Infants of the Spring

by Wallace Thurman

  —

  He was on an ocean. Calm billows cradled him, transferred him gently to the shore, venting plangent roars of self-approval. Mist kissed his lips and cooled his fervid head and cheeks. Spray enveloped his naked body. Fleecy phantoms in the sky protected his eyes from the blazing sun. Then there was a gradual cessation of movement and sound. The breakers had deposited him upon something soft and yielding to the weight of his body. The phantoms had dispersed and the sun’s unretarded rays blinded him. The roar of the waves diminished in volume, became pianissimo, then faded into nothingness. There was complete silence. Consciousness returned.

  “How’s the coon?” It was an unfamiliar male voice.

  “He’s coming out of it. Must be epileptic.” A woman’s voice penetrated the fog. Raymond opened his eyes. An immense calcimined ceiling arched above him. An acrid odor invaded his nostrils as he breathed deeply. A disembodied hand appropriated his wrist, professional fingers, cool and direct, pressed upon his pulse. His roving eyes encountered the form of a uniformed nurse bending over him. He sat up abruptly, startled. His wrist was wrenched from her restraining hand. The nurse smiled, as did the interne standing by her side.

  “All right,” she announced crisply and walked away. Raymond was speechless. His reconnoitering eyes discerned a hospital ward, full of beds. The interne was speaking.

  “Your name Raymond Taylor?”

  “Yes.”

  “You live at 267 West 1—th Street?”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, we found letters in your pocket which identified you. We called your house. They’ll be after you soon.”

  “What’s the matter?” Raymond asked anxiously, unable to comprehend why he was in a hospital ward.

  “You’re in Bellevue. Fell out on the street. Ever do that before?”

  “No.”

  “You’re not epileptic, are you?”

  “No.”

  “Ever have heart trouble?”

  “No.” Other words surged through his consciousness but could not be articulated.

  “Humph.” The interne turned to a table beside the bed. “Here, drink this.” He forced a glass of clear liquid into Raymond’s hand. Obediently the glass was drained.

  “Now lie quiet a while. You can go home when someone comes after you.”

  He was gone. Raymond lay down and tried to recall what had happened. He seemed to have been unconscious for years. Everything was jumbled and incongruous. He fell into a stupor, and was almost asleep when Paul and Eustace, accompanied by the interne, leaned inquiringly over him.

  XX

  Raymond went to bed the moment he returned home from the hospital. He felt weak, depressed and ill. His head ached constantly, throbbing with all the intensity of an overworked dynamo. His nerves were taut, expectant. And yet there was really nothing wrong physically. His whole trouble was mental, and he knew it, but he did not have sufficient energy to dissipate the rather satisfying feeling of illness which enveloped him. For the moment he wanted to do nothing but lie in bed and be left alone.

  Paul and Eustace respected his wishes. But Euphoria was insistent upon calling in a physician. Only by telling her that she could call one in on the next day if he felt no better was Raymond able to be rid of her.

  He was lying in his bed, eyes partly closed, half awake, mind conjuring fantastic dream images, when he became aware of someone being in the room. Opening his eyes, he saw Stephen leaning over him. Stephen appeared to be ill too. The usually keen blue eyes were dull and bleary. The smooth, transparent skin was mottled, drawn, and heavily lined.

  “I didn’t mean to wake you.”

  “I wasn’t asleep.”

  There was an awkward silence.

  “Why don’t you sit down? There’s room on the bed.”

  Raymond turned over on his side so that he faced the center of the room. Stephen eased himself on to the edge of the bed, and sat there nervously twirling his hat.

  “Are you surprised to see me?”

  “Mmn … more or less.”

  “I heard you were ill.”

  “How?”

  “I telephoned of course. Your messenger boy stunt hurt.”

  “I explained that in my note. I really didn’t see any sense in our seeing one another.”

  “Yes … I know.”

