But Chalmers, who was entering Yale in the fall on a full scholarship, refused to share her excitement. Instead, he accused her of betraying The Cause.
His words of rebuke were hurtful enough. But it was his tone and his body language that made Dru feel as if she had been slapped.
“If you’ve got all that money to burn, bourgeois girl, what’s wrong with going to Latin America to study Spanish? Better yet, why not major in something that will take you to Africa?” He had spoken in that nasal, aloof tone he reserved for white people. He had drawn himself up to the full measure of his six-foot-eleven frame and looked down at her as if she were a dirty old rag. His chin jutted out, and the corners of his mouth angled down, causing his bottom lip to push up. This was his signature scowl of contempt. It cowed those who were in awe of him.
Chalmers was a good ten years older than she was. She respected his age and his legendary intelligence. She’d even had a stupid crush on him when she was a freshman.
He was an evening student and had a full-time day job for five of the six years he was in college. He finally managed to arrange his working hours so that he could spend his final year as a daytime student. He wanted to take advantage of the wider choice of electives offered in the day, he claimed, and to get to know the tenured professors who knew where all the grant money was and how to get it.
Dru explained to him, her voice cracking with apology, that she was a student of Latin American affairs, and that by being in Spain she could experience for herself the nature of the people who did what they had done to the people of Africa, Latin America, and the Caribbean. She could learn firsthand what it was about Europe that drove its people to subjugate other races and plunder their land and their treasures.
“And, yeah! I also want to see what they built with all that loot from Africa, and what imprint our people may have left on their character,” she said, her voice growing more confident. There was also something about Europe that had attracted all those Black American writers and singers and political thinkers. She needed to see what that was all about, too, she explained. “You can understand all that, can’t you, Chalmers? Our people, our history, they’re as much tied up with Europe as it is with America.”
She so wanted his approval.
But he continued to torment her, alternating between berating her and treating her as though she did not exist, until it suddenly dawned on her that his quarrel was not with her going to Europe at all. Rather, bogged down by the responsibilities of a wife, two kids, and the need to find a new job in Connecticut to support them, scholarship or no scholarship, Chalmers was jealous of her freedom.
It was as simple as that. Even if she were going off to Mexico, Chalmers Freeman would have found fault with that, too.
The moment she realized what was going on in Chalmers’ mind, she stopped shuffling her feet and avoiding his eyes. One day, as he ranted and raved to her in the Black Students Organization office in the Student Center, she jerked her head up—out of its hang of hurt and shame—looked him straight in the eye for one full minute, and burst out laughing. She spoke no words to him. She just laughed and laughed while he looked at her slack-mouthed, as if he were staring at someone suddenly gone mad.
A few other people were in the office at the time, and all during Chalmers’ tirade against her they kept giving her the evil eye, shaking their heads, curling their lips, and making those unh-unh-unh sounds to let Chalmers know they were on his side.
One of them had even volunteered that Dru was behaving like a “Negress,” like an “Aunt Jemima” who had taken too many “white people” courses and had lost her sense of priorities.
Dru refused to look at any of them. Her eyes remained glued to Chalmers’ face as she laughed. Still laughing, she had stalked out of the office and slammed the door.
Walking along the corridors of the Student Center, she felt light, totally in control, as though she had defeated an old and formidable enemy at long last. Never mind that she might have made an enemy for life in the person of Chalmers Freeman. As smart as he was, it wouldn’t take him long to figure out—if he hadn’t done so already—that she was laughing because she had seen through him, and not because she was high on weed, as he had suggested to his adoring lackeys.
She didn’t care what he told them. She comforted herself with her mother’s frequent pronouncement that “even the Good Lord had enemies.” Packing her suitcase the night before she left for Europe, she told her anxious parents that plain human instinct was the best protection a person could have in an unknown environment.
“Plain, ordinary instinct is like an eternal state-of-the-art radar system. No technology in the world can match it, neither in speed nor in accuracy,” she had declared with the superiority of a brand-new college graduate addressing her high school-educated parents.
Her father had simply given her that poor-fool look and walked out of the room, shaking his head and muttering that he had gotten a raw deal for all the money he had doled out for his only girl-child’s college education. Her mother, on the other hand, was not one for the silent treatment. At Dru’s words, she had hmmphed with the know-it-allness of a graduate of the school of commonsense and hard knocks, and fired back that instinct might do the warning but that it was God in heaven who did the protecting and Dru had better remember to say her prayers while she was a lone young woman—black at that—riding around in trains in “strange white people’s countries.”
“Not that you’d be any safer traveling around in America, mind you,” her mother had added quickly. “But at least these are our white folks. We know them and they know us. We may not get along, but we know what tricks we each got up our sleeves. But over there! It’s like, you’re like…” She had broken off and flung both arms up to the heavens, turning her head from side to side, her mouth hanging open, her eyes wide with dread as she imagined the unspeakable things that could happen to her daughter.
It was the first time in all her twenty-two years under her parents’ roof that Dru had seen her mother at a loss for words. Softened, she had climbed down, grudgingly, from her high horse and put her arms around her mother. “I’ll be all right, Mom. Don’t worry. Not a thing is going to happen to me. Not with you praying for me.”
