The Stone Face

by William Gardner Smith

  Simeon did not move; he pretended not to see the cop. He knew why they were calling: a Negro was “out of place” in a white neighborhood. Rage, always just below the surface, began to boil up in him. He knew what to expect.

  “Hey, Joe Louis, come here.”

  He did not move. From the corner of his eye, he saw that there were two policemen in the car. The white couple looked at him apprehensively, as though he were a dangerous criminal wanted by the police. One of the cops cursed and got out of the automobile and strode over to him.

  “Didn’t you hear me call you?”

  “My name’s not Joe Louis.”

  “Oh, one of them bad ones! What’re you doin’ in this neighborhood this time of night, boy?”

  “I’m not a boy. I’m as old as you are.”

  “You been up to some mischief? You been stealing something, boy?”

  His rage boiled over. “I been looking for your sister!”

  The cop’s face went white, his open right hand exploded against Simeon’s cheek. Simeon did not even have time to think: his fist leaped up from his side and crashed against the policeman’s chin. The cop went sprawling; there was a split second of dazed amazement, then: “Why you black mother——,” and he reached for his pistol. The second policeman jumped from the car. “No, Mike, not that!” he shouted. He waved his own pistol at Simeon with a smile. “Okay, Joe Louis, get in the car.”

  They drove off. Simeon sat in the back, saying nothing. Mike whistled. “Nice punch you got there, Joe Louis. One thing I like, it’s a spirited nigger. How about that, Jeff?” “Yeah,” the other cop said, “We love spirited niggers.”

  They took him to the police station. Cops lolled about everywhere, sitting on the edges of tables or on chairs, some playing cards. They were relaxed, smoking, telling dirty jokes, their coats off and their shirtsleeves rolled up. Mike shoved Simeon toward the sergeant’s desk. “Resisting arrest, assaulting an officer, Sarge.” The sergeant booked him. Mike said, “Before you stow him away, we’d like to have a little private conversation with him.” “Sure,” the sergeant said, and got up. “I’m going out to buy some cigarettes. Be back in an hour or so,” he announced. Mike looked at Simeon and grinned. “He’s a great guy, the Sarge. Understands things.”

  Mike and Jeff led Simeon into a back room. Some of the lolling policemen who were not playing cards said “What’s up?”

  “This guy’s a boxer,” Jeff said. “Joe Louis. Knocked Mike out in one round.”

  The cops whistled softly and came to watch. Mike smiled, taking off his jacket. “I always did have a glass jaw if you caught me right. Joe Louis there caught me right, didn’t you, boy?” He chuckled, shaking his head. “Okay, Joe Louis, take off your clothes.”

  Simeon did not move. He was not going to make things easier for them. He was scared; he hated himself for being scared.

  Mike moved forward and hit him in the face with his fist. Simeon crumbled under the blow. “Not so tough here are you, Joe Louis!” A policeman snorted in disgust. “Fell with the first punch. Niggers are yellow!” Jeff said, “Well, now, you gotta be fair. Mike fell with the first punch, too.” Mike, Jeff and another cop pulled Simeon to his feet and began beating him methodically. He tried to protect the socket of his eye with his hands, but two other policemen came and pinioned his arms behind him. Mike pounded his stomach and groin; Simeon’s face twisted, and he fainted.

  When he came to, he was naked on the wooden floor. Mike and Jeff were holding lengths of rubber hose, while the other cops sat on a table smoking and watching him.

  Mike bent over him and smiled. “Feel better, Joe Louis?”

  His entire body ached, and he could hardly see out of his one eye.

  Mike said, “Joe Louis, I’m gonna tell you why I like spirited niggers. It’s because it’s so much fun putting them back in their place. Know what I mean? This is a white man’s country, boy; we don’t want your black ass here stinking up the place nohow, but long as you’re here you’re damn sure gonna stay in your place. Now, you know who I am? I’m your tutor. I’m the special archangel sent specially to look after you, keep you out of mischief and stuff. And I’m a responsible sort of man, I’m gonna fill that role. I got your address. I’ll drop in to see you from time to time. I’m gonna personally keep my eye on you. And any time you act up, I’ll bring you in for treatment again. Personally. A sort of marriage, you know, between me and you.”

