The End of a Primitive (21 page)

“—Why didn’t you just let him sleep it off. He’d have—”

“—That son of a bitch wet my carpet and trembled so I thought he was dying. I called Nat and had him sent to my own hospital. I had to sign him in and it cost me twenty-four dollars a day. Nat wanted to have him sent to Bellevue—”

“—Why didn’t you let him? Hell—”

“—Oh, I couldn’t bear it. Bellevue sounded like the end of the world—all those skid-row drunks—and Harold was a great man once. Nat said I was a fool. He wanted me to call the police and tell them he had no means of support—”

“—Where was Bebe? She had a little money from—”

“—Divorced the year before—”

“—I’d have let him go to Bellevue. They’re used to handling dt patients—”

“—Went himself…two days checked out my hospital and went back to his flat—had a cold water flat on Houston—called the police and told them he was sick and destitute—”

“—time is it, baby?”

She glanced at her watch and leaped from her chair, staggered across the floor to her television set as if gone berserk. “Sid Caesar and Imogene Coca. Mix drinks dear while I dial—” The screen lit up and showed the flashing of jagged lines. “Oh shit!” he heard her cry as he staggered toward the kitchen bearing the empty glasses like a man dying of thirst staggering his last mile across a burning hot desert in a blinding snow storm, and when he got back to the sitting-room with the refills he thought of Donavan staggering into his apartment where they were having the last WPA party—the time they were let off for two days shortly before the end—his dirty white shirt flapping open, suspenders hanging down and his pants about to fall from his long lean frame, blue eyes glazed, red hair flagging across his bloodless forehead, ugly bony face set in grim determination, a bottle of Paul Jones whiskey in each hand, looking about triumphantly at all his goggle-eyed coworkers, and saying, “I made it,” before falling on his face.

She took her drink from his hand and gave him a quick friendly kiss, then sat on the sofa beside him. “I just love Imogene Coca, don’t you?”

He peered at the blurred pygmies on the screen, trying to focus his vision, and the next thing he knew Harold was stepping down into the room, hand extended, saying in his jubilant tenor voice, “Jesse, what you say, old man?”

Jesse jumped to his feet and they shook hands warmly. “Damn, Harold, I’m glad to see you!” he exclaimed with drunken emotion. “Really glad to see you. Goddamn folks are getting me down again.”

“It’s a bitch, man, it’s a bitch. I’ve been thinking of wearing a turban and posing as an Indian like that Sam preacher who went all through the South. Stayed in all the best hotels and—”

Kriss had served him a drink on the storage cabinet beside her three-legged chair and on resuming her seat on the sofa cut him off irritably, “Harold, will you please sit down so I can see the screen.”

He was a big heavy-set man with strong bold features of a ruddy tan complexion, appearing rugged and forceful in brown tweed jacket and gabardine slacks, and when he gave Kriss a half hurt, half indulgent smile, and obeyed like a scolded child, Jesse felt another tremor of violent rage. “Thinks she’s God!” he thought, and then half-amused, remembering the current crop of jokes, “Not God, MacArthur!”

Harold was sitting, leaning forward, talking around Kriss: “…pecks bowing and scraping—” when she cut him off again, “If you and Jesse want to talk, go outside. This is my only pleasure, only—” she laughed childishly at some antic on the television screen, and now Jesse was half-amused, thinking of those magazine cartoons of a man cast away on a tropical island with a beautiful woman and complaining that his radio wouldn’t work. “Bitch cast away with two men…Island not tropical…no palm trees—but shade of sky-scrapers—just as good…only pleasure television…”

He stood shakily and said, “I’ma maka drink.”

Kriss held up her glass and Harold hastened to empty his.

“I smell somp’n on fire,” Jesse said, hugging the empty glasses to his stomach.

Kriss giggled. “It’s Harold’s paraldehyde.”

Jesse sniffed. “Paldahyde? Smells like formaldehyde.”

“They give it to alcoholics at Bellevue,” Kriss said, forgetting the program in her enjoyment of Harold’s discomfiture.

“Don’t laugh, my dear, you might be taking it yourself someday,” Harold said acidly.

Jesse staggered kitchenwards, laughing to himself. “Poor sonabitch embalming himself ‘fore he’s dead.” When he stopped to place the glasses on the hall table to get a better grip he noticed for the first time the three keys atop a check. He poked the keys aside and studied the check, trying to concentrate. But all that made sense was the amount and he thought, as he continued on, “Son, if meat’s so high you gonna have to drink soup.”

