Amiable with Big Teeth

by Claude McKay

  Professor Makepeace said that he knew all the facts of the situation, but it was the policy of the Friends of Ethiopia and other liberal organizations to which he belonged always to make a distinction between the government of a country and its people. He added that Maxim Tasan had specially requested him to talk to Peixota, as he considered the moment opportune to bring the Hands and the Friends into closer collaboration.

  As if a wasp had whizzed out of the receiver and stung him in the ear, the mention of Tasan’s name infuriated Peixota. He said: “If Mr. Tasan is there I’d like to talk to him.” Professor Makepeace replied: “I’ll put you in touch with him immediately.” He felt relieved in ending the awkward conversation. In his heart he felt that Peixota was right, but he had pledged himself intellectually to uphold Marxist principles.

  When the telephone rang again Peixota’s finger twitched as he grasped it in eagerness to talk to Tasan. Said he: “Mr. Tasan, Professor Makepeace was just talking to me about you. He said you wanted to stop the Sufi demonstration. But I think it would be better for you to keep your blood-hound’s nose out of Harlem and take your filthy leprous hands off our organization. You’ve done every damnable thing possible to hurt our cause. You caught Lij Alamaya in a trap. You can work your will on him, you abominable bashibazouk.4 But we others will be a match for you, you understand? I know your type. You don’t mean my people any good; you don’t mean any people any good. Human life to you is like playing a game of cards which you aim to win by hook or crook. What do you care about working people of any race and their miserable lot? How can you care when you’re only a cold-blooded international sloganizer, a phrase-touting racketeer? What can you do for humanity when you’re no more human than a viper? What can humanity expect of a despicable whoreson, a proletarian prostitute like you, yes, you—”

  He stopped, having used up all available words, but he still held the receiver.

  “Thank you, Mr. Peixota,” Tasan spoke calmly, “you are very eloquent.”

  Peixota turned from the telephone in disgust. His anger was suddenly gone and he thought: “I should have faced him man-to-man and said it. That would have been more effective. But perhaps I would have made a big ass of myself.” Had Peixota been able to see Tasan’s face, livid with hate, he would not have thought that what he said was not quite effective.

  • • •

  Peixota had not been very enthusiastic about the Sufists’ demonstration, when he permitted the use of the name of the Hands to Ethiopia as one of the supporting organizations. As a would-be labor leader and Harlem agitator he considered Sufi Abdul Hamid, in his attractive Oriental costume, more picturesque than practical and much too volatile of character to hew steadily and unswervingly along the hard line of labor organization of an overwhelmingly unskilled body of workers who were the victims of discrimination by white employers and workers. Also as a property owner and employer, Peixota saw the problems of his people more from the anthropological than a labor angle.

  But the conversation with Tasan had resulted in quickening his sympathy for the Sufists. He visited their headquarters personally to give Sufi Abdul Hamid the assurance of his support. The Sufi informed him that he had been approached directly and indirectly by persons who desired him to use the word “Fascist” instead of “Italian” in the demonstration, but he had refused. He added that even if he were willing to make the change, all of his followers were against it. For “Fascist” to them was like an unfamiliar word that one had to look up in the dictionary and even then not quite grasping its clear meaning. But “Italian” was as real and obvious as spaghetti and tomato sauce and as full of meaning for Aframericans as it was fraught with danger for the Ethiopians.

  That Saturday afternoon the parade was held according to schedule. It was a grand mass demonstration of marching and music. The people flocked together, a mighty host with bands and banners and flags. There were religious and lay groups from churches and clubs, political and professional leagues and associations and plain people’s organizations of the sons and daughters of the Southern states and the Caribbean islands. Organized into sections, each headed by a band of music, they assembled at the upper end of Seventh Avenue. Arresting signs proclaimed the object of the demonstration:

  ITALIANS EXTERMINATING ETHIOPIANS IN AFRICA

  ITALIANS DEBAUCHING AFRAMERICANS IN HARLEM

  ITALIANS DECLARE AFRICANS ARE SAVAGES UNFIT TO LIVE

  ITALIANS SAY THERE SHALL BE NO ACTIVE AFRICAN STATE

  ITALIANS SPRAY ETHIOPIANS WITH POISON GAS

  ITALIANS BOMBING ETHIOPIAN WOMEN AND CHILDREN

  AFRO-AMERICANS—HELP YOUR ETHIOPIAN BROTHERS

  PEOPLE OF HARLEM—DON’T PATRONIZE ITALIAN BUSINESS

  The parade went down Seventh Avenue to 135th Street, crossed to Lenox Avenue and continued to 125th Street, turned to reach Seventh Avenue again, streaming on to 110th Street, thence east to Lenox Avenue and headed north. It was followed by a cavalcade of cars decorated with flags of the United States and Ethiopia. Seated in a big Buick, the heavy-muscled Sufi Abdul Hamid resembled a black Buddha in his turban and baroque Oriental costume, but he was out-dazzled by Professor Koazhy, who sat beside him in his glittering uniform of an Ethiopian Ras with his shako of many-colored plumes. The parade stopped above 125th Street, where the speakers’ stand was erected.

  The speakers’ stand was opposite the notorious Merry-Go-Round bar and grill, which was Italian-owned. As the Sufi and Professor Koazhy mounted the stand, four Sufists unfolded a large banner before it, which was lettered:

  ITALIANS EXTERMINATING ETHIOPIANS IN AFRICA

  ITALIANS DEBAUCHING AFRAMERICANS IN HARLEM

  Suddenly unfolded there directly in front of the café, the huge banner was a surprise even to the demonstrators, having upon them the effect which the Sufi intended. Murmurs of approval arose from the crowd: “Exactly right!” “A fine idea!” “It just hit the nail on the head!”

  The Sufi’s job as a community and labor leader combined the role of the sidewalk agitator and muck-raker, whose obsession was the morals of Harlem. It was a subject upon which he was always pounding. It teamed perfectly with his labor leader activity. Aframericans had no fixed and worthwhile place in the good ship, Labor; they were flotsam dumped to please any captain’s whim, or workers’ caprice, therefore Harlem morals were low. And in his bitter harangues, standing on a step-ladder on the avenue, the Sufi usually picked the Merry-Go-Round as an example to prove that Harlem morals were low.

  The Merry-Go-Round was the largest and bawdiest bar in Lenox Avenue. It had the commodious aspect of a barn-big everybody’s drinking-joint on Forty-Second or Fourteenth Street. Its liquor bar was a gigantic horseshoe centrally fixed, with tables ranged on either side. There was an enormous room in the rear, which was filled with customers every night. Ordinarily it employed six bartenders besides waiters, and on Saturdays, Sundays, and holidays the number was doubled. There was no orchestra, only two elaborate music boxes, one in front and one in the rear. It was the haunt of the gutterbugs of Harlem and the place par excellence where its elite went slumming. And like flies attracted by sweet scum, its customers came from all parts of New York. Polite-speaking Harlemites nicknamed the place the Marys-Go-Round, but the gutterbugs called it the Fairy-Go-Round.

  The Sufi had campaigned against the establishment for months, planting his step-ladder on the opposite side and demanding that it be closed by the City Fathers. “The white folks say we are degenerate and dirty and diseased,” he shouted, “but this Merry-Go-Round proves that they are pushing us down to be what we are. They wouldn’t permit any Afro-Americans to run an open cesspool like this.”

  The Sufi was probably right. A group calling itself the Jitter-bugs had started in the hub of Harlem a place similar to the Merry-Go-Round. But one night the doughty one and only Aframerican police officer led his men in, armed with hatchets, and hacked it to pieces. He declared that no su
ch den of abomination would be run by Aframericans as long as he had any power in the community! But evidently his power was not great enough to stop the Merry-Go-Round.

  Sufists and Senegambians had frequently precipitated quarrels and fights in the Merry-Go-Round. For sometimes when the Sufi was agitating the crowds from the step-ladder some of them would enter the bar and attempt to induce customers, especially persons with whom they were acquainted, to leave. The management was compelled largely to increase its staff of able-bodied Aframerican bouncers to handle the intruders.

  The great crowd was not aware of the intention of the erratic and unpredictable Sufi Abdul Hamid to make the mighty demonstration for Ethiopia serve as an instrument of agitation against the Merry-Go-Round. Professor Koazhy spoke first and chiefly emphasized the ideas of the speech he made at the mass meeting of welcome to Lij Alamaya. His uniform was still thrillingly exciting to the crowd and he was rewarded with warm salvos of applause. Other speakers followed with vivid details of the horrors of the war in Ethiopia. A doctor who had lived in Ethiopia gave a pathetic idea of the wounded soldiers and civilians, because there was a dearth of physicians and nurses and no adequate hospital service.

