The Fugitivities, стр. 34
He had always wanted a reason to get out of the Bronx and see how things looked from somewhere else. Why not go to Haiti? As it happened, the island was in the news and the news wasn’t good. He followed the coverage but couldn’t understand enough of the politics to make sense of why there was so much chaos. US soldiers were leaping out of choppers and running through Port-au-Prince like they were still in Vietnam. It wasn’t a time to visit. From his language class he learned that, if he paid a fee, he could enroll for a semester as a foreign student at the Sorbonne, in Paris. Obviously, he had the money. And the destination was romantic, an old ideal. It was where the Negro Caravan stopped on its voyage through the desert wilderness. He knew James Baldwin had gone there, Richard Wright, and others. Why couldn’t he?
—
His first days in France were unpleasant and lonely, Nathaniel said. Perhaps, in retrospect, the loneliest days of his life. His classes had not yet begun, and in that first month he mostly encountered American tourists as he made pilgrimage stops at the city’s famous monuments and museums. The Parisians were apparently elsewhere. Maybe on one of the far-flung, turquoise-ringed possessions advertised in the Métro that promised all-inclusive packages and discount airfare. The Americans dressed like they were going to the mall. He noticed that waiters, bus drivers, ticket booth operators, and strangers assumed that he was African. They always changed their expression when they heard his accent. Their faces brightened and relaxed as if a stink was gone. Apparently, in Paris his blackness was an African problem. They weren’t afraid he was a criminal; they were afraid he was colonial. Never in his life could he have imagined constantly meeting people who were relieved to discover that he was a nigger.
Nathaniel had taken up residence in a small but comfortable room in a three-star hotel on the rue de Rivoli. He wanted to live in style, to have a place that did justice to his vision, or, since he had never before really entertained fantasies of living in Europe, to what he thought his friends and family back home would imagine when they pictured him living abroad in Paris. The image relayed back home and the need to control and manage it was important to him, even if it was unpleasant to think of it that way.
Still, living detached left him prey to certain doubts that had never crept to the forefront of his mind before. He thought of his mother often. Some days he woke alone, consumed with the fear that he was becoming ill. It was a new experience. Although he had suffered injuries, even a serious injury to his hamstring that the doctors thought might keep him out of the game, he had almost always enjoyed optimal health. He took pride in his physical form, in those indomitable qualities that he deployed at will to shake his adversaries. He had always been strong. But ailment was not the same thing as injury.
The only remedy he knew was the rope. He had used the same jump rope since he was sixteen years old. He got it from the manager of a boxing club that no longer existed, a dank, funky old place near the ballpark that was always incensed with a combination of cigar smoke, Pakistani leather, and freshly spilled sweat. People said Joe Louis had practiced there, and Sugar Ray too. There were two sounds that attracted young Nate as boy on the streets. The whap of gloves rapping on the bags, and the crisp, metallic snap of skipping rope. Before long, he and his rope were virtually inseparable, his nirvana instrumental. Once he got started, he could keep time like a Rolex.
—
He never would have guessed his training would come in handy in Paris, but it did, one memorable day in September. After his last class of the day, he had tried to take the RER B, which he understood to be like an express train, back to his apartment. But he had ended up taking it in the wrong direction. He didn’t realize his mistake until the train was pulling out of the Port Royal station, outbound towards the periphery. A crew had boarded at Port Royal and immediately headed for the far end of the carriage where he was sitting. One was black, three others Arab, the last one possibly Arab or white, it was hard to tell. They were obviously riled up, perhaps not unusually rowdy, but deliberately imposing on the other passengers. Just as the train pulled out of the following station, one of the posse members said something to a young woman who was facing away from them. After a moment the crew burst out laughing, and the same guy got up and stood over her.
There was time for Nathaniel to evaluate the situation. He was outnumbered, but he was also older and stronger than any of them individually by the looks of it. And he was black. Now the same kid was shouting at the woman, obviously telling her to answer him while she sat frozen and looking straight ahead. Furious at her defiance, the kid raised his hand to her, not with much force—more like a humiliating pat on the cheek. He was laughing. Instantly, she threw her arm up and hit him back. Stunned, he came back across her face, hard enough this time that her head