“We gotta celebrate tonight,” said Felice when Saturday came round again. Jake agreed to do anything she wanted. Monday they would have to think of working. He wanted to dine at Aunt Hattie’s, but Felice preferred a “niftier” place. So they dined at the Nile Queen restaurant on Seventh Avenue. After dinner they subwayed down to Broadway. They bought tickets for the nigger heaven of a theater, whence they watched high-class people make luxurious love on the screen. They enjoyed the exhibition. There is no better angle from which one can look down on a motion picture than that of the nigger heaven.

They returned to Harlem after the show in a mood to celebrate until morning. Should they go to Sheba Palace where chance had been so good to them, or to a cabaret? Sentiment was in favor of Sheba Palace but her love of the chic and novel inclined Felice toward an attractive new Jewish-owned Negro cabaret. She had never been there and could not go under happier circumstances.

The cabaret was a challenge to any other in Harlem. There were one or two cabarets in the Belt that were distinguished for their impolite attitude toward the average Negro customer, who could not afford to swill expensive drinks. He was pushed off into a corner and neglected, while the best seats and service were reserved for notorious little gangs of white champagne-guzzlers from downtown.

The new cabaret specialized in winning the good will of the average blacks and the approval of the fashionable set of the Belt. The owner had obtained a college-bred Negro to be manager, and the cashier was a genteel mulatto girl. On the opening night the management had sent out special invitations to the high lights of the Negro theatrical world and free champagne had been served to them. The new cabaret was also drawing nightly a crowd of white pleasure-seekers from downtown. The war was just ended and people were hungry for any amusements that were different from the stale stock things.

Besides its spacious floor, ladies’ room, gentlemen’s room and coatroom, the new cabaret had a bar with stools, where men could get together away from their women for a quick drink and a little stag conversation. The bar was a paying innovation. The old-line cabarets were falling back before their formidable rival.⁠ ⁠…

The fashionable Belt was enjoying itself there on this night. The press, theatrical, and music world were represented. Madame Mulberry was there wearing peacock blue with patches of yellow. Madame Mulberry was a famous black beauty in the days when Fifty-third Street was the hub of fashionable Negro life. They called her then, Brown Glory. She was the wife of Dick Mulberry, a promoter of Negro shows. She had no talent for the stage herself, but she knew all the celebrated stage people of her race. She always gossiped reminiscently of Bert Williams, George Walker and Aida Overton Walker, Anita Patti Brown and Cole and Johnson.

With Madame Mulberry sat Maunie Whitewing with a dapper cocoa-brown youth by her side, who was very much pleased by his own person and the high circle to which it gained him admission. Maunie was married to a nationally-known Negro artist, who lived simply and quietly. But Maunie was notorious among the scandal sets of Brooklyn, New York, and Washington. She was always creating scandals wherever she went, gallivanting around with improper persons at improper places, such as this new cabaret. Maunie’s beauty was Egyptian in its exoticism and she dared to do things in the manner of ancient courtesans. Dignified colored matrons frowned upon her ways, but they had to invite her to their homes, nevertheless, when they asked her husband. But Maunie seldom went.

The sports editor of Colored Life was also there, with a prominent Negro pianist. It was rumored that Bert Williams might drop in after midnight. Madame Mulberry was certain he would.

James Reese Europe, the famous master of jazz, was among a group of white admirers. He had just returned from France, full of honors, with his celebrated band. New York had acclaimed him and America was ready to applaud.⁠ ⁠… That was his last appearance in a Harlem cabaret before his heart was shot out during a performance in Boston by a savage buck of his race.⁠ ⁠…

Prohibition was on the threshold of the country and drinking was becoming a luxury, but all the joy-pacers of the Belt who adore the novel and the fashionable and had a dollar to burn had come together in a body to fill the new cabaret.

The owner of the cabaret knew that Negro people, like his people, love the pageantry of life, the expensive, the fine, the striking, the showy, the trumpet, the blare⁠—sumptuous settings and luxurious surroundings. And so he had assembled his guests under an enchanting-blue ceiling of brilliant chandeliers and a dome of artificial roses bowered among green leaves. Great mirrors reflected the variegated colors and poses. Shaded, multicolored sidelights glowed softly along the golden walls.

