Romance in Marseille

by Claude McKay

  “You mean a lav’try?”

  “No, a real WC.”6

  “But that ain’t possible in Gawd’s kingdom. They wouldn’t do that to a hog.”

  “They did it to me all right though, and they knew what they were doing too, for after they fed me they didn’t even think it was necessary to let me out to take the air.”

  The American shook his head with a ripe giggle.

  “You nevah can tell what a white man will do. But all the same I’m going to take this business a yours to a white lawyer. I don’t trust no nigger lawyers. They’ll sell you out every time.”

  Lafala wanted to defend Negro lawyers.

  The American Negro grinned. “Race ain’t nothing in this heah hoggish scramble7 to get theah, fellah, wif the black hogs jest that much worser because them is way, ways back behind. Ise gwina get you a go-get-’im-skin-and-scalp-him of a lawyer and take it from me that when him done get through fixing you up youse gwina have you a pair of legs to walk on and good dollars in you pocket.”

  “You think so?” asked Lafala.

  “I done think, I knows it.”

  Alone, Lafala wondered if anything would come from the talk of Black Angel. It was the first sign of hope for the future that he had seen. He had never before thought of gaining something from such a loss, never dreamed there was the slightest chance. The hospital staff had avoided talking to him about the subject of his future. Doctors and nurses. “Poor boy!” a doctor would ejaculate, passing his cot. Sometimes he noticed a group of visiting doctors and internes and students talking with sympathetic glances towards him. He knew they had been told about his case. The nurses, even his nurse that called him “my boy,” could not grant him that essentially feminine word of encouragement that always works such a miracle on the masculine mind. In their eyes, in their silence about his future, he saw only pity, that terrible dumb pity that can sweep the fibers of feeling for a fine man or beast that has fallen from self-sufficiency into a hopeless case.

  Now from the thought of the other black whom he had avoided as a fool, he saw himself again facing existence. Suppose the shipping company came across with something! A thousand dollars!

  I wonder if they could give that much for a pair of black feet on the shelf. I could go back to one of those ports where all the seamen know me and open up a little grogshop. A kind of seamen’s shelter without the chaplain and the hymns. Do something and make something and live again.

  How ironical it would be if by the intervention of his ignorant fellow black, whom he had disliked, he should strike the way to good fortune. But there could be no greater irony now than his own macabre self in the hands of fate. The surprising fact of himself was so terribly real, he felt that nothing in life could ever give him the fine moving shock of surprise again.

  CHAPTER TWO

  It was early afternoon, three days since the departure of Black Angel. Lafala lay speculating about the future, his thoughts alternating from sugar-sweet to sour, between hope and doubt, when the lawyer appeared to him.

  So warmly and heartily he shook Lafala’s hand that he pulled him right up off his butt of a self, and before Lafala, confusedly thinking of showing some native warmth himself, was settled again, his visitor had plunged into business.

  Lafala had to rake up all his recent past to give precisely the details of his stowing away and he was deftly handled and steered into giving only such details as could form the basis of a lawsuit with favorable results. Lafala, for instance, seemed to have a grievance against some individual of a little importance whom he said he had paid to protect him if he were found.

  “How much did you pay?” the lawyer asked.

  “About five dollars.”

  “Five dollars. You expected protection for five dollars? Now listen to me. Don’t ever mention that at any time to anybody. What we are after is the company and no individual to spoil the big game. I’m going to tell you what to say and you must never say anything more than that to anybody. Get me? Right. And don’t talk too much about your case. You’re in my hands now.”

  One hundred thousand dollars was what the lawyer said he intended to sue for. Lafala was struck dumb by the idea of such a sum. The shipping company would either compromise or go to court. In a case like his, the lawyer told Lafala, it wasn’t necessary to get the judge and jury to think. It was straight heart stuff. Poor African boy without any relatives taken away from his people when he was so young he did not even remember them, without family, without country even, without legs.

  He did not know how much he would get. Maybe not more than ten thousand dollars. All depended on the company’s lawyers and the kind of fight they could put up. But it was better to ask for a big sum.

  Then the lawyer said that before he touched the case Lafala would have to sign a paper giving him half of whatever he obtained as damages. Frankly he explained that he was not going to handle the case for sympathy only, although he sincerely sympathized with Lafala. He was asking a half of any amount that was paid because he was as much plaintiff as lawyer. Lafala did not have the means nor the influence to procure a lawyer and in all such damage suits lawyers’ fees were enormous. He didn’t want Lafala to think that he was taking a mean advantage of him. All cases like his were handled on a fifty-fifty basis. He would give Lafala two days to reflect.

  When the lawyer was finished, Lafala said “I don’t need two days to make up my mind. Just give me that paper and I’ll sign it right away.”

  The lawyer produced the contract stipulating that he should receive as a legal fee one-half of any payment that he obtained from a certain company for the loss of Lafala’s legs. Lafala signed. The lawyer produced a little camera, made Lafala pull up his night shirt to show his stumps and photographed him. Lafala had a photograph of himself before the accident and this the lawyer also took.

