The End of a Primitive (17 page)

Chapter 8

O
n his return from the liquor store, Jesse stopped at the super’s and got the keys to the storeroom where his trunks were stored. From the steamer trunk containing leftovers from their lighthouse-keeping days, he took two blankets, four sheets and four pillowcases for Becky. He looked at the dusty junk about him, abandoned trunks, broken furniture, wornout baby carriages and tried not to think of her.

“Don’t Leroy give you bedding?” the super asked, eyeing his load.

“Oh sure, this is for a friend.”

“Settin’ ‘em up now, eh?”

“No, just laying ‘em still.”

The super laughed. “You got the best go, sport. You got the combination.”

“No, you the one’s got the gimmick. I see you slipping here and there when you think nobody’s looking.”

“I’ll be slipping up your way soon.”

“Come get your throat cut,” Jesse thought, half-amused.

Leroy was out with the dogs and he managed the dark corridor without being assaulted. On his dresser was a letter from his editor at Hobson’s, asking him to call. He called from Leroy’s room and the editor asked if he could come in that afternoon at three.

“Now what?” he thought, going fluttery inside as the world became distorted again. Sighing, he poured a half glass of the cheap bourbon and tossed it off, grimacing in the mirror.

He took off his coat and shirt and prepared to shave. Then, half-smiling, said, “Better wash this white stink off; no need taking any chances,” and stripped. The water in that house was always scalding hot, and as he ran the huge, old-fashioned tub full to the overflow drain, he thought, “Smart super, not his coal.” Then as he lay stretched out in water hot enough to scald a fowl for pickling, he laughed, “Can’t be a nigger, using the white man’s coal to heat water for other niggers—to bathe in, too. Not American nigger! Must be a Mau Mau, or a Russian in disguise. Better tip off McCarthy. Russian masquerading as nigger janitor creating coal and water shortage. See the headlines: McCarthy discovers Communist cell in Harlem Basement.”

Hobson’s was in an old building in the twenties on Fourth Avenue. An elderly and dignified receptionist mistook him for a messenger boy when he asked to see Mr Pope. But when he explained it was his own manuscript he wished to discuss she flushed slightly and hastened to buzz Mr Pope. “Go to the end of this corridor and turn to the right,” she directed, smiling sympathetically. “His is the last office in the comer. And he’ll be waiting for you.” This last to the tune of,
I’ll be waiting for you, Nellie
. I don’t expect him to jump out the window,” he thought, and after a moment smiling inwardly, “No such luck.”

James Pope was a tall thin man with graying hair and a British mustache, something of a cross between Chamberlain and Eden, dressed in Baggy Brooks Brothers tweeds. He came around the desk to shake Jesse’s hand, his narrow face creased in an apologetic smile.

“Welcome to the bastard’s comer.” He gripped Jesse’s hand and released it quickly.

“Black, isn’t it,” Jesse thought, but said aloud, smiling, “Howya, Jim. You got us wrong. We just love editors.”

Pope pulled up a worn leather chair. “Sit down.” He went behind his desk and offered cigarettes. Jesse declined. “Can’t say as I much blame them,” Pope reflected. “The publishing business is lousy these days.”

Jesse felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. How many times had he heard these words, always a prologue to a rejection. But he kept up his front. “We modern writers are just spoiled. In the old days a writer starved in a garret for fifty years and wrote seventy books, all masterpieces. We write one book and want to get rich. I blame it all on Margaret Mitchell.”

Pope’s face resumed its customary expression of shame and guilt, like that of a man who’s murdered his mother and thrown her body in the well, to be forever afterwards haunted by her sweet smiling face.

“I’m afraid I have bad news for you.”

Jesse just looked at him, thinking, “Whatever bad news you got for me—as if I didn’t know—you’re going to have to say it without me helping you. I’m one of those ungracious niggers.”

“We’ve given your book six readings and Mr Hobson has decided to drop the option.”

Jesse had been prepared for this from the moment he’d read Pope’s letter and now, before the reaction had set in, he just felt argumentative. “I thought you were going to cut it.”

Pope reddened slightly. “That was my opinion. I like the book. I fought for it all the way. I think all it needs is cutting. But Hobson thinks it reads like fictional autobiography. And he doesn’t like the title.”

