Invisible Man (56 page)

“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 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 over-all 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 decisions, and 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 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 is 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 merrygo-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.