Infants of the Spring

by Wallace Thurman

  “My dear Ray. Don’t you realize that should we marry you’d probably cut my throat after the first week or else I’d bash you over the head with your typewriter?”

  “But I love you.”

  “I don’t doubt that. And I love you, too.”

  “At last?” His voice was joyous. His eyes sparkled with delight.

  “Not at last, at all. I always have.”

  “But Bull … ?”

  “Was an experiment I had to make.”

  Raymond studied her eyes for a moment before speaking again.

  “You’re one queer girl.”

  “I assure you Fm quite aware of all my limitations.”

  “And you won’t marry me?”

  “I should say not. I happen to think too much, both of myself and you.”

  Once more Raymond grew pensive.

  “Would you …”

  “Be your mistress?” she finished as he paused. “Certainly.” Then before he could give expression to his joy and surprise, she asked suddenly, and for no apparent reason, “Isn’t that Ramona they’re playing?”

  Raymond had not even been aware of the sweet voiced tenor crooning over the radio.

  “Why, yes it is,” he answered after listening for a moment. “But what has that got to do … ?”

  “It just reminds me of something. I think of it whenever I hear that song. You see it was like this,” she smiled sweetly and leaned confidentially across the table, “I had a boy friend. He was a butler to some wealthy white family. He took me to dinner one night and regaled me throughout the meal with the trouble his master had keeping a good cook. Finally fed up on it, I suggested that he marry and let his wife fill the position. The idea took hold. Immediately he proposed. And during his ecstatic outburst someone began singing Ramona.”

  “And the proposal?”

  “Oh, he wasn’t so keen after I told him I couldn’t cook.”

  She began to laugh. Raymond did likewise. There seemed to be nothing else for him to do.

  XXV

  It was Raymond’s last night in Niggeratti Manor. Lucille had spent most of the evening with him, aiding him to pack. The studio was bare and cheerless. The walls had been stripped of the colorful original drawings contributed by Paul and Carl Denny. They were now stark and bare. The book shelves were empty, and yawned hideously in the more shaded corners. The middle of the room was filled with boxes in which his books had been packed, and in the alcove his trunk and suitcases stood at attention in military array. The rest of the house was also in a state of dishevelment. Painters and plasterers had been swarming over the place, leaving undeniable evidence of their presence and handiwork. Niggeratti Manor was almost ready to suffer its transition from a congenial home for Negro artists to a congenial dormitory for bachelor girls.

  Amid the gloom and confusion Raymond and Stephen sat, fitfully conversing between frequent drinks which had little effect. There was more bad news. Stephen had been called back to Europe. His mother was dangerously ill. There was little hope of his arriving before she died, but they insisted that he, the eldest son, start for home immediately. He was to sail the next day.

  “You know, son, family is a hell of a thing. They should all be dissolved. Of course I’m perturbed at the thought of my mother’s death, but I can’t stop her from dying, nor can I bring her back to life should she be dead when I arrive. And yet I am dragged across an ocean, expected to display great grief and indulge in all the other tomfoolery human beings indulge themselves in when another human being dies. It’s all tommyrot.”

  “Assuredly,” Raymond agreed, “dying is an event, a perversely festive occasion, not so much for the deceased as for his so-called mourners. Let’s forget it. You’ve got to adhere to the traditions of the clan to some degree. Let’s drink to the day when a person’s death will be the cue for a wild gin party rather than a signal for well meant but purely exhibitionistic grief.” He held his glass aloft. “Skip ze gutter.” The glasses were drained.

  “And after you get in Europe?”

  “I will be prevailed upon to stay at home and become a respectable schoolmaster. Now, let’s finish the bottle of gin. I’ve got to go. It’s after three and as usual we’ve been talking for hours and said nothing.”

  Raymond measured out the remaining liquor.

  “O. K., Steve. Here’s to the fall of Niggeratti Manor and all within.”

  Stephen had gone. Raymond quickly prepared himself for bed, and was almost asleep when the telephone began to ring. He cursed, decided not to get up, and turned his face toward the wall. What fool could be calling at this hour of the morning? In the old days it might have been expected, but now Niggeratti Manor was no more. There was nothing left of the old régime except reminiscences and gossip. The telephone continued to ring. Its blaring voice echoed throughout the empty house. Muttering to himself, Raymond finally left his bed, donned his bathrobe and mules, went out into the hallway, and angrily lifted the receiver:

  “Hello,” he grumbled.

  A strange voice answered. “Hello. Is this Raymond Taylor?”

  “It is.”

