With an automobile on a warm summer day you could drive out of the city and visit the Champagne and Burgundy regions and go down into the winecellars where they gave you free samples of the best wines. You didn’t have to worry about whether the hotels would accept black people. You just drove through the beautiful countryside, stopping off in villages whenever you felt like it to eat or have a drink, and taking a hotel or boardinghouse room wherever you happened to be in the evening.
But he could not help thinking about race in Paris or anywhere. How can you help thinking about the thing that dominates your life? So Simeon thought about race, thought of all those French mothers (and mothers-in-law) who walked through the streets of Paris proudly wheeling their brown babies. Or the night when he had been at a night club and a French Negro woman who had been drinking too much stood up tall and beautiful and danced sensuously alone by candlelight, drawing admiring stares and applause, and the jealous blond French actress who commented within earshot of Simeon: “Hmmmph! She thinks she’s better than anybody else just because her skin is black!”
Things were different from the States all right. The night that he had walked with the Brazilians to the Arch of Triumph, they had held their arms outstretched over the eternal flame and he and the others had joined Carlos in this vow: “We’ll never leave this beautiful city. If anybody tries to make us leave, we’ll chain ourselves to the lampposts!”
•
Ahmed had explained: “It goes like this. The police make a raid and pick up every Algerian in sight. They take you to the station, and if you don’t have a record they mark your name on a card and let you go. A short time afterwards, they make another raid and pick up everybody in sight, you included. They check the records and see your name on the card and say, ‘Aha! A troublemaker. You’ve already been arrested once, you’re a second offender.’ So they send you to jail for a week or so, and then they let you go free with a warning. So you’re sitting in a café, drinking a coffee or something, and the police burst in; it’s a raid, everybody in the wagon. ‘The third time!’ the sergeant exclaims, and this time you go to jail for a longer stretch. Maybe you’re beaten first, to make you give information about the FLN. Sometimes the beating is done with clubs, sometimes with rubber hoses. Can you imagine how this feels?”
“Yes, I can imagine.”
“Maybe finally you’re released again. They make another raid and you’re picked up and you disappear. Nobody ever hears from you again. God knows what’s happened to you. And you’ve never done a thing, not a thing!”
4
As Henri left the café, Ahmed’s eyes followed the student out of the door.
“He’s a nice person,” Ahmed said to Simeon and Lou. “He’s got a conscience, and is tormented by what’s happening to the Algerians. That’s more than you can say for most Frenchmen.”
“Don’t you think most of the French are tormented?” Lou asked.
“Not tormented. They’ve got bad conscience, but they react by just not thinking about it. Television, football, wage increases—that’s all they want to think about.”
“I’ve seen some demonstrations against the war. That took courage, because the police swung their clubs mighty hard against the demonstrators, cracking heads right and left.”
“How many demonstrators? One thousand? Five thousand? Ten thousand? Twenty thousand? There are forty-five million Frenchmen! That’s no way to stop a war. . . . But Henri’s all right. He’ll act on what he believes. People like him can keep Algerians from hating all Frenchmen.”
Simeon and Lou began a game of chess while waiting for Maria. Lou was Simeon’s favorite among the white Americans in Paris. He was reserved, but had a quiet intelligence and good sense of humor. His unobtrusive patriotism was rooted in what Simeon thought best in America’s history and legend: the old pioneer spirit, the individualism, the belief in every man’s equality with every other man, the vision of the United States as a melting pot of peoples and races. He realized that the reality did not come up to this vision, but held to the image as a goal.
Lou said, “When I was a kid, I lived in a mixed neighborhood, I grew up with Negro kids as well as white kids. Everything was fine until we started going to school. Then Negroes went to one school, and the white kids to another. That was a shock to me, my first real awakening to the color problem.”
Simeon said, “Yeah. There must have been a lot of others afterward, though.”
