Invisible Man (38 page)

They stood up now. I looked at them, fighting a sense of unreality. They stared at me as the fellows had done when I was being initiated into my college fraternity. Only this was real and now was the time for me to decide or to say I thought they were crazy and go back to Mary’s. But what is there to lose? I thought. At least they’ve invited me, one of us, in at the beginning of something big; and besides, if I refused to join them, where would I go—to a job as porter at the railroad station? At least here was a chance to speak.

“When shall I start?” I said.

“Tomorrow, we must waste no time. By the way, where are you living?”

“I rent a room from a woman in Harlem,” I said.

“A housewife?”

“She’s a widow,” I said. “She rents rooms.”

“What is her educational background?”

“She’s had very little.”

“More or less like the old couple that was evicted?”

“Somewhat, but better able to take care of herself. She’s tough,” I said with a laugh.

“Does she ask a lot of questions? Are you friendly with her?”

“She’s been very nice to me,” I said. “She allowed me to stay on after I was unable to pay my rent.”

He shook his head. “No.”

“What is it?” I said.

“It is best that you move,” he said. “We’ll find you a place further downtown so that you’ll be within easy call…”

“But I have no money, and she’s entirely trustworthy.”

“That will be taken care of,” he said, waving his hand. “You must realize immediately that much of our work is opposed. Our discipline demands therefore that we talk to no one and that we avoid situations in which information might be given away unwittingly. So you must put aside your past. Do you have a family?”

“Yes.”

“Are you in touch with them?”

“Of course. I write home now and then,” I said, beginning to resent his method of questioning. His voice had become cold, searching.

“Then it’s best that you cease for a while,” he said. “Anyway, you’ll be too busy. Here.” He fished into his vest pocket for something and got suddenly to his feet.

“What is it?” someone asked.

“Nothing, excuse me,” he said, rolling to the door and beckoning. In a moment I saw the woman appear.

“Emma, the slip of paper I gave you. Give it to the new brother,” he said as she stepped inside and closed the door.

“Oh, so it’s you,” she said with a meaningful smile.

I watched her reach into the bosom of her taffeta hostess gown and remove a white envelope.

“This is your new identity,” Brother Jack said. “Open it.”

Inside I found a name written on a slip of paper.

“That is your new name,” Brother Jack said. “Start thinking of yourself by that name from this moment. Get it down so that even if you are called in the middle of the night you will respond. Very soon you shall be known by it all over the country. You are to answer to no other, understand?”

“I’ll try,” I said.

“Don’t forget his living quarters,” the tall man said.

“No,” Brother Jack said with a frown. “Emma, please, some funds.”

“How much, Jack?” she said.

He turned to me. “Do you owe much rent?”

“Too much,” I said.

“Make it three hundred, Emma,” he said.

“Never mind,” he said as I showed my surprise at the sum. “This will pay your debts and buy you clothing. Call me in the morning and I’ll have selected your living quarters. For a start your salary will be sixty dollars a week.”

Sixty a week! There was nothing I could say. The woman had crossed the room to the desk and returned with the money, placing it in my hand.

“You’d better put it away,” she said expansively.

“Well, Brothers, I believe that’s all,” he said. “Emma, how about a drink?”

“Of course, of course,” she said, going to a cabinet and removing a decanter and a set of glasses in which she poured about an inch of clear liquid.

“Here you are, Brothers,” she said.

Taking his, Brother Jack raised it to his nose, inhaling deeply. “To the Brotherhood of Man … to History and to Change,” he said, touching my glass.

“To History,” we all said.

The stuff burned, causing me to lower my head to hide the tears that popped from my eyes.

“Aaaah!” someone said with deep satisfaction.

“Come along,” Emma said. “Let’s join the others.”

“Now for some pleasure,” Brother Jack said. “And remember your new identity.”

I wanted to think but they gave me no time. I was swept into the large room and introduced by my new name. Everyone smiled and seemed eager to meet me, as though they all knew the role I was to play. All grasped me warmly by the hand.

