Invisible Man (38 page)

"Yes," Clifton burst out. "Hell, yes!"

"You t'ink I'm crazy, is it c'ase I speak bahd English? Hell, it ain't my mama tongue, mahn, I'm African! You really t'ink I'm crazy?"

"Yes, yes!"

"You believe that?" said Ras. "What they do to you, black mahn? Give you them stinking women?"

Clifton lunged again, and again I grabbed him; and again Ras held his ground, his head glowing red.

"Women?
Godahm,
mahn! Is that equality? Is that the black mahn's freedom? A pat on the back and a piece of cunt without no passion? Maggots! They buy you that blahsted cheap, mahn? What they
do
to my people! Where is your brains? These women dregs, mahn! They bilge water! You know the high-class white mahn hates the black mahn, that's simple. So now he use the dregs and wahnt you black young men to do his dirty work. They betray you and you betray the black people. They tricking you, mahn. Let them fight among themselves. Let 'em kill off one another. We organize --organization is good

--but we organize black. BLACK! To hell with that son of a bitch! He take one them strumpets and tell the black mahn his freedom lie between her skinny legs --while that son of a gun,
he
take all the power and the capital and don't leave the black mahn not'ing. The good white women he tell the black mahn is a rapist and keep them locked up and ignorant while he makes the black mahn a race of bahstards.

"When the black mahn going to tire of this childish perfidity? He got you so you don't trust your black intelligence? You young, don't play you'self cheap, mahn. Don't deny you'self! It took a billion gallons of black blood to make you. Recognize you'self inside and you wan the kings among men! A mahn knows he's a mahn when he got not'ing, when he's naked --nobody have to tell him that. You six foot tall, mahn. You young and intelligent. You black and beautiful --don't let 'em tell you different! You wasn't them t'ings you be dead, mahn. Dead! I'd have killed you, mahn. Ras the Exhorter raised up his knife and tried to do it, but he could not do it. Why don't you do it? I ask myself. I will do it now, I say; but somet'ing tell me, 'No, no! You might be killing your black king!' And I say, yas, yas! So I accept your humiliating ahction. Ras recognized your black possibilities, mahn. Ras would not sahcrifice his black brother to the white enslaver. Instead he
cry.
Ras is a mahn --no white mahn have to tell him that

--and Ras cry. So why don't you recognize your black duty, mahn, and come jine us?" His chest was heaving and a note of pleading had come into the harsh voice. He was an exhorter, all right, and I was caught in the crude, insane eloquence of his plea. He stood there, awaiting an answer. And suddenly a big transport plane came low over the buildings and I looked up to see the firing of its engine, and we were all three silent, watching.

Suddenly the Exhorter shook his fist toward the plane and yelled, "Hell with him, some day we have them too! Hell with him!"

He stood there, shaking his fist as the plane rattled the buildings in its powerful flight. Then it was gone and I looked about the unreal street. They were fighting far up the block in the dark now and we were alone. I looked at the Exhorter. I didn't know if I was angry or amazed.

"Look," I said, shaking my head, "let's talk sense. From now on we'll be on the street corners every night and we'll be prepared for trouble. We don't want it, especially with you, but we won't run either . . ."

"Goddam, mahn," he said, leaping forward, "this is
Harlem.
This is
my
territory, the
black
mahn's territory. You think we let white folks come in and spread their poison? Let 'em come in like they come and take over the numbers racket? Like they have all the stores? Talk sense, mahn, if you talking to Ras, talk sense!"

"This is sense," I said, "and you listen as we listened to you. We'll be out here every night, understand. We'll be out here and the next time you go after one of our brothers with a knife --and I mean white or black --well, we won't forget it."

He shook his head, "Nor will I forget you either, mahn."

"Don't. I don't want you to; because if you forget there'll be trouble. You're mistaken, don't you see you're outnumbered? You need allies to win . . ."

"That there is sense. Black allies. Yellow and brown allies!"

"All men who want a brotherly world," I said.

"Don't be stupid, mahn. They
white,
they don't have to be allies with no black people. They get what they wahnt, they turn against you. Where's your black intelligence?"

"Thinking like that will get you lost in the backwash of history," I said. "Start thinking with your mind and not your emotions."

He shook his head vehemently, looking at Clifton.

