The Stone Face

by William Gardner Smith

The rooming house where Hossein lived had narrow shadowy hallways, and the splotched plaster walls were so damp and filthy that Simeon shrank from them as he climbed the stairs. The musty air was filled with the melancholy Arab music and the smell of cooked food. All the doors were ajar and you could see groups of Algerians talking softly, on chairs or beds, under bare electric bulbs. Hossein lived on the fifth floor. His room was small, with a stark bulb hanging from the ceiling; the wallpaper was torn and stained, a worn linoleum was on the floor. There was no mattress or sheet on the narrow bed; a spare blanket, serving as mattress, was stretched across the springs. Simeon was sure there were bedbugs and perhaps fleas. The smell of the food which had been cooked on the alcohol burner under the washstand was stifling.

  Hossein grinned and shook Simeon’s hand. “Welcome to paradise. How does the white man feel?”

  Simeon smiled. “The white man feels all right.”

  Ahmed and Simeon sat on two shaky chairs while Hossein heated a pot of coffee on the burner. Simeon looked around the room. There was a lopsided table, a closet and a suitcase. The washstand was partly torn from the wall. He would not like to live here, he thought, but he had seen even worse rooms on South Street.

  Ahmed said, “This is only partly Hossein’s room. He has it for eight hours a day. Two other men have it also for eight hours each. They sleep in rotation. That way, they split the rent three ways. None of them could afford to pay the rent alone.

  Simeon got up and went to the window. It was getting dark, now. Under the street lamps he saw the idle men and the passing cops with their submachine guns. This was the Goutte d’Or quarter of Paris, Ahmed had told him. “Drop of Gold.” He smiled sardonically.

  “Do Algerians have to live in certain quarters?” he asked, turning.

  Ahmed shrugged. “There’s no law, if that’s what you mean. We just run into: ‘Sorry, no rooms; sorry, we’re all filled up.’ Know what I mean?”

  “Oh, yes. I know.”

  Hossein put two cracked cups on the table. “Education of the white man,” he said, glancing at Simeon. But now there was no hostility in his teasing. As he poured the coffee he said, “Sorry there’s no cognac or wine. I was broke. Besides, Moslems aren’t supposed to drink.”

  They drank the coffee in silence. Simeon looked at the two men. Their skins were white, all right: they looked like Southern Slavs. The way Hossein jokingly called him “white man” was ridiculous, he thought—as though he, Hossein, were not white! One of the Brazilians had explained to Simeon that in South America when an Indian or a Negro became rich or became a general, he was officially considered white. It was crazy. The world was a pyramid, and at the apex were the great rich peoples—the Northern Europeans, the English and recently the Americans. They imposed their sliding scale on the rest of the world. Here, the black man was inferior; there the Arab, there the Jew, there the Asiatic—according to where you were. And the people who became rich and great through historical accident were those who ruled. For that particular time.

  Hossein said, “Well, what do you think of our castle?”

  “Reminds me of slum tenements in Harlem or Philadelphia.”

  Hossein nodded. He looked at Simeon intently and said, “The Negroes in America should revolt, like we did.”

  Simeon said, “We don’t have any Algeria to free.”

  “You have a country. Africa.”

  It was hard to explain. Africa was far away, in time as well as miles, and most American Negroes, while enthusiastic about the independence movement in Africa, would feel and be treated like complete foreigners there. The American Negro had, because of a specific experience, become something specific—neither African nor typically American. Things could change, things were evolving, and perhaps some day—

  He finally said, “A lot of Negroes will go to Africa. But not all. You can’t make it a revolutionary program.”

  “And you?”

  “I don’t know where I’m going.”

  “What do you feel like, living here, a black man in a white country?”

  “Like a man without a country. Like the wandering Jew.”

  “That can’t go on forever.”

  Simeon shrugged. “I didn’t wish it. It’s not on me that it depends.”

