“Jesse!” He heard Kriss call to him from the bedroom.
He felt very indulgent toward her now. Returning to the bedroom, he turned on the small night light. “Yes, baby.”
“Did you do what I told you to do?” she asked, laughing up at him with childish humour and he knew then she’d done it to annoy him.
He pulled the covers from her and in the soft pink light her nude body resembled one of Van Dyck’s nudes. Sitting slantwise on the bed he kissed her breasts and stomach and when trying to pull her close discovered she was ticklish. He tickled her until she was pink all over and nearly hysterical, then said, “That’s what you get for being so mean,” and left her to get the paper and make the coffee and toast.
She arose and turned on the television to Gloucester before taking the paper to the John to begin her morning ritual. He felt wonderful, no sex drives and almost completely senseless, which was the way he would have loved to feel forever, but he could never let a good glow be, so he went back to the kitchen and drank a water tumbler of the vermouth. It put a sharp sardonic edge on his glow and his thoughts came back, not vivid, but alive, and about ten degrees off the line of conformity.
“Want some eggs, baby?” he called, and getting no reply, went to the bathroom door, “Will you have eggs, chicken—or should I say do you have eggs.”
“You can poach me an egg on toast.” She was taking a cold water douche and brushing her teeth at the same time and her voice was muffled. “You’ll find them in the icebox. I’m not laying this morning,” she added with double-entendre.
He was curious but he didn’t go in. “Ought to do an article for Cosmopolitan on Woman in Bathroom in Morning—no, no. Profile of Woman at Dawn, for the New Yorker,” he was thinking, as he returned to the kitchen, fried six slices of bacon and two eggs, poached one egg in vinegared water that came out frayed and uninteresting looking, which he put on a slice of dry, unbuttered toast and served it with a cup of black coffee.
“Your breakfast is ready!” he called, then made himself four well-buttered slices of toast, brought his own bacon and eggs to the table and began eating.
He had neglected to turn up the volume of the television and was surprised to look up and find the busts of a man and a chimpanzee on the screen. “Good God! The Russians are here,” he called to Kriss and she came from the John to see the excitement.
“Oy, you must hear this, he’s the cutest thing,” she said and hastened to turn up the sound.
“Which one?” he muttered, but she was acting so silly, backing from the room with her hands covering her loins, that he forgot the crack in his amazement. “Now I know her secret,” he thought with drunken cleverness, “She’s chimp-shy!”
She slipped into a robe and pulled the table in front of the archway so both of them could see, then sat on the stool beside him and said with giggling anticipation, “He says the most fantastic things.”
He looked up again at the two grimacing faces and after listening for a moment realized that the man was interviewing the chimp.
“Well, what will happen after that?” Gloucester asked the chimpanzee with a condescending smirk.
“On July 1 responsible officials of the United States will charge that slave labour exists in Russia on a scope unknown in the history of man,” the chimpanzee replied grinningly.
“Not a Russian after all” Jesse thought. “Not even an apeman. Must be a man-man.”
“That’s no news,” Gloucester protested. “You’re supposed to forecast news events.”
“All right then,” the chimpanzee replied. “On September 8 a woman named Bella V. Dodd will testify before a Senate Internal Security subcommittee in New York City that there are fifteen hundred Communist party members teaching in schools throughout the nation. And—”
“Who cares?” Gloucester interrupted rudely.“People are always testifying—”
“Wait! Wait!” the chimpanzee said. “Following which the New York City Board of Education will declare that ex-communists who admit party membership will not lose their teaching positions if they are genuinely repentant.” The chimpanzee looked at Gloucester expectantly. “Doesn’t that sound like wonderful doctrine?”
“Get on with the facts and forget the doctrine,” Gloucester snarled angrily.
“Just what I was saying, facts not fancy,” the chimpanzee murmured slyly.