“And how! I keep thinking about one incident. When I was drafted, a Negro fellow I knew and I got on the train together to go to Fort Mead. We talked all the way to Maryland, sharing our sandwiches and discussing jazz, and when we got to Mead we got into line together to pick up our bedding for the night. We were having a great conversation, when all of a sudden a sergeant came out and shouted: ‘All colored men step out of the line.’ This friend of mine and I stared at each other in stupefaction. We had been talking and laughing and then suddenly somebody had smashed the drawbridge between us. He looked at me with a faint smile—I had a funny feeling it was as though he were accusing me—and then stepped out of the line. They led all the colored fellows away to another part of the camp and kept them in segregated barracks. From time to time I ran across my friend, but he was cool. We would exchange a few embarrassed words, but things could never be the same again. The bridge was broken.”
Simeon nodded. He had heard a dozen stories like this. Lou said, “It’s a relief talking to you like this. This color and race problem obsesses me; it always did. I always wanted to get closer to Negroes, but it was hard, the Negroes themselves were suspicious of me. When I would go to Negro neighborhoods in the States, I had the feeling that the Negroes were rejecting me. Know what I mean? It’s complicated. One day I was coming out of the subway in Harlem and a Negro walked up to me and without a word hauled off and punched me in the face. I fell, blood spurting all over, and the Negro calmly got on the subway and the train pulled off.”
Simeon said sympathetically, “It’s not that easy, Lou. The trouble is, nobody could read your mind. When people get classified into castes, they classify the dominant group, too. I had a friend who had a prejudiced white Southerner commanding officer while he was in the army. It was an all-Negro unit, and the officer took out all his racism on the soldiers, really giving them a hard time. This friend, Charlie, knew he had to take it while he was in the Army, but he told himself: ‘Dammit, when I get out of this friggin’ Army the first person who speaks to me with a Southern accent is gonna get knocked on his rear.’
“So he got discharged and sent home. When he was getting off the train in Pennsylvania Station a man walked up to him and smiled and said with a Southern accent, ‘Pardon me, could you-all tell me where I can find——’ He never finished that sentence. Charlie sighed, put down his bags and knocked that poor man flat on his back. It’s sad, the poor Southerner was probably a nice guy. He might not even have been a racist. But any member of the privileged group in a racist society is considered guilty. Every white South African is guilty. Every Frenchmen is guilty in the eyes of the Algerians. Every white American is guilty. The guilt can end only when racism ends.”
Lou stared wonderingly at Simeon. “Yeah. It’s what I feel. Always guilty, even though I’m not racist. Crazy.”
Hossein and Ben Youssef had come into the café and had listened silently to the conversation of the two Americans. Hossein seemed surprised to see Simeon talking to a white man from the United States.
A few minutes later, Maria hurried into the café, her eyes shining with excitement.
“I’m late,” she said apologetically to Simeon. “I was shopping with Anushka, my Paris mother. . . . Darling, she took me shopping. I’ve got new shoes, Simeon. Three pairs. And two beautiful dresses, and a necklace and bracelet. She is crazy with money, Anushka!”
Breathless, Maria sat down and ordered a hot tea. Ben Youssef and Hossein were meeting her now for the
first time, and they watched with curiosity as she opened her packages to show her treasures to Simeon.
Betty whistled when Maria unwrapped the bracelet, which appeared to be made of jade. Maria held it up and stared at it for a long moment, as though she could not believe it really belonged to her. “Is beautiful,” she whispered. “Beautiful.” I never had something so beautiful. But I am bit afraid. I am afraid I lose it. Paris mother is crazy, was so expensive, I did not want her to buy it. But it could not cost so much. I am sure we were cheated.”
Ben Youssef smiled. His face, too, was boyish, like Ahmed’s, and he seemed all innocence as he casually and unwittingly dropped his bomb: “Sure,” he said, “probably some dirty Jew sold it to you.”
