The End of a Primitive (29 page)

He sat on the side of the bed with his back to the dead body, staring unseeingly at the framed picture of Kriss’s mother on the dressing table. “You finally did it, son,” he said, and when the full realization of what he had done penetrated his intelligence, his mind turned inward and became sealed within a sardonic self-lacerating humour, so that now he realized the body of his victim as the final result of his own life. “End product of the impact of Americanization on one Jesse Robinson—black man. Your answer, son. You’ve been searching for it. BLACK MAN KILLS WHITE WOMAN. All the proof you need now. Absolutely incontrovertible behaviourism of a male human being. Most human of all behaviour. Human beings only species of animal life where males are known to kill their females. Proof beyond all doubt. Jesse Robinson joins the human race. Good article for the Post: He Joined The Human Race. All good solid American Post readers will know exactly what you mean: were a nigger but killed a white woman and became a human being. Knew they’d keep fucking around with us until they made us human. They don’t know yet what they’re doing. Fucking up a good thing. Best thing they ever had for all their social ills…Be Happy—Go Nappy…Feel Low? Lynch Negro!…Can’t Fuck? Shoot A Buck!…Suffer From Rigour? Chase A Nigger!…If Hubby’s a Prune, Get Yourself a Coon!…Banned From The Hierarchy? Take Up With A Darky!…Why Whine? Screw A Shine And Feel Fine!…When All Your Money Affords You No Ease—Then Sambo Will Please!” Placing the dead cigarette butt in the ashtray on the night stand, he stood up and lit another from Kriss’s case and sat back in the same position. “Your trouble, son,” his thoughts continued without interruption. “You tried too hard to please. Showed right there you were a primitive. A human being never tries to please. Not restricted by conscience like a primitive. Reason why he’s human. All other animals restricted by conscience. Call it instinct but conscience just the same. Reason why you own life was so bitter, son. Had conscience.” He realized then that in the back of his mind he was thinking also of Becky. But he couldn’t visualize her anymore; she seemed only a wraith. “No such person, really,” he told himself. “Just your conscience. Give one to all primitives. But gone now. No more worrying about what is right and what is wrong. You’re human now. Went in the back door of the Alchemy Company of America a primitive filled with all that crap called principles, integrity, honour, conscience, faith, love, hope, charity and such, and came out the front door a human being, completely purged. End of a primitive; beginning of a human. Good title for a book but won’t sell with the word
human
in it. Americans sensitive about that word. Don’t want it known they’re human. Don’t blame them, though. Poses the only problem they’ve never been able to solve with all their gadgets—the human problem. But they’ll know damn well you’re human. Be in all the newspapers: BLACK MAN KILLS WHITE WOMAN. Not only natural, plausible, logical, inevitable, psychiatrically compulsive and sociologically conclusive behaviour of a human being—and all the rest of the shit the social scientists think up—but mathematically accurate and politically correct as well. Black son of a bitch has got to have some means of joining the human race. Old Shakespeare knew. Suppose he’d had Othello kiss the bitch and make up. Would have dehumanized the bastard. Didn’t take much to know, however. All right there in little figures. Two plus two equal four. Some happy-headed bastards are beginning to claim they equal five. And of course we’ve always had those mite-hearted sons of bitches who claim they make only three. But equal four regardless. Way the system works. Got to change the whole damn system to get either five or three. Wonder by this time the sons of bitches haven’t made up their minds to accept this. Their own fucking system, too. Yours too now, son. Too bad Kriss not here to see that you made it.” His face relaxed in a slow sympathetic smile. “She’d be the only one who’d understand.”

A knock sounded on the door but the sound did not penetrate his closed and sealed perceptions.

“Miz Cummons, anything mo y’all need?”

“—too bad, Kriss-baby,” he was thinking. “Spent ten best years of your life trying to get us niggers into the human race and not here to see your first recruit.”

He did not hear the diminishing sound of footsteps down the hall, not the faint sound of the front door opening and closing. In the act of lifting the telephone to call the police he stopped abruptly, thinking, “She would never forgive you for being undressed, son.” He went across to the bathroom, shaved, brushed his teeth again, and dressed completely, re-tying his tie several times before he’d fashioned a perfect V-shaped Duke of Kent knot. “Now you can tell them you just dropped by for the killing. Nothing disrespectable about that,” he said as he examined his face in the mirror. Tears flowed uncontrollably down his pale tan cheeks. “Don’t cry, son,” he said. “It’s funny really. You just got to get the handle to the joke.”

Returning to the bedroom he said to Kriss’s body, “Now we’re all even, baby,” and smiling slightly beneath the steady seep of tears, he picked up the telephone and asked for police headquarters. On receiving an answer he asked to speak to homicide, thinking, “Damn good thing I read detective stories; wouldn’t know what to do otherwise.”

Finally a bored voice said, “Yeah…homicide.”

“My name is Robinson, Jesse.”

“Yeah…Robinson.” Whoever he was sounded as if his ass was filled with lead.

“I’m a nigger.”

There was a slight pause before the voice said, “What’s that?”

“Where you been all your life, boy, you don’t know what a nigger is?”

“All right! Cut the comedy! What’s the beef?”

“I’m a rugger, and I’ve just killed a white woman,” Jesse said, giving the address on 21st Street, and hung up. “That’ll get the lead out of his ass,” he thought, half-amused.

About the Author

CHESTER HIMES was born in Jefferson City, Missouri in 1909 and attended Ohio State University for two years. He began writing while serving a prison sentence for a jewel theft and published just short of twenty novels before his death in 1984. His books include
Pinktoes, If He Hollers Let Him Go, Lonely Crusade, Cast the First Stone
, and
The Third Generation
.