which works like Satan against the idea of a coherent and purposeful
Negro group. Each one wanted to be the first Negro, the one Negro, and
the only Negro _for the whites_ instead of for their group. Because
an unusual number of them were receiving grants to do creative work,
they actually and naïvely believed that Negro artists as a group would
always be treated differently from white artists and be protected by
powerful white patrons.
Some of them even expressed the opinion that Negro art would solve the
centuries-old social problem of the Negro. That idea was vaguely hinted
by Dr. Locke in his introduction to _The New Negro_. Dr. Locke's essay
is a remarkable chocolate _soufflé_ of art and politics, with not an
ingredient of information inside.
They were nearly all Harlem-conscious, in a curious synthetic way, it
seemed to me--not because they were aware of Harlem's intrinsic values
as a unique and popular Negro quarter, but apparently because white
folks had discovered black magic there. I understood more clearly why
there had been so much genteel-Negro hostility to my _Home to Harlem_
and to Langston Hughes's primitive Negro poems.
I wondered after all whether it would be better for me to return to
the new _milieu_ of Harlem. Much as all my sympathy was with the Negro
group and the idea of a Negro renaissance, I doubted if going back to
Harlem would be an advantage. I had done my best Harlem stuff when I
was abroad, seeing it from a long perspective. I thought it might be
better to leave Harlem to the artists who were on the spot, to give
them their chance to produce something better than _Home to Harlem_. I
thought that I might as well go back to Africa.
XXVIII
Hail and Farewell to Morocco
I suppose every man who achieves something worthwhile naturally
attracts some woman. I was interested in Carmina, who had a white
lover. Carmina was a pretty colored lady who had recently deserted
the best circles of Harlem for Paris. I liked Carmina. She had lived
her life a lot, even as I, and neither of us could reproach the other
about the past. But when Louise Bryant saw us together she scolded me.
"That girl is not your type," she said. "Why don't you go on living
as you always did? Why do you have to go around with a female on your
arm, simply because you have written a successful novel?" I said that
perhaps it was nothing more than "male conceit." Louise Bryant laughed
and said, "Take care you don't spoil yourself by doing the thing that
every man thinks he ought to do because of male conceit."
Louise Bryant and Carmina did not like each other. The three of us were
spending a convivial evening together and, feeling gallant, I tried
to find something to praise in Louise's appearance. She had been to a
hairdresser's that afternoon and her neatly shingled hair was gleaming
black. I said, "Louise, your hair is very nice tonight." Louise smiled
her appreciation. But Carmina said, in a loud whisper, "Can't you see
it's dyed?" A blighting frost descended on the party.
It was a sweet relief to give up for awhile discussing problems of race
and art for an atmosphere of pure sensuality and amorous intrigue.
Carmina also had been fed up with too much race in the upper circles
of Harlem, which was why she had fled to Paris. One night I was drunk
and maudlin in Montparnasse and Louise Bryant shrieked at me in high
intoxicated accents, shaking her forefinger at me, "Go away and write
another book. Go home to Harlem or back to Africa, but leave Paris. Get
a grip on yourself." She looked like the picture of an old emaciated
witch, and her forefinger was like a broomstick. Perhaps it was her
better unconscious self warning me, for she also could not get a grip
on herself and get away from Paris.
I heeded the warning. I started off for Africa. But I lingered a long
time in Spain. The weeks turned into months. From Madrid I went to
Andalusia and visited Cordova and Granada again, then went back to
Barcelona. A French radical friend wrote chidingly about my preference
for Spain, so medieval and religion-ridden. I wrote him that I expected
radical changes in medieval Spain sooner than in nationalistic France.
