And it also seemed to him that Negroes under civilization were helplessly caught between the two forces. There was an idea current among the whites that the blacks were oversexed. He had heard it coarsely from ordinary whites and he had spoken frankly with intelligent-minded ones about it. He had also got it from things written by white people about the black.
But from his experience and close observation of Negro sex life in its simplicity in the West Indies and in its more complex forms in American and European cities, Ray had never felt that Negroes were oversexed in an offensive way and he was peculiarly sensitive to that. What he inferred was that white people had developed sex complexes that Negroes had not. Negroes were freer and simpler in their sex urge, and, as white people on the whole were not, they naturally attributed oversexed emotions to Negroes. The Negroes’ attitude toward sex was as much removed from the English-American hypocritical position as it was from the naughty-boy exhibition manner of the Continent.
Even among rough proletarians Ray never noticed in black men those expressions of vicious contempt for sex that generally came from the mouths of white workers. It was as if the white man considered sex a nasty, irritating thing, while a Negro accepted it with primitive joy. And maybe that vastly big difference of attitude was a fundamental, unconscious cause of the antagonism between white and black brought together by civilization.
The beginning of the cold season brought the boys straggling back to Marseilles. Ginger had made his way back from Cardiff to Rouen, from Rouen to Bordeaux, and he had taken ten days, he said, to walk from Bordeaux to Marseilles. Goosey left Bugsy at the factory, going away with a white fellow. He had wanted to go to Paris. He got as far as a town near Lyon, where he found a job as kitchen man in a hotel. But under the new law the proprietor could not keep him unless he could obtain French papers. There was an American consul in the town and Goosey went and asked his help in procuring the necessary papers. The consul was a colored man, but Goosey did not know it, because he was so near white. (It was Ray who told Goosey when he returned to Marseilles that the consul was Negroid, for he had read about him and seen his photograph in an American Negro publication.) The consul could not get the coveted papers for Goosey, and, faced with the fact that he could get nowhere without them, he returned to Marseilles. He was discouraged and became ill on the way back. Arriving at Marseilles, he had just enough strength to drag himself to the American consulate, from which he was sent to the hospital. He was placed in a ward below Banjo.
The turning of the weather was detrimental to the boys, whose scanty clothing was suitable for summer only. It also dampened their ever-bubbling gayety. But they all agreed that Marseilles was the most convenient port for them. The only one missing from the group was Bugsy. Nobody knew whether he had left the factory or was still there.
One Saturday, when Ray went to the hospital, Banjo told him that he expected to be operated on the next week. As Ray was leaving, Banjo asked him almost casually if he ever saw Chère Blanche. Ray said he had not seen her since he took her his message, because he did not pass frequently through Boody Lane, but he had heard that she was still in her box.
“What do you expect, Banjo? I told you to lay off her, because I knew she would treat you a second time just as she did the first. Those people in the Ditch—they can’t afford to have a heart.”
“I knowed she was no angel,” said Banjo. “But as she done come and made up with me without me chasing after her a second time, she coulda leastways come and see me once. Is that theah Latnah still hanging around?”
“Yes, she is,” said Ray, “but everything is different, you know. The gang doesn’t hang together as we used to. And you know Latnah is mad at you. Would you like to see her?”
“Well, I wouldn’t mind befoh fixing mahself foh that cold steel business,” said Banjo.
“I’ll tell her,” Ray said.
Latnah went to see Banjo with flowers.
“Now ain’t this showing some’n’!” exclaimed Banjo. “The whole ward’ll think wese crazy. Everything comes heah. Eats and drink and the whole shooting family, but it’s the first time this place got gifted with flowers.”
They made up to each other.
“Quand on est malade, on ne garde pas la rancune,” said Latnah.
Banjo assented. “It’s a sure thing I ain’t making no preparation for the boneyard, for I jest ain’ta gwina die. But being as Ise gwineta get down and under the knife, it does make me feel better for all of us to be as we uster befoh. It was a bum business we getting mad at each other ovah a no-’count kelt.”
“It was no that made me angry,” said Latnah, “no she herself. I was mad when Bugsy tell me you like white more than colored and that you were so lucky getting money, and every time you get it you waste all with the white and don’t remember friends. And she after you again jest because you make a big raise—”
“That Bugsy is the meanest monkey-chaser I evah seen,” cried Banjo. “Bugsy hate white folks like p’ison and all a them look the same to him without any difference. He got mad at me ’causen I done gived five francs to a poah hungry white kid. But all the stuff he been handing out about me is bull. Of cohse I know mah limentations and I know I kain’t nevah wear that there crown of glory as a pure-and-holy race saint. But I know what I
