by Claude McKay
It was in a North African port, after many months of unworried silence, that Babel heard the good news about Lafala. He went up in the air all agog to see his former pal in his new role as a money man.
The whole crew of Babel’s boat was anticipating leaving the charming blue-white North African port for the fascinating nocturnal revels at Quayside. But the boat went instead to a little antique port near Genoa.2 And from the little port they were due to go back to a Greek island.
That was more than Babel could stand. He made the freighter leave him in the little port. When it had disappeared, Babel went and planted himself in the town square like a big banana tree and stretched his limbs. He had no money. He would have to depend on his wits to carry him over the frontier to Marseille. A group soon formed pressing around Babel and yelling “Negro!” in rough friendliness. Men, women, girls, children, Babel took it all grinning. The men invited and escorted him into a bar. And while he was being treated to a rich black-red wine, a man pushed his way in and addressed Babel in Americanese.
The man was chance itself. He knew an agent in Genoa who put up stranded seamen until he could place them. He proposed sending Babel up to Genoa, and Babel accepted. That night Babel had a good plain board and bed and the next day he entrained for Genoa.
Nothing could pleasure Babel more except going directly to Marseille. Genoa was a pretty good start. It should be easy for him to pick up some old kind of craft going across to Marseille. Babel was duly met at the station by a runner of the agent and taken to the bureau. The agent greeted him warmly, took his name and promised to keep him until he could place him.
For the first time in his life Babel started in living the life of an honored guest. He was given a room and tickets for regular meals in a seamen’s eating place. On top of all this came Maria the housemaid who took a great liking to him.
But after nine days (during which Babel discovered nothing available sailing between Marseille and Genoa) the tenor of that lovely existence was endangered by an incoming freighter that needed a fireman. The agent secured the job for Babel. There wasn’t much shakes to the freighter—a rusty-looking affair engaged in toting lumber and copra up the West African coast. Babel took a look at it and walked away. He reported to the agent that the galley was in a mangy condition and didn’t appeal to him for the hard job of a fireman.
The agent had a sharp sense of humor. There was a comical sharp-featuredness about him. His flesh was a sharp growth over his frame. His forehead was sharp. His ears pointed sharply, likewise his nose, his mouth, his moustache, his hands, his clothes; and the long peculiarly Italian cigar he smoked was an indispensable spot of color in the whole sharp composition.
He smiled at Babel sharply and said, “Alright, me get you one other ship.” And he gave Babel a couple of long cigars. “Have a smoky, you,” he said.
The second opportunity was a boat going out to the far east “on the fly”—to stay out there.
Babel grew indignant in the bureau of the seamen’s broker and made a big noise. The crew was East Indian and Babel voiced the fear that if he signed on, they might want to reduce his pay to the East-of-Suez rate.3 The agent said he could guarantee there would be no reduction.
“But I wouldn’t know going out theah with a coolie crew,”4 said Babel. “I wouldn’t know foh sure. And when I goes out yonder in that country they might want do anything with me. I won’t go with no coolie crew. I want white man wages.”
Meanwhile, Babel was full up with exasperation not finding a chance to run away to Marseille and Quayside. He was crazy to see his old pal Lafala and determined to get to Marseille by any means. Quayside was big in his body, singing in his head and calling, insistently calling him as if something important was happening there in which he should be meddling.
“Got to make it! Coming back to you, Marseille. Got to go back right there.”
The third boat was going to the same Greek island that Babel had from the first funking decided to miss. This time he pulled off a heavy drunk. Two days after he appeared in the bureau. The seamen’s broker was jaundiced from anger.
“I did hopes never see you no more,” he cried. “I see you wanta ruina me. I treaty you better than any other seamen. Feed you and bed you and you living a fine. Me losea lotta money on you. But you gotta no conscience. Finish, me finish, no lose a no more money. No more job, no more sleeping, no more feeding. I never before had no seaman likea you to handle and I hopes I never see another like you. You don’t wanta leave this port so you can go live on the beach.”
Babel had no words left to defend himself this time, but he hesitated there like a shamed boy, a comic picture from being so big, tricky and simple.
“I mean what I said,” continued the agent. “Me finish. Get outa here.”
Babel realized that the game was at last played out and left the bureau. He climbed up a narrow stone way and went into the public gardens along the waterfront and sat down. It was after the lunch hour.
There Maria came to him with a way out and of her own planning. Maria had found Babel all right whatever he did. And she had consulted the police on his behalf. The police had told her that the agent could not turn Babel out of doors because it was he who had brought him to Genoa. The agent was bound to place Babel on a boat or be responsible for him so long as he remained in Genoa. Babel could go back to the lodging house and if the agent tried to put him out he should report to the police.
“I don’t want no police messing with that man because a me,” said Babel. “That man know his business and I knows mine. The picnic is over and me—I is through.”
“And what you going to do?” asked Maria.
“Something in some ways.”
“Come back to the house just for tonight.”
“No, man. I ain’t never going back on meself.”
