The Stone Face by William Gardner Smith

Author:William Gardner Smith
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: New York Review Books
Published: 2020-07-13T00:00:00+00:00

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.

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