“I WAS LOOKING FOR A STREET,” Jesse quoted, turning it over in his mind. “I was looking for a street that I could understand,” he thought, and for a moment he was lost in memory of the search.

“He said it sounds like a visiting fireman looking for a prostitute’s address,” Pope said with his apologetic smile.

Jesse laughed. “That ought to make it sell.”

Pope again assumed his look of shame and guilt. “The truth is, fiction is doing very poorly. We’re having our worst year for fiction.”

“Why not publish it as an autobiography then?”

“It would be the same. Hobson thinks the public is fed up with protest novels. And I must say, on consideration, I agree with him.”

“What’s protest about this book?” Jesse argued. “If anything, it’s tragedy. But no protest.”

“The consensus of the readers was that it’s too sordid. It’s pretty strong—almost vulgar, some of it.”

“Then what about Rabelais? The education of Gargantua? What’s more sordid than that?”

Pope blinked in disbelief. “But surely you realize that that was satire—Rabelais was satirizing the humanist Renaissance—and certainly some of the best satire ever written…This—” tapping the manuscript neatly wrapped in brown paper on his desk—“is protest. It’s vivid enough, but it’s humourless. And there is too much bitterness and not enough just plain animal fun—”

“I wasn’t writing about animals—”

“The reader is gripped in a vice of despair and bitterness from start to finish—”

“I thought some of it was funny.”

“Funny!” Pope stared at him incredulously.

“That part where the parents wear evening clothes to the older son’s funeral,” Jesse said, watching Pope’s expression and thinking, “What could be more funny than some niggers in evening clothes? I bet you laugh like hell at Amos and Andy on television.”

Pope looked as if he’d suddenly been confronted by a snake, but was too much of a gentleman to enquire of the snake if it were poisonous.

“All right, maybe you don’t think that’s funny—”

“That made me cry,” Pope accused solemnly.

“I suppose you think I didn’t cry too when I wrote it, you son of a bitch,” Jesse thought, but aloud he continued, “But how do you make out it’s protest?”

Looking suddenly lost. Pope said, “You killed one son and destroyed the other, killed the father and ruined the mother…” and Jesse thought, “So you find some streets too that you don’t understand,” and then, “Yes, that makes it protest, all right. Negroes must always live happily and never die.”

Aloud he argued, “What about Hamlet? Shakespeare destroyed everybody, ruined everybody and killed everybody in that one.”

Pope shrugged. “Shakespeare.”

Jesse shrugged. “Jesus Christ. It’s a good thing he isn’t living now. His friends would never get a book published about him.”

Pope laughed. “You’re a hell of a good writer, Jesse. Why don’t you write a black success novel? An inspirational story?

The public is tired of the plight of the poor downtrodden Negro.”

“I don’t have that much imagination.”

“How about yourself? You’re certainly a success story. You’ve published twelve novels that were very well received.”

“That’s what I mean.”

“I don’t understand you.”

“Damn right you don’t,” Jesse thought. He didn’t care to remind Pope that a moment or so back he’d termed the rejected novel as autobiographical. Instead he arose and picked up the manuscript. “There’s nothing more futile than arguing with a rejection.”

“You don’t owe us a thing,” Pope said, also standing.

Jesse grinned. “If I could get five hundred dollars from every six readers, I’d soon catch up with Norman Vincent Peale.”

Pope walked with him to the elevator, pressed the button, and stood with him. “For my part I liked the book, Jesse. It’s a powerful piece of writing.”

“Thanks.”

“And please don’t think of me as an enemy. Keep in touch with me, please do.”

“I will, thanks.”

“I’m going to be in Breadloaf the month of August. I’d like very much to have you come up and spend a weekend with me.

Jesse gave him a quick curious look. “Thanks.”

The elevator door opened. They shook hands again.

“Good luck with the manuscript,” Pope said.

“Thanks.”

There were two women and three men beside the operator in the elevator, but already Jesse’s thoughts had turned inward and he didn’t see them. “Jesse Robinson,” he said distinctly. One of the women gave a slight start and everyone turned to look at him. “What did you think, son,” he went on, “They’d shave you for nothing and give you a drink.” The two women moved to the far comer of the elevator and looked straight ahead. The men stared at him curiously. But he was not aware. He smiled. “The ass,” he said.

