The End of a Primitive

by Chester Himes

  From beyond, in the far office, came the rapid clatter of an old upright typewriter. Benny Field, the accountant, was hard at work. Kriss didn’t disturb him.

  Her office was furnished with a glass-top desk on which lay several stacks of typed pages, her telephone, an inkwell, an empty porcelain vase, and a small bright glass globe of the world; a metal typewriter stand holding a new plastic-covered upright typewriter; a new desk chair and two leather upholstered straight-back chairs, leftovers from the original furnishings. On the deep window edge at her back, a pigeon had built a nest and was now sitting on four eggs. Kriss made a soft clucking sound and the pigeon looked at her indignantly. She gave a little girl’s laugh—her private laugh reserved for animals, children and television comedians. “Go on,” she whispered. “I don’t want to sit on your old eggs.” The pigeon stirred nervously. “Now you know how I felt when you used to stand there and stare at me by the hour,” Kriss said, then hung her coat on the tree in the corner, and sat at her desk. She looked at the stacks of summaries before her, some to be proofread before mailing, others to be corrected and re-typed. One stack was more or less just data to be correlated, organized and summarized. Across her desk passed the entire program of the Institute.

  The Institute had its origin in a foundation left by Godwin for the purpose of bringing ambitious Indian students to the United States to study. For more than twenty-five years it had been directed by a small staff of elderly women, retired school teachers and the like, who had played nursemaids to a small select group of high caste Hindus through the Ivy League universities. But following the war, during India’s crusade for independence, it had assumed a startling stature as a source of reference and a point of contact, not only in the field of education, but for the federal government, private enterprise, and all other major foundations as well. So the trustees had reorganized, and expanded the personnel to over two hundred. Having soon outgrown the modest fund of eleven million dollars left by M. Cornelius Godwin, the new India Institute was subsidized by more than a dozen other foundations and indirectly by the Federal Government. M. Cornelius Godwin III, seeing it slip away from the family name, donated the use of the family mansion, and proposed to the trustees that it be changed to Godwin Institute or Godwin Foundation or even Godwin India Institute. But by then nine-tenths of the funds for its operation came from other sources and they could not very well do this.

  Kriss had started four and a half years ago at a salary of fifty dollars a week, when the staff had been comparatively small. Now her salary was six thousand dollars a year and she had the title of assistant director. She wrote the summaries of the Institute projects which were sent, as prospectuses, to all of the subsidizing foundations and to the U.S. State Department. They were subject of course to approval by the directors, there being a director for each of the four major divisions of the Institute’s program, a director of personnel, and the director, Kirby Reynolds. As a consequence she sat in on all policy meetings. She was important, well-liked and permanently situated.

  And yet she had liked her temporary job at the Chicago Foundation far more. This morning, as every morning, on facing the dull tedious work, she remembered her office in the old mansion in Chicago overlooking the spacious grounds that had formed a circle of exclusiveness, the leisurely, personalized routine, the president’s morning kiss—of course, after she had begun sleeping with him—lunch on the terrace, bridge in the card room before dinner, conversation and drinking afterward, always the visitors, good-looking black professionals, artists, writers, college deans and presidents, the excitement of choosing the one she wanted for the night, which was the only reason she ever had to return to her apartment at all in those days. The memory lasted but a moment, but left a definite block. She was still alert, still eager, still confident, but her mind didn’t want to engage in the task before her.

  For fifteen minutes she read the morning paper, after which she sorted her work, called her secretary from the floor below and gave her the pages to be typed, and rapidly read the completed summaries for typographical errors. She was an expert proofreader with a complete command of punctuation and grammatical construction, and in addition a very excellent writer of clear, explanatory prose. Her sentences were always concise and to the point, never ambiguous, and were phrased with amazing simplicity and conclusiveness and in perfect logical sequence. No man would ever believe a woman wrote such prose until taken into her office and confronted with the fact. Then they wanted to date her.

  At ten o’clock she began composing in longhand and continued without interruption for an hour, by which time she had written nine pages.

  Anne Sayers, her assistant, came in to ask if she wanted coffee.

  “Yes, dear, thank you,” she replied without looking up.

