by Claude McKay
“I’ll show you I’m a woman, yes I will. I’ll leave this house and to hell with it.”
“Why, Seraphine, you don’t know what you’re saying,” cried Mrs. Peixota. “Pablo, go on out and leave us alone.”
“And take your damned flowers, I don’t want them!” cried Seraphine, smashing the vase on the floor.
Her mother slammed shut the door: “Are you going insane, Seraphine, speaking that way to your father?”
“He’s not any father of mine.”
“If you say that again, I’ll spank you for the first time in my life, you miserable ungrateful wretch. What other father do you know but Pablo, who raised and educated you to become what you are today?”
“I’m not a miserable wretch and you can’t spank me either,” said Seraphine. “Understand that I won’t be treated like a little child. I won’t stay under this roof, not if I’ve got to go to hell!”
“There!” cried Mrs. Peixota, sharply slapping Seraphine’s face. “Go to hell if you want to—the devil may teach you good sense.”
“O-h-h!” Seraphine cried, pressing her palm against her cheek. “That ends it!” She rushed to the closet and started to take out her clothes, tossing them on the couch.
“You may go as quick as your feet will carry you, if you have no respect for your father and me,” said Mrs. Peixota. “Perhaps it’s my fault. I must blame myself for bringing you up too indulgently.” She left the room, banging the door behind her.
• • •
That night Seraphine stayed with Bunchetta Facey at her apartment on Edgecombe Avenue. The girls talked the greater part of the night. Bunchetta was more excited about Seraphine Peixota’s actually leaving her parents’ house than the cause of it. For some years Bunchetta had maintained an apartment of her own, finding existence more elastic living away from her parents. But Seraphine had always appeared to her set as the type of girl that could exist forever under the parental roof, because she enjoyed such unlimited freedom there.
“I hope I can find a really good job,” said Seraphine. “Then I wouldn’t have to worry about anything.”
“It won’t be difficult for you to find a place,” said Bunchetta. “I wouldn’t mind taking an apartment with you in the Village or some place downtown. I’m fed up with living in Harlem and feeling that it’s the only place I can live in New York.”
“That’s just how I feel myself,” said Seraphine. “Mother and Father are content, but I won’t be content with Harlem. All of us crowded together in the same pen. I love plenty of space and change of scenes. I want to feel free to live my life like any American girl.”
“Certainly and why not?” said Bunchetta. “I like a modernistic life and Harlem is not modernistic. Our downtown friends think it is because Harlem is abnormally hectic and jitterbuggering on the surface. But I tell them that Harlem is no more modernistic than Chinatown.”
Seraphine’s eyes seemed stranger than usual; while the yellowish one was glowing like a cat’s, the bluish appeared half-asleep between the lashes. She said: “I’ve never mixed much with the downtowners like you, Bunchy, I guess because Mother always discouraged it. We’ve gone to a lot of places downtown, but never made friends. Mother always said that white folks’ opinion of colored was either patronizing or sneering, but never genuine.”
“I’ve discovered that to be true enough,” said Bunchetta, “and that is the chief reason why I like to keep up with my contacts downtown. I try to correct wrong impressions of colored people among whites. Information is like daily bread to people. We eat and we talk and read. The white people control all the best means of information and so colored people cannot pretend to ignore them like—well, like the Peixotas.”
The remark made Seraphine smile: “I wish I could get interested in those interracial contacts like you, Bunchy. But I can’t see that they mean so much in the life of colored people. Interracial contacts are not really normal social contacts. Some charitable whites meet colored social workers with maybe a singer or a doctor from the group. They drink tea together or if it is a bohemian crowd they drink liquor. Everybody is very polite. But it’s like going to church and sitting beside a stranger and both of you listening to the sermon and singing hymns together. But colored people don’t live that way really, nor white people either.”
“But that’s one way of social contact, all the same,” said Bunchetta.
