“Buddy, I know it’s the trute. What you doing today?”
“No, when you make me think ovit, particular thing. And you?”
“I’m alongshore but—I ain’t agwine to work thisaday.”
“I guess I’ve got to be heaving along right back to it, too, in pretty short time. I got to get me a room but ——”
Uncle Doc reminded Jake that his suit-case was there.
“I ain’t nevah fohgitting all mah worldly goods,” responded Jake.
Zeddy took Jake to a pool-room where they played. Jake was the better man. From the pool-room they went to Aunt Hattie’s chitterling joint in One Hundred and Thirty-second Street, where they fed. Fricassee chicken and rice. Green peas. Stewed corn.
Aunt Hattie’s was renowned among the lowly of Harlem’s Black Belt. It was a little basement joint, smoke-colored. And Aunt Hattie was weather-beaten dark-brown, cheery-faced, with two rusty-red front teeth sticking together conspicuously out of her twisted, spread-away mouth. She cooked delicious food—home-cooked food they called it. None of the boys loafing round that section of Fifth Avenue would dream of going to any other place for their “poke chops.”
Aunt Hattie admired her new customer from the kitchen door and he quite filled her sight. And when she went with the dish rag to wipe the oil-cloth before setting down the cocoanut pie, she rubbed her breast against Jake’s shoulder and a sensual light gleamed in her aged smoke-red eyes.
The buddies talked about the days of Brest. Zeddy recalled the everlasting unloading and unloading of ships and the toting of lumber. The house of the Young Men’s Christian Association, overlooking the harbor, where colored soldiers were not wanted. . . . The central Rue de Siam and the point near the Prefecture of Marine, from which you could look down on the red lights of the Quartier Réservé. The fatal fights between black men and white in the maisons closes. The encounters between apaches and white Americans. The French sailors that couldn’t get the Yankee idea of amour and men. And the cemetery, just beyond the old mediæval gate of the town, where he left his second-best buddy.
“Poor boh. Was always belly-aching for a chance over the top. Nevah got it nor nothing. Not even a baid in the hospital. Strong like a bull, yet just knocked off in the dark through raw cracker cussedness. . . . Some life it was, buddy, in them days. We was always on the defensive as if the boches, as the froggies called them, was right down on us.”
“Yet you stuck t’rough it toting lumber. Got back to Harlem all right, though.”
“You bet I did, boh. You kain trust Zeddy Plummer to look out for his own black hide. . . . But you, buddy. How come you just vanished thataway like a spook? How did you take your tail out ovit?”
Jake told Zeddy how he walked out of it straight to the station in Brest. Le Havre. London. The West India Docks. And back home to Harlem.
“But you must keep it dark, buddy,” Zeddy cautioned. “Don’t go shooting off your mouth too free. Gov’mant still smoking out deserters and draft dodgers.”
“I ain’t told no nigger but you, boh. Nor ofay, neither. Ahm in your confidence, chappie.”
“That’s all right, buddy.” Zeddy put his hand on Jake’s knee. “It’s better to keep your business close all the time. But I’ll tell you this for your perticular information. Niggers am awful close-mouthed in some things. There is fellows here in Harlem that just telled the draft to mount upstairs. Pohlice and soldiers were hunting ev’where foh them. And they was right here in Harlem. Fifty dollars apiece foh them. All their friends knowed it and not a one gived them in. I tell you, niggers am amazing sometimes. Yet other times, without any natural reason, they will just go vomiting out their guts to the ofays about one another.”
“God; but it’s good to get back home again!” said Jake.
“I should think you was hungry foh a li’l’ brown honey. I tell you trute, buddy. I made mine ovah there, spitin’ ov ev’thing. I l’arned her a little z’inglise and she l’arned me beaucoup plus the French stuff. . . . The real stuff, buddy. But I was tearin’ mad and glad to get back all the same. Take it from me, buddy, there ain’t no honey lak to that theah comes out of our own belonging-to-us honeycomb.”
“Man, what you telling me?” cried Jake. “Don’t I knows it? What else you think made me leave over the other side? And dog mah doggone ef I didn’t find it just as I landed.”
“K-hhhhhhh! K-hhhhhhhh!” Zeddy laughed. “Dog mah cats! You done tasted the real life a’ready?”
