Banjo told Dengel he was hunting for a job and wanted him to help.
“What for a job?” demanded Dengel.
“Because I’ve got to work. I ain’t got no money. I done lost mah banjo. I ain’t got nothing left, so I jest nacherally gotta find anything that looks some’n’ like that hard-boil’ ugly-mug baby they calls a job.”
“Job no good. Good job no easy find,” said Dengel. “Why you no keep on as you use to?”
“Kain’t no moh. Gang’s all broke up and gone the cardinal ways that every good thing dead must go.”
There were two Senegalese section bosses on the docks who hired the majority of the Senegalese when there was work for them. One of them was always in a boisterous semi-drunken state. The other was a fine, upstanding specimen of black man with strong white teeth and clear eyes, a full, gorgeously-carved mouth, and smooth-shining ebony skin. His name was Sarka. Banjo had seen him a couple of times at the African bar. But he did not often frequent the Vieux Port quarter. He was married and lived in a more respectable proletarian district of the town. Banjo got Dengel to arrange a meeting between him and Sarka at the Rendezvous Bar.
Banjo took with him to the bistro his suitcase with a few chic articles of toilet in it. He had heard that the boys who had jobs often had to grease the palm of the section boss. Having been used to that in the United States, he was prepared to meet it. He had a few sous for wine and he relied on Dengel to help out his sparse French vocabulary.
With an apologetic gesture Sarka turned up his palms in reply to Banjo’s demand for work. He didn’t think it was possible. Work! It was difficult nowadays. There was a new law passed about strangers working in France. Banjo didn’t know that, eh! The hectic postwar period when there was more work than men to do it was passing now. Strangers who wanted work had to show a special permit.
The new law did not in any way affect those dock workers who were strangers. The majority of the little bosses were Italians and when men were wanted to load and unload ships, they took the men that were at hand. When work was scarce the strangers yielded place to the favorite sons, of course. And the favorite sons were naturally Italians, who were strangers in the unnaturalized sense, but not foreigners in the generally accepted sense.
Banjo chinked glasses with Sarka and Dengel, gulped down some red wine, and turned to occupy himself with his suitcase. He fished up a striped silk shirt and handed it to Sarka. Sarka’s eyes gleamed bigger and whiter in his jolly, handsome face. He had seen American seamen with those shirts that opened all the way down, just like the B.V.D.’s that one could put on without ruffling the kinks in the hair after combing them. He was eager to possess one. Now it was his without cost—a silk one!
“Pour moi?” asked Sarka.
“Oui, vous,” responded Banjo, his forefinger punching Sarka’s heart. And then he nearly knocked him over with a gorgeous oblique-striped necktie, of the kind that college boys flaunt in America.
“Mais non!” exclaimed Sarka, and affectionately his hand sought Banjo’s shoulder.
“Oui, oui, vous take,” Banjo grinned. “Vous, moi, amis, bons amis.”
“Toujours amis,” agreed Sarka. “Demain, vous venez me chercher aux docks. Travail.”
Thus Banjo opened a way to work on the docks. And Sarka, who hoped to go to America some day, began learning English words from him. Some British West Africans of the Ditch asked Banjo to introduce them to Sarka. He did, and they, too, got work. Soon Sarka’s gang was English-speaking and he was saying to his men: “Get down,” “Come up,” “Time to begin,” “Stop,” and a few more boss words.
At the African Bar it was gossiped that Sarka had taken on the English-speaking hands in place of the Senegalese because he touched a five-franc graft every day from each of them. Besides, they were always swilling wine together in the evenings and it was the gang that paid. Banjo was Sarka’s friend and chief man, of course, and the gossip excluded him from the daily graft, but it was well known that he had given a bribe of fancy stuff to gain Sarka’s good will.
Dengel told Banjo all about the gossip and Banjo replied: “I ain’t worrying about them niggers’ evil lip. They c’n talk their jawbone loose. Ise used to niggers talking. What’s giving a man a shiert? Back home wese every jackman used to scrambling foh buying jobs. Peckawoods and niggers. It’s all the same. A shiert! Five francs! That ain’t no money. I done buy moh jobs than I can count up in the States. I buy them offn white mens and I buy them offn niggers. Them was big-money days when every man was after the other fellah’s skin. Oh, Lawdy! Life is a game a skin; black skin, white skin, sweet skin and all skin and selling one another is living it.”
Sarka did not boss his new gang very long. There were crosscurrents of rivalry and jealousy on the docks between Italians, Arabs, Maltese, and
