The Stone Face

by William Gardner Smith

  “Hey, nigger!”

  He wanted to run but his muscles froze.

  “C’mere, nigger.”

  He felt that a brave person should say something defiant, throw the word nigger back into their faces. But his tongue was paralysed.

  His sense of time was distorted: everything was in slow motion. The boys stood around him, who now saw them through a blur, the leader, Chris, standing in front of Simeon, studying him with a faint cold smile. Chris toyed with a jagged switchblade knife. Everything was a blur, and then suddenly Chris’ face came into frightening sharpness. He had an inhumanly cold face with dull, sadistic eyes, a thin mouth, tightly clamped jaw and deathly pale skin. Chris’ face was utterly without feeling; it betrayed a soul of stone. Chris suddenly became aware that Simeon was staring at his face, and his sheet-white skin reddened.

  “Whatchu lookin at, nigger?”

  Simeon said nothing.

  “Nigger don’t like to talk. Hold him.” The boys held Simeon, twisting his arms behind him.

  Chris said, “Nigger don’t like my face. Tell me it’s a pretty face, nigger. Tell me it’s a prettier face than your mammy’s got.”

  Simeon continued to stare, hypnotized by the glazed blue eyes of his tormentor. For the instant he was less frightened by the danger than by the coldness of the eyes, the iron jaw. The man who had this face felt no human emotion, no compassion, no generosity, no wonder, no love! The face was that of hatred: hatred and denial—of everything, of life itself. This was the terrible face of anti-man, of discord, of disharmony with the universe. What horrors could have turned a human being into this?

  Chris placed the razor-edged knife at Simeon’s throat and said with sudden fury: “Answer me, nigger, or I’ll blind you!”

  Terror washed over him. Simeon almost fainted. He forced his mouth open, forced out the word: “Yes.”

  The flat eyes burned into his. “Yes what?” All else shimmered, was indistinct; there was only this face in the universe, shining with the joy of destruction.

  “Yes, it’s a pretty face.”

  “Prettier than your mammy’s!”

  “Yes.”

  “Say it!”

  “Prettier than my mother’s.”

  “Mammy’s, nigger!”

  “Prettier . . . than my mammy’s.”

  “Prettier than your rotten, no good, cock-suckin’ mammy’s. Say it!”

  The face shone. It grew brighter, a satanic star, burning with hatred and evil. Simeon shut his eyes against it. His legs gave way but the boys held him up. The world reeled.

  “Say it!”

  He opened his mouth, but no words would come out. He could hardly breathe. He opened his eyes and looked pleadingly at the stone face.

  “Say it, nigger, I’m telling you one more time.”

  Simeon closed his eyes again and fell into a kind of stupor. Dear God, Dear God, Dear God, he cried inside himself. But the prayer was interrupted by a shrieking flash of brilliant color, followed instantly by a blazing pain. He could not hear himself screaming. “Jesus, you blinded him!” a boy yelled. Simeon screamed at the peak of his voice, falling to the pavement, darkness closing in on him, his hands clutched to the place where he had once had an eye.

  3

  Black patch. “Only temporary,” the doctor said to his mother. “Later you can buy a glass eye to put in the socket.”

  But Simeon had never wanted the glass eye.

  Out of the hospital, walking up Tenth Street: “Damn! Look at Simeon!”

  “Hey! You look like somebody in a movie, Simeon!”

  “You look like a war lord!”

  “You look like a pirate!”

  War lord? Pirate? Simeon stared at himself in the mirror with satisfaction.

  The girls were fascinated. “Simeon, you look . . . tough. You look . . . mysterious, romantic.”

  Tough? Mysterious? Romantic? Simeon faced the mirror and barked commands to invisible followers: “Captain, place your men on that hill. You, Colonel, protect the rear. I’ll lead the main attack.” He injected courage into faltering troops: “Forward! Let’s show them how to die like men!” His mind took him to distant countries where he entered ballrooms and exotic restaurants. Everyone was in awe of the Man of Mystery!

