The End of a Primitive (12 page)

Once they had gone together to a chicken shack in the black belt, hot fried chicken-in-the-basket. She adored every instant with his beautiful eyes only for her, and that night, with bottles from the friendly liquor store, it had been a dream of heaven. She had loved him then, and even more when next morning in the kitchen he had said, “God, I’d like to marry you.” And that third morning, after he’d dressed and packed to continue on the journey to California and his wife, he had begged her humbly, “May I have you just once more,” and she’d undressed him and taken him and he’d made a solemn vow to divorce his wife and come back and marry her, and she’d believed and hoped that it would be forever. “I would have married him then,” she thought. And now thinking about it again, having kept it from her thoughts for many years, she closed her eyes and let unconsciousness take her.

And the next moment he was asleep, grinding his teeth like a rat gnawing wood, threshing about and striking out in unconscious fury.

Chapter 6

T
he gold-plated Swiss clock on the nightstand whirred softly, curdling the silence of the small dark room. A woman stirred tentatively on the three-quarter size bed, flung a heavy bare arm searchingly across the faded blue sheet. It encountered a nude human body, and the panic that had begun to well up inside of her abruptly subsided. Dave? she wondered, and cracked a bleary eye. On the adjacent pillow a fuzzy round object, like a frizzled coconut, black in the dim light, showed faintly in her thin scope of vision. Jesse! she remembered. She closed her eyes and, recalling his abject acceptance of her atrocious behaviour, felt pleased. “FU make him eat roots,” she resolved and silently kneed him in the back.

“Uh!” he grunted, coming awake as furiously as he’d gone to sleep. His startled gaze searched the dim, cell-like room and, finding everything strange, he felt a shattering of emotion. He was on the verge of leaping up and searching for the light of reason when his hand encountered a nude body beside him in the bed. Peering from bloodshot eyes, he recognized the matted head of Kriss. “Ready to light out and run, eh, son?” he thought, laughing at himself with self-disparagement.

She appeared to be asleep. He moved towards her. “Maybe she won’t awaken,” he thought hopefully. Half laughing, he recalled a burlesque skit of a guy in a hotel room eavesdropping on a honeymoon couple in the next room who were trying, unknown to him, to close an overstuffed suitcase. “No, not that way,” he said as she tried to close it with her hands, “I’ll put it on the floor and you get on top.” The eavesdropper’s ears perked up. But it still wouldn’t close, so she said, “Oh shucks, it won’t fit, you get on top.” The eavesdropper’s ears wagged in a frenzy. But still it wouldn’t close, so he said, “Let’s both get on top.” That’s where the eavesdropper broke down the adjoining door. “
This I gotta see!
” he cried…

But Kriss pushed him viciously and said in a cold dictatorial voice, “Jesse, I’ve got to go to work,” adding viciously, “You don’t have anything to do but hang around some Harlem bar and you can sleep all day.”

“Fine,” he said, and turned over as if to go back to sleep.

“You can’t sleep here!” she said, trying to push him from the bed. “My maid’s coming this morning to clean up,” she lied, then, to infuriate him, she added, “Go back to your wife then, she’ll let you sleep all day. She always has.”

He found the switch for the hall light and went into the bathroom without replying. She had a glimpse of his body before he closed the door, smooth sepia skin, strong back and broad shoulders, his well-formed legs and smooth calves, almost hairless, that could have been a woman’s; and she thought of other women who’d seen him naked in the morning and resented his body bitterly. “He’s five years older than I am,” she thought, indulging in the complicated reasoning of attributing his youthful appearance to the fact that white people, like herself, supported him so he could write a book every four or five years. “If they had to work as hard as I do, they’d all die,” she concluded.

He looked at his greasy reflection in the mirror and thought, “You don’t look a damn bit different, son.” There were five toothbrushes on the rack; to one side on a wall-shelf of glass a box of talcum powder, comb and brush, colognes and perfumes; beside the tub one gray and white bath towel. Inside the medicine cabinet he found two safety razors, a container of blades, many bottles labelled with a doctor’s prescription, a septic pencil and a man’s comb, after-shaving lotion, and the bottle of blue tablets which had the shape of dexedrine but not the colour. “Man, woman and doctor,” he thought, immediately amending it to, “Statue of modern woman standing atop a drugstore, right hand lifting nude male to prophylactic couch, left hand behind back beckoning to hovering figure of doctor in background with two middle fingers crossed.”

