“Let’s all go in here and take a stiff drink.” Banjo indicated a little bistro at the corner.
“Better let’s leg it a li’l’ ways longer,” said the ukelele-player, “so the police won’t come fooling around us now that wese good and well away outa there. I don’t wanta have no truck with the police.”
“And they ain’t gwineta mess around us, pardner,” said Malty. “We don’t speak that there lingo a theirn and they ain’t studying us. Ise been in on a dozen shooting-ups in this here Ditch, ef Ise been in on one, with the bullets them jest burning pass mah black buttum, and Ise nevah been asked by the police, ‘What did you miss?’ nor ‘What did you see?’ ”
“Did you say a dozen?” cried the ukelele-player.
“Just that I did, boh, which was what I was pussonally attached to. But that ain’t nothing at all, for theah’s a shooting-up or a cutting-up—and sometimes moh—every day in this here burg.”
“Malty,” said Banjo, “youse sure one eggsigirating spade.”
“Doughnuts on that there eggsigirating. It’s the same crap to me whether there was a dozen or a thousand. They ain’t nevah made a hole in me, for Ise got magic in mah skin foh protection, when you done got you souvenir there on you’ wrist, Banjo boy.”
“Gawd! But it was a bloody affair, all right,” said the guitar-player. “I was so frightened I didn’t really know what was happening. Bam! Biff! And the big boss-lady was undertaker’s business before you could squint.”
“Jest spoiled the whole sport,” said the ukelele-player. “I kinda liked the nifty dump. It was the goods, all right.”
“You said it, boh,” the mandolin-player grinned, scratching his person. “It was some moh collection. All the same, I gotta plug.”
“With you, buddy,” cried Banjo. “Right there with you I sure indeed is.”
“Let’s go back to the African Bar,” suggested the mandolin-player. The picture of the North African girl shaking that jellyroll thing was still warmly working in his blood.
They found the African Bar closed. Again they left the quay, and Banjo took them up one of the somber, rubbish-strewn alleys of the Ditch. On both sides of the alley were the dingy cubicles whose only lights were the occupants who filled the fronts, gesturing and calling in ludicrous tones: “Viens ici, viens ici,” and repeating pridefully the raw expressions of the low love shops that they had learned from English-speaking seamen.
Out of a drinking hole-in-the-wall came the creaky jangling notes of a small, upright and ancient pianola. The place was chock-full of a mixed crowd of girls, seamen, and dockers, with two man-of-war sailors and three soldiers among them.
“What about this here dump?” asked Banjo.
The mandolin-player looked lustfully up and down the alley and into the bistro, where wreaths of smoke settled heavily upon the frowsy air. “Suits me all right,” he drawled. “What about you fellows?”
“Well, I hope it won’t turn into another bloody mess of a riot this time,” said the ukelele-player.
“Here youse just like you would be at home. This is my street,” said Banjo. A girl came up and, patting him on the shoulder with a familiar phrase, she pushed him into the bistro.
As they entered a Senegalese who had been dancing to their voluptuous playing at the African Bar, exclaimed: “Here they are! Now we’re going to hear some real music—something ravishing.” And he begged Banjo to play the “Jellyroll.”
One of the soldiers was evidently “slumming.” There was a neat elegance about his uniform and shoes that set him apart from the ambiguous dandies of military service, the habituées of shady places. His features and his manner betrayed class distinction. He offered Banjo and his companions a round of drinks, saying in slow English: “Please play. You American? I like much les Nègres play the jazz American. I hear them in Paris. Épatant!”
Banjo grinned and tossed off his Cap Corse. “All right, fellows. Let’s play them that thing first.”
“And then the once-over,” said the mandolin-player.
Shake to the loud music of life playing to the primeval round of life. Rough rhythm of darkly-carnal life. Strong surging flux of profound currents forced into shallow channels. Play that thing! One movement of the thousand movements of the eternal life-flow. Shake that thing! In the face of the shadow of Death. Treacherous hand of murderous Death, lurking in sinister alleys, where the shadows of life dance, nevertheless, to their music of life. Death over there! Life over here! Shake down Death and forget his commerce, his purpose, his haunting presence in a great shaking orgy. Dance down the Death of these days, the Death of these ways in jungle jazzing, Orient wriggling, civilized stepping. Sweet dancing thing of primitive joy, perverse pleasure, prostitute ways, many-colored variations of the rhythm, savage, barbaric, refined—eternal rhythm of the mysterious, magical, magnificent—the dance divine of life.
Second Part
VI
Meeting-Up
Banjo’s place at Latnah’s was empty for many days, for he was deep down in the Ditch again. He was even scarce with Malty and the other boys, and they did not know where he was lying low. Malty, Bugsy, and Ginger had the run of a ship, where they ate, did a little galley work, and could even sleep when they wanted to, and Banjo was supposed to eat there, too. But only once had he honored the beach boys’ new mess with his presence. He did, however, send down some dozen white and colored fellows to bum off Malty. For on that ship there was always enough leftover food to feed a regiment of men.
Banjo did not go to the boat to feed because he was having a jolly fat time of it. While his pals had felt quite satisfied with the big treat of eats and drinks and a few francs in coins from the musical seamen, Banjo’s infectious spirit had touched his fellow artistes for over two hundred francs, which they considered nothing at all
