It was six o’clock, and David had just walked in the door, panting. High humidity, the Parisian summer sun, and eight flights up the staircase caused the sweat to roll in volumes. It accumulated under his armpits with a renewed strength, thankfully not doing so during the day but only when he had access to a bath, allowing him to escape possible embarrassment. He reached his hand down into the pocket of his slacks, today’s pair so light as to let the wind pass through the fabric moist from his perspiration. He pulled out his room key, opening the door into the havoc of his apartment.
The smell of breakfast still lingered in the air. The coffee from this morning, now cold in a sludge consistency, was still in the porcelain pot he used to serve it that morning, slowly engraining a brown stain into the white surface.
David went into the other room. He undressed, turned on the water for his bath, urinated, then checked the mail. None of his mail came from outside of France, and even after spending over a decade in the foreign city, his mind still required several seconds of adjustment before he could fully comprehend what he was reading. There’s never any mail from home, he thought, placing the envelopes on the table. He went back into the bathroom and eased into the searing water. His brown skin took on a reddish hue.
Even now, as he prepared to go to the dinner that evening, David still couldn’t fathom why his coworker, Blanche Devereax, would invite him to it. Each year, the list of invites circulated throughout the teaching staff of the university, and each year David was left off of it, despite the cordial everyday acceptance of his colleagues. Blanche wasn’t throwing the party, but he guessed his friendship with Blanche made him part of the extended circle of friends invited by this year’s event throwers, Jacque and Karen Legrand. They smile at me often, David thought. Their acceptance of me must be some of Blanche’s doing.
He finished bathing, rising laboriously from the water like a lazy leviathan on the sea, each wave cascading from his smooth flesh. He continued to get dressed, opting to wear the green silk shirt with white camel slacks instead of the blue suede one. At the last moment, the thought of taking a dish to the dinner came to his mind, and the confusing questions of French etiquette arose, conflicting with those of his home land, so much so that he had to leave the issue unresolved. He left his apartment, going down stairs and stepping out of the main door into the dramatic evening sky, enveloped in shades of ruby and topaz like the jewelry of sad women from the bordellos, who were just creeping out into the streets for an evening of work.
David’s pace was slow compared to the mad dash he had earlier, this time in an attempt to avoid the same envoy of sweat he has battled earlier. The issue of the dish still in his mind, he darted into the florist he usually passed on his way to work, placed down four bills and received three gardenias in a faux-crystal vase. The smell of flowers, mixed pleasantly with the aroma of oils from his bath and David’s natural fragrance, created a welcome assault of the senses for the average passerby. While trying not to break the precious cargo he carried in his hands, David continued up the streets, his exotic features catching the Frenchman’s attention, the curls of his hair glistening in the last rays of the setting sun. He continued up the boulevard.
His cheeks a healthy glow from his uphill trek, David knocked on the Legrands’ door. The hostess for the evening, Karen, American and blonde and fighting gravity’s pull on her face and breast, opened the door with held breath. After a second of delay, the smile she practiced for a lifetime came to her face. She reached out graciously and took the vase from David’s hands. “Good evening, Monsieur Fritzafrique,” Karen said, using her free hand to motion him into the house.
“Bonne nuit, Mme. Legrand,” David replied. As Karen led him through the corridor to the dining room, the darkness of the walls and the fragrant smells wafting in from the kitchen combined to choke him as he walked beside his hostess. “Please, call me David.”
“All right. I shall.” She placed his vase on the oak table beside the interior entrance to the dining room, too near the furniture’s edge for David’s liking. “The rest of the guests are inside. Please, take a seat in there and make yourself comfortable.
With amazing speed, Mme. Legrand exited to the kitchen, the matching oak door swinging on its hinges like the banner of a country. David breathed in and listened, searching for a familiar voice from the mighty wave of sound coming in from the dining room. Blanche’s ringing soprano was heard every now and then in the tide of noise, and he was reassured just enough to make his way into the dining room.
Like a formal faculty meeting, the majority of David’s colleagues were gathered together around the cherry wood table. Sturdy, appearing to be solid all the way through, the table was in the center of the room, serving as the main visual piece. Hard labor went into the table, and carvings along the edge begged to be examined. David walked up to the table and examined one of the engravings along its side, ignoring the conversation that had stopped at his approach. He saw the little ships along the edges, each one with full mast and French flag waving in the eternal wind. The imagined waves leapt high, but the ship pressed on, the sharp front end cutting into the sea water with swift determination. The design encircled the top of the table, a border about six centimeters thick.