  Mike raised the hose and it fell with unbelievable weight across Simeon’s abdomen. He doubled up with a stifled cry. The hose fell again and again. Mike kept talking softly, soothingly, in whispered joy, and suddenly, seeing in a flash the hard mouth and sadistic eyes Simeon thought: It’s the same face! The face of Chris! The illusion lasted an instant only. A blow of the hose snapped him like a switchblade. The hose chopped at the base of his neck. Hoses fell from everywhere, while the distant, toneless, strangely soothing voice of Mike went on: “You see, boy, hoses don’t leave no marks. I don’t mean you no harm. I want to keep you out of trouble. I’m your guardian angel; we’re married from now on, you and me.” And then the world again became black.

  Guardian Angel Mike. Simeon bought a pistol from a friend who had been in the Army. But Mike did not come to his house. He never saw Mike again.

  IV

  1

  THE CAVALCADE of ten cars was pulling into a clearing in the forest south of Paris. Carlos, one of Babe’s Brazilian friends, had suggested the trip, saying that they should take wine, beer and food to a spot in the Chevreuse Valley from which they could overlook the entire forest. “We can roast lamb over an open fire and listen to guitars until morning!” Carlos’ idea had enchanted them and they left Paris in great excitement. Most of the Americans from the Tournon crowd had come, as well as the Brazilians and others from the quarter. There were about forty people in all, who now piled out of the cars and began climbing the hill.

  Simeon held Maria’s hand and carried a case of wine on his shoulder. Stones slid beneath their feet. Below them Babe huffed and puffed, shoving his immense body up the hill. They finally reached the small plateau at the top, where those who had already arrived were searching for firewood. Maria sank onto a blanket and Simeon went off to look for wood. Eventually Babe reached the top, wheezing like an engine, the Swedish girl Marika beside him. Babe collapsed onto a blanket. “It ain’t right, it ain’t right,” he said. “Some people got so much more weight to carry around than others. It ain’t right.”

  Simeon felt elated by the air and the view. Maria did not move, but lay on her back, staring in a melancholy and inscrutable way at the sky. Every time he had looked at her, since their first meeting, intense physical desire had over-whelmed him. It was not just because of her body—he had seen other lovely bodies—but because of a turbulent, somber passion he felt beneath her usual silence. This woman was a sleeping volcano, radically different from other women he had known. Suddenly, without giving his shyness time to assert itself, Simeon bent down and kissed her on the cheek. She did not move, but lay on her back, staring in a melancholy and inscrutable way at the sky.

  Soon two fires were blazing in the clearing, the lambs turning over them slowly on spits. They sat in a huge circle around the fires. The sun had gone completely now, and the night breeze was cool and fresh. Below stretched the forest and in the distance they could see the highway with the headlights of cars, and beyond that, on the horizon, the lights of Paris. Simeon lay on his back, Maria beside him. The Brazilians passed a bottle of Beaujolais to each person shouting, “First course.”

  They all began to drink the wine and Babe, the best story-teller Simeon had ever heard, started telling jokes. Harold, the composer Simeon had met at Babe’s bookshop, was staring wistfully into the fire.

  “What are you thinking, Harold?” Simeon asked.

  There was a frown on Harold’s face; he turned his soft, liquid-brown eyes on Simeon a
nd said, “I’m thinking about a piano.” He had a velvet voice with a Midwestern twang. “Look, it’s hard enough to find an apartment in Paris, right? But whenever I manage to find one I’m happy and all that but I know it won’t work, because I’ll ask the fatal question: can I put a piano in the apartment? And the answer is always no. Landladies say no, neighbors say no. I’m commissioned to write a piano concerto but I can’t have a piano. No pity on musicians in this city. So I’ll have to make it back to Vienna again. Back and forth to Vienna, where they allow pianos.”

  “Where’s Doug?” Simeon asked.

