Invisible Man (48 page)

"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 overall 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 a 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 it 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 merry-go-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.

"Brother, are you following me?" He stopped, squinting at me with Cyclopean irritation. "What is the matter?"

I stared up at him, unable to answer.

Then he understood and approached the table, smiling maliciously. "So that's it. So it makes you uncomfortable, does it? You're a sentimentalist," he said, sweeping up the glass and causing the eye to turn over in the water so that now it seemed to peer down at me from the ringed bottom of the glass. He smiled, holding the tumbler level with his empty socket, swirling the glass. "You didn't know about this?"

"No, and I didn't want to know."

Someone laughed.

"See, that demonstrates how long you've been with us." He lowered the glass. "I lost my eye in the line of duty. What do you think of that?" he said with a pride that made me all the angrier.

"I don't give a damn how you lost it as long as you keep it hidden."

"That is because you don't appreciate the meaning of sacrifice. I was ordered to carry through an objective and I carried it through. Understand? Even though I had to lose my eye to do it . . ." He was gloating now, holding up the eye in the glass as though it were a medal of merit.

"Not much like that traitor Clifton, is it?" Tobitt said.

The others were amused.

"All right," I said. "All right! It was a heroic act. It saved the world, now hide the bleeding wound!"

"Don't overevaluate it," Jack said, quieter now. "The heroes are those who die. This was nothing

--after it happened. A minor lesson in discipline. And do you know what discipline is, Brother Personal Responsibility? It's sacrifice,
sacrifice,
sacrifice!"

He slammed the glass upon the table, splashing the water on the back of my hand. I shook like a leaf. So that is the meaning of discipline, I thought, sacrifice . . . yes, and blindness; he doesn't see me. He doesn't even see me. Am I about to strangle him? I do not know. He cannot possibly. I still do not know. See! Discipline is sacrifice. Yes, and blindness. Yes. And me sitting here while he tries to intimidate me. That's it, with his goddam blind glass eye . . . Should you show him you get it? Shouldn't you? Shouldn't he know it? Hurry! Shouldn't you? Look at it there, a good job, an almost perfect imitation that seemed alive . . . Should you, shouldn't you? Maybe he got it where he learned that language he lapsed into. Shouldn't you? Make him speak the unknown tongue, the language of the future. What's mattering with you? Discipline. Is learning, didn't he say? Is it? I stand? You're sitting here, ain't I? You're holding on, ain't I? He said you'd learn so you're learning, so he saw it all the time. He's a riddler, shouldn't we show him? So sit still is the way, and learn, never mind the eye, it's dead . . . All right now, look at him, see him turning now, left, right, coming short-legged toward you. See him, hep, hep! the one-eyed beacon. All right, all right . . . Hep, hep! The short-legged deacon. All right! Nail him! The short-changing dialectical deacon . . . All right. There, so now you're learning . . . Get it under control . . . Patience . . . Yes . . . I looked at him again as for the first time, seeing a little bantam rooster of a man with a high-domed forehead and a raw eye-socket that wouldn't quite accept its lid. I looked at him carefully now with some of the red spots fading and with the feeling that I was just awakening from a dream. I had boomeranged around.

"I realize how you feel," he said, becoming an actor who'd just finished a part in a play and was speaking again in his natural voice. "I remember the first time I saw myself this way and it wasn't pleasant. And don't think I wouldn't rather have my old one back." He felt in the water for his eye now, and I could see its smooth half-spherical, half-amorphous form slip between his two fingers and spurt around the glass as though looking for a way to break out. Then he had it, shaking off the water and breathing upon it as he walked across to the dark side of the room.

"But who knows, Brothers," he said, with his back turned, "perhaps if we do our work successfully the new society will provide me with a living eye. Such a thing is not at all fantastic, although I've been without mine for quite a while . . . What time is it, by the way?" But what kind of society will make him see me, I thought, hearing Tobitt answer, "Six-fifteen."

"Then we'd better leave immediately, we've got a long way to travel," he said, coming across the floor. He had his eye in place now and he was smiling. "How's that?" he asked me. I nodded, I was very tired. I simply nodded.

"Good," he said. "I sincerely hope it never happens to you. Sincerely."

"If it should, maybe you'll recommend me to your oculist," I said, "then I may not-see myself as others see-me-not."

He looked at me oddly then laughed. "See, Brothers, he's joking. He feels brotherly again. But just the same, I hope you'll never need one of these. Meanwhile go and see Hambro. He'll outline the program and give you the instructions. As for today, just let things float. It is a development that is important only if we make it so. Otherwise it will be forgotten," he said, getting into his jacket. "And you'll see that it's best. The Brotherhood must act as a co-ordinated unit." I looked at him. I was becoming aware of smells again and I needed a bath. The others were standing now and moving toward the door. I stood up, feeling the shirt sticking to my back.

"One last thing," Jack said, placing his hand on my shoulder and speaking quietly. "Watch that temper, that's discipline, too. Learn to demolish your brotherly opponents with ideas, with polemic skill. The other is for our enemies. Save it for them. And go get some rest." I was beginning to tremble. His face seemed to advance and recede, recede and advance. He shook his head and smiled grimly.

"I know how you feel," he said. "And it's too bad all that effort was for nothing. But that in itself is a kind of discipline. I speak to you of what I have learned and I'm a great deal older than you. Good night."

I looked at his eye. So he knows how I feel. Which eye is really the blind one? "Good night," I said.

"Good night, Brother," they all except Tobitt said.

It'll be night, but it won't be good, I thought, calling a final "Good night." They left and I took my jacket and went and sat at my desk. I heard them passing down the stairs and the closing of the door below. I felt as though I'd been watching a bad comedy. Only it was real and I was living it and it was the only historically meaningful life that I could live. If I left it, I'd be nowhere. As dead and as meaningless as Clifton. I felt for the doll in the shadow and dropped it on the desk. He was dead all right, and nothing would come of his death now. He was useless even for a scavenger action. He had waited too long, the directives had changed on him. He'd barely gotten by with a funeral. And that was all. It was only a matter of a few days, but he had missed and there was nothing I could do. But at least he was dead and out of it.

I sat there a while, growing wilder and fighting against it. I couldn't leave and I had to keep contact in order to fight. But I would never be the same. Never. After tonight I wouldn't ever look the same, or feel the same. Just what I'd be, I didn't know; I couldn't go back to what I was --which wasn't much --but I'd lost too much to be what I was. Some of me, too, had died with Tod Clifton. So I would see Hambro, for whatever it was worth. I got up and went out into the hall. The glass was still on the table and I swept it across the room, hearing it rumble and roll in the dark. Then I went downstairs.