waiting until I lost patience. He let one of the buses go, although
there were vacant places. I said, "What's the idea? What game are you
playing?" He said, "You know in America, you'd have to wait for the
last and ride by yourself." I said, "Yes, you--you have sucked off so
much America, that you need some fascist castor oil to purge you." He
said, "I think you'll want to box next; all Negroes are boxers." I
said, "Look here, I won't defile my hands with your dirty dago skin,
but I'll cut your gut out." I went suddenly mad and pulled my knife and
he ran around the bus, crying that the Negro was after him with a knife.
In a moment sanity flashed back into me as quickly as it had fled and I
put the knife in my pocket. It was a fine clean blade. Lucien had given
it to me in Toulon. A friendly fellow took me up on his motorcycle and
we dashed away from the damned place. It was the first time I had ever
drawn a blade in a fight, and I was ashamed. The Frenchman said: "What
are you ashamed of, when you didn't do it? You should have stuck him in
his belly and made one Italian less. Italy and France are certain to go
to war, and I think they should start right now." That was ten years
ago.
The business manager made much trouble for me over the incident. He
talked a lot about an intelligent Negro not being able to control
himself. And if I had to use a weapon, he wanted to know, why should it
be a knife? For it was a general idea that the Negro race was addicted
to the use of the knife. Even though I was on trial, with the judge
prejudiced against me, I could not resist saying, "When bad traits are
wished upon a whole group of people, it isn't so surprising if the best
of us sometimes unconsciously exhibit some of the worst traits."
I thought that when the final decision was handed down, I would
surely lose my job. But Rex Ingram's face revealed that he possessed
an intuitive understanding of poets. He is Irish. He knew that I had
suffered enough from the incident, and didn't punish me further.
So I stayed at work all that spring until summer, when the studio
closed. Then I decided to go to Marseilles. I had kept out of Rex
Ingram's sight most of the rest of the time, because, as I said, I
was thoroughly ashamed. But when I was going I sought him out to
say goodbye and he encouraged me to go on with my writing, told his
bookkeeper to give me a free ticket to Marseilles, and gave me a gift
of six hundred francs.
XXV
Marseilles Motley
It was a relief to get to Marseilles, to live in among a great gang of
black and brown humanity. Negroids from the United States, the West
Indies, North Africa and West Africa, all herded together in a warm
group. Negroid features and complexions, not exotic, creating curiosity
and hostility, but unique and natural to a group. The odors of dark
bodies sweating through a day's hard work, like the odor of stabled
horses, were not unpleasant even in a crowded café. It was good to feel
the strength and distinction of a group and the assurance of belonging
to it.
The Africans came mainly from Dahomey and Senegal and Algeria. Many
were dockers. Some were regular hard-working sailors, who had a few
days in port between debarking and embarking. Others were waiting for
ships--all wedged in between the old port and the breakwater, among
beachcombers, guides, procurers, prostitutes of both sexes and _bistro_
bandits--all of motley-making Marseilles, swarming, scrambling and
scraping sustenance from the bodies of ships and crews.
I rented a room in the Vieux Port and worked rapidly revising my
stories. Louise Bryant had written asking me to get all my stories
ready, for she was sailing soon to New York, and would take them
herself to a publisher. Sometimes I did a little manual work. The
Senegalese foreman of the Negro dockers was my friend, and when he
had a lot of work of the lighter kind, such as unloading peanuts or
cocoanuts, he gave me an easy job.
There was always excitement in the Vieux Port: men's fights and
prostitutes' brawls, sailors robbed, civilian and police shooting. One
Senegalese had a big café on the quay and all the Negroes ganged there
with their friends and girls. The Senegalese was a remarkable type,
quiet, level-headed, shrewd. He had served in France during the World
War and had been a sergeant. He went to the United States as soon as he
could after the armistice. He got a job such as the average Negro works
at and at the same time he ran a rooming house for Africans and Negroid
Moslems in New York. He amassed a tidy sum of money, returned to France
after six years, and bought the bar in the Vieux Port. His family in
Goree was old, large and important. He had a relative in Paris, who was
a small functionary in the municipal system. A sister was a graduate
nurse in Dakar, and I met in Casablanca a first-class mechanic who was
his cousin.
