Invisible man

Chapter 22

When I saw them sitting in their shirtsleeves, leaning forward, gripping their crossed knees with their hands, I wasn't surprised. I'm glad it's you, I thought, this will be business without tears. It was as though I had expected to find them there, just as in those dreams in which I encountered my grandfather looking at me from across the dimensionless space of a dream-room. I looked back without surprise or emotion, although I knew even in the dream that surprise was the normal reaction and that the lack of it was to be distrusted, a warning.

I stood just inside the room, watching them as I slipped off my jacket, seeing them grouped around a small table upon which there rested a pitcher of water, a glass and a couple of smoking ash trays. One half of the room was dark and only one light burned, directly above the table. They regarded me silently, Brother Jack with a smile that went no deeper than his lips, his head cocked to one side, studying me with his penetrating eyes; the others blank-faced, looking out of eyes that were meant to reveal nothing and to stir profound uncertainty. The smoke rose in spirals from their cigarettes as they sat perfectly contained, waiting. So you came, after all, I thought, going over and dropping into one of the chairs. I rested my arm on the table, noticing its coolness.

"Well, how did it go?" Brother Jack said, extending his clasped hands across the table and looking at me with his head to one side.

"You saw the crowd," I said. "We finally got them out."

"No, we did not see the crowd. How was it?"

"They were moved," I said, "a great number of them. But beyond that I don't know. They were with us, but how far I don't know ..." And for a moment I could hear my own voice in the quiet of the high-ceilinged hall.

"Sooo! Is that all the great tactician has to tell us?" Brother Tobitt said. "In what direction were they moved?"

I looked at him, aware of the numbness of my emotions; they had flowed in one channel too long and too deeply.

"That's for the committee to decide. They were aroused, that was all we could do. We tried again and again to reach the committee for guidance but we couldn't."

"So?"

"So we went ahead on my personal responsibility."

Brother Jack's eyes narrowed. "What was that?" he said. "Your what?"

"My personal responsibility," I said.

"His personal responsibility," Brother Jack said. "Did you hear that, Brothers? Did I hear him correctly. Where did you get it, Brother?" he said. "This is astounding, where did you get it?"

"From your ma --" I started and caught myself in time. "From the committee," I said.

There was a pause. I looked at him, his face reddening, as I tried to get my bearings. A nerve trembled in the center of my stomach.

"Everyone came out," I said, trying to fill it in. "We saw the opportunity and the community agreed with us. It's too bad you missed it ..."

"You see, he's sorry we missed it," Brother Jack said. He held up his hand. I could see the deeply etched lines in his palm. "The great tactician of personal responsibility regrets our absence ..."

Doesn't he see how I feel, I thought, can't he see why I did it? What's he trying to do? Tobitt's a fool, but why is he taking it up?

"You could have taken the next step," I said, forcing the words. "We went as far as we could ..."

"On your personal re-spon-si-bility," Brother Jack said, bowing his head in time with the words.

I looked at him steadily now. "I was told to win back our following, so I tried. The only way I knew how. What's your criticism? What's wrong?"

"So now," he said, rubbing his eye with a delicate circular movement of his fist, "the great tactician asks what's wrong. Is it possible that something could be wrong? Do you hear him, Brothers?"

There was a cough. Someone poured a glass of water and I could hear it fill up very fast, then the rapid rill-like trickle of the final drops dripping from the pitcher-lip into the glass. I looked at him, my mind trying to bring things into focus.

"You mean he admits the possibility of being incorrect?" Tobitt said.

"Sheer modesty, Brother. The sheerest modesty. We have here an extraordinary tactician, a Napoleon of strategy and personal responsibility. 'Strike while the iron is hot' is his motto. 'Seize the instance by its throat,' 'Shoot at the whites of their eyes,' 'Give 'em the ax, the ax, the ax,' and so forth."

I stood up. "I don't know what this is all about, Brother. What are you trying to say?"

"Now there is a good question, Brothers. Sit down, please, it's hot. He wants to know what we're trying to say. We have here not only an extraordinary tactician, but one who has an appreciation for subtleties of expression."

