Sister Johnson stood up and replaced the Brother Ruler beside the coffin. She began the funeral poem of the Elks, “Thanatopsis”: “To him who in the love of Nature holds / Communion with her visible form, she speak / A various language. . . .” Baleful poem. Simeon wanted to cry but no tears came; he wanted to run and hide.
. . . The gay will laugh
When thou art gone,
The solemn brood of care
Plod on, and each one as before will chase
His favorite phantom; yet all these shall leave
Their mirth and their employments, and shall come,
And make their beds with thee.
Simeon turned from Joey’s coffin. He was close to tears and did not know why. Images whirled through his mind: the African students, the Algerians, his brother, Lulu Belle, the French demonstrating in the street. Joey was dead; he was alive. But just how alive was he?
Babe and Benson were leaving. They beckoned for Simeon to come with them, but he shook his head. He stayed on for a while. Then he left by himself.
2
He did not want to go to the cocktail party, but he had promised Maria. She was pleased when she saw him, and introduced him to everyone, including the movie director.
Simeon felt depressed, standing in the brightly lighted room with the cocktail glass in his hand, listening to the well-dressed guests discuss plays, actors and critics.
“Yes, I like Claudel,” Maria was saying in French, “but I don’t understand him very well.” Her French was much better than her English.
Maria and her friends tried to draw Simeon into their conversations, but he could not make the effort. Drawing Maria aside he said, “I’ve just come from seeing Joey, sweetheart. I’m not much in the mood for parties. Do you understand?”
She was disappointed. “You want to leave.”
“Yes.”
“It’s all right. You’ll come with me another time.”
“Yes.”
The cold air felt good on his face. He walked straight home, avoiding the cafés. Ahmed was standing in the doorway of the building where he lived.
“I’ve been looking for you. I wanted to talk to you. Do you have a minute?”
“Sure, come upstairs.”
“No, I’d rather walk.”
They started walking toward the Seine. Ahmed was very grave but still rather diffident. “I wanted to say good-by, Simeon. I’ll be back eventually, and I’ll look you up. Listen; two things. Hossein’s been arrested and we’ve had word through the grapevine that he’s been tortured. He’s being shipped to a concentration camp in Algeria. And there’s something else. My brother’s been killed, fighting French troops in the Kabylia Mountains.”
“Ahmed!” The words hit Simeon as hard as though the brother had been his own. He put a hand on Ahmed’s shoulder and wanted to say something, but he did not know what to say. Ahmed’s brother dead. Joey dead. “Ahmed, I’m so sorry.”
Ahmed made a helpless gesture. “I’ve had enough of being a student. That’s what I came to tell you. You understand me? I can’t just sit by, comfortable, while the others take the hard blows. So I’m leaving.”
There was a catch in Simeon’s voice. “Where are you going?” He knew the answer.
“To Algeria.”
Simeon’s world was flying to pieces. He could not imagine Paris without Ahmed. He had grown very fond of his soft-smiling, quiet friend, who in so many ways was like himself. Ahmed turned suddenly and embraced Simeon, kissing him affectionately on both cheeks.
“Listen, I don’t have any more time. I’ve got to rush. I wanted to say good-by to you, Simeon.”
“Don’t you have a minute?” Simeon asked anxiously, feeling that a part of himself was about to vanish into the night.
“Not even a minute, Simeon.” He smiled apologetically. “Once you make up your mind, the FLN arranges things in a hurry. Take care of yourself. Remember me. Remember us.”
He clasped Simeon’s hand firmly, then turned and walked off. Simeon watched him go away, feeling numb, futile and old. At a corner, Ahmed turned and waved to him, then disappeared.
Simeon walked wearily toward his apartment. It was very cold and damp. West Indians were talking with animation in the Mephisto. A group of drunks from the foreign colony walked singing up the rue de Tournon.
“Simeon.”
It was Clyde, walking beside him. The Southerner was drunk and his eyes were red from drink or from tears.
“Simeon, Jinx left me. Ran off with a painter from Montparnasse. Took the kid with her.”
Simeon was tired. “Life’s tough all over,” he said.
Clyde sobbed. “I don’t know what I’m gonna do. Christ, I don’t know what I’m gonna do! I love her, Simeon.”
Simeon shoved sympathy from his mind and feelings. He could not help anyone, not even himself. He remembered with a wry smile something he had told himself as a child, staring in a mirror at the new black patch: “I’ll be a great man someday.”
PART THREE
The Brother
I
1
FRENCH and American specialists were to operate on Maria’s eyes at the American Hospital early in the new year. Maria was calm as the date approached, and spoke rarely of the operation.
“Are you afraid?” he asked her once.
“Not of what you think.”
But the night before the operation she lay quietly in his arms and he could feel her body tremble.
After a while she turned on her back, her head on his lap, and stared at the ceiling. She was outwardly calm again. But she whispered, “If it doesn’t work. If I’m blind——”
He concealed his fears from her, as she generally concealed hers from him, but he thought about it. If she became blind, he would take care of her. He would wait on her hand and foot, feed her, wash her. His one eye would see for both of them. But she would not become blind.
