The End of a Primitive (22 page)

Jesse laughed boisterously, feeling quite sober. “Economical, too. Saves buying a popper. But I don’t like popcorn.”

Harold chuckled. “That reminds me of a joke—”

“Where’s Kriss?” Jesse asked.

Harold looked at him questioningly. “She’s in her room unless she’s eviled on away as the boys used to say on—”

“I ought to wake her up; she hasn’t eaten anything.” He looked about at the closed bedroom door. “Was she sick?”

Harold chuckled maliciously. “You should know, old man. You went in and asked her if she wanted to eat.”

Jesse felt embarrassed because he didn’t remember his doing so. “What did she say?”

“You could hear better than I, ol’ man. You were right there beside her, but if I remember right I think she told you to go to hell and take your food with you.”

Jesse laughed. “You know, that bitch is crazy.” Then seriously, “But she’s been hurt. I wonder what happened between her and Ted.”

“He caught her sleeping with Joe and broke her jaw.”

“No wonder! I thought it was Maud who—”

“Maud quit her after that.” Harold licked his lips, relishing the vicious gossip.

“I always wondered what the setup was.”

“These dikers are a bitch, old man. Maud got Kriss to divorce Ronny and get engaged to Ted, and when she’d married Ted Maud intended to sleep with both of them. But Kriss took so long Maud couldn’t wait and began sleeping with Ted during the day and with Kriss after she came from work at night and Kriss got irritated, you see, and slept with Joe.”

“I didn’t think Maud gave a damn who slept with Joe,” Jesse said. But he didn’t fully realize what he was saying for his mind had gone into a daze wherein his conscious mind was torn between incomprehension and subjectivism.

“She didn’t,” Harold said. “She got mad because Kriss let Ted know. And when Ted quit her, Maud didn’t want just bare cunt, so she—” He broke off as the bedroom door opened.

Kriss came into the hall, red-eyed from crying. Her face was tear-stained and the flesh indented by the wrinkles on the coverlet, but she felt a cold contained rage of such violence it had sobered her. “I heard what both of you said,” she announced. “Both of you get up from my table and leave my house.” But the ludicrousness of herself ordering two drunken Negroes to stop eating and leave her house in the early hours of morning tickled her so that she giggled.

However, Harold chose to be offended. Clambering to his feet with a great show of dignity, chuckling with insouciance at her bad manners as if that was the correct thing to do when one was ordered from a house, said, “Certainly, my dear. Your company doesn’t interest me. I only came because you invited me to come—”

“—inviting you to leave—”

“—to see Jesse, with whom—”

“—may take him home and sleep with him too, you—”

“—wants to sleep with you, my dear, although whom you want to—”

“—for you to leave at once, this—”

“—on my way, my dear—”

“—want you to go too, Jesse!”

Scraping back his stool, Jesse heaved to his feet and began, “I’m not going any goddam where and if Harold wants to stay and drink my own liquor—”

“—not me, old man, not me. As Bert Williams used to say:

when the fellows

get to fighting

and the law is at the door…

somebody stay

and the law delay

and make himself a great hero

—but somebody else

not me…

—not me, old man. But I’ll have a drink for the road.”

Jesse staggered with him into the kitchen and poured two half glasses of straight whiskey which they gulped down without strangling, barely tasting it, then they staggered to the door and shook hands and Harold said in parting, “She likes to be whipped, old man. Uncle Whitney brought a bullwhip from Mexico to whip her with. Used to tell me how she liked it.” Jesse closed the door on him, momentarily sobered by the last drink and tired of Harold’s malice. He found Kriss mixing a drink and said, “You ought to eat something, baby,” but she turned on him furiously, “I’m never going to sleep with you again, Jesse!”

“Don’t give a goddam!”

“Go back to your wife, you son of—”

“Why not to some other white bitch? Why always back to my wife?”

“You hate me, you son of a bitch!” she blazed.

“Don’t hate you. Just want some peace. A piece,” he corrected. “A piece in peace. You goddam white women always want to be raped. I don’t feel like raping you. Too old, too tired. Can leer at you though, if you like that. Best I can do. If that doesn’t satisfy—”

“You hate white people!”

“Don’t be too sure about that,” he said, thinking of some half-remembered joke about the white man who said to the black, “You don’t hate white people, do you, Mose?”