“Last night was the end of the world, buddy, and tonight ahm going back there,” chanted Jake as he rose and began kicking up his heels round the joint.
Zeddy also got up and put on his gray cap. They went back to the pool-room. Jake met two more fellows that he knew and got into a ring of Zeddy’s pals. . . . Most of them were longshoremen. There was plenty of work, Jake learned. Before he left the pool-room he and Zeddy agreed to meet the next evening at Uncle Doc’s.
“Got to work tomorrow, boh,” Zeddy informed Jake.
. . . . . . .
“Good old New York! The same old wench of a city. Elevated racketing over you’ head. Subway bellowing under you’ feet. Me foh wrastling round them piers again. Scratching down to the bottom of them ships and scrambling out. All alongshore for me now. No more fooling with the sea. Same old New York. Everybody dashing round like crazy. . . . Same old New York. But the ofay faces am different from those ovah across the pond. Sure they is. Stiffer. Tighter. Yes, they is that. . . . But the sun does better here than over there. And the sky’s so high and dry and blue. And the air it—O Gawd it works in you’ flesh and blood like Scotch. O Lawdy, Lawdy! I wants to live to a hundred and finish mah days in New York.”
Jake threw himself up as if to catch the air pouring down from the blue sky. . . .
“Harlem! Harlem! Little thicker, little darker and noisier and smellier, but Harlem just the same. The niggers done plowed through Hundred and Thirtieth Street. Heading straight foh One Hundred and Twenty-fifth. Spades beyond Eighth Avenue. Going, going, going Harlem! Going up! Nevah befoh I seed so many dickty shines in sich swell motor-cars. Plenty moh nigger shops. Seventh Avenue done gone high-brown. O Lawdy! Harlem bigger, Harlem better . . . and sweeter.”
. . . . . . .
“Street and streets! One Hundred and Thirty-second, Thirty-third, Thirty-fourth. It wasn’t One Hundred and Thirty-fifth and it wasn’t beyond theah. . . . O Lawd! how did I fohgit to remember the street and number. I reeled outa there like a drunken man. I been so happy. . . .
“Thirty-fourth, Thirty-second, Thirty-third. . . . Only difference in the name. All the streets am just the same and all the houses ’like as peas. I could try this one heah or that one there but —— Rabbit foot! I didn’t even git her name. Oh, Jakie, Jake! What a big Ah-Ah you is.
“I was a fool not to go back right then when I feeled like it. What did I want to tighten up mahself and crow and strut like a crazy cat for? A grand Ah-Ah I is. Feet in mah hands! Take me back to the Baltimore tonight. I ain’t gwine to know no peace till I lay these here hands on mah tantalizing brown again.”
CONGO ROSE
IV
ALL the old cabarets were going still. Connor’s was losing ground. The bed of red roses that used to glow in the ceiling was almost dim now. The big handsome black girl that always sang in a red frock was no longer there. What a place Connor’s was from 1914 to 1916 when that girl was singing and kicking and showing her bright green panties there! And the little ebony drummer, beloved of every cabaret lover in Harlem, was a fiend for rattling the drum!
Barron’s was still Barron’s, depending on its downtown white trade. Leroy’s, the big common rendezvous shop for everybody. Edmond’s still in the running. A fine new place that was opened in Brooklyn was freezing to death. Brooklyn never could support anything.
Goldgraben’s on Lenox Avenue was leading all the Negro cabarets a cruel dance. The big-spirited Jew had brought his cabaret up from the basement and established it in a hall blazing wi
th lights, overlooking Lenox Avenue. He made a popular Harlem Negro manager. There the joy-loving ladies and gentlemen of the Belt collected to show their striking clothes and beautiful skin. Oh, it was some wonderful sight to watch them from the pavement! No wonder the lights of Connor’s were dim. And Barron’s had plunged deeper for the ofay trade. Goldgraben was grabbing all the golden-browns that had any spendable dough.
But the Congo remained in spite of formidable opposition and foreign exploitation. The Congo was a real throbbing little Africa in New York. It was an amusement place entirely for the unwashed of the Black Belt. Or, if they were washed, smells lingered telling the nature of their occupation. Pot-wrestlers, third cooks, W. C. attendants, scrub maids, dish-washers, stevedores.