  Anne was a huge young woman, over six feet tall, with a round pleasant face, a mop of tan curls, and was smart as a whip. She compiled the data for the summaries, checked the facts and figures with the sources. Her office was similar to Kriss’s but was located in the wing overlooking the court. There were only women in that section and something like a boarding school atmosphere prevailed. Anne had a sideboard in her office where she kept tea, coffee, tea biscuits, cocktail crackers, jars of cheeses, tins of hors d’oeuvres, and usually a bottle of claret and a bottle of sherry; and, of course, cups and saucers, sugar and—if she thought to bring it—cream, an electric coffee pot, a cocktail service, and a set of silverware. Kriss’s only concession to office refreshment was a silver flask of Scotch she kept in her desk drawer; but coffee was always welcome at this time. With it she could take another pill.

  A few minutes later Anne returned with a flaming face. “Goddammit!” she choked furiously.

  Kriss looked up in surprise. “Why—what’s the trouble, Anne?”

  “That damned Watson again!”

  Watson was the personnel director. He disapproved of the girls making coffee and toast in the big pleasant bathroom across the corridor, and had wanted to post a notice forbidding it, but Kirby had said no. So he had initiated a campaign which couldn’t be refuted. Every day at eleven, when the girls began making tea and toast and coffee, he had to answer the call of nature. He would stand patiently beside the door, merely waiting his turn, until the girls cleared out, then he would enter and lock the door. They despised him.

  “Seems he could shit somewhere else while we’re making coffee!” Anne flared.

  “He’s a son of a bitch if ever there was one,” Kriss murmured consolingly.

  “I’m going to curse that man yet,” Anne declared.

  Dorothy heard them talking about Watson and came from next door. “Kirby says he’s going to have a water closet installed in Watson’s office,” she said, grinning at Kriss.

  “Well, I’m going back and knock,” Anne said defiantly. “He’s had time enough.”

  Kriss chuckled. “He’s not a duck, dear.”

  Anne had to laugh. When she left, Dorothy came around the desk and looked over Kriss’s shoulder. But instead of commenting on the work, she tenderly fingered Kriss’s curls and said, “Your hair always looks so fresh.”

  Kriss was slightly embarrassed. She didn’t like women to touch her. But Dorothy was different. She knew that Dorothy had a crush on her that amounted almost to worship. Dot was forever complimenting her on her dress, her carriage, her poise, telling her how pretty she was, how brilliant everyone considered her. Every now and then she wondered if Dot were a lesbian. She was disconcertingly affectionate, and awfully jealous. Whenever another woman came to Kriss’s office—even Anne, who was as soft as butter about men—Dot would find some excuse to come in too. But she liked Dot. And it paid to be nice to her. As Kirby’s confidential secretary she had inside information about everything that went on at the executive level—and she told Kriss everything she wanted to know, in strictest confidence of course. Besides which, Kriss felt sorry for her. She was such a shy woman and so sensitive, so easily hurt; really a virgin at heart despite
the fact she was almost as old as Kriss. She had such an enormous capacity for emotion; she wanted to be loved violently, but was petrified with fear by the very thought of it. Kriss often wondered if Dot had ever slept with a man. Probably so! She’d never heard of the stone lions roaring when Dot passed the library at 42nd and Fifth, which they did whenever a virgin passed.

  “It’s just my country look,” Kriss giggled. “That’s a very pretty blouse, baby.”

  “Oh, this old thing!” It was a soft white nylon of a mannish cut, worn with a large black bow. “You’ve seen it before.”

  Kriss wished that Dot would wear things that were more feminine. It would do her good. “Quit despising yourself,” Kriss wanted to say. Dot’s air of wistful self-deprecation always slightly angered her. She quickly changed the conversation from clothes.

  “Watson’s going to keep on until Anne sits on him someday,” she said. “And he doesn’t know how much Anne weighs.”

  “Oh, that reminds me of a joke I want to tell you. Mrs Donahue told it to me last night.” She grinned. “I don’t know where she hears such things.”

  Kriss knew Mrs Donahue, the eighty-two year old semi-invalid with whom Dorothy lived, and she knew why the old lady told Dorothy those Rabelaisian jokes—she thought her prim genteel roomer much too respectable for her own good. So did Kriss. She gave Dorothy a wicked grin. “Tell me, baby.”

  Anne came in at that moment with the coffee and Dorothy hesitated. She couldn’t bear to be intimate with another woman. But when Kriss urged, “Go on. Dot, tell Anne, too,” she began. “Well—” then looked at Anne and blurted, “I got this from my landlady.”