In his social outlook the café owner was an African nationalist. He
introduced me to one of his countrymen named Senghor. This Senghor
also was a war veteran and a Negro leader among the Communists. He was
a tall, lean intelligent Senegalese and his ideas were a mixture of
African nationalism and international Communism. Senghor was interested
in my writing and said he wished I would write the truth about the
Negroes in Marseilles. I promised him that I would some day.
He gave me a little pamphlet he had written about the European
conquest of Africa. The sentiment was quaint and naïve, like the human
figures stamped on old-fashioned plates.... Senghor took me to the
international building for seamen in Marseilles. It was newly opened
by Communists--a vast place, complete with bar, kitchen, theater
and recreation room. In the reading room there were newspapers in
nearly all of the occidental and oriental languages. There were a few
seamen, Scandinavian, French, Annamites, Spanish, but no Negroes,
present. Senghor talked to the manager and said it was their job to
get the Negroes to come to the International Seamen's building. But
the building was far out of the center of the town and the Negroes
preferred the international beehive of the Vieux Port. Yet the Negroes
had hard industrial problems to face in Marseilles. On the boats they
were employed as stokers only, and they were not employed on those
boats making the "good" runs: that is, the short runs, which the white
seamen preferred. Also as dockers they were discriminated against
and given the hardest and most unpleasant jobs, such as loading and
unloading coal and sulphur. The Negroes complained against the unions:
Senghor told them the unions were Socialist unions and that they should
become Communists.
One afternoon I listened in on a conversation in black and white
between Senghor and the café owner. I think it is worth recording here.
Senghor had been gassed in the war and he was consumptive. He was
married to a Frenchwoman who was devoted to and was dutifully taking
care of him.
Said the café owner to Senghor: "But say, listen: I don't see how you
can become a great Negro leader when you are married to a white woman."
Senghor replied that he felt even more bitterly about the condition of
Negroes because he was married to a white woman; and as Communism was
international, it was an international gesture for him to be married
to a white woman, especially since white chauvinists objected to
intermarriage. "And what about you," Senghor asked the café owner,
"aren't you living with a white woman?"
"Yes, but I am not aiming to be a leader," said the café owner. "But
you are aiming to be. If you are a real true leader, if the Negroes see
it on the outside and feel it on the inside, they will surely follow
you, and if the men follow you, their women must follow them. For
you can't uplift men without uplifting women. And colored women will
not follow Negro leaders who are married to white women. Especially
when white women everywhere have more social freedom and privileges
than colored women. How many white leaders are there anywhere who are
married to colored women? They couldn't be and remain leaders. They
love our women, but they don't marry them.
"Now take our Deputy Diagne. Before Diagne, all our leaders used to
be mulattoes. But the mulattoes did everything for the whites and
nothing at all for the blacks. So we blacks, being more than they, we
got together and said: 'Let's elect a black man; he might do better.'
But as soon as we elected Diagne and sent him to Paris, right away
he married a white woman. Now his mulatto children despise us black
Senegalese. Now if Deputy Diagne had a colored wife for his hostess in
Paris, wouldn't that be propaganda helping our women and our race? But
I think the French preferred Diagne to have a white wife, rather than
have a colored woman as a political hostess in Paris. Soon as we tried
to do something for ourselves as a group, they did something else to
make our action ineffective."
Senghor closed his eyes and scratched his head and opened his eyes and
said that his countryman's idea was interesting and he would have to
think the subject over from another point of view.
"It's not just a color problem, but a human problem," said the café
owner. "Why, suppose all the big Frenchmen took English wives and
disregarded the French women! I tell you there would be another French
Revolution."
At that moment the French companion of the proprietor entered the
café. Embarrassed, the two Senegalese shut up. The woman went over
to the proprietor and leaned affectionately upon his shoulder. He
reached up and patted her. It was a strange scene, after that strange
conversation, and it made me feel queer. Sentimentally, I was confused;
intellectually, I was lost.
* * * * *
My stories finished, I mailed them to Louise Bryant who received
them on the very morning she was leaving for America. Summer was at
its meridian in Marseilles. It was hot, and that was good for me,
a straight dry heat and sweet to the skin. Nothing of the sticky,
uncomfortable and oppressive summer heat of New York and London and
Paris. One gets into the warmth of Marseilles as a West Indian boy
burrows into a heap of dried sugar cane after the liquor has been
pressed out, and feels sweet and comfortable lying down deep in it.
