Romance in Marseille

by Claude McKay

  The letter was from the directress of the Nubian Orphanage,4 asking a contribution. Black Angel explained to Lafala that it was common knowledge in the Black Belt that black babies were not made welcome in that orphanage. They looked comically at each other and burst out laughing.

  “You oughta make a little one just like you self and take it ovah to that theah cullud lady as a contribulation,” said Black Angel.

  And now it developed that there were many formalities to go through before the lawyer could touch the money.

  Lafala had to be represented by some official. He did not belong to any of the two free states that remain of the vast African land; he belonged to one of the parceled regions and was therefore either a colonial subject or a protected person.5 Some important white person in the big city was entitled to represent Lafala formally. Meanwhile the company had informed the official of the impending payment to Lafala and asked that it should be officially witnessed. A duplicate of the documents concerning the case was sent to the official’s office.

  The day arrived when Lafala was taken to the city to receive his payment officially from the lawyer. The official was a tall, impressive person. He received the lawyer coldly in the manner of a lord condescending to a vassal.

  The lawyer had his papers and Lafala’s payment ready. Lafala’s share was about twenty-five thousand dollars. The lawyer laid a check on the table. The official picked it up but stopped the signing of the papers. In drawing up the papers the company’s lawyers had put down a round sum amounting to about a quarter of the payment for the lawyer’s fee, the rest of the money going to Lafala. The lawyer had accepted it. It was a catch for him and he did not relish the idea of prolonged negotiation over that particular point. There was the contract with Lafala for the final settlement between them. But now the official raised an objection to that.

  The official said “This man is entitled to more money.”

  “He’s not,” said the lawyer. “I made a fair agreement with him before I took the case. Fifty-fifty. Didn’t I, Lafala?”

  Lafala did not reply. The phrase “entitled to more money” was singing in his ears.

  “That was not a fair agreement,” said the official. “You had him at an advantage. What else could he do but agree when he was lying on his back crippled?”

  “Rather belated pity you’re working up for the poor fellow now,” the lawyer sneered. “I think he would have been glad to have just a little of that pity before I went to the hospital to see him. I’ve done for him more than any other lawyer would. I told him he could think it over before he signed the fifty-fifty agreement. I told him there was a Legal Aid Society, only I didn’t think it would help him much. I did my utmost for him. Got more money for him from that company than anybody else would.”

  “That may be so,” said the official, “but the company has stipulated a certain sum for the lawyer’s fee and you cannot have a half. I am here to protect this man’s rights, that’s all. That’s my duty.”

  “Protect him? Protect him! Good God! Why didn’t you and your protecting kind protect him before he stowed away to get frozen on the boat? Why didn’t you find out about him before his legs were sawed off? Why didn’t you prevent the company people from kidnapping him away from the hospital? Fine protection you all give to these sort of people!”

  “I’m not here to listen to a lecture from you, Mr. Jew. You did wring that money out of the company alright—to get your big share. All I want is that you hand over now the balance of the money that has been allotted to this man.”

  “I will not! I am entitled to a half. Lafala, we have an agreement between us. If you will stick to it and stand by me, it’s okay.”

  “But I don’t think I can interfere now, since I’m in official hands,” said Lafala.

  “Yes, you can. All you have to say is that you’re willing to let our original agreement stand. You know I treated you straight from the very beginning. If you say you’re satisfied with our original agreement and sign this paper to that effect, everything will be settled without difficulty. I didn’t argue with the company about the lawyer’s fees clause because I was convinced you would stand by the fifty-fifty agreement.”

  But Lafala’s mind was fully occupied with the official statement “entitled to more money”. . . . More money. That was the slogan of life. Everybody and all the world wanted more money. Those who had none wanted some. And those who had some wanted more. And the more many had the more they wanted. Why should a little contract stand in the way when there was something more to gain which was legally awarded to him? Why should the lawyer appeal to him? The company had granted him more. The official said he was entitled to it. Let the big white men battle it out over him. All he wanted was to come out from under it with what was left of his skin and all he could possibly get.