It was a scene of blazing color. Soft, barbaric, burning, savage, clashing, planless colors⁠—all rioting together in wonderful harmony. There is no human sight so rich as an assembly of Negroes ranging from lacquer black through brown to cream, decked out in their ceremonial finery. Negroes are like trees. They wear all colors naturally. And Felice, rouged to a ravishing maroon, and wearing a close-fitting, chrome-orange frock and cork-brown slippers, just melted into the scene.

They were dancing as Felice entered and she led Jake right along into it:

“Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma⁠ ⁠…”

Every cabaret and dancing-hall was playing it. It was the tune for the season. It had carried over from winter into spring and was still the favorite. Oh, ma-ma! Oh, pa-pa!

The dancing stopped.⁠ ⁠… A brief interval and a dwarfish, shiny black man wearing a red-brown suit, with kinks straightened and severely plastered down in the Afro-American manner, walked into the center of the floor and began singing. He had a massive mouth, which he opened wide, and a profoundly big and quite good voice came out of it.

“I’m so doggone fed up, I don’t know what to do.
Can’t find a pal that’s constant, can’t find a gal that’s true.
But I ain’t gwine to worry ’cause mah buddy was a ham;
Ain’t gwine to cut mah throat ’cause mah gal ain’t worf a damn.
Ise got the blues all ovah, the coal-black biting blues,
Like a prowling tom-cat that’s got the low-down mews.

“I’m gwine to lay me in a good supply a gin,
Foh gunning is a crime, but drinking ain’t no sin.
I won’t do a crazy deed ’cause of a two-faced pal,
Ain’t gwineta break mah heart ovah a no-’count gal
Ise got the blues all ovah, the coal-black biting blues,
Like a prowling tom-cat that’s got the low-down mews.”

There was something of the melancholy charm of Tchaikovsky in the melody. The black singer made much of the triumphant note of strength that reigned over the sad motif. When he sang, “I ain’t gwine to cut mah throat,” “Ain’t gwine to break mah heart,” his face became grim and full of will as a bulldog’s.

He conquered his audience and at the finish he was greeted with warm applause and a shower of silver coins ringing on the tiled pavement. An enthusiastic white man waved a dollar note at the singer and, to show that Negroes could do just as good or better, Maunie Whitewing’s sleek escort imitated the gesture with a two-dollar note. That started off the singer again.

“Ain’t gwine to cut mah throat⁠ ⁠…
Ain’t gwine to break mah heart⁠ ⁠…”

“That zigaboo is a singing fool,” remarked Jake.

Billy Biasse entered resplendent in a new bottle-green suit, and joined Jake and Felice at their table.

“What you say, Billy?” Jake’s greeting.

“I say Ise gwineta blow. Toss off that theah liquor, you two. Ise gwineta blow champagne as mah compliments, old top.”⁠ ⁠…

“Heah’s good luck t’you, boh, and plenty of joy-stuff and happiness,” continued Billy, when the champagne was poured. “You sure been hugging it close this week.”

Jake smiled and looked foolish.⁠ ⁠… The second cook, whom he had not seen since he quitted the railroad, entered the cabaret with a mulatto girl on his arm and looked round for seats. Jake stood up and beckoned him over to his table.

“It’s awright, ain’t it Billy?” he asked his friend.

“Sure. Any friend a yourn is awright.”

The two girls began talking fashion around the most striking dresses in the place. Jake asked about the demoted rhinoceros. He was still on the railroad, the second cook said, taking orders from another chef, “jest as savage and mean as ever, but not so moufy. I hear you friend Ray done quit us for the ocean, Jakey.”⁠ ⁠…

There was still champagne to spare, nevertheless the second cook invited the boys to go up to the bar for a stiff drink of real liquor.

Negroes, like all good Americans, love a bar. I should have said, Negroes under Anglo-Saxon civilization. A bar has a charm all of its own that makes drinking there pleasanter. We like to lean up against it, with a foot on the rail. We will leave our women companions and choice wines at the table to snatch a moment of exclusive sex solidarity over a thimble of gin at the bar.

The boys left the girls to the fashions for a little while. Billy Biasse, being a stag as always, had accepted the invitation with alacrity. He loved to indulge in naked man-stuff talk, which would be too raw even for Felice’s ears. As they went out Maunie Whitewing (she was a traveled woman of the world and had been abroad several times with and without her husband) smiled upon Jake with a bold stare and remarked to Madame Mulberry: “Quel beau garçon! J’aimerais beaucoup faire l’amour avec lui.”

“Superb!” agreed Madame Mulberry, appreciating Jake through her lorgnette.