  The lawyer had visited Lafala on a Wednesday. On Saturday morning the nurse approached him smiling with a tabloid in her hand. Lafala had achieved publicity. The tabloid contained an account of his accident, written in pointed modern sentimental sentences, and his two photographs. Under the first was printed “Before”; under the lawyer’s snapshot “After.”

  That same evening another paper carried a pathetic story with the photographs of Lafala.

  The next day the lawyer visited Lafala and cautioned him never at any time to talk to anyone about his case unless he was present and that he should refer all interviewers to him.

  Thus began a new outlook for Lafala. It was the first time that he had ever appeared in print and that impressed on his mind the assurance that out of his trouble he would win something tangible. His lawyer kept in close touch with him by visits and by correspondence. Twice he was visited by an official of the shipping company, but he refused to talk. Vigilantly his nurse stood by to see that he didn’t. The lawyer had shrewdly seen and enlisted her sympathy.

  She despised those people who could treat any human being, even a black, like that—locking him up in a water-closet until he was frozen.

  One day an official of the shipping company came with the lawyer. The official tried to make out that Lafala might have had some disease of the feet before he stowed away. He couldn’t freeze like that if he were in good health, for the ship had a fine heating apparatus.

  “What disease you think?” Lafala asked. “I was a dancing fool in the port I came from. You can go there and ask the gang.”

  The official left. The lawyer stayed for a while to talk with Lafala. He told Lafala that the newspaper stories had stirred up the officials and that they wanted to avoid further publicity and he was going to work them for a handsome compromise. A compromise was better than going to the courts. For a lawsuit of that kind was like a strike. The employers will go their limit to compromise a strike, but once it is on and the works dislocated, they don’t care if the workers starve. So the lawyer told Lafala that his business was to w
ork the publicity scare to obtain the best settlement from the company. Better not to go to the courts where the company’s big lawyers may start in to wear them down on legal points and a callous judge cut down the damages to nothing.

  Lafala listened and thought his lawyer’s argument was good.

  During the long interval of negotiation a pretty friendship sprung up between Lafala and his lawyer. Lafala’s spirit was lifted up and like a feather in space, he felt himself floating in the delightful realm of futurity. A desire for activity seized him again and it found outlet in his nimble hands. He obtained some hemp and varicolored wool and began weaving girdles,1 the only clothing that his tribeswomen used to wear when he was a boy in the bush. The first one finished he presented to his nurse and she told him it was the nicest gift that she had ever had and it made her happy to be a nurse. Lafala sent the second girdle to his lawyer with a note by the hand of Black Angel who had been to see him.

  Lafala wrote “This is the only thing I remember my tribeswomen wearing in the bushland when I was a kid. I began making them because I was so nervous wanting to do something. I remembered I could make them and so I got the stuff and set to work. I hope you like it. The wool is my own invention. They used to put the color in with specially dyed straw.”

  The lawyer replied, “The girdle is very pretty. My wife appropriated it at once. It carried me back to very ancient times. I mean the times when my people were also divided into tribes and wore girdles just as your people do today.

  “Our case is progressing nicely. It may seem a long time getting done to you, but these legal affairs can’t be got through in a hurry. Don’t worry. You’re going to get all out of that company that I can possibly get for you. So give them time and keep cheerful.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  In the meantime Lafala was pronounced officially better and thus due to leave the hospital. In a sense he was not a patient only, but technically also a prisoner held for deportation to the port that he had left clandestinely.

  And one morning an official of the shipping company appeared in the ward and announced to Lafala that he had orders to ship him back to that port.

  “And what about my case?” Lafala asked.

  “That will be settled on the other side.”

  “But the immigration officials?”

  “They know all about it. You’re discharged from the hospital and out of their hands now and we’ll be getting into more trouble if we don’t take charge of you and take you back where you stowed away from.”

  It was the international usage. . . .

  Lafala said he would like to see his lawyer.

  “All right, we’ll see about that for you.”

  His little bundle of clothes was brought. He dressed and was lifted into a waiting taxi-cab and whisked away.

  The nurse had stood by in helpless agitation. Frantically now she rushed to the telephone to call the lawyer, only to learn that he knew nothing of Lafala’s being sent away. The lawyer got busy in a hurry. He got out an injunction to prevent Lafala’s sailing before his case was settled. He looked up which of the company’s ships was sailing and likely to take Lafala. He did not telephone the company’s office, but sent someone to see, without asking, if Lafala was there. He was not, so the lawyer instituted a search and finally found the helpless black on the company’s pier. He snatched him up and the game was won.

  “I’ll squeeze something more out of the company for this,” he said, “or I’ll get this straight into the papers. And when I get your money, I’ll see that you don’t go back to the port you stowed away from, for you never can tell what they might do to you there.”

  That night Lafala slept in the lawyer’s apartment. The following afternoon he was at the lawyer’s office when Black Angel walked in.

  “See youse looking better,” Black Angel said, his features glowing with a large smile.

  “Feeling better, too,” Lafala grinned back.

  “And you’ll soon be walking bettah, so that the chippies meeting you in the street will jest think youse got a sprain ankle.”

