The Outsider (66 page)

“And when I read those diaries and saw into the deceived heart of this little Eva, I knew damn well that you did not kill to get her. She was hysterically waiting for some man to ask her to run off from that impossible
Blount and his Party…I visited her studio and looked at those powerful projections of nonobjective horror she had painted; then I read her diaries and I knew you'd love her, understand her; she was a sensitive artist and represented in her life and work a quality of suffering that would move a heart like yours. In spirit, Eva was your sister. Both of you were abandoned, fearful, without a form or discipline for living; and, therefore, you were both a prey to compulsions. In the face of life, she shrank, but you advanced. But here, attack or retreat, is a form of fear. No; you didn't kill to get her; you didn't have to. You'd want to lead her, remake her, save her, and at bottom you'd be wanting, in doing this, to save yourself…And she was ripe to respond on the same basis; she wanted to
help
you…

“Damon, last night you said something that hurt me. When I had the cops pick you up and bring you to my office, when I was putting the heat on you, you told me—Well, you implied that I was a kind of monster for confronting you with your wife and children—No, Damon, I'm not that kind of a man. If I were a sadist, I could have had you locked up in the Tombs days ago for investigation, but I didn't.” Houston smiled ironically. “I wouldn't deliberately torture anything or anybody on this earth. But, of course, I do so live that I find myself in situations where people are suffering. After all, why did I become a District Attorney? But, hell, that's another story.

“No; I wasn't torturing you last night. I was trying to identify you; I had to be absolutely certain that you were Cross Damon, postal clerk of Chicago, supposedly dead, married, etc. But there was another thing I wanted to know. I had to see how you would react when I told you of your mother's death, how you would react when you saw your sons…I'm a District
Attorney, Damon; I was tracking down emotional clues; I was doing my police work…

“You were so inhuman that I would not have believed it unless I'd seen it. Today many sociologists say that the American Negro, having been stripped of his African tribal culture, has not had time to become completely adjusted to our mores, that the life of the family of the Western World has not had time to sink in, etc. But with you, you are adjusted and more…You've grown up and gone beyond our rituals. I knew that you were beyond organized religion, but I didn't suspect that you were already beyond the family. Last night you stood there in my office and committed the greatest and last crime of all. You did not bat your eye when I told you that your mother was dead. It hurt you, yes; I could see it, but you rode it out. Boy, you had killed your mother long, long ago…You must have known your mother well, understood her both emotionally and intellectually; and when one can see and weigh one's mother like that, well, she's dead to one…And when you saw those three fine sons of yours! They tugged at your heart and memory and you were wildly angry and ashamed; but you rode out that too; you overcame it…And I said to myself: ‘This man
could
have killed Blount, Herndon, and Hilton…Only
he
could have done it. He has the emotional capacity—or
lack
of it!—to do it.'

“Then I sat down and thought. After all, Damon, as I told you on the train that morning, I'm close enough to you, being a hunchback, being an outsider, to know how some of your feelings and thought processes
must
go. In a sense, I'm your brother…We men are not complete strangers on this earth. The world changes, but men are always the same. And especially the various
basic types of men—and you are an ancient, fundamental type—run the same.

“When I first talked to you in the Blount apartment, how you must have laughed at me! I walked all around you and could not see you! And then Hilton started his crazy, class-conscious pressure. Strange, the Communists had access to this insight as well as I and they didn't want to see…”

Cross was still. Yes; he was caught. But where was the
proof
? Eva could not witness against him. Had Houston, then, some hidden evidence? If this was the best that Houston could do, why, he would simply walk into court and keep his damned mouth shut and let him see if he could convict him.

“Damon, you are an atheist,” Houston resumed, “and that is the heart of this matter. You know what convinced me that you were guilty? No; I didn't find any clues you'd left behind…It was in a realm far afield that I found conclusive proof. Where?” Houston lifted his arm toward the window. “Right out there in those teeming streets…Damon, you act individually just like modern man lives in the mass each day.