"Yes, and for sarcasm, when it's good," I said.

"And for discipline? Sit down, please, it's hot ..."

"And for discipline. And for orders and consultation when it's possible to have them," I said.

Brother Jack grinned. "Sit down, sit down -- And for patience?"

"When I'm not sleepy and exhausted," I said, "and not overheated as I am just now."

"You'll learn," he said. "You'll learn and you'll surrender yourself to it even under such conditions. Especially under such conditions; that's its value. That makes it patience."

"Yes, I guess I'm learning now," I said. "Right now."

"Brother," he said drily, "you have no idea how much you're learning -- Please sit down."

"All right," I said, sitting down again. "But while ignoring my personal education for a second I'd like you to remember that the people have little patience with us these days. We could use this time more profitably."

"And I could tell you that politicians are not personal persons," Brother Jack said, "but I won't. How could we use it more profitably?"

"By organizing their anger."

"So again our great tactician has relieved himself. Today he's a busy man. First an oration over the body of Brutus, and now a lecture on the patience of the Negro people."

Tobitt was enjoying himself. I could see his cigarette tremble in his lips as he struck a match to light it.

"I move we issue his remarks in a pamphlet," he said, running his finger over his chin. "They should create a natural phenomenon ..."

This had better stop right here, I thought. My head was getting lighter and my chest felt tight.

"Look," I said, "an unarmed man was killed. A brother, a leading member shot down by a policeman. We had lost our prestige in the community. I saw the chance to rally the people, so I acted. If that was incorrect, then I did wrong, so say it straight without this crap. It'll take more than sarcasm to deal with that crowd out there."

Brother Jack reddened; the others exchanged glances.

"He hasn't read the newspapers," someone said.

"You forget," Brother Jack said, "it wasn't necessary; he was there."

"Yes, I was there," I said. "If you're referring to the killing."

"There, you see," Brother Jack said. "He was on the scene."

Brother Tobitt pushed the table edge with his palms. "And still you organized that side show of a funeral!"

My nose twitched. I turned toward him deliberately, forcing a grin.

"How could there be a side show without you as the star attraction, who'd draw the two bits admission, Brother Twobits? What was wrong with the funeral?"

"Now we're making progress," Brother Jack said, straddling his chair. "The strategist has raised a very interesting question. What's wrong, he asks. All right, I'll answer. Under your leadership, a traitorous merchant of vile instruments of anti-Negro, anti-minority racist bigotry has received the funeral of a hero. Do you still ask what's wrong?"

"But nothing was done about a traitor," I said.

He half-stood, gripping the back of his chair. "We all heard you admit it."

"We dramatized the shooting down of an unarmed black man."

He threw up his hands. To hell with you, I thought. To hell with you. He was a man!

"That black man, as you call him, was a traitor," Brother Jack said. "A traitor!"

"What is a traitor, Brother?" I asked, feeling an angry amusement as I counted on my fingers. "He was a man and a Negro; a man and a brother; a man and a traitor, as you say; then he was a dead man, and alive or dead he was jam-full of contradictions. So full that he attracted half of Harlem to come out and stand in the sun in answer to our call. So what is a traitor?"

"So now he retreats," Brother Jack said. "Observe him, Brothers. After putting the movement in the position of forcing a traitor down the throats of the Negroes he asks what a traitor is."

"Yes," I said. "Yes, and, as you say, it's a fair question, Brother. Some folks call me traitor because I've been working downtown; some would call me a traitor if I was in Civil Service and others if I simply sat in my corner and kept quiet. Sure, I considered what Clifton did --"

"And you defend him!"

"Not for that. I was as disgusted as you. But hell, isn't the shooting of an unarmed man of more importance politically than the fact that he sold obscene dolls?"

"So you exercised your personal responsibility," Jack said.

"That's all I had to go on. I wasn't called to the strategy meeting, remember."

"Didn't you see what you were playing with?" Tobitt said. "Have you no respect for your people?"

"It was a dangerous mistake to give you the opportunity," one of the others said.