When he saw the potatoes on the stove he decided to start dinner. Taking a short drink straight, he pulled out the grill, placed it on the table, lit the oven, put the steak on the grill, and the next thing he knew he was sitting on the sofa beside Kriss, asking Harold, “…happened about that Chicago Letter you were going to write for the New Democrat? I bought it for a time but I never saw your pieces.”

He felt reasonably sober and quite lucid.

“Never heard from them…after that lunch at Cheerio’s…was going to review your book…”

“…killed everybody ever liked it…rank poison those things—”

“…‘sa book, Jesse ol’ man, ‘sa book…these white folks ‘mot gointa letcha—”

Kriss turned on Jesse in a rage and cried, “If this book is like the last one I’ll never speak to you again!”

“…‘ll never forgive you, ol’ man, ‘ll never forgive you. They’ll—” Harold was saying while Jesse glared at Kriss, “Did you read it? All you people—”

“I hated it—‘n what’s more—”

“—count all the white people—”

“—all of ‘em, Hal, all of ‘em. No goddam except—”

“—son of a bitch, if you ever write another book like—”

He looked at her glazed eyes filled with senseless hatred and felt the sickness coming over him. “—wrote it for you…wrote it to please you—” he was saying without realizing what he said, and she was saying, “—ever mention it again in my house!—‘n Harold, I’m sick o’ your whining! Negroes!—‘d think—only people matter…”

Harold was staggering toward the kitchen to get another drink and Jesse was muttering half to himself, “…took a beating…took a head-whipping…” and Kriss was laughing maliciously, and it was unbearably hot in the small apartment, and Jesse was talking to himself. “…only time you ever tried to be fair…fair to everybody…made all of ‘em much good as bad…hated nobody…thought they’d say, at last a nigger’s who’s fair…and they stoned you…they gut-butted you, son…knocked you down and kicked you in the nuts…it’s funny…take the hate but hate the compassion…hate the objectivity…hate the analysis…hate it!…makes sense though…only reasonable…guilt invites hate but hates reason…hates pity…hates forgiveness most…never forgive forgiveness…hate that sonabitch forever…great race though…right too…conquered the world…proves they’re right…never hate hate—first commandment…love hate…hates what makes conquest…love that sonabitch like mother…never loved mother either though…never loved anything but hate…love that sonabitch though…” And from this disjointed mental soliloquy he went into a stage of kaleidoscopic remembering: they’d cancelled all his radio appearances, all public contacts, removed his books from the stores, returned them to the publisher, because the blacks had hated it as much as had the whites…in the communist press it was likened to the biased ravings from the “rotted mouth of Bilboa!” and himself was compared to those depraved slaves who betrayed the slave revolts; while writers for the capitalist press labelled it sordid, bitter, the most poorly written book ever published, said hate ran through it like a yellow bile, likened it to the graffiti on walls and termed him psychotic…he was shoving his father Rockefeller Center on his father’s visit to New York for the publication and his father looked up at the tall buildings of the city that had hurt his son so cruelly and said, “Had they built the Terminal Tower in Cleveland before you left, Jesse?” trying to tell his son there were just as big dwarfs elsewhere as in New York City…he was hurrying from a downtown bookstore where his autographing hour had been cancelled and just missed the telephone call Becky took cancelling him off his first scheduled radio appearance, so he said nonchalantly, “Fine, I’ll take you and Dad to Luchow’s for lunch”…he was crossing the grounds of Skiddoo four o’clock of an April morning, thinking, “I’d just like to find some goddamned short one-storied street of simple folk whom I could understand’…And then the disjointed thoughts again: “…what makes these people—big important people—hate a simple sonabitch like you…tell you so many lies…simple sonabitch like you…can’t hurt anybody…yourself…can hurt yourself but nobody else…what are they afraid of…” And finally: “What you never knew, son, what you never knew—” His head seemed to burst with the effort of trying to catch that one simple thing he never knew which in extreme moments of extreme drunkenness was always so close…“What you never knew…Jesse Robinson…what you never knew…” and all the while the dirge going on in the back of his mind:

deeee-do-deeee-do-deeee-do

d

e

eeeeee-do-daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

“…‘sabitch, Jesse, ‘sabitch…hated white folks so much had to be a whore for ‘em…”

And Kriss saying: “…whore when you married her…”

“…no more than you, my dear…you nigger men…she white men…all part of problem…”