“It’s the worse way,” said Seraphine. “It is oily with hypocrisy. I prefer Mother’s way. She’s got to meet the downtowners too because of her connexion with colored charitable organizations. But it’s business with her, to prod some politician to act or get the city to do something. She doesn’t pretend it’s social like you all. There can’t be any really normal social enjoyment and contact between people who have something and people who have nothing.”
“Then you wouldn’t entertain the idea of living downtown,” said Bunchetta.
“Sure I would. But it’s because I want space to move around with freedom like other people and enjoy life; it’s not because my heart is breaking to shake a white person’s left hand. I’d like to sit and eat in any restaurant on Broadway with a dark man, if I enjoy his company. I’d like to see him treated as an American, so that I could be proud of him. In spite of his money Father has never had the privilege to enjoy it and walk like a man with Mother along the American way of life. Otherwise he would be different and not so ingrown and hard like rock that resists even dynamite. He wouldn’t be so buried in racial movements.”
“The enjoyment of life is worth fighting for and a man must be hard as a rock either in his body or his mind to fight,” said Bunchetta. “If you had specialized like me in economics and sociology instead of music and interior decoration, you would understand that man was not born to enjoyment of life—he has to fight to get enjoyment out of life. I’ll tell you, Sirrie, you’re missing plenty by not associating more with white people who are thinking about social problems. They’re fighting like Mr. Peixota, but from a different angle. Take Lij Alamaya, for example. He is wrapped up in the fight for Ethiopia, just like Mr. Peixota, but he lives downtown, where he has important contacts. The average white person wouldn’t think he was Ethiopian, he’s so fair-skinned.”
“That’s just it,” said Seraphine. “The light ones have some freedom of movement by themselves, but with the dark ones together we are all doomed to discrimination. I don’t know if I wasn’t crazy about Tekla because he was fair and we could circulate together anyplace without creating curiosity. Once I said to him that it was nice that we two could ‘pass’ together. He didn’t understand, so I explained to him what ‘passing’ was and he was very angry. He said he was not ‘passing,’ he was proud to be an Ethiopian. I told him that he couldn’t live in the Santa Cruz if he were a dark Ethiopian. He said he didn’t care where he lived and he thought ‘passing’ was cheapening to the person who was ‘passing’ if he had any pride in being himself. He couldn’t understand the American point of view.”
“He’s perspicacious,” said Bunchetta. “The human point of view is more important than the American point of view. It is the American point of view, the German point of view, the British point of view and all the different nations’ point of view that make a mess of the world. Now we have the Popular Front to which all peoples with the right human point of view can belong.”
Seraphine yawned. “I wish I wasn’t so plumb dumb about politics and social problems. But you may be right, Bunchy, when you say I should associate more with social-problem people. Maybe I’ll learn something for my benefit.”
• • •
The opportunity of a new orientation for Seraphine was right at hand. Bunchetta telephoned at noon the next day (from the lower Harlem office of Social Service) to inform Mrs. Witern that Seraphine had quit her parents’ house and was staying with her. She did not omit to mention that Seraphine was looking for a job. Mrs. Witern commun
icated the interesting report to Professor Makepeace. And long before Harlem’s rubbernecks had reached out to sample the choice morsel, Maxim Tasan had heard that Peixota’s daughter had left home.
That evening Bunchetta informed Seraphine that Mrs. Witern had invited them to dinner on Friday. Seraphine had not followed up her contact with Mrs. Witern since their visit to the Airplane. Twice she had received invitations to visit her, once through Bunchetta and another time by a direct note, but she had found some excuse for not going. But now she grasped eagerly at the chance. Anything was welcome which offered some relief from thinking too much about Lij Alamaya and the consequences of her leaving home.
• • •
It was a small dinner party at Mrs. Witern’s. She never had many people to dinner, because of the state of her husband’s health. Besides Bunchetta and Seraphine, there was Mrs. Abigail Hobison, who was accompanied by Mr. Hall Ming, a young Chinese, and Mr. Montague Claxon. It was a plain dinner, hot broth in cups, a platter full of appetizers (olives, celery, pickles, shrimp, miniature frankfurters), mashed potatoes, boiled carrots and grilled filet of beef.