I looked across at him. "The committee can take it away, if it wishes. But meantime, why is everyone so upset? If even one-tenth of the people looked at the dolls as we do, our work would be a lot easier. The dolls are nothing."

"Nothing," Jack said. "That nothing that might explode in our face."

I sighed. "Your faces are safe, Brother," I said. "Can't you see that they don't think in such abstract terms? If they did, perhaps the new program wouldn't have flopped. The Brotherhood isn't the Negro people; no organization is. All you see in Clifton's death is that it might harm the prestige of the Brotherhood. You see him only as a traitor. But Harlem doesn't react that way."

"Now he's lecturing us on the conditioned reflexes of the Negro people," Tobitt said.

I looked at him. I was very tired. "And what is the source of your great contributions to the movement, Brother? A career in burlesque? And of your profound knowledge of Negroes? Are you from an old plantation-owning family? Does your black mammy shuffle nightly through your dreams?"

He opened his mouth and closed it like a fish. "I'll have you know that I'm married to a fine, intelligent Negro girl," he said.

So that's what makes you so cocky, I thought, seeing now how the light struck him at an angle and made a wedge-shaped shadow beneath his nose. So that's it ... and how did I guess there was a woman in it?

"Brother, I apologize," I said. "I misjudged you. You have our number. In fact, you must be practically a Negro yourself. Was it by immersion or injection?"

"Now see here," he said, pushing back his chair.

Come on, I thought, just make a move. Just another little move.

"Brothers," Jack said, his eyes on me. "Let's stick to the discussion. I'm intrigued. You were saying?"

I watched Tobitt. He glared. I grinned.

"I was saying that up here we know that the policemen didn't care about Clifton's ideas. He was shot because he was black and because he resisted. Mainly because he was black."

Brother Jack frowned. "You're riding 'race' again. But how do they feel about the dolls?"

"I'm riding the race I'm forced to ride," I said. "And as for the dolls, they know that as far as the cops were concerned Clifton could have been selling song sheets. Bibles, matzos. If he'd been white, he'd be alive. Or if he'd accepted being pushed around ..."

"Black and white, white and black," Tobitt said. "Must we listen to this racist nonsense?"

"You don't, Brother Negro," I said. "You get your own information straight from the source. Is it a mulatto source, Brother? Don't answer -- the only thing wrong is that your source is too narrow. You don't really think that crowd turned out today because Clifton was a member of the Brotherhood?"

"And why did they turn out?" Jack said, getting set as if to pounce forward.

"Because we gave them the opportunity to express their feelings, to affirm themselves."

Brother Jack rubbed his eye. "Do you know that you have become quite a theoretician?" he said. "You astound me."

"I doubt that, Brother, but there's nothing like isolating a man to make him think," I said.

"Yes, that's true; some of our best ideas have been thought in prison. Only you haven't been in prison, Brother, and you were not hired to think. Had you forgotten that? If so, listen to me: You were not hired to think." He was speaking very deliberately and I thought, So ... So here it is, naked and old and rotten. So now it's out in the open ...

"So now I know where I am," I said, "and with whom --"

"Don't twist my meaning. For all of us, the committee does the thinking. For all of us. And you were hired to talk."

"That's right, I was hired. Things have been so brotherly I had forgotten my place. But what if I wish to express an idea?"

"We furnish all ideas. We have some acute ones. Ideas are part of our apparatus. Only the correct ideas for the correct occasion."

"And suppose you misjudge the occasion?"

"Should that ever happen, you keep quiet."

"Even though I am correct?"

"You say nothing unless it is passed by the committee. Otherwise I suggest you keep saying the last thing you were told."

"And when my people demand that I speak?"

"The committee will have an answer!"

I looked at him. The room was hot, quiet, smoky. The others looked at me strangely. I heard the nervous sound of someone mashing out a cigarette in a glass ash tray. I pushed back my chair, breathing deeply, controlled. I was on a dangerous road and I thought of Clifton and tried to get off of it. I said nothing.

Suddenly Jack smiled and slipped back into his fatherly role.