When he came from the bathroom she said, as though to a servant, “Jesse! Put on some water for coffee and make some toast.” He went into the sitting room without replying and found his shorts among his other clothes heaped in a pile on the floor. She giggled luxuriously at his silent resentment. “Get the paper from outside the door and turn on the television to Gloucester,” she directed.

“I’ve had it now, little sister, for what it was worth,” he thought, disdaining to reply. After donning underwear, socks, pants and shoes, he went to the kitchen, poured the remnants of the Scotch and bourbon into a water tumbler, ran it full of water from the tap and drank it down without stopping. On a high shelf beside the stove he noticed an unopened bottle of imported sherry and a half-filled bottle of vermouth. Looking through the refrigerator he found a remnant of grilled steak, a barbecued chicken leg, and two fried crab cakes, all of which he ate greedily without bread.

The liquor took immediate effect and he began to feel good, bubbly with laughter inside, but slightly dazed as if everything, both mental and material, were just a wee bit out of line. “What I prescribe for the world is continuous drunkenness,” he thought, amusedly, as he broke two raw eggs into his highball glass, filled it with milk and drank it down, breaking the egg yolks in his mouth by the pressure of his tongue. “Nothing like a good diet,” he thought—“Man eats seed of chicken to replenish own seed to give to chick—
Robinson.
”

“Jesse!” He heard Kriss call to him from the bedroom.

He felt very indulgent toward her now. Returning to the bedroom, he turned on the small night light. “Yes, baby.”

“Did you do what I told you to do?” she asked, laughing up at him with childish humour and he knew then she’d done it to annoy him.

He pulled the covers from her and in the soft pink light her nude body resembled one of Van Dyck’s nudes. Sitting slantwise on the bed he kissed her breasts and stomach and when trying to pull her close discovered she was ticklish. He tickled her until she was pink all over and nearly hysterical, then said, “That’s what you get for being so mean,” and left her to get the paper and make the coffee and toast.

She arose and turned on the television to Gloucester before taking the paper to the John to begin her morning ritual. He felt wonderful, no sex drives and almost completely senseless, which was the way he would have loved to feel forever, but he could never let a good glow be, so he went back to the kitchen and drank a water tumbler of the vermouth. It put a sharp sardonic edge on his glow and his thoughts came back, not vivid, but alive, and about ten degrees off the line of conformity.

“Want some eggs, baby?” he called, and getting no reply, went to the bathroom door, “Will you have eggs, chicken—or should I say
do
you have eggs.”

“You can poach me an egg on toast.” She was taking a cold water douche and brushing her teeth at the same time and her voice was muffled. “You’ll find them in the icebox. I’m not laying this morning,” she added with double-entendre.

He was curious but he didn’t go in. “Ought to do an article for
Cosmopolitan
on Woman in Bathroom in Morning—no, no. Profile of Woman at Dawn, for the
New Yorker
,” he was thinking, as he returned to the kitchen, fried six slices of bacon and two eggs, poached one egg in vinegared water that came out frayed and uninteresting looking, which he put on a slice of dry, unbuttered toast and served it with a cup of black coffee.

“Your breakfast is ready!” he called, then made himself four well-buttered slices of toast, brought his own bacon and eggs to the table and began eating.

He had neglected to turn up the volume of the television and was surprised to look up and find the busts of a man and a chimpanzee on the screen. “Good God! The Russians are here,” he called to Kriss and she came from the John to see the excitement.

“Oy, you must hear this, he’s the cutest thing,” she said and hastened to turn up the sound.

“Which one?” he muttered, but she was acting so silly, backing from the room with her hands covering her loins, that he forgot the crack in his amazement. “Now I know her secret,” he thought with drunken cleverness, “She’s chimp-shy!”

She slipped into a robe and pulled the table in front of the archway so both of them could see, then sat on the stool beside him and said with giggling anticipation, “He says the most fantastic things.”

He looked up again at the two grimacing faces and after listening for a moment realized that the man was interviewing the chimp.

“Well, what will happen after that?” Gloucester asked the chimpanzee with a condescending smirk.

“On July 1 responsible officials of the United States will charge that slave labour exists in Russia on a scope unknown in the history of man,” the chimpanzee replied grinningly.