“On May 21 fascist Spain will be admitted to UNESCO. On June 2 Secretary Trygve Lie will deny that the U.N. is a communist nest. On July 13 U.S. generals on an inspection tour of Yugoslavia will endorse military aid to communist Yugoslavia. On October 14 Senator O’Conor of Maryland will urge the U.N. to dismiss Americans employed by the U.N. who refused to say whether or not they were communists. On October 15, following the reorganization of the Soviet Directorate, Stalin will say in capitalist countries, ‘So-called freedom of the individual does not exist any longer.’ On October 16 U.S. Secretary of State Dean Acheson will urge the U.N. to continue to fight in Korea as long as is necessary to stop aggression and restore peace and security. On October 27 communist Yugoslavia will win a seat on the Economic and Social Council of the U.N. On November 8 police will fire on black rioters in Kimberly, South Africa, killing fourteen and wounding thirty-nine. African blacks will be protesting against government segregation policies of African blacks in Africa.” The chimpanzee’s interest strayed; he began looking about for his bananas. “Police will shoot into a mob of ungrateful African blacks, impressing them with white man’s goodwill toward African blacks who respect white man’s rule in Africa,” the chimpanzee concluded, yawning with an air of extreme boredom. After all, no one was shooting down chimpanzees.
“The little stinker!” Kriss said. “Imagine the U.S. giving military aid to Yugoslavia!”
“That’s what I’ll do!” Jesse said. “I’ll write a book about chimpanzees.” Then hastened to ask, “There isn’t any chimpanzee problem, is there?”
“Not that I know of,” Kriss said. “All of those I’ve seen—most at the zoo—seem well satisfied.”
“I guess you’re right at that,” Jesse said. “I’ve never heard of a chimpanzee being lynched for raping a white woman and so far none have been cited as communists.”
“No—oo,” Kriss said thoughtfully. “But I once saw a chimpanzee in the zoo leer at me.”
“Damn!” Jesse said. “That lets them out. Leering at a white woman is considered rape in some states. And if I write a love story about chimpanzees, some white woman is sure to remember how some chimpanzee leered at her and the critics will say Robinson has written another sordid protest story, why doesn’t the black bastard stop and count his blessings.”
“You could write about snakes,” Kriss suggested. “Everybody hates snakes.”
“But I don’t know any snakes,’ Jesse said. “I’ve seen some in the snakehouse in the Bronx zoo but I can’t say I came to know them.”
“Kathleen Windsor didn’t know any dukes, either. But she didn’t let that stop her,” Kriss said.
“I know, but she didn’t write about duking. She just went on the age-old principle that human conscience is only waist deep.”
“Why don’t you read her and learn then?” Kriss asked.
“But it’s below the waist the colour problem lies,” Jesse pointed out.
“Lays!” Kriss corrected him. “It’s not the lies but the lays that make the colour problem.”
“The lies make the lays and the lays make the lies,” Jesse expounded, feeling very clever. “If there were more lays and less lies it would soon be solved, or conversely, if there were more lies and less lays it would soon be resolved.”
With that profound analysis, he went into the bathroom to tie his tie. Everything seemed so extremely normal he forgot to swipe some pills as he had intended. Way in the back of his head he found himself humming Da-Da-Dee. The floor was listing first one way and then the other, keeping everything in normal perspective. When he finished dressing, he kissed Kriss on the nec
k.
“When will I see you again, baby?”
“Call me Saturday at noon,” she said, smiling sweetly. She felt wonderfully sane and cheerful.
“You’re going to see your love tonight?” he asked.
She smiled her secret sensual smile.
At the front door he peeped through the Judas window to see if the coast was clear. He heard footsteps and waited until he heard the outer door open and shut. Then he went hurriedly down the corridor, relaxing only when he had safely reached the street. “Not that I give a damn for myself,” he thought. But he didn’t know what might result from her neighbours seeing a black man coming from her apartment early in the morning.
She cared less about it than he did. But he didn’t know that.
It was shortly after nine o’clock when Jesse let himself into the apartment where he lived. “I hope all these damn birdmen are at work,” he thought. “Or at least visiting some other nest.” He didn’t turn on the light in the pitch-black hallway because he’d have to go back and turn it off after turning on the second light. As he groped his way through the treacherous tunnel, bumping into first one hazard and then another. Napoleon came tearing from the kitchen, barking furiously, and began nipping at his ankles. He aimed a vicious kick but missed him in the dark and kicked the leg of an unseen table instead, the sharp pain running up his legbone…“You little bastard!” he hissed. “Wait ‘till I get you in the light!”
