The Native Son

by Inez Haynes Gillmore

In fact, all the time you stay in California you're living in a story.

The San Franciscans will inundate you with stories of that old San Francisco. And what stories they are! The water-front, Chinatown, the Barbary Coast and particularly that picturesque neighborhood, south of Market Street—here were four of the great drama-breeding areas of the world. The San Franciscans of the past generation will tell you that the new San Francisco is tamed and ordered. That may be all true. But to one at least who never saw the old city, romance shows her bewildering face everywhere in the new one. Almost anything can happen there and almost everything does. Life explodes. It's as though there were a romantic dynamite in solution in the air. You make a step in any direction and—bang!—you bump into adventure. There is something about the sparkle and bustle and gaiety of the streets... There is something about the friendliness and the vivacity of the people... There is something about the intimacy and color and gaiety of the restaurants....

Let me tell some stories to prove my point. Anybody who has lived in San Francisco has heard them by scores. I pick one or two at random.

A group of Native Sons were once dining in one of the little Bohemian restaurants of San Francisco. Two of them made a bet with the others that they could kiss every woman in the room. They went from table to table and in mellifluous accents, plus a strain of hyperbole, explained their predicament to each lady, concluding with a respectful demand for a kiss. Every woman in the room (with the gallant indulgence of her swain) acceded to this amazing request. In fifteen minutes all the kisses were collected and the wager won. I don't know on which this story reflects the greater credit—the Native Daughter or the Native Son. But I do know that it couldn't have happened anywhere but in California.

The first time I visited San Francisco shortly after the fire, I was walking one day in rather a lonely part of the city. There were many burnt areas about: only a few pedestrians. Presently, I saw a man and woman leaning against a fence, absorbed in conversation. Apparently they did not hear my approach; they were too deep in talk. They did not look out of the ordinary and, indeed, I should not have given them a second glance if, as I passed, I had not heard the woman say, "And did you kill anyone else?"

A man told me that once early in the morning he was walking through Chinatown. There was nobody else on the street except, a little distance ahead, a child carrying a small bundle. Suddenly just as she passed, a panel in one of the houses slid open... a hand came out... the child slipped the bundle into the hand... the hand disappeared... the wall panel closed up. The child trotted on as though nothing had happened... disappeared around the corner. When my friend reached the house, it was impossible to locate the panel.

A reporter I know was leaving his home one morning when there came a ring at his telephone. "There is something wrong in apartment number blank, house number blank, on your street," said Central. "Will you please go over there at once?" He went. Somehow he got into the house. Nobody answered his ring at the apartment; he had to break the door open. Inside a very beautiful girl in a gay negligee was lying dead on a couch, a bottle of poison on the floor beside her. He investigated the case. The dead girl had been in the habit of calling a certain number, and she always used a curious identifying code-phrase. The reporter investigated that number. The rest of the story is long and thrilling, but finally he ran down a group of lawbreakers who had been selling the dead girl drugs, were indirectly responsible for her suicide. Do you suppose such a ripe story could have dropped straight from the Tree of Life into the hand of a reporter anywhere except in California?

A woman I know was once waiting on the corner for a car. Near, she happened casually to notice, was a Chinaman of a noticeable, dried antiquity, shuffling along under the weight of a bunch of bananas. She was at that moment considering a curious mental problem and, in her preoccupation, she drew her hand down the length of her face in a gesture that her friends recognize as characteristic. Did she, by accident, stumble on one of the secret signals of a great secret traffic? That is her only explanation of what followed. For suddenly the old Chinaman shuffled to her side, unobtrusively turned his back towards her. One of the bananas on top the bunch, easy to the reach of her hand, was opened, displaying itself to be emptied of fruit. But in its place was something—something little, wrapped in tissue paper. Her complete astonishment apparently warned the vendor of drugs of his mistake. He scuttled across the street; in a flash had vanished in a back alley.

One could go on forever. I cannot forbear another. A woman was passing through the theatrical district of San Francisco one night, just before the theatres let out. The street was fairly deserted. Suddenly she was accosted by a strange gentleman of suave address. Obviously he had dallied with the demon and was spectacularly the worse for it. He was carrying an enormous, a very beautiful—and a very expensive—bouquet. In a short speech of an impassioned eloquence and quite as flowery as his tribute, he presented her with the bouquet. She tried to avoid accepting it. But this was not, without undue publicity, to be done. Finally to put an end to the scene, she bore off her booty. She has often wondered what actress was deprived of her over-the-foot-lights trophy by the sudden freak of an exhilarated messenger.

I know that the Native Son works and works hard. The proof of that is California itself. San Francisco twice rebuilt, the progressive city of Los Angeles, all the merry enterprising smaller California cities and towns. But, somehow, he plays so hard at his work and works so hard at his play that you are always wondering whether it's all the time he works or all the time he plays. At any rate, out of his work comes gaiety and out of his play seriousness. His activities are so many that when I try to make my imagined program of his average day, I should provide one not of twenty-four hours, but of seventy-two.