  They fell silent again, each waiting for the other to reopen the conversation. Finally, Stephen got up, took a turn around the room, then divested himself of his hat and coat and turned to Raymond.

  “Must we be so childish?” he said. “I tell you. I’ve got some liquor … some good liquor. Let’s drink some and maybe our tongues will be loosened.”

  “But I’m ill, and I don’t want to drink.”

  “Horse feathers. You know there isn’t a damn thing wrong with you except that you’re mentally drunk. Why not get physically drunk, too?”

  He went into the alcove, obtained two glasses and poured out two stiff drinks. The glasses were soon empty and as quickly refilled and emptied again. After the third drink, Raymond forgot his lethargic state and sat up in the bed.

  “You know, Steve,” he was saying, “you ought to write the story of your experiences in Harlem and sell them to Mencken. He’s so damn interested in Aframericana recently. But I doubt if he would believe it. I hardly believe it myself. I hardly believe anything that’s happened in this damn house.”

  “This house has been bad for both of us. I often wonder what would have happened had we been in a more sane atmosphere.”

  “Are there any?”

  ”Any what?”

  “Sane atmospheres. I’ve never found one. It seems to me that my whole life has been one whirlpool after another. I’m one of those people who are so anti-vegetable that the most insignificant event in my life takes on exciting proportions.”

  “Always the author, Ray, always the author. You dramatize yourself and every situation in which you find yourself. And you seem to feel that no incident which occurs around you can reach a climax unless you contribute something to the action. And the moment someone pulls something exciting, you always feel as if you must surpass them. You’re as addicted to the spotlight as Paul, but you’re much more subtle about it.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “Give me your glass. Let’s have another drink.”

  “I deserve one after that last crack.”

  Stephen refilled the glasses. They were silent until the glasses were once more empty.

  “What’s going to become of you and me, Ray?”

  “Who in the hell knows, and who in the hell cares? I’m going to write, probably a series of books which will cause talk but won’t sell, and will be criticized severely, then forgotten. Negroes won’t like me because they’ll swear I have no race pride, and white people won’t like me because I won’t recognize their stereotypes. Do you know, Steve, that I’m sick of both whites and blacks? I’m sick of discussing the Negro problem, of having it thrust at me from every conversational nook and cranny. I’m sick of whites who think I can’t talk about anything else, and of Negroes who think I shouldn’t talk about anything else. I refuse to wail and lament. My problem is a personal one, although I most certainly do not blind myself to what it means to be a Negro. I get it from all sides. I get it from the majority of whites who invade Harlem and who bend over backwards making themselves agreeable. I get it from whites downtown with whom I do business, and who for the most part are unconsciously patronizing. But I have a sense of humor. That’s all that saves me from becoming like most of the Negroes I know. Things amuse me. They don’t make me bitter. I may get moody and curse my fate, but so does any other human being with an ounce of intelligence. The odds are against me … well … so are they against every other man who would dare to think for himself. Most of the people who would segregate me because of my color are so inferior to me that I can only pity their ignorance, and as for those who patronize me I stand for it only because I am to be the gainer.”

  “What’s th
e point?”

  “I don’t know. I’m just talking, Steve, because I haven’t had a chance to get anything out of my system for a long time, and God knows when I’ll be able to do it again. That party affected me, too, the other night. But now I can see it in a different perspective, a clearer one, I believe. Anything that will make white people and colored people come to the conclusion that after all they are all human, all committed to the serious business of living, and all with the same faults and virtues, the sooner amalgamation can take place and the Negro problem will cease to be a blot on American civilization. There’ll be other blots just as bad of course, but there won’t be this mass of alien people, retarding the progress of the country because they are being inculcated with complexes which can only wrack havoc. A few years ago it was the thing for all Negroes who could get an education to be professional men, doctors, lawyers, dentists, et cetera. Now, they are all trying to be artists. Negroes love to talk, love to tell the stories of their lives. They all feel that they are so different from the rest of humanity, so besieged by problems peculiar only to themselves. And since it is the fashion now to be articulate either in words, music or paint brush, every Negro, literate or otherwise, confesses and is tempted to act according to the current fad.”