“You see, hopeful men seize upon every tiny incident and read the dreams of their hearts into them. Each hour of the day men are asking: ‘Do you think we'll have peace? Don't you think what General So-and-So said means we'll have war? Don't you think that the White House pronouncement means that prices will be lower?' Or maybe he observes that his neighbor is reading a radical book and comes to the conclusion that he is a spy and ought to be killed? And, Damon, that was the way you were living. The only difference was that your compulsions were negative, had no direction…

“In the old days we were concerned with mobs, with
thousands of men running amuck in the streets. The mob has conquered completely. When the mob has grown so vast that you cannot see it, then it is everywhere. Today the compulsive acts of the lynching mobs have become enthroned in each individual heart…Every man now acts as a criminal, a policeman, a judge, and an executioner…

“But to come back to this individual mob-you who is called Cross Damon. What an atheist you are! You know, real atheists are rare, really. A genuine atheist is a real Christian turned upside down; God descends from the sky and takes up abode, so to speak, behind the fleshy bars of his heart! Men argue about their not believing in God and the mere act of doing so makes them believers. It is only when they do not feel the need to deny Him that they really do not believe in Him.” Houston rose in his excitement and paced the floor, as though he had forgotten the existence of Cross. “
You went all the way!
You have drawn all the conclusions and deductions that could be drawn from the atheistic position and you have inherited the feelings that only real atheists can have. At first I didn't believe it, but when you stared so unfeelingly at your sons, when you laughed when your poor wife could not summon enough strength to identify you, I knew that you were beyond the pale of all the
little
feelings, the
humble
feelings, the
human
feelings…
I knew that you could do anything!
Not in a towering rage, not to save falling mankind, not to establish social justice, not for glory…But just because you happen to feel like that one day…

“You are a free man. Ideas do not knock you off your feet, make you dizzy, make you fall down and serve others. You always suspect that ideas are in the service of other people…Oh, I
know
you, boy! Blimin told me about your ideas.”

Cross hovered over a vast void. Was this man making fun of him or was he sympathizing with him? What he had feared most had come; there was nothing he could hide from Houston. He kept his eyes on the floor, afraid to look up at Houston's passion-inflamed face.

“You felt that you were right, but not in the sense that you had to insist upon it. No! Does one explain when he says he wants three teaspoons of sugar in his coffee instead of two? You don't have to justify that, do you? You had risen—or sunk!—to that attitude toward the lives of those about you…

“But, Damon, you made one fatal mistake. You saw through all the ideologies, pretenses, frauds, but you did not see through
yourself
. How magnificently you tossed away this God who plagues and helps man so much! But you did not and could not toss out of your heart that part of you from which the God notion had come. And what part of a man is that? It is desire…Don't you know it? Why didn't you just live a quiet life like all other men? That's the correct way of being godless. Why be restless? Why let desire plague you? Why not conquer it too?”

Houston was questioning Cross in a kind manner, like a brother would question him.

“Desire? Why does man desire? It's crazy, for it's almost certain that he'll never get what he desires…Is desire not a kind of warning in man to let him know that he is limited? Is desire in man not a kind of danger signal of man to himself? Desire is the mad thing, the irrational thing. Damon, you peeled off layer after layer of illusion and make-believe and stripped yourself down to just simply naked desire and you thought that you had gotten hold of the core of reality. And, in a sense, you had. But what does one
do
with desire? Man desires ultimately to be a god…Man desires
everything…
Why not? Desire is a restless, floating demon…Desire tries to seize itself and never can…It's an illusion, but the most solid one! Desire is what snared you, my boy. You felt that what brooked desire could be killed; what annoyed, could be gotten rid of…

“Only a man feeling like that could have gone down into that room and seen those two men fighting it out, and then killed the
both
of them! Not taking sides…Not preferring the lesser evil…Just a sweeping and supreme gesture of disdain and disgust with the both of them! And only a man akin to them could have hated them that much, and you know it, Damon! You slew them just because they offended you…It was just like taking a cinder out of your eye because it stings a bit…”

Houston paused in front of Cross and chuckled, his eyes bright and mischievous. Cross looked at him and said to himself: That must have been how I looked when Sarah saw me laughing at her! Sarah had gotten angry, had leaped to her feet and had tried to beat him with her doubled fists, had shouted and cursed him; but he could not afford to act that way with Houston. Pride held him still. To show resentment would give the game away. No; he would sit and take it all.