"This black mahn talking to me about brains and thinking. I ask both of you, are you awake or sleeping? What is your pahst and where are you going? Never mind, take your corrupt ideology and eat out your own guts like a laughing hyena. You are nowhere, mahn. Nowhere! Ras is not ignorant, nor is Ras afraid. No! Ras, he be here black and fighting for the liberty of the black people when the white folks have got what they wahnt and done gone off laughing in your face and you stinking and choked up with white maggots."

He spat angrily into the dark street. It flew pink in the red glow.

"That'll be all right with me," I said. "Only remember what I said. Come on, Brother Clifton. This man's full of pus, black pus."

We started away, a piece of glass crunching under my foot.

"Maybe so," Ras said, "but I ahm no fool! I ahm no black educated fool who t'inks everything between black mahn and white mahn can be settled with some blahsted lies in some bloody books written by the white mahn in the first place. It's three hundred years of black blood to build this white mahn's civilization and wahn't be wiped out in a minute. Blood calls for blood! You remember that. And remember that I am not like you. Ras recognizes the true issues and he is not afraid to be black. Nor is he a traitor for white men. Remember that: I am no black traitor to the black people for the white people."

And before I could answer Clifton spun in the dark and there was a crack and I saw Ras go down and Clifton breathing hard and Ras lying there in the street, a thick, black man with red tears on his face that caught the reflection of the checks cashed here sign.

And again, as Clifton looked gravely down he seemed to ask a silent question.

"Let's go," I said. "Let's go!"

We started away as the screams of sirens sounded, Clifton cursing quietly to himself. Then we were out of the dark onto a busy street and he turned to me. There were tears in his eyes.

"That poor, misguided son of a bitch," he said.

"He thinks a lot of you, too," I said. I was glad to be out of the dark and away from that exhorting voice.

"The man's crazy," Clifton said. "It'll run you crazy if you let it."

"Where'd he get that name?" I said.

"He gave it to himself. I guess he did.
Ras
is a title of respect in the East. It's a wonder he didn't say something about 'Ethiopia stretching forth her wings,' " he said, mimicking Ras. "He makes it sound like the hood of a cobra fluttering . . . I don't know . . . I don't know . . ."

"We'll have to watch him now," I said.

"Yes, we'd better," he said. "He won't stop fighting . . . And thanks for getting rid of his knife."

"You didn't have to worry," I said. "He wouldn't kill his king." He turned and looked at me as though he thought I might mean it; then he smiled.

"For a while there I thought I was gone," he said.

As we headed for the district office I wondered what Brother Jack would say about the fight.

"We'll have to overpower him with organization," I said.

"We'll do that, all right. But it's on the inside that Ras is strong," Clifton said. "On the inside he's dangerous."

"He won't get on the inside," I said. "He'd consider himself a traitor."

"No," Clifton said, "he won't get on the inside. Did you hear how he was talking? Did you hear what he was saying?"

"I heard him, sure," I said.

"I don't know," he said. "I suppose sometimes a man
has
to plunge outside history . . ."

"What?"

"Plunge outside, turn his back . . . Otherwise he might kill somebody, go nuts." I didn't answer. Maybe he's right, I thought, and was suddenly very glad I had found Brotherhood.

The next morning it rained and I reached the district before the others arrived and stood looking through the window of my office, past the jutting wall of a building, and on beyond the monotonous pattern of its bricks and mortar I saw a row of trees rising tall and graceful in the rain. One tree grew close by and I could see the rain streaking its bark and its sticky buds. Trees were rowed the length of the long block beyond me, rising tall in dripping wetness above a series of cluttered backyards. And it occurred to me that cleared of its ramshackle fences and planted with flowers and grass, it might form a pleasant park. And just then a paper bag sailed from a window to my left and burst like a silent grenade, scattering garbage into the trees and pancaking to earth with a soggy, exhausted plop! I started with disgust, then thought, The sun will shine in those backyards some day. A community clean-up campaign might be worthwhile for a slack season, at that. Everything couldn't possibly be as exciting as last night. Turning back to my desk I sat facing the map now as Brother Tarp appeared.

"Morning, son, I see you already on the job," he said.

"Good morning. I have so much to do that I thought I'd better get started early," I said.