  Anne flung her a quick look and continued serving the coffee.

  “She knows, dear,” Kriss said, but the sarcasm was lost on Dorothy.

  “Well—there was a Texan wandering about the city wearing a ten gallon hat—”

  Now Anne looked solidly at Dorothy, but bit back the words, “You don’t say?” Instead she put her sting into the anonymous Texan. “With water on the brain.”

  Kriss chuckled. “No doubt, dear, but not ten gallons!”

  “Just like a Texan. Always exaggerating.”

  “Do you want to hear this story or not?” Dorothy complained jealously.

  “Let Dot tell her story,” Kriss said.

  “Well, this Texan ran into an actor on Broadway dressed like a Quaker. He’d never seen a Quaker before. So he went up to the actor and said, ‘Talk some Quaker for me, will you. Friend.’ The Quaker smiled indulgently and tried to pass, but the Texan took hold of his arm ‘Oh, come on, partner, talk some Quaker for me. Ah never heard nobody talk Quaker.’ The actor tried to disengage his arm, but the Texan held him firmly. ‘Ah tell you what I’ll do. Friend. If you talk some Quaker for me, I’ll buy you the best feed they can throw together at 21.’ When the Texan said that, the actor turned slowly and looked him straight in the eye. ‘Fuck thee!’ he said.”

  Kriss laughed with childish glee. “Someone should tell that to Watson. The last part, I mean.”

  Even Anne giggled. “I’ll tell him,” she said. “You just wait. And I won’t say thee, either!”

  Dorothy glanced at her watch. “Oh, I’ve got to run; Kirby wants me before lunch.” She gave Kriss a beseeching smile. “What I wanted was to ask you to go with me to the Museum of Modem Art this evening. It’s the opening of the Monet exhibition.” Through the corners of her eyes Kriss noticed Anne flick a glance at her as she began stacking the dirty cups and saucers. Once they had discussed Dorothy’s passion for art exhibitions, but now she felt a faint disloyalty for having done so.

  “I’m so tired, baby. Can’t we go some other time,” she begged off.

  Anne carted off the coffee service with no comment.

  “Oh, Kriss—” She’d promised herself not to feel badly if Kriss couldn’t go, but she couldn’t keep the disappointment from her voice.

  Kriss felt sorry for her. “Oh, baby, I’m just so tired.” Then, relenting, she said, “Why don’t you come and have dinner with me tonight.”

  “But—but—” She couldn’t bring herself to ask.

  “He won’t be there tonight,” Kriss assured her. “Nor any other night,” she thought bitterly.

  Now Dorothy was happy. She looked like a girl who’d been asked on a date. “All right. But you let me do everything. Promise?”

  Kriss wondered again if Dorothy understood her own emotions. Probably not, she thought. A veil lowered over her eyes. “I promise,” she said, chuckling mechanically. If I find myself in bed with Dot, that’ll be the bitter end, she thought. Anyway, I’d like a virgin, she added mentally, chuckling to herself. “Make it around seven-thirty.”

  “All right, then, at seven-thirty.”

  Immediately after Dorothy left, she regretted asking her. But at least Dot would be better than being alone, she confessed. Anything was better than being alone. Although she’d never come to the stage of letting herself be picked up…“You son of a bitch!” she thought with sudden venom, but whether her venom was directed toward Ronny or Ted or Dave or anyone else in particular, she didn’t even know herself.

  Chapter 4

  Jesse came up from the subway through the arcade with its tobacco shops, barber shops, shoeshine parlours, notion stores, florists, lunch counters, turkish baths, to the north side of 42nd Street, next to the comer drugstore. ‘This is what they mean by the underworld,” he had thought in passing, and now he viewed the upper side with equal distaste.

  From where he stood at the corner of Eighth Avenue—a pesthole of petty thugs where a man could buy a gun, hot or cold, for fifteen dollars up—down to the tri-cornered, old stone Times building in the narrow angle where Broadway crossed Seventh Avenue, was a block of infinite change. Once in the lives of very old men it had been a mudhole; then had come an era of fashion, of furred and diamonded women with their potbellied escorts alighting from lacquered carriages beneath the glittering marquees of plush modern play-houses. Now it was descending into a mudhole again, but of a different kind. The once famous playhouses, lumped together on both sides of the street, were now crummy second-and-third run movie theatres, contesting with the cheap appeal of a penny arcade with its shooting galleries, mechanical games, flea circus, thimble arena where Jack Johnson had done a daily stint of boxing in his waning years. And in between there were the numerous jewelry stores with fake auctions every night, beer joints, cafeterias, sporting goods stores, shoe stores, shoe repair and valet shops, book stores that dealt principally in pornography, second-class hotels and filthy rooming houses.