He took her by taxi to the hospital. A doctor told Simeon, “We think everything will be all right.” Simeon did not trust the professional optimism of doctors. For one crazy moment he thought: Suppose the doctors were racists! Suppose they didn’t like the idea of Maria being with a black man. Would they go so far as to . . . ?
They operated on Maria early on the second day. “Well, we’ve done all we can,” the doctor told Simeon. “We’ll have to wait until the bandages come off to know the result.”
“How long will that be?”
“Five days.”
Five lifetimes, five centuries. Simeon spent every afternoon sitting with Maria in her room. She spoke little, though from time to time she stretched out her hand to find his. She sat erect, the pillows propped behind her lovely shoulders, occasionally giving Simeon a melancholy smile as he talked, trying to sound casual. When he stopped talking, their silent communication had never been more profound. Simeon felt more sure than ever of his love for her, and sensed that she had come very close to saying that she loved him.
One day she said, “Remember what I told you? That the blind Maria is best?”
“I remember. And it’s not true.”
“It is true,” she said softly.
Evenings, he could not sleep. He could not even bring himself to go home to the apartment before dawn. He did not feel like talking to anyone. When he sat in bars, he kept cold sober. From time to time he thought of Ahmed, wondering what had become of him. It was more than two months he had been gone, now. And Hossein. Simeon imagined himself on an Algerian mountain fighting alongside Ahmed. Then he imagined himself in Angola fighting with the nationalists. Or in the Congo aiding the imprisoned prime minister Patrice Lumumba. Then he returned with an ache to reality. Maria.
Before the day Maria’s bandages were to be removed he sat up all night in a café, drinking coffee. Unshaven and exhausted, he arrived at the hospita
l just after dawn. The nurses were sympathetic; they sat him in the waiting room and told him, “The bandages will be removed at eleven o’clock.”
Simeon stared at the clock, wondering how he would manage to stay alive until eleven. But he dozed in the chair and dreamed that an old blind woman crossing a street was almost hit by an automobile. Simeon took her hand and led her to a pavement. An old woman with a doorknob nose and rough yellowish skin. She was hungry. He took her to a restaurant and ordered for her. She could not see the plate, so he cut the meat for her. She had been blinded by flying glass, she told him. He felt strange, talking to a blind woman. He wanted to say something, felt hesitant about what he wanted to say, but he said it: “I’m . . . also blind. In one eye only.”
He felt ridiculous. She said, “One eye? Well, that ain’t so bad.”
“No, that’s not so bad.”
“You develop the other eye.”
“That’s it,” he said.
He woke again at precisely five minutes before eleven. He sat bolt upright. A nurse came into the room.
“The bandages are off. You can go in now.” She smiled. “The operation was successful.”
Simeon jumped up, his face radiant, and ran to Maria’s room. She was sitting up in the bed with a calm smile. Her body gave way softly in his arms. “Baby, baby, baby,” he whispered. She bit his ear.
“Can I have a cigarette?”
She inhaled slowly, leaning back against the pillows, looking at him with a tired smile. Strangely, in this moment of triumph, the sad quality he had noticed in her voice was now in her face. She was pale and thin and somewhat drawn. Sitting on the edge of the bed, he inspected her eyes: they seemed both darker and sharper than before. She had combed her black hair and put on lipstick before telling the nurse to let him come in. Her handsome round shoulders showed through the frills of her nightgown.
“How do you feel?” he asked.
“Tired.”
“And happy?”
She paused for a moment before replying. “Yes.” After a while, she said, “It’s crazy, but I’m afraid. I don’t know of what.”
“No, we’ll celebrate. We’ll take a trip, a vacation, like a honeymoon.”
“That will be good. Yes, let’s go away.”
2
Corsica was cloudy and chilly, but Maria swam in the sea all the same. She dove and flipped and turned in the water like a porpoise while Simeon watched her admiringly from the beach. He was a poor swimmer, and found the cold and choppy water uninviting. Maria laughed and taunted him: “Come in, you just have to dive, the first shock is the worst.” He shook his head, settled comfortably in the sand in a heavy sweater. Not even the Corsicans would brave that water, so he and Maria had the long stretch of beach to themselves.
The Mediterranean was so blue that it seemed unreal. The beach curved gently toward the village of Porto Polo, near the inn where they were staying, and the low hills stood out against the clear sky beyond. Maria’s legs shot up into the air as she dived, looking for sea urchins. On the previous day she had caught several squid on a sort of lance, and the cook had served them to Simeon and Maria for dinner.
The Corsicans were hospitable almost to the point of embarrassment. The people and the land were poor, but the residents of Porto Polo often invited Simeon and Maria to their homes for dinner or to drink the strong local bootleg gin. Whenever Simeon and Maria went walking in the hills they were invited by farmers for fresh milk and cakes. Both of them noticed that the Corsicans, even in other villages, took an immediate and special liking to Simeon: they frequently hailed him on the streets or invited him to have drinks with them in cafés. One day, looking at a post card, he discovered why: there was the head of a Negro on the Corsican flag. No one could explain to him why. But the Corsicans apparently identified him with their flag.