I took a holiday from thinking out stories and writing and took to
the water. Way down at the end of the great Marseilles breakwater,
with the black sailors on French leave, dockers and beachcombers, we
went in bathing. But I discovered a better bathing place in l'Estaque,
fifteen minutes by trolley from Marseilles, and went out there with an
American friend for the rest of the summer. Formerly l'Estaque was a
fishing village with a big beautiful clean and sheltered bay. Cézanne
loved to paint there. But now it is a squalid factory town and the
center of the cement and tile industries. In its population there
are many foreigners: Poles, Italians, Russians, North Africans, even
some Germans who call themselves Austrians. They live in ugly cabins
on the hill and work in the factories and on the new Rhône canal. All
the dirty water of the cementing and tiling flows into the bay. But a
little outside the town, a little out beyond where the canal enters the
bay, there still remains a wonderful wide sheet of splendid deep clean
water. There I went every day for the rest of the summer, floating for
hours upon my back with the healing sun holding me up in his embrace.
Suddenly there came three days of mistral, and it was fall. I don't
like the mistrals of Marseilles. Happily just then I received an
invitation from Max Eastman to visit him at Antibes. Soon after I got
that letter another came from Louise Bryant. She said she had found a
publisher who was interested in printing my stories and that I should
soon hear from her again.
I went to Antibes. The next interesting thing was a letter from William
Aspenwall Bradley of Paris, telling of his coming down to Antibes to
see me about my work. When Bradley arrived he said my stories were
accepted for publication as Harlem stories and he suggested that I
should do a novel of Harlem instead, because a novel would bring me
more prestige and remuneration than a book of short stories.
I seized upon the suggestion, and with the story, "Home to Harlem,"
as the design I built up a book upon scenes of Harlem life. They were
scenes of the Harlem I knew during the many years I lived there and
worked as a porter in New York buildings and clubs and as a waiter on
the Pennsylvania Railroad.
Many persons imagine that I wrote _Home to Harlem_ because Carl
Van Vechten wrote _Nigger Heaven_. But the pattern tale of the book
was written under the tide of "Home to Harlem" in 1925. When Max
Eastman read it he said, "It is worth a thousand dollars." Under the
same title it was entered in the story contest of the Negro magazine
_Opportunity_. But it did not excite the judges. _Nigger Heaven_ was
published in the fall of 1926. I never saw the book until the late
spring of 1927, when my agent, William Aspenwall Bradley, sent me a
copy. And by that time I had nearly completed _Home to Harlem_.
I lived a hermit and ascetic in Antibes and achieved _Home to Harlem_.
I finished it in the summer of 1927 and fled to Marseilles. The Negroid
colony of the Vieux Port was greatly changed. Many of the foreign
Negroes were deported. Some had died of disease.
Also, I had an opportunity to see the Vieux Port from a different
angle, from the inside out. Jules Pascin, the painter, had sent me a
letter of introduction to his friend, Le Corse, of the Vieux Port. I
had seen Pascin in Paris with his Negro model, Aicha. I never care for
letters of introduction when I am visiting a new place for the first
time, for I like the sensation of being a total stranger in a strange
place and sampling the strangeness of it until I find myself a little
and get acquainted.
Now, however, as I had already approached Marseilles independently
in my own way, and as it was one of those places which stirred me up
to creative expression, I was glad to make use of Pascin's letter.
Perhaps it would be a means of providing something complementary to my
impressions.
I looked up Le Corse and found his wine shop not far from the Rue de la
Bouterie, one of the most sordid streets of _mancebías_ in the world.
Le Corse was a solid man, built like a bull, with the head of a hog.
He read Pascin's letter and was immediately friendly. He poured me a
big glass of good red wine and we drank together. He said that any
friend of Pascin's was his also, and that I could have all that the
Vieux Port had to offer, as much as was in his power--anything I liked.
We talked awhile. I told him a little about my background and the
ground I had covered in Europe. He said that Pascin had informed
him that I was a writer and he hoped I would find something good in
Marseilles to write about. He was a friend of painters and writers.
He left his shop in charge of a young man and went around with me,
dropping into _bistro_ cafés and _mancebías_ and introducing a few
types of both sexes. He was surprised that I was cordially greeted in a
few of the places. I told him I had been in Marseilles before.