  The altercation with Maxim Tasan had intensified Pablo Peixota’s interest in the demonstration and he and Dorsey Flagg had walked down to the pavement parliament. The Sufi had just started his attack against the Merry-Go-Round when they got there. Peixota was delighted with the man’s pithy phrases and sarcasm and the adroit manner in which he took advantage of the Ethiopian conflict to press his drive against the Merry-Go-Round. He had never visited the bar and had not even heard of it, so far was he removed from the bohemian life of Harlem. Now he decided to go in and see what it was like. Dorsey Flagg, of course, had indulged a Black-and-White occasionally at the Merry-Go-Round when he was out slumming with a regular gang of intellectual good fellows, among whom was Newton Castle. But he seldom went there now, as most of them had become collectively serious adherents of the People’s Front and had black-listed him as a Fascist.

  So while the Sufi was pounding away at the Merry-Go-Round the two men elbowed a way through the crowd, crossed the street and entered the bar. They stood on one side of the horseshoe and ordered Scotch. Being Saturday afternoon, there were a considerable number of customers. Some of them, chiefly young men, went outside awhile to listen to the Sufi and, titillated by his sharp jabs at the establishment, they came back giggling and singing: “Oh, Mary goes round and round.”

  Peixota looked around at the place and naively asked Dorsey Flagg why so many lads had charcoaled and elongated their eyebrows and rouged their cheeks like the girls and spoke from the tip of the tongue a kind of unintelligible jargon. Flagg explained that they were chorus boys of the lower type from the cabarets and music halls.

  “I don’t like it,” said Peixota. “It is very insipid. It is as bad as Sufi describes it, or is he plastering?”

  “To tell the truth, it’s bad enough, sometimes worse,” said Flagg.

  They went back into the rear. The music box was playing and, although dancing was not permitted, a group of chorus boys with arms linked were shaking their legs together, while some girls sitting were rhythmically clapping and prompting them to continue. The tables were nearly all occupied and there was general hilarity, a hectic reckless wave of intoxication sweeping all together.

  In one corner a group of nine persons—six girls, two youths, and an older man—were imbibing many rounds of double “shorties” (a Harlem special) of rye.5 One of the girls was white. She was svelte with regular features, not very pretty, but she had beautiful orange-burnished bobbed hair. It was difficult to tell to what white group she was a member. She was limber from inebriation and tossed excitable amorous phrases at the Italian waiter each time that he attended to their table.

  At last, when he came and set down another round of drinks, she jumped up and embraced him and cried: “Tony, for all the passes I’m making at you, you’ll hardly look at me. I guess you imagine I am white, but I’m a real nigger with all that nigger stuff, just like my darker sisters have.” She clung to the waiter, kissing, and the ribald older man of the party cried: “Look out, Carrot, don’t choke him with your tongue.”

  “Don’t worry about me,” said the waiter. “I’m used to it.”

  Peixota and Flagg were going out by the side entrance and the same man called to Flagg: “Lo, Dorsey, come and have a shot with us.”

  The girl he called Carrot looked round and waved: “Dorsey, you bum, come right on over here.”

  Flagg shouted, “No!” And he went out with Peixota.

  “Who is she? They know you,” said Peixota.

  Flagg mentioned her name and said she was an important city employee.

  “I met her father in Philadelphia,” said Peixota. “Her family is among the tops. But, good God, can’t she drink without making a slut of herself in public?”

  “If she keeps it up, she’ll lose her job,” said Flagg. “Some of her own drinking pals will write in to her department. I know them for what they are: skunks and rats.”

  “She must be sex crazy to put on such an exhibition in such a place,” said Peixota. “It’s a rotten dive, raw and slimy like the afterbirth of a cow.”

  Peixota’s first reaction to the place was not unfavorable. It had appeared to him like a big carousing depot for disoriented young people, of which it was regrettable there were so many in Harlem. And he was inclined to conjecture that the Sufi perhaps had a special grudge against the owners and was overstepping his license as a popular agitator to hurt their business. He was opposed to bigotry and would combat it in a Sufi Abdul Hamid as much as in a Maxim Tasan. He could not apprehend what disgusted the Sufi about the establishment, for his eyes were not keen nor his ears sensitive to detect the secret signs and suggestive erotomania of the underworld.

