Chapter 14 Chapter Eleven

The Queen Mary set sail exactly at twelve noon. Dock attendants said they had never seen so many things happen to the Kuna ship on its way out. Two tugboats that were leading the ship slowly off shore collided; a brawny sailor passed out drunk; and the captain of one of the tugboats choked on his own dentures. Two stout businessmen celebrating their wives' departure, together with a fat lady who had come to see her daughter off, fell into the dock, and the Mary had to turn back and wait for them to be picked up. The dock police, who tried to keep the crowd behind the cordon, were surrounded.Clashes ensued; some were trampled by the crowd.

There were 1,500 passengers on board, and 5,000 people saw them off at the pier.With the whistle of the tugboat, the roar of command and order, and the farewell of six thousand and five hundred throats, the combined noise is enough to wake the dead from their graves. Authorities said it was all due to overheating.The threat of a thunderstorm had been lifted, and the sun was beating down mercilessly from the cloudless sky. In the midst of this chaos, no one gave Pink Boy a second glance.There is a cosmopolitan atmosphere here, and people's thoughts are only focused on distant people and places.Those who saw him thought he was either an African statesman, a Cuban revolutionary, a Brazilian snake charmer, or just an ordinary Harlem shoeshine boy.

Pinkie is looking for that suitcase. While everyone's attention was on the mess on the pier, he looked over the freight piles and stared straight at the warehouse at the end of the pier. A guard turned back and caught him at the scene. "What are you doing here, boy? You know, it's none of your business here." "I'm looking for Joey," Pinkie said, ducking his head like an idiot to dispel the guard's suspicions. Like all blacks, Pinky knew that if he acted stupid enough, most white people would just think of him as a harmless idiot. The guard stared at Pink Boy, holding back a smile.

Pinkie was sweating, leaving a large purple stain where the dye had passed, from the back of the red silk jersey bodysuit, down the front, under the armpits, to the hips of the brown beach pants.Sweat slid off his face and collected in the knot of his hat strap under his chin, before dripping onto the floor. "Who is Joey?" the guard asked. "Joy the porter. You know Joy, don't you?" "Go upstairs to the passenger luggage storage, the porters don't work here," said the guard. "Okay, sir." After Pink Boy finished speaking, he shuffled away.

After a while, another guard came and joined the work.The previous guard told his colleague, "See that nigger over there?" He pointed to Pinkie. "The one with the white cap and the red tights going up the stairs." The second guard followed the prestige. "He's bleeding ink," said the first guard. The second guard laughed. "I mean it," said the first guard, "look at the ground over there, where he's sweating." The second guard grinned in disbelief as he stared at the purple spots on the gray concrete floor. The first guard said angrily: "You don't believe it? Why don't you go and see for yourself?"

The second guard nodded in agreement. The first guard was relieved. "I've heard niggers sweat like ink," he said, "but that's the first time I've seen it." As soon as Pink Boy approached the baggage area waiting to board the ship, he saw the suitcase.All the luggage around it was on board, and it stood alone. He didn't go near it, as if he was content just to see it. The next step is to find the African. He chose a position behind the concrete jetty below the railway support rails, monitoring the people leaving the dock.It wasn't hard to spot him in a crowd, he stood out like a fly in skim milk, he thought.

But he gave up after an hour.If the African had come to see Gus and Jeanne off, he would have left by this time. He decided to go to the residential area of ​​the city and ask the African landlady for clarification.If the African is really not found, then I will be arrested holding the suitcase. Africans rented houses between 145th Street and Eighth Avenue.The trouble is how to get there safely without being caught by the police.He suddenly remembered that he was becoming more and more conspicuous, because the dye soaked all over his clothes.In addition, he only had fifteen cents on him, and even if he found a taxi driver who was willing to pick him up, he couldn't get a ride.

Just as he was thinking about this point over and over, an old man with a sandwich advertising billboard on his chest and back was slowly shuffling along the sidewalk opposite the pier, staring longingly at every bar he passed.This morning, due to the effects of the four powerful stimulants in his blood, Pink Boy's mind was exceptionally clear and alert. He read the words on the advertising billboards dangling lengthwise over the old man's shoulders: "Bursky Sideshow in Jersey City, fifty beautiful girls, ten strippers, six dynamic comedians, The best show in the world."Beneath a witty passage, it reads in red chalk: "Better than Picasso".

Pink Boy looked at the old man. He was wearing a tattered straw hat, a red bulbous nose, and a white beard that hadn't been shaved for two days. The baggy and worn-out trousers with folded trousers were exposed under the advertising billboard, and the worn-out shoes were One sole has come loose.He thought he was a bum from around Hoboken. He cut across the driveway and approached the old homeless man. "Is what everyone says true?" he asked slowly, shuffling like a black man on good terms with whites. "I just came here from Mississippi and I wondered if what they said was true."