  “Poor man’s Broadway,” Jesse thought sourly, as his searching gaze flitted from the lighted movie signs to the passing faces: then his mind began improving on the commonplace phrase, “Melting pot…already melted—rusting now…last chance…I can get it for you hot—hotter than you think, bud…this side of paradise—way this side…” His eyes rested on a black couple, the man tall and strutting in a cream coloured suit, a yam-coloured woman with a hundred pounds of hams…“Nigger Haven too…”

  Ahead of him a short swarthy man in a striped blue suit backed angrily from a narrow-fronted hash joint, shouting belligerently, “You come out here, you bastard, I’ll show you!” A big blond buck, Swedish looking, dressed in a white apron, a white shirt with the sleeves rolled up, obviously the counterman, charged onto the sidewalk. His face was red with rage. “Don’t you call me no bastard, you son of a bitch!” The short swarthy man stood his ground defiantly. “Don’t you call me no son of a bitch, you bastard! You’re out here on the street now and I’ll knock you on your ass!” Whereupon the big blond counterman knocked him down with one wild swing. The short swarthy man staggered to his feet and lurched about dizzily in a fighting stance. “You ain’t got no counter now to protect you,” he said. Whereupon the big blond buck swung wildly and knocked him down again. Jesse recalled his dream where the short squat man had brained the big wild man with a heavy oak chair, and said, half-laughing, “Law of
averages.”

  A cop ambled up lazily and broke it up. “Go on, go on, get on back tuh work ‘fore I lock you up!” he said to the counterman, giving him a push, then he turned to the short swarthy man, “Whyoncha pick on somebody yo’ own size?” A snigger ran through the crowd. “He slipped up on me,” the short man defended his prowess. “Go on, go on,” the cop said. “I can tell you never wuz a boy scout.”

  “Never was a boy, son,” Jesse thought. “Where’d you study psychiatry?”

  Further on, a book store claimed his vagrant attention. He stopped for a moment, searching among the titles for those of his own two books. There were several books by black writers, but not his. “If you ever find someone who’s read your books you’ll drop dead,” he told himself. His gaze picked out the title. Lost Horizon. “Good and lost right here,” he thought.

  Then he recalled an editor who’d rejected his second book, complaining, “Why do you fellows always write this kind of thing? Some of you have real talent. Why don’t you try writing about people, just people.” He had countered, “White people, you mean?” The editor had reddened. “No, I don’t mean white people. I mean people! Like Maugham and Hilton write about, for instance.” He laughed at the recollection and his bitterness left. “I should have told him I don’t want no Eskimos, and that’s all the people they left. Don’t even know no ape-men, I should have told him, and no apes either, for that matter—although he probably wouldn’t have believed that, close as he thinks I am to Africa.” The thought kept tickling him as he ambled along, unmindful of the gay who trailed him on the leeside. “My folks didn’t do right by me,” he said aloud suddenly. “They shouldn’t have got themselves caught.”

  Suddenly he turned and retraced his steps to another small bookstore that had just registered on his mind, disconcerting the gay. He stared at the titles without really seeing them, a sort of reflex gesture. “What I really ought to have told the son of a bitch,” he thought, “is why don’t you read the Old Testament, son? Or even Rabelais for that matter. That’s the way I should have started the damn book.” He blew laughter from his nostrils. “The nigger woke, sat up, scratched at the lice, stood up, farted, pissed, crapped, gargled, harked, spat, sat down, ate a dishpan of stewed chitterlings, drank a gallon of lightning, hated the white folks for an hour, went out and stole some chickens, raped a white woman, got lynched by a mob, scratched his kinky head and said. Boss, Ah’s tahd uh gittin’ lynched. Ah’s so weary kain keep mah eyes open, and the Boss said. Go on home an’ sleep, nigger, that’s all you niggers is good for. So he went back to his shanty, stealing a watermelon on the way, ate the watermelon rind and all, lay down on his pallet, blinked, yawned, and went to sleep hating the white folks.” “We can’t print this crap,” the editor would have said.