That was no prophecy. The thing was in the air; students mentioned it
to you on the café terraces; waiters spoke of it in the pensions and
restaurants; chauffeurs spoke of their comrades murdered in Morocco
by King Alfonso; bank clerks said a change was coming soon, and even
guides had something to say. That was in the winter of 1929-30. I
was in Spain early in 1930 when the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera
collapsed. In the spring of 1931 I was in Spanish Morocco when King
Alfonso abdicated, and in Tetuán I witnessed a wonderful demonstration
of amity and fraternity between the native Moorish and civilian Spanish
populations. There in Africa I hankered after Spain again and indited
these three sonnets for Barcelona:
_BARCELONA_
1
_In Barcelona town they dance the nights
Along the streets. The folk, erecting stands
Upon the people's pavements, come together
From pueblo, barrio, in families,
Lured by the lilting playing of the bands,
Rejoicing in the balmy summer weather,
In spreading rings they weave fine fantasies
Like rare mosaics of many-colored lights._
_Kindled, it glows, the magical Sardana,
And sweeps the city in a glorious blaze.
The garrison, the sailors from the ships,
The workers join and block the city's ways,
Ripe laughter ringing from intriguing lips,
Crescending like a wonderful hosanna._
2
_Oh admirable city from every range!
Whether I stand upon your natural towers,--
With your blue carpet spreading to their feet,
Its patterns undulate between the bars,--
Watching until the tender twilight hours,
Its motion cradling soft a silver fleet;
Or far descend from underneath the stars,_
_Down--to your bottoms sinister and strange:
The nights eccentric of the Barrio Chino,
The creatures of the shadows of the walls,
Gray like the savage caricatures of Goya,
The chulos of the abysmal dancing halls,
And, in the garish lights of La Criolla,
The feminine flamenco of El Niño._
3
_Oh Barcelona, queen of Europe's cities,
From dulcet thoughts of you my guts are twisted
With bitter pain of longing for your sights,
And for your hills, your picturesque glory singing,
My feet are mutinous, mine eyes are misted.
Upon my happy thoughts your harbor lights
Are shimmering like bells melodious ringing
With sweet cadenzas of flamenco ditties._
_I see your movement flashing like a knife,
Reeling my senses, drunk upon the hues
Of motion, the eternal rainbow wheel,
Your passion smouldering like a lighted fuse,
But more than all sensations oh, I feel
Your color flaming in the dance of life._
I was ready to begin another book, and a Moorish friend had put his
house in Fez at my disposal. But as soon as I landed in Fez, toward the
end of 1930, the French police pounced upon me. I had arrived there a
few days before the official visit of President Domergue of France.
The police declared I should leave Fez immediately. They said British
authorities had furnished proof that I was a political agent; that I
had carried on propaganda among the British military forces and also
visited Soviet Russia. I went to the British Consulate for further
information. There I was told that they possessed no information about
me, but that I must obey the local authority. They wanted to send me
back to Europe. I refused to go. I said I would leave Fez if I were
forced to, but I was determined to remain awhile in Africa. So I went
to Casablanca and from there to Tangier.
Months later a merchant from Fez came to Tangier and hinted why I had
been obliged to leave. He said that Moroccan custom permitted anyone
who had a serious grievance to complain to the sultan in person when
he made an official visit to a city. And as Morocco was a protectorate
of France, any person who desired could present his complaint to the
sultan of France during his official visit. But the police had a system
of banishing real malcontents for a short period during the sultan's
visit. The police had feared that I might seize an opportunity to
complain to the French sultan, President Domergue, about the unjust
treatment I received during my first visit to Fez! And so they had
ordered me to leave.
In Tangier I rented a Dar Hassani (native house) and went to work on
_Gingertown_, a book of short stories. Mail for me had accumulated in
Paris. When it arrived there was a little pile of letters from Carmina.
She chided me for deserting her and said that she, too, wanted to go to
Africa; that she was sick of Europe and growing worse. She had met all
the leading bohemians, writers and artists, more than I ever met. She
was a frequent visitor to the Rue Fleurus and was hooked up with one of
Gertrude Stein's young men. But she was disgusted with him; he was just
a poor white mouse, she said. She was sick of it all and wanted to come
to me.