  “This eye,” Simeon told the boys of the neighborhood, “is a gift to the gods. I gave them the eye; they give me other things.”

  The boys looked at him sceptically. “Such as?”

  “Strength, courage, bravery—”

  “Hah!”

  One of the boys was toying with a penknife. For a terrifying instant Simeon saw the face of Chris before him. He said, “Lend me the knife.”

  Holding the knife like a dagger in his right hand, Simeon turned up the palm of his left. Everyone watched in amazement as he raised the knife high over the open palm. “What in hell you gonna do?” He inhaled deeply, thought of Chris and brought the knife down hard into his palm. The boys gasped; the girls squealed. The knife trembled in the palm. He had not flinched. For a moment he let the group stare at the upright knife, then pulled it brutally out of his hand.

  “Goddam!” a boy whispered admiringly.

  The girls rushed toward him. “Simeon, you’re crazy!” He let himself be led away, allowed his hand, now covered with blood, to be washed, spread with iodine and bandaged. “Goddam! Goddam!” the boys kept repeating.

  Simeon smiled. He was a man.

  III

  1

  ONE DAY Simeon walked over to Babe’s English-language bookshop, a small store on the rue Monsieur le Prince. The window was well decorated, and the store had the most recent American and English books, in addition to Henry Miller and other books still banned in the United States. A young Frenchwoman behind the counter showed Simeon the stairs leading to Babe’s apartment on the second floor. Babe’s huge frame filled the entire doorway. “Come on in, man, we’re just opening up a bottle of vin rouge.”

  He introduced Simeon to five other Negroes in the big, comfortable living room: two women jazz singers, Gertie and Mathilda, and three men, Doug, Harold and Benson. “Harold’s one of the best classical composers around,” Babe said, “and Benson is a novelist.”

  “Used to be a novelist,” Benson said. He looked about forty-five, a handsome man with graying temples and an ironic expression in his pale brown eyes.

  “James Benson?” Simeon said. “I’ve read some of your books. Very strong, very bitter.”

  There was something said in Benson’s eyes, his face and movements gave an impression of weariness. He drank some of the red wine. “Ain’t gonna be no more books. I ain’t got nothing more to say to them people. Said all I got to say. I’m a journalist, now. Write crap from Paris for the Black Dispatch. Tole Babe to stop that novelist crap.”

  “When was it you wrote your last book?”

  “Ten years ago. Ain’t got nothing more to say to them people.”

  Babe grinned, handing Simeon a glass of wine. “See that character over there—that mouselike gloomy character in the corner? He’s a government man!”

  Doug, who was somewhat younger than Simeon, did look like a mouse. His bony face moved forward toward a point; he had enormous, indignant eyes and huge ears.

  He gave Babe a pained and furious look. “I keep tellin’ you, you oughtn’t say things like that to people. They might take you seriously.” He spoke with a heavy Southern drawl.

  “I am serious. You work for the government or not?”

  “I’m a minor clerk in the Embassy. That ain’t the same thing.”

  “Who pays you?”

  Doug frowned and looked at the floor. “You know who pays me.” Simeon smiled. Doug was a perfect straight man.

  “There you go. So you a government man. A government agent.”

  Benson laughed a wicked laugh, loo
king at Doug’s down-cast face. Gertie, who was almost as big as Babe, winked and said soothingly, “That’s all right, Doug, don’t let ’em get you down, hear? Stick up for your rights; I’m on your side.”

  Simeon drank from the glass. It was pleasant to be in this apartment with other American Negroes. After a while he would look for a place and move out of that hotel room. He had time. He stood at the window and on the street below saw an African walking slowly with his arm around a girl. Benson came over and stood beside him.

  “Babe tells me you’re a newsman, too.”

  “Writing stupid stuff for a stupid magazine.”

  “We write crap together, then.”

  “The books you wrote weren’t crap.”

  “That was when I was young and indignant. You have to believe in something to be indignant.”

  “You stopped writing books when you left the States?”

  “That’s right.”

  “If you’d stayed there, do you think you’d have continued writing?”

  “Maybe.”

  “And you still don’t want to go back?”