The words exploded full in their faces. Maria jerked her head up as though she had been slapped. Lou’s mouth dropped slightly open, Betty’s eyes widened in surprise and pain. Hossein seemed to notice nothing, but Ahmed nervously looked from Simeon to Maria. Simeon was stunned. Those words, from one of the Algerians? Abruptly a whole mental and psychological structure he had built up since the day he had first talked with Hossein seemed to collapse.
Maria’s face was white with anger; all frivolity had gone.
“I am dirty Jew,” she said.
Ben Youssef became pale and tried to smile, but couldn’t. “Just a word,” he said. “It slipped out. I’m sorry.”
Maria said, “No reason to be sorry. You said what you thought.”
“It’s a word; just like that it came to my tongue, I wasn’t thinking. I didn’t mean it.”
Lou coughed nervously. Hossein looked around the table, particularly at Maria, he seemed still unperturbed. Simeon thought was everybody a racist toward somebody else, then? He had never given much thought to prejudice against Jews, he had been too much personally involved in the question of color.
“It’s the war,” Ahmed said hesitantly. “The war between Israel and the Arabs. It provoked reactions. You must forgive Ben Youssef.”
“Is not just the war,” Maria replied with quiet intensity, staring straight ahead as though concentrating on something. “This existed before the war, and you cannot even call it anti-Semitism, because Arabs are Semites, too. It is crazy.” Her face seemed both tired and defiant as she swept them with the eyes behind the dark glasses. It was a visible effort for her to speak about a subject she did not like to discuss. “For thousands of years this has gone on. Why? In Poland there were pogroms. The Germans burned us in ovens. People hate us in North Africa, in Middle East, in Europe, in America, everywhere? Why? What do we do to anyone, tell me that. Poland now is Communist and is supposed to stand for equality for all, and still it is horrible to be a Jew there. You cannot get certain jobs, there is hatred and persecution. You are spat on in streets. Why?”
She looked at Hossein, held her eyes steady on his. “You say nothing, but I see it in your eyes. You hate Jews.”
Hossein said with sudden passion, “Worse than I hate the French! Worse than I hate the colonialists!”
Simeon winced. In that moment he detested Hossein. Ahmed was distressed.
Maria was cold and calm. “Why?”
“Because they are Semites. Because they are like us and should be with us, on our side, but consider themselves different, consider themselves better, and place themselves on the side of the colonialists against us. I hate them because of Israel, because they took Arab territory and drove the Arabs out. I can tell you about North Africa and the Jews! Who was the spy in our midst for the French? The Jews! Who made profits on our backs? The Jews! When we felt that weight on our backs, when we looked up to see who was on our backs, who did we see just above, on our backs, smiling and weighing hard? The Jews! Don’t talk to me about the Jews. I can tell you about the Jews!”
Maria bit her lip. Simeon said, “You’re raving, Hossein. The Jews are persecuted as much as we are.”
“Then they should be on our side! What are they doing on our backs? Hated by the colonialists, but still despising us! Playing both ends against the middle!”
Lou intervened, speaking gently because he was the only “pure” white person there. “Every oppressed group is oppressed in a different way and has a different history,” he said. “The history of the American Negro is not the same as the history of the colonized African or Asian. The end products are different, too. The history of the Jews in the Middle Ages led them to become tradesmen and moneylenders to survive. They were banned from practically all other professions, but Christians were forbidden to become moneylenders so at least the Jews could do that. Middlemen. It’s true, they drifted through hostile societies, hated, rejected and persecuted, becoming middlemen for their own self-preservation. And naturally they adopted defensive attitudes. They were always threatened and they wanted to hold on, hold on to whatever security they had, and maybe that’s part of the reason they sided with the French in North Africa.”
Hossein said: “You can give any excuse you like. For me, they’re on the side of the enemy, and that’s all I need to know. I shoot!”
“I said part of the reason,” Lou went on. “But the other part of the reason is that the Moslems themselves rejected them. The Moslems themselves refused to consider the Jews as one with them. The Jews in North Africa were torn between two things; I understand how you come to think the way you do, but you should try yourself to understand.”
