The End of a Primitive (28 page)

“—McCarthy nightmares—”

“—August 7, Florida Supreme Court will dismiss pleas of five Negroes who seek entrance to the University of Florida, and rule they are not entitled to admittance while equal facilities are available at the Florida Agricultural and Mechanical College for Negroes—”

“—southern mathematics—”

“—General Eisenhower will urge Southerners to protect the rights of Negroes—”

“—shell-shocked—”

“—beautiful world—”

“—will be tried for the first degree murder of Mrs Kristina Cummings, white, a divorcee employed as assistant director of the India Institute. State-appointed defence attorneys for Robinson will enter a plea of temporary insanity, based on the allegation that Robinson, after a weekend of excessive drinking in the Gramercy Park apartment of Mrs Cummings, had become intoxicated to the extent that, during the commission of the crime, he was not conscious of his actions—”

“—battle fatigue,” Jesse thought. “Same thing as shell-shocked, just sounds worse—”

“—prosecution v/ill establish that, following a previous quarrel, during which he knocked her down with his fist, he entered her bedroom armed with a kitchen knife, stabbed her through the heart while she lay in bed, after which he washed the body clean of blood, changed the bedding, and arranged the body in the fresh bed in the position of sleeping with the eyes closed and the arms extended at its sides, then took a shower, dressed, packed the murder knife, bloodstained towels and bedding into two paper shopping bags, pocketed an extra set of keys to her apartment which he had formerly noticed in a bowl on the table, walked down 23rd Street to East River and threw the shopping bags containing the bloodstained evidence into the river, returned to the apartment on 21st Street, let himself in with the extra set of keys, undressed, hanging his clothes in Mrs Cummings’ hall clothes closet, made a bed on the sofa in the sitting-room, and went to sleep immediately—”

“—what you get for reading too much Faulkner, son,” Jesse said, half-laughing.

“—defence will allege that he was completely blotto all during this time; that if, as the prosecution will maintain, he stabbed her in a rage because she refused to succumb to his advances, he was entirely unconscious of making advances and of feeling outraged, and could only have been acting out of a subconscious resentment toward the woman who invited him to spend the weekend in her apartment for immoral purposes, and then, after two days of continuous drinking and sexual enticement, reneged on her part of the bargain—”

“—you tell ‘em, bub! Give a little sausage or get slaughtered for ham.”

“—will dismiss the insanity plea—”

“—must be sure to get a copy of the transcription to show all those critics who’ve been calling you psychotic—”

“—and Robinson will be sentenced to be electrocuted in Sing Sing prison, December 9th—”

“—elementary progression—”

“As a rule, on this program, we don’t consider murder a newsworthy event,” Gloucester rebuked the chimp, somewhat superciliously. “What do you find so unusual about this case?”

Chimpanzee
(leering): “There will be no evidence of rape.”

Jesse
: “Son of a bitch was too drunk. Only reason.”

Gloucester
(embarrassed): “Oh! You don’t say!”

Chimpanzee
(grinning maliciously): “But I do say. And furthermore, on May 17, 1954 the U.S. Supreme Court will render a decision against racial segregation in all U.S. public schools—”

Jesse
(with drunken clairvoyance): “Then the agony begins—”

Gloucester
(sardonically): “I say, my little friend, aren’t you letting your imagination run away with you. As much as I abhor any form of discrimination toward our darker brother, I doubt if the south would stand for it—for the end of segregation, I mean—”

Jesse:
“Boy’s shooting with history. Doesn’t know it—”

Gloucester
: “—by the Federal Government, I mean—”

Jesse
: “—thinks he’s playing with sentiment; harmless stuff, he thinks; killed more people than—”

Gloucester
: “—feel very strongly about State Rights. They consider the problem—”

Jesse
: “—time integrates; man liquidates—”

Gloucester
: “—will fight valiantly for what they deem right. But I have no doubt—”

Jesse
: “—kill the rooster, son! Do it every time. Only answer to enlightment man’s ever figured out—”

Gloucester
: “—if you understand the problem, my little friend, and the issue of the rights involved—”

Jesse
: “—more rights, more grave grow, all I said, massa—”

Chimpanzee
(with bored indifference): “My dear sir, I report the news as I foresee it.” After all, chimpanzees have never been segregated in U.S. public schools.