  Benson chuckled. “Ole Beethoven. He was deaf, you know. Some people say he might not have written all that great music if he hadn’t been deaf.” After a pause, Benson said, “Me, I want to keep my hearing.”

  2

  The following Saturday Babe called for Simeon at his hotel. They were to meet two Swedish girls for dinner. Babe had to lower his head to get through the doorway; his mountainous figure seemed to fill the room. Babe looked at Simeon’s paintings.

  Simeon said, “I liked Benson. I read a novel of his when I was a kid, a brilliant book. It’s a damned shame he’s stopped writing.”

  “Yeah. He don’t like to talk about it much. He says he just suddenly felt like silence. He’s a strange cat, a sort of hermit. Disappears into his apartment with whatever girl he happens to be living with. He really hates all the girls he lives with, even while he’s with them, because they’re white. A bitter man who don’t believe in much any more, not even in himself. He’s one of the boys, though.”

  Simeon noticed that at times Babe completely dropped his slurring Negro drawl. He “wore” the drawl whenever he wanted to. He now stared at the canvas on the easel: the inhuman face Simeon had once again begun to paint. The cold eyes shone from the canvas with quiet cruelty.

  “What is that?”

  “It’s the man I told you about. The man I almost killed.”

  “He doesn’t look real. It look like it was carved out of rock . . . or out of wax. Who is he?”

  “That’s a long, long story, Babe.”

  Babe looked at Simeon with mock saucers of eyes and slipped back into the Negro drawl. “Man, you is one of them excitable people! One of them gun-tottin’, knife-wieldin’, bottle-throwin’ kind! Gotta watch my step with you!”

  They took a taxi to the Champs-Élysées, where they were to meet the Swedish girls. Babe leaned back comfortably, puffing on his pipe, his eyes narrowed in thought. More went on in that head than one might gather from the easy banter, Simeon thought. Simeon made himself as comfortable as possible in what Babe had left him of the seat, and watched the people, the cafés, the trees and the bridges of the Seine go by. He was amazed to find himself relaxed and calm. Sometimes in Paris he dreamed that he was back in Philadelphia, unable to escape. Slowly, as consciousness came, the terror faded. Yes, it was all right; he was in Paris.

  But the old reflexes died hard. He felt a vague unease, a readiness for battle as they left the taxi and walked to the café where the girls waited for them. Babe kissed Marika on the cheek; Simeon shook Ingrid’s hand. They had met the girls the day before—pretty, empty-headed but gay.

  They ate at Les Îles, a cozy restaurant on the rue Marbeuf, off the Champs-Élysées. Chickens turned on spits, people talked gaily. The waiters were polite. Simeon remembered that when you went into the fashionable restaurants of Philadelphia with a black skin, waiters would step forward quickly to say: “Sorry, there are no tables.”

  After dinner Babe took them to a key club on the Left Bank. It was a small club dimly lighted by candles, where one could dance to Latin American and jazz records. As they came in, a French girl in a tight-fitting dress was going through the gyrations of the Twist.

  “Nothing like this in Stockholm,” Ingrid said, frowning. “The men are dull—and they’re not interested in girls. It’s the dullest place in the world.”

  “The men are too blond,” Marika said.

  Babe laughed. “You’re pretty blond yourself.”

  “With women it’s different.”

  Ingrid’s body pressed close to Simeon as they danced to the slow blues. She had a cold, depersonalized, lovely face; still, it was pleasant dancing with a woman again. Simeon talked politely and she nodded and smiled, a good listener.

  They returned to the table. The manager of the club came over and talked to Babe, whom everybody in Paris seemed to know. Then the door to the club opened and four men walked in, all Americans. Their drunken raucous laughter and loud voices disturbed the peaceful atmosphere of the room. The manager seated them at a table adjacent to Simeon’s and one of them called imperiously for a waiter: “Champagne. Champagne for me and my friends. We got plenty of money, bring on the champagne.”