Her mother had sighed and held her tight. “I know, baby, I know. I always knew you’d be traveling off one day. The way you carry on speaking all that French and Spanish.” There was pride in her voice. The moment stretched out, then she pushed Dru away, dug into her pocket, and pulled out a fifty-dollar bill. “Here. Your father wants you to have this,” she said gruffly, stuffing the money into Dru’s hand and looking around to make sure her husband was out of earshot. Not trusting her eyes, she leaned into Dru and whispered, “You know how he gets when he doesn’t want you to know how pleased and proud he is.”
Even now, in Marseille, Dru still had that fifty-dollar bill. It was folded in four, just as her mother had given it to her, and tucked away in one of the countless slits in her wallet. She had thought of putting it toward her Eurail Pass, but she had changed her mind. She would keep it for the rainy day everyone talked about. It was desperation money.
Italy had been her first stop after Spain. The Eurail Pass would take her through twelve countries in just over two weeks—as far east as Austria, all the way up north to Norway, Sweden, and Denmark, then back down to France, where she would catch a plane in Paris for New York.
Aside from all she had told Chalmers Freeman, she had decided that the trip across Europe was a present to herself for sweating through the three-month certificate course in Spanish language and literature at the University of Madrid.
She had paid for everything herself. All of it. The airfare, the cost of the course, books, rent for the tiny studio on Calle Ayala in New Madrid, and the Eurail Pass itself. She had used the money she had saved from four years of tutoring other undergrads in French and Spanish, and from summer jobs as a counselor in the day camp that City College had set up for the children a
ttending the neighborhood elementary school. The camp was part of the community outreach program black students had demanded, along with open admissions, back in 1969 when they had shut down the campus and forced the president to resign.
Thank God Spain was so cheap.
She absolutely had to strengthen her Spanish before she could dream of taking graduate courses in Latin American studies, New York University had told her. They were even giving her a scholarship, but they wanted proof, on paper and verbally, that she was conversant in the language.
The course was tough. Conducted in Spanish. And not New York Spanish. Castilian. The difference was like the difference between American English and British English.
Daily, Dru blessed the Spaniards for being smart enough to put the sexiest white man she had ever laid eyes on to teach the first class in the mornings. Had it not been for her mammoth crush on el profesor Oricain—which, she regretted, had gotten her nowhere beyond her own lustful dreams—she probably would have flunked out of the course for failing to show up after nights of swilling sangría with a raucous bunch of American students in the mesones on and off the Gran Via.
Someone jostled her, yanking her out of her reverie. She had stopped walking and was standing in the middle of the platform.
Self-consciously, she looked around. A few people were staring at her, their faces pinched with curiosity. A few of them looked downright annoyed. When had she stopped walking and put down her bags? She had been so engrossed in her thoughts that she did not realize she had done so.
They must think I’m crazy.
She entered the station, wrinkling her nose at the pervasive stench of European tobacco. Does every friggin’ one in Europe smoke? Phew! The odor of their cigarettes hung somewhere between a cigar and an American cigarette. Dru doubted she would ever get used to it.
The penny-pinching wisdom of Europe on 5 Dollars a Day was kicking in. Dru found an empty locker, stored her bags—two smart pieces of American Tourister that her parents had given her that year for her twenty-first birthday—and headed out into Place Victor Hugo.
She would grab a bite to eat—that café across the street didn’t look too bad—do some sightseeing and come back to catch an early afternoon train to Paris.
Standing on the sidewalk, she dug into her shoulder bag, pulled out a small map of Marseille and began to study it.
“Excuse me. Are you lost? May I help you find where you want to go?”
English. A native French speaker with an American accent.
Dru frowned. Barely lifting her head, she followed the trail of the long, lean body standing before her, all the way up to the head of a black man with a low haircut, so short it said “establishment.”
I guess black people in France don’t wear Afros.
Wordlessly, she dropped her eyes and continued to study the map.
The man did not go away as she hoped he would. He repeated, “Excuse me, Miss. May I help you?”
Dru slowly lifted her head and settled a hooded gaze on the stranger. His skin was a shade or two darker than her own café au lait complexion. He might be in his late twenties. Not too bad-looking.
No Denzel, but no slouch either.
He had a strongish square jaw; deep-set small eyes; full lips; and a hint of a dimple in his chin. There was a birthmark on his left cheek—a raised, jetblack patch of skin the size and shape of a black-eyed pea. The cut of his clothing was definitely European—chocolate brown, snug-on-the-hips, wide-legged trousers; fitted white shirt, open at the neck, belted neatly into the trousers; expensive-looking laced leather shoes. Brown.
The man folded his arms and waited for Dru to speak. The corners of his mouth twitched with amusement under her aloof appraisal.
