by Claude McKay
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
The following day Lafala went to the office of the official and found him with La Fleur’s anonymous letter upon his desk. Lafala showed him the warning note that he had also received and wondered if the letters were not a hoax. But Lafala did not get any assurance from him. Whether it was a hoax or not the best thing, the man thought, was that Lafala should leave Marseille at once to avoid further complications. He had thought Aslima was a different kind of girl, a domestic or something, and had never imagined she was just a colored creature of the dives of Quayside.
A few cases of foreign sailors wanting to marry pretty prostitutes out of the cabarets had come under his official notice. But thanks to the local laws that made marriage a difficult transaction, nearly all such persons had been saved from themselves.
But it was the first case of a Negro and a colored prostitute.
Lafala, trying to get right with his conscience, suggested that the anonymous notes might have been written by an enemy of Aslima. But the official said he could have nothing to do personally with the whole matter. He was going to arrange Lafala’s passage but he would have nothing to do with his more intimate affairs. He telephoned a shipping company and learned that there was a boat leaving for West Africa the next day and stopping at Lafala’s home port. He told Lafala he was going to book his passage or he would wash his hands of his business. Reluctantly, Lafala consented. . . .
* * *
• • •
But that night Aslima went to see Lafala at his hotel, lovelier and livelier than ever. She was charmingly dressed in native costume and when she took off the coat under which it was hidden, she received the exclamation of admiration she had expected. She had on a long yellow robe reaching to her ankles and a yellow jacket bordered with black braid and blue bloomers.1 It was one of two dresses she had brought to Marseille and which she had never worn.
“You’re fine like that,” said Lafala.
“Thanks, my pig,” said Aslima reclining beside him. The touch of her burned into him like a sweet fever consuming his body.
“They tried to separate us, but they couldn’t for long, eh, my darling pig?” she said.
“No, they couldn’t, honey pig. We’re true pigs for life.”
“Pigs for life,” she repeated. “Two loving pigs going away together to hide in the jungle.”
* * *
• • •
Lafala stirred. “You’ve been sleeping, honey pig,” said Aslima.
“Sleeping and dreaming. I didn’t sleep last night. Couldn’t get any peace in my mind.”
“Well, if I brought you peace it’s all right, only I don’t like you to go to sleep on me. What were you dreaming about?”
“I was dreaming we couldn’t go away together. Suppose we couldn’t really?” asked Lafala.
“If it’s the will of God that we shouldn’t—but what’s there to prevent us?”
“Suppose Titin should?”
“How could he unless he killed me?”
“Or me,” said Lafala. And he told her Petit Frère’s story and about the anonymous letters and the opinion of the official.
“Well, if it’s as bad as all that, I don’t know what to say,” said Aslima. “It’s up to you.”
“Suppose if we couldn’t go together, I paid you your passage back home. Would that be alright?”
“What home? I have no home to go back to. No parents, no relatives. I would be a stranger going back alone as much as I am here. I would go with you if you wanted me to, but I wouldn’t want to leave here to go anyplace alone.”
“Telephone some drinks and let’s not talk about this,” said Lafala.
“That’s better,” she said. “It you want to go and leave me I can’t stop you, but don’t talk about it.”
* * *
• • •
A man entered with the drinks on a tray and set it down on the night table. . . .
“Going to be swilling pigs, tonight,” said Aslima. “Forget everything swilling.”
“Even Titin!” said Lafala.
“Forget Titin. He’s not the same with me since you came out of prison. He’s starting to get rough again. But I don’t care. I couldn’t stand him any longer whether I went with you or not.”
“But what would happen if you quit him and stayed here in Marseille?”
“I don’t care.” Aslima began dancing round the room singing a pig-song in her language which is something like this translated:
Want to know what’s loving sweet,
Want to know what’s loving big?
When two naughty lovers meet
And unite in loving pigs.
