The Outsider (33 page)

The Blounts lived in a sparsely furnished, seven-room apartment on the second floor of a red brick building on Charles Street. Eva was not in and Gil received Cross with determined stolidity. The questions that had thronged Cross's mind were now informing his sensibilities. If there was something here to understand, then he, Cross, would get it.

“How are you?” Gil asked him offhandedly.

“Fine.”

“Follow me,” Gil said, heading down a narrow hallway.

Gil showed him a small room overlooking a depressing stretch of straggling wooden fences separating backyards.

“Will this suit your needs?” Gil asked.

“Most certainly.”

“Leave your suitcase and let's have some beer,” Gil said and left.

Cross placed his suitcase in a corner and walked slowly down the hallway, passing first what was obviously Gil's bedroom, then Eva's bedroom, and next the dining room, the living room, and finally coming to the
kitchen in which Gil stood pouring beer into two tall glasses.

“You get the layout of the place?” Gil asked without looking around.

“Yes; I see it.” He knows I've looked the joint over…

“The bathroom is next door,” Gil said. He pointed to a rear door in the kitchen. “That's Eva's studio. She paints, you know.”

“Oh; I didn't know,” Cross said.

“She's a good painter,” Gil told him. “Now, follow me.”

Gil took the glasses into the living room and sat one glass for Cross and another for himself on the end tables of two easy chairs. Cross noticed the slow precision with which Gil moved.

“You are observant,” Gil observed.

“Just a habit,” Cross said.

When they were seated, Gil studied Cross silently for some seconds, took a swallow of beer, lit his pipe and puffed the bowl to a glowing red. He held the burnt-out match delicately in his fingers, then laid it aside carefully in an ashtray. Why does he act like that? Cross asked himself. Or, maybe he was observing the man
too
closely? He acts like he wants to mesmerize me; if he does, he certainly picked the wrong subject…

“Did anyone see you come up?” Gil asked.

“Not a soul. Why?”

Gil did not answer; he acted as though he had not heard.

“I'd like for you to sit around a week, go to meetings, listen a bit before you start your lessons in the Workers' School,” Gil said.

“Just as you say,” Cross agreed.

Gil rose and went to his bookcase and took down a
volume, parted the leaves to a certain page, and stood reading for some minutes, puffing slowly on his pipe. He finally sat and spoke while looking out of the window.

“We are going to launch a campaign against realtors who discriminate against Negroes here in Greenwich Village,” Gil explained. “There is no law against Negroes living anywhere in this city they want to, but landlords have banded together and made codes against Negroes. One of the leading supporters of this code is the man who lives downstairs; he is my landlord.”

Gil's attitude began to assume a pattern of meaning. Cross recalled that Gil had asked him if he had been observed by anyone on his entering the building, and when he had told Gil that no one had seen him and had asked Gil to explain why he had asked such a question, Gil had remained silent. It was clear that Gil was jealously reserving to himself the right to tell Cross the facts in his own way, to paint the entire picture, put in the shadings, the interpretations, the sense of direction. And the words Cross heard would constitute a law which he had to memorize carefully…But
why?
Cross asked himself. Let him come out and say what he wants…

“This'll be a tough fight,” Gil went on. “We'll be attacking the most deeply entrenched money interests in this city. The man downstairs is called Langley Herndon; he's an ex-real estate broker; he's now retired. He's a dyed-in-the-wool Negro hater. He has told me that if he had his way, he'd kill every Negro he could lay his hands on…

“Now, here's our strategy. He's going to know soon enough that you're living in my apartment, and the moment he knows, trouble will start. Just enter and leave the building normally. Maintain a polite attitude toward
everyone you meet. We mustn't let any side issues develop here; we mustn't give anybody a chance to say that you were rude or insulting to them; understand? Be reserved. If this Herndon should speak to you, and he will, just act as if you were not aware of trespassing his racial boundaries. Let him take the offensive in every instance, that is, up to the point of violence. Now, Lionel, I have a lease…” He paused and pulled a batch of papers out of his inside coat pocket. “It's drawn between you and me. The lease I hold with Herndon gives me the right to sublet in whole or in part. Now, the lease I want you to sign was drawn up by a Party lawyer. This whole plan has been most carefully mapped out. Your staying here is perfectly legal; not only human and decent, but
legal
.

“Now, armed with this lease, Herndon has no real recourse to law to throw you or me out. But, of course, he has his goons, his tough boys who may try to waylay you. The cops will be on his side; make no mistake about that.

