The customers were colored seamen, soldiers from Martinique and Guadeloupe, a few from Madagascar, and three brown girls. During the dinner a brown, jolly-faced soldier played an accordion while a Martinique guide and sweetman, who was sweet in the Ditch for every purchasable thing, was shaking a steel pipe, about the size of a rolling-pin, containing something like beans or sand grains. The curious thing went beautifully with the accordion.
They played the “beguine,” which was just a Martinique variant of the “jellyroll” or the Jamaican “burru” or the Senegalese “bombé.” The tall, big-boned patronne started the dancing. She radiated energy like a boiler giving off steam. She danced with a whopping sergeant, talking all the time the Martinique dialect in a deep voice of the color and flavor of unrefined cane sugar. She was easily the central figure, making the girls look like dancing attendants. It was an eye-filling ensemble of delicious jazzing, and the rhythm of it went tickling through the warm blood of Taloufa, who was still smacking his lips over his sausage-and-rice, tempered with a bottle of old Bordeaux.
“Beguine,” “jellyroll,” “burru,” “bombé,” no matter what the name may be, Negroes are never so beautiful and magical as when they do that gorgeous sublimation of the primitive African sex feeling. In its thousand varied patterns, depending so much on individual rhythm, so little on formal movement, this dance is the key to the African rhythm of life. …
In company with a pretty Provençale, the Arab-black girl came in. Her hair stood up stiff, thick and exciting. Her mouth was like a full-blown bluebell with a bee on its rim, and her eyes were everywhere at once, roving round as only Arab eyes can. She had disappeared since the night of her glorious performance at the “Shake-That-Thing” festival and was just this day returned to Marseilles again.
Taloufa saw her for the first time and fell for her. Their eyes met, his a question, hers a swift affirmative, and he went to dance with her. There was no common language between them, but what did that matter? Taloufa’s swelling emotion was eloquent enough. And mingled with that emotion was the patriotic feeling of kinship with his pickup that made him do the “beguine” with a royal African strut.
After that dance they sat together, the girl choosing a bottle of mousseux for the treat. … Taloufa was filling the glasses from a second bottle when Banjo entered in search of him.
“For the love of a li’l’ piece!” Banjo cried. “Ain’t you coming to play noneatall tonight, buddy?”
Not understanding, but guessing that Banjo wanted to get Taloufa away, the girl looked at him in a hostile manner. She knew, of course, that Banjo was on the beach.
“You gotta carry on without me tonight,” Taloufa said in a thick, ripe-brown voice, slowly, pointlessly fingering his guitar.
“Get outa that,” said Banjo. “You ain’ta gwine to drop a fellah flat like that. Come and give us a hand. You got all the balance a the night foh sweet flopping. Kay’s got two ofays with him and I wanta turn loose some’n’ splendacious foh them. Them’s English and might hulp us some. A fellah nevah know his luck. Theyse done some moh running around the wul’ jest lak you and me and Malty, and they knows every knowingest place in this white man’s Europe.”
“But I’ve got this sweet business with me,” objected Taloufa.
“Man, tell her you’ll see it later. I’ll fix it up with her. This is Marcellus. Everything wait on you down to Time himse’f when youse gotta roll on you.”
It was not so easy to get Taloufa away from the girl, but Banjo managed it, making eloquent promises of returning him to the Antilles.
“You come back without fail,” said the girl as Banjo opened the door.
“Youse clean gone on her, eh?” remarked Banjo as they went along the Bum Square.
“She’s a bird of a brown,” was Taloufa’s response.
“Watch out! Our own color is the most expensive business in this sweet burg. Ise one spade can live without prunes when I ain’t in chocolate country. You see Latnah. I got her all going mah own way becazen Ise one independent strutter.”
“I’ve noticed all right you aren’t foolish about her,” agreed Taloufa. “Malty’s more that way. But I’m different from you. I haven’t got any appreciation at all for the kelts.”
“You’re joking,” exclaimed Banjo, laughing. “You ain’t telling me that you done gone all the way back home to Africa even by that most narrow and straitest road that a human mortal was nevah made to trod?”
“I’m not kidding at all,” responded Taloufa. “I’m foursquare one hundred percent African.”
At the hangout Bugsy, Goosey, Ginger, Dengel, Malty, and Ray with his two guests were waiting. They were two Britishers who lived uptown, but were frequently down in the Ditch. Ray had met them by one of the tourist bureaus of the Cannebière. Like himself, they were always traveling. But they had been staying for some length of time in Marseilles. Ray knew nothing about them yet—what hobby they pursued and what they were doing in Marseilles. They spoke cultivated English and the taller of the two had a colonial accent that Ray could not place. At the hangout they treated the beach boys, and the girls that their presence attracted there, to the best liqueurs and fines in the place.
“He was just falling down for a wonderful brown,” cried Banjo as he entered