No kind of liquor was served before or during the dinner. Mr. Witern was once a connoisseur of wines and liquors but he could no longer take any alcoholic drinks because of his physical condition. Out of consideration for him, Mrs. Witern never had any with meals. As his right side was entirely paralysed, Mr. Witern ate with his left hand only. The butler had his meat cut into small pieces before it was placed before him.
Mr. Witern, to the right of his wife, was eager like a child interested in new surroundings. It was the first time he had dined with a Chinese or an Aframerican and he was pleased with the invitation. He adored his wife and her intellectual outlook, so elastic and varied. Her approach was so different, so superior to the cold philanthropic routine to which he was formerly accustomed, such as sitting in his office and discussing the possibility of an endowment with an emissary from an educational or charitable institution. His wife’s attitude was the ideal human way. And he appreciated her more because withal her activities, she was so exquisitely considerate in her attentions to him.
The conversation about the worldwide social ferment and the Popular Front was like a substitute for rare wine to the taste of Mr. Witern. For many years he had supported the intransigent position that Mr. Secretary Hughes1 took against the recognition of Soviet Russia in the society of states. But his paralytic body was miraculously thrilled when Soviet Russia at last accepted the democratic formulas of the comity of nations and with a grand gesture of goodwill promoted the universal movement of the Popular Front. But Mr. Witern’s enthusiasm was dampened by the knowledge that at the time the Russian nation made this conciliatory move the great Nazi nation had ostentatiously withdrawn from the society of Democratic nations.
Mrs. Abigail Hobison was seated opposite Mrs. Witern at the other end of the table, with Seraphine to her right. Like Seraphine she was tall, but remarkably stately with her white hair sitting like a crown upon her head. She was a widow and the scioness of an abolitionist family which became rich through wise investments in the dynamic industrial expansion that developed from the Civil War. She was the promoter and benefactor of the Interlink.
The Interlink was something of a correspondence school of information, a human-interest school. Its chief object was the dissemination of valuable and authentic information concerning the way of life and the thought of different groups of people. This information was condensed and sent to members and other persons in the form of a monthly newsletter called the Interlink. The Interlink had member correspondents in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and other South American countries, Panama and the Caribbean Islands, Mexico, Canada, Alaska, Australia, the Netherland Indies, China, Korea, Japan, the Philippines, India, Iran, Egypt, South Africa, North Africa and West Africa, Spain, France, Italy, Austria, Turkey, Greece, Czecho-Slovakia, Finland, Scandinavia, Great Britain. It had no correspondents in Germany.
Its original name was the Interracial Forum, but after the Nuremberg decrees2 were promulgated, setting the Nordic race apart from and above all other races, the name was changed to Interlink. Mrs. Hobison believed that the word “race” had become like a danger signal, threatening the existence of Civilization, and that decided her to drop “Interracial.” Her newsletter was circulated among important people: bankers, industrialists, scions of great fortunes, brokers, heads of corporations, merchants, ministers of religion, editors, publishers, educators, social workers, governors, congressmen and other politicians. It was slanted to combat prejudice of all kinds and chiefly race prejudice, class prejudice and caste prejudice. It advocated the free promotion of literature, art and science, and also the aristocratic conception of society.
After the launching of the Popular Front movement, Soviet Russia was listed among the countries in which the Interlink had correspondents, but no reports from that land were ever published. But sometimes excerpts were reprinted from Soviet newspapers and magazines.
The social highlight of the Interlink was the once-a-month luncheon at which an informal discussion was initiated by an invited guest who had accomplished an achievement in any field of civilized endeavor. Mrs. Hobison was not like Mrs. Witern, bohemian-inclined and proletarian-minded. She lived an aristocratic life, but she believed in the aristocracy of service. She was extensively and intelligently informed about the affairs of the world and her keen mind was as alert as a bird’s to the rustle of a leaf. She held that more than any the wealthy classes should be political-minded and aware of the social conditions of life on a world scale. She was contemptuous of people of consequence whose outlook was narrow and contended that misinformation was the chief cause of international confusion and misunderstanding. And so she had founded the Interlink as her contribution to the greater understanding and knowledge of human beings.
