This evening no different from others. He knows where he is by the quality of the light, the shape of the pale sheet of mirror behind the bar. Waterside bar, early evening sunlight falling through the open door – there are no windows. The light is broken, disturbed by movements of bodies. The interior of the bar is dark, he can see nothing there – he always sits facing the light. Between himself and the door shapes loom and melt. He knows that he is a licensed clown for the sailors, dockers, whores, who use this place. He knows that he is alone.
The drink he pays for himself, as long as he can, from the day’s yield of dimes, hoarding the coins together on the counter. When he runs out of money he might start to sing, snatch of some old slave song, in a high, cracked voice. Frail eyelids over ruined eyes, head trembling a little, yearning towards the light. The Paradise Nigger is dying, but he never looks any different; no more damage can show on his face.
He talks to anyone that he senses to be close; or to no one. Sometimes one of the customers will set him off, winking round at the others: ‘Come on, old Sawdust, what’s the news from paradise?’
‘Cause you ain’t seen it you don’t believe. Doubtin’ Thomas had to see the Lord wounds. But this nigger seen it. An’ they makes bellerin’ sounds an’ blow up water an’ got birds live inside they mouth, eat the pickin’s of they teeth, that’s ’nough food fo’ them birds, don’ need nuthin more. No sir! Dragon flies you heerd tell of. Please inform this nigger if you ain’t never heerd tell of dragon flies. Well, these dragon birds.’
He pauses for a moment, then says with sudden scorn, ‘I hear you laughin’. Yeah, you pissin’ youselves.’
‘You keep civil or I got to show you the door,’ the barkeeper says.
The mulatto lowers his head, an old reflex of submission. ‘Heart’s delight,’ he says, somewhere between a groan and a sigh. Some accidental gleam falls on the whitish sheaths of his eyes. He talks on, but to himself now, about the birds in the dragon’s mouth, and with rum they grow increasingly marvellous. Other birds too, white herons rising on slow wings, black snake-birds, and a sea of grass brimming and winking with flood-water. ‘Red-colour fish in them pool,’ he says, ‘an’ leather-shell turtle. I kin see it now. It never snowed nor frosted neether. I kin see the clouds, kinda like mist but then blue back of it. We come off a ship. That place nobody boss man. All the people live together friendly, say good-mornin’, good-evenin’, white or black don’ make no diff’rence …’
Someone puts a drink in his hand and he drinks and goes on talking, muttering, after they have stopped listening, when no one could have heard anyway because of the noise in the place, voices or music of a fiddle, he chokes himself up with a sudden crazy spasm of laughter, soft choking laughter that seizes his throat. ‘My poppa tell me dat, one time. He show me in a book. Long time ago now.’ Sparse tears run from his eyes. His mind fills with hyperbole, visions fed with hunger and rum, glowing moons, gilded palmettos, clouds pierced with splinters of sunshine. And faces, black and white, belonging to the time of the dragons. ‘I allus thought I goin’ to git back but I never did. You ain’t never goin’ now, nigger. Ah, Jesus.’
Sometimes, with the rum, he would get dogged about something, quarrelsome even. Or he would get tearful and wild. One way or another he would be thrown out sooner or later. This evening it is stray words of a woman heard earlier that get inflamed in his mind.
‘Why you say that? I warn’t born on no plantation. I ain’t a Guinea nigger neether. ’Cause I yaller, don’ mean my fadder a slave-driver neether. My father a doctor. I born in a paradise place. You hear me? You hear me there?’
He is put out into the alley; not very roughly, but he falls, allows himself to fall, to break the hold on his arm. So he sprawls there in the dark, the harmonica dangling round his neck, while his rage fades and his mind grows blank as his eyes. Some time later, on this particular evening, he limps and fumbles his way to the kitchen of the Cupola, where Big Suzanne presides.
Indigo evening of summer, he sees stars floating and dilating in it. Big red pansies bloom and die on Suzanne’s vast hips as she moves below the lamp. Standing unsteady in the doorway, he confides in her massive and contemptuous kindness.
‘I give them a piece of my mind.’
‘Sure,’ she says. ‘Same as every night. You been rollin’ around again, ain’t you? They’s some meat gravy if you wants it.’
‘We come on a ship,’ he says. ‘Not here.’
‘Don’t I know it? Here, take some of this here biscuit, mop it up with.’
‘Heart’s delight,’ he sighs, standing in the doorway with his plate.
Her sweating face smiles over at him. ‘That a fine name for a ship.’