Going to Meet the Man (21 page)

The others are all, visibly, very proud of Pete; and we all join him, and people stop to listen:

In the crowd that has gathered to listen to us, I see a face I know, the face of a North African prize fighter, who is no longer in the ring. I used to know him well in the old days, but have not seen him for a long time. He looks quite well, his face is shining, he is quite decently dressed. And something about the way he holds himself, not quite looking at our table, tells me that he has seen me, but does not want to risk a rebuff. So I call him. “Boona!”

And he turns, smiling, and comes loping over to our table, his hands in his pockets. Pete is still singing and Ada and Vidal
have taken off on a conversation of their own. Ruth and Talley look curiously, expectantly, at Boona. Now that I have called him over, I feel somewhat uneasy. I realize that I do not know what he is doing now, or how he will get along with any of these people, and I can see in his eyes that he is delighted to be in the presence of two young girls. There are virtually no North African women in Paris, and not even the dirty, rat-faced girls who live, apparently, in cafés are willing to go with an Arab. So Boona is always looking for a girl, and because he is so deprived and because he is not Western, his techniques can be very unsettling. I know he is relieved that the girls are not French and not white. He looks briefly at Vidal and Ada. Vidal, also, though for different reasons, is always looking for a girl.

But Boona has always been very nice to me. Perhaps I am sorry that I called him over, but I did not want to snub him.

He claps one hand to the side of my nead, as is his habit. “
Comment vas-tu, mon frère?
I have not see you, oh, for long time.” And he asks me, as in the old days, “You all right? Nobody bother you?” And he laughs. “Ah!
Tu as fait le chemin, toil
Now you are
vedette
, big star—wonderful!” He looks around the table, made a little uncomfortable by the silence that has fallen, now that Pete has stopped singing. “I have seen you in the movies—you know?—and I tell everybody, I know
him!
” He points to me, and laughs, and Ruth and Talley laugh with him. “That’s right, man, you make me real proud, you make me cry!”

“Boona, I want you to meet some friends of mine.” And I go round the table: “Ruth, Talley, Ada, Pete”—and he bows and shakes hands, his dark eyes gleaming with pleasure—“
et Monsieur Vidal, le metteur en scène du film qui t’a arraché des larmes.
”

“
Enchanté.
” But his attitude toward Vidal is colder, more distrustful. “Of course I have heard of Monsieur Vidal. He is
the director of many films, many of them made me cry.” This last statement is utterly, even insolently, insincere.

But Vidal, I think, is relieved that I will now be forced to speak to Boona and will leave him alone with Ada.

“Sit down,” I say, “have a drink with us, let me have your news. What’s been happening with you, what are you doing with yourself these days?”

“Ah,” he sits down, “nothing very brilliant, my brother.” He looks at me quickly, with a little smile. “You know, we have been having hard times here.”

“Where are you from?” Ada asks him.

His brilliant eyes take her in entirely, but she does not flinch. “I am from Tunis.” He says it proudly, with a little smile.

“From Tunis. I have never been to Africa, I would love to go one day.”

He laughs. “Africa is a big place. Very big. There are many countries in Africa, many”—he looks briefly at Vidal—“different kinds of people, many colonies.”

“But Tunis,” she continues, in her innocence, “is free? Freedom is happening all over Africa. That’s why I would like to go there.”

“I have not been back for a long time,” says Boona, “but all the news I get from Tunis, from my people, is not good.”

“Wouldn’t you like to go back?” Ruth asks.

Again he looks at Vidal. “That is not so easy.”

Vidal smiles. “You know what I would like to do? There’s a wonderful Spanish place not far from here, where we can listen to live music and dance a little.” He turns to Ada. “Would you like that?”

He is leaving it up to me to get rid of Boona, and it is, of course, precisely for this reason that I cannot do it. Besides, it is no longer so simple.

“Oh, I’d love that,” says Ada, and she turns to Boona. “Won’t you come, too?”

“Thank you, mam’selle,” he says, softly, and his tongue flicks briefly over his lower lip, and he smiles. He is very moved, people are not often nice to him.

