Hail and Farewell to Morocco
I suppose every man who achieves something worthwhile naturally attracts some woman. I was interested in Carmina, who had a white lover. Carmina was a pretty colored lady who had recently deserted the best circles of Harlem for Paris. I liked Carmina. She had lived her life a lot, even as I, and neither of us could reproach the other about the past. But when Louise Bryant saw us together she scolded me. "That girl is not your type," she said. "Why don't you go on living as you always did? Why do you have to go around with a female on your arm, simply because you have written a successful novel?" I said that perhaps it was nothing more than "male conceit." Louise Bryant laughed and said, "Take care you don't spoil yourself by doing the thing that every man thinks he ought to do because of male conceit."
Louise Bryant and Carmina did not like each other. The three of us were spending a convivial evening together and, feeling gallant, I tried to find something to praise in Louise's appearance. She had been to a hairdresser's that afternoon and her neatly shingled hair was gleaming black. I said, "Louise, your hair is very nice tonight." Louise smiled her appreciation. But Carmina said, in a loud whisper, "Can't you see it's dyed?" A blighting frost descended on the party.
It was a sweet relief to give up for awhile discussing problems of race and art for an atmosphere of pure sensuality and amorous intrigue. Carmina also had been fed up with too much race in the upper circles of Harlem, which was why she had fled to Paris. One night I was drunk and maudlin in Montparnasse and Louise Bryant shrieked at me in high intoxicated accents, shaking her forefinger at me, "Go away and write another book. Go home to Harlem or back to Africa, but leave Paris. Get a grip on yourself." She looked like the picture of an old emaciated witch, and her forefinger was like a broomstick. Perhaps it was her better unconscious self warning me, for she also could not get a grip on herself and get away from Paris.
I heeded the warning. I started off for Africa. But I lingered a long time in Spain. The weeks turned into months. From Madrid I went to Andalusia and visited Cordova and Granada again, then went back to Barcelona. A French radical friend wrote chidingly about my preference for Spain, so medieval and religion-ridden. I wrote him that I expected radical changes in medieval Spain sooner than in nationalistic France. That was no prophecy. The thing was in the air; students mentioned it to you on the café terraces; waiters spoke of it in the pensions and restaurants; chauffeurs spoke of their comrades murdered in Morocco by King Alfonso; bank clerks said a change was coming soon, and even guides had something to say. That was in the winter of 1929-30. I was in Spain early in 1930 when the dictatorship of Primo de Rivera collapsed. In the spring of 1931 I was in Spanish Morocco when King Alfonso abdicated, and in Tetuán I witnessed a wonderful demonstration of amity and fraternity between the native Moorish and civilian Spanish populations. There in Africa I hankered after Spain again and indited these three sonnets for Barcelona:
BARCELONA
1
In Barcelona town they dance the nights
Along the streets. The folk, erecting stands
Upon the people's pavements, come together
From pueblo, barrio, in families,
Lured by the lilting playing of the bands,
Rejoicing in the balmy summer weather,
In spreading rings they weave fine fantasies
Like rare mosaics of many-colored lights.
Kindled, it glows, the magical Sardana,
And sweeps the city in a glorious blaze.
The garrison, the sailors from the ships,
The workers join and block the city's ways,
Ripe laughter ringing from intriguing lips,
Crescending like a wonderful hosanna.