"Let us handle the theory and the business of strategy," he said. "We are experienced. We're graduates and while you are a smart beginner you skipped several grades. But they were important grades, especially for gaining strategical knowledge. For such it is necessary to see the overall picture. More is involved than meets the eye. With the long view and the short view and the overall view mastered, perhaps you won't slander the political consciousness of the people of Harlem."

Can't he see I'm trying to tell them what's real, I thought. Does my membership stop me from feeling Harlem?

"All right," I said. "Have it your way, Brother; only the political consciousness of Harlem is exactly a thing I know something about. That's one class they wouldn't let me skip. I'm describing a part of reality which I know."

"And that is the most questionable statement of all," Tobitt said.

"I know," I said, running my thumb along the edge of the table, "your private source tells you differently. History's made at night, eh, Brother?"

"I've warned you," Tobitt said.

"Brother to brother, Brother," I said, "try getting around more. You might learn that today was the first time that they've listened to our appeals in weeks. And I'll tell you something else: If we don't follow through on what was done today, this might be the last ..."

"So, he's finally gotten around to predicting the future," Brother Jack said.

"It's possible ... though I hope not."

"He's in touch with God," Tobitt said. "The black God."

I looked at him and grinned. He had gray eyes and his irises were very wide, the muscles ridged out on his jaws. I had his guard down and he was swinging wild.

"Not with God, nor with your wife, Brother," I told him. "I've never met either. But I've worked among the people up here. Ask your wife to take you around to the gin mills and the barber shops and the juke joints and the churches, Brother. Yes, and the beauty parlors on Saturdays when they're frying hair. A whole unrecorded history is spoken then, Brother. You wouldn't believe it but it's true. Tell her to take you to stand in the areaway of a cheap tenement at night and listen to what is said. Put her out on the corner, let her tell you what's being put down. You'll learn that a lot of people are angry because we failed to lead them in action. I'll stand on that as I stand on what I see and feel and on what I've heard, and what I know."

"No," Brother Jack said, getting to his feet, "you'll stand on the decision of the committee. We've had enough of this. The committee makes your decisionsand it is not its practice to give undue importance to the mistaken notions of the people. What's happened to your discipline?"

"I'm not arguing against discipline. I'm trying to be useful. I'm trying to point out a part of reality which the committee seems to have missed. With just one demonstration we could --"

"The committee has decided against such demonstrations," Brother Jack said. "Such methods are no longer effective."

Something seemed to move out from under me, and out of the corner of my eye I was suddenly aware of objects on the dark side of the hall. "But didn't anyone see what happened today?" I said. "What was that, a dream? What was ineffective about that crowd?"

"Such crowds are only our raw materials, one of the raw materials to be shaped to our program."

I looked around the table and shook my head. "No wonder they insult me and accuse us of betraying them ..."

There was a sudden movement.

"Repeat that," Brother Jack shouted, stepping forward.

"It's true, I'll repeat it. Until this afternoon they've been saying that the Brotherhood betrayed them. I'm telling you what's been said to me, and that it why Brother Clifton disappeared."

"That's an indefensible lie," Brother Jack said.

And I looked at him slowly now, thinking, If this is it, this is it ... "Don't call me that," I said softly. "Don't ever call me that, none of you. I've told you what I've heard." My hand was in my pocket now, Brother Tarp's leg chain around my knuckles. I looked at each of them individually, trying to hold myself back and yet feeling it getting away from me. My head was whirling as though I were riding a supersonic merry-go-round. Jack looked at me, a new interest behind his eyes, leaned forward.

"So you've heard it," he said. "Very well, so now hear this: We do not shape our policies to the mistaken and infantile notions of the man in the street. Our job is not to ask them what they think but to tell them!"

"You've said that," I said, "and that's one thing you can tell them yourself. Who are you, anyway, the great white father?"

"Not their father, their leader. And .your leader. And don't forget it."

"My leader sure, but what's your exact relationship to them?"

His red head bristled. "The leader. As leader of the Brotherhood, I am their leader."

"But are you sure you aren't their great white father?" I said, watching him closely, aware of the hot silence and feeling tension race from my toes to my legs as I drew my feet quickly beneath me. "Wouldn't it be better if they called you Marse Jack?"