“Going to be naughty pigs, tonight,” she sing-songed. She danced over to the bed and rubbed her burning brown face against Lafala. Lafala hugged her keeping her hot cheek against his and their generated warmth mingled harmoniously, kindling a delicious feeling of ebony in brown, and stirring up in him a riotous sensation of crimson and green, yellow and honey and all the kindred colors of love and passion.
“Oh, you’re the darlingest pig in the world,” said Aslima, “and you won’t find another pig like me in all of Africa.”
“I know I won’t,” said Lafala.
“Then we’ll go back together and you won’t tease me again about going back alone.”
“No,” he said.
“For we need one another.”
“Yes, we need one another.”
“To make pig-honey together, for pig-honey is the sweetest honey. Sweeter than the honey of flowers and bees.”
“Yes, sweeter than the damned flowers and the bloody bees,” said Lafala.
“Will we be going soon?”
“Yes, soon, very soon,” he said. And Lafala meant it then for he was overwhelmed in love. Never was he so happy in sweet loving. It was as if Aslima had all the time reserved a secret cell in her being and had unlocked it now for him alone to enter. And how like a rare tropical garden it was where every fruit was delicious to taste.
Oh, nothing could tear him away from her now. No fear of protectors, nor white respectability, nor native dignity. He would stick to her and be a contented pig in a pen, wallowing with joy in the mud.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
In the early morning Aslima left Lafala as happy as a bird. She went to her room and changed her clothes. Titin was not there; he had not slept in. She tidied the room afresh and went out up on the terrace and sat down gazing over the sea into the horizon, her spirit in a fever and full of the anticipation of a big joy.
The harbor was crowded and busy with yachts moored on the far side and fishing boats clustered together on the near side and through the sunlit blue space between the excursion boats dashed with visitors to the warships and to promenade in the bay.
The fishermen came clogging up the terrace to spread their nets in the sun, and ample women walked with baskets of fish, blue-white sardines gleaming in the sunlight. Little kids screamed and clapped hands around Aslima, yet unmindful of her, digging and rolling in the sand, lifting their short smocks, toddling and pissing. But she remained indifferent to the everyday reality around her, wrapped up in her complete happiness.
She stayed up there on the terrace until lunchtime. In the afternoon she went to the Tout-va-Bien.
The bar of the Tout-va-Bien was a shining affair. Glasses of all sizes were nicely arranged on the little glass shelves over the bar. And behind was the exciting array of bottles stood up or set horizontally according to their contents: white and red wine, whiskies, cognacs, gins, rums, champagnes and a variety of apéritifs and cordials. A case of appetizers (olives, anchovies, clams, crackers and other tidbits) at one end of the bar. The piano was dusted and oiled. The marble-topped tables were washed clean and those out on the terrace placed in a neat row.
Everything was in
trim for the Saturday afternoon trade. The mulatto looked well his part of proprietor-waiter in a newly-ironed brown holland coat. His paramour, a broad-bosomed brunette, sat at the desk constantly patting her frizzly crown of cropped hair.
The hour was yet early for business and the customers few. A group of chronic idlers, nearly all blacks, were gaming at cards in a corner. Babel was leaning against the piano and watching the game which he wanted to learn. He had worked only half a day. La Fleur and her friend were sitting on the terrace and an instantaneous photographer1 was taking a group of sailors and soldiers.
Aslima entered the café and stood at the desk exchanging compliments with the woman. Babel glanced scowlingly at her.
While the women were gossiping, Rock and Diup breezed into the café, each waving a ten-franc note and calling for drinks.
“Come on, Babel and you fellahs,” said Rock, “and drink to a safe voyage for Lafala. This is his last treat.”
“Last treat!” exclaimed Babel. “Is he gone then?”
“You bet he is. Done sailed away. Diup and me we seen the broad shove off with Lafala and we waved the last goodbye to him and he waved back too without any tears shed.”