Unable to persuade Babel, Maria went back to her work. And Babel philosophized: “She’s a darter of a dawg.”5
* * *
• • •
In a barrelhouse on the quay that night Babel struck up conversation with a slim sailor boy—a reddish Negroid who was a native of one of those miniature republics strung together in the Spanish Main.6 The lad too was waiting for a ship. And he had been waiting long. He complained that he was fed up with Genoa and wanted just to get away from it. Babel asked him if he had ever been to Marseille which was just across the frontier. The lad had not. Babel painted in thick splashing colors the pleasures of Quayside until the boy’s imagination was lit. There were many ships in Marseille. It would be easy to get a place. The boy thought it would be fine fun to go to Marseille with Babel.
Why not leave for Marseille right away? Babel urged. Both of them. Babel explained that it was easy for the lad to go. All he needed to do was ask the representative of his country in Genoa to send him to Marseille by telling him that there was a better chance for him there. The lad was representatively better off than Babel who had been turned down and away from all official consideration.
But the boy wanted a pal along with him and felt that Big Babel was about the best person with whom he would like to be in Marseille. And so they concocted a plan. Babel could make his way with a little Spanish, for he had lived in Panama. He should pretend that he had lost his seaman’s papers. And then he could go to the representative of his pal’s country and ask his pal to say that he was a citizen of the republic and that once they had both been on the same ship.
The plan worked splendidly and two days later Babel and the boy were speeding by train over the frontier toward Marseille.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
The disappearance of Lafala had created a fever of suspicion at Quayside. All his things were intact at his hotel. The worried owner went to inform the official, who was taking care of Lafala’s money, of his absence. Recalling Lafala’s last visit to him about a sweetheart and the probability of his marrying, the official jokingly su
ggested that Lafala might be off on his honeymoon. But he became uneasy when the days slipped by without any news. Quayside under the surface was a vicious place. Lafala might be the victim of mischief, gangsters framing him to get at his money.
But Quayside felt itself very clean of the affair. To the Quaysiders Lafala’s disappearance came as a shock, but not a mystery. They considered that if any harm had come to Lafala it had come from above and not from below. They had never ceased marveling that Lafala had received such a large amount of money. And as it had been rumored that he was waiting in Marseille for a final settlement, many of them thought now that his disappearance was that final settlement. The people who had been hit in the pocket had hit back.
But the proprietor of the Tout-va-Bien had a different theory. And to air it he relaxed from his habitual taciturnity. On the last day Lafala visited the Tout-va-Bien he had casually mentioned to the proprietor of his intended visit to the Seamen’s Club with St. Dominique. And he had remarked, “You better keep away from those anti-government people.” He believed that Lafala had got into trouble there. The proprietor did not like St. Dominique visiting the café and distributing leftward tracts among the seamen. The café was sometimes used as a meeting place by politicians in good standing to harangue the voters of Quayside. And on such occasions the proprietor made plenty of money selling plenty of liquor.
* * *
• • •
Titin and Aslima were in a state of chronic contention over the same subject. Aslima baited Titin, saying that maybe his attack on Lafala had something to do with his disappearance and if they never got anything out of him Titin would have himself to blame.
Titin grew exasperated and one night he turned savagely upon Aslima and commanded her to find Pied-Coupé wherever he was hiding his stump.
“Maybe you and your gang know where he is,” retorted Aslima. “But you’re fools if you think you can torture money out of him that way. His money is in official hands. God! I hope they’re not torturing the poor man for nothing.”
“I don’t care what happens to him so long as he shows up with that money. You talk as if you’re in love with him.”
“I pity him. Seems like it wasn’t his feet but his fortune is his real misfortune.”
“Hell with pity. Better worry about finding him and putting our business through.”
“What business? You know you spoiled everything.”
“I haven’t and if you don’t find him and fix it up your soul will repent in hell.”
“I’m not afraid of you. If God wills it you’ll murder me yet. But you won’t get away free either. I have my countrymen here who will get you yet, by God.”
Aslima had no secret relations with the Arabs and only meant to frighten Titin. And he was frightened. He had often encountered her talking to some of them in a tongue he did not understand. If the Negroes boldly encroaching upon their preserves were to Titin and his set the most obnoxious of the foreign settlements of Quayside, the lean tough-bodied Arabs were the most pernicious.
As a group the Arabs were right there among the rattiest of the rats, the snakiest of the snakes in the holes of the quays. But it was a rare thing to find an Arab living on the earnings of a prostitute as her lover and protector. Chinese, Maltese, Negroes, French, Italians, Spaniards, Corsicans, Jews, and many others belonged to the fraternity. But the Arabs as a group did not.
Maybe it was because of some traditional thing in their character as a distinct formation of people. Or the fact that the Arab in his relations to a woman is so possessively personal, making her so much his slave in unconsciously becoming her slave that he cannot tolerate the idea of another man loving his woman. Some of the Arabs had taken Quayside girls away from prostitution to become their mistresses and doing that created a feeling of hostility against them among the protecting class. Indeed, it was quite a joke among that class that the Arabs preferred male prostitutes to female.