In the Spanish place there are indeed a couple of Spanish guitars, drums, castanets, and a piano, but the uses to which these are being put carry one back, as Pete puts it, to the levee. “These are the wailingest Spanish cats I ever heard,” says Ruth. “They didn’t learn how to do this in Spain, no, they didn’t, they been rambling. You ever hear anything like this going on in Spain?” Talley takes her out on the dance floor, which is already crowded. A very handsome Frenchwoman is dancing with an enormous, handsome black man, who seems to be her lover, who seems to have taught her how to dance. Apparently, they are known to the musicians, who egg them on with small cries of “
Olé!
” It is a very good-natured crowd, mostly foreigners, Spaniards, Swedes, Greeks. Boona takes Ada out on the dance floor while Vidal is answering some questions put to him by Pete on the entertainment situation in France. Vidal looks a little put out, and I am amused.

We are there for perhaps an hour, dancing, talking, and I am, at last, a little drunk. In spite of Boona, who is a very good and tireless dancer, Vidal continues his pursuit of Ada, and I begin to wonder if he will make it and I begin to wonder if I want him to.

I am still puzzling out my reaction when Pete, who has disappeared, comes in through the front door, catches my eye, and signals to me. I leave the table and follow him into the streets.

He looks very upset. “I don’t want to bug you, man,” he says, “but I fear your boy has goofed.”

I know he is not joking. I think he is probably angry at Vidal because of Ada, and I wonder what I can do about it and why he should be telling me.

I stare at him, gravely, and he says, “It looks like he stole some money.”

“Stole
money?
Who, Vidal?”

And then, of course, I get it, in the split second before he says, impatiently, “No, are you kidding? Your friend, the Tunisian.”

I do not know what to say or what to do, and so I temporize with questions. All the time I am wondering if this can be true and what I can do about it if it is. The trouble is, I know that Boona steals, he would probably not be alive if he didn’t, but I cannot say so to these children, who probably still imagine that everyone who steals is a thief. But he has never, to my knowledge, stolen from a friend. It seems unlike him. I have always thought of him as being better than that, and smarter than that. And so I cannot believe it, but neither can I doubt it. I do not know anything about Boona’s life, these days. This causes me to realize that I do not really know much about Boona.

“Who did he steal it from?”

“From Ada. Out of her bag.”

“How much?”

“Ten dollars. It’s not an awful lot of money, but”—he grimaces—“none of us
have
an awful lot of money.”

“I know.” The dark side street on which we stand is nearly empty. The only sound on the street is the muffled music of the Spanish club. “How do you know it was Boona?”

He anticipates my own unspoken rejoinder. “Who else could it be? Besides—somebody
saw
him do it.”

“Somebody saw him?”

“Yes.”

I do not ask him who this person is, for fear that he will say it is Vidal.

“Well,” I say, “I’ll try to get it back.” I think that I will take Boona aside and then replace the money myself. “Was it in dollars or in francs?”

“In francs.”

I have no dollars and this makes it easier. I do not know how I can possibly face Boona and accuse him of stealing money from my friends. I would rather give him the benefit of even the faintest doubt. But, “Who saw him?” I ask.

“Talley. But we didn’t want to make a thing about it—”

“Does Ada know it’s gone?”

“Yes.” He looks at me helplessly. “I know this makes you feel pretty bad, but we thought we’d better tell you, rather than”—lamely—“anybody else.”

Now, Ada comes out of the club, carrying her ridiculous handbag, and with her face all knotted and sad. “Oh,” she says, “I hate to cause all this trouble, it’s not worth it, not for ten lousy dollars.” I am astonished to see that she has been weeping, and tears come to her eyes now.

I put my arm around her shoulder. “Come on, now. You’re not causing anybody any trouble and, anyway, it’s nothing to cry about.”

“It isn’t your fault, Ada,” Pete says, miserably.

“Oh, I ought to get a sensible handbag,” she says, “like you’re always telling me to do,” and she laughs a little, then looks at me. “Please don’t try to do anything about it. Let’s just forget it.”

“What’s happening inside?” I ask her.

“Nothing. They’re just talking. I think Mr. Vidal is dancing with Ruth. He’s a great dancer, that little Frenchman.”

“He’s a great talker, too,” Pete says.

“Oh, he doesn’t mean anything,” says Ada, “he’s just having fun. He probably doesn’t get a chance to talk to many American girls.”

