XXIII
Shake That Thing Again
Ray returned to the Ditch, and at the African Bar Banjo was treating Malty, Ginger, Dengel, and some West African boys. Banjo had received notice from the consulate to prepare to leave in a day or two. Ray was boisterously welcomed. Girls and their touts were dancing to the continuous racket from the pianola. Banjo suggested that the gang should go to his old hangout, where he would play and they could kick up their own racket.
The long back room in the rear of the bistro was the boys’ for spreading joy. Banjo revived “Shake That Thing” for the party. Malty joined him blowing a little horn or whistling, while the boys kept up a humming monotone of accompaniment as they danced.
Front and rear the bistro was jammed—girls and touts and beach boys. The girls helped themselves liberally to the boys’ wine on the tables. Dengel, who rarely danced, was dogging it with a boy from Grand Bassam. A vivacious girl pointed at them and cried: “Look at that Dengel dancing. I thought he didn’t do anything but booze.”
She cut in between them and, her feminine curiosity rising over her passion for gain, she ignored the boy from Grand Bassam, who was new to the Ditch and supposed to have money, and taking hold of Dengel, said “Dance with me.” Tall and very slim, Dengel looked like a fine tree fern. He bent over to the girl in that manner of swaying inebriation peculiar to him, and executed an African jig so wildly that space had to be cleared for them. Surprised at Dengel’s rough wildness, the girl laughed and shrieked and wiggled excitedly.
When Banjo stopped playing, she rushed up to him and asked for the same thing again. Just at that moment a tout entered and whispered something to the Jellyroll patronne of the bistro, who held up her hand and called: “Listen! If any of you have guns or any other weapons, give them to me, for there’s going to be a rafle tonight.”
The touts handed over their guns and knives to her. Of the colored men, only a mulatto, a Martiniquan, had a revolver, which he gave to the woman. She put the weapons in a drawer of the counter and locked it. A boy who was a stranger to the quarter asked her; “You always know when the police are going to operate down here?”
“Sure. That’s understood,” she said. She was near the entrance, and stepping out into the narrow alley she said, with a raucous laugh, “That for the police.”
She reentered the bistro heaving with laughter and, patting one of the Senegalese who was standing white-eyed by the door, said: “Tu as vu le clair de lune?”
Hearing that the police were coming, Ray felt that he could not stand being handled by them again just then. He might do something crazy and get into serious trouble. So he quietly slipped off. Just as he reached the corner the police entered the bistro. He had to cut across Boody Lane to reach the Bum Square, and as he was passing he saw a policeman coming out of one of the holes-in-the-wall and finger-wiping his long mustache as if he had just finished the most appetizing hors d’oeuvre in the world. Maybe.
In the Bum Square he met Latnah. Her manner was strangely preoccupied. Ray asked her if she knew the boys were celebrating in the Ditch. She knew, but did not care to go.
“I think you’re blue like me,” said Ray. “Maybe what we need to fix us up is a pipe dream.”
“You do that, too?” Latnah asked.
“I do anything that is good for a change. All depends on the place and the time and the second person singular?”
“Then I have stuff,” Latnah said. “We go.”
They went up to her little place. She spread the colored coverlet on the floor and threw down two little cushions for pillows. She brought out a basket of oranges and dates. And they sat down together on the rug. A little brass plate, lamp, tube and, the iodine-like paste strangely fascinating in its somnolent thickness. Latnah prepared for the ritual.
“Take fruit. It good with fruit,” she said.
“I know that,” Ray replied.
“You know all about it,” she smiled subtly. “I think is leetle Oriental in you.”
“Maybe. There’s a saying in my family about some of our people coming from East Africa. They were reddish, with glossy curly hair. But you have the same types in West Africa, too. You remember the two fellows that used to be at the African Bar during the summer? They looked like twins and they were heavy-featured like some Armenians.”
“I think they were mulattres,” said Latnah.
“No, they weren’t mixed—not as we know it between black and white today. Perhaps way back. I heard they were Fulahs.”
“We all mixed up. I’m so mixed I don’t know what I am myself.”
“You don’t? I always wonder, Latnah, what you really are. Except for the Chinese, I don’t feel any physical sympathy for Orientals, you know. I always feel cold and strange and far away from them. But you are different. I feel so close to you.”
“My mother was Negresse,” said Latnah. “Sudanese or Abyssinian—I no certain. I was born at Aden. My father I no know what he was nor who he was.”
Latnah picked an orange clean of its white covering and handed a half of it to Ray. He put his tube down and slipped a lobe into his mouth. The incense of the rite rose and filled the little chamber, drifting on its atmosphere like a magic