Gloucester:
“Why the south might even go to war again.”

Jesse
: “They laughed at Hitler too, when he sat down to play,
Deutschland, Deutschland über Alles!
”

Chimpanzee
(brightening): “That reminds me of a joke they tell about Generalissimo Franco—”

Gloucester
(startled): Generalissimo Franco?”

Chimpanzee
: “There was great poverty in Spain and the Franco government couldn’t get a penny from the U.S. And they had a grave beggar-problem similar to your Negro-problem which had to be solved, besides which Franco’s uniforms were getting somewhat frayed. So the Generalissimo met with his ministers to see what could be done about these problems, especially about the problem of his uniforms. After a week’s deliberation, the ministers suddenly struck upon a foolproof solution. In a body, they rushed to the palace and demanded an immediate audience with the Generalissimo.

—What’s the answer, boys? he asked.

—Declare war on the U.S.! they chorused exultantly. Generalissimo Franco considered the suggestion. He thought of the prosperity in post-war Japan and Germany. It seemed to be a flawless solution. But he was assailed by one grave doubt.

But what if I win? he asked.

Jesse: “Damn right! Suppose the south had won the Civil War…”

The interview had overrun its time and abruptly the commercial came on. A disembodied hand held forth what appeared on first sight to be an ordinary cigarette lighter.

“PRESTO!” the mealy-mouthed voice of the adman shouted, and the disembodied thumb pressed a button on top and a flame shot upward. “Light your cigarette.” Disembodied lip holding a cigarette leaned into view and the cigarette was lit.

“PRESTO!” A disembodied little finger pressed a button on the bottom of the lighter and a flame shot downward. “Light your pipe.” Disembodied teeth clamping a pipe leaned into view and the pipe was lit.

“PRESTO!” the disembodied hand pressed both buttons at once and what had been a simple two-way cigarette-pipe lighter became a modern kitchen fully equipped with all the most modem appliances in shining chrome and gleaming white enamel. “Why bum your candle at both ends?” the mealy-mouthed voice asked solemnly, “When PRESTO, the greatest gadget of them all will not only do the trick slick, but cook you a meal just as quick!” And sure enough, there was a pre-cooked self-roasting turkey basting itself in a self-heating oven, while on top of the stove was a self-frozen vegetable garden complete with gardener, self-thawing itself; self-washing breakfast dishes were slopping about happily in a sink full of self-foaming suds; self-washing shirts were hard at work in the self-operating (invisible: takes up absolutely no space at all) laundry, washing and drying and ironing themselves and turning the collars where needed; and over by the four-way kitchen door (just turn handle and it opens from either side or top or bottom) the PRESTO Atom-atic Refrigerator, equipped with the famous PRESTO NO DOOR (just press a button and the door disappears completely) was busily engaged in freezing and defrosting, cheese-and-butter keeping, juice-and-dairy barring, and many other necessary functions, such as crisping various items and mixing rye highballs, and all the while operating itself entirely on stale air at absolutely no cost whatsoever to the owner (perfect for city apartment dwellers); while across the room in the self-opening-and-closing window a self-containing air conditioner was washing and rinsing the air until pretty soon the PRESTO Atom-atic Refrigerator called over, “Look, bub, I eat stale air, you’re taking the food out of my mouth!”—to which the self-containing air conditioner retorted, “Food for the mouth yet, he says, in this self-eating nation!”

“Won’t be long now before they have the main problem solved,” Jesse said, laughing, scratching his testicles and peering curiously at his penis. “How man and woman can screw with both on top. No more beefs about who’s being screwed. Both being screwed. Be a good thing, too. Solve the woman problem, too…”

“Mawnin,” a flat negroid voice greeted from behind.

He turned with such a violent start he almost denutted himself, and on sight of an amazonian black woman clad in professional rags grinning at him slyly from the hallway, leaped to his feet and started to run.

But she said, “Ah’m Mattie,” and he caught himself. “That’s a relief!” he said. “I wondered what had happened to Kriss.”

