He went to America after the riots and jumped his ship there. He lived in the United States until after the passing of the new quota immigration laws, when, the fact of his entering the country illegally getting known, he was arrested and deported. In America he had joined the Back-to-Africa crusade and was a faithful believer in the Black Star Line bubble, the great dream of commerce that was to link Negroes of the New World with those of Africa. He bought shares in it and, although the bubble burst with the conviction and imprisonment of the leader for fraudulent dealings, Taloufa still believed in him and his ideas of Back-to-Africa.
Taloufa maintained that the Back-to-Africa propaganda had worked wonders among the African natives. He told Ray that all throughout West Africa the natives were meeting to discuss their future, and in the ports they were no longer docile, but restive, forming groups, and waiting for the Black Deliverer, so that, becoming aroused, the colonial governments had acted to keep out all propaganda, especially the Negro World, the chief organ of the Back-to-Africa movement.
“The Black Deliverer has delivered himself to the ofays’ jailhouse,” said Ray.
“It’s the damned English that got him there,” said Taloufa.
Taloufa firmly believed the rumor, current among Negroes, that representatives of the British Intelligence Service had instigated the prosecution and conviction of Marcus Garvey in the United States.
However, Taloufa had no immediate intention of returning to West Africa. It was his first trip to this great Provençal port of which he also had heard and dreamed much. And after tasting it for a while he expected to go on to England.
He had at once fallen in with the idea of Banjo’s orchestra. Unlike Goosey, he was not squeamish about the choice of music. He loved all music with a lilt, and especially music that was heady with sensuousness. Banjo found it easy to work along with him. If Taloufa had a little word to say about Back-to-Africa, Banjo would listen deferentially, and for his answer refer him to Ray.
“I ain’t educated, buddy. Ask mah pardner, Ray.”
The day following their big musical night, Banjo took Taloufa down to look the breakwater over. Returning from Joliette to the Vieux Port in the afternoon, they stopped in a bistro of the Place de Lenche for a cool guzzle of wine. The Place de Lenche is midway between Joliette and the Bum Square. The Quartier Réservé slopes up a somber crisscross of alleys to its edge, where it ends.
Finishing their bottle, the boys started down one of the alleys into the Ditch, when they were attracted by a striking girl framed in front of a bistro. She was straight, boyish, and carrot-headed. And she stood right-arm akimbo and the left up against the jamb of the door, between her fingers a cigarette at which she whiffed with an infinitely bored mechanical manner. A young Chinese, leaning against a lamppost a little farther down on the opposite side of the alley, was beckoning to her. Lizard-like, excessively slim and hipless, his smooth buff-yellow countenance was rigidly immobile, but the balls of his eyes behind the curious little slits were burning with rage.
“Gawd on his golden moon! What a saucy-looking doll that one is!” Banjo exclaimed.
“I ain’t studying any kelts,” replied Taloufa.
“Watch her and that sweet chink. She’s scared a him.”
Not a muscle of the Chinese youth’s face twitched as the girl went slowly, reluctantly toward him. He stood fixed in his tracks until she came to him, her toes up to his toes, her face almost touching his face. Then he said something to her, his lips barely moving, and as she opened her mouth to reply he lifted his knee and drove a terrific kick into her belly. The girl fell backward with a shriek on the cobblestones.
A policeman then coming down from the Place de Lenche, bicycle in hand, rushed over, and apprehended the Chinese. Immediately the girl picked herself up and grabbed the arm of the youth, crying to the policeman: “Leave him alone! Leave him alone!” The policeman left them a little shamefacedly as the gang of spectators that had quickly gathered laughed derisively.
“Sale vache au roulette,” said the Chinese boy, and putting the girl before him he said, “Go on,” and began kicking her all the way down into the Ditch. And subdued, without a whine, she went. A little knot of pasty-faced kids frisked about and, laughing, cried: “Chinois! Chinois!”
“She honors and obeys her boss all right,” Taloufa remarked, dryly.
“They’re the only real sweetbacks in this Ditch, them Chinese,” said Banjo. “The only ones kain bring you a decent change a suit and strut the stuff like a fellow back home.”
Taloufa went to the Antilles Restaurant for dinner. Banjo had taken a dislike for that restaurant and would not go there. Taloufa promised to meet him after dinner at the beach boys’ café on the other side of the Bum Square, where they would play.
Taloufa had not gone Back-to-Africa in ideas only, but also in principle … and nature. He put up at the Antilles because it was a hotel primarily for Negroes (although it did not at all exclude the little pinks of the Ditch who went there for chocolate trade and brought in business), owned by a Negro couple.
The Antilles Restaurant was