“How you must have felt in that awful room! I wish you'd tell me! Did you calculate every movement? Or did you act without knowing it? Did you realize what you were doing? Or did you invent the idea of it afterwards? How did those two men look to you? And which one did you kill first? I'll bet a million dollars that, even though you're a free man, you killed Herndon first, eh? You're a Negro and you know what Fascism means to you and your people. Even a man like you cannot be as indifferent as he would like…Your feet, Damon, I'll bet, were of earthy clay and you killed
Herndon first…Won't you tell me? No? All right…I'll not press you; these are unimportant details…

“Ha-ha-ha! Of course, I don't believe that Eva Blount saw Herndon on those stairs. I can't
prove
that she didn't, but I don't believe it. She was wrought up; she wished Blount out of her life, wanted him dead…She imagined she saw Herndon. And I'll bet you you seized upon her fantasy and tried to fool us all with it…

“I know that Blount would not have touched you. He thought he had snared you into his ideological spiderweb and that you were his slave, his moral slave, the slave who believes in the ideas that are given to him…But, if you killed Blount first, Herndon would have killed you the next instant, wouldn't he? I'm right, hunh? Ha-ha-ha! I'm clever, boy, when I get my sights at last leveled on the right target. And you must certainly have gotten a rich, deep satisfaction out of killing that nigger-hater, Herndon. And Blount's face must have been a study in amazement when you suddenly turned on him…

“Then you wiped off all the fingerprints; there was none of yours in the room except on the door. And they had a right to be there, for you had been in the room talking to Herndon that afternoon, hadn't you?

“All right…Now comes a gap that I can't fill—I don't know how Hilton found out that you had killed the two of them…Did you tell him? Hunh? No; you don't want to answer? All right. You can tell me…No; you must not. Then I'd be bound by my oath of office and I'd have to use it against you…Ha-ha…Get the point, Damon?

“But I don't think you told Hilton anything. You're much too clever for that. Anyhow, he found out some
way…These Communists eat and breathe suspicion. He had his eyes on you from the beginning, according to the Party, but not for any reason, just in general…And he caught you in your little godly game…

“You went to see him. You must have known that he knew. I must admit that I'm a bit foggy about this part of it. He had asked you to come and talk to him about joining the Party…But I can't believe that you went there for that.
That
might have been your excuse…But that was not your purpose. After all, Damon, I'm only human. I can't know all. I'm not a god and do not claim to be one, or want to be one. Ha-ha-ha…I curb my desires, you see?

“But, if I know the Hilton type, and I do to some extent, I'd expect a deal to be made. Damon, why wasn't there a deal, an understanding arrived at between you and Hilton? Maybe the reality of this beautiful Eva had begun to enter the picture to some extent then? Maybe you two just hated each other naturally because you were so much alike? You little gods who traffic in human life, who buy and sell the souls of men, why couldn't you have not made a trade?

“Well, I guess that maybe you couldn't trust each other, hunh? That's the big trouble with gods when they get together. Gods cannot share power; each god must have all the power or he's no god. Logical, hunh? For, what's a god if he has a rival? So damn much jealousy enters, hunh? Look at Hitler and Stalin…Boy, if they could have been reasonable, they could have divided this whole earth up between them. But, no; each felt that he and he alone had to have the whole earth. So they chewed each other up. When gods fall out, little worms can live…