Banjo

Banjo

Banjo anchors a floating brotherhood of beach boys scraping meals off docked ships and coins off bistro floors, and his music briefly turns their hunger into something like art. Latnah keeps a pillow ready and a ten-franc note in reach, yet he refuses to bury his head under any woman's skirt, insisting easy come, easy go. His refusal to fight over trampled porridge marks the pride that separates him from the pack and sets the terms of his drifting.

Latnah

Latnah entered the vagabond circle by speaking up for hungry men to a ship's mate, and she has been provisioning and protecting them ever since. She takes up collections after Banjo plays, keeps a pillow ready at her place, and slips the boys onto her rooftop box when the mistral bites. Banjo's easy-come-easy-go indifference toward her sharpens the question of what loyalty costs in the Ditch.

Malty Avis

Malty made it easy for the gang to accept Latnah, and his gentle warmth contrasts with Banjo's careless pride. On the breakwater he tells Banjo plainly that some men never know when they've got a good thing, and Banjo laughs him off with easy come, easy go. His steady, unshowy loyalty gives the group its moral center and quietly measures what Banjo keeps refusing.

Goosey

Goosey plays solo flute in Banjo's orchestra and blows the mouth of it clean between tunes, but illness has thinned him to a skeleton in a loose brown suit. He returns from the hospital careful and retired, lectured by the consul for quitting his ship. It is Goosey who brings word that Bugsy lies sick in a lodging-house, pulling the gang back toward the alleys they thought they'd left.

Bugsy

Bugsy leads the boys dancing with a bird-hopping step that turns a bistro floor into something startlingly fresh, and he seizes the porridge-pan brawl to settle an old grudge against a boy from Benin. His wiry grace and his readiness to strike sit side by side, making him both the orchestra's best showman and its loosest fuse. When he falls ill in a back alley, his refusal of the hospital becomes a test of the gang's nerve.

Taloufa

Taloufa believes British intelligence framed Marcus Garvey, and he carries the movement's talk into Banjo's orchestra without ever quite committing to sail home. He loves sensuous, heady music and works easily alongside Banjo, who defers the political questions to Ray. His dry remark that the Chinese are the only real sweetbacks in the Ditch frames the brutal scene he and Banjo witness in the alley.