Come to me! I was exceeding flattered, forgetting all about "male
conceit." The idea of Carmina leaving her white man for me was
tantalizing. She had introduced him to me in Paris, and he had said,
"_J'ai le béguin pour toi_." I said, "_Merci, mais je n'ai pas_." His
bloodless white skin was nauseating. He had no color.
Carmina had been traveling around a lot herself and confided to me that
she was keeping a diary of her _randonnée_. She thought I might help
her to publish it.
And so Carmina came to Morocco. It was just at the commencement of
_l'Aïd El Kebir_ (the Big Feast), when the Moroccans cut the throats of
thousands of lambs and the air is filled with their plaintive bleating
and the crooked streets are running with their blood. We went to live
in my little native house at that time of the Great Sacrifice. In the
beginning it was nice, being together and working together. People
liked Carmina. She was pretty. The Spanish liked the name Carmina
because it had a little of Carmen in it. And the Moors liked Mina
because it was a native name derived from the lovely sweet flower,
Jasmine, which in Morocco is Yasmina, a name often given to Negresses
and Mulattresses. And I liked her being so much admired.
I showed Carmina how to make Moroccan tea with mint and other
flavorful shrubs. And a native woman friend cooked us big bowls of
_cous-cous_ in olive oil with the tenderest pieces of lamb and chicken.
The Aframerican honeymoon in Africa was quite happy, until Carmina
announced that she desired to marry me. But I couldn't because I wasn't
divorced and I expected some day to return to America.
And now there was no peace between us. Carmina insisted she had to
marry, to satisfy her mother, who was a Christian church-loving woman.
In anger I said indiscreetly: "Why didn't you marry your white man in
Paris." She said she would show me she could marry him. And one day she
announced that her former white lover was coming to Morocco to marry
her. I said I thought that that wasn't a bad idea, since she had to
be married. I meant it. But my attitude turned Carmina raging. She
said the right kind of man would be jealous. She was right, I suppose.
But even from the angle of pure passion only I couldn't imagine myself
being jealous of Carmina's white lover. And frankly I was interested
in seeing her marry her white man from a social point of view. Because
the story of Negroes in civilization is one of white men loving black
women and giving them mulatto children, while they preferred to marry
their own white women. Carmina said she was a modern woman and that if
I were truly a radical and bohemian, I would not have such reactionary
ideas about marriage. I asked her why she was not modern enough to live
with a black man as she had lived with a white man. Also I said I was
thinking in black-and-white, and that as marriage has a social value
and her white man was of the better class, I'd like to see her marry
him. Mixed marriages were mostly one-sided, colored men marrying white
women; I'd also like to see white men marrying colored women, I told
her. White men must have some social reason for not marrying the Negro
women in whose flesh they find delight.
My reasoning infuriated Carmina, and our relationship became
intolerable. She left me. Perhaps Carmina's white mouse had his special
white fascination. I have known women who used to be afraid of mice and
who in later years made pets of rats. Carmina's Nordic came, but he
didn't marry. After being surfeited with loving, he left her still a
spinster. I suppose it is easier for some women (like some men) to have
than to hold.
I have read white writers and heard white men who romantically said
that Negro women will not be faithful to white men. And there are Negro
writers who write vicarious tales of colored girls ditching rich white
men for black sheiks. I wonder what actual experience such colored
writers have. All bunk. And my experience is not limited to just one.
I know that in the West Indies the black and brown women become the
faithful mistresses of Europeans.
So Carmina left me for a white skin. I don't think because it was so
hot and I so cold. But the white skin is a symbol of money and power.
In North Africa the native social system holds out against the European
assault simply because the native women are confined in their harems.
To modern thinking minds this is objectionable. Yet it is the native
fanaticism in sex and religion which makes North Africa a little more
wholesome than the rest of that fatal continent.
Some folk's remedy for lost love is immediately to love again. But if
it is a big love, that remedy is like swilling beer to get rid of a
champagne hangover. For if one has a passionate love in his system,
I don't think indulging in lesser and indiscriminate loving helps to
rid one of it. At least not for me. My way is to face it and live it
down in hard work, sweat it out of my system. And so to get rid of
the feeling and the odor of lost love, I gave up the little house and
went for a few months up in the mountain fastness of Xauen in Spanish
Morocco. There I finished my book, _Gingertown_.
