“I no could imagine you really love the white more than the colored,” said Latnah.
“Chuh! How could I evah love white moh’n colored?” cried Banjo. “White folks smell like laundry soap.”
And Banjo and Latnah laughed so contagiously that all the white patients in the ward joined them without suspecting in the least that they were laughing at themselves.
XXI
Official Fists
Some time after the operation Banjo left the hospital. Latnah volunteered to put him up until he felt strong enough to rough it.
Ray had suggested to Banjo that when he came out of the hospital he should go straight to the American consulate to inquire for mail, as that was the address he had given his aunt when he wrote to her. When Banjo presented himself at the consulate he found two letters from his aunt, and one contained a ten-dollar note neatly folded in a bit of newspaper. He was also given ten francs and sent to a Seaman’s Hotel, where his board-and-lodge would be paid by the consulate until a boat was found for his repatriation. He was not subjected to any questioning as to how he had come to Marseilles or how long he had been there.
Banjo changed the ten dollars and gave the boys of his group ten francs a piece. To Ray he gave fifty and kept a hundred for himself. They celebrated the evening big. Banjo, Ray, Malty, Latnah, Dengel, and some others who had recently landed on the beach; a stripling of a mulatto mess-boy, who was also put up in Banjo’s hotel, waiting for a ship; a Central American from one of those complicated little Tangier-like places, who was working all the consulates of the Latin republics as well as the British and American; an Egyptian black and three British West Africans. Bugsy was still missing, and Goosey was not with the gang.
Goosey had left the hospital before Banjo, but his illness had scared him into careful retirement. He had entered the hospital coughing and feverish, and had come out quite emaciated, like a skeleton with his nigger-brown suit hanging loose on him. The consul had put him in the same hotel where he sent Banjo, but Goosey did not get all that without being lectured for his obstinacy in quitting his ship when he was warned not to.
The gang fed at an Italian feeding-place. There was a grand pouring of red wine, plenty of black and green olives, pickles, and tiny salt fishes and saucisson, macaroni and tomato sauce, and veal à la Milanaise. From feeding they went to the African Café, with the roses of the Ditch in their wake. Music was supplied by a tinpanny pianola and half of the night was jazzed away to its noise. All through the feverish coughing-spitting jazzing there was restless movement of feet between Boody Lane and the bistro, and when the hot tumult was falling note over note from its high crescendo, the jazzers pairing off, Latnah did not find her Banjo. Chère Blanche had not vamped him this time, however, as his emotions were as indifferent to her now as to Latnah. Banjo was stuck in another hole of the Ditch.
Banjo bought a secondhand instrument at a bargain. He got it at one-half the amount that he owed at the restaurant where his original companion was held. He redeemed his clothes from the Mont de Piété. He made sweet music for the boys again, but the old spontaneous, carefree happiness was not in the new gang.
For one thing, Banjo was no longer a homeless drifter. He was safe. He had no need to worry about his keep. He would soon be sent back home. It was splendid that he had a few francs to help the boys during the cold days when ships were scarce and panhandling was worthless. But he could not share his eats at the hotel with them. If he ate outside, he could not let one of them have the benefit of his hotel meal. And he could not take any of them up to his room. When the mistral blew the freezing Atlantic gusts into the Mediterranean and it was too shivering cold in the box car for the boys, Latnah would sneak some of them up to her box on the roof and Ray allowed others the floor of his chambre noire, which he shared with the Egyptian who worked as a watchman on the docks. But Banjo could not help.
One afternoon Goosey, with Ray, Latnah, and Malty, was sitting on the terrace before his hotel when a tall, slim black boy with straight jet-shiny hair came up to them. He looked like a Somali. The boy was one of the gang with whom Goosey and Bugsy had gone to work in the upcountry factory. He spoke to Goosey and told him that Bugsy was very ill in a lodging-house in one of the alleys back from Boody Lane. They had both come back just that week to the Ditch. He had told Bugsy to go to the hospital, but he had refused, saying he didn’t like a hospital for he was afraid that they might make away with him there. The boy had been getting milk for him, which was all that he would take. But he had talked all night long the night before. The boy had been to the docks for a half a day’s work, and when he went home in the afternoon he had found Bugsy very quiet and strange. He thought he ought to be compelled to go to the hospital, and so he had come to ask Goosey’s help.
The boys and Latnah started off for the Ditch. On the way they picked up Banjo. Bugsy was lying in one of those little chambres