  “Well, Lafala, it’s up to you now,” said the lawyer.

  “It’s like this with me,” said Lafala. “You are a good lawyer; this gentleman is a big official. I am nothing. I put the case in your hands and you handled it fine. But now you bring me here and put me in the hands of this gentleman as my official representative. I’ll have to follow the advice of this gentleman now. If I’m entitled to more money, I want it.”

  “But I did not bring you here—,” began the lawyer.

  “Can’t you see it’s useless arguing anymore,” the official interrupted. “The man has made his decision. I am responsible for him now and all I want is that you pay over all his share of the amount the company allotted to him.”

  The official’s voice was cold, smooth and timbreful like tempered old steel. His hands betrayed none of the ungenteel gestures of the lawyer and his eyes were full of the contempt of the aristocrat of a Great Tradition looking down upon the parvenu bounder.

  “I refuse to be done out of my share by you,” cried the lawyer excitedly.

  “Then it simply means that we will have to go to the courts to get it,” said the official.

  “You! You? You’re in with the company against us—against this poor crippled black man,” the lawyer leveled his finger at the official. “You can take the case to court. I’ll fight it on my original contract. You don’t mean this man any good. You couldn’t. You’re a company man yourself, only the company you work for is bigger than the one that maimed him. But you all belong to the same Big Brotherhood.”

  The official pointed to the door: “Now get out or I’ll have you thrown out, you dirty ambulance-chaser.”

  “Thank you!” The lawyer bowed sardonically and stalked out.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  It was four days since Lafala’s difference with his lawyer; to be exact, Saturday after the midday meal. The dishes had been gathered from the patients and wheeled away. The cots were straightened out for the visiting hour. Round an unoccupied cot toward the southern end of the ward a group came together to play cards.

  Lafala sat on his cot, curiously caressing his corks preliminary to fixing them on for a walk, when Black Angel appeared to him. Black Angel came with a grievance. When he put the lawyer on to Lafala’s case, he was made to understand he would receive five-hundred dollars if the suit were successful. But the lawyer had given him two-hundred and fifty dollars only. Black Angel told the lawyer that this was a breach of their gentleman’s agreement. The lawyer referred him to Lafala. He would have paid Black Angel the five-hundred dollars if Lafala had not repudiated his contract before his official representative. As it was, he was in trouble. He was worried by the official’s threat of a lawsuit and that he would get him suspended. He was going to fight, but he might lose. Black Angel should ask Lafala to pay him the balance.

  “I think Ise worf it,” Black Angel said, “for all I did. And you all should give it to me.”

  “I haven’t any money, Angel,” said Lafala. “The official man is taking care of it.”

  “Sure but he’ll pay me ef you tellum to
.”

  “God! This money business is a bigger pain in the bone than it was sawing off my legs,” said Lafala.

  “I understand how you feel, fellah,” said Black Angel. “Ise a race man and Ise with you alright against the lawyer. But I think I done earned what was promised to me. You oughta put the other half to this heah.”

  Black Angel laid the lawyer’s check for two-hundred and fifty dollars upon the cot.

  “Look here, Angel,” said Lafala. “You opened up the way to heaven for me alright and I’m aiming to get there, but I got to look out for every step I take. I can’t do this thing. I can’t start paying out money like that. You got to be contented with what you have.”

  “But you wouldn’t mean to say I ain’t worf five-hundred dollars fohal I did?”

  “Sure, but oh God! Don’t ask me to pay, Angel. I’m an amputated man, my feet laid on the shelf and I need all I can get to carry me along.”

  Black Angel got up, pocketing the lawyer’s check. “Alright fellah, Ise going then, but you all ain’t done treat me right.”

