Jules Peterson
A Black shoe-polish manufacturer from Stockholm who tells the police the truth about Abe North's quarrel, and is hunted for it.
Protection from the consequences of somebody else's quarrel, and a start for his formula — a chance in life, as he puts it himself.
The book
At a glance
- Black businessman from Stockholm, in Paris
- Shoe polish — a failed manufacturer with a formula he refused to sell
- Legal witness to the Montparnasse dispute involving Abe North
- A business in Versailles, and two hundred francs on account
- The Paris chapters, in the corridor and suite of the Divers' hotel
Who they are in the book
Spoiler-freePeterson comes into the book looking for Abe North, having already been round all the American bars and hotels in Paris. Abe introduces him as Mr. Peterson of Stockholm — a small, respectable man, and a legal witness to the early-morning dispute in Montparnasse that Abe has turned into what Abe himself cheerfully calls a race riot. Peterson gave a truthful account. Abe then too hastily identified the wrong man to the police, and the people injured by that misidentification are looking less for Abe than for Peterson.
He arrives frightened, with his business in a box. In Stockholm he had failed as a small manufacturer of shoe polish and now owns only his formula and enough trade tools to fill a small case; he says his methods are simple and his formula so good that he was driven out of Stockholm, ruined, because he would not sell it. Abe has promised in the early hours to set him up in Versailles, where Abe's former chauffeur is a shoemaker, and has handed him two hundred francs on account. What Peterson asks for, in his own words, is only a chance in life.
How the book draws them
- Mr. Peterson of StockholmAbe's introduction, and the correct one. On the telephone earlier, drunk, Abe had described him as a Negro from Copenhagen who makes shoe polish — the sort of error nobody but Peterson pays for.
- The boxHis entire enterprise is portable: a formula and enough tools to fill a small case. He carries it into the Divers' suite with him.
- The friendly witnessThe book's own comparison is that he is in the position of the friendly Indian who had helped a white man. Cooperating is what put him in danger.
- DelicacyTold to wait while the others discuss what to do, he offers to withdraw to the hall, observing that it is perhaps hard to discuss his problems in front of him, and leaves after a short travesty of a French bow.
- Politely dismissedDick regards him politely; interest forms and dissolves; he turns to Abe and suggests Abe go to bed and see Mr. Peterson once he is straight. Abe protests that Dick does not appreciate the mess Peterson is in.
- Rosemary's distasteShe listens to the whole account with distaste, and the narration notes that appreciating its grotesquerie would require a more robust sense of humour than hers.
He is . Dick's response is immediate and competent and entirely about something else: he — which is the moment Rosemary hears through the door what Violet McKisco saw at the Villa Diana.
It is the hardest judgement the novel passes on the Divers' world, and it passes it without comment. Peterson's life is treated as expendable by the men who kill him and then as an inconvenience by the people who survive him. The one thing he asked for was a chance in life; what he gets is a competent man moving him twice.