The Cairo Café in Joliette was packed full. An aged girl, her pale, tired features grotesque under the paint, was pounding out on the piano a tragic imitation of Raquel Meller’s song:

“Mimosa! Mimosa!
Elle n’a pas regarde chère petite,
Mais elle a vu bien plus vite
Que son coeur palpite,
Et qu’il lui tend les bras,
Mimosa! Mimosa!”

A slightly built Algerian rattled the drum and banged the cymbals. Young men, rigged out in fashionable regalia, burning colors from shoes to cap, danced with the girls of the quarter and with one another. Some wore proletarian blue. Egyptians, Maltese, Algerians, Tunisians, Syrians, Arabians, and Chinese bobbing up and down in ungainly jerks.

Chinese and Arab men are awkward in modern dances. They have nothing of the natural animal grace and rhythm of Negroes jazzing.

Although the Cairo was a colored bar, the Negroes hardly ever went there. Negroes and Arabs are not fond of one another⁠—even when they speak the same language and have the same religion. There is a great gulf, of biological profundity, between the ochre-skinned North-Africans and the black dwellers below the desert. The Negro’s sensual dream of life is poles apart from the Arab’s hard realism.

Bugsy, passing the Cairo, saw Latnah inside and entered. Since his misunderstanding with Banjo, the wiry little fighter was walking very much by himself. And he enjoyed it. Bugsy was happiest when he was breathing some militant resentment. He did not speak to Latnah, not knowing with whom she had come nor what she was doing, but went to the bar and called for a glass of lemonade-menthé.

Latnah spoke to him. Although she was sitting at a table with white girls and brown men, she was really alone. She knew the proprietor, who was a brown man, and had stopped for a word with him. And then she had sat down and stayed, to listen, perhaps, to the language familiar to her, which Banjo mockingly called the Arabese.

Latnah called Bugsy and shifted, without getting up, to a small unoccupied table in the corner parallel to the one from which she moved. Bugsy went over to her, taking his drink.

“What you doing heah, taking that thing away from Banjo?” he asked her.

“Banjo!” Latnah sneered. “Me no never see him. Long time him no come sleep. Banjo dirty man and no good friend.”

Bugsy was very glad that Latnah was piqued and ready to hear him unburden himself about Banjo.

“You jest now finding out he’s a dirty spade and ain’t no good?” he said. “I knowed it long time. If Banjo had had plenty a money he’d never speak to a cullud person. I know that.”

“But why?” Latnah demanded. “He black man.”

“That ain’t nothing. Him is crazy ’bout white folks. He’s a Alabama nigger or cousin to one, and jest bohn foolish about that white skin. I tell you he’ll sooner give a white beachcomber a raise than one of his own color. And you know it’s easier for a white man to bum a good raise than us to. A white man can bum off his own color, and he think him is doing a colored man a favor when he pay him the compliment a bumming him, but often when we start bumming a white man, all we get outa him is ‘damned dirty nigger’ and his red moon in our face.”

“I know Banjo little mad, but I no think he love white more than colored. No, he just like everything without thinking. He Nègre; he can’t love the white.”

“You don’t know that nigger like I does. He ain’t lak me and you. He is a sore-back nigger and sure got white fevah. I done listen at him talking and I knows he ain’t got no use foh your kind.⁠ ⁠… Why, did you evah see him when he made that big raise off a them boys with the music on that City Line boat? You bet you didn’t. And now you ain’t seeing him, either, since Taloufa done paid and got his suit out and give him a big raise befoh going away⁠—”

“Oh, Taloufa gone away?”

“Sure. He done take his tail away from this bum hussy.” (Bum hussy was one of Bugsy’s names for Marseilles.) “And all the money he done leave Banjo that nigger is spending in Boody Lane on that kelt that he done wasted all his duds on when he come here first. Same one that wouldn’t nevah so much as look at him when he done run through all his money and got him messed up in a fight.”

“He with her again?” Latnah asked.

“Sure. Ef you go ’long up to that there rendezvous café near Boody Lane Ise sure you find them theah together.”

The thought of Banjo having money and spending it on that girl, together with Bugsy’s intimation that this was Banjo’s real preference, made Latnah crazy with anger.

“I no understand good,” she said. “I go with white man, but only for money. White race no love my race. My race no love white.”

“Banjo ain’t like us. Him is a sore-back nigger,” said Bugsy, vindictively. “Them that likes white folks riding them all the time.”

So, thought Latnah, he no like my kind. He no man. He no good. He no got no pride of race. Me give him sleep. Me give him eat. Me give him love. Me give him money for go buy that thing. Even my money he took and went off laughing and sailor-rocking like that, away from me to spread strange joy. She had never been jealous of his change of pillow. That she understood, Orientwise. But for him to lose good money to those things in the Ditch, and for what? For the benefit of their two-legged white rats. Banjo an ofay-lover. She was seething with that deep-rooted sexual resentment that the women of the colored and white races nourish against one another⁠—a resentment perhaps even more profound among the women than among the men of the species, because it is passive, having no outlet for brutal expression.