Mr. Montague Claxon was the director of the Interlink. The office was on lower Madison Avenue. It employed a considerable staff whose main work was to read and translate and clip excerpts from newspapers and magazines. Among them were a Chinese, a Mexican, a Hindu, a Brazilian, a Tunisian and a German exile. Claxon was a former newspaper correspondent who had lived in China in the late 1920s and had traveled in Japan, the Philippines and South America. He shared Mrs. Hobison’s ideas and was an efficient executive.
When Maxim Tasan learned of Seraphine Peixota’s predicament and that she was looking for a job, he immediately thought of her finding a place in the Interlink. Tasan had previously asked Montague Claxon why there was not an Aframerican on his staff. Claxon replied that he had not thought of it.
“But you should,” said Tasan. “The Aframericans are like a small foreign nation within the United States. As foreign as the Chinese in China and Eskimos in Alaska. Did you ever think of that? Some thoughts in their newspapers need translating into American as much as an article from Iceland or Arabia.”
“What you say is very illuminating,” said Claxon. “The Aframericans have become so matter-of-course among us that few white persons realize they are practically strangers among us.”
“They are your most problematic minority,” said Tasan, “and the readers of the Interlink should know it.”
“I’ll tell Mrs. Hobison exactly what you say,” said Claxon. “Of course, I could take on an Aframerican employee without telling her, for I have complete control over the staffing. But she’ll be excited over your idea and surprised that we never thought of it. She’s a true-blue descendant of abolitionists.”
And Tasan said: “There are some people who are so encrusted in the aristocratic shell of a great tradition that they are apt to forget the true spirit of it.” When Tasan was introduced to Abigail Hobison he had immediately formed an unfavorable opinion. He distrusted her lofty ideas about intellectual and cultural achievement and her bourgeois egoism in bracketing the class struggle with class prejudice and race prejudice. However, as a loyal soldier of the Soviet, h
e was fulsome in praise of the Interlink, hoping thus to win another recruit for the Popular Front.
In this case, as in many others, Tasan was successful. He was a close friend of Montague Claxon and was often at the offices of the Interlink, the entire staff of which were enthusiastic adherents to the Popular Front against war and Nazi-Fascism.
Tasan’s view concerning the Aframericans was a novel and a pleasing surprise to Mrs. Hobison. It had never once flashed into her mind that they too were a subject people like Zulus and Indians and Malays. She had always seen them from the angle of a domestic problem. But quickly her prehensile mind was illuminated to see, like Tasan, that Aframericans were a colony of subject people within the nation. Perhaps the only reason why she and the others had not seen the thing before was because of the lack of perspective. The human eye is at its best when it is long-sighted and accustomed to look at horizons and beyond; the proximity of the Aframericans placed them in a disadvantageous light.
Mrs. Hobison was eager to have an Aframerican representative on the staff of the Interlink. But Seraphine was a little disappointing to her, when they met. Mrs. Hobison had anticipated an Aframerican as distinctly representative of the type as the Chinese and Hindu members of the staff were of theirs. But Seraphine was so astonishingly typically Euramerican! However, she was doubly interesting as a type and as a symbol, thought Mrs. Hobison; she would be excellent to illustrate the absurdity of the new Nordic theories of race.
Mrs. Hobison got Mrs. Witern’s attention across the table and said: “We are using a very interesting item in next month’s Interlink, a splendid letter that Mr. Ming has received about living conditions in Manchukuo. From a member of the Comintern, was it?”
“The Kuomintang, the Chinese National Party,” said Mr. Ming.
“Oh, thank you,” said Mrs. Hobison. “Sometimes I become confused about the names of the innumerable radical movements. But the Comintern is mentioned in the letter, am I right?”