  SECOND PART

  CHAPTER SIX

  The water went green and the water came yellow and indigo, gray, mottled and foaming white. And up and down, over and over, Lafala came and went with the waves. He closed his eyes to shut the ocean outside, but it washed him clean and green inside. The waves roared up and the waves roared down and inside of Lafala. God-oh! Maybe I’m top-heavy, he thought, with my feet gone. No man’s ocean ever did get the best of me in my sound feet, footloose days. Let me walk a little to see if I’ll feel better. So he raised his trunk from the bunk and adjusted his apparatus. But that merely helped him out on deck to hang on to the railing and whoop pathetically into the undulating sea. The waves roared up and the waves roared down and Lafala, harassed, agitated, turned upside-down again and again, found final refuge in the WC.

  Never, for many years seafaring, had Lafala fallen into such a state. He remembered being a little upset the first time he went to sea, but he was soon all right. Since then how many voyages had he made from port to port, crossing and recrossing the Atlantic without ever getting sick? Because in spite of stopover intervals of loose frolicking, his frugal way of living had inured him against the common indispositions of delicate passenger folk.

  But now Lafala was a passenger himself, at the company’s expense, first class. And he was living up to it. He had decided to make good use of all that the company was paying for. And so thoroughly had he carried out his decision, his long-disciplined body had reacted against the sudden abuse, and his bowels roared resentment against too much first-class food.

  Thus, out of tune with the sea and the boat, Lafala, now completely out of his lawyer’s cunning hands, was returning to the dream port of his fortune and misfortune. His official had arranged his sailing back with the same company that owned the boat on which he had stowed away. And like all vain humanity who love to revisit the scenes of their sufferings and defeats after they have conquered their world, Lafala (even though his was a Pyrrhic victory) had been hankering all along for the caves and dens of Marseille with the desire to show himself there again as a personage and especially to Aslima.1

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wide open in the shape of an enormous fan splashed with violent colors, Marseille lay bare to the glory of the meridian sun,1 like a fever consuming the senses, alluring and repelling, full of the unending pageantry of ships and of men.

  Magnificent Mediterranean harbor. Port of seamen’s dreams and their nightmares. Port of the bums’ delight, the enchanted breakwater. Port of innumerable ships, blowing out, booming in, riding the docks, blessing the town with sweaty activity and giving sustenance to worker and boss, peddler and prostitute, pimp and panhandler. Port of the fascinating, forbidding and tumultuous Quayside against which the thick scum of life foams and bubbles and breaks in a syrup of passion and desire.

  Down at Quayside there was a colored colony whose complexion was highly emphasized by two of its notorieties who strove in rivalry there. They were the two wenches known as Aslima2 and La Fleur Noire.3

  Aslima was nicknamed “the Tigress” and her dominion had been long undisputed at Quayside until the appearance of La Fleur. The resultant clash between the two was inevitable for if Aslima was a strong and restless tigress, La Fleur was something of a wily serpent. Aslima was stout and full of an abundance of earthly sap and compact of inexhaustible energy in spite of the grinding waste of it. La Fleur was small and straight and might have served for an excellent model of a new-fangled doll done in dark-brown wax.

  Many legends had sprung up around La Fleur. One of the most unusual was the incident about her and a personage who had gone sightseeing down Quayside way and seen La Fleur promenading on Number One Quay. La Fleur had excited the personage’s interest and his guide told him that he could easily arrange a rendezvous.

  The guide enlisted the aid of the mistress of a sumptuous rendezvous house in the high-up part of the town and a champagne dinner was organized to which La Fleur was invited as a guest of honor.

  La Fleur was offered a nice sum of money to play her part. And she prinked herself up4 in style for the party. Heightening the tone of her face and her neck and her arms with rouge, she appeared like a big-mouthed brown orchid. An automobile was sent to convey her from Quayside.

  It was a princely banquet with the lady of the house presiding and many pretty girls and La Fleur the only colored one. The personage had a couple of friends with him and the guide was there spruced up like a man about town with another of his fraternity. It was fine eating and drinking.