While Banjo had temporarily got up strutting and looked good to the Ditch again, his first flame had fallen far down the scale to a box in the Ditch. After quitting her maison d’amour for picnic days with Banjo, she had found another when the strutter’s funds were exhausted. But she did not remain very long in the new place. Banjo’s grandiose way of doing things must have stirred to life dead romances in her and spoiled her for the discipline of the shuttered places. However, the change was not advantageous even if she lived now in more natural light, seeing more of the street, for she was merely a “leetah” girl and down at the very bottom.

And now, in her changed estate, she did not withhold a smile from Banjo passing by more dandified than ever and looking his handsomest. Banjo, who never bore rancor for any length of time against anybody or anything, fell again.

“Chère Blanche!” That was her name, and someone had chalked it up on the rough, weather-beaten gray door of her dark little hole-in-the-wall.

Bugsy, of course, had Banjo wrong. Banjo was no ofay-lover. He simply would not see life in divisions of sharp primary colors. In that sense he was color-blind. The colors were always getting him mixed up, shading off, fading out, running into one another so that it was difficult to perceive which was which. Any pleasing color of the moment’s fancy might turn Banjo crazy for a while.

Bugsy was wrong indeed. Banjo would put no ofay before Malty, much less Ray. If he had Latnah tangled up and lost in the general color scheme, it was because she was a woman, and he took all women as one⁠—as they came⁠—roughly, carelessly, easily.

Banjo with Ray was at the little bar not far from Boody Lane. They were playing American poker with a red-skinned tout from Martinique, and a group of Corsican and Provençal touts were playing a French game at another table. Chère Blanche had deserted the sill of her box, where she was a fixture on the lookout night and day now, and was talking to the patronne at the bar.

Two girls came in, one of them whistling Carmen’s song. The sharp features of the whistling girl were brown as an Arab’s, but she was Provençal. She wore a flaring pink frock and her face was smeared with rouge. She was an old and hard habitant of the Ditch, but her companion, who was new to it, was very pretty, pink-rosy and young, between fifteen and sixteen. She had just a little rouge on her lips and she had on a black frock, as if she were mourning somebody; but that was camouflage. She had not a yellow card to live the life of the Ditch, for she was too young to get one. And so she was being chaperoned and cautiously initiated into the ways by the older girl. She had been only two weeks down there, having run away, so they said, from some country place. She was very much admired, naturally, for her youth and fresh prettiness among the old girls gave her the air of a little princess among scrub-women. But there was not a latent spark of interest in her eyes. She was thin, and already a fever color was supplanting the rose of her cheek, and from the bones the flesh was sagging unpleasantly.

The boys of the Ditch who were not touts gossiped about her all the time. They said that if the police caught her they would send her away to some place of confinement and keep her there a good many years, giving her time enough to reflect. But such gossiping was merely slum sentimentality, for the ways of the Ditch were open to all eyes and police eyes, like touts’ eyes, were keen to see what they wanted to see and blind to what they wanted not to see.

It was just a month since a very interesting couple had been pounced upon and borne away. A boy of seventeen and a girl of sixteen from a little tourist town. They had come into the Ditch with something of the verve of the black beach boys. She, boy-bobbed, wearing a cerise frock, and he like a romantic apache in black, a red cloth around his neck, a bright cap pulled down sideways on his face and often a flower, fixed always in the corner of his mouth. The girl was usually reading Le Film Complet, Mon Ciné, and moving-picture novelettes. In the bistro where they lolled out each day they were amorous of each other in a curious way⁠—like stage folk apparently forgetful of the audience⁠—an amorousness that was as different from the monkey exhibitions of the runted touts and their ladies as a good glass of red wine was from the camouflage absinthe-and-water of the Ditch. It may have been that that young couple brought something into the scene which made them impossible to the poor old actors there. Anyway, the police were soon on to them.

The girl who was whistling ruffled Ray’s kinky black mat. “Pay me a drink?” she asked.

“Sure; but what will you do for it?” he demanded.

She shrugged. “What is it you want?”

“You might sing what you were whistling. Do you know the words?”

“Putain! C’est ça? Sure I know Carmen. I see it every season. I never miss it. Carmen, Bohème, Mignon⁠ ⁠… I love them all. But Carmen the most. I saw it three times one season, the artiste who played Carmen was so wonderful.”

“Let’s hear you sing it. I love it, too,” said Ray.