"You'll do all right," he said. "But I didn't come in here to take up your time, I want to put something on the wall."

"Go right ahead. Can I give you a hand?"

"No, I can make it all right," he said, clambering with his lame leg upon a chair that sat beneath the map and hanging a frame from the ceiling molding, straightening it carefully, and getting down to come over beside my desk.

"Son, you know who that is?"

"Why, yes," I said, "it's Frederick Douglass."

"Yessir, that's just who it is. You know much about him?"

"Not much. My grandfather used to tell me about him though."

"That's enough. He was a great man. You just take a look at him once in a while. You have everything you need --paper and stuff like that?"

"Yes, I have, Brother Tarp. And thanks for the portrait of Douglass."

"Don't thank me, son," he said from the door. "He belongs to all of us." I sat now facing the portrait of Frederick Douglass, feeling a sudden piety, remembering and refusing to hear the echoes of my grandfather's voice. Then I picked up the telephone and began calling the community leaders.

They fell in line like prisoners: preachers, politicians, various professionals, proving Clifton correct. The eviction fight was such a dramatic issue that most of the leaders feared that their followers would have rallied to us without them. I slighted no one, no matter how unimportant; bigshots, doctors, real-estate men and store-front preachers. And it went so fast and smoothly that it seemed not to happen to me but to someone who actually bore my new name. I almost laughed into the phone when I heard the director of Men's House address me with profound respect. My new name was getting around. It's very strange, I thought, but things are so unreal for them normally that they believe that to call a thing by name is to make it so. And yet I am what they think I am . . .

Our work went so well that a few Sundays later we threw a parade that clinched our hold on the community. We worked feverishly. And now the clashing and conflict of my last days at Mary's seemed to have moved out into the struggles of the community, leaving me inwardly calm and controlled. Even the hustle and bustle of picketing and speechmaking seemed to stimulate me for the better; my wildest ideas paid off.

Upon hearing that one of the unemployed brothers was an ex-drill master from Wichita, Kansas, I organized a drill team of six-footers whose duty it was to march through the streets striking up sparks with their hobnailed shoes. On the day of the parade they drew crowds faster than a dogfight on a country road. The People's Hot Foot Squad, we called them, and when they drilled fancy formations down Seventh Avenue in the springtime dusk they set the streets ablaze. The community laughed and cheered and the police were dumfounded. But the sheer corn of it got them and the Hot Foot Squad went shuffling along. Then came the flags and banners and the cards bearing slogans; and the squad of drum majorettes, the best-looking girls we could find, who pranced and twirled and just plain girled in the enthusiastic interest of Brotherhood. We pulled fifteen thousand Harlemites into the street behind our slogans and marched down Broadway to City Hall. Indeed, we were the talk of the town. With this success I was pushed forward at a dizzy pace. My name spread like smoke in an airless room. I was kept moving all over the place. Speeches here, there, everywhere, uptown and down. I wrote newspaper articles, led parades and relief delegations, and so on. And the Brotherhood was going out of its way to make my name prominent. Articles, telegrams and many mailings went out over my signature --some of which I'd written, but most not. I was publicized, identified with the organization both by word and image in the press. On the way to work one late spring morning I counted fifty greetings from people I didn't know, becoming aware that there were two of me: the old self that slept a few hours a night and dreamed sometimes of my grandfather and Bledsoe and Brockway and Mary, the self that flew without wings and plunged from great heights; and the new public self that spoke for the Brotherhood and was becoming so much more important than the other that I seemed to run a foot race against myself.

Still, I liked my work during those days of certainty. I kept my eyes wide and ears alert. The Brotherhood was a world within a world and I was determined to discover all its secrets and to advance as far as I could. I saw no limits, it was the one organization in the whole country in which I could reach the very top and I meant to get there. Even if it meant climbing a mountain of words. For now I had begun to believe, despite all the talk of science around me, that there was a magic in spoken words. Sometimes I sat watching the watery play of light upon Douglass' portrait, thinking how magical it was that he had talked his way from slavery to a government ministry, and so swiftly. Perhaps, I thought, something of the kind is happening to me. Douglass came north to escape and find work in the shipyards; a big fellow in a sailor's suit who, like me, had taken another name. What had his true name been?