“Napoleon, now you behave yourself,” came the dulcet voice of Leroy. “Don’t you know Mr Robinson yet?”
“Oh, he’s not bothering me,” Jesse lied, muttering under his breath, “The little sissy cur!” Aloud he continued, “He’s just saying hello.”
Leroy was waiting for him in the dim front hall, his big teeth grinning from his round black face, his big belly pushing the soiled white shirt down over the half-buttoned fly of his greasy black uniform pants. “I believe Napoleon likes you,” he lilted coyly. “He’s just flirting.” He shook his finger at the pop-eyed little beast. You stop flirting with Mr Robinson.” The mop-shaped dog trotted complacently back to the kitchen where his ancient sire was dozing beneath the kitchen stove, dreaming of young lions frolicking on the African coast.
“Perfectly normal,” Jesse thought. “Sane as life.” He tried to get past Leroy by saying, “I’ve been peeping at hole cards all night, I’m beat.”
But Leroy saved the choice morsel. “Your wife stopped by last night after you’d left. She wanted to get some blankets.”
“Oh!” Suddenly everything went crazy, abnormal in an insane world.
“You’ve been holding out on me,” Leroy accused coquettishly. But on seeing the bleak, drawn expression that had come over Jesse’s face, he quickly dropped the levity. “Mrs Robinson is a very fine-looking woman.”
“Thanks.” Leroy’s face swam before his vision and he thought he was going to be sick. He staggered blindly toward his room.
“Oh, I almost forgot. She wants some sheets too,” Leroy added. “And said to tell you she was getting along fine. She asked how you were getting along and I told her—”
“Thanks,” Jesse cut him off, finally managing to get his room door open. “I’ll get them for her sometime this morning. Thanks very much.” And he closed the door in Leroy’s face.
“Who times these things?” he thought, and the next moment he was lying face down across the bed crying with deep gasping sobs. “Don’t let her get hurt, God. Please don’t let her get hurt,”
he kept praying over and over until the paroxysm passed, then he stood, leaning weakly against the dresser top, and stared at his ravaged reflection.
“Jesse Robinson,” he said in a voice of utter futility. “Jesse Robinson. There must be some simple thing in this goddamn life that you don’t know. Some little thing. Something every other bastard born knows but you.” After a moment, without being aware that he had moved, he found himself in the window looking down across the flats of Harlem. His vision encompassed a sea of rooftops from 135th Street and Eighth Avenue until it was lost in the mists of East River, like sharp-angled waves of dirty water in the early sun, moving just enough to form a blurred distortion. “Every other nigger in this whole town but you.” There had been a line in a piece he’d written for a white daily newspaper years ago, which all the blacks had objected to: “Just a pure and simple faith in the whiter folks and the days…” For ten years he’d forgotten it, now it came back to mind. “Your trouble, son, you got no faith. Fine people really. Just got to believe all their lies.”
The shimmering distortion of the rooftops made him nauseated. Must be the way everybody sees the world,” he thought bitterly. “All nauseated! Every mother’s son of them!” He sat down weakly on the horribly covered couch, bent over, swallowing down the vomit that kept ballooning into his mouth. “It’s normal, though,” he tried to convince himself. “Any son of a bitch who sees it otherwise is crazy. Un-nauseated bastard abnormal. Put him away. Going around shouting. Peace, it’s wonderful! Lock him up! Menace to society.” Suddenly he thought of the woman editor who, upon reading the galley proofs of his first novel that had been submitted for a prize, said it made her sick at the stomach, nauseated her. “Fine lady! Perfectly normal! No cause for alarm if everybody’s like her. Let the commies come, long as we got McCarthy and nauseated normal lady editors.”