Felice caught Maunie Whitewing’s carnal stare at her man and said to the mulatto girl: “Jest look at that high-class hussy!”

And the dapper escort tried to be obviously unconcerned.

At the bar the three pals had finished one round and the barman was in the act of pouring another when a loud scream tore through music and conversation. Jake knew that voice and dashed down the stairs. What he saw held him rooted at the foot of the stairs for a moment. Zeddy had Felice’s wrists in a hard grip and she was trying to wrench herself away.

“Leggo a me, I say,” she bawled.

“I ain’t gwineta do no sich thing. Youse mah woman.”

“You lie! I ain’t and you ain’t mah man, black nigger.”

“We’ll see ef I ain’t. Youse gwine home wif me right now.”

Jake strode up to Zeddy. “Turn that girl loose.”

“Whose gwineta make me?” growled Zeddy.

“I is. She’s mah woman. I knowed her long before you. For Gawd’s sake quit you’ fooling and don’t let’s bust up the man’s cabaret.”

All the fashionable folk had already fled.

“She’s my woman and I’ll carve any damn-fool nigger for her.” Lightning-quick Zeddy released the girl and moved upon Jake like a terrible bear with open razor.

“Don’t let him kill him, foh Gawd’s sake don’t,” a woman shrieked, and there was a general stampede for the exit.

But Zeddy had stopped like a cowed brute in his tracks, for leveled straight at his heart was the gift that Billy gave.

“Drop that razor and git you’ hands up,” Jake commanded, “and don’t make a fool move or youse a dead nigger.”

Zeddy obeyed. Jake searched him and found nothing. “I gotta good mind fixing you tonight, so you won’t evah pull a razor on another man.”

Zeddy looked Jake steadily in the face and said: “You kain kill me, nigger, ef you wanta. You come gunning at me, but you didn’t go gunning after the Germans. Nosah! You was scared and runned away from the army.”

Jake looked bewildered, sick. He was hurt now to his heart and he was dumb. The waiters and a few rough customers that the gun did not frighten away looked strangely at him.

“Yes, mah boy,” continued Zeddy, “that’s what life is everytime. When youse good to a buddy, he steals you woman and pulls a gun on you. Tha’s what I get for prohceeding a slacker. A‑llll right, boh, I was a good sucker, but⁠—I ain’t got no reason to worry sence youse down in the white folks’ books.” And he ambled away.

Jake shuffled off by himself. Billy Biasse tried to say a decent word, but he waved him away.

These miserable cockfights, beastly, tigerish, bloody. They had always sickened, saddened, unmanned him. The wild, shrieking mad woman that is sex seemed jeering at him. Why should love create terror? Love should be joy lifting man out of the humdrum ways of life. He had always managed to delight in love and yet steer clear of the hate and violence that govern it in his world. His love nature was generous and warm without any vestige of the diabolical or sadistic.

Yet here he was caught in the thing that he despised so thoroughly.⁠ ⁠… Brest, London, and his America. Their vivid brutality tortured his imagination. Oh, he was infinitely disgusted with himself to think that he had just been moved by the same savage emotions as those vile, vicious, villainous white men who, like hyenas and rattlers, had fought, murdered, and clawed the entrails out of black men over the common, commercial flesh of women.⁠ ⁠…

He reached home and sat brooding in the shadow upon the stoop.

“Zeddy. My own friend in some ways. Naturally lied about me and the army, though. Playing martyr. How in hell did he get hooked up with her? Thought he was up in Yonkers. Would never guess one in a hundred it was he. What a crazy world! He must have passed us drinking at the bar. Wish I’d seen him. Would have had him drinking with us. And maybe we would have avoided that stinking row. Maybe and maybe not. Can’t tell about Zeddy. He was always a badacting razor-flashing nigger.”

A little hand timidly took his arm.

“Honey, you ain’t mad at you sweetness, is you?”

“No.⁠ ⁠… I’m jest sick and tiah’d a everything.”

“I nevah know you knowed one anether, honey. Oh, I was so scared.⁠ ⁠… But how could I know?”

“No, you couldn’t. I ain’t blaming nothing on you. I nevah would guess it was him mahself. I ain’t blaming nobody at all.”

Felice cuddled closer to Jake and fondled his face. “It was a good thing you had you’ gun, though, honey, or⁠—O Lawd! what mighta happened!”

“Oh, I woulda been a dead nigger this time or a helpless one,” Jake laughed and hugged her closer to him. “It was Billy gived me that gun and I didn’t even wanta take it.”