Her sly little eyes appraised his manly physique, took in the spread sofa and the consolatory bottle, then she went about her work collecting the dirty glasses and ashtrays as if finding a naked black man laughing and scratching his nuts and talking to himself in a white lady’s fashionable apartment of a Monday morning were as commonplace a Manhattan incident as finding cockroaches in the kitchen. But he could tell by her sly silent laughter she didn’t give much for his chances. “She doesn’t think much of the Robinson label, son,” he thought, half-amused, as he picked up his bottle and glass and went into the bedroom. “Can’t depend on those self-starting genitals. Choke up every time. Nothing to beat the old fashioned crack. Give it a turn and it never fails to start. These modern jobs got to be babied and petted every minute. Then if you happen to put a couple of quarts of booze in the tank, the automatic nuts will go dead sure as hell.”

Placing the bottle and glass beside the telephone on the night-stand, he made certain the door was shut, then sat on the side of the bed and poured a half glass of wine and drank it. Everything was delightfully blurred again and he felt relaxed and indifferent. “Your maid’s here,” he said to Kriss. Then, recalling the maid’s sly scrutiny of his equipment, he thought, “She probably wonders how they missed throwing me back into the Harlem river.” Listening to her moving about the apartment, cleaning up the night’s debris, he realized he’d been given a short reprieve from having to face the unknown outside. There was a vaguely drunken delicious atmosphere of safety in the small dark room with the gray chill dangerous day locked out. He began feeling a warm half-amused friendliness for Kriss. “Kriss, baby,” he said tentatively, and started to awaken her, then changed his mind and decided to take a nap himself. He slipped beneath the covers without disturbing her and went to sleep instantly.

He dreamed horribly of running naked across endless glaciers and awakened seven minutes later, deathly chilled, without being aware he had dreamed. “Damn, Kriss, aren’t you cold, baby?” he asked. She didn’t reply. He got up and slammed the window shut with a bang, then sat on the edge of the bed and poured a glass of wine. His teeth chattered against the rim of the glass. “Bitch must have self-heating blood,” he thought. He felt certain that now she was awake and was keeping silent to annoy him. “You know, Kriss baby, you can be a very unpleasant bitch,” he said angrily, and as his rage began to ride, added, “You’re going to get yourself good and fucked up someday.” Then, prodded by her continued silence, he turned on her furiously, saying, “And whether you like it or not I’m—” His voice stopped short when he clutched her naked white shoulders. Her icecold flesh burned his hands.

His next action of which he was aware occurred two and a half minutes later. He was kneeling on the bed, astride her naked body, trying to make her breathe by means of artificial respiration; and seeing his tears dripping on the purple-lipped knife wound over her heart, thought she was beginning to bleed again. He felt such a fury of frustration he began beating her senselessly about the face and shoulders, cursing in a sobbing voice, “Breathe, Goddamit, breathe!”

The next thing he knew he was kneeling beside the bed, sobbing into the sheet, praying between gasps: “—have mercy on her, God…forgive her, God…she was a good girl, God…we were the bastards…You’ve got to forgive her, God—” Suddenly it struck him, “Here you are asking God to forgive her for what you’ve done to God,” and he broke off and stood up and finished the bottle of wine. It soothed his panic sufficiently for him to look at the body again, and he thought, “You don’t really know you did it,” but in the next flash, “Who’re you lying to, son? You knew before anybody. You knew it two days before it happened. Perhaps two years. Perhaps from the time they first hurt you for being born black.” Unaware of what he was doing, he leaned over and covered the body completely with both sheet and blanket as if to bury the deed itself and for the first time noticed the yellow spread piled in the corner on the floor. In a daze he picked it up and examined it in the dim light and when he saw the one dark spot of congealed blood, shaped something like a hand, he knew he could not bury the deed—only the dead. Letting it fall back to the floor he felt for his pocket to get a cigarette. He realized then that he was naked, and instinctively closed the Venetian blinds before turning on the light. There were no cigarettes in sight but he found one in the gold case in Kriss’s purse that lay open on the dresser, and lit it with her gold-plated lighter. From that part of his mind which persistently analyzed his own behaviour came the realization that he was not frightened. “Too late to run, anyway,” he said. “Too late to make it straight,” his thoughts continued, then, “Your fate,” adding, “P.S.—tragedy.”

On a sudden impulse he leaned over and uncovered Kriss’s face, tucking he covers about her throat as they’d been before. Sighing heavily, he said to the marble-like face, “Sorry, baby,” then with bitter self-condemnation, “Son of a bitch kills you and says excuse me,” after which he had to exert tremendous restraint to keep from praying again.