Native Son (33 page)

He had crouched so long in the snow that when he tried to move he found that his legs had lost all feeling. A fear that he was freezing seized him. He kicked out his legs to restore circulation of his blood, then crawled to the other side of the roof. Directly below him, one floor away, through a window without shades, he saw a room in which were two small iron beds with sheets dirty and crumpled. In one bed sat three naked black children looking across the room to the other bed on which lay a man and woman, both naked and black in the sunlight. There were quick, jerky movements on the bed where the man and woman lay, and the three children were watching. It was familiar; he had seen things like that when he was a little boy sleeping five in a room. Many mornings he had awakened and watched his father and mother. He turned away, thinking: Five of ’em sleeping in one room and here’s a great big empty building with just me in it. He crawled back to the chimney, seeing before his eyes an image of the room of five people, all of them blackly naked in the strong sunlight, seen through a sweaty pane: the man and woman moving jerkily in tight embrace, and the three children watching.

Hunger came to his stomach; an icy hand reached down his throat and clutched his intestines and tied them into a cold, tight knot that ached. The memory of the bottle of milk Bessie had heated for him last night came back so strongly that he could almost taste it. If he had that bottle of milk now he would make a fire out of a newspaper and hold the bottle over the flame until it was warm. He saw himself take the top off the white bottle, with some of the warm milk spilling over his black fingers, and then lift the bottle to his mouth and tilt his head and drink. His stomach did a slow flip-flop and he heard it growl. He felt in his hunger a deep sense of duty, as powerful as the urge to breathe, as intimate as the beat of his heart. He felt like dropping to his knees and lifting his face to the sky and saying: “I’m hungry!” He wanted to pull off his clothes and roll in the snow until something nourishing seeped into his body through the pores of his skin. He wanted to grip something in his hands so hard that it would turn to food. But soon his
hunger left; soon he was taking it a little easier; soon his mind rose from the desperate call of his body and concerned itself with the danger that lurked about him. He felt something hard at the corners of his lips and touched it with his fingers; it was frozen saliva.

He crawled back through the door into the narrow passage and lowered himself down the shallow wooden steps into the hallway. He went to the first floor and stood at the window through which he had first climbed. He had to find an empty apartment in some building where he could get: warm; he felt that if he did not get warm soon he would simply lie down and close his eyes. Then he had an idea; he wondered why he had not thought of it before. He struck a match and lit the newspaper; as it blazed he held one hand over it awhile, and then the other. The heat came to his skin from far off. When the paper had burned so close that he could no longer hold it, he dropped it to the floor and stamped it out with his shoes. At least he could feel his hands now; at least they ached and let him know that they were his.

He climbed through the window and walked to the street, turned northward, joining the people passing. No one recognized him. He looked for a building with a “For Rent” sign. He walked two blocks and saw none. He knew that empty flats were scarce in the Black Belt; whenever his mother wanted to move she had to put in requests long months in advance. He remembered that his mother had once made him tramp the streets for two whole months looking for a place to live. The rental agencies had told him that there were not enough houses for Negroes to live in, that the city was condemning houses in which Negroes lived as being too old and too dangerous for habitation. And he remembered the time when the police had come and driven him and his mother and his brother and sister out of a flat in a building which had collapsed two days after they had moved. And he had heard it said that black people, even though they could not get good jobs, paid twice as much rent as whites for the same kind of flats. He walked five more blocks and saw no “For Rent” sign. Goddamn! Would he freeze trying to find a place in which to get warm? How easy it would be
for him to hide if he had the whole city in which to move about! They keep us bottled up here like wild animals, he thought. He knew that black people could not go outside of the Black Belt to rent a flat; they had to live on their side of the “line.” No white real estate man would rent a flat to a black man other than in the sections where it had been decided that black people might live.

His fists clenched. What was the use of running away? He ought to stop right here in the middle of the sidewalk and shout out what this was. It was so wrong that surely all the black people round him would do something about it; so wrong that all the white people would stop and listen. But he knew that they would simply grab him and say that he was crazy. He reeled through the streets, his bloodshot eyes looking for a place to hide. He paused at a corner and saw a big black rat leaping over the snow. It shot past him into a doorway where it slid out of sight through a hole. He looked wistfully at that gaping black hole through which the rat had darted to safety.

