“The woman who owned the studio was a Nordic of Scandinavia. The artist by whom I was recommended said that she was worried about engaging me, because there were many Américaines in the class. They were the best-paying students, and, as I belonged to a savage race, she didn’t know if I could behave.
“My artist vouched for me. And so I went to work, putting myself rigidly on good behaviour. Everything went along as nice as pie. Personally I felt no temptation to prevent me from being the best-behaving person in the studio. All the students, strong and fair, came and measured me all over to get the right perspective, not hesitating to touch me when they wanted to place me in a better light or position.
“The posing went along famously. Soon the students began making polite conversation with me. They were all fierce moderns. Some of them asked if I had seen the African Negro sculptures. I said yes and that I liked them. They wanted to know what quality I liked in them. I told them that what moved me most about the African sculpture was the feeling of perfect self-mastery and quiet self-assurance that they gave. They seemed interested in what I had to say and talked a lot about primitive simplicity and color and ‘significant form’ from Cézanne to Picasso. Their naked savage was quickly getting on to civilized things. … I got extra appointments for private posing, which paid better than the school. …
“Then one beautiful day I forgot students and art and all in the middle of my pose, and was lost away back in Harlem, right there at the Sheba Palace, in a sea of forms of such warmth and color that never was seen in any Paris studio. And—good night! My staff went clattering to the floor and it was refuge for me.”
“What happened?” demanded Banjo.
“Nothing. … But I decided that only the other sex was qualified for posing in the nude.”
While Ray was talking, two white beach fellows entered the café.
“Hello, there!” cried Ginger. “Which one a the bum broad youse running away from now?”
“None a them this time, me man,” replied the smaller of the two, going to shake hands with Ginger. He was a young fellow with a mischievous boyish face and a bush of black hair all tousled. He had on an old and well-frayed seaweed-green jersey and a pair of once-black pants, now burned red by the sun, eaten up in the bottom and creased a thousand ways. He was of the breed of white vagabonds that prefer the company of black men and are apt to go native in tropical lands. He had a frank, free manner of approach that made the black boys accept him without any reserve. He had chummed with Ginger the summer before on the beach, and had disappeared sometime during the winter.
“Then where was you all this time? In jail?” Ginger asked.
“You guessed it first shot,” said the white, “only it wasn’t in this damned frog hole. Was over there,” he jerked his thumb toward the boy, “in Africa—Algeria.”
“In the A‑rabs country?” said Ginger. “How did you likem?”
“Not me,” the Irish fellow brought his palms up as a sign of disapproval. “Them babies over there ain’t noways like you-all. Be Christ, they ain’t got no religion and won’t ever have any, it seems to me, so long as they believe that Mohammed is the law and that Jesus ain’t born yet, and that some day he’s going to be born, if ever he is, of a white man. Oh, Lord! if I didn’t have a hell of a time in that country. I stowed away over there, thinking I’d meet up with fellows like you-all, and I found there nothing but red ones that wasn’t human at all. And then I landed in prison and the white ones was worse. They wouldn’t even give me water to drink. I was burning up all inside and I felt like I’d catch fire and blaze, for I’d been drinking hard. For two days I never had a drop of water. I cried and begged to see the chief warden, and when he did come at last and I begged him for water, he spit in my face.”
“Good God!” exclaimed Ray.
“Yes, be Christ he did!” said the Irish boy, “and he wasn’t no A‑rab, neither; he was a white man. I’ll never make another beach in any of the frogs’ country again.”
“French or English, they are all the same under this system,” said the other white. He was English. His clothes were good. He was returning from Piraeus, where he had been paid off from a Greek ship and was now being repatriated home. His home-going thoughts were not happy. He had been an out-of-work before joining the foreign ship and was probably returning to join that army. He was for the left in politics and had been in jail for extremist agitation.
“I was beaten up in the fice at Pentonville Prison,” he said. “There’s little difference anywhere under the system.”
“I could better stand up to the Englishman’s fist in me face than the Frenchman’s spit in me face,” said the Irish lad. “It’s better to taste me own blood in me mouth than another man’s spit.”
XI
Everybody Doing It
Ray had put on his carefully-tended suit for special occasions to go to an agency on the Canebière, the great Main Street of Marseilles. The broad short stretch of thoroughfare was in gala dress, just as crazy as could be.
A Dollar Line boat, and a British ship from the Far East, had come into port that morning and their passengers