  They were no doubt businessmen on vacation, doing Paris by night. Simeon felt less American than ever before. Were Negroes such a separate nation within that nation which was America? The mood in the club was shattered now for Simeon; his mind became fixed on the four men at his elbow, engaged in the desperate American occupation of trying to enjoy themselves. They drank, shouted, told unfunny jokes, laughed the tense laughs of nervous compulsion. Then their eyes fell on Simeon and Babe and the Swedish girls.

  The four men grinned. “Hey, you boys from the States?”

  There was no reply.

  “What’s the matter? I’m just being friendly. Good to meet other Americans over here, that’s all. Get tired of these goddam frogs.”

  Babe said, “Man, we ain’t no boys. I’m old enough to be your mother’s husband.”

  The man laughed nervously. “Where you from in the States? I’m from Utah, myself; me and my friends here we’re over on a short trip but we can’t wait to get back. But I bet you boys like it over here, all right. Never had it so good, huh, all these blondes and things. Hah, hah, hah.”

  His loud voice filled the room, and the other people in the club were silent. Then Simeon said, “That’s right, never had it so good being away from you.”

  “What’d I do? How come you people are so touchy all the time?”

  One of his friends said, “Skip it, Jim. Come on, drink your champagne. Them boys’ bigger’n their britches over here where the frogs let ’em run around loose.” He pointed a finger at Simeon. “I got one bit of advice for you, boy. Stay over here. You done got sassy since you come over here, but we’ll sure as hell change that if you come back home!”

  The waiter and the manager had been watching the scene from a distance, and now, as Simeon and Babe rose from their table and moved toward the four men, the manager stepped forward.

  “I’m sorry,” he said to the white men. “I have to ask you to leave.” They were astonished. One man said, “What’s this? You crazy or something? You gonna throw out white men for niggers?”

  The manager said in perfect English, “Please leave or I’ll call the police. There are certain things you have to leave behind when you come to France. At least when you come to my club.”

  “We was just saying to them boys——”

  The manager nodded to several waiters, who started toward the Americans. The man named Jim said, “Okay, okay. Let’s go, fellas.” He looked at the manager and shook his head. “You must be out of your mind, mister.” At the door, one man turned and shouted to Simeon and Babe: “Remember what I told
you, boys. You better stay over here with these nigger-lovers, ’cause you’d have a lot of painful lessons to learn again in the States.”

  The door closed. People in the club looked at Simeon and Babe with smiles of relief. The manager shook his head. “Sorry, Babe. Your compatriots—they have disagreeable reflexes sometimes.”

  Babe chuckled. “Don’t I know it. Them people got a long way to go, a lot to learn.”

  “Have a drink,” the manager said. He smiled. “How about some champagne? Their champagne.”

  Marika said, “What I can’t understand is what was it all about? What happened?”

  “It’s a long story, Baby,” Babe said. “I don’t think they really meant to be that way. They just open their mouths and they can’t help putting their feet in them.”

  It was late when they left the club. Babe laughed as they walked down the street. “Maybe they didn’t mean no harm, them paddies, but it sure feels good sometimes to have the shoe on the other foot.”

  “Yes.”

  At the corner, they saw a policeman clubbing a man. Although he had fallen to the pavement, the policeman kept on swinging his long white nightstick down on the man, who was trying in vain to protect his head from the blows with his arms. The man was screaming in a language Simeon could not understand. Simeon watched the beating until the patrol wagon pulled up and two policemen tossed the beaten man into the back and drove off.

  “What was that?” Simeon asked.

  Babe said, “The man was probably an Arab.”

  “An Arab?”

  “Yeah. There’s a war on in Algeria, remember?”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  3

  “Hey, Joe Louis, come here.”

  It was a spring evening in Philadelphia. Simeon had been moving ahead in the world then, had been to Penn State on a scholarship, studied journalism, and become the first Negro reporter in town on a “white” newspaper. That evening, he had visited white friends, former schoolmates at college, in a pleasant residential neighborhood. Afterward, he went to the bus stop, where a white couple were already waiting. A police patrol car passed, halted, backed up and shone its searchlight on him. A policeman leaned out of the window and beckoned to him.