My Heart Laid Bare (60 page)

“They will not bring me to earth, here. I am safe, here.”

He rises early, at 4
A.M.
to pray to Allah (in whom he can't believe) that he will be strong enough to endure Elihu's terrible spirit for another five or six years at least.

He prays that he won't shrink before Elihu's tragic destiny.

“For I know, I accept: Prince Elihu will be assassinated one day.”

And he prays too that his health won't suddenly deteriorate . . . for Elisha suffers from certain medical problems of which Elihu in his pride knows not.

(His skull once fractured by a policeman's billy club; all the fingers of his left hand smashed. Rheumatoid arthritis in the joints of his knees and thighs, a result of the unheated Atlanta prison. A weak stomach, prone to ulcerous inflammations. Migraine headaches, wavering vision. The aftermath of malaria and a sinister parasitic blood fluke, acquired in his West African pilgrimage. These and other maladies are secrets to be kept from even his most trusted aides in the Union.)

Where Elihu is defiant of all physical infirmity, Elisha carries himself with the caution of a much-kicked dog; where Elihu is a paragon of Negro manhood, robust and still young, a dashing black man whom women turn to watch in the street, Elisha is after all nearing forty—“And not a young forty.” The Prince is six feet tall, supple, muscled, light on his feet as a panther, supremely self-confident; poor Elisha is undernourished, with ribs straining against his slightly jaundiced skin and, perversely, a slack, soft little potbelly. (For there are few foods he can eat and the malarial fevers, striking at will, sweat him dry.) The Prince is a renowned master of rhetorical outrage, in his ostrich-plume and ceremonial attire in particular, but of course he's never angry—“For to be angry is to be
small
”—while Elisha is becoming increasingly short-tempered as he grows older. (Behind his back,
his most trusted aides refer to him, not without affection, as “the Hornet.”) The Prince is cavalier enough to tolerate flatterers and fawners and hypocrites while Elisha recoils in disgust; the Prince is shrewd enough to accept donations from virtually any source, for money is but money and is needed for the cause, while Elisha is apt to turn on his heel with a look of nausea and stride out of the room—“There is some shit a man will not even
smell.
”

Yet both the Prince and Elisha hold themselves aloof from the numerous hot-eyed women who claim that Elihu has summoned them by night to be his brides, and the bearers of his sacred issue. (For Elisha is certain there can't be any truth in the legends relating to Prince Elihu's remarkable virility . . . .)

Though Elihu is proudly innocent of such knowledge, Elisha is well aware of the fact that his own people spy on him. And carry tales about the city, even to the cannibal-devils who pay them for their information. It is fate, it is destiny.
I am not I but another. The bearer of another.

The massed dark-gleaming faces, the eyes uncannily prominent, even to the shadowy rear of the hall: rippling, surging, sighing pulsing life:
theirs
, and
his.
Unexpected words spring to Prince Elihu's lips by way of these people; without them he would be mute. So it is wicked of his enemies to accuse him and his organization of exploiting the poorest Negroes when it is they who speak through him: they who have blessed him with divinity.

It is not so much Prince Elihu's strategy as his instinct, that he begins in slow, formal, incantatory tones; then speaks more quickly, by degrees; more forcibly; at last vehemently, his magnificent rich voice raised nearly to a shout. All that he utters at such dazzling moments is holy; and true, because holy; else why would the people shout in agreement with him, why would they adore him so powerfully, so ecstatically? For he tells them precisely that which they already know.

Our love for America has not been returned, brothers and sisters, though we
have given of ourselves virtually all we can give, though they have taken from us virtually all they can take, it must be realized at last . . . today, now, at this very hour . . . that the Negro's love for America has not been returned: and cannot be returned.

And why can it not be returned, now or in the future? . . .

Because, brothers and sisters, there can be no love when the agent of love is accursed; when the agent of love is diseased, degenerate, doomed; a creature of the Age of the Machine, damned by History.

