“Hi! now you’re saying that thing,” Ray laughed.
“All the same, you’ve got more freedom here,” said the seaman; “when you have money you can go any place you got a mind to.”
“Sure can,” said Banjo. “Theah’s moh freedom, all right, if you know how to handle it. But some a them niggers come here, boh, am as funny and dumb jes’ like that thing. They get in every way except the right way. They ketch the wrong end of the stuff. They ketch the pohliceman’s billy, they ketch the jailhouse, and what not ketch? Oh, Lawdy! ask not me!”
“Maybe the good liquor makes them crazy after boozing so long on moonshine corn,” said a seaman.
“And mos’n a them don’t even know how to use it right,” said Banjo. “They come here wanting whisky and gin, and when I tell them to drink French wine, that’s the best stuff to feel good on, they say it’s sour dago red. Can you beat that?”
“Don’t be too hard on them, Banjo,” said Ray. “They got to learn.”
“Learn!” sneered Banjo. “Them kind a babies nevah learn anything. A real traveling guy has got a preambulating nose for the bestest thing in any country whenever it is accommodated to him, but there’s many people running round the world that nevah shoulda been outa them own home town.”
For certain reasons, arrived at from a wide knowledge of the eccentricities of civilization and experience personal and impersonal, Ray felt no eagerness to transfer the party to the British-American Bar on such an evening. He was really rather reluctant, but because he preferred not to deaden in any way the keen anticipation of the evening’s pleasure for his comrades, he said nothing.
The atmosphere of the cabaret, when the boys got there, was heavily charged with contrary foreign influences and they were greeted by an extraordinary salvo of shrill female laughter as they entered. The Senegalese was irritated and said he did not like the atmosphere and the reception. Ray told him he did not think it was mocking laughter. Ray was never on the lookout for hostile hints; his mind was too rich of sane, full living for that. But there was no obtuseness there to prevent him from making immediate note of any such tendency. He had often remarked that white people were never more contemptibly vulgar than when a Negro entered a white place of amusement. If it were not a hostile exhibition of bad manners, as in America, it would be an imbecile theatrical demonstration, as often happened in Europe. It was as if the black visitor could not be seen in any other light but that of a funny actor on the stage.
He had never known black people to act like that when white persons entered a Negro place of pleasure. On such occasions Negroes could assume a simple dignity as remote from white behavior as primitive African sculpture is from the conventionalism of a civilized drawing-room. He had never remarked a vulgar gesture. Primitive peoples could be crude and coarse, but never vulgar. Vulgarity was altogether a scab of civilization.
The boys squeezed together round a table and had some drinks. The Senegalese was right. None of the girls wanted to dance with them. It was purely a matter of good business. Ray understood and he was glad to get away from the place. Cockney was not a musical accent to his ears, nor was there any aesthetic pleasure in the sight of those white caps on hard-boiled, over-shaved heads. But it hurt him that these black boys, coming off the ship after a long hard trip should tumble into this.
Not far from the British-American Bar was another. The head waiter was a boxing enthusiast and was friendly with Ray and the Senegalese. Ray told the boys to wait for him in the square while he went to the bar to talk to the head waiter. It was a more expensive bar than the British-American.
The head waiter was at the bar when Ray entered. He was glad to see Ray and offered him a drink, but he wasn’t pleased to hear what Ray wanted for his comrades. He wished it was any other time, for the boîte de nuit was full of American and British officers spending plenty of money, drinking champagne. He was sure there would be trouble. There had been before when there were colored men in the bar and English and American customers—especially Americans. Once that bar had been ordered closed for six months because of a colored-white incident. He was for the boys, all right, for he was one of them himself, but if they did come in there might be a fight and it would spoil the boss’s business.
Business! Prejudice and business. In Europe, Asia, Australia, Africa, America, those were the two united terrors confronting the colored man. He was the butt of the white man’s indecent public prejudices. Prejudices insensate and petty, bloody, vicious, vile, brutal, raffiné, hypocritical, Christian. Prejudices. Prejudices like the stock market—curtailed, diminishing, increasing, changing chameleon-like, according to place and time, like the color of the white man’s soul, controlled by the exigencies of the white man’s business.
Back in the square with his comrades, Ray said he knew of one other place where he had been a few times with the two gentlemen bums, but he felt sure it would be no different from the rest on a night like that.
“Damn the white man’s bars!” he said. “Let’s go back to the Ditch.”
“When I enlisted in the army during the war,” said Banjo, “mah best buddy said I was a fool nigger. He said the white man would nevah ketch him toting his gun unless it was to rid the wul’ of all the crackers, and I done told him back that the hullabaloo was to make the wul’ safe foh democracy and there wouldn’t be