“Didn’t you? Billy is a good friend, eh?”

“You bet he is. Nevah gets mixed up with⁠—in scraps like that.”

“Honest, honey, I nevah liked Zeddy, but⁠—”

“Oh, you don’t have to explain me nothing. I know it’s jest connexidence. It coulda been anybody else. That don’t worry mah skin.”

“I really didn’t like him, though, honey. Lemme tell you. I was kinder sorry for him. It was jest when I got back from Palm Beach I seen him one night at a buffet flat. And he was that nice to me. He paid drinks for the whole houseful a people and all because a me. I couldn’t act mean, so I had to be nice mahself. And the next day he ups and buys me two pair a shoes and silk stockings and a box a chocolate candy. So I jest stayed on and gived him a li’l loving, honey, but I nevah did tuk him to mah haht.”

“It’s awright, sweetness. What do I care so long as wese got one another again?”

She drew down his head and sought his mouth.⁠ ⁠…

“But what is we gwineta do, daddy? Sence they say that youse a slacker or deserter, I don’t know which is which⁠—”

“He done lied about that, though,” Jake said, angrily. “I didn’t run away because I was scared a them Germans. But I beat it away from Brest because they wouldn’t give us a chance at them, but kept us in that rainy, sloppy, Gawd-forsaken burg working like wops. They didn’t seem to want us niggers foh no soldiers. We was jest a bunch a despised hod-carriers, and Zeddy know that.”

Now it was Felice’s turn. “You ain’t telling me a thing, daddy. I’ll be slack with you and desert with you. What right have niggers got to shoot down a whole lot a Germans for? Is they worse than Americans or any other nation a white people? You done do the right thing, honey, and Ise with you and I love you the more for that.⁠ ⁠… But all the same, we can’t stay in Harlem no longer, for the bulls will sure get you.”

“I been thinking a gitting away from the stinking mess and go on off to sea again.”

“Ah no, daddy,” Felice tightened her hold on his arm. “And what’ll become a me? I kain’t go ’board a ship with you and I needs you.”

Jake said nothing.

“What you wanta go knocking around them foreign countries again for like swallow come and swallow go from year to year and nevah settling down no place? This heah is you’ country, daddy. What you gwine away from it for?”

“And what kain I do?”

“Do? Jest le’s beat it away from Harlem, daddy. This heah country is good and big enough for us to git lost in. You know Chicago?”

“Haven’t made that theah burg yet.”

“Why, le’s go to Chicago, then. I hear it’s a mahvelous place foh niggers. Chicago, honey.”

“When?”

“This heah very night. Ise ready. Ain’t nothing in Harlem holding me, honey. Come on. Le’s pack.”

Zeddy rose like an apparition out of the shadow. Automatically Jake’s hand went to his pocket.

“Don’t shoot!” Zeddy threw up his hands. “I ain’t here foh no trouble. I jest wanta ast you’ pahdon, Jake. Excuse me, boh. I was crazy-mad and didn’t know what I was saying. Ahm bloody well ashamed a mahself. But you know how it is when a gal done make a fool outa you. I done think it ovah and said to mah inner man: Why, you fool fellah, whasmat with you? Ef Zeddy slit his buddy’s thwoat for a gal, that won’t give back the gal to Zeddy.⁠ ⁠… So I jest had to come and tell it to you and ast you pahdon. You kain stay in Harlem as long as you wanta. Zeddy ain’ta gwineta open his mouf against you. You was always a good man-to-man buddy and nevah did wears you face bahind you. Don’t pay no mind to what I done said in that theah cabaret Them niggers hanging around was all drunk and wouldn’t shoot their mouf off about you nohow. You ain’t no moh slacker than me. What you done was all right, Jakey, and I woulda did it mahself ef I’d a had the guts to.”

“It’s all right, Zeddy,” said Jake. “It was jest a crazy mix-up we all got into. I don’t bear you no grudge.”

“Will you take the paw on it?”

“Sure!” Jake gripped Zeddy’s hand.

“So long, buddy, and fohgit it.”

“So long, Zeddy, ole top.” And Zeddy bear-walked off, without a word or a look at Felice, out of Jake’s life forever. Felice was pleased, yet, naturally, just a little piqued. He might have said goodbye to me, too, she thought. I would even have kissed him for the last time. She took hold of Jake’s hands and swung them meditatively: “It’s all right daddy, but⁠—”

“But what?”

“I think we had better let Harlem miss us foh a little while.”