"Now see here," he began, leaping to his feet to lean across the table, and I spun my chair half around on its hind legs as he came between me and the light, gripping the edge of the table, spluttering and lapsing into a foreign language, choking and coughing and shaking his head as I balanced on my toes now, set to propel myself forward; seeing him above me and the others behind him as suddenly something seemed to erupt out of his face. You're seeing things, I thought, hearing it strike sharply against the table and roll as his arm shot out and snatched an object the size of a large marble and dropped it, plop! into his glass, and I could see the water shooting up in a ragged, light-breaking pattern to spring in swift droplets across the oiled table top. The room seemed to flatten. I shot to a high plateau above them and down, feeling the jolt on the end of my spine as the chair legs struck the floor. The merry-go-round had speeded up, I heard his voice but no longer listened. I stared at the glass, seeing how the light shone through, throwing a transparent, precisely fluted shadow against the dark grain of the table, and there on the bottom of the glass lay an eye. A glass eye. A buttermilk white eye distorted by the light rays. An eye staring fixedly at me as from the dark waters of a well. Then I was looking at him standing above me, outlined by the light against the darkened half of the hall.

"... You must accept discipline. Either you accept decisions or you get out ..."

I stared into his face, feeling a sense of outrage. His left eye had collapsed, a line of raw redness showing where the lid refused to close, and his gaze had lost its command. I looked from his face to the glass, thinking, he's disemboweled himself just in order to confound me ... And the others had known it all along. They aren't even surprised. I stared at the eye, aware of Jack pacing up and down, shouting.

"Brother, are you following me?" He stopped, squinting at me with Cyclopean irritation. "What is the matter?"

I stared up at him, unable to answer.

Then he understood and approached the table, smiling maliciously. "So that's it. So it makes you uncomfortable, does it? You're a sentimentalist," he said, sweeping up the glass and causing the eye to turn over in the water so that now it seemed to peer down at me from the ringed bottom of the glass. He smiled, holding the tumbler level with his empty socket, swirling the glass. "You didn't know about this?"

"No, and I didn't want to know."

Someone laughed.

"See, that demonstrates how long you've been with us." He lowered the glass. "I lost my eye in the line of duty. What do you think of that?" he said with a pride that made me all the angrier.

"I don't give a damn how you lost it as long as you keep it hidden."

"That is because you don't appreciate the meaning of sacrifice. I was ordered to carry through an objective and I carried it through. Understand? Even though I had to lose my eye to do it ..."

He was gloating now, holding up the eye in the glass as though it were a medal of merit.

"Not much like that traitor Clifton, is it?" Tobitt said.

The others were amused.

"All right," I said. "All right! It was a heroic act. It saved the world, now hide the bleeding wound!"

"Don't overevaluate it," Jack said, quieter now. "The heroes are those who die. This was nothing -- after it happened. A minor lesson in discipline. And do you know what discipline is, Brother Personal Responsibility? It's sacrifice, sacrifice, SACRIFICE!"

He slammed the glass upon the table, splashing the water on the back of my hand. I shook like a leaf. So that is the meaning of discipline, I thought, sacrifice ... yes, and blindness; he doesn't see me. He doesn't even see me. Am I about to strangle him? I do not know. He cannot possibly. I still do not know. See! Discipline is sacrifice. Yes, and blindness. Yes. And me sitting here while he tries to intimidate me. That's it, with his goddam blind glass eye ... Should you show him you get it? Shouldn't you? Shouldn't he know it? Hurry! Shouldn't you? Look at it there, a good job, an almost perfect imitation that seemed alive ... Should you, shouldn't you? Maybe he got it where he learned that language he lapsed into. Shouldn't you? Make him speak the unknown tongue, the language of the future. What's mattering with you? Discipline. Is learning, didn't he say? Is it? I stand? You're sitting here, ain't I? You're holding on, ain't I? He said you'd learn so you're learning, so he saw it all the time. He's a riddler, shouldn't we show him? So sit still is the way, and learn, never mind the eye, it's dead ... All right now, look at him, see him turning now, left, right, coming short-legged toward you. See him, hep, hep! the one-eyed beacon. All right, all right ... Hep, hep! The short-legged deacon. All right! Nail him! The short-changing dialectical deacon ... All right. There, so now you're learning ... Get it under control ... Patience ... Yes ...