He passed a bakery and wanted to go in and buy some rolls with the seven cents he had. But the bakery was empty of customers and he was afraid that the white proprietor would recognize him. He would wait until he came to a Negro business establishment, but he knew that there were not many of them. Almost all businesses in the Black Belt were owned by Jews, Italians, and Greeks. Most Negro businesses were funeral parlors; white undertakers refused to bother with dead black bodies. He came to a chain grocery store. Bread sold here for five cents a loaf, but across the “line” where white folks lived, it sold for four. And now, of all times, he could not cross that “line.” He stood looking through the plate glass at the people inside. Ought he to go in? He had to. He was starving. They trick us every breath we draw! he thought. They gouge our eyes out! He opened the door and walked to the counter. The warm air made him dizzy; he caught hold of a counter in front of him and steadied himself. His eyes blurred and there swam before him a vast array of red and blue and green and yellow cans stacked high upon shelves. All about him he heard the soft voices of men and women.

“You waited on, sir?”

“A loaf of bread,” he whispered.

“Anything else, sir?”

“Naw.”

The man’s face went away and came again; he heard paper rustling.

“Cold out, isn’t it?”

“Hunh? Oh, yessuh.”

He laid the nickel on the counter; he saw the blurred loaf being handed to him.

“Thank you. Call again.”

He walked unsteadily to the door with the loaf under his arm. Oh, Lord! If only he could get into the street! In the doorway he met people coming in; he stood to one side to let them pass, then went into the cold wind, looking for an empty flat. At any moment he expected to hear his name shouted; expected to feel his arms being grabbed. He walked five blocks before he saw a two-story flat building with a “For Rent” sign in a window. Smoke bulged out of chimneys and he knew that it was warm inside. He went to the front door and read the little vacancy notice pasted on the glass and saw that the flat was a rear one. He went down the alley to the rear steps and mounted to the second floor. He tried a window and it slid up easily. He was in luck. He hoisted himself through and dropped into a warm room, a kitchen. He was suddenly tense, listening. He heard voices; they seemed to be coming from the room in front of him. Had he made a mistake? No. The kitchen was not furnished; no one, it seemed, lived in here. He tiptoed to the next room and found it empty; but he heard the voices even more clearly now. He saw still another room leading farther; he tiptoed and looked. That room, too, was empty, but the sound of the voices was coming so loud that he could make out the words. An argument was going on in the front flat. He stood with the loaf of bread in his hands, his legs wide apart, listening.

“Jack, yuh mean t’ stan’ there ’n’ say yuh’d give tha’ nigger up t’ the white folks?”

“Damn right Ah would!”

“But, Jack, s’pose he ain’ guilty?”

“Whut in hell he run off fer then?”

“Mabbe he thought they wuz gonna blame the murder on
him
!”

“Lissen, Jim. Ef he wuzn’t guilty, then he oughta stayed ’n’ faced it. Ef Ah knowed where tha’ nigger wuz Ah’d turn ’im up ’n’ git these white folks off me.”

“But, Jack,
ever
’ nigger looks guilty t’ white folks when somebody’s done a crime.”

“Yeah; tha’s ’cause so many of us ack like Bigger Thomas; tha’s all. When yuh ack like Bigger Thomas yuh stir up trouble.”

“But, Jack, who’s stirring up trouble now? The papers say they beatin’ us up all over the city. They don’t care whut black man they git. We’s all dogs in they sight! Yuh gotta stan’ up ’n’ fight these folks.”

“’N’ git killed? Hell, naw! Ah gotta family. Ah gotta wife ’n’ baby. Ah ain’t startin’ no fool fight. Yuh can’t git no justice pertectin’ men who kill….”

“We’s
all
murderers t’ them, Ah tell yuh!”

“Lissen, Jim. Ah’m a hard-workin’ man. Ah fixes the streets wid a pick ’n’ shovel ever’ day, when Ah git a chance. But the boss tol’ me he didn’t wan’ me in them streets wid this mob feelin’ among the white folks…. He says Ah’ll git killed. So he lays me off. Yuh see, tha’ Goddamn nigger Bigger Thomas made me lose mah job…. He made the white folks think we’s
all
jus’ like him!”

“But, Jack, Ah tell yuh they think it awready. Yuh’s a good man, but tha’ ain’ gonna keep ’em from comin’ t’ yo’ home, is it? Hell, naw! We’s all black ’n’ we jus’ as waal
ack
black, don’ yuh see?”

“Aw, Jim, it’s awright t’ git mad, but yuh gotta look at things straight. Tha’ guy made me lose mah job. Tha’ ain’ fair! How is Ah gonna eat? Ef Ah knowed where the black sonofabitch wuz Ah’d call the cops ’n’ let ’em come ’n’ git ’im!”