  ”This is Artie Fletcher, Paul’s roommate. Can you come down to my house right away? Something terrible has happened.”

  Raymond was now fully awake. The tone of horror in the voice at the other end of the wire both stimulated and frightened him. He had a vague, eerie premonition of impending tragedy.

  “What is it? What’s happened?” he queried impatiently.

  “Paul’s committed suicide.”

  Raymond almost dropped the receiver. Mechanically he obtained the address, assured Artie Fletcher that he would rush to the scene, and within a very few moments was dressed and on his way.

  The subway ride was long and tedious. Only local trains were in operation, local trains which blundered along slowly, stopping at every station, droning noisily: Paul is dead. Paul is dead.

  Had Paul the debonair, Paul the poseur, Paul the irresponsible romanticist, finally faced reality and seen himself and the world as they actually were? Or was this merely another act, the final stanza in his drama of beautiful gestures? It was consonant with his character, this committing suicide. He had employed every other conceivable means to make himself stand out from the mob. Wooed the unusual, cultivated artificiality, defied all conventions of dress and conduct. Now perhaps he had decided that there was nothing left for him to do except execute self-murder in some bizarre manner. Raymond found himself not so much interested in the fact that Paul was dead as he was in wanting to know how death had been accomplished. The train trundled along clamoring: What did he do? What did he do? Raymond deplored the fact that he had not had sufficient money to hire a taxi.

  The train reached Christopher Street. Raymond rushed out of the subway to the street above. He hesitated a moment to get his bearings, repeated the directions he had been given over the telephone, and plunged into a maze of criss-cross streets. As he neared his goal, a slender white youth fluttered toward him.

  “Are you Raymond Taylor?”

  “Yes.”

  ”Come this way, please. I was watching for you.”

  Raymond followed his unknown companion into a malodorous, jerry-built tenement, and climbed four flights of creaky stairs to a rear room, lighted only by burning planks in the fireplace. There were several people in the room, all strangely hushed and pale. A chair was vacated for him near the fireplace. No introductions were made. Raymond lit a cigarette to hide his nervousness. His guide, whom he presumed to be Artie Fletcher, told him the details of Paul’s suicide.

  Earlier that evening they had gone to a party It had been a wild revel. There had been liquor and cocaine which everyone had taken in order to experience a new thrill. There had been many people at the party and it had been difficult to keep track of any one person. When the party had come to an end, Paul was nowhere to be found, and his roommate had come home alone.

  An hour or so later, he had heard a commotion in the hallway. Several p
eople were congregated outside the bathroom door, grumbling because they had been unable to gain admittance. The bathroom, it seemed, had been occupied for almost two hours and there was no response from within. Finally someone suggested breaking down the door. This had been done. No one had been prepared for the gruesome yet fascinating spectacle which met their eyes.

  Paul had evidently come home before the end of the party. On arriving, he had locked himself in the bathroom, donned a crimson mandarin robe, wrapped his head in a batik scarf of his own designing, hung a group of his spirit portraits on the dingy calcimined wall, and carpeted the floor with sheets of paper detached from the notebook in which he had been writing his novel. He had then, it seemed, placed scented joss-sticks in the four corners of the room, lit them, climbed into the bathtub, turned on the water, then slashed his wrists with a highly ornamented Chinese dirk. When they found him, the bathtub had overflowed, and Paul lay crumpled at the bottom, a colorful, inanimate corpse in a crimson streaked tub.

  What delightful publicity to precede the posthumous publication of his novel, which novel, however, had been rendered illegible when the overflow of water had inundated the floor, and soaked the sheets strewn over its surface. Paul had not foreseen the possible inundation, nor had he taken into consideration the impermanency of penciled transcriptions.

  Artie Fletcher had salvaged as many of the sheets as possible. He handed the sodden mass to Raymond. Ironically enough, only the title sheet and the dedication page were completely legible. The book was entitled:

  WU SING: THE GEISHA MAN

  It had been dedicated:

  To

  Huysmans’ Des Esseintes and Oscar Wilde’s Oscar Wilde

  Ecstatic Spirits with whom I Cohabit

  And whose golden spores of decadent pollen

  I shall broadcast and fertilize

  It is written

  Paul Arbian.

  Beneath this inscription, he had drawn a distorted, inky black skyscraper, modeled after Niggeratti Manor, and on which were focused an array of blindingly white beams of light. The foundation of this building was composed of crumbling stone. At first glance it could be ascertained that the skyscraper would soon crumple and fall, leaving the dominating white lights in full possession of the sky.