When I came back I leased a little house in the country by the sea,
about three miles out of Tangier. I found a little brown native girl to
take care of the house. She brought her mother along, so that she could
look her own people in the face without flinching. There also was a boy
on a bicycle to run errands. And we all cultivated the garden and lived
comfortably on twenty-five dollars each month.
One day when I was not at home, Carmina rode out there and pushed
herself into the house. Both mother and daughter were very nonplussed
by the American brown girl, who looked exactly like their own people,
yet did not dress like them nor talk their language. Nevertheless,
undaunted, they barred the way to my workroom. Carmina fired a volley
of Americanisms and departed. Some days later it was reported to me
in the Petit Socco of Tangier that she said she had told the woman
she ought to be horsewhipped. Also, she had read a great book called
_Mother India_ about those awfully uncivilized Asiatics, and she wished
somebody would write a Mother Morocco about the barbarous Africans.
Twice a week I tramped into town and spent the night in the native
cafés listening to the alluring singing of Andalusian songs to the
accompaniment of lute and mandolin. It was interesting to note that
Spanish and French words and musical phrases were slipping into the
native melodies. Some day a wonderful new music is destined to come out
of North Africa.
The life was a little lazy. I did not plunge deep enough down into
the native ways to touch the depths of that tribal opposition to
other opposing groups which gave strength and meaning to their common
existence.
So I lived on the edge of the native life, among them, but not one of
them. I could have become a member by marrying into a family, as my
two Senegalese friends had done. But religion was an obstacle. I did
not want to take a backward step in that direction. I had interesting
conversations with my friend Sidi Abdallah, a poet, who was educated
in Egypt and was conceded by the natives to be the most highly
educated and broad-minded Moroccan of the town. He assured me that
Islam was all-embracing and could accommodate free-thinkers. It was he
who started me off on the great story of Antar, informing me of the
high-lights that were not hinted of in the Encyclopedia Britannica. He
told me too that the father of free-thought was the Moslem, Averrhoës,
who lived in Spain in the twelfth century; that he was the real founder
of pantheism and of modern European free thought. And he told me his
story, how he was imprisoned and flogged by the Caliph of Cordova,
because he had said that the Caliph had no divine authority.
Sidi Abdallah was very eloquent. He resented the Christian
representation of Islam as the religion of the sword. It was the
religion of social equality, for all humanity, he said. It was the
liberal and liberating religion, when the orthodox Christians were
persecuting dissident Christians and pagans. Arabia was a land of
refuge for the dissident Christians and Jews and pagans fleeing
Christian persecution. "Our great Prophet dreamed of a religion of
reconciliation in a world where all men would be like brothers,
worshipping the same God," he said. "Take the Guinea fetishists, for
example; they are primitive magicians and steeped in superstition,
yet we accept and tolerate them as Moslems because they acknowledge
Mohammed as the prophet."
All that Sidi Abdallah said was fine and vastly illuminating. I had a
better conception of Islam after knowing him. The philosophy was all
right, but the fact was that Islam, as it was practiced in North Africa
when I observed it, was intolerant and fanatic. The Moors frankly
admitted that perhaps Morocco was the most fanatically Islamic country
in the West.
It was better, I thought, to live as I did without getting too deeply
involved, and thinking too much, because I experienced more of purely
physical happiness than at any time in my life.
When Carmina and I separated she circulated the report that I disliked
white people. The natives were puzzled about that, because large
numbers of them are as white as some Spanish and French. In the Riff
and other mountain regions there are blue-eyed and blonde-haired types
resembling Nordics, except that they are rather bronzed. But they are
all remarkably free of any color obsessions or ideas of discrimination.
They are Africans. The others are _roumi_ or Europeans. So they thought
that Carmina meant that I did not like the _roumi_ or Europeans. And
that did not displease them. They opened their doors wider for me. And
I did not mind the report, for I was not particularly interested in
European society in North Africa.