  There was a loud rapid knocking, the door sprang open, and an excited Algerian rushed in. “Hossein!” He spurted something in Arabic and ran out again, closing the door behind him. There were frantic running footsteps in the hall. Simeon looked at Ahmed questioningly, alarmed. Hossein jumped up and began shoving papers under a false bottom in the closet drawer. Ahmed said to Simeon, “Police raid. Have you got your passport?” “Yes.” They heard heavy footsteps mounting the stairs, then loud knocks on doors followed by the imperious word Police! The knock rang on their door. Hossein opened it calmly.

  An inspector in civilian clothes showed his badge. Behind him stood a policeman with a submachine gun. The inspector entered, and the cop stood in the doorway, his finger near the trigger of the gun.

  “Papers,” the inspector said. The policeman looked at them a moment and, as the inspector looked at their papers, began searching through the closets and drawers.

  The inspector looked at Simeon, squinching his eyes. “You’re not an Arab.”

  “No.”

  “Let me see your papers.” Simeon showed his passport. The inspector said, “What are you doing here?”

  “Visiting a friend.”

  The inspector looked at him suspiciously. He beckoned to the policeman, who approached and patted Simeon under the arms and at the hips to make sure that he was not carrying a weapon.

  “You work for the FLN?” the inspector asked, studying Simeon’s face with a frown.

  “No,” Simeon said, remembering that FLN were the initials of the Algerian National Liberation Front.

  The inspector continued to study his face. “You’re a foreigner. I wouldn’t advise you to get mixed up in our internal affairs; understand what I mean? You could be expelled from the country at the slightest suspicion. Understand?”

  “Yes.”

  “Stick among the foreigners. You’ve got nice cafés over there on the Left Bank. Stay out of trouble. All right?”

  “Yes.”

  The inspector beckoned to the policeman and, with a final glance over their shoulders at Simeon, they left.

  More police were in other rooms. Through the paper-thin walls, you could hear them asking sharp questions or opening drawers. The entire house seemed alive. Simeon could almost hear it humming. Hossein winked at Simeon with a smile. Ahmed went to the window.

  “They’ve got an army down there,” he said. He turned to Simeon. “I’m sorry. I don’t want to get you in trouble.”

  “I’m glad I’m here. I feel . . . baptized.”

  Hossein grinned. “That’s the spirit.”

  Later, through the window, they saw the police loading a score or so of Algerians into the patrol wagons outside.

  “Off to the concentration camps,” Ahmed said.

  “Or worse,” Hossein said.

  “What do you mean by worse?” Simeon asked.

  “Beating. Torture, maybe. To get information about the FLN.”

  Ahmed and Simeon did not stay much longer. At the door, Hossein grinned, and shook Simeon’s hand. “You’re not so bad for a white man,” he said. On their way to the bus stop the police stopped Ahmed and Simeon twice and each time asked to see their papers.

  III

  1

  “COME ON by for dinner tonight,” Babe had told the boys. “Leroy Haines just taught me how to make some of that fine barbecued chicken he fixes up at his restaurant in Pigalle. It’ll sting the tongue.”

  Babe was a race man. He enjoyed nothing better than sitting in his comfortable apartment chatting and joking with members of the Negro colony in Paris. His place
was cozy, with a fireplace which roared in winter, soft armchairs, good records and always plenty to eat and drink. He was a born host; you could drop in to see him at any time and he’d make you feel welcome.

  Babe went into the kitchen to get dinner while, in the living room, gossiping and joking, sat Simeon and Maria, Benson, Doug, Harold, and an assortment of women: two English girls, Pat and Pamela; a French painter named Claire, Babe’s Swedish girl friend Marika, and the two Negro blues singers, Mathilda and Gertie. All were drinking Pernod or red wine.

  Mathilda, a lean hoarse blues singer who had once been with Count Basie’s band, was looking at Doug and shaking her head.

  “Listen everybody,” she said, “I got an announcement to make. Our boy Doug here done got himself all mixed up in a love affair with an American heiress! My people are a bitch!”

  She winked at Gertie, who was immense, with twinkling eyes and a hearty laugh. “A heiress, did you say? An American heiress? A white American heiress? You mean to tell me that our boy Doug here . . .” She looked at him, shaking her head in mock disbelief. “What’s all this they saying about you, Doug? Thought you had a cute little French girl.”

