They went to the other side of the Vieux Port on the Quai de Rive Neuve where the restaurants specialized in sea foods. A waiter brought them a basket of fine fish and told them to choose. Soles, dorades, loups, mullets—some alive and twitching. Jake insisted on having champagne. And when the smiling head waiter submitted the wine list he chose an expensive brand, Duc de Montebello, because, he said, “the name sounded lak a mahvelous mouful.”
The boys had a gorgeous time feeding and sampling the sparkling liquor and swapping jokes, except for one little snag, which they swept grinning over. At the third table across from them there was a party of two women and three men, and one of the men, who looked like a middle-aged salesman, kept throwing phrases at the boys in English: “It’s good here, eh? … You like drink fine champagne. … I know many blacks. I been in America. … You get good treatment here. Eat good, sleep good. … Les filles.” He smirked and leered nastily at them and Ray told him in French:
“We don’t know you and we don’t want you to butt into our party.”
A look of mean hatred came into the man’s face and he replied, “You are not polite.”
“I know,” said Ray. “When we don’t let you condescend to interrupt us, we’re not polite, and if any of us had tried to do the same thing with your party we would be impertinent blacks.”
The man’s party paid their bill and left the restaurant a little after the incident.
Then Goosey remarked: “You didn’t have to trip him up so hard, Ray. You know in New York we couldn’t eat in a white restaurant like this.”
“I don’t give a white damn for that,” said Ray. “If we can’t eat downtown we can eat better in Harlem. I wouldn’t give Aunt Hattie’s smoky cook-shop for all the Childs restaurants whitewashed like a tomb. I guess that puss-faced Frenchman was thinking just like you. But all the same, if they let us into their white places, they’ve got to treat us naturally like other guests. This black boy won’t stand for any condescending crap.”
“Mah pardner is right, Goosey,” said Banjo. “For all you’ bellyaching talk about race, youse a white man’s nigger in the bottom. You got you’ haid so low down behind that white moon, believe me, that you kain’t see nothing clear.”
The Bum Square was a close, busy, bustling place when the boys returned there. There were many ships in port—American, English, Norwegian, Italian, and others—and all the common seamen had come to the quarter for amusement. It was like a pit with all things in it—men, women, aged, infirm, boys, touts showing their girls with ghoulish gestures, children, dogs, and cats—all boiling in desire. But there was no free, wild bubbling over. It was a boiling as of purchased food put in a cauldron and carefully fed with fire to a certain point. A boiling exhibition for a strong smell of change was in the Bum Square. Loveless eyes told and hounds’ voices barked without words the price of the circus—boxes, balcony, gallery, parquet, pit, front and rear.
Automatically the piano-panning jumped madly out of the Anglo-American Bar to clash rioting in the square with that of the Monkey Bar.
“Gawd’s love!” exclaimed Jake. “Ain’t no wonder you fellahs stick in this sweet mud. Fust place I evah feel mahself in a jazzing circus some’n’ lak Harlem. It shoh smells strong.”
“Not like Harlem, though,” said Ray. “Harlem’s smell is like animals brought in from the fields to stable. Here it’s rotten-stinking.”
Jake grinned. “You remember you’ send-off feed in ole Aunt Hattie’s cook-shop, chappie? You ain’t fohgit how I done told you there was no other place like Harlem in the white man’s wul’. And now foh putting a li’l’ Harlem stuff in this jazzing.”
A young girl went by them, limping with a pathetic, half-resentful, half-terrified look in her eyes and a fever-hot color in her cheeks.
“See that gal?” Banjo said. “Jest a few months back she hit this Ditch the cutest thing in it. Comed from the country, they said, and, oh, Lawdy! if it wasn’t a rushing wild. And then blip-blap it was the hospital next and look at her now.”
They went to the Ditch to a bistro full of brown and black and Mediterranean seamen, automatic music, strenuously jazzing girls, loud, ready-made laughter, and vigorous swilling of liquor.
Ray’s friend, the chauffeur, was there, drinking and surrounded by an admiring group of pale touting youths. Ray went over to him for a moment. The chauffeur asked him to join the party, but Ray pointed out that he was with Banjo and Jake. He glanced a little inquiringly at the boys. The chauffeur smirked and said: “They are all my boys. They do everything you want them to do. Steal, murder, love in all ways, lie, and spy.”
The boys’ features wore a sickly smile as they listened to the chauffeur boosting them. Ray rejoined his group. A little later Latnah came in with Malty and Dengel. Latnah, peeved, unreconciled to Banjo’s going away, although she had not uttered a word about it, sat rather apart on the edge of the group. The girls of the circle glanced resentfully at her. They could never like the little brown woman. Although quite unobtrusive, the superiority of her difference from them was too eloquently obvious.
The chauffeur left his place and went over to where Latnah was sitting. Standing behind her, he put his arms around her.
Latnah said, “Take you’ dirty hands off me and leave me alone.”
The chauffeur laughed and said, “I am boss of everything here.”
“Except me,” replied Latnah. “I’m not like your Arab wench.”
This Arab girl was different from the Arab-black one. She was honey-colored, with flaky-soft shining coal hair, deeply curled. Her mouth was not cruel, but her eyes were mad. She was one of the chauffeur’s women.
The chauffeur said: “Don’t