La Fleur came into the café to hear all about it. Diup and Rock had slept down on the breakwater the night before and in the morning while they were foraging for food along the docks, they espied Lafala on the deck of his ship. Lafala had given them the notes for a farewell drink and asked them to say goodbye to the Quaysiders.
For when he arose from his drunken night of loving in the clear and sobering daylight and began thinking again, the practical side of his nature had reasserted itself over the sensual and decided him to do as his agent wished. . . .
Babel was transported with joy because Lafala had secretly sailed away from Aslima and Quayside. And he began to dance and sing:
“Oh, the life was sweet but the time is short,
And I’ve got to go with the broad alone,2
Oh, the jolly gals in this good ole port,
Who’ll remember me after I am gone.”
La Fleur threw up her head at Aslima with a look of smiling satisfaction and delicious triumph. . . . But her manner underwent a sudden change as she observed the terrible expression upon Aslima’s face.
Aslima said nothing. She had turned away from the woman at the bar and now she left the café repeating to herself “Mektoub! Mektoub!” (Destiny! Destiny!)3
She had gone a few steps only when a uniformed messenger boy came to the café with a letter for her. It was from Lafala and he had sent it expressly in care of the proprietor to prevent it from falling into Titin’s hands. . . .
But when Titin came to the café a little later in a chorean state4 because of the news of Lafala’s sailing, the proprietor, like a good ally, gave him Aslima’s letter. . . . La Fleur cried out that the letter was Aslima’s and Titin had no right to it.
“Shut up, you slut,” said Titin, “and mind your own affair.”
Titin opened the letter and read it with the help of the proprietor. Lafala had left a hundred dollars with his agent for Aslima which she could claim by showing her papers of identification. She could use the money to return home.
But something else in the letter made Titin’s voice trembling wet with tears. It concerned an extra thousand-franc note belonging to Aslima and which she had entrusted to Lafala for safe-keeping, and which he had also left for her with the agent.
“That hard-hearted slut!” cried Titin. “She had all that money saved up from me and there were days when I actually starved. How could any man trust the slut that is a woman!”
“Don’t you know better than talking about trusting any woman?” said the proprietor.
His paramour’s face grew sharp with anger but she said nothing.
“I’m the last man she’ll double-cross,” said Titin.
La Fleur slipped from the café and flew to Aslima’s room to warn her about the letter and implore her to escape. But Aslima was apathetic. She did not care about anything. She said she would not mind what Titin did now. La Fleur tried to pull Aslima up from the couch where she was lying indifferently but Aslima quietly told her to leave her alone. La Fleur broke down and cried and said she was sorry she had ever been mean to Aslima. Aslima replied that that was all right for she had also been mean and she told La Fleur that perhaps it would be better for her if Titin did not find her there. And so La Fleur left, encountering Titin in the passage who brushed past her like a wild rat with the letter in his hand, hardly noticing her.
He found Aslima in the same listless position in which La Fleur had left her. He brandished the letter and raged until he foamed. But Aslima maintained the same silence. Her manner was even mocking.
“You won’t double-cross another man,” said Titin. “Your life will pay for this.”
“Take it then and stop shouting,” Aslima spoke at last. Titin was nonplussed. She had spoken so coolly and confidently, as if life was no longer desirable living for her. It was evident that she had lost her mind and herself to that Lafala. He was not a killer. He wondered hesitatingly if she wouldn’t be getting off too easily with death.
Then he began to rage again, but this time more against Lafala. . . . Oh, to be outwitted by a creature of the jungle! . . . A half-helpless savage. . . . A mere black stump of humanity. . . . Escaped. . . . Gone with all the money and the great deep sea between them.
“Better I had killed him that night so his money would have been no use to him either,” cried Titin. “Better I had killed him like a dog!”
“Kill him! Kill Lafala?” Aslima started up aroused at last. As if she saw Lafala standing there between them and in danger from Titin. “You’d have to kill me first and kill him over my dead body,” she screamed frantically, and drawing the knife she always carried she advanced upon Titin like a madwoman.
