DN15

 On An Evening at the Cinema -- Japan & Georgia

[note dated, but probably 1943 or 1944]

For the Man it had been a hard day at University Hill. Not a long day that one could put his hands upon and say "this is the trouble," but a day in which a gnawing uneasiness, dissatisfaction and bitterness merged in one soft rankling bitterness. For the life of him he could not put his finger upon the main cause of it all. 

And the feeling did not lose itself when the Brown Girl called him and apologized for some silly tiff that they had had during the morning. She had said that she was not going to see him that night--that she was going to the theater, and finally ended by asking him if he wanted to go too. She had promised to buy some things from Solari's so that he could have something to eat while in the theater. She said a sandwich. He said no that it would be bad taste to eat a sandwich while in the theater, but that she could get him something to eat when they got home and also a muffin or two to eat while in the theater. This he planned upon eating surreptitiously.

He was at University Place ahead of time. He loitered at Silver's Book Store, looking over the offerings in the show window. All sorts of books. Among them highly featured was "This is My Best," the book from which Brown Girl had been reading a poem by Archibald MacLeish the night before. There was a beautiful and ingenious display of a "Tree Grown in Brooklyn," and over in the other side of the case was "Strange Fruit," and "Black Boy." 

Yeh, they featured "Black Boy" alone with the others. That was something for Silver's where a clerk had shown some reluctance to give the proper respect to the Lawrences.  

He [Christian} looked and then passed on, thinking that Brown Girl might be waiting for him in the sort of a alleyway by which Negroes had to go up to the seats in the balcony. She was not there, and while he hesitated, she came up University Place, walking that slightly knock-kneed, walk that she had. He turned and deliberately compared her with two white women in the rear of her. Not bad as a comparison, he thought. Then they went inside.

God Is My Co-Pilot, was the name of the picture. But he was sick of the picture when he took his seat at the part of it where the American Japanese called the flying opponent a Yank and the aviator answered back that he was not a Yank--that he was from Georgia. Gosh he [Christian} knew that he would not like the picture if anybody in it was from Georgia and boasted about it.

Aw, hell, why didn't them fool Japanese stay out of this war and let it be a white man's war. The slant-eyed bastards. What good did it do them? Boy, they had the one golden chance to lower forever and collectively the white man's pride, but no, they must try to build up a world on the same snobbery that the white man had built up his. Boy, they were dumb. 

When at last the Georgian sent the Japanese plane roaring to earth in flames, his feelings were of a mixed sort. He would have preferred it had they not consigned the Japanese to death. This was a race war, and it was going to breed untold harm he thought. He came out in a growing grouch that walking with the Brown Girl did nothing to erase. There were no answers to anything--at least there seemed to be none at times. He and Brown Girl walked slowly home.

<<<---Previous                                            Next--16->>