  “Why not take him up among your folks tonight and show him a good time? He needs it after so many months in the hospital,” the lawyer said with a wink.

  The lawyer advanced Lafala some money. But Black Angel had money of his own and it appeared to Lafala that he was very much in the lawyer’s confidence. Lafala was curious and Black Angel explained that he was due to get his runner’s reward from the lawyer, about five hundred dollars more or less, according to the final amount obtained in damages.

  That evening for the first time Lafala had a glimpse of the life of Harlem. In the basement kitchen and dining room of Black Angel’s house a woman was preparing a feast for Black Angel and Lafala. It was a big dinner of celery soup, fricassée chicken and mashed potatoes. After the dinner Black Angel gave a party in his room for Lafala.

  “Ise got a buddy working for a big bootlegger,” he said, “and I’m gwine have him heah tonight wif some good liquor. You can play the phonograph theah, if youse tired waiting befoh I git back.”

  Lafala cushioned his butt of a body in an old Morris chair1 and biting off the point of a cigar, he lit it.

  Black Angel returned with a brown girl and a bottle of gin. A little later his buddy appeared with two girls, a dark-brown with rouge in her cheeks that gave her an exotic maroon color and a lemon-colored one. He deposited a package on the chiffonier, which contained two bottles of gin and two bottles of wine.

  “Gwina make a little cabaret a this heah joint foh you special benefit,” Black Angel assured Lafala.

  The buddy made a strong punch. Black Angel started the phonograph.

  “Don’t think no affliction of you’self that you kaint dance as we do,” said Black Angel to Lafala. “Ef you kaint dance on the floor, you can dance in the bed.”

  While they were dancing somebody knocked on the door and another girl entered, a warm satin-skinned mahogany brown.

  “One plus, gotta do some figuring,” muttered Black Angel. He introduced the girl. And now Lafala had two girls, one on each side entertaining him when the others danced. He was the center of the show, with Black Angel and his buddy replenishing the glasses. He was pitied and praised and beamed upon and his stumps of legs were fondled and caressed as if they were honeysticks. It was a great evening for Lafala. Black Angel had taken care all right that the company should know that there was a fortune in Lafala’s misfortune. . . .

  Said Black Angel to the lawyer when they met again, “I done gave him a sweet souvenir a high life, boss, and he sho’ will remember it all them days that he’s gwine spend chasing chimpangees when he scootles back to jungle-land.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  After his haphazard leave of absence, Lafala returned to his cot in new colors. His nurse welcomed him happily.

  “You’re lucky to have such a real person for a lawyer,” she said. “He’s square and working hard for you.”

  “Sure, but remember it’s fifty-fifty,” said Lafala, “and the harder he works for me, the more he’ll get for himself.”

  “But there’s more to it than that,” she maintained, “he’s human.”

  On a fine spring day the rumor ran through the ward that Lafala had been awarded some thousands of dollars. The figure went up to fifty. Lafala had not yet heard directly from the lawyer. But although it was really a big sum, exceeding anything his imagination was capable of, he was less excited than the nurses and his fellow patients. He accepted the godsend with a primitive dignity that appeared like indifference.

  His real excitement was reserved for the cork legs that he was to get at the company’s expense. He was eager to try himself out in them. How would he look with a girl in the street? He might learn to dance with them and do the things that whole-legged people did.

  Lafala was sent to one of the best houses for artificial limbs in Ne
w York to fit himself. He surveyed his stilted form in the full-length mirrors and felt good. He shuffled with a stick. He stepped. He felt that with a little more practice he would soon hold his own with other promenaders. Nobody observing him a little halting would think that it was more than a sprain. . . .

  At last the Negro newspapers caught up with Lafala and front-paged him with a blast so big and so black that such permanent front-pagers as the pretender to the throne of Africa and his titled entourage and all the other personages of the moment were buried beneath it.

  The Bellows of the Belt1 shouted:

  AFRICAN DAMAGED FIFTY THOUSAND DOLLARS

  But it was outdone by the United Negro2 which ran:

  AFRICAN LEGS BRING ONE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS

  The African had conquered Aframerica with a whoop. Very literary were the days that ensued for Lafala.

  He received letters asking individual gifts and detailing pitiful cases of persons who had been badly injured and received no compensation. One letter came from a youth, accompanied by his photograph. He had written a book in which he had shown how the Negro Problem could be eliminated by the Negro himself by means of psychic development.

  “It would be wonderfully appropriate,” he wrote to Lafala, “if a full-blooded African should be the instrument by which my sublime opus was brought to light.”

  Another letter was received from C.U.N.T. (Christian Unity of Negro Tribes)3 asking Lafala to communicate with the association if he needed any spiritual assistance in the handling of his affairs.

  Lafala showed some of the letters to the nurse and they had an amusing time reading them.

  “There’ll be lots of people trying to get on to you,” said the nurse.

  “They won’t find me easy though,” said Lafala. “I’ve lost my legs but not my head.”

  Lafala had more fun out of the letters when Black Angel visited him. He read a number of them. There was one that made Black Angel exclaim “Hot nuts! Now tha’s a wench foh you!”