Romance in Marseille

by Claude McKay

  The families of the houses around the terrace were taking the evening air before supper. Children played in the sand. Loving couples sat spaced apart with their backs to the sea.

  Aslima sat on a bench and gazed out over the big bay. From up there Quayside was so charming a dream with the soft-gray buildings forming a fence along the water and the little fishing boats huddled together coloring the slightly moving waves. Farther off the big ships loomed upon the horizon in shadow and gloom.

  The night came quickly down throwing a heavy cloak over the city and the sea. And Aslima was lost in it. The lights glimmered along Quayside and in rows and clusters in the town but the margin of the bay was in heavy obscurity.

  The darkness became thicker and damp with dews and Aslima remained alone with it, inert as if her spirit had fled her body. And after a long strange interval a red light appeared in the horizon revealing to her a different scene. She was in the heart of an antique white-washed city. And there was loud mounting music of voices as if a thousand golden-throated muezzins were calling in one mighty chorus.

  And there was a rushing movement of hurrying feet as if all the houses had brusquely emptied their inhabitants into the street. And started a great procession of loose-robed men and women and children marching as to a midnight ritual, stamping and dancing to barbaric music, the men brandishing swords and women chanting and keening and children capering and Aslima foremost among the hysterical women.

  And the procession went winding into a vast marble and malachite court of beautiful balconies filled with kindred people and all the people marched around a gushing fountain dipping their hands in limpid water. And perfume was shed down upon them from on high.

  There followed a loving feast.2 The people gathering unceremoniously together, old and young, men, women and children, kneeling and squatting upon magic-like carpets and piles of rainbow cushions under lights like variegated flowers and shrouded in clouds of rarest incense, there was a gorgeous gorging. . . .

  When the feasting was finished the belly-moving beat of the drum roused the people again after an interval of rest to dancing and chanting over and over again repeating and reiterating from pattern to pattern unraveling the threads of life from the most intricate to the simplest to the naked bottom as if in evocation of the first gods who emerged out of the ancient unfathomed womb of Africa to procreate and spread over the vast surface of the land.

  Dancing and dancing down into a deep darkness. . . . And when they came up into light again the court was transformed into a place of worship. And all bowed down together submissive in a warm circle. And timidly raising her head Aslima saw a beauty that dazzled her. Overshadowing all an immense dome studded with all the jewels of earth and reflecting all the colors of life.

  And as she gazed she was repelled, fascinated and awed by a flaming sword suspended from the center of the dome. And a golden voice was chanting its praise: “The Sword of Life! The Sword of Life!”

  All the people of the earth were assembled under that dome and worshipping that sword. Some were slaves and some were free; some were wanton and some were happy. Some were strange and some were sad; some were lighthearted and some were heavy-burdened.

  But all were worshippers, subject creatures, making sacrifices to it: budding flower of childhood, fruit of adolescence, honey of maturity, wine of experience, vinegar of disillusion, bitter broth of cynicism, lamentation of blasted hopes.

  And among the multitude was one group apart that was offering up body and soul as a sacrifice. And in the midst of that group was Aslima divided and struggling against herself. She did not want to surrender all of her, but she could not detach herself. Fighting for release, she saw Lafala among the free and cried out fearfully to him. But he could not go to her.

  Lafala! Lafala! Lafala! But a high wall arose shutting her off and all was darkness.

  “Oh, God, I’m free!” Aslima cried, springing up. The terrace was deserted and silent. “God! How long I’ve been here. What a vision! Awful and sweet! Oh, I wonder if it meant good or bad? I must go and tell Lafala about it right now.”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Titin was a son of country laborers, born and raised in a small village. It was while he was doing his service in the army that he got onto the tricks that eventually determined his career. His parents were too poor to send him even the smallest of remittances to help eke out his miserable army pay. Titin belonged to a group that had no cigarette money, no beer money, no money for loving while their comrades had.

  Titin soon learned the ways of earning a percentage from the loving houses by procuring clients. By that means he obtained a little pocket money.

  With his face prematurely caved in he was not at all a handsome type, but there was a fascination in his glassy beady eyes and spoonlike mouth. He possessed a tough little body and his manner was brusque. And so he was a good type to do business for a loving house. He picked up a store of knowledge about the secret desires of men and understood the mawkish weaknesses of the hetairai. And so when his military service was finished he just slipped from amateur to professional.

  However, he was among the lesser fry in the loving business. The loving houses he frequented when he was a soldier were all small establishments in small towns. Titin did not possess the quality and the presence for the luxurious places. And so he had never reached above Quayside. Even in Marseille he was not associated with any of the big fellows who played his line.

  But Aslima losing control of herself and getting madly angry because of Lafala convinced him that she might really be playing a double game and against such an eventuality he decided to enlist the help of the bigger fellows.

  There was a fellowship in Quayside known as the Domino Association that usually met at a café called the Domino.1 It was an international association, a kind of loose federation of men of common mind and ideals who kept in touch with one another by secret correspondence, keeping tabs on their protégées, boycotting or hounding into submission or out of existence those who were refractory.

