"No, you're American. Why should you imagine yourself like them because you are of the same complexion? The Spaniards and Portuguese around here are the same complexion as myself, but I am not in their class! The Senegalese are savages and stupid. They don't understand our system with the girls; the same goes for the Arabs."
The bawdy battle between black and white was sharp in Marseilles. The Negroes and Arabs who had settled in large numbers in the city since the armistice had developed a problem for the European apaches. There was a tendency among the Africans to take the girls out of their business and set up housekeeping with them. That, of course, diminished the income of the procurers.
Said Le Corse: "Do you know an artist whose name is Ivan Opfer?"
"Yes," I said.
"He is also Pascin's friend," said Le Corse. "Is he a big painter? I mean, does he sell for big money?" I said that Opfer was successful and had done portraits of celebrated persons in America and Europe, even titled ones.
A shadow fell upon Le Corse's hog face. He shook his head and said, "Ivan Opfer offered me a large portrait of myself, but I refused it. I couldn't take it," he said sadly. "Why?" I asked, surprised and interested. "It is worth money. Opfer is not as big a man as Pascin, but he is good."
"I couldn't take it," said Le Corse, "because he made me look so terribly like an apache and I don't really look like that. I couldn't stand it. Pascin and the other artists painted me nice."
"I wish you had kept it," I said. "I should have liked to see it. It's years since I saw any work of Ivan Opfer's."
"It is at the Hôtel Nautique," said Le Corse. "I'll take you there and ask the proprietor to show it, and you'll see for yourself that it is a painting of a criminal."
We went to the Nautique and the friendly proprietor sent a garçon with us up to an attic to show us the picture. I had known Ivan Opfer when I was an assistant editor of The Liberator. The magazine staff used to be divided in opinion about his work. Some thought it had striking merit; others, that it was tricky. Most of his work that I saw were portraits with a strong caricature element in them. But never had I seen anything by him so gripping as his large portrait of Le Corse. When I saw it I recoiled as if I had been thrust into the presence of an incarnate murderer. It was Le Corse all right—a perfect picture. Opfer had painted it without mercy. Pascin and the other artists had done romantic studies of the man, making him like a picturesque retired sailor of the Marseilles bottoms. But Opfer had penetrated straight into his guts and seized his soul to fix it on that canvas. It was a triumph of achievement, it was so real, so exactly true. And suddenly I felt a little sympathy for Le Corse, a slight kinship of humanity, for I became aware that he was afraid of his real self.