  “How’s it going to end?”

  “A few Negroes will escape their race and go on about their business. In small towns throughout the country, and in some large towns too, you will find financially independent Negroes who are respected members of the community, holding responsible jobs and being taken for granted by their white neighbors. Over in Staten Island, there is a Negro who has made a fortune in the trucking business. He is a director in one of the local banks. He belongs to the chamber of commerce. And he can hardly write his name. What’s the reason? He has money. He’s an individualist. And that is the only type of Negro who will ever escape from the shroud of color, those who go on about their own business, and do what they can in the best way they can, whether it be in business or in art. Eventually only the Babbitt and the artist will be able to break the chains. The rest must wait until the inevitable day of complete assimilation.”

  “Won’t the masses benefit by Communism if they are given the chance?”

  “I’m glad you spoke of that, for I, for one, would like to see them get the chance. I’d like to help disseminate communistic propaganda among the black masses. Just to see if their resentment is near enough the surface to be inflamed. I’d like to see them retaliate against the whites in their own sphere. For every lynching, I’d like to see Negroes take their toll in whites. If I thought that the Negro masses would be belligerent enough to fight for their rights, and make capitalistic America stop playing black labor against white labor, I’d join the communist party tomorrow and risk life and limb spreading the gospel.”

  “You’re contradicting yourself. How can you fight both for the masses and for the individual? I’ve heard you say a million times that there is nothing to be looked for from the proletarian Negro. That only the individual matters. And that you would waste more energy protesting against the false imprisonment of a Mooney and a Billings than you would against the lynching of some stray darky who probably deserved no better fate.”

  “Right you are, Steve. But after all, you have to improve the status of the masses in order to develop your individuals. It is mass movements which bring forth individuals. I don’t care about stray darkies getting lynched, but I do care about people who will fight for a principle. And if out of a wholesale allegiance to Communism, the Negro could develop just a half dozen men who were really and truly outstanding, the result would be worth the effort. I’m sick of the namby-pamby folk who call themselves leaders of the race. Booker T. was a great man. Frederick Douglass was a great man. Garvey was a great man with obvious limitations. He was an organizer, which is something no other Negro leader can boast of being. As a race leader, DuBois is a potentially great writer gone wrong, and the rest are mere chicken feed, pushed into prominence because of expediency.” Raymond paused and drew a deep breath. “Now, for God’s sake, give me a drink.”

  Stephen complied with his request. And after Raymond had drained his glass, he suddenly turned to Stephen:

  “Jeez. I’ve been raving like an idiot for the last hour. You asked me what was going to become of you and me. I haven’t answered either, have I? Well, what is going to happen to you?”

  “Let’s don’t talk about me. I’m not important. I can never be anything but a campfollower. I’ll never have the courage to rush in front of any vanguard. I’ll probably spend all my time on the wide public highway, avoiding any unchartered sidepath. You see, I’m one of Gertrude Stein’s lost generation … or rather post-lost generation. I’m too busy trying to find borderlines in this new universe of ours ever to strike out on my own. I’m afraid of the dark, I suppose. The world has become too large. I can’t see the skyline from the ground, and I’ll probably become a Humanist just because they are interested in establishing boundary lines.”

  “Why not revolt?”

  “There’s really very little to revolt against since the Victorians have been so thoroughly demolished. And it’s too soon to rebel against the present régime of demolition. Of course the real reason is that I am too easily seduced by the semblance of security to risk the loss of creature comfort.”

  “In that case you don’t deserve any sympathy.”