Because, brothers and sisters, the Caucasian is but a subspecies of the great original tribe of the children of Ham; a subspecies that drifted, many millennia past, from the sun-blessed birthplace of mankind . . . to regions of geography and climate inimical to life . . . and to the soul. Thus, the depth and richness of their spirit were bleached out in them as, by degrees, the pigment of their skin was bleached, to the sickly pale pigment it now possesses.

And, thus, Prince Elihu is the only man to dare name them what they are: white cannibal-devils!

And to decry, for all the world to hear, their crimes against us! Which are unforgivable, and not to be forgiven!

Which dare not be forgiven!

Which will not be forgiven!

And never, never, so long as Prince Elihu draws breath, to be forgotten!

THINKS ELISHA, IN
a virtual trance of certitude, The Game is now given over to
us
: and we must be cruel, as we have been taught.

True, perhaps, that Prince Elihu and his staff sometimes give the impression of boasting, in public, of the fact that the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union is the fastest-growing organization of its kind in Negro America—indeed, in the world.

And of the fact that they are tireless in their campaign to improve
the lot of the Negro people: there will be, for instance, a forty-page Land and Indemnity Bill presented to Congress on or before 1 March 1929 seeking restitution of $5 billion from the United States Government as well as a sovereign Negro state; the First Negro Confraternity Rally will be held in June 1929 in Madison Square Garden, which rally is expected to draw more than one hundred thousand men and women from all over the world; negotiations are in process for the purchase of a second oceangoing ship,
Black Jupiter II
, and to launch Prince Elihu's proposed Black Jupiter Line (for trade between Negro parties and for the eventual transportation of North American Negroes to Africa). Also, purchases have already been made of an eight-passenger Cessna plane,
Black Eagle II
; and the two-year-old Thoroughbred Ruby Blood, one day to be the pride of the Negro sporting world, and the envy of the white; and certain properties in Harlem, Jersey City, Newark, Philadelphia and Baltimore, to be renovated by way of contributions from the membership for the establishment of Negro schools and colleges and centers for medical welfare, legal counseling and recreation. (True, these properties are in states of advanced dilapidation and disrepair at the present time, and heavily mortgaged; but Prince Elihu and his staff insist that, within a few years, all will be restored to their former conditions if not improved.) Thus, the acquisition of such properties may be seen as a shrewd investment in preparation for the mass emigration to Africa.

Because a number of these purchases are partly financed by the selling of stocks and bonds, Prince Elihu's activities have aroused the hostile attention of the Manhattan district attorney, to whose grim office in lower Manhattan Elihu has been so frequently summoned it's beginning to be charged, even by Elihu's Harlem detractors, that he's being persecuted yet again by the United States Government.

Yet, since Prince Elihu and his staff are scrupulously honest in their Wall Street dealings, and can present remarkably detailed financial records and reports, the white racist officials are powerless to act. At least at the present time.

(
ELISHA KNOWS THAT
he and the World Union are being continuously investigated by city, state and federal agents; that Prince Elihu's file in the Justice Department in Washington must be enormous by now; that it's only a matter of time before . . .

“But what does
that
matter,” Elisha murmurs, critically contemplating his yet fine-boned face in his favorite mirror, examining his veiny yet still alert eyes; and his damned upper gums which were bleeding again during the night, staining his white linen pillowcase. “What does any of
that
matter?” he says, with a careless smile, “—for The Game is never to be played as if it were but a game when it is in fact
life.
”)

Of course, Prince Elihu must marry. Prince Elihu must father sons to carry on his name and his sacred work.

But there is no woman in all of Harlem for him.

Visits with an affable smiling well-to-do black physician, a neighbor here on Strivers Row, the man's bamboo cane has a brass bird for a handle, his left eye has a merry gleam, but his shy plump daughter of twenty gives off a regrettable odor of starched cotton and dank fruity sweat; and Elihu cannot love her.

Visits with the family of his minister of finance, ebony-black Jamaicans, gay, watchful, proud, and he sees that the daughter of the household is beautiful, wide-spaced dark-lashed eyes bright with secrets, thin plucked eyebrows curved in crescents, and lips ripe for biting; for love. But Elihu cannot love.