She took her drink to the table and poked at the cold partly-eaten steak. “It’s raw,” she said, giggling.

“What you expect from two cannibals? Cook it for you though, baby. White ladies like well-browned meat. Fact can’t get it too black…”

“You son of a bitch! I’m never—”

He felt a sudden violent impulse to beat her into silence. The next thing he knew he was down on his knees before the oven trying to place the steak on the grill that was located at the bottom of the firebox. The acrid scent of raw gas had brought him to his senses. “Dam oven’s on!” he exclaimed and leaping to his feet struck a match and threw it into the grill. The flame blasted out with a whooshing sound.

“Hydrogen bomb!” he thought. “That’s the way to do it, son. Blow ‘em all up!” And after a moment, “Just be patient. They’ll do it they own damn selves.”

And the next thing he knew he was sitting at the hall table with a cleared space before him scrawling the words at the bottom of a page of typewriter paper: “—and just don’t be so goddam challenging because I will kill you…“He had already written on the page: “Dear Kriss, you like feeling being hated because it offers you absolution for your sense of guilt. Also helps you bear defeat. You’ve always felt the need to pay for adulation—fact for everything—good will, good morning, good time—every Goddam thing—pay for it with your body. Pay pay pay. Somebody tell you you’re pretty. Pay. Tell you you’re smart. Pay. Take you to dinner. Pay. Way you used to be. Pay for it in ass. Pay with ass—get discount. Liked you then. Sell you this nigger. Pay for him in ass. Fair exchange. Everybody happy. Lot of fun. No frustration. No fighting. Just fucking and fun. Way it should be. They take the credit but you take the fool. American way. No more though. You’ve gone un-American. No more pay for nigger with ass. Now whip nigger with ass. Use it as cheap dirty weapon for fighting. Don’t blame you. Happens to most women. Just don’t like the women it happens to. Don’t try whipping me with it. Too much like the south. Been whipping nigger with white ass three hundred years. This nigger’s been whipped with enough other things to leave ass out. Don’t try whipping me with ass because you know baby I can hurt you more than anybody. Because I can kill you. Only person you ever knew who could kill you. So don’t press me. Be a good girl and pay ass—”

Suddenly the smell of something burning alerted his senses. On sight of smoke pouring from the kitchen doorway he jumped to his feet and rushed into the smoke-filled room. For a moment he was in complete command of his senses. He realized instantly that the steak had caught fire. Calmly he turned off the gas, threw open the window, speared the burning steak with a long-handled fork, tossed it into the sink and turned the cold water on it. “Black enough for Kriss now,” he thought.

And the next thing he knew it was Sunday afternoon.

Chapter 10

K
riss never dreamed
. But physical discomfort ofttimes penetrated her unconsciousness in a manner similar to a dream. In her sleep she became conscious of being chilly and awakened immediately. Before opening her eyes she flung a bare arm searchingly across the faded blue sheet. It encountered only emptiness. Every event of the previous night returned in one flash of memory. She became rigid, scarcely breathing, her emotions shattered by the blind panic she always experienced on awakening and finding herself alone. “Oh shit!” she exclaimed in acute chagrin. Not that she regretted having ordered Jesse home, but that he had gone. She felt as if her fair white body had betrayed her. It had been bad enough when Dave walked out, but for Jesse—for any Negro…