The guests were looking at him. David knew they were waiting for him to speak, so he did. “Good evening. How are all of you?” he asked, turning specifically to Blanche.
Blanche shook her head as mother does when her child says some material from a dirty joke in a crowd of people who are accustomed to making them. “David, we’re so glad you’re here. What in the devil are you doing?”
“I’m investigating this table. It’s so interesting I had to bypass you all, seeing as we work together everyday. Wow, I hope that doesn’t sound rude because, by any stretch of the imagination, I really do enjoy your presence. Please, believe that.”
David righted himself. “How are all of you?” he asked, this time facing the rest of the group and brandishing a smile.
The guests around Blanche returned his smile with the same laborious air as Mme. Legrand. A soft rumble of replies drifted to his ears, each sounding dead and disinterested compared to what he heard while still outside the door.
Monsieur Legrand was seated at the head of the table, his plump red face taking on an orange hue under the dim lighting from candles and shawl-covered lamps. He held a fork in his hand, gesturing, stabbing the air to emphasize words that in print would have been italicized. As he was about to reach his crescendo, waving his utensil about like a baton, he stopped to pay attention to the conversation between Blanche and David, and, slightly intrigued, he let it continue for as long as he could without interjecting his input.
Monsieur Legrand heaved himself up from his seat and took David’s hand in his, giving it a clammy squeeze. “David,” he began, “what a pleasure it is to have you here.”
“Thank you for you and your wife’s invitation, sir.”
“Please, none of that ‘sir’ business,” Monsieur Legrand replied with a toss of his left hand, which still contained the fork. “This is my dinner, and I don’t allow such formalities. You’re a guest, and I want you to feel right at home.”
David unclasped Monsieur Legrand’s hand. After a second, Monsieur Legrand did the same, eyeing the unusual contrast between David’s dark skin and his ruddy complexion. Monsieur Legrand ushered his guest to his seat, which, to David’s relief, was across from Blanche and between two colleagues with whom he was fairly well acquainted.
Monsieur Legrand reclaimed his seat at the head of the table. He picked up where he had left off in his story, and David tried not to laugh as he watched Blanche silently groan, resting her blonde head in her palm and leaning slightly to her left.
“So,” continued Monsieur Legrand, picking up his fork and leading the orchestra onward, “have any of you heard about what’s been going on in the United States? Oh, pick up the paper, mes amis, every now and then. Keep your heads out of academia and investigate the world around you with vigor.”
“And what exactly are we going to find in these papers of yours?” a voice asked near the end of the table.
“All sorts of things!” exclaimed Monsieur Legrand, not realizing the mocking nature of the question. “For one,” he began, tapping his fork against the air, “did you know that in the southern region of America, there are riots going on there? People running through the streets like mad, waving signs and bombing buildings, breaking windows and you know the women aren’t safe! Complete anarchy!”
Blanche looked at David, catching his eye. She raised an eyebrow in interest, and David tried his best to conceal a smile.
“Oh, why do you ask are they running about? America claims to be the most democratic and ideal country in the world. They say that they’re the ‘land of the free and the home of the brave’. Well, it’s because they’re so unequal that they can’t get anything accomplished. Les gens de couleur are upset because they’re being treated like les citoyens de deuxième classe. They can’t eat with les blanchs, they have to sit in the back of everything, and they can’t even get served in a restaurant unless they come in the back door.” Monsieur Legrand’s face, to David’s surprise, became even more crimson in his emotion.
Monsieur Legrand looked around the table to his guest. “Can you believe such a thing? A nation in this century being so unfair to its people becau of the color of their skin. Why, David, you should be glad you’re here i France instead of that dreadful America. You wouldn’t even have a chance to excel upon leaving that ghastly Nigeria of yours.”
“Actually,” David replied, trying to smile through this latest insult, “I’m from Senegal.”