“Waal, Ah wouldn’t. Ah’d die firs’!”

“Man, yuh crazy! Don’ yuh wan’ a home ’n’ wife ’n’ chillun? Whut’s fightin’ gonna git yuh? There’s
mo
’ of them than us. They could kill us all. Yuh gotta learn t’ live ’n’ git erlong wid people.”

“When folks hate me, Ah don’ wanna git erlong.”

“But we gotta
eat
! We gotta
live
!”

“Ah don’ care! Ah’d die firs’!”

“Aw, hell! Yuh crazy!”

“Ah don’ care whut yuh say. Ah’d die ’fo’ Ah’d let ’em scare me inter tellin’ on tha’ man. Ah tell yuh, Ah’d die firs’!”

He tiptoed back into the kitchen and took out his gun. He would stay here and if his own people bothered him he would use it. He turned on the water faucet and put his mouth under the stream and the water exploded in his stomach. He sank to his knees and rolled in agony. Soon the pain ceased and he drank again. Then, slowly, so that the paper would not rustle, he unwrapped the loaf of bread and chewed a piece. It tasted good, like cake, with a sweetish and smooth flavor he had never thought bread could have. As he ate his hunger returned in full force and he sat on the floor and held a fistful of bread in each hand, his cheeks bulging and his jaws working and his Adam’s apple going up and down with each swallow. He could not stop until his mouth became so dry that the bread balled on his tongue; he held it there, savoring the taste.

He stretched out on the floor and sighed. He was drowsy, but when he was on the verge of sleep he jerked abruptly to a dull wakefulness. Finally, he slept, then sat up, half-awake, following an unconscious prompting of fear. He groaned and his hands flayed the air to ward off an invisible danger. Once he got up completely and walked a few steps with outstretched hands and then lay down in a spot almost ten feet from where he had originally slept. There were two Biggers: one was determined to get rest and sleep at any cost; and the other shrank from images charged with terror. There came a long space of time in which he did not move; he lay on his back, his hands folded upon his chest, his mouth and eyes open. His chest rose and fell so slowly and gently that it seemed that during the intervals when it did not move he would never breathe again. A wan sun came onto his face, making the black skin shine
like dull metal; the sun left and the quiet room filled with deep shadows.

As he slept there stole into his consciousness a disturbing, rhythmic throbbing which he tried to fight off to keep from waking up. His mind, protecting him, wove the throb into patterns of innocent images. He thought he was in the Paris Grill listening to the automatic phonograph playing; but that was not satisfying. Next, his mind told him that he was at home in bed and his mother was singing and shaking the mattress, wanting him to get up. But this image, like the others, failed to quiet him. The throb pulsed on, insistent, and he saw hundreds of black men and women beating drums with their fingers. But that, too, did not answer the question. He tossed restlessly on the floor, then sprang to his feet, his heart pounding, his ears filled with the sound of singing and shouting.

He went to the window and looked out; in front of him, down a few feet, through a window, was a dim-lit church. In it a crowd of black men and women stood between long rows of wooden benches, singing, clapping hands, and rolling their heads. Aw, them folks go to church every day in the week, he thought. He licked his lips and got another drink of water. How near were the police? What time was it? He looked at his watch and found that it had stopped running; he had forgotten to wind it. The singing from the church vibrated through him, suffusing him with a mood of sensitive sorrow. He tried not to listen, but it seeped into his feelings, whispering of another way of life and death, coaxing him to lie down and sleep and let them come and get him, urging him to believe that all life was a sorrow that had to be accepted. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the music. How long had he slept? What were the papers saying now? He had two cents left; that would buy a
Times
. He picked up what remained of the loaf of bread and the music sang of surrender, resignation.
Steal away, Steal away, Steal away to Jesus….
He stuffed the bread into his pockets; he would eat it some time later. He made sure that his gun was still intact, hearing,
Steal away, Steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here….
It was dangerous to stay here, but it was also dan
gerous to go out. The singing filled his ears; it was complete, self-contained, and it mocked his fear and loneliness, his deep yearning for a sense of wholeness. Its fulness contrasted so sharply with his hunger, its richness with his emptiness, that he recoiled from it while answering it. Would it not have been better for him had he lived in that world the music sang of? It would have been easy to have lived in it, for it was his mother’s world, humble, contrite, believing. It had a center, a core, an axis, a heart which he needed but could never have unless he laid his head upon a pillow of humility and gave up his hope of living in the world. And he would never do that.