  Doug grinned sheepishly. With his heavy Southern accent, he said, “Well, she ain’t exactly a heiress, but she got a little money. Her father’s a big man in the State Department.”

  “State Department!” Gertie’s eyes became round as doughnuts. “Mathilda, did you hear what the man said?”

  “I heard him! I heard him!”

  Mouth open, Gertie looked around the room, then at Doug again. “Now, Doug, you listen to me, I’m one of the sisters and I got your interests at heart. You go on home to the States ’fore you get yourself in some real trouble. You hear me? Back to the States and get yourself a nice, simple little down-home girl from—where’d you say that place was you come from?”

  “Tougaloo.”

  “Tougaloo!” Gertie doubled up with laughter. “Tougaloo where?”

  “Tougaloo, Mississippi. . . .”

  “You hear him, you hear him?” Gertie shouted. “Hey, Babe, back there, you hear this man Doug here?”

  Babe stuck his head around the door. “I heard him.” He stared at Doug as though seeing a ghost. Doug grinned his sheepish grin, shifted his feet and, looking at the floor, said slowly in his Mississippi drawl, “Ain’ nothing wrong with it over here.”

  Babe stared at Doug in horror. “Listen here, son,” he said, “I’m gonna give you some advice. You better get your black behind back to Tougaloo where Senator Bilbo can keep an eye on you!”

  Doug frowned. “Bilbo’s dead.”

  “What’s that!” Babe shouted.

  “I said Bilbo’s dead.”

  Babe’s eyes rolled as though he were going to pass away. “Boy, did I hear you say Bilbo, just out plain like that, instead of saying, ‘Mister Bilbo, sir,’ like your mammy taught you!” Babe stood in the doorway, his hands on his hips, then shook his head in despair and indignation and returned to the kitchen.

  He returned carrying a platter of barbecued chicken and a bowl of greens.

  “Okay, leap into it!” Babe said.

  Benson looked amazed. “Babe, where in hell did you find greens in Paris?”

  Babe chuckled. “A good race man finds green anywhere. Stink good, don’t they? See the French grocers throw ’em away, so I made a deal with my own personal grocer.” He cast a sly glance at Benson. “Made a deal with my butcher, too. He saves spare ribs for me. Dirt cheap.”

  Doug had stopped scowling and served the wine. “Ladies first. An old gallant custom among us Southern gentlemen.”

  Mathilda said, “This Southern gentleman’s gentlewoman grandmammy washed Scarlet O’Hara’s britches!”

  They settled down to eat.

  Babe leaned back, wiping his hands and mouth with a napkin, and said, “Them French is something. Met one of the boys the other day, just drove up to Paris from Rome bringing another man and two women with him. The cats didn’t know the chicks so well, so when they stopped over-night in a French hotel they took two rooms, one for the girls and the other for them. The manager of the hotel bows and smiles, but he don’t understand English very well, and when he carries the bags upstairs he puts one of the girls with my buddy and the other with the other guy. My friend says, ‘Look, man, you made a little mistake there . . .’ Before he can finish the manager apologizes, turns red and all, and rushes and changes the bags, switching things so my friend is with the other girl and vice versa. ‘No, no,’ says my boy, ‘I’m stayin in the room with the man and the two girls are sleepin’ together.’ The manager draws himself up to his full height and says, ‘Sir! We’ll have none of that in my hotel!’”

  Everybody laughed, except Doug. Babe winked at the others and then said, “Whatsamatter, Tougaloo, you miss the point?”

  “No,” Doug said, staring into the distance as if to formulate his thought. “However, I had always been led to believe that the French were rather broad-minded about homosexuality.”

  Laughter exploded again. Simeon glanced at Maria, to see if she were following the conversation. Her lips were parted in a smile, then she looked in Simeon’s direction. It was crazy, the effect she had on him! She was reserved and secretive despite her age. Several times in bed he had whispered fiercely, “I love you!” trying in vain to force the same words from her lips. Once he had angrily complained about her reticence to commit herself in words and she had shrugged with nervous impatience. “Why ruin things by defining them?” she had said.