  The president of the organization at Quayside was a Levantine sort of person,2 a thick-set, well-fed man with enormous jowls reminding one of the types of men pictured as guardians of harems, excepting that this man was not black, but had a complexion something like old yellow paint dirty with soot. He was a highly-honored personage in all the loving houses of Marseille. Formally he was known as a guide and commercial traveler. He was a great crony of the cavalier seamen who went to sea sometimes to prove that they were not sans profession, and through them he kept up a regular correspondence with those Near East ports that are as fascinating to the mind as Marseille.

  Titin did not find this man at the Domino Café (so-called because the clients always gambled at dominoes, preferring it to any other game). He left the Domino thinking of Aslima and Lafala and the thought of what they might be doing together excited him so that he was irresistibly compelled to visit Lafala’s hotel.

  The night man unsuspiciously gave him the number of Lafala’s room on the first floor back. He went up and listened outside the door to catch what was going on. Hearing nothing, he knocked. Lafala said, “Come in.”

  Titin’s entrance startled Lafala. He had thought it was Aslima.

  “What is it? What do you want?” Lafala asked.

  “Where’s Aslima?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “You’re a damn liar. You must know when she left me to come here.”

  “I can’t understand why a rat like you should come here to insult me.”

  “Don’t dare call me a rat, Pied-Coupé. I came here to look for my woman.” Titin looked behind the screen where the wash bowl was under the bed.

  “I tell you she isn’t here. What sort of game are you up to? Why should she be hiding if she were here?”

  “Because she knows I’m going to get her.”

  “Well, go and get her wh
ere she is,” Lafala’s voice rose in contemptuous anger. “You’ll never find her here now or any time. I don’t want to have anything to do with a woman whose pimp comes butting into my hotel. You get out!”

  “I will when you pay me the money you owe Aslima.”

  “The money I owe her! Did she send you here for that?” Lafala was very suspicious. He had never really reposed any confidence in Aslima.

  “Yes! The money you owe her. You’ve never paid her anything, but you’ll pay me.”

  “I offered money to Aslima many times and she wouldn’t take it. I suppose you’re both up to some hellishness. But I don’t care a damn. I have no money for you.”

  “You lie! You have plenty of money, you black Pied-Coupé.”

  “I’m a Pied-Coupé, alright, but I’m a man!” said Lafala. “You’re nothing but a white dung-eater. Money is your only passion, yet you never think of working for it. All you’re good for is riding some goose like Aslima until she plumps money out for you.”

  “Sure, I ride easy and make the pigs like you pay. How did you get your money? You didn’t work for it any more than all the other hogs who’re rich. You just got it by chance.”

  “Chance here.” Lafala tapped his head with a contemptuous smile. “Yes, I got plenty of money. All of you down Quayside know that. But it isn’t for any of you and you won’t find five francs here. You’re in hard luck with me, my friend, but the life of a pimp is not as easy as you say. It’s just like the life of a rat.”

  Titin was enraged. Lafala was actually laughing, mocking at him. “You dirty blackamoor,” he cried, and his hand sought his hip pocket, but he had forgotten his revolver. He approached the bed. Lafala felt afraid and turned to press the button of the bell, but before he could touch it Titin was upon him.

  “Give me that money or I’ll kill you,” he said. And suddenly he threw the heavy blanket over Lafala and began choking him.

  “I’ll kill you and finish with the damned business!” Titin cried, tightening his hold on the twitching stump.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Arriving at Lafala’s hotel in an exalted condition after her vision Aslima was rather distressed when the night man informed her that Lafala had a visitor.

  “Well, I can’t go up then.” But the man assured her that she could for it was a he-male and not a female.

  Aslima ascended the staircase. Approaching Lafala’s door she heard Titin’s voice: “I’ll kill you! I’ll kill you!”

  She rushed in and saw him in the act: Lafala was being murdered. With a sure and quick presence of mind she seized a chair and brought it down upon Titin’s head, knocking him flat against the bed. She snatched the blanket off Lafala and, seizing a jug of water on the night table, dashed it in his face.

  “Are you hurt, my God! Are you hurt?”

  “Almost,” said Lafala, shaking himself like a dog come up out of water.

  “Thank God, you’re alive,” she said.

  “You saved my life!” he said.

  “Sh-h-h-h! I got to look out now,” she replied.

  Titin stirred, coming back to his senses. Aslima pulled him up and pushed him through the door into the corridor.

  “Who hit me? Who hit me?” he demanded.

  “Better let’s beat it before the police gets on to this,” said Aslima.

  Outside in the street Titin started to quarrel with her for hitting him so hard.

  “Guess you’d have preferred to finish him and get ready for the guillotine,”1 said Aslima.

  “What guillotine?” said Titin contemptuously. “I wouldn’t catch more than six months if any for that stump.”

  Aslima turned upon him tigerishly: “But what profit is there in such a fool act? We had a perfect plan to carry out and now you’ve wrecked it.”