He felt a great need for a drink. His hands shook when he held them out and he could feel his legs trembling. He couldn’t make it to the store but he could telephone for a bottle. But when he stood up he noticed by the clock on the dresser that it was only a little past nine-thirty. Stores wouldn’t be open until ten. Half-hour; another half-hour to be delivered. “Too Late The Opiate-Race Problem.” He debated whether to ask Leroy for a drink, but decided against it. “If I have to look at that bastard’s greedy eyes, I’ll vomit,” he thought. His reflection in the mirror showed that he was fully dressed, even to his trench coat, but minus his hat. His hat was on the bed where it had fallen off while he was crying.
And suddenly it was back and he knew all his vagrant thoughts had been a shield, but to no avail. It was back and he knew he couldn’t escape it, no matter how much liquor he drank. He lay down on the bed without undressing, his black shoes on the white spread, and put his hat over his face, and gave in to it, crying quietly to himself. “Jesse Robinson. How do these people do it, son? The white man is pissing on them too, and the days don’t know them either. How is it they keep their wives, bring up children, get along? Why can’t you believe too, son? They say after the first bite it tastes like sugar. How come you have to be the only one to act a fool? And think you’re being noble, too…”
The winter before the one just past, the last winter he and Becky were together, they had lived in an isolated summer resort on a small island in upstate New York, where he had been employed as caretaker. The blankets and sheets she wanted were part of a shipment of rejects the proprietors had sold to them for a fraction of the list price.
It had been pleasant there among the empty houses, far from the hurts of modern city life. No condescensions and denunciations, no venomous intrigues and shattering infidelities, no black problem and bright shining world of race relations with all its attendant excitement and despair—the frantic, frenzied and ofttimes funny interracial social gatherings, the frenetic interracial sex, the abnormally sharpened wits and equally sharpened spite, the veneer of brotherhood and exchange of beautiful ideas in a ghostly garden of hope, and the unrelenting hatred of them all, white and black, if you did not agree that history was made in bed—no mean and undermining competition with your black brothers for the favours of white folks, which had always reminded him of lines from that devastating poem, “Three Ways of Hunger,” by Francis Robert White:
Want, will assume a lost, Lysippan
Animal proportion of man:
Small of head and long of arm’s reach.
Whose knuckles break, break again
In the brute contest for con
tested ends.
His duties had been light, raking leaves, a few minor repairs, and nothing after the snow came in late November. The proprietors had known he was a writer, had given him the job for that reason, believing him to be honest and chiefly wanting someone to keep a close watch on the property. He and Becky had a car to use, a lovely cottage with central heating, a fireplace and plenty of wood. And there had been a little terrier, owned by one of the proprietors, that had stayed with them; and in the cellar a hogshead of homemade wine that tasted a little like muscatel but was dry and very strong which they had drunk all winter. It was full of dead gnats and had to be strained, but on occasion, to show off his ruggedness, he drank it with the dead gnats floating about in the glass. “Ah laks marinated gnats,” he would say. “Marinated gnats is good.” Amusing himself with this parody on a fine novel written by a fellow black author, the part of which he remembered most vividly was a bit of dialogue between the protagonists and his brother:
—Ah likes chiddlins, do you like chiddlins?
—Ah likes chiddlins.
—Chiddlins is good.
—Ah likes de big gut, do you likes de big gut?
—Ah likes de big gut.
—De big gut is good.
It was very cold that winter and the lake froze and all day long the ice fishermen sat beside their fires, tending their lines. Gradually he’d come to feel an inner peace, such as he had never known, and the sickness following the vile stoning of his second book had almost gone. He had begun his book: I Was Looking For a Street. In a sense, he had almost found that street. When spring came and the summer crew came back, his job was over. He had bought a fifteen year old Plymouth sedan with part of the money he had saved, and they went to Bridgeport, Connecticut, and rented a room in the home of a widow who worked as a domestic. Why Bridgeport? Why not Yonkers? Or New Haven? Afterwards, he never really knew. At the time he knew that Bridgeport had a Socialist mayor, and he vaguely remembered driving through it once and it had seemed like such a pleasant town.
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