“Not a Russian after all” Jesse thought. “Not even an apeman. Must be a man-man.”

“That’s no news,” Gloucester protested. “You’re supposed to forecast news events.”

“All right then,” the chimpanzee replied. “On September 8 a woman named Bella V. Dodd will testify before a Senate Internal Security subcommittee in New York City that there are fifteen hundred Communist party members teaching in schools throughout the nation. And—”

“Who cares?” Gloucester interrupted rudely.“People are always testifying—”

“Wait! Wait!” the chimpanzee said. “Following which the New York City Board of Education will declare that ex-communists who admit party membership will not lose their teaching positions if they are genuinely repentant.” The chimpanzee looked at Gloucester expectantly. “Doesn’t that sound like wonderful doctrine?”

“Get on with the facts and forget the doctrine,” Gloucester snarled angrily.

“Just what I was saying, facts not fancy,” the chimpanzee murmured slyly.

“On May 21 fascist Spain will be admitted to UNESCO. On June 2 Secretary Trygve Lie will deny that the U.N. is a communist nest. On July 13 U.S. generals on an inspection tour of Yugoslavia will endorse military aid to communist Yugoslavia. On October 14 Senator O’Conor of Maryland will urge the U.N. to dismiss Americans employed by the U.N. who refused to say whether or not they were communists. On October 15, following the reorganization of the Soviet Directorate, Stalin will say in capitalist countries, ‘So-called freedom of the individual does not exist any longer.’ On October 16 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson will urge the U.N. to continue to fight in Korea as long as is necessary to stop aggression and restore peace and security. On October 27 communist Yugoslavia will win a seat on the Economic and Social Council of the U.N. On November 8 police will fire on black rioters in Kimberly, South Africa, killing fourteen and wounding thirty-nine. African blacks will be protesting against government segregation policies of African blacks in Africa.” The chimpanzee’s interest strayed; he began looking about for his bananas. “Police will shoot into a mob of ungrateful African blacks, impressing them with white man’s goodwill toward African blacks who respect white man’s rule in Africa,” the chimpanzee concluded, yawning with an air of extreme boredom. After all, no one was shooting down chimpanzees.

“The little stinker!” Kriss said. “Imagine the U.S. giving military aid to Yugoslavia!”

“That’s what I’ll do!” Jesse said. “I’ll write a book about chimpanzees.” Then hastened to ask, “There isn’t any chimpanzee problem, is there?”

“Not that I know of,” Kriss said. “All of those I’ve seen—most at the zoo—seem well satisfied.”

“I guess you’re right at that,” Jesse said. “I’ve never heard of a chimpanzee being lynched for raping a white woman and so far none have been cited as communists.”

“No—oo,” Kriss said thoughtfully. “But I once saw a chimpanzee in the zoo leer at me.”

“Damn!” Jesse said. “That lets them out. Leering at a white woman is considered rape in some states. And if I write a love story about chimpanzees, some white woman is sure to remember how some chimpanzee leered at her and the critics will say Robinson has written another sordid protest story, why doesn’t the black bastard stop and count his blessings.”

“You could write about snakes,” Kriss suggested. “Everybody hates snakes.”

“But I don’t know any snakes,’ Jesse said. “I’ve seen some in the snakehouse in the Bronx zoo but I can’t say I came to know them.”

“Kathleen Windsor didn’t know any dukes, either. But she didn’t let that stop her,” Kriss said.

“I know, but she didn’t write about duking. She just went on the age-old principle that human conscience is only waist deep.”

“Why don’t you read her and learn then?” Kriss asked.

“But it’s below the waist the colour problem lies,” Jesse pointed out.

“Lays!” Kriss corrected him. “It’s not the
lies
but the
lays
that make the colour problem.”

“The
lies
make the
lays
and the
lays
make the
lies
,” Jesse expounded, feeling very clever. “If there were more
lays
and less
lies
it would soon be solved, or conversely, if there were more
lies
and less
lays
it would soon be resolved.”

With that profound analysis, he went into the bathroom to tie his tie. Everything seemed so extremely normal he forgot to swipe some pills as he had intended. Way in the back of his head he found himself humming
Da-Da-Dee
. The floor was listing first one way and then the other, keeping everything in normal perspective. When he finished dressing, he kissed Kriss on the neck.