And Jesse saying: “…surrenderin’ myself…made private peace…screw ‘em now in peace…”

And Harold saying: “…she couldn’t be my wife…not wife of a nigger…had to be white men’s whore…”

And Kriss, remembering when she’d first tried to make him, thinking him so great and exciting and dangerous, and so superior to herself, forgiving him for his condescension and indifference, his caustic comments such as at the interracial dinner party when she was relating some joke about “Uncle Mose” who’d been her step-mother’s handyman in Mississippi, he’d turned to her and said, “Your mother’s brother, no doubt?” and even after she’d been sleeping with him and loved him dearly and went to sleep one night drunk with a cigarette and set her bed on fire and telephoned him to come and put it out to have him say crossly, “Just throw a bucket of water on it, my dear,” and how he’d married a Negro bitch, a one-time streetwalker who’d married a homosexual racketeer and got up in the world, and then married Harold and got up farther, and had let her break him because he came and slept with her sometimes when she needed him, his wife going around sleeping with all his white friends, sometimes two and three at a time, and saying she wondered why Harold could never make her happy when Kriss liked it so well….

The memories fired her with such blind rage, remembering in addition that she, herself, had never been able to break him, that she lurched to her feet and screamed at him hysterically: “Niggers! niggers! niggers! That’s all you niggers talk about… Niggers! niggers! niggers! You’re just as bad as she is! All
niggers!
I’m sick to death of
niggers!
Ever since I’ve known you you’ve talked of nothing but
niggers!
” her rage causing her to talk distinctly. “I’m tired of you niggers always whining around me. I am sick of all you niggers…”

Jesse staggered to his feet and with a violent action threw her on the sofa. “One more
nigger
out of you—” he began, peering through a blinding blur of rage to find her face to hit it. But instead he saw Harold kneeling before her, embracing her hips, tears streaming down his sweaty tan cheeks, his big strong face piteously distorted, pleading hoarsely, “Don’t say that to me, Kriss. Don’t try to hurt me. We’ve been through too much together, my dear…just alike…you and me…no difference…white woman black man…broke us both…white woman black man always broken together…don’t try to hurt old Harold…don’t my dear…in the same river together…you married homosexual…I married whore…you can’t do without black men…no more’n I can do without white women…” And she stroked his hair and consoled him. “Don’t cry, baby…Kriss didn’ intend hurt you…” And feeling such perverted pleasure at having made him cry it turned to sexual desire for him more intense than she had ever felt in all the years of his critical arrogance. “Kriss ‘ll take care you baby…put you to bed…make you happy…” Feeling his hot wet tears on her dry palms with orgastic ecstasy.

Jesse vaguely realized through his senseless rage and stupefying drunkenness that he was witnessing a sex ritual of laceration, the two of them slashing each other in sensual excitement, and he thought some deep frustrated love between them was frothing out in cruelty. And when she too began to cry, her tears streaming down a face gone ugly to fall on his head where he felt them through his hair, Harold also felt a sexual urge for her and buried his wet face in her lap.

This was too much for Jesse; he’d come to screw the bitch himself. Savagely, he clutched Harold by the collar and jerked him to his feet. “Godammit make love t’her w’en I’m not ‘ere!”

Harold spread his hands in a gesture of innocence as if to show he had no aces palmed, “…don’ be jealous of me, ol’ man…flame’s out…truth it was never lit…” Then with a deprecating laugh, “Kriss tried t’make great romance…”

Kriss gave them both a venomous look through red-laced eyes…“Sonssabitches!” she muttered and got up dizzily and staggered into her bed-room and slammed the door.

“Bitch is sick,” Jesse said from a sudden subconscious realization. “Really sick…negroes hurt her…really hurt her…”

“‘sabitch, Jess, ‘sabitch, ol’ man. Once a white person works for the Sam cause never get over it.”

“‘ow bout a drink?”

“God bless whiskey. Man couldn’ live without it.”

The next thing Jesse knew he and Harold were sitting at the table eating hot burnt rolls, warm raw steak, hot soapy potatoes swimming in butter, and cold sliced tomatoes with Hollandaise sauce. Harold was saying in a fairly sober voice: “…the popcorn got mixed up with the head juices and the bloodstream rushed it to the brain, you see, and the popcorn on the brain caused a burning fever, you see, and the heat popped the com with such force it came out through the skull into the hair, and that’s how you get dandruff, old man.”