Jake was very American in spirit and shared a little of that comfortable Yankee contempt for poor foreigners. And as an American Negro he looked askew at foreign niggers. Africa was jungle, and Africans bush niggers, cannibals. And West Indians were monkey-chasers. But now he felt like a boy who stands with the map of the world in colors before him, and feels the wonder of the world.
The waiter told him that Africa was not jungle as he dreamed of it, nor slavery the peculiar role of black folk. The Jews were the slaves of the Egyptians, the Greeks made slaves of their conquered, the Gauls and Saxons were slaves of the Romans. He told Jake of the old destroyed cultures of West Africa and of their vestiges, of black kings who struggled stoutly for the independence of their kingdoms: Prempreh of Ashanti, Tofa of Dahomey, Gbehanzin of Benin, Cetawayo of Zulu-Land, Menelik of Abyssinia. …
Had Jake ever heard of the little Republic of Liberia, founded by American Negroes? And Abyssinia, deep-set in the shoulder of Africa, besieged by the hungry wolves of Europe? The only nation that has existed free and independent from the earliest records of history until today! Abyssinia, oldest unconquered nation, ancient-strange as Egypt, persistent as Palestine, legendary as Greece, magical as Persia.
There was the lovely legend of her queen who visited the court of the Royal Rake of Jerusalem, and how he fell in love with her. And her beautiful black body made the Sage so lyrical, he immortalized her in those wonderful pagan verses that are sacred to the hearts of all lovers—even the heart of the Church. … The catty ladies of the court of Jerusalem were jealous of her. And Sheba reminded them that she was black but beautiful. … And after a happy period she left Jerusalem and returned to her country with the son that came of the royal affair. And that son subsequently became King of Abyssinia. And to this day the rulers of Abyssinia carry the title, Lion of Judah, and trace their descent direct from the liaison of the Queen of Sheba with King Solomon.
First of Christian nations also is the claim of this little kingdom! Christian since the time when Philip, the disciple of Jesus, met and baptized the minister of the Queen of Abyssinia and he returned to his country and converted the court and people to Christianity.
Jake listened, rapt, without a word of interruption.
“All the ancient countries have been yielding up the buried secrets of their civilizations,” the waiter said. “I wonder what Abyssinia will yield in her time? Next to the romance of Haiti, because it is my native country, I should love to write the romance of Abyssinia … Ethiopia.”
“Is that theah country the same Ethiopia that we done l’arned about in the Bible?” asked Jake.
“The same. The Latin peoples still call it Ethiopia.”
“Is you a professor?”
“No, I’m a student.”
“Whereat? Where did you l’arn English?”
“Well, I learned English home in Port-au-Prince. And I was at Howard. You know the Negro university at Washington. Haven’t even finished there yet.”
“Then what in the name of mah holy rabbit foot youse doing on this heah white man’s chuh-chuh? It ain’t no place foh no student. It seems to me you’ place down there sounds a whole lot better.”
“Uncle Sam put me here.”
“Whadye mean Uncle Sam?” cried Jake. “Don’t hand me that bull.”
“Let me tell you about it,” the waiter said. “Maybe you don’t know that during the World War Uncle Sam grabbed Haiti. My father was an official down there. He didn’t want Uncle Sam in Haiti and he said so and said it loud. They told him to shut up and he wouldn’t, so they shut him up in jail. My brother also made a noise and American marines killed him in the street. I had nobody to pay for me at the university, so I had to get out and work. Voilà!”
“And you ain’t gwine to study no moh?”
“Never going to stop. I study now all the same when I get a little time. Every free day I have in New York I spend at the library downtown. I read there and I write.”
Jake shook his head. “This heah work is all right for me, but for a chappie like you. … Do you like waiting on them ofays? ’Sall right working longshore or in a kitchen as I does it, but to be rubbing up against them and bowing so nice and all a that. …”
“It isn’t so bad,” the waiter said. “Most of them are pretty nice. Last trip I waited on a big Southern Senator. He was perfectly gentlemanly and tipped me half a dollar. When I have the blues I read Dr. Frank Crane.”
Jake didn’t understand, but he spat and said a stinking word. The chef called him to do something in the kitchen.
“Leave that theah professor and his nonsense,” the chef said. …
The great black animal whistled sharply and puff-puffed slowly into the station of Pittsburgh.
XI
Snowstorm in Pittsburgh
In the middle of the little bridge built over the railroad crossing he was suddenly enveloped in a thick mass of smoke spouted out by an in-rushing train. That was Jake’s first impression of Pittsburgh. He stepped off the bridge into a saloon. From there along a dull-gray street of grocery and fruit shops and piddling South-European children. Then he was on Wiley Avenue, the long, gray, uphill street.
Brawny bronze men in coal-blackened and oil-spotted blue overalls shadowed the doorways of saloons, poolrooms, and little basement restaurants. The street was animated with dark figures going up, going down. Houses and men, women, and squinting cats and slinking dogs, everything seemed touched with soot and steel dust.
“So this heah is the niggers’ run,” said Jake. “I don’t like its ’pearance, nohow.” He walked down the street and remarked a bouncing little chestnut-brown standing smartly in the entrance of a basement eating-joint. She