“I’m not afraid,” he said to Aslima. “I can protect myself and I am well protected besides.”
“I know you belong to some gang. Why don’t you admit it?” Aslima was curious to know but Titin kept a discreet silence.
“You don’t have to tell,” she said. And after a brief silence between them she demanded, “How do I know I’ll get anything out of all this damned business. Suppose Lafala does turn up and I make up with him? What’ll be my reward if I put the plan over?”
“Your reward?” exclaimed Titin. “Why you fool, we’ll buy a fine bar. We’ll be independent and looked up to here in Quayside like all the other business people.”
“Yes, a bar, a bar, a bar,” mocked Aslima. “But how do I know I would be treated right? I want to be sure about myself. If I promise to get that money will you promise to marry me before I hand it over? That’s the only way I’ll feel sure about my share. If we are married!”
That sense of the unity of the family that is more deeply rooted in the Latin peoples1 than any was so strong in Titin that he could not even bring himself to attempt to deceive Aslima in his own interest. Because it was an unthinkable thing—the idea of marrying a whore, a woman whose card of identity was the yellow one of prostitution,2 a woman without family, without home, without name.
He was proud of his family in his village, poor but intact. No near kinswoman was a prostitute. Aslima could never escape from her record as a prostitute. If she had a son it would be a whoreson.3 Wherever she went and whatever she did she was in the clutch of the social law, the police record that would trace her down to the third and fourth generation.
There were certain Quaysiders who were married to professional prostitutes but they were creatures of brothels and allied places of the same status as the inmates. Titin referred to such men as degenerates and perverts. He felt sick in the guts from the suggestion at his becoming a member of that class of men.
“Where did you get that stuff about marriage?” said Titin. “Who thinks about marriage down here but idiots? We’ll buy a bar and live together. That’s enough.”
“Not enough for me,” said Aslima. “I’m a stranger here and always will be. After you’ve made use of me God only knows what may happen to me.”
“What can happen?” asked Titin, breaking wind with his mouth contemptuously.
“What can happen? You know you despise me for what I am. You know well the first thing you’d try to do after you’d used me. You’d get rid of me. Take everything for yourself and get married to a good girl.”
“I’m not a marrying man.”
“You not a marrying man? All of your kind are. I’ve been in this life long enough to know the very guts of you all. We’re not human beings in your eyes. You’re all crazy about marrying a pure girl, une jeune fille de famille.4 I’m not going to go farther with this thing whether Lafala turns up or not. I refuse!”
“If you go back on this thing I’ll kill you like a bitch!” said Titin.
“Kill me then and finish with everything. I’m ready,” cried Aslima. “I’m tired and disgusted. Once you nearly killed Lafala. Now kill me instead and be done with it.”
“You talk as if it’s sweet to die, my lady,” said Titin. “What’s coming over you? You never were like that. Something has surely happened to you since the coming of Pied-Coupé.”
“Don’t talk to me anymore!” cried Aslima. “You say you’ll kill me like a bitch. Here, do it then and be damned with you.” Aslima ripped open her blouse baring her breast to Titin in one gesture.
“Woman, you’re crazy like a mad cow,” said Titin. “You want me to commit murder because of Pied-Coupé.” And he ran out of the room.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Babel arrived in Marseille one noon at the height of the confusion at Quayside and his exuberant spirits fell flat when he heard the bad news about Lafala. It was tough luck for him after all the tricks he had set his brains on to arrive at Marseille. He f
elt cheated and fooled by one trick more.
That very night St. Dominique dropped in at the Tout-va-Bien, visiting Quayside for the first time since the day he had taken Lafala to the Seamen’s Club. A boat had arrived from the Near East with colored seamen and St. Dominique wanted to invite them to a meeting at the club which was scheduled for the following evening.
In his dislike of St. Dominique and what he considered his pretentious manners the proprietor of the café had stirred up Quayside opinion against him with hints of treachery. Ever since Lafala’s disappearance he kept saying, “They have sold him. They have sold him!” He meant that St. Dominique had betrayed Lafala, which sounded plausible as St. Dominique was the last person that Lafala was known to be with. The habitués of the Tout-va-Bien were worked up into a pretty pitch of hostility against St. Dominique.
As for St. Dominique, he was not aware of what had happened. He had dismissed Lafala’s fears from his mind, not imagining they could have any serious consequences.
St. Dominique greeted the proprietor in his usual friendly fashion.
“I don’t want to speak to any traitor,” said the other mulatto.
“What is this? What do you mean, old man?” asked St. Dominique.
“I mean what I said. I don’t want a traitor in my place. I mean you!” He levelled his finger at St. Dominique.
“What damned stupidity. What is all this about?” asked St. Dominique.
With an irritated gesture the proprietor half turned, putting some soiled glasses in the tank of water.
Leaving a group of girls and fellows near the piano where they were sitting, Aslima rushed up to the bar and said to St. Dominique, “You don’t know what is it? You don’t know that Lafala can’t be found since that day he went with you?”