The old man looked up at him with wet eyes. "Is something true, brother?" he said drunkenly. Pinkie licked his purple lips with his big pink tongue. "It's the white women who perform naked, really?" The old tramp grinned, showing a pair of dirty teeth. "Nude!" he said hoarsely. "Not only that, they even shave their hair." "I wish I could see it for myself," said Pinky. This gave the tramp an idea.He spends his morning touting business among truckers and longshoremen with this sandwich billboard on him, and even the bartender won't let him in.

"You hold this billboard for me first, I'll go in and find a friend. I'll see if I can help you a little," he promised. "Okay," said Pinkie, and helped the old homeless man remove the billboard from his head. The old bum runs to the nearest bar and disappears into it.Pink Boy left in the opposite direction, turned at the first corner and out of sight of the opponent.Then he stopped and put the billboard on his body.The taut billboard jutted out from the front and back, like some sort of fancy swimming float, but he figured that would provide some cover.He walked generously to Columbus Circle to catch the Broadway subway. He got out between 145th Street and Lenox Avenue.As soon as he came out of the subway ticket booth, he took off the sandwich advertising billboard.Now that he's in Harlem, he doesn't need this thing anymore. He walked to Eighth Avenue, ready to enter through the side door of the Silver Moon Bar. "Shh, shhh." Someone said from the entrance next door. He looked around and saw a black woman beckoning him over.He stepped forward to see what she was going to do. "Don't go in," she warned him, "there are two white policemen in there." She didn't know him, but there was a strong sense of solidarity among blacks in Harlem against the white police; as soon as the white police were around, they would immediately warn others that it didn't matter who was wanted. He looked around for the police car, his nerves tensed, and he tried to leave. "They were guys in plain clothes," she elaborated. "Sneaked in in those two unassuming Fords." He glanced at the parked Ford RV and walked down Eighth Avenue without thanking her. His super calm mind figured it out easily.The only reason two undercover guys were in that tenement at this particular time was because they were looking for Africans.This meant that they had information about Africans, which he did not know. It wasn't until he had walked two blocks that he felt safe enough to go into the bar.At this moment, he remembered that he had no money, so he had to continue down to a friend on 137th Street. Packets of adulterated heroin were given to teenage students. His friend was an old man named Papa Heidi, with leprosy-like white spots on his thick, tanned skin.The dark, small, musty-smelling shop was terribly hot, but Papa Heidi was wearing a thick brown sweater and a black raccoon hat pushed down so low that it touched his smoky black glasses. box up.He stared at Pink Boy with a strange expression on his face. "What do you need, Mike?" he asked suspiciously in a thin falsetto. "What's wrong with you?" Pink Boy said angrily. "Are you blind? Don't you recognize me as Pinkie?" Papa Haidi stared at him through smoke-colored glasses. "You're as ugly as Pinkie," he admitted, "and about the same build. But what are you doing with that skin tone? Did you fall into the blackberry juice?" "I'm dyed. The police are looking for me." "Then get lost," Father Haidi warned. "Are you trying to get me caught?" "No one saw me come in here, and you have confirmed with your own eyes that no one recognized me." Pink Boy retorted. "Hmph, tell me what you want to do, and then get out," Haidi father reluctantly gave in. "According to the color fading on your body, your blue body won't last long." "I just want you to tell Wope to find the African at the corner of 145th and warn him not to come home because the police are looking for him." "Speech!" Father Haidi muttered. "How did he recognize the African?" "This African is very different from the others. He wears a white turban and a four-coloured smock over his trousers." "What did he do?" "He didn't do anything, he was dressed like that the whole time." "I mean, what did he do and why did the police want him?" "How would I know?" Pink Boy muttered irritably, "I just don't want him to be caught." "Another thing, Wope's still in a trance," Heidi said, "so everything looks different to him, and he's likely to stop an old woman and think she's the African. " "I thought you were my friend." Pink Boy said mournfully. The old man looked at his purple-dyed face tangled into a ball, and thought again. "Wop!" he yelled. A charcoal-black boy with a thin body, long oval head, and squinting eyes emerged from the back room.He was wearing a white T-shirt, blue jeans and espadrilles, typical of a black boy his age in Harlem.The only difference is that he has long straight black hair and obsidian eyes with no whites. "What for?" he asked in a gruff voice of displeasure. "You tell him," said Papa Haidi. Pink Boy described it. "What if the police have already caught him?" Wop asked. "Then you just flash and get out of there." "I see," Wop said. "Safety first." "I'll meet you tonight at Sister Bliss's," Pinkie promised, "and if I'm not there, I'll leave ten bucks at St. Uncle's." "Well, it's settled," said Woop, "don't make me have to look around for you." He took out a pair of sunglasses from the pocket of his blue jeans, put them on his face, put his hands in the back pockets of his trousers, opened the door with his feet, and walked into the light. "Don't count on him too much." Father Haidi warned. "I know," Pinkie said, following Wop outside. They left each other in opposite directions.