Summary
On 19 December 1949, a little more than one year into his stay in Paris, Baldwin was arrested by French police for being a receiver of stolen goods. He spent eight days in prison before being released. This essay tells the story of what Baldwin ironically calls his “Great Adventure.”
In this period, Baldwin was staying in a dark, cold, ugly hotel. Because he could not write in his room, he spent all his time in cafes drinking coffee and alcohol. During one of these days at the cafe, he was found by an acquaintance from New York. This fellow New Yorker complained about his terribly expensive hotel and asked Baldwin to arrange a room for him in his own hotel. Little did he know that this friend was planning to seek revenge on the owners of his old hotel. This act of revenge ended up leading them both into disaster.
The disasters of Baldwin’s life in Paris, he recounts, began with the fact that he came to the city with only 40 dollars, no savings, and little knowledge of French. He writes that French culture may be impressive, but "no people come into possession of a culture without having paid a heavy price for it." The price for the French is rigidity. For example, the country’s institutions are notoriously slow and difficult to manage.
Baldwin continues with the story, describing how his New Yorker friend brought with him a bedsheet from his old hotel. As Baldwin’s own bedsheets were dirty, he used his friend’s and put his own sheets outside in the hopes that the hotel staff would finally wash them. Yet one day when Baldwin is feeling low about having little money and thus not being able to see very many friends in the city, he decides to visit his fellow American in the other room. There he finds two French policemen who eventually ask to see Baldwin’s room. There they find what they were looking for: the bedsheet embroidered with the name of the hotel. Both Baldwin and his friend are put under arrest.
Baldwin tries to get answers from the police as to where they are being taken and how long the process will last, but the answers given are vague. The criminal system in France is slow, appointments and court dates are continually postponed, and one can never find the person one is looking for in their office. Baldwin compares the situation here in this strange country to the situation back home, finding that though he does not trust the process in either country at least in the US he knows how to read the intentions of the people with power over him. He does learn that here his identity as an American is perhaps more important than the fact of his being black.
Baldwin and his friend are interrogated, taken to a basement dungeon, and from there loaded into a police van to another cell. Eventually, the two are separated and he is sent a prison cell with an open pit for a toilet in the middle and straw mats to sleep on. Baldwin is still wondering when he will finally get out and have a real meal, for all they have in the cell is old bread, runny potato soup, and coffee. His cellmates are either very old, young criminals, or North Africans.
Finally, Baldwin is taken to court, but the proceedings are postponed because there is no translator present. He realizes that he will be stuck here until after Christmas. When one of his cellmates, a “petty-larceny man,” is about to be released, he asks Baldwin if he can do anything for him in the outside world. He asks the man to phone an attorney friend of his, who comes to reassure him the next day.
On December 28th, Baldwin is again taken to court and the charges are finally dropped. Yet he leaves with serious doubts about the injustices of the legal system in France, in the US, and all over the world.
Analysis
The story of Baldwin’s arrest in Paris reads like a dark comedy. Baldwin makes light of his terrible experience while also drawing important insights from it. One moment when this essay overlaps with the larger themes in the book is Baldwin’s confusion about what exactly the authorities want from him and how they see him. He writes that when white Americans look at him, he has learned to guess what it is they see and what they want. These experiences, similar to the “conditioning” described in “Encounter on the Seine,” leads him to move “into every crucial situation with the deadly and rather desperate advantages of bitterly accumulated perception, of pride and contempt.” The strange thing about being in France is that this “awful sword and shield” does not work in the same way in France. Yet the experience there leads him to discover that he was doing violence to himself and it was this that pushed him out of New York.
Though the arrest leads Baldwin to reflect on how race functions differently in different societies, the laughter he hears in the courtroom when his case is dismissed makes him realize that justice functions similarly everywhere. He writes that “this laughter is the laughter of those who consider themselves to be at a safe remove from all the wretched, for whom the pain of the living is not real.” He recognizes this laughter from his “native land” and had hoped to discover a place where it could not be heard. Yet he realizes that “this laughter is universal and never can be stilled.” This thought frightens and depresses him.