“He certainly made up for lost time tonight.”

“Look,” I say, “if Talley and Boona are alone, maybe you better go back in. We’ll be in in a minute. Let’s try to keep this as quiet as we can.”

“Yeah,” he says, “okay. We’re going soon anyway, okay?”

“Yes,” she tells him, “right away.”

But as he turns away, Boona and Talley step out into the street, and it is clear that Talley feels that he has Boona under arrest. I almost laugh, the whole thing is beginning to resemble one of those mad French farces with people flying in and out of doors; but Boona comes straight to me.

“They say I stole money, my friend. You know me, you are the only one here who knows me, you know I would not do such a thing.”

I look at him and I do not know what to say. Ada looks at him with her eyes full of tears and looks away. I take Boona’s arm.

“We’ll be back in a minute,” I say. We walk a few paces up the dark, silent street.

“She say I take her money,” he says. He, too, looks as though he is about to weep—but I do not know for which reason. “You know me, you know me almost twelve years, you think I do such a thing?”

Talley saw you, I want to say, but I cannot say it. Perhaps Talley only thought he saw him. Perhaps it is easy to see a boy who looks like Boona with his hand in an American girl’s purse.

“If you not believe me,” he says, “search me. Search me!” And he opens his arms wide, theatrically, and now there are tears standing in his eyes.

I do not know what his tears mean, but I certainly cannot search him. I want to say, I know you steal, I know you have to steal. Perhaps you took the money out of this girl’s purse in order to eat tomorrow, in order not to be thrown into the streets tonight, in order to stay out of jail. This girl means nothing to you, after all, she is only an American, an American like me. Perhaps, I suddenly think, no girl means anything to you, or ever will again, they have beaten you too hard and
kept out in the gutter too long. And I also think, if you would steal from her, then of course you would lie to me, neither of us means anything to you; perhaps, in your eyes, we are simply luckier gangsters in a world which is run by gangsters. But I cannot say any of these things to Boona. I cannot say, Tell me the truth, nobody cares about the money any more.

So I say, “Of course I will not search you.” And I realize that he knew I would not.

“I think it is that Frenchman who say I am a thief. They think we all are thieves.” His eyes are bright and bitter. He looks over my shoulder. “They have all come out of the club now.”

I look around and they are all there, in a little dark knot on the sidewalk.

“Don’t worry,” I say. “It doesn’t matter.”

“You believe me? My brother?” And his eyes look into mine with a terrible intensity.

“Yes,” I force myself to say, “yes, of course, I believe you. Someone made a mistake, that’s all.”

“You know, the way American girls run around, they have their sack open all the time, she could lost the money anywhere. Why she blame me? Because I come from Africa?” Tears are glittering on his face. “Here she come now.”

And Ada comes up the street with her straight, determined walk. She walks straight to Boona and takes his hand. “I am sorry,” she says, “for everything that happened. Please believe me. It isn’t worth all this fuss. I’m sure you’re a very nice person, and”—she falters—“I must have lost the money, I’m sure I lost it.” She looks at him. “It isn’t worth hurting your feelings, and I’m terribly sorry about it.”

“I no take your money,” he says. “Really, truly, I no take it. Ask him”—pointing to me, grabbing me by the arm, shaking me—“he know me for years, he will tell you that I never, never steal!”

“I’m sure,” she says. “I’m sure.”

I take Boona by the arm again. “Let’s forget it. Let’s forget it all. We’re all going home now, and one of these days we’ll have a drink again and we’ll forget all about it, all right?”

“Yes,” says Ada, “let us forget it.” And she holds out her hand.

Boona takes it, wonderingly. His eyes take her in again. “You are a very nice girl. Really. A very nice girl.”

“I’m sure you’re a nice person, too.” She pauses. “Goodnight.”

“Goodnight,” he says, after a long silence.

Then he kisses me on both cheeks. “
Au revoir, mon frère.
”

“
Au revoir, Boona.
”

After a moment we turn and walk away, leaving him standing there.

“Did he take it?” asks Vidal.

“I tell you, I
saw
him,” says Talley.

“Well,” I say, “it doesn’t matter now.” I look back and see Boona’s stocky figure disappearing down the street.