I looked at him again as for the first time, seeing a little bantam rooster of a man with a high-domed forehead and a raw eye-socket that wouldn't quite accept its lid. I looked at him carefully now with some of the red spots fading and with the feeling that I was just awakening from a dream. I had boomeranged around.

"I realize how you feel," he said, becoming an actor who'd just finished a part in a play and was speaking again in his natural voice. "I remember the first time I saw myself this way and it wasn't pleasant. And don't think I wouldn't rather have my old one back." He felt in the water for his eye now, and I could see its smooth half-spherical, half-amorphous form slip between his two fingers and spurt around the glass as though looking for a way to break out. Then he had it, shaking off the water and breathing upon it as he walked across to the dark side of the room.

"But who knows, Brothers," he said, with his back turned, "perhaps if we do our work successfully the new society will provide me with a living eye. Such a thing is not at all fantastic, although I've been without mine for quite a while ... What time is it, by the way?"

But what kind of society will make him see me, I thought, hearing Tobitt answer, "Six-fifteen."

"Then we'd better leave immediately, we've got a long way to travel," he said, coming across the floor. He had his eye in place now and he was smiling. "How's that?" he asked me.

I nodded, I was very tired. I simply nodded.

"Good," he said. "I sincerely hope it never happens to you. Sincerely."

"If it should, maybe you'll recommend me to your oculist," I said, "then I may not-see myself as others see-me-not."

He looked at me oddly then laughed. "See, Brothers, he's joking. He feels brotherly again. But just the same, I hope you'll never need one of these. Meanwhile go and see Hambro. He'll outline the program and give you the instructions. As for today, just let things float. It is a development that is important only if we make it so. Otherwise it will be forgotten," he said, getting into his jacket. "And you'll see that it's best. The Brotherhood must act as a co-ordinated unit."

I looked at him. I was becoming aware of smells again and I needed a bath. The others were standing now and moving toward the door. I stood up, feeling the shirt sticking to my back.

"One last thing," Jack said, placing his hand on my shoulder and speaking quietly. "Watch that temper, that's discipline, too. Learn to demolish your brotherly opponents with ideas, with polemic skill. The other is for our enemies. Save it for them. And go get some rest."

I was beginning to tremble. His face seemed to advance and recede, recede and advance. He shook his head and smiled grimly.

"I know how you feel," he said. "And it's too bad all that effort was for nothing. But that in itself is a kind of discipline. I speak to you of what I have learned and I'm a great deal older than you. Good night."

I looked at his eye. So he knows how I feel. Which eye is really the blind one? "Good night," I said.

"Good night, Brother," they all except Tobitt said.

It'll be night, but it won't be good, I thought, calling a final "Good night."

They left and I took my jacket and went and sat at my desk. I heard them passing down the stairs and the closing of the door below. I felt as though I'd been watching a bad comedy. Only it was real and I was living it and it was the only historically meaningful life that I could live. If I left it, I'd be nowhere. As dead and as meaningless as Clifton. I felt for the doll in the shadow and dropped it on the desk. He was dead all right, and nothing would come of his death now. He was useless even for a scavenger action. He had waited too long, the directives had changed on him. He'd barely gotten by with a funeral. And that was all. It was only a matter of a few days, but he had missed and there was nothing I could do. But at least he was dead and out of it.

I sat there a while, growing wilder and fighting against it. I couldn't leave and I had to keep contact in order to fight. But I would never be the same. Never. After tonight I wouldn't ever look the same, or feel the same. Just what I'd be, I didn't know; I couldn't go back to what I was -- which wasn't much -- but I'd lost too much to be what I was. Some of me, too, had died with Tod Clifton. So I would see Hambro, for whatever it was worth. I got up and went out into the hall. The glass was still on the table and I swept it across the room, hearing it rumble and roll in the dark. Then I went downstairs.