  2

  After salad and dessert there was coffee and cognac. Babe sucked on a cigar and said, “You know, that story got me to thinkin about the difference between the French and the Anglo-Saxons, ’specially the Americans, when it comes to sex. It’s a bitch. My mind wandered over all kinds of historical reasons why the Anglo-Saxons are messed up. Cold, rainy weather, for one thing. Then, they was barbarians until rather late, until the Romans made up their minds to colonize them and civilize them. Then the early industrialization and all this crap about the raw materials, about colonizing. See, I know the historical reasons for lots of their troubles, including why they’re racists. But I thought about that story, and I figured it out: one of the reasons for their state comes from their weird notions about sex.”

  The English girls looked at Babe with narrowed eyes, prepared to advance a defense. Maria smiled at Simeon; they had heard Babe philosophizing before. Benson pinched his nose, his face expectant—he loved any talk against white people.

  “It’s that Puritanism,” Babe said. “What kinda damn people can you produce when you bring ’em up to believe that the most natural function in the world is dirty and sinful? Think about it! If you teach this to kids, if that’s the feeling in the air around them, you can’t expect them to get rid of it just because a preacher mumbles a few words and they reply ‘I do’ one fine day. If it’s dirty and sinful before marriage, then it’s dirty and sinful after marriage. You’re supposed to marry the Virgin and sleep with the Bitch. It’s a mess, man, a mess.

  “Now, you take their attitude toward Negroes. I know the race problem don’t come from sex, but sex has become a part of it. Because the white Americans, most of them, know deep down that their relations with their wives ain’t all they should be, and they know the wives are dissatisfied, and they feel deep down that maybe the women long for something else. Now, the white man don’t have to worry about most other white men, because they got the same upbringing and problems as him. But them black niggers! Walkin around with them loose-jointed hips, and dancin all them sexy dances! Liking good food and liquor and laughter—all them nasty sensual things! Them niggers is dangerous!”

  Babe mused, puffing on the cigar. He was enjoying himself, and Benson watched and listened approvingly. Maria was lost in her private world; the English girls were amused.

  “The white man don’t
think this consciously,” Babe went on. “That would hurt his pride as a member of the master race. What he thinks in his head and what he says out loud is, ‘I’m gonna protect my pure lily-white delicate virgin wife and all lily-white virgin American wives from them slobbering, filthy, smelly, rapacious, satanic beasts!’ But what he really fears deep, deep down inside is, ‘Maybe my lily-white delicate virgin wife and other lily-white delicate virgin women would like to take down their hair for once and throw their legs in the air and holler and scream in ecstasy with them!’ Then he panics, man. All kinds of aggressiveness and rage inside. Attack any Negro he sees with a white woman on the street. That white woman is his wife!”

  “Tell ’em ’bout it, Babe!” Benson said. He held his hand across the table. “Gimme some skin, man. You right!”

  Simeon laughed. “And the French, Babe? What about them?”

  “Hell, the Frenchmen ain’t scared of no black men because they ain’t Puritans and they like screwin’ themselves. They don’t believe in no myth about us being the great lovers, because they believe in their own myth about Frenchmen being great lovers. A Frenchman feels he’s as good as anybody and better than most in bed. He thinks that, black or white, it’s all the same between the sheets. I knew a German chick when I was in the Army after the war, and she told me a white American officer had said to her: ‘If you ever sleep with a black man, you’ll never be satisfied again with a white man.’ Hell, no Frenchman would ever be fool enough to say or think a thing like that. He’d be insulted if anybody said it to him; he’d never believe it. And he’s right!”

  Benson savored the cognac, his pale eyes narrowed and hazy from drinking. Simeon thought again what a tragedy it was that he had stopped writing; the man was very quiet, but it was evident that he had a lot to say.

  “Nigger,” Benson said softly, almost to himself, rolling the word like an olive on his tongue. “Along the lines of what you just said, Babe, I been thinking about Anglo-Saxon foreign policy and I got it figured out. It’s based on the nigger view of history.”