The girl went to the counter, drank an apéritif sec, and began singing:

“L’amour est un oiseau rebelle⁠ ⁠…”

Her voice was rather hoarse and soiled, incapable of holding a note or ascending very far, but her acting was superb as she sidestepped about the bistro, posing and gesturing with a cigarette between her fingers. It was her manner when she whistled that had piqued Ray to ask her to sing. She was Carmen incarnate in her acting. What a hip-shaker she was!

Comic opera was ever a thing of great joy to Ray. It gave him such a perfect illusion of a crazy, disjointed relationship of all the arts of life. Singing and acting and orchestra and all the garish hues. Fascinating mélange of disorder. No one part ever equal to the other. Like life⁠ ⁠… like love. All the world on a stage just wrong enough to be right.

Ray recalled the first time he had ascended to the gods to see Geraldine Farrar in Carmen at the Metropolitan in New York. Geraldine certainly did not act that Carmen stuff as brazenly well as this girl. Going down from colored Harlem to the opera then was a stealing away from his high home of heavenly “blues” and ragtime to taste some exotic morsel brought from a faraway other land of music. The pals of his milieu tapped their heads knowingly at his going among the ofay gods to throw away a dollar or two. There were so many charming things at a dollar or so a throw in Harlem. He felt a little lonely going, but was compensated afterward by the blood-tingling realization of how much the composite life of Harlem was like a comic opera. He had traveled far since those days, yet no scene had ever conveyed to him such a sensuous impression of a comic opera as Harlem.

A little lusting for opera in the Ditch was a different thing. It was quite easy to find a companion of a sort in a bistro ready for a trip to the gods of the opera. And Ray never had that feeling, as he had had it in Harlem, of going out of his own warm environment into a marble-cold world of dilettantism.

For a change, a slight operatic tune in the Ditch was not an exotic thing. Such airs flowing through the alleys were as natural as rain water washing down the gutters. It was often a delicious experience for Ray suddenly to hear a girl whistling or singing such a fascinating old favorite as “Connais tu le pays ou fleurit l’oranger⁠ ⁠…” or “Oui! On m’appelle Mimi⁠ ⁠…” or a fleeting fragmentary lilt from La Flute Enchantée. It was nonetheless lovely if the melody was broken by a volley of bullets tearing down some dark alley and scaring the Ditch to cover. That enhanced the color of the place as a theater. That endeared the Ditch to him. There was nothing artificial about that. It was as strikingly natural as the high-heeled fancy shoes and the pretty frocks of popeline de soie and crêpe Marocain and all the voluptuous soft feminine stuff parading there in the mud and slime and refuse. The poor overplucked chickens who loved to jazz all night to American ragtime and the music-hall hits of Mistinguett also had an ear for other kinds of music⁠—even as Ray.

“L’amour est enfant de Bohême,
Il n’a jamais connu de loi;
Si tu ne m’aimes pas, je t’aime!
Si je t’aime, prends garde a toi!”

The girl flicked her skirt in Ray’s face, and, laughing, ended her song. At that moment Latnah entered the bistro. She had abruptly left Bugsy at the Cairo bar to come to the Ditch. Chère Blanche was familiarly posing against Banjo. Latnah rushed up to her and said in French: “You haven’t done him enough harm when you robbed him and got him in trouble. Now you run after him again. You no good, you damned mean slut. That for you.”

She slapped the girl in her face. The girl screamed and started toward her, but Latnah caught her flimsy frock at the neck and with one fierce jerk, ripped it apart so that it fell at Chère Blanche’s feet. And that was all her clothing. She gathered the pieces about her and fled from the café.

Banjo grabbed Latnah’s wrist. “What in hellfire you come here messing with the gal foh?”

“You fool!” cried Latnah. “Gal no love you. Because you got good clothes now and little money and she thrown out of the maison fermé and got no friend, not even a dirty maquereau wanting her, she running after you again.”

“You lemme manage mah own self and don’t come poking you’ nose in mah business, for I don’t want no black woman come messing me up.”

“I no black woman.”

“You ain’t white.”

“But I no nigger like you. So what Bugsy say is true, eh? You prefer help ofay than colored boys. You no proud of race, no like your own color. You no good then. You no come no more my house, no speak no more to me. Me finish.”

“I don’t care. You know why I went with you? I did that to change mah luck.”

“I no understand.”

“You don’t?” Banjo explained. “When I was up against it, as if the ofays hadda done hoodoohed me, I thought that by changing color I might change mah luck.”

Now Latnah understood. It humiliated her. She crumpled under Banjo’s jibe. He had spoken in a bantering way, but his words were cruel; they ate into her.

“Bye-bye, mamma.” Banjo touched her shoulder playfully⁠—“and don’t nevah you pull off no moh of that hen-scratching stuff on me.”

“Touch me again and I stick you!” She whipped her little dagger out of her bosom.

Banjo saw the silver-headed thing and recoiled quickly as from the sudden menace of a rattlesnake. His eyes and mouth popped open, his face wearing horror like an African mask.