But I did have "white" friends (if the Moors do not object to the use
of that phrase) from the white colony. They were all Americans, some
of whom are interestingly friendly to colored people abroad. They
delighted in flaunting their intimacy with colored persons in the face
of the smug European colony. Also there were visitors from Europe.
My first and oldest French friend, Pierre Vogein, came to see me in
1932. He and his wife had come over the previous summer, but I was away
in Xauen. Also Max Eastman and his wife, Eliena Krylenko, visited me
the same year. And there came some of the Gertrude Stein young men.
Carmina's young man had been a kind of protégé of Gertrude Stein.
Carmina said she had been welcome at Gertrude Stein's at first. But
when she and the young man became seriously enamored of each other,
Gertrude Stein grew cold to them. Carmina said she could not understand
Gertrude Stein being a novelist, for she seemed almost incapable of
understanding life. She said Miss Stein saw black as black and white as
white, without any shades, and so it was impossible to understand one
like herself, for she was neither black nor white. She said Miss Stein
did not seem to realize that chameleon was a fundamental feature of
life; that serpents shed their skins and even the leopard might change
its spots for a woman. But Miss Stein was reactionary: she did not
believe in change.
Carmina was considered one of the most intellectual women in Harlem.
Carmina said that Gertrude Stein reproached her young man, telling him
that if he were seriously interested in Negroes he should have gone to
Africa to hunt for an authentic one. Carmina said she did not know what
more authentic than herself Miss Stein desired. For besides having some
of the best white blood mingled with black in her veins, which were
blue, she came from the best Negroid middle-class stock, and Gertrude
Stein was also only middle-class.
An interesting couple of visitors from Paris was Monsieur Henri
Cartier-Bresson, and his friend, an American colored woman. He was a
Norman, and a painter and photographer. He had studied at Oxford and
had a suggestion of upper-class English something about him. He had
a falsetto voice which was not unpleasant, but it wasn't so pleasant
to listen to it reiterating that its possessor could fancy only Negro
women because he preferred the primitive. That falsetto voice just did
not sound authentic and convincing to me.
And if a white man is fond of black women, why should he be declaring
his liking to _me_! The penchant of white men for black women is
nothing new. It has given the world an arresting new type of humanity,
generally known as mulatto. M. Bresson had hunted all over West Africa
in search of the pure primitive. And he had returned to Paris to find
an American brown woman nearly twice his age and as sophisticated as
Carmina, but not so pretty.
M. Bresson brought his lady over to lunch at my house. I was living
alone then like an ascetic, which I found necessary to the completion
of a new book. But I asked Mr. Charles Ford over to meet my guests. He
came in his bathing suit, walking his way down the peninsular strip
which lay between the river and the bay, and swimming over to my house.
He took one look at the pair and left. The lady said, "He smells like a
down-home." I said, "Yes, but he's not a cracker." Later Ford explained
that his precious artistic sense of the harmony of form and rhythm had
suffered too great a shock.
Our conversation turned upon M. Bresson's unwillingness to carry on
with his father the business of an industrialist. M. Bresson's colored
lady thought that he would be more interesting as a business man than
as a modern photographer. She said he was not so artistic as he was
plain lazy; that he was so lazy he wouldn't even pick up his pajamas
from the floor.
I said that there at the head of Africa in Morocco, hard by the ancient
civilized Mediterranean, the natives did not worry about pajamas. Going
to bed was an effortless thing. And I asked M. Bresson whether among
the pure primitives (if there were any left) in the middle or the
bottom of Africa, one had to worry about pajamas. Or if one might be
satisfied with a broad banana leaf. M. Bresson was not so sure. He had
returned all the way to Paris to find his pure primitive and bring her
to Morocco to show me. Well, in less than a couple of years I heard of
M. Bresson in Mexico with a Mexican girl. Perhaps when his protracted
period of adolescence has passed he will finally finish like a cool
Norman and practical Frenchman by marrying a woman of his country and
his class.