Hossein stood up. He was very calm, looked first at Lou, then at Simeon, then at Maria. He said to Maria, “I apologize. I apologize first because you’re with Simeon, and he’s a friend. Second, because you seem like a nice person and I’m sorry I offended you.” To Simeon he said: “Excuse me. I know what you’re thinking, but don’t judge me wrong. I get carried away when I talk about things I really believe.” He turned to Lou and said, “I understand nothing. You hear?—nothing. There are historical reasons for everything, even for the French occupation of Algeria, even for slavery, but I don’t understand historical reasons. I just judge by end products. I accept the end products, I embrace the end products, or else I shoot the end products before they shoot me. I am a very simple man. I’m going home to bed, now. I’m not good at discussing. I get angry, and there’s no point in that.”
Ahmed said, “You should stay, Hossein.”
“Yes, I know, intellectual, you like to hear words.”
“You can’t always run away from words. There’ll come a day when the shooting will stop, and we’ll have to use words instead.”
“Not me. It’s too late. There’ll always be someplace where people are talking with more than words, and I’ll be there. On the right side.”
Ben Youssef stood up, too. It was clear that he had been lost in the conversation, and frightened by the heat his casual words had generated. He wanted to be in the secure company of Hossein.
“I’m . . . I’m very sorry,” Ben Youssef said to Maria before leaving.
Maria did not look at him, nor did she reply.
VI
1
MUCH LATER that night Simeon and Maria walked towards Simeon’s apartment. The street was dark and cold. Police paced back and forth in front of the Luxembourg Palace. Although they were near Simeon’s apartment, Maria said, “I don’t feel like going in yet. Let’s walk. Maybe go the Caméléon.” Simeon nodded, thinking of the incident with Hossein.
They did not talk, but Simeon felt very close to Maria and knew that she felt close to him. They passed in front of the Mephisto, waving to friends, then up the rue de Seine to the river before circling and turning back.
“I don’t like to discuss such things,” Maria said finally. “It twists me inside and makes me ill.”
Simeon was silent. He had wanted to say more back in the café, when Hossein and the others were talking, but he had been angry and had not known what to say. How do you argue against a blind prejudice? He remembered that many Negroes disliked Jews. There was
a reason for it: the Jews, discriminated against in the white society, were often left with the crumbs—the real estate and stores in the Negro neighborhoods. They were therefore the most visible exploiters of the American Negroes, and detested by many Negroes because of this. The same must be true in North Africa. But how could you explain this to Hossein? Besides, the prejudice of the oppressed was much different, morally, from the prejudice of the oppressor.
“It’s the first time I heard you talk this way,” he said.
She shrugged. “Yes, and maybe the last. I swore to myself I would drop this kind of subject. In the end, everybody still thinks what he thought at first.”
“Still, you have to say it.”
“Why? Why bother? The world is terrible, Simeon.”
“Terrible and wonderful, sweetheart.”
“No. Terrible. I am nervous about something in you. There is a reason why you hunt out your Algerian friends. It is because they are in a troubled situation. I have a feeling that you cannot simply accept happiness. You have a good life, a nice apartment, enough money, but you cannot accept it. Something bothers you inside, so you go and look for complications. I am afraid for you. For me, too.”
He understood what she meant. What she did not understand was that he longed for peace, quiet and the gentle life as much as she did. At least, he felt he did. Maybe you couldn’t be sure, he thought, as he pushed open the heavy door of the Caméléon.
It was a small nightspot near the Odéon, with a jazz band and dancing in the cellar and a café where they played modern jazz records upstairs. John Coltrane’s saxophone greeted them. The smoky room was crowded with Africans, American Negroes and young French jazz fans. They waved to Slim, a Nigerian drummer sitting at the bar, and inched their way to a tiny table in the rear.
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