  “Sez you with an air of superiority. For all your prattle about self-sufficiency, egoism, revolt, individuality, and sense of humor, your flight, too, will be curtailed, and you, like myself, will be pressed downwards, and forced to cry out with Santayana:

  ’I would I might forget that I am I

  And break the heavy chain that binds me fast,

  Whose links about myself my deeds have cast’ ”

  Stephen paused for a moment. “Maybe I’m wrong. You have something to fight for and against. You’ve got to fight two sets of people, your own and mine ….”

  “And get a hearing from neither. No, Steve, I wish that I could lead a vegetable existence. It sounds romantic, but I suppose I’m bound to thrive on antagonism. I’d be bored to death otherwise. I’ll probably spend my life doing things just to make people angry. I don’t expect to be a great writer. I don’t think the Negro race can produce one now, any more than can America. I know of only one Negro who has the elements of greatness, and that’s Jean Toomer. The rest of us are merely journeymen, planting seed for someone else to harvest. We all get sidetracked sooner or later. The older ones become warped by propaganda. We younger ones are mired in decadence. None of us seem able to rise above our environment. That donation party the other night is symptomatic of my generation. We’re a curiosity … even to ourselves. It will be some years before the more forward will be accepted as human beings and allowed to associate with giants. The pygmies have taken us over now, and I doubt if any of us has the strength to use them for a stepladder to a higher plane.”

  “What’s the solution?”

  “I should knowë”

  “But what are you going to do?”

  “Eventually I’m going to renounce Harlem and all it stands for now. You see, Harlem has become a state of mind, peopled with improbable monsters. There are a quarter million Negroes here, and it is fashionable only to take notice of a bare thousand … the cabaret entertainers, the actors, the musicians, the artists, and the colorful minority who drift from rent party to speakeasy to side-street dives. The rest are ignored. They’re not interesting. Because we live in an age when only the abnormal is interesting.”

  ”You’re wrong there, Ray The abnormal is receding into its proper sphere.”

  “Oh yeah? That accounts, I suppose, for the popularity of Faulkner and Hemingway. They are so interested in normality. No, Steve, there is not yet a return to normalcy, and certainly not for the Negro who has never known such a state. He is, you see, a product of his age and of his race, which has been carried along at such a pace that never has t
here been time for him to sit by the side of the road and reflect upon what it all might mean.”

  Stephen refilled their glasses. Both were tired now. Silently they made a gesture of toasting one another, then downed their drinks. Stephen placed the empty glasses and the empty flask upon the table, and in doing this, noticed a notebook, dirty, dogeared, and worn, carelessly thrown atop a pile of books.

  “What’s this?” he asked, picking it up.

  “Oh, that’s Paul’s notebook. Bring it here. There’s something in it I must show you.”

  Stephen handed the notebook to Raymond, who busied himself turning the grimy pages. He finally found the page he sought, and, smiling, handed the notebook to Stephen.

  “Get a load of this, will ya?”

  Dear Gabriele D’Annunzio (Stephen read):

  Susceptible as you are to flattery (for all great men are vain) I do not follow in the footsteps of the herd. For I, too, am an artist. A genius. I, too, have visions. And you interest me. Spectacular person. Your cleverness amuses me. Witty man. Your idiosyncrasies intrigue me. Wise One. I am only delayed in making you a visit by financial difficulty. But that is a minor hindrance and one that you may alleviate to save yourself further expectancy. For I am coming. Expect me.

  Paul Arbian

  P. S. Your cell of pure dreams is wonderful in conception. But faulty in a few details. I know you better than you know yourself.

  “What the hell?” Stephen began.

  ”Turn to the next page,” Raymond said. “You ain’t seen nothing yet.”

  Stephen turned the page and read:

  The Shah of Persia:

  Illustrious potentates need jewels to enhance their own immortal luster. You lack the most priceless jewel best to set yourself off. I am that jewel. An artist. A genius. A citizen of the world. You could array me in a setting befitting my personality. And you can send me the fare enabling me to come to you. I’ll be the correct something you need to make your exile in Paris a thing of joy and beauty forever.