Jake obtained leave. He put on civilian clothes and lit out for Havre. He liquored himself up and hung round a low-down café in Havre for a week.
One day an English sailor from a Channel sloop made up to Jake. “Darky,” he said, “you ’arvin’ a good time ’round ’ere.”
Jake thought how strange it was to hear the Englishman say “darky” without being offended. Back home he would have been spoiling for a fight. There he would rather hear “nigger” than “darky,” for he knew that when a Yankee said “nigger” he meant hatred for Negroes, whereas when he said “darky” he meant friendly contempt. He preferred white folks’ hatred to their friendly contempt. To feel their hatred made him strong and aggressive, while their friendly contempt made him ridiculously angry, even against his own will.
“Sure Ise having a good time, all right,” said Jake. He was making a cigarette and growling cusses at French tobacco. “But Ise got to get a move on ’fore very long.”
“Where to?” his new companion asked.
“Any place, Buddy. I’m always ready for something new,” announced Jake.
“Been in Havre a long time?”
“Week or two,” said Jake. “I tooks care of some mules over heah. Twenty, God damn them, days across the pond. And then the boat plows round and run off and leaves me behind. Kain you beat that, Buddy?”
“It wasn’t the best o’ luck,” replied the other. “Ever been to London?”
“Nope, Buddy,” said Jake. “France is the only country I’ve struck yet this side the water.”
The Englishman told Jake that there was a sailor wanted on his tug.
“We never ’ave a full crew—since the war,” he said.
Jake crossed over to London. He found plenty of work there as a docker. He liked the West India Docks. He liked Limehouse. In the pubs men gave him their friendly paws and called him “darky.” He liked how they called him “darky.” He made friends. He found a woman. He was happy in the East End.
The Armistice found him there. On New Year’s Eve, 1919, Jake went to a monster dance with his woman, and his docker friends and their women, in the Mile End Road.
The Armistice had brought many more black men to the East End of London. Hundreds of them. Some of them found work. Some did not. Many were getting a little pension from the government. The price of sex went up in the East End, and the dignity of it also. And that summer Jake saw a big battle staged between the colored and white men of London’s East End. Fisticuffs, razor and knife and gun play. For three days his woman would not let him out-of-doors. And when it was all over he was seized with the awful fever of lonesomeness. He felt all alone in the world. He wanted to run away from the kindheartedness of his lady of the East End.
“Why did I ever enlist and come over here?” he asked himself. “Why did I want to mix mahself up in a white folks’ war? It ain’t ever was any of black folks’ affair. Niggers am evah always such fools, anyhow. Always thinking they’ve got something to do with white folks’ business.”
Jake’s woman could do nothing to please him now. She tried hard to get down into his thoughts and share them with him. But for Jake this woman was now only a creature of another race—of another world. He brooded day and night.
It was two years since he had left Harlem. Fifth Avenue, Lenox Avenue, and 135th Street, with their chocolate-brown and walnut-brown girls, were calling him.
“Oh, them legs!” Jake thought. “Them tantalizing brown legs! … Barron’s Cabaret! … Leroy’s Cabaret! … Oh, boy!”
Brown girls rouged and painted like dark pansies. Brown flesh draped in soft colorful clothes. Brown lips full and pouted for sweet kissing. Brown breasts throbbing with love.
“Harlem for mine!” cried Jake. “I was crazy thinkin’ I was happy over heah. I wasn’t mahself. I was like a man charged up with dope every day. That’s what it was. Oh, boy! Harlem for mine!
“Take me home to Harlem, Mister Ship! Take me home to the brown gals waiting for the brown boys that done show their mettle over there. Take me home, Mister Ship. Put your beak right into that water and jest move along.” …
II
Arrival
Jake was paid off. He changed a pound note he had brought with him. He had fifty-nine dollars. From South Ferry he took an express subway train for Harlem.
Jake drank three Martini cocktails with cherries in them. The price, he noticed, had gone up from ten to twenty-five cents. He went to Bank’s and had a Maryland fried-chicken feed—a big one with candied sweet potatoes.
He left his suitcase behind the counter of a saloon on Lenox Avenue. He went for a promenade on Seventh Avenue between 135th and 140th Streets. He thrilled to Harlem. His blood was hot. His eyes were alert as he sniffed the street like a hound. Seventh Avenue was nice, a little too nice that night.
Jake turned off on Lenox Avenue. He stopped before an ice-cream parlor to admire girls sipping ice-cream soda through straws. He went into a cabaret. …
A little brown girl aimed the arrow of her eye at him as he entered. Jake was wearing a steel-gray English suit. It fitted him loosely and well, perfectly suited his presence. She knew at once that Jake must have just landed. She rested her chin on the back of her hands and smiled at him. There was something in his attitude, in his hungry wolf’s eyes, that went warmly to her. She was brown, but she had tinted her leaf-like face to a ravishing chestnut. She had on an orange scarf over a green frock, which was way above her knees, giving an adequate view of legs lovely in