“That’s right! Senegal, one of those exotic places in Afrique. You told me that before, didn’t you? My, young man, it’s a good thing indeed you’re here in France with compassionate and civilized people like us instead of those unfortunate savages.” Monsieur Legrand looked around the table where he was greeted with people nodding their heads in agreement, including, to David’s chagrin, Blanche. Monsieur Legrand put his fork down. “Karen, dear, where is the food?” he yelled towards the kitchen. “The guests and I are famished.”
“Beulah will bring it in shortly,” Karen called from the kitchen, the lilt of the housewife engrained in her voice.
Within moments, the swinging door to the kitchen opened, and out came a large black woman, pushing her way through with her back and hips, balancing a tray of silver in her hands. She entered the room, dressed in the standard black uniform with white apron, hair pinned nicely under her starched cap. Once through, the woman stood by the door and awaited instruction.
Monsieur Legrand gestured his fork towards her. “Everyone, this is Beulah, the best colored maid in all of France.” Beulah looked up briefly, gave a slight smile, and began to serve those at the table. She stopped by Legrand first, depositing some dishes in front of him. With everyone engrossed in private conversation, David was the only one who saw Legrand lightly grasp Beulah’s backside as she stepped away to serve the first guest. Her face remained blank, as if the contact was against some inanimate object, not the hand of her employer, not in front of a group, and not as she attempted to work.
She went around the table, depositing dishes as each one she served ignored her presence, foregoing thank you and please for the more tantalizing option of future classroom lovemaking if all went well tonight. Women and men were in languid positions, consciously elongating their necks, moving deft and nervous fingers across the table linen, grasping like the antenna of roaches for some pungent sweet. Beulah went around them, pushing with her sturdy build and rhythmic hips through the clouds of superficiality and empty pleasantries, serving those who would choke in their haste to leave the dinner and head straight for their respective dens for a night of rushed pleasure.
Beulah went beside David. She laid down the dish in front of him and lifted the engraved silver top from the platter. On the platter lay a roasted duck, eyelids closed and wrinkled over the shriveled eyes that had burst during cooking. The body glistened a golden brown from the marinade, but was charred for flavor slightly on its stomach. The legs pushed straight up, almost as if in flight, and the wings that once took the bird to extraordinary heights now lay baked against its side, slightly torn at the connection point and stiff everywhere else along the wing.
“C’est tres bon,” said the woman, holding David’s gaze with her black eyes. “I made sure to prepare it especially for you.” Only then, after glancing around the table, did David realize his plate was different from everyone else’s.
Beulah walked away, finished her serving, and sauntered back into the kitchen, making a noticeable arc out of the path of Monsieur Legrand. Her eyes now straight ahead, no longer on the floor, she pushed open the door with her right hand, causing it to swing back with distinct force. Before the door closed all the way, David could see Karen look up with marked surprise as she stood in the corner in her finery, flipping a cigarette into the sink.
The dinner continued, filled with Monsieur Legrand’s decrees of French civility and David constant feeling of uneasiness. As the dinner came to a conclusion, David grabbed his coat and excused himself first, making sure to thank Karen and Monsieur Legrand for their hospitality, and sidestepping Blanche on his way out into the humid French air. The wetness slapped him across his face while he sped hurriedly down the hill he had treaded only a few hours ago.
As the first star enchanted the earth, David stopped inside a local café, breathing heavily. The waitress looked at him with concern in her eyes as David made his way to a table in the back, easing gingerly into the seat. He sat breathing for a few moments; he couldn’t seem to stop the blood from pounding in his head like a drum. The breath kept escaping him — in and out, in and out, running away from his lungs, robbing him of his voice and his ability to think outside the panic of not being able to breathe the elusive in and out.
The waitress came up to him. Thin and dark as the approaching night, she placed a menu on the table, concern marking her face, causing her full lips to purse and the usually sassy expression to vanish. She touched him lightly on his heaving shoulder, silently coaxing him to look up at her, to look into those dark brown eyes that mirrored so perfectly his own.
“Sucre, what has got you in such a state?” she asked, gently stroking the curls of his hair.
David continued to gasp for a few moments. When he had enough air to speak, he gazed wearily up into the waitresses face, noticing her full lips, her high cheekbones, the broadness of her nose, and that skin. That ebony skin.
“She was black — d’Afrique — just like me,” David replied. “Just like me.”