Jesse put the manuscript on the dresser amidst the other junk and poured a half glass of the cheap bourbon. He tossed it off and grimaced in the mirror. “You were looking for a street, eh, son?” he said. “But all you found was a blind alley.” He had eaten a substantial lunch of two fried pork chops, fried potatoes, and what went for apple pie in a “Home Cooking” lunch counter on Amsterdam Avenue, but found himself hungry again. He was out of raw eggs and the milk had soured, so he munched a chocolate bar absently and poured another drink, thinking, “When in doubt, get pie-eyed.” And then, “Be nonchalant, drink a bottle of bourbon.” And after another moment, “You hired out for it, son. Nobody made you. You were the best porter that Briggs & Sons ever had; old man Briggs said so himself…” His thoughts wandered off and he stood for a moment with his right thumb dug into his right cheek, stroking his upper lip with his index finger, his mind a vacuum.

Then he looked at his special account bank book and discovered that he had $198.47 left from the $500.00. He felt a slight shock. “Oh, how the lucre fugit,” he thought, and recited aloud a half-remembered jinglet from his childhood:

Oh how de ham do smell

Oh how de boarders yell

W’en dey hears dat dinner bell

He laughed silently and said, “Damn right.” And the next thing he was conscious of was walking south on Convent toward the arch of City College. His mind drew a blank for the elapsed two hours and now it was six-thirty of a soft April evening. Students were coming in a stream up toward the 145th Street entrance to the subway. He went down the other way, walking against the crowd. He staggered a little but didn’t feel drunk. Although he didn’t know when he’d left the house nor where he’d intended going, it didn’t worry him. He was accustomed to these blanks of memory, and as far as he knew nothing dreadful had ever happened to him during one of them. At the moment he didn’t remember the rejection, but felt strangely depressed for some unattributable reason, and in the back of his mind began silently singing his private dirge,
da-da-dee
:

di

dee dee

da da-da-da deeeeeee da

da-da dee dee-dee

da dee-dee do

do da

doooooo

At 140th Street he turned down the steep incline toward St. Nicolas Avenue. To his befuddled senses the slope seemed quite level but his body tended to fall face-forward and he began to run to keep up with his head which seemed some distance out in front of him. As he passed the church at the comer of Hamilton Avenue, he thought half-amusedly, “Open de door, brethren, ol’ devil’s chasin’ me; I’m gonna pop in, once more around the block…”

The next he knew he was sitting alone in Frank’s restaurant, eating apple pie a la mode and a heavy-set dark brother sitting opposite a buxom dark sister in the booth opposite him, said with a tolerant grin, “That’s an interesting theory, young man—seems to me as if I’ve heard it before—but I don’t believe we’ll solve this problem by making an all-Negro state. Who’re we gonna be working for? Now my idea is what we need are more Negro-owned factories. Now the Negroes who got money ought to build factories to hire the Negroes who ain’t; that’s what the white folks do and that’s why they got everything. Now take Joe Louis and all the money he had…” Jesse’s attention wandered. The woman looked disapproving. He wondered what he had said. Finally, when the man stopped giving his theories about Negro-owned factories and Negro-owned steamships and Negro-owned skyscrapers and why Negroes in the South didn’t get together and buy up a heap of land and why those in the North didn’t get together and make their own automobiles and distil their own whiskey and can their own vegetables and why those in South Africa didn’t mine their own diamonds, Jesse said, “It was just an idea.”

He felt quite sober as he looked about at the many-hued faces of the diners, here and there an interracial couple, and three tables in the rear seating large groups of whites, probably families. Although it was located on 125th Street just off St. Nicolas Avenue, in the heart of Harlem, when Jesse first came to New York eight years before, blacks had only been served at the tables along one side. Now they ate all over. “You see, boy,” he said to himself. “Someday we’ll all wake up and find all this race business gone and everything changed, people living in complete harmony without any thought of colour.” Then, blowing laughter through his nose, added, “But old Gabriel is going to have one hell of a job blowing.”

The waiter brought him a check for a roast beef dinner with soup and salad extra. “I must have eaten it,” he muttered, and then in reply to the waiter’s perplexed look, added, “It’s always good to know what one eats.”

“You can always depend on Frank’s,” the waiter beamed.

The bill was for $3.05. “Damn right,” Jesse thought. “Too bad I didn’t get here first.”