Dru was not impressed. She had seen good-looking, smartly dressed men before. “No, thank you. I’m not really lost,” she replied coolly, her guard firmly in place. She was, after all, in a place no different from the Port Authority Bus Station, Grand Central Terminal, or Penn Station in New York. All types of con artists—of every color and from any country you could name—drifted in and out of port cities. They swarmed around bus and train stations, on the hunt for innocence and starry eyes. They were maggots who could do you in and fade away before you even suspected what was happening.
“What does ‘not really’ mean? Either you’re lost or you aren’t,” the stranger persisted with a pleasant laugh.
Dru’s chin snapped forward. This guy clearly can’t take a hint.
She deadpanned him, and then she let her face go slack gradually, until it was drained of expression. Still staring at him, she crossed her eyes, and rolled her neck ever so slightly from side to side. This was the graceful, snakelike movement of a belly dancer with attitude. Only hers was no intent to tantalize. No come-hither. This was the Brooklyn visage. Blank.
Silent. Eloquent. The signature gesture of that borough’s peppery black and Hispanic females who knew they were right even when they were dead wrong.
Oh, sure. Women and girls all across America rolled their necks and crossed their eyes. It meant the same thing everywhere: bored, but downright dangerous if touched. But no one did it quite like the women of Brooklyn—slow, with the wisp of a pout.
The stranger seemed to understand Brooklynese.
His smile collapsed. He held up his hands and took a step back. When he spoke, his voice had a slight edge and his English was more formal. “I am sorry. I mean you no harm. But if you don’t mind my saying so, you are a sitting duck for the miscreants around here if you continue to stand with your head in a map. But if you know where you’re going, and you’re okay, then again, my apologies for the intrusion. Good day.”
He stared at her for an instant, inclined his head slightly, then turned and walked away.
Dru stared at his back, her mouth open. Can you believe this? He’s got the nerve to be offended!
She rolled her neck again, rolling her eyes at the same time. “And a good day to you, too! Thank you for asking!” she called after the stranger with a flick of her wrist. Yeah! And just keep stepping, Mr. French Slickeroo, she added under her breath.
She resumed her study of the map, tracing the route to La Canebière, the bustling main street of Marseille that took its name from the hemp that grew there. The locals used the hemp to make rope.
La Canebière—”can of beer,” American World War II GIs called it—led to the Vieux Port, where there were supposed to be two huge forts and all sorts of buildings dating back to neoclassical times.
There would be lots to see along the way, Dru was sure. A city’s main street was a window to that city’s soul. She was confident she would find a restaurant where she could get some bouillabaisse at a reasonable price. The bouillabaisse in Marseille was supposed to be the best in France. She had read all about it when she studied French.
A shadow fell across the map and she looked up. He was back. The same
man was standing in front of her again.
Dru’s eyes narrowed and she opened her mouth to hurl her iciest “get lost.” But before she could form the words, the stranger started to speak. The words seemed to tumble from him, his accent at times very American, at times very French.
“Look. I’m no con artist. I was born in Paris, but my parents are American. They are communist and chose to live in France where they felt there was real freedom of thought and speech. They’re jazz musicians, too. My mom sings; my father plays the saxophone. They own a small club in Paris. See, here’s their picture.”
He removed a leather wallet from the inside pocket of his jacket, extracted what looked like a photograph, and thrust it toward Dru.
Dru hesitated, then sighed and rolled her eyes again. She couldn’t believe she was even talking to this man. She took the picture anyway, practically snatching it from him.
She studied it. It showed the man, a young woman who resembled him enough to be his twin, and an elderly couple who obviously were their parents. It could not have been taken mor
e than two or three years ago. “That’s my twin sister,” the man said, reaching out and touching the face of the young woman in the photograph.
His fingers seemed to linger on her face. Dru thought she heard a slight catch in his throat as he said the words “my twin sister” and she looked up quickly, just in time to see the cloud in his eyes.
He looked down, took two cards from the wallet and handed them to her. Again he spoke before she could say anything.
“Those are my parents’ business cards. You can call them right now if you like. There’s a phone on the corner. I’ll pay for the call myself.” He waved to the phone booth at a few steps away.”I have a master’s degree in finance, but I wanted to see the world before I settled down,” he continued, looking intently at Dru. “So I joined the French navy, to the dismay of my parents, of course. I’m in port for just today. My name is Theron. Theron St. Cyr. And here is my ID.”
He removed another card from his jacket pocket. This one was a bit bigger than the business cards. It was laminated and bore what Dru assumed was the seal of the French navy. His picture was on it.
Dru studied the family photo, and the alleged business cards, and his navy ID.
She sighed. And a goddamn sailor too!
She looked up into Theron St. Cyr’s face, held his gaze for a moment, and then shrugged.
Oh, what the hell! “Okay. I’m going to walk along La Canebière to the Vieux Port and find a place to eat some bouillabaisse. You can come if you like,” she said.
She made it sound friendly enough, but not overly inviting.
Theron St. Cyr nodded and smiled broadly. “So you know about bouillabaisse,” he said eagerly as they crossed the street. “I know just the place where you can get a good one. And I’ll give you a tour of Le Quartier Noir. I’m sure you would want to see what it can be like for black people in France,” he said.
The Guyana Contract Page 2