Le Corse possessed a _mancebía_ of his own and we went there. Also he
protected through his gang a number of girls who had their private
holes in the walls of the alleys. After going through the Vieux Port,
he invited me to his home. His home was ten paces distant from the
wineshop. It was a well-furnished apartment with plenty of bric-à-brac,
and very noticeable was the cheap Roman Catholic statuary. Le Corse's
wife warmly wished me welcome. "Any friend of Pascin is our friend,"
she also said. She was rather stout, although less formidable than her
husband, and all the fingers of her hands, excepting the thumbs, were
full of rings of all kinds.
Le Corse entertained me with more wine, and then he proceeded to show
me what Pascin meant to him. We went into his front room. On the walls
there were many fine Pascin paintings: portraits, scenes and tableaux
of girls of the _mancebías_ in different attitudes. There was one very
fine thing of the girls: a large canvas with a group of them deftly
fixed in tired disgusted ungainly attitudes. The only other painting of
that profession that ever impressed me so much was one of a café girl
by Picasso which I had seen some years before.
Le Corse knew the value of the picture. He said: "That's a masterpiece."
"Yes," I agreed.
"It's worth about twenty thousand francs in New York," said Le Corse.
"Pascin is in the first class. When he invited me to visit Paris, I
went to a dealer there and found out what price he could command as a
painter. I have collected every scrap of paper he made a drawing on,
and made him sign them. Look here!" Le Corse opened a portfolio and
displayed a lot of Pascin drawings. Besides Pascin, he had paintings
and drawings by other artists, all inscribed to Le Corse in a fine
fervor of friendship. And poets also had dedicated their verses to him.
While Le Corse was exhibiting his art treasures, his two daughters
entered and he introduced them. They left the room immediately after
being introduced. Le Corse said: "I don't allow my daughters to powder
and paint and smoke. I am bringing them up in the right way. They go
to a convent school. My son goes to a commercial college. We keep our
family clear and clean of our business.
"When Pascin and his wife and their friends come to Marseilles, I look
out for them," he went on. "They are artists and visit the bordels for
material, so I protect them in their business as I protect my boys and
the girls in their business. One time Pascin brought a Frenchman here
with a Russian lady, and the lady started to dance with one of the
bordel girls. I stopped it. I said, 'Pascin's friends are _my_ friends
and can't afford to lower themselves.' They are my guests and I treat
them like guests, not as customers. I don't like degenerates. Of
course, if rich people want to indulge a fantasy, I arrange privately
for them, for rich people can afford to be fantastic. But I have no use
for plain poor people being fantastic unless they are making money by
it."
Le Corse and I went walking along the quay. We passed a group of
Senegalese. He said: "They're no good," with a deprecating gesture.
"Why?" I asked. "I am just like them."
"No, you're American. Why should you imagine yourself like them because
you are of the same complexion? The Spaniards and Portuguese around
here are the same complexion as myself, but I am not in their class!
The Senegalese are savages and stupid. They don't understand our system
with the girls; the same goes for the Arabs."
The bawdy battle between black and white was sharp in Marseilles. The
Negroes and Arabs who had settled in large numbers in the city since
the armistice had developed a problem for the European apaches. There
was a tendency among the Africans to take the girls out of their
business and set up housekeeping with them. That, of course, diminished
the income of the procurers.
Said Le Corse: "Do you know an artist whose name is Ivan Opfer?"
"Yes," I said.
"He is also Pascin's friend," said Le Corse. "Is he a big painter? I
mean, does he sell for big money?" I said that Opfer was successful and
had done portraits of celebrated persons in America and Europe, even
titled ones.
A shadow fell upon Le Corse's hog face. He shook his head and said,
"Ivan Opfer offered me a large portrait of myself, but I refused it.
I couldn't take it," he said sadly. "Why?" I asked, surprised and
interested. "It is worth money. Opfer is not as big a man as Pascin,
but he is good."
"I couldn't take it," said Le Corse, "because he made me look so
terribly like an apache and I don't really look like that. I couldn't
stand it. Pascin and the other artists painted me nice."
"I wish you had kept it," I said. "I should have liked to see it. It's
years since I saw any work of Ivan Opfer's."