  She burst into tears. She declared that Lafala would never want to see her again now that Titin had frightened him with an attempt on his life. Lafala was suspicious. He would think that Titin’s attack and her coming to the rescue at the opportune moment was a planned affair. She was sure Titin did not want Lafala’s life. What was he going to do with it? Take it and then fly a fugitive from his beloved dream port? All the days and nights she had devoted to the scheme were lost through Titin’s folly. Women were always suffering for men. She had sacrificed herself perfecting her plan and Titin like a madman had destroyed it in a moment. Aslima wept copiously.

  Titin was confounded. He could not answer Aslima. The force of her argument sunk into him. He had made a fool of himself and perhaps wrecked the bar of his dreams. He suggested that he might beg Lafala’s pardon. But Aslima said that that would be worse and that Titin had better think of getting into hiding, for Lafala might put in a charge of assault against him. But Titin stood out against that suggestion. He was not afraid of an affair like that. And Aslima continued to mourn the wreck of their plan.

  They drifted along without direction until they found themselves before the cathedral high on the hill above Quayside. There Titin broke down completely and confessed that he was altogether wrong. He had gone crazy when Aslima left the house in a fit and at the hotel the craziness turned to madness before Lafala’s taunts. He shouldn’t have gone to the hotel, but some power stronger than himself had just taken him along.

  “But swear to me before God and this cathedral, Aslima,” concluded Titin, “that you won’t double-cross me in this business!”

  “What business?” demanded Aslima. “It’s finished.”

  “It isn’t finished! That Negro likes you more than anything except his money. We can fix him yet. But you swear now that you’re on the level.”

  How abject and detestable he was, asking her to swear before the church, Aslima thought. She swore with her mouth, but her heart went out to her own God. “Help me oh God and forgive me,” she said. An oath before the God of Titin could not bind her to anything. She had heard the story of the warriors of the golden age of her people conquering all that romantic stretch of earth between the Pillars of Hercules and Marseille.2 And there was a legend that the cathedral was built on the site of a mosque, over the bones, maybe, of a marabout. And she uttered a silent prayer that the lost dominions of her people might be restored.3

  Arriving at their room Aslima threw herself on the couch continuing her sad state of lamentation. Titin went down on his knees to her to plead for forgiveness. Pretending to shift herself on the couch Aslima purposely kicked him in the face and asked him to excuse her. And she felt that laughter was taking possession of her, an uncontrollable overcoming laughter that would sweep her away and betray her and with a strong effort she channeled it into another outburst of hysterical weeping. It was too much for Titin. He cursed himself a damned blunderer and fled from the room, slamming her door.

  Meanwhile, Lafala was anxious about Aslima. She had saved his life. That was the big thing. However much he had doubted her before, he was compelled to change his mind before that big fact. Even though he had been loving her all the time, he had never permitted the exigencies of the flesh to befuddle his head. But it was different now. Suppose Titin should find out at last that she was playing a double game!

  In his agitation he made up his mind to go down to Quayside and find Aslima, although he felt that it was dangerous. He was sorry now he hadn’t bought a revolver since his return to Marseille. He asked the night man if he had one to spare, but the night man had one only with which he could not part.

  Nevertheless, Lafala decided to go and took a taxicab to the square at Quayside. He went a roundabout way through a rusty and moldy row of buildings to Aslima’s lair. When he approached the door he heard Titin and Aslima arguing excitedly. He stepped into the shadow of a hallway foul with piled-up garbage to listen. He was happy to hear Aslima’s voice.

  But now she was crying. Suddenly the door flew open and Titin dashed out brushing against Lafala in the shadows. Lafala stepped
into the room and to his greater amazement found Aslima flat on her back laughing hysterically.

  “What’s all the noise about?” he asked.

  “Did he see you?” she asked eagerly, turning over on her side.

  “No.”

  “Good. Then I can keep him up in the air a little longer.”

  “What’s the game now?” Lafala asked. “Tell me everything.”

  Aslima related how she had contrived to turn Titin’s attack upon Lafala against Titin and to their account.

  “Suppose he’s come back and should be out there listening now,” said Lafala when she was finished.

  “He won’t come back tonight,” said Aslima. “But all the same let’s go up on the terrace where we can talk freely.”

  Lafala said his artificial feet were not any good climbing.

  “I can carry you,” she said, and did most of the way. She wanted to return to the terrace of her vision with him. Arriving there she told Lafala everything about the plan that Titin and she had in mind to ruin him. She explained however that she had invented the plan herself, considering it was the best means of allaying the suspicion of Titin against her.

  “Oh, that was why he was so nice to me when I came to see you that night I threw La Fleur out. But how can I trust you? How can I know for sure you’re straight?”

  “I can’t tell you. You got to find that out yourself.”

  “And I have. You saved my life. That’s proof enough.”

  “I didn’t do much. It was the vision.”

  “What vision?”

  Aslima told Lafala the story of what had happened up there on the terrace a little earlier in the evening.

  “Do you believe in visions?” she asked him.

  “Oh, you just fell asleep and dreamed a lot.”

  “Maybe it was a sign that Titin was going to do that and you and I go away together,” she said.