  Babe pointed to a blanket where Doug lay talking to a girl with a pretty and very young face. “There he is over there, whisperin’ lies into the ears of his unsuspecting French gal.”

  “I’ve never seen him with her before.”

  “He hides her, man. Because she’s soft and sweet, and he’s afraid that if we see him with her we’ll think he’s soft and sweet, too.” Babe chuckled. “As for me, I’m waitin for my i-deel.”

  Benson said: “Reminds me of the cat who spent all his life looking for the perfect woman to marry. Spent fifty years traveling to every country in the world, never found the woman. Got older and older. Finally, in a little village near his own home city, he saw the ideal woman drawing water from a well. He rushes over to her: ‘My love, I’ve spent all my life looking for the ideal woman; now I’ve found her, it’s you, will you marry me?’ and she says: ‘Sorry, I’m looking for the ideal man.’”

  The music was hypnotic and one of the Brazilian girls stood up and began to dance. Simeon bent and kissed Maria lightly on the mouth. She continued to stare up at the sky and said, “What do you want from me?”

  The question surprised him. He said softly, “I want you.”

  She smiled faintly and was silent again. The wine was in their heads and everyone started to sing with the Brazilians. Carlos shouted that one of the lambs was cooked and began slicing the meat and passing it around. The Brazilian woman danced in a frenzy and they all stopped talking and watched her. A few couples moved off into the woods. The dancing woman circled the fires, her head shining in the firelight, her body gone wild. Simeon watched the faces around the fire, faces ranging from white to brown to black, from Scandinavia to Africa.

  Simeon and Maria drove back to Paris with another couple shortly before dawn. Most of the others stayed on, and from the highway Simeon could see the light of the fires against the sky. He was silent and nervous during the drive, terribly aware of Maria’s presence. He wanted to sleep with her, but could not fathom her brooding silence. His pride and all of his racial experience made him fear a rebuff if he approached her directly. Yet all that was honest in him had always made him reject any approach but a direct one.

  Simeon and Maria got out near Simeon’s hotel. “Do you live near here?” Simeon asked.

  “Just around the corner. In a hotel.”

  “Don’t go home. Stay with me.”

  “Yes.”

  He could have kissed her in gratitude for that rare and beautiful simplicity. Here, thank God, was a woman who played no games.

  When, in bed, he touched her body it trembled so violently that he was frightened. She whispered again: “What do you want from me? What do you want?”

  2

  They slept until early afternoon, then lunched at Marco’s, around the corner on the rue des Quatres Vents. Afterward, they went for a walk in the Luxembourg Gardens.

  “I feel . . . better,” she said, looking at him with a shy smile.

  He laughed softly. “So do I.”

  “But I missed acting school. That is serious.”

  She hummed gaily, swinging her tall lithe body as she walked, her face bright in the sun. He could not believe she would go blind; she would have a successful operation.

  “What are you thinking?” she asked.

  “Of how your body swings.”

  “Better than Brigitte’s?”

  “Much better.”

  She laughed. “All men lie.”

  They returned to Simeon’s hotel room in the late afternoon. Maria turned to Simeon with a smile and said, “So we buy an apartment. After all, this room is not big enough for the two of us.” She laughed with delight. “I scare you, eh? You are thinking ‘Aha, who is this woman who wants to trap me?’ Ah yes, you men, you are all the same, my aunt tells me so. Afraid for your precious freedom. Now I must leave you. I must go see my Paris mother.”

  “When will I see you again? Will you come here tonight?”

  “Tonight?” she mocked. “Ah, but is very soon, no? You are sure you are ready for such steady relations? No, we’ll protect your freedom. I’ll come back in, say, one month.”

  “Come tonight, Maria.”

  “Maybe. But I will be late. We are going to Enghein to play roulette. If I do come, I will not be here until four or five in the morning. So that gives you lots of freedom. Ciaou, Simeon.”

  When she had gone, the room seemed empty. He sat at the table and tried to finish a magazine article but felt restless and went downstairs for a beer at Lipp’s. He ate alone. He went to a movie after dinner, but could not get Maria out of his thoughts.