Girls coming from the South to try their future in New York always reached the Congo first. The Congo was African in spirit and color. No white persons were admitted there. The proprietor knew his market. He did not cater to the fast trade. “High yallers” were scarce there. Except for such sweetmen that lived off the low-down dark trade.
When you were fed up with the veneer of Seventh Avenue, and Goldgraben’s Afro-Oriental garishness, you would go to the Congo and turn rioting loose in all the tenacious odors of service and the warm indigenous smells of Harlem, fooping or jig-jagging the night away. You would if you were a black kid hunting for joy in New York.
Jake went down to the Baltimore. No sign of his honey girl anywhere. He drank Scotch after Scotch. His disappointment mounted to anger against himself—turned to anger against his honey girl. His eyes roved round the room, but saw nobody.
“Oh what a big Ah-Ah I was!”
All round the den, luxuriating under the little colored lights, the dark dandies were loving up their pansies. Feet tickling feet under tables, tantalizing liquor-rich giggling, hands busy above.
“Honey gal! Honey gal! What other sweet boy is loving you now? Don’t you know your last night’s daddy am waiting for you?”
The cabaret singer, a shiny coffee-colored girl in a green frock and Indian-waved hair, went singing from table to table in a man’s bass voice.
“You wanta know how I do it,
How I look so good, how I am so happy,
All night on the blessed job—
How I slide along making things go snappy?
It is easy to tell,
I ain’t got no plan—
But I’m crazy, plumb crazy
About a man, mah man.
“It ain’t no secret as you think,
The glad heart is a state o’ mind—
Throw a stone in the river and it will sink;
But a feather goes whirling on the wind.
It is easy to tell. . . .”
She stopped more than usual at Jake’s table. He gave her a half dollar. She danced a jagging jig before him that made the giggles rise like a wave in the room. The pansies stared and tightened their grip on their dandies. The dandies tightened their hold on themselves. They looked the favored Jake up and down. All those perfection struts for him. Yet he didn’t seem aroused at all.
“I’m crazy, plumb crazy
About a man, mah man. . . .”
The girl went humming back to her seat. She had poured every drop of her feeling into the song.
“Crazy, plumb crazy about a man, mah man. . . .”
Dandies and pansies, chocolate, chestnut, coffee, ebony, cream, yellow, everybody was teased up to the high point of excitement. . . .
“Crazy, plumb crazy about a man, mah man. . . .”
The saxophone was moaning it. And feet and hands and mouths were acting it. Dancing. Some jigged, some shuffled, some walked, and some were glued together swaying on the dance floor.
Jake was going crazy. A hot fever was burning him up. . . . Where was the singing gal that had danced to him? That dancing was for him all right. . . .
A crash cut through the music. A table went jazzing into the drum. The cabaret singer lay sprawling on the floor. A raging putty-skinned mulattress stamped on her ribs and spat in her face! “That’ll teach you to leave mah man be every time.” A black waiter rushed the mulattress. “Git off’n her. ’Causen she’s down.”
A potato-yellow man and a dull-black were locked. The proprietor, a heavy brown man, worked his elbow like a hatchet between them.
The antagonists glowered at each other.
“What you want to knock the gal down like that for, I acks you?”
“Better acks her why she done spits on mah woman.”
“Woman! White man’s wench, you mean. You low-down tripe. . . .”
The black man heaved toward the yellow, but the waiters hooked and hustled him off. . . . Sitting at a table, the cabaret singer was soothing her eye.
“Git out on the sidewalk, all you trouble makers,” cried the proprietor. “And you, Bess,” he cried to the cabaret singer, “nevah you show your face in mah place again.”
The cabaret was closed for the rest of the night. Like dogs flicked apart by a whip-cord, the jazzers stood and talked resentfully in the street.
“Hi, Jake”—Zeddy, rocking into the group with a nosy air, spotted his buddy—“was you in on the li’l’ fun?”
“Yes, buddy, but I wasn’t mixed up in it. Sometimes they turn mah stomach, the womens. The same in France, the same in England, the same in Harlem. White against white and black against white and yellow against black and brown. We’s all just crazy-dog mad. Ain’t no peace on earth with the womens and there ain’t no life anywhere without them.”