Next, he is brought to meet a handsome widow of thirty-one, mother of a ten-year-old girl, she tells him her husband died for his country overseas, in France, she too is proud, nervous, tight-cinched waist and heavy melonlike breasts, melonlike hips, she wets her lips with a quick pink tongue and Elihu feels the stir of manly desire but his heart remains unmoved, he cannot love.

Next, they bring him to a laughing young woman, part Puerto Rican, gold-glinting teeth, hair straightened to a smooth stiff thick-textured sheen, lips rouged, ripe for love, for Prince Elihu—his muscular shoulders and thighs, the promise of his hungry mouth—but though he stares at her entranced he cannot, cannot love.

And, last, there is a sweet plump too-young girl named Mina, her parents' boastful chatter distracts him, why is she so young? why have they lied about her age? Mina? Mina? why does the name so upset him? shy, stammering, lips pursed over big white teeth, eyelashes beaded with tears of childish shame; and of course Elihu is polite, Elihu is icily polite, for perhaps after all he's too old for marriage, for carnal love.

His ministers inquire worriedly—Will he give up the search? Is there no Negro woman anywhere to please him? Elihu passes a hand over his face, for a terrible weak moment he and 'Lisha are one, the throb of pain behind the eyes that have seen too much, the malaise of the gut that has endured too much, “Yes,” he says, “—I mean no,” he says stiffly, “—it's just that, my friends, Venus Aphrodite is a strong proposition.”

A small-boned girl, white, very blond, in an old-fashioned traveling cloak . . . the hood lifted from her face by a sudden gust of wind . . . her lower lip caught in her teeth and her eyes narrowed in the savagery of The Game, that single glance a razor blade, a lighted match . . . beside her, keeping a jaunty comical flirtatious mocking pace, some yards away but beside her, surely, it cannot be a coincidence, a tall, thin, middle-aged Negro with a goatee, impeccably groomed, graying, rather stoop-shouldered, with a ministerial look: rimless glasses, smart black bowler hat, a cane beneath his arm
just like white folks.

Whispers 'Lisha, How did you do?—
did
you?

Whispers the girl, Shut your mouth till we get by ourselves!

Whispers 'Lisha, Ain't you a proud little beauty!

Whispers the girl, lovely eyes narrowed to entice, to tease, to play (for she is only a child after all), Wait'll you see!—just wait!

And 'Lisha struts with his cane, preening-proud, now keeping a discreet eyes-ahead, a discreet distance betwixt him and the little white minx, her laughter tinkling like breaking glass in another room, O sweet Millicent the sinful companion of his soul whom one day he
will
love, as Devil Father cannot foresee.

ELISHA WHO
WAS
, long ago in Muirkirk; Elihu who
is
, in the great clamorous kingdom of Harlem; yet, at certain helpless moments (indeed, hours), Elisha who
is
, gaunt and trembling with rage behind the Prince's imperturbable face.

The Prince neither knows nor cares about skinny white women, white she-devils with dry sickly skin like the underbellies of crawling things, silly rolled stockings, boys' hats, tiny dresses that show the inconsequential outlines of their undergarments; lips darkly bee-stung in the manner of Clara Bow, or is it Gilda Gray with her feathered shimmy, or ugly Theda Bara posed with a giant snake's tongue protruding toward hers? The Prince has no memory of the Devil Father, let alone of Millie, or Muirkirk, or the lie of white brothers; the Prince would recoil in disgust, for to him all whites
are
diseased, and the thought of sexual intercourse with a white woman is wholly repugnant.

Elisha remembers, at times; Elisha is condemned to remember, so long as he has any memory at all; but in truth, with the passage of years—the tumultuous years and days of his second birth!—he cannot remember very clearly or coherently; and has even stopped hating his young white bride.

The issue of Devil Father, she was; contaminated by his greed.

She whom he loved, and adored, and so wildly desired, under the Devil's enchantment: that 'Lisha and the others were as
one
; and the color of his skin made no division between them.

For only brothers by blood are brothers by the soul.

And once that truth has been beaten into one's very flesh, it is never to be denied.

IN ANY CASE
, thinks Elisha, it's purposeless: continuing to hate Millicent.