  He ran into Harold, who said, “Come along with me, I’m going to hear music at a café.”

  “What café?”

  “Come along, you’ll see.”

  Harold led him into a small dingy café, filled with men with curly dark hair and dressed in baggy, unpressed clothes. “Algerians. Arabs,” Harold said. From a phonograph came Arab music which had the passion and melancholy of flamenco. The Arabs stared blankly at the two intruders, but the barman, also an Algerian, smiled at Harold and extended his hand.

  “Salud! Haven’t seen you for a long time,” he said.

  “I was in Vienna. Piano trouble again. Meet Simeon.”

  They drank cognac at the bar, listening to the music. The Algerians played dominoes or just stared in front of them. They all drank coffee. Simeon knew that there were half a million Algerians in France, but had never before been in one of their cafés. He thought again of the night he had seen a policeman brutalize a man Babe had identified with the laconic comment: “He’s probably an Arab.”

  “There are no women,” Simeon said.

  Harold said, “The women are at home with their families, in Algeria. The men come here to find work and send money home. People are very poor in Algeria.”

  They left the café at two o’clock and Harold went home. Simeon went to an all-night bar on the rue Monsieur le Prince where there was a Spanish guitarist. He sat at the bar and ordered a beer. Beside him was a blonde girl reading a Dutch newspaper.

  “Could you give me a light?” The girl smiled and held up her cigarette. He struck a match.

  “How did you know I speak English?” he asked.

  “You dress like an American.”

  How annoying, Simeon thought. I must buy new clothes. The Dutch girl finished her drink, smiled at him again, and left the bar. Simeon had another beer, and when he went outside it was 3 A.M.

  A couple was struggling near a wall. Simeon recognized the Dutch girl, who was being pressed against the wall by a heavy-set man. She was crying and her eyes fell on Simeon.

  “Help me! For God’s sake, help me, he’s going to kill me!” she cried. Simeon hesitated for an instant, then moved toward them and took the man by the shoulder, “This is my fiancée, leave her alone,” Simeon said in French.

  The man whirled in fury, eyes glaring, and shoved Simeon. “Go away and mind your own business!”

  Simeon took a step forward and hit the man on the jaw. The man turned and grappled with Simeon, trying to pull him down to the pavement. Simeon saw the girl run in her high heels down the street, then disappear. He backed away and swung hard, hitting the man flush in the face, this time drawing blood from his lip. The man sh
outed in a guttural language Simeon recognized as Arabic, and Simeon realized then that the man was Algerian.

  The man charged again, butting Simeon hard on the chin with his head; they fell struggling to the ground. Then the door to the bar opened and other men seized Simeon, cursing in Arabic. Simeon was dimly aware of shouts and the screams of women, then suddenly the street was filled with police brandishing tommy guns. “Hands up! Hands up!” the police ordered, shoving the Arabs around roughly. An officer said, “All right, now what’s it all about?”

  One of the waiters in the bar, who knew Simeon, came forward: “I saw the whole thing. These Arabs attacked the American.”

  “All right,” the officer said, “everybody in the wagon.”

  The Arabs and Simeon got into the back of the patrol wagon with the police. They sat on wooden benches facing each other. From time to time, one of the policemen cursed and slapped an Algerian in the face. The Arabs stared straight ahead, sullenly. Simeon was embarrassed and confused. He had not realized the man was an Algerian. And the Dutch girl had run off.

  The police kept roughing up the Arabs, but they did not touch Simeon. At the police station, they shoved the Algerians through the door. The desk sergeant looked at them with a sigh.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “These bicots attacked the Monsieur,” a policeman said.

  The sergeant looked at Simeon. “Do you want to bring charges?”

  “No.”

  “Explain what happened, Monsieur.”

  The man Simeon had fought tried to speak, but one of the policemen slapped him in the face. The sergeant said to the man, “Be quiet!” then turned to Simeon. “Go ahead, Monsieur.” The sergeant had used the familiar tu in speaking to the Algerian, but employed the polite vous in addressing Simeon.