“Oursin!” Maria shouted in triumph from the water, holding up a sea urchin. He had never seen her so gay as during the month since they had left Paris. She had reacted slowly to the success of her operation, but gradually its full impact hit her and suddenly it was as though the whole world of vision were new to her. She saw everything with added sharpness: the harsh browns and reds and yellows of the hills, the dazzling blue of the sea, the subtle grays and greens in the stones of buildings and houses, the strong character engraved on the faces of the people.
For two full months they vacationed in Corsica. When they left they toured the South of France from Menton to Marseilles, living in hotels, eating in good restaurants, sometimes dancing in night clubs. Simeon even took Maria to a casino, where he felt out of place and where she played more cautiously than when she was at Enghein, knowing it was Simeon’s money she was playing with this time. They were living beyond their means, going deep into his savings, but Simeon did not care. He would write a whole string of articles for He-Man when they returned to Paris.
He bought no newspapers. He did not want to know the news. But sometimes, as he sipped an anisette or put his shoes outside his door for the hotel porter to shine, he would think of Ahmed on an Algerian hill and feel a stab of guilt. Or he would see Joey’s cold ashen face and hands before him. Or he would hear the shouted insults of the mob at Little Rock. He would push these thoughts away.
But he was apprehensive finally when the vacation ended and they boarded the train for Paris. Back to the teeming city and back to reality.
II
1
THE SUCCESS of the operation had another effect on Maria—it seemed to triple her energy and ambition to become a film actress. Once back in Paris, she threw herself with vigor into the work of her amateur theater group and at the same time began to cultivate her relationship with the movie director and his friends.
She worked hard on a new play her group was preparing, studying her part in the afternoon with the help of Simeon, who read the other roles. He was amazed once more to note that she had real talent. On the director’s advice, she hired an imprésario who had a photographer make pictures of her in various stages of undress (Simeon disapproved, to Maria’s amusement) and who acted as her agent in the launching of her career. One group photograph, in which she was shown in a night club with the director and some of his friends, was published in a film magazine, and finally one of the sexy pictures also appeared.
A scene from the play her amateur group was rehearsing was shown on the French television network, and Simeon, Lou and Babe watched it in a café and were impressed. “I’m on my way!” Maria shouted. A television producer became interested in her and, after a tryout, promised her a small role in a future program.
Simeon was delighted by Maria’s new energy and enthusiasm, except that it so often deprived him of her company. She constantly went to the places where she could meet people who might help her—to cocktail parties and to cafés and clubs frequented by film stars. You could not go to these places unescorted or uninvited, so usually she went with her director friend, Vidal.
“You’d like him,” she told Simeon, “if you’d get to know him.”
“I can’t believe he’s doing all this for you just out of the goodness of his heart,” Simeon said with an exaggerated frown.
“He’s doing it because he thinks I have talent, and because he likes little Maria’s legs.” She laughed.
“That’s what I thought!”
“Jealous?”
“Yes.”
“Terribly?”
“Yes!”
She laughed with delight and kissed him. “You don’t have to worry. He has no black patch. I have nothing to do with men without the black patch anymore.”
Except for the fact that Maria was so frequently away, they lived a fairly settled life. Since Ahmed’s departure, Simeon rarely saw any of the Algerians he knew, and he made a conscious effort—with only limited success—to think less about “problems.” He told himself that the world was what it was, that it
was not his fault, and that there was nothing he could do about it. He had Maria “in the skin” as the French said, and he told himself that there was nothing he could do about that, either. He wanted her to be happy—and they had been happy on vacation. It could go on this way. She was right: life was much simpler when you lived for yourself and let the world take care of itself.
But Maria was away from him too often with the director and her friends and Simeon was annoyed that she did not seem to regret these separations.
He said to her one day: “Let’s get married.”
She hesitated, her dark eyes, no longer hidden by sun glasses, turning on him thoughtfully.
“You would like that?”
He was irritated. “I wouldn’t have asked you, otherwise.”
She pursed her lips. For a moment it seemed she would not answer. Then she said: “Wait a while. We have time, yes? For the present I want to become a famous actress.”
2
Babe gave Simeon a sly glance one Saturday, and said, “Say, man, how’d you like to be a best man? Me and my Swedish Marika are getting married.”
Babe and Marika were married in the mairie of the Sixth Arondissement in a simple civil ceremony that took exactly three minutes, in the presence of Simeon and Maria, Lou and Betty, Doug and Benson, and a score of other people, most of them Negro musicians. Babe said “Oui” to the mayor instead of “I do,” feeling ridiculous in the suit and white shirt with stiff collar and dark necktie. Marika, who was nervous, looked very Swedish with her blonde hair, pale, freckled skin and sky-blue eyes.
The Stone Face Page 15