  But the spectacle of the Titian-haired6 member of one of the best Aframerican families and a swinish white waiter was upsetting to his innate feeling of respectability. It hurt his dignity and that pride in his group which he fostered and held sacred against all the humiliating circumstances of living that continued to undermine it. In a flash he had understood the fundamental cause of the Sufi’s agitation.

  “Are there many more places like this in Harlem?” Peixota said to Flagg.

  “Not any large licensed establishments,” said Flagg, “but there are lots of reefer joints or tea-shops and the hooch dives where they sell rot-gut for a nickel a glass. They’re worse because the fools who drink that stuff are getting poisoned and going insane at the same time. I don’t approve of Sufi making a racial issue out of his agitation against this joint. They have them downtown too. The underworld must also have its relaxation.”

  “But you can’t compare downtown with Harlem, Dorsey. Downtown the whites run such places for whites. Up here the whites run them for colored and we can’t get away from the racial angle. The Sufi says it is an orgy of debauchery and it is. And then the white people declare we are degenerate and bestial. In science books and schoolbooks they try to prove we are inferior. The Nazis and Fascists say we are half apes. And these same white, these Fascists are exploiting our vices for profit! I agree with Sufi. If we don’t wake up the whites will destroy us in the same manner that the Europeans and Japanese encourage the Chinese to have their opium and make laws to prevent the sale in their own countries.”

  Outside in the keen March weather the Sufi was mightily booming against the Merry-Go-Round. One of his scouts had espied Peixota and Flagg and informed the Sufi of their presence. He invited both to the stand and presented them to the crowd. Peixota spoke for three minutes in congratulation of the demonstrators and in praise of the Sufi and invited all to work together for the salvation of Ethiopia. Dorsey Flagg spoke just as briefly in the same vein.

  There was a little commotion in the midst of the crowd as a white man struggled to approach the
stand. “Let him through, let him come!” commanded the Sufi. The white man pushed his way through and after exchanging words with the Sufi, he was permitted to mount the stand. Murmurs of disapproval arose among the crowd: “Throw him off!” “We don’t want any white man up there!”

  But the Sufi held up his hand and silenced them. “Listen, friends! This is a member of the White Friends of Ethiopia. This is a democratic country, where we all believe in freedom of speech. I want you to hear him.”

  The man was an Italian of average height and appeared to be an ordinary workingman. Said he: “My friends, I wanta you see yourself one Italian no wanta war against Etiopia and there are a lotta more like me. Mussolini and Fascisti notta real Italy. Mussolini hema big bandit kidnappa our King. But our King no wanta Etiopian Empire anda Pope no hate Etiopian people, for alla people white and colored in the church.

  “We Italians alla good Americans and we believa in liberty for oda people. Me no likea Fascists. Fascisti badder for my country, but America my country now. Fascisti killa Italia for Fascisti hate the working class. I’d geeva my life a-fighting with you all for Etiopia. I joina da Friends of Etiopia to helpa fight against Fascisti and if all of us a working people stick togedder no Fascisti can leek us. Only Party Communista fighta with Fascisti. Only Soviet Russia help alla people fighting with Fascisti, alla working people. Join the Party Communista for Soviet Russia—”

  The crowd booed and yelled: “Take it away!” “We don’t want that crap!” “To hell with Soviet Russia and give us Ethiopia!” “Down with Italy!” “Boycott all Italians!” At the northern edge of the demonstration a voice shouted: “Help! Help! Murder!” There was a general stampede toward the spot. Many were asking what was wrong; some said a white man was hit, others that a white man was killed. The police patrol had been considerably increased for the occasion. Police hurried to the corner when the cry of “Murder!” came. Others ordered the people to disperse, driving them like cattle and poking them with their sticks. The people were sullen. Some of them damned the police. One fellow would not move on quickly and argued with a policeman about his rights as a citizen. He was prodded hard in his backside. He turned and grabbed the policeman’s stick. The policeman felled him to the pavement with the butt of his gun. The Sufi tried to convince the police that the people would disperse and go home quietly, if they were not badgered. He was arrested for creating a disturbance and obstructing a policeman in pursuit of his duty. But it developed late that the cry of “Murder!” was a grim joke. No person, white or colored, had been molested.