  But the rubicund gentleman did not please La Fleur. He was afflicted with an enormous paunch, which dominated the banquet. When he stood up it ballooned ungracefully against the neighbors in its vicinity. And when he sat down it surmounted the table, a huge bag that any accidental prick it seemed might cause to burst disagreeably. Some of the girls pressed their little elbows mischievously into it and fondled the rubicund’s face.5

  But La Fleur was not so merry contemplating contact. And when after the feasting was finished and a tango unwound slowly out of the pianola6 and the personage took her dancing, pushing her round and round the room with that panting paunch, she felt that that was as far as she could go with it.

  La Fleur could always intoxicate herself up to the point of easy pleasantness in the love trade for any person. But now she felt it was impossible to find any tolerable kind of person in that huge contented bag.

  And so a little after she had finished dancing La Fleur excused herself from the attentions of the rubicund and fled to Quayside. Later she telephoned that too good feasting and guzzling had made her ill and unfit to carry through the entertainment.

  The rubicund was inconsolable and so Aslima was sent for to substitute for La Fleur. Aslima went and the flagging entertainment went banging over. But the following day La Fleur enticed Aslima into a card game and from her all the money that she had earned.

  All the little rats in the holes of Quayside held their tales high, pirouetting in merriment over the practical joke. But from that day Aslima consorted no more with La Fleur and the two wenches became vicious enemies. But La Fleur remained the queen of Quayside.

  When Lafala arrived at Marseille, Aslima was absent on a short trip of adventure to a popular summer resort of the region. The first place of recreation that attracted Lafala was the Café Tout-va-Bien.7 It was the rendezvous of the colored colony and owned by a mulatto.

  The freedom of Quayside was practically granted to Lafala on his return. As a onetime habitué it was a big event for him to come back to the old haunt with the status of a personage. There was all sorts of wild talk about him. Some said that he was officially protected and had been granted a large tract of land somewhere in the deep bush of Africa. Others said that he was going to acquire real estate in Marseille.

  The faces of his old comrades of
the boats had nearly all disappeared, except for an American black who made his nest between the blocks way down the extreme end of the breakwater and was thus called Rock and a Senegalese named Diup.8 But the girls of Cat Row were still there with new faces among them. They all trooped down to the Tout-va-Bien and chattered about Lafala’s unfortunate stowing away and the fortune he had derived from it.

  Lafala did not as in his carefree days indulge in any reckless spending yet he was highly esteemed nevertheless, representing as he did to the Quaysiders almost one of themselves who had legitimately succeeded in getting his hands deep into the pockets of the high-and-mighty.

  La Fleur attached herself to Lafala and was making just a regular little affair of it until the evening of Aslima’s return to the Quayside. That evening Lafala in a honey-sweet and La Fleur in a money-sweet mood were engaged in a corner of the Tout-va-Bien over a bottle of the soft Italian wine, spumante,9 when Aslima appeared. She was wearing a red frock. Lafala looked up at her and was surprised to find himself feeling that she looked better than ever. But he surveyed her coldly, proudly with a sarcastic set of the mouth and his manner said “Look at me! Here I am come back a bigger man than you ever dreamed of when you robbed me and went away.”

  Aslima had already been informed of Lafala’s triumphant comeback and she had fully made up her mind to challenge La Fleur and stage a comeback of her own. She sized up the situation immediately and rushed it putting herself between La Fleur and Lafala. She patted his cheeks, hugged him, felt his feet, had him pull up his trousers to show the corks—all in a flutter of sympathetic enthusiasm. She was really sorry for his accident, yet really glad about the fine result, glad and sad for him in the same feeling. For the moment Lafala’s rancor was fairly swept away by Aslima’s warmth. It seemed so natural. He invited her to sit down and drink and she appropriated the seat on the other side of him and clapped her hands for the waiter. The proprietor came and Lafala ordered another bottle of the same wine.