"It is at the Hôtel Nautique," said Le Corse. "I'll take you there and
ask the proprietor to show it, and you'll see for yourself that it is a
painting of a criminal."
We went to the Nautique and the friendly proprietor sent a _garçon_
with us up to an attic to show us the picture. I had known Ivan Opfer
when I was an assistant editor of _The Liberator_. The magazine staff
used to be divided in opinion about his work. Some thought it had
striking merit; others, that it was tricky. Most of his work that I saw
were portraits with a strong caricature element in them. But never had
I seen anything by him so gripping as his large portrait of Le Corse.
When I saw it I recoiled as if I had been thrust into the presence of
an incarnate murderer. It was Le Corse all right--a perfect picture.
Opfer had painted it without mercy. Pascin and the other artists had
done romantic studies of the man, making him like a picturesque retired
sailor of the Marseilles bottoms. But Opfer had penetrated straight
into his guts and seized his soul to fix it on that canvas. It was a
triumph of achievement, it was so real, so exactly true. And suddenly I
felt a little sympathy for Le Corse, a slight kinship of humanity, for
I became aware that he was afraid of his real self.
When Le Corse took me into his house and exhibited the pictorial and
literary tributes--those bouquets and wreaths that a vanguard of modern
artists and writers had laid at his conquering feet, I felt a sickness
in the pit of me, a paralysis of all the fibers of fine feeling. For
there was no doubt about the genuine talent of those artists: some
of the stuff was high genius. And also there was no doubt about the
_intention_ of their tribute to Le Corse. They meant a sincere homage
to this hero, exalted by the taxes paid for freedom of action by the
poor vampires of the waterfront. But I felt better, more hopeful, when
I saw Ivan Opfer's portrait of Le Corse, so strangely abandoned there
in a little hotel on the Marseilles waterfront.
I said goodbye to Le Corse. "Remember," he said, "if you ever want
anything, if you are ever in trouble in Marseilles, just let me know,
for you are Pascin's friend." I thanked Le Corse, but I thought that
whatever happened to me in Marseilles, I could never bring myself to
ask any help of _him_. "I hope you'll write a successful book," he
said, as we parted.
I said I'd like to do a good book. And right then I remembered Senghor,
the Senegalese, begging me to write the truth. I settled down to work
and began _Banjo_.
In the beginning of _Banjo_ I was surprised by Bull-frog, who burst
into my den one afternoon accompanied by Isadora Duncan. I must go back
a little on the trail to pick up and explain Bull-frog. He was a slav
adventurer. We had met in Berlin. A student friend who loathed his
way of life called him the Bull-frog. Later in Paris we came together
again. He was always traveling between Paris and the Midi and sometimes
we met for a brief moment in Nice or Monte Carlo or some other tourist
spot. We carried on a regular correspondence. He had to write many
letters in his clandestine business and as his English was bad, he
often asked me to write important ones for him: those that he didn't
want anybody else to know about.
Bull-frog was making better progress with his contacts in France than
in Germany. Most of his correspondence was kittenish letters from old
ladies who were apparently amused by a jumping frog. But one day he
surprised me at Monte Carlo. He introduced me into a really smart set:
an English lady with a high title and an enormous amount of money, a
Christian Scientist from New England who had gone Gurdgieff, a futurist
poet from Oxford, a cosmopolitan _rentier_ and three student-like
youngsters. And I heard Bull-frog saying very gravely that humanity had
produced only six great men and they were all poets and artists. He
named them: the Founder of Christianity, Aristotle, Dante, Shakespeare,
Beethoven, Tolstoy. Bull-frog was getting by also intellectually.
I went to Bull-frog's hotel to write a letter for him. As he opened a
valise to look for a letter I noticed many other letters in the valise
that were not addressed to him. I passed my hand over them. A few
were addressed to prominent persons. Some were unopened. I exclaimed
in surprise. Bull-frog laughed: "I don't steal money or jewelry from
them," he said, "for if you steal you'll get caught some day and
lose everything. But I get their letters and find out their private
business. And if there's anything bad, I'll know how to make them give
money without wasting the energy which I must conserve for the building
of my Temple." Bull-frog had informed me in Berlin that his big idea
was to build an international Temple of Love.
"But if you steal the letters," I said, "it is equally dangerous.
Suppose there is money in them!"