THE MOHAMMEDANS
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with regret, of the Negroes, "creatures of music and dream,"
who formed a world apart in America. A world of joy and spirit,
a City which one might have opposed, as Lorca had opposed his
gypsies, to the real world in which they violently and tragically
lived. Only they were too numerous and too contemporary, like
most things in this country.... The dusk was coming down swiftly.
For a moment, Simon was distracted by a tiny, two-seater Ford
which pulled up to the curb across the street and disgorged, sur–
prisingly, four people-three women and a squat, long-armed
man whose head was heavily bandaged.
He looked away, and precisely because the thing was so un–
likely allowed himself to hope that these were some of his rich
relatives, come to show him off to one of their friends. They
would come in, polite, mildly amused, and Simon would be intro–
duced as a poet. How happy they were to introduce him as a poet!
How that saved the whole situation! He would carry on a kind
of guerrilla war against them. He would turn to the prettiest
woman and say: "Perhaps I have sold you a pair of shoes down–
town? I am a poet four days of the week. The rest of the time
I sell shoes." He would start a political discussion so that, knowing
the arguments of their side better than they, he might demonstrate
the shallowness of their rather sporty radicalism. Or he would
show them his rooms, painted orange-crates and all, letting them
understand that he much preferred this to their modern apartments.
Outside, the group crossed the street and stood now on the
sidewalk in front of Simon's house-which was, in fact, the only
house left on a block long given over to garages and warehouses.
For all his myopia, Simon could see now that they were Negroes
and that the man wore a sort of terry-cloth towel wrapped about
his head. Half-obscured by the weeds of the lawn, they stood
there immobile, like a fresco of dancers. What did they want?
What were they waiting for? After a while he looked away to
the sunset, now merging downward with the giow that rose from
the other side of the park. Then a dilapidated truck rattled around
the comer and stopped, and Simon realized that these people
were moving into his house.
The idea came easily, without shock, as though his first con–
cern
was, defensively, to recall that he was a man of the spirit
and that
the lwuse was not necessarily his.
The ancestral mansion