She opened her eyes and saw she had slept uncovered. Critically she examined her neglected body. From her prone position she saw the hill of a soft white belly between two flat-top mounds of breasts, one arm outflung and the other curved around breasts and belly with the fingertips sunk in the straight sparse leaf-brown hairs surrounding her cloaca, and beyond, the square-toed feet in vague silhouette against the dark gray slit of open window. She thought of the time she used to have a lovely flat stomach and resolved to stop drinking for a month. Remembering how much she had drunk the night before she became enraged. “Damn Jesse to hell!” she muttered, as if he’d forced her to drink against her will. And then, tickled by the indignant thought: “At least he should have had the decency to screw me before leaving—even if I were unconscious,” she began to giggle. It was dim in the room; the door was open to a gray hall and outside it looked like a gray night. She turned on the night light and looked at the gold-plated Swiss clock. The hands stood at 6.11. She picked it up and found that it had stopped. She dialled
Time
and while waiting looked at her nude body with distaste. A woman’s controlled contralto voice purred affectedly, “When you hear the chime…the time will be…one thirty-two and one quarter…” It struck Kriss as being a sexy voice, whereas a man would have been irritated, and she listened for it to speak again, wondering what the woman looked like, blonde or brunette, buxom or petite, young or elderly, if she had been screwed last night, if she had liked it, if she screwed quietly or intensely or with a lot of pitching and gasping and crying or with the dull indifferent application of a woman trying to get it done; and when she heard her voice again she decided she did it in the first way and thought, “Come up to my house, baby,” and the next instant was shocked by such a thought. She got up and set the clock and started across the hall to the bathroom but heard a voice muttering, “Going to fuck you goddamit—open your goddam legs,” and stepped to the arch of the sitting room. In the semi-darkness she saw clothes strewn haphazardly over the floor and a nude brown body curled grotesquely on the sofa, a wrinkled sheet beneath it and one of her extra blankets wrapped about the head and shoulders. It faced outward, the buttocks pressed tightly against the sofa’s back, and erected penis pointing room-ward with which the right hand struggled spasmodically as if to tear it off. By his presence she was instantly relieved of her panic and chagrin and when she heard him scream in muffled frustration, “Don’t play around, goddamit!” she giggled with delight and felt warm and good all over. She felt an impulse to tickle his penis with a broom straw to see what he would do but was afraid she might awaken him, so instead she stood silently and listened. For a long time he didn’t speak again, then he cried in a voice of rage, “kill you!” and kicked out so violently his toe hit the cocktail table and sent a glass spinning across the floor. “Uhn!” he grunted in pain but didn’t awaken. Then quickly he turned on his stomach, pressing his erection against the sofa and she heard a jumble of words which sounded like, “Now that’s better, baby—but your skin feels rough.” His tan body minus its head was like a bronze statue in the dim light and she felt a strong desire to kneel beside it and kiss the firm smooth buttocks and hard slender thighs. But her curiosity proved stronger and she let him sleep.

She performed her morning’s toilet as quickly as possible, brushed her teeth and showered briefly, slipped on a pair of rayon panties and then, as she was standing before the mirror surveying her legs, one ear cocked to listen, abruptly her stomach fell. She had felt no hangover on awakening but was now so suddenly hungry she felt nausea. In the doorway of the kitchen immediately after turning on the light, she stood stock still in consternation. The window was open wide on the rusty wet fire escape and a face peered from the window of the apartment across the murky airwell. It was raining grayly with that desolation of a miserable big city Sunday and she went quickly to shut the window and draw the blinds to close out the gloomy day and the leering face of the fat bald-headed salesman across the way who’d been vainly trying for the past two months to meet her accidentally in the corridor. The grill at the bottom of the oven was pulled out and charred black, and a soggy cinder of meat lay in the greasy sink. Atop the stove was a pan lined with burnt whipped potatoes, a charred paper container and some green stuff in a pot that resembled scum on a stagnant pool. On the table the cardboard carton in which the groceries had been delivered had been hacked to pieces, and then she saw the knife sticking from the centre of the door. Four of the white doughy uncooked club rolls were skewered on the blade like corpses of newborn quadruplets and the blade stabbed into the centre crossbar of the door with such force it remained in position as if awaiting the fire to barbecue. Kriss stared at it for some time, more out of curiosity than fear, wondering what had been in Jesse’s mind, and from what she knew of how he thought, the skewered rolls took the form of the four outsize testicles of the great-grandfathers of the whole white race pinned as a grim love token by a bitter Negro on a lush white woman’s door. She was so sexually excited by the sadistic thought that when she endeavoured to draw out the knife she found her fingertips caressing the dead white mutilated testicles and her mind picturing the black erection of the tan body on the sofa. Suddenly she was weak from hunger to the point of fainting. She ate a plain slice of white bread, then put on water to make coffee and boil eggs, and stepped back into the hall to clear a space on the table. Not until then did she notice the scrawled note, and as she stood reading it, ciphering the scrawled words, her sexual excitement was again heightened by the veiled frustration behind the drunken threats. This, combined with the telltale erection and the mutilated mammoth white testicles, conjured up a picture of frenzy that made her frantic, her mouth turning strange with opening glands, and she would have gone and turned him over if she hadn’t heard the water boil.