“You said it, boh. It’s a be-be itching life”—Zeddy scratched his flank—“and we’re all sons of it. . . . But what is you hitting round this joint? I thought you would be feeding off milk and honey tonight?”
“Hard luck, buddy. Done lose out counta mah own indiligence. I fohgit the street and the house. Thought I’d find her heah but. . . .”
“What you thinking ’bout, boh?”
“That gal got beat up in the Baltimore. She done sings me into a tantalizing mood. Ahm feeling like.”
“Let’s take a look in on the Congo, boh. It’s the best pick-me-up place in Harlem.”
“I’m with you, buddy.”
“Always packed with the best pickings. When the chippies come up from down home, tha’s where they hangs out first. You kain always find something that New York ain’t done made a fool of yet. Theah’s a high-yaller entertainer there that I’se got a crush on, but she ain’t nevah gived me a encouraging eye.”
“I ain’t much for the high-yallers after having been so much fed-up on the ofays,” said Jake. “They’s so doggone much alike.”
“Ah no, boh. A sweet-lovin’ high-yaller queen’s got something different. K-hhhhhhh, K-hhhhhhh. Something nigger.”
The Congo was thick, dark-colorful, and fascinating. Drum and saxophone were fighting out the wonderful drag “blues” that was the favorite of all the low-down dance halls. In all the better places it was banned. Rumor said it was a police ban. It was an old tune, so far as popular tunes go. But at the Congo it lived fresh and green as grass. Everybody there was giggling and wriggling to it.
And it is ashes to ashes and dust to dust,
Can you show me a woman that a man can trust?
Oh, baby, how are you?
Oh, baby, what are you?
Oh, can I have you now,
Or have I got to wait?
Oh, let me have a date,
Why do you hesitate?
And there is two things in Harlem I don’t understan’
It is a bulldycking woman and a faggotty man.
Oh, baby how are you?
Oh, baby, what are you? . . .
Jake and Zeddy picked two girls from a green bench and waded into the hot soup. The saxophone and drum fought over the punctuated notes. The cymbals clashed. The excitement mounted. Couples breasted each other in rhythmical abandon, grinned back at their friends and chanted:
“Oh, baby, how are you?
Oh, baby, what
are you? . . .”
Clash! The cymbal snuffed out saxophone and drum, the dancers fell apart,—reeled, strutted, drifted back to their green places. . . .
Zeddy tossed down the third glass of Gordon gin and became aware of Rose, the Congo entertainer, singing at the table. Happy for the moment, he gave her fifty cents. She sang some more, but Zeddy saw that it was all for Jake. Finished, she sat down, uninvited, at their table.
How many nights, hungry nights, Zeddy had wished that Rose would sit down voluntarily at his table. He had asked her sometimes. She would sit, take a drink and leave. Nothing doing. If he was a “big nigger,” perhaps—but she was too high-priced for him. Now she was falling for Jake. Perhaps it was Jake’s nifty suit. . . .
“Gin for mine,” Rose said. Jake ordered two gins and a Scotch. “Scotch! That’s an ofay drink,” Rose remarked. “And I’ve seen the monkey-chasers order it when they want to put on style.”
“It’s good,” Jake said. “Taste it.”
She shook her head. “I have befoh. I don’t like the taste. Gimme gin every time or good old red Kentucky.”
“I got used to it over the other side,” Jake said.
“Oh! You’re an over-yonder baby! Sure enough!” She fondled his suit in admiration.
Zeddy, like a good understanding buddy, had slipped away. Another Scotch and Gordon Dry. The glasses kissed. Like a lean lazy leopard the mulattress reclined against Jake.
The milk cans were sounding on the pavements and a few pale stars were still visible in the sky when Rose left the Congo with both hands entwined in Jake’s arm.
“You gwina stay with me, mah brown?”
“I ain’t got me a room yet,” he said.
“Come stay with me always. Got any stuff to bring along?”
“Mah suitcase at Uncle Doc’s.”
They went to her room in One Hundred and Thirty-third street. Locking the door, she said: “You remember the song they used to sing before you all went over there, mah brown?”
Softly she chanted:
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