“What is your opinion of the state of women’s rights, Brother?” I was asked by a plain woman in a large black velvet tam. But before I could open my mouth, Brother Jack had pushed me along to a group of men, one of whom seemed to know all about the eviction. Nearby, a group around the piano were singing folk songs with more volume than melody. We moved from group to group, Brother Jack very authoritative, the others always respectful. He must be a powerful man, I thought, not a clown at all. But to hell with this Booker T. Washington business. I would do the work but I would be no one except myself—whoever I was. I would pattern my life on that of the Founder. They might think I was acting like Booker T. Washington; let them. But what I thought of myself I would keep to myself. Yes, and I’d have to hide the fact that I had actually been afraid when I made my speech. Suddenly I felt laughter bubbling inside me. I’d have to catch up with this science of history business.

We had come to stand near the piano now, where an intense young man questioned me about various leaders of the Harlem community. I knew them only by name, but pretended that I knew them all.

“Good,” he said, “good, we have to work with all these forces during the coming period.”

“Yes, you’re quite right,” I said, giving my glass a tinkling twirl. A short broad man saw me and waved the others to a halt. “Say, Brother,” he called. “Hold the music, boys, hold it!”

“Yes, uh … Brother,” I said.

“You’re just who we need. We been looking for you.”

“Oh,” I said.

“How about a spiritual, Brother? Or one of those real good ole Negro work songs? Like this:
Ah went to Atlanta—nevah been there befo’,”
he sang, his arms held out from his body like a penguin’s wings, glass in one hand, cigar in the other.
“White man sleep in a feather bed, Nigguh sleep on the flo’
… Ha! Ha! How about it, Brother?”

“The brother
does not sing!”
Brother Jack roared staccato.

“Nonsense,
all
colored people sing.”

“This is an outrageous example of unconscious racial chauvinism!” Jack said.

“Nonsense, I
like
their singing,” the broad man said doggedly.

“The brother
does not sing!”
Brother Jack cried, his face turning a deep purple.

The broad man regarded him stubbornly. “Why don’t you let
him
say whether he can sing or not … ? Come on, Brother, git hot!
Go Down, Moses,”
he bellowed in a ragged baritone, putting down his cigar and snapping his fingers.
“Way down in Egypt’s land. Tell dat ole Pharaoh to let ma colored folks sing!
I’m for the rights of the colored brother to sing!” he shouted belligerently.

Brother Jack looked as if he would choke; he raised his hand, signaling. I saw two men shoot from across the room and lead the short man roughly away. Brother Jack followed them as they disappeared beyond the door, leaving an enormous silence.

For a moment I stood there, my eyes riveted upon the door, then I turned, the glass hot in my hand, my face feeling as though it would explode. Why was everyone staring at me as though I were responsible? Why the hell were they staring at me? Suddenly I yelled, “What’s the matter with you? Haven’t you ever seen a drunk—” when somewhere off the foyer the broad man’s voice staggered drunkenly to us,
“St. Louis mammieeeee—with her diamond riiiings
…” and was clipped off by a slamming door, leaving a roomful of bewildered faces. And suddenly I was laughing hysterically.

“He hit me in the face,” I wheezed. “He hit me in the face with a yard of chitterlings!”—bending double, roaring, the whole room seeming to dance up and down with each rapid eruption of laughter.

“He threw a hog maw,” I cried, but no one seemed to understand. My eyes filled, I could barely see. “He’s high as a Georgia pine,” I laughed, turning to the group nearest me. “He’s abso-lutely drunk … off music!”

“Yes. Sure,” a man said nervously. “Ha, ha …”

“Three sheets in the wind,” I laughed, getting my breath now, and discovering that the silent tension of the others was ebbing into a ripple of laughter that sounded throughout the room, growing swiftly to a roar, a laugh of all dimensions, intensities and intonations. Everyone was joining in. The room fairly bounced.

“And did you see Brother Jack’s face,” a man shouted, shaking his head.

“It was murder!”

“Go Down Moses!”

“I tell you it was murder!”

Across the room they were pounding someone on the back to keep him from choking. Handkerchiefs appeared, there was much honking of noses, wiping of eyes. A glass crashed to the floor, a chair was overturned. I fought against the painful laughter, and as I calmed I saw them looking at me with a sort of embarrassed gratitude. It was sobering and yet they seemed bent upon pretending that nothing unusual had happened. They smiled. Several seemed about to come over and pound my back, shake my hand. It was as though I had told them something which they’d wished very much to hear, had rendered them an important service which I couldn’t understand. But there it was, working in their faces. My stomach ached. I wanted to leave, to get their eyes off me. Then a thin little woman came over and grasped my hand.