He could stop her with the gun only. He didn’t want to do it then. There was that money in the hands of Lafala’s representative that he would like her to get first. . . . He cried out at her fearfully like a hunter attacked by a precious wild beast that he would rather capture than slay. . . . But he was forced to let go at her or she would bleed his heart. . . .
She threw up her hands like a bird of prey about to swoop down upon a victim and pitched headlong to the door. He shot the remaining bullets into her body, cursing and calling upon hell to swallow her soul.
Suggestions for Further Reading
BY CLAUDE MCKAY
Amiable with Big Teeth: A Novel of the Love Affair Between the Communists and the Poor Black Sheep of Harlem. Edited and introduced by Jean-Christophe Cloutier and Brent Hayes Edwards. New York: Penguin, 2017.
Banana Bottom. 1933. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1974.
Banjo: A Story Without a Plot. 1929. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970.
Complete Poems. Edited and introduced by William J. Maxwell. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2004.
Gingertown. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1932.
Harlem: Negro Metropolis. New York: Dutton, 1940.
Harlem Glory: A Fragment of Aframerican Life. Preface by Carl Cowl. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1990.
Harlem Shadows. Introduction by Max Eastman. New York: Harcourt Brace, 1922.
Home to Harlem. 1928. Foreword by Wayne F. Cooper. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1987.
A Long Way from Home. 1937. Edited and introduced by Gene Andrew Jarrett. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2007.
My Green Hills of Jamaica and Five Jamaican Short Stories. Edited by Mervyn Morris. Kingston: Heinemann, 1979.
The Negroes in America. 1923. Edited by Alan McLeod. Translated from the Russian by Robert J. Winter. Port Washington, NY: Kennikat Press, 1979.
The Passion of Claude McKay. Edited by Wayne F. Cooper. New York: Knopf, 1976.
Trial by Lynching: Stori
es of Negro Life in North America (Sudom Lincha). 1925. Edited and introduced by A. L. McLeod. Translated from the Russian by Robert J. Winter. Mysore, India: University of Mysore, Centre for Commonwealth Literature and Research, 1977.
CRITICISM
Bell, Christopher M., ed. Blackness and Disability: Critical Examinations and Cultural Interventions. East Lansing, MI: Michigan State University Press, 2011.
Bishop, Jacqueline. “Claude McKay’s Songs of Morocco.” Black Renaissance/Renaissance Noire 14.1 (spring–summer 2014): 68–75.
Braddock, Jeremy. “Media Studies 1932: Nancy Cunard in the Archive of Claude McKay.” Modernism/modernity 3.2. Web. May 30, 2018. https://modernismmodernity.org/articles/media-studies-1932.
Cloutier, Jean-Christophe. Shadow Archives: The Lifecycles of African American Literature. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019.
Cooper, Wayne F. Claude McKay: Rebel Sojourner in the Harlem Renaissance. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.
Davis, Lennard J. Bending over Backwards: Disability, Dismodernism, and Other Difficult Positions. New York: New York University Press, 2002.
Edwards, Brent Hayes. “Vagabond Internationalism: Claude McKay’s Banjo.” The Practice of Diaspora: Literature, Translation, and the Rise of Black Internationalism. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2003: 187–240.
Etherington, Ben. “Claude McKay’s Primitivist Narration.” Literary Primitivism. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2018: 135–159.
Fabre, Michel. “Claude McKay and the Two Faces of France.” From Harlem to Paris: Black American Writers in France, 1840–1980. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1991: 92–113.
Hathaway, Heather. Caribbean Waves: Relocating Claude McKay and Paule Marshall. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1999.
Holcomb, Gary Edward. “‘Swaying to the Music of the Moon’: Black-White Queer Solidarity in Romance in Marseille.” Claude McKay, Code Name Sasha: Queer Black Marxism and the Harlem Renaissance. Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2007: 171–224.