I thought that when the final decision was handed down, I would surely lose my job. But Rex Ingram's face revealed that he possessed an intuitive understanding of poets. He is Irish. He knew that I had suffered enough from the incident, and didn't punish me further. So I stayed at work all that spring until summer, when the studio closed. Then I decided to go to Marseilles. I had kept out of Rex Ingram's sight most of the rest of the time, because, as I said, I was thoroughly ashamed. But when I was going I sought him out to say goodbye and he encouraged me to go on with my writing, told his bookkeeper to give me a free ticket to Marseilles, and gave me a gift of six hundred francs.
Marseilles Motley
It was a relief to get to Marseilles, to live in among a great gang of black and brown humanity. Negroids from the United States, the West Indies, North Africa and West Africa, all herded together in a warm group. Negroid features and complexions, not exotic, creating curiosity and hostility, but unique and natural to a group. The odors of dark bodies sweating through a day's hard work, like the odor of stabled horses, were not unpleasant even in a crowded café. It was good to feel the strength and distinction of a group and the assurance of belonging to it.
The Africans came mainly from Dahomey and Senegal and Algeria. Many were dockers. Some were regular hard-working sailors, who had a few days in port between debarking and embarking. Others were waiting for ships—all wedged in between the old port and the breakwater, among beachcombers, guides, procurers, prostitutes of both sexes and bistro bandits—all of motley-making Marseilles, swarming, scrambling and scraping sustenance from the bodies of ships and crews.
I rented a room in the Vieux Port and worked rapidly revising my stories. Louise Bryant had written asking me to get all my stories ready, for she was sailing soon to New York, and would take them herself to a publisher. Sometimes I did a little manual work. The Senegalese foreman of the Negro dockers was my friend, and when he had a lot of work of the lighter kind, such as unloading peanuts or cocoanuts, he gave me an easy job.
There was always excitement in the Vieux Port: men's fights and prostitutes' brawls, sailors robbed, civilian and police shooting. One Senegalese had a big café on the quay and all the Negroes ganged there with their friends and girls. The Senegalese was a remarkable type, quiet, level-headed, shrewd. He had served in France during the World War and had been a sergeant. He went to the United States as soon as he could after the armistice. He got a job such as the average Negro works at and at the same time he ran a rooming house for Africans and Negroid Moslems in New York. He amassed a tidy sum of money, returned to France after six years, and bought the bar in the Vieux Port. His family in Goree was old, large and important. He had a relative in Paris, who was a small functionary in the municipal system. A sister was a graduate nurse in Dakar, and I met in Casablanca a first-class mechanic who was his cousin.
In his social outlook the café owner was an African nationalist. He introduced me to one of his countrymen named Senghor. This Senghor also was a war veteran and a Negro leader among the Communists. He was a tall, lean intelligent Senegalese and his ideas were a mixture of African nationalism and international Communism. Senghor was interested in my writing and said he wished I would write the truth about the Negroes in Marseilles. I promised him that I would some day.