“I’m so sorry that this had to happen,” she said in a slow Yankee voice, “really and truly sorry. Some of our brothers aren’t so highly developed, you know. Although they mean very well. You must allow me to apologize for him …”

“Oh, he was only tipsy,” I said, looking into her thin New England face.

“Yes, I know, and revealingly so.
I
would never ask our colored brothers to sing, even though I love to hear them. Because I know that it would be a very backward thing. You are here to fight along with us, not to entertain. I think you understand me, don’t you, Brother?”

I gave her a silent smile.

“Of course you do. I must go now, good-bye,” she said, extending her little white-gloved hand and leaving.

I was puzzled. Just what did she mean? Was it that she understood that we resented having others think that we were all entertainers and natural singers? But now after the mutual laughter something disturbed me: Shouldn’t there be some way for us to be asked to sing? Shouldn’t the short man have the right to make a mistake without his motives being considered consciously or unconsciously malicious? After all,
he
was singing, or trying to. What if I asked
him
to sing? I watched the little woman, dressed in black like a missionary, winding her way through the crowd. What on earth was she doing here? What part did she play? Well, whatever she meant, she’s nice and I like her.

Just then Emma came up and challenged me to dance and I led her toward the floor as the piano played, thinking of the vets prediction and drawing her to me as though I danced with such as her every evening. For having committed myself, I felt that I could never allow myself to show surprise or upset—even when confronted with situations furthest from my experience. Otherwise I might be considered undependable, or unworthy. I felt that somehow they expected me to perform even those tasks for which nothing in my experience—except perhaps my imagination—had prepared me. Still it was nothing new, white folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they’d done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing. The thing to do was to be prepared—as my grandfather had been when it was demanded that he quote the entire United States Constitution as a test of his fitness to vote. He had confounded them all by passing the test, although they still refused him the ballot … Anyway, these were different.

It was close to five
A.M
., many dances and many bourbons later, when I reached Mary’s. Somehow, I felt surprised that the room was still the same—except that Mary had changed the bed linen. Good old Mary. I felt sadly sobered. And as I undressed I saw my outworn clothes and realized that I’d have to shed them. Certainly it was time. Even my hat would go; its green was sun-faded and brown, like a leaf struck by the winter’s snows. I would require a new one for my new name. A black broad-brimmed one; perhaps a homburg … humbug? I laughed. Well, I could leave packing for tomorrow—I had very little, which was perhaps all to the good. I would travel light, far and fast. They were fast people, all right. What a vast difference between Mary and those for whom I was leaving her. And why should it be this way, that the very job which might make it possible for me to do some of the things which she expected of me required that I leave her? What kind of room would Brother Jack select for me and why wasn’t I left to select my own? It didn’t seem right that in order to become a Harlem leader I should live elsewhere. Yet nothing seemed right and I would have to rely upon their judgment. They seemed expert in such matters.

But how far could I trust them, and in what way were they different from the trustees? Whatever, I was committed; I’d learn in the process of working with them, I thought, remembering the money. The bills were crisp and fresh and I tried to imagine Mary’s surprise when I paid her all my back rent and board. She’d think that I was kidding. But money could never repay her generosity. She would never understand my wanting to move so quickly after getting a job. And if I had any kind of success at all, it would seem the height of ingratitude. How would I face her? She had asked for nothing in return. Or hardly anything, except that I make something of myself that she called a “race leader.” I shivered in the cold. Telling her that I was moving would be a hard proposition. I didn’t like to think of it, but one couldn’t be sentimental. As Brother Jack had said, History makes harsh demands of us all. But they were demands that had to be met if men were to be the masters and not the victims of their times. Did I believe that? Perhaps I had already begun to pay. Besides, I might as well admit right now, I thought, that there are many things about people like Mary that I dislike. For one thing, they seldom know where their personalities end and yours begins; they usually think in terms of “we” while I have always tended to think in terms of “me”—and that has caused some friction, even with my own family. Brother Jack and the others talked in terms of “we,” but it was a different, bigger “we.”