“Scared?”

“Yes, daddy, but for you only. Zeddy won’t go back on you. I guess not. But news is like a traveling agent, honey, going from person to person. I wouldn’t take no chances.”

“I guess youse right, sweetness. Come on, le’s get our stuff together.”

The two leather cases were set together against the wall. Felice sat upon the bed dangling her feet and humming “Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.” Jake, in white shirtsleeves, was arranging in the mirror a pink-yellow-and-blue necktie.

“All set! What you say, sweetness?”

“I say, honey, le’s go to the Baltimore and finish the night and ketch the first train in the morning.”

“Why, the Baltimore is padlocked!” said Jake.

“It was, daddy, but it’s open again and going strong. White folks can’t padlock niggers outa joy forever. Let’s go, daddy.”

She jumped down from the bed and jazzed around.

“Oh, I nearly made a present of these heah things to the landlady!” She swept from the bed a pink coverlet edged with lace, and pillow-slips of the same fantasy (they were her own make), with which she had replaced the flat, rooming-house-white ones, and carefully folded them to fit in the bag that Jake had ready open for her. He slid into his coat, made certain of his pocketbook, and picked up the two bags.

The Baltimore was packed with happy, grinning wrigglers. Many pleasure-seekers who had left the new cabaret, on account of the Jake-Zeddy incident, had gone there. It was brighter than before the raid. The ceiling and walls were kalsomined in white and lilac and the lights glared stronger from new chandeliers.

The same jolly, compact manager was there, grinning a welcome to strange white visitors, who were pleased and never guessed what cautious reserve lurked under that grin.

Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.⁠ ⁠…

Jake and Felice squeezed a way in among the jazzers. They were all drawn together in one united mass, wriggling around to the same primitive, voluptuous rhythm.

Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.⁠ ⁠…

Haunting rhythm, mingling of naive wistfulness and charming gayety, now sheering over into mad riotous joy, now, like a jungle mask, strange, unfamiliar, disturbing, now plunging headlong into the far, dim depths of profundity and rising out as suddenly with a simple, childish grin. And the white visitors laugh. They see the grin only. Here are none of the well-patterned, well-made emotions of the respectable world. A laugh might finish in a sob. A moan end in hilarity. That gorilla type wriggling there with his hands so strangely hugging his mate, may strangle her tonight. But he has no thought of that now. He loves the warm wriggle and is lost in it. Simple, raw emotions and real. They may frighten and repel refined souls, because they are too intensely real, just as a simple savage stands dismayed before nice emotions that he instantly perceives are false.

Tell me, pa-pa, Ise you’ ma-ma.⁠ ⁠…

Jake was the only guest left in the Baltimore. The last wriggle was played. The waiters were picking up things and settling accounts.

“Whar’s the little hussy?” irritated and perplexed, Jake wondered.

Felice was not in the cabaret nor outside on the pavement. Jake could not understand how she had vanished from his side.

“Maybe she was making a high sign when you was asleep,” a waiter laughed.

“Sleep hell!” retorted Jake. He was in no joking mood.

“We gwineta lock up now, big boy,” the manager said.

Jake picked up the bags and went out on the sidewalk again. “I kain’t believe she’d ditch me like that at the last moment,” he said aloud. “Anyhow, I’m bound foh Chicago. I done made up mah mind to go all becausing a her, and I ain’ta gwineta change it whether she throws me down or not. But sure she kain’ta run off and leaves her suitcase. What the hell is I gwine do with it?”

Felice came running up to him, panting, from Lenox Avenue.

“Where in hell you been all this while?” he growled.

“Oh, daddy, don’t get mad!”

“Whar you been I say?”

“I done been to look for mah good-luck necklace. I couldn’t go to Chicago without it.”

Jake grinned. “Whyn’t you tell me you was gwine? Weren’t you scared a Zeddy?”

“I was and I wasn’t. Ef I’d a told you, you woulda said it wasn’t worth troubling about. So I jest made up mah mind to slip off and git it. The door wasn’t locked and Zeddy wasn’t home. It was hanging same place where I left it and I slipped it on mah leg and left the keys on the table. You know I had the keys. Ah, daddy, ef I’d a had mah luck with me, we nevah woulda gotten into a fight at that cabaret.”

“You really think so, sweetness?”

They were walking to the subway station along Lenox Avenue.

“I ain’t thinking, honey. I knows it. I’ll nevah fohgit it again and it’ll always give us good luck.”