“Now, let me tell you the kind of man this Herndon is. I mentioned last night that he was a Fascist. He is. I'm not understating it. Herndon began his life as a Texas oil man and he made piles of money. He has the old-fashioned American racist notions, all of them, right up to the hilt, including the so-called biological inferiority of the Negro. He even claims that he has found a philosophical basis and justification for his racial hatred. Understand? He hates not only Negroes, Jews, Chinese, but
all
non-Anglo-Saxons…And he is smart enough to give you a mile of specious arguments, gotten out of crackpot books, for his anti-Semitism, anti-Negroism, etc. All of his arguments boil down to this: God made him and his kind to rule over the lower breeds. And God was so kind and thoughtful as to arrange that he be
paid handsomely for it. Of course, he has conceived this God of his in the image of a highly successful oil or real estate man, just a little more powerful and wonderful than he is. Herndon is quite anxious to collaborate with God by shouldering a rifle, if necessary, and helping God to defend what God has so generously given him. Herndon feels that God was absolutely right in giving him what he's got, but he does not completely trust God's judgment when it comes to his keeping it.

“As soon as he knows that you're in the building, the entire neighborhood will know it. That ought to happen within the next few hours. From that moment on, you'll have to watch out. Now, I'm getting you a gun and a permit to carry one…”

“I've got a gun,” Cross told him. “But no permit.”

Gil frowned and studied the floor. “How long have you carried a gun?”

“A few weeks. Especially when I travel—”

“You carry it on you?”

“Yes.”

“May I see it?”

Cross tendered Gil his gun and Gil broke it, copied down the serial number and returned it.

“A Party contact will help get you a permit,” Gil continued, but the tone of his voice had changed.

He's worried about the gun, Cross thought. Otherwise, I've acted in a way to make him trust me, to make him feel that he is the boss; but my having a gun makes him feel that I might have a will of my own…

“If and when Herndon moves against us,” Gil resumed, “we'll break the case in the
Daily Worker
; we'll break it in England, in France, in China, and the Soviet Union—”

“You don't think a court would uphold your lease?” Cross asked.

Gil seemed annoyed. He gazed down at the figures in the carpet for a moment.

“Lionel, courts are instrumentalities of bourgeois law,” he said slowly. “We are going to try this case in the public mind. Above all, this case must serve the Party's organizational interests.”

Cross was worried. What would the publicity mean for him? Ought he tell Gil that he could not risk that? No; he would wait; he could always disappear if things went in the wrong direction…

“Are you in agreement with this plan?” Gil asked.

“Of course,” Cross lied.

“Then tell me what would you think of anyone who tried to defeat this fight for Negroes to live where they wanted to?” Gil asked slowly.

“Why,” Cross stammered, “he would be a sonofabitch, to say the least.”

Gil did not react to this definition. He stared straight at Cross and then leaned back in his chair. His pipe had gone out and he relit it. Suddenly Gil's eyes seemed to become unseeing.

“He would be a counter-revolutionary,” Gil pronounced at last. “And he would deserve to be destroyed by the Party.”

Gil's words made Cross at last understand what had been bothering him all along. It came in the tone of Gil's words, in the chilled promise of cold vengeance that edged his voice.
Power!
This was power he saw in action. That was why Gil had evaded answering his questions; Gil had made him assume a position of disadvantage, of waiting to be told what to do. The meaning unfolded like the petals of a black flower in the depths of a swamp. That was why fear was used; that was why no rewards of a tangible nature were given. It worked like this: Gil could lord it over Cross; and, in
turn, as his payment for his suffering Gil's domination, Cross could lord it over somebody else. It was odd that he had not sensed it before; it had been
too
simple,
too
elementary. His mind worked feverishly, analyzing the concept. Here was something more recondite than mere political strategy; it was a
life
strategy using political methods as its tools…Its essence was a voluptuousness, a deep-going sensuality that took cognizance of fundamental human needs and the answers to those needs. It related man to man in a fearfully organic way. To hold absolute power over others, to define what they should love or fear, to decide if they were to live or die and thereby to ravage the whole of their beings—that was a sensuality that made sexual passion look pale by comparison. It was a noneconomic conception of existence. The rewards for those followers who deserved them did not cost one penny; the only price attached to rewards was the abject suffering of some individual victim who was dominated by the recipient of the reward of power…No, they were not dumb, these Gils and Hiltons…They knew a thing or two about mankind. They had reached far back into history and had dredged up from its black waters the most ancient of all realities: man's desire to be a god…How far wrong were most people in their appraisal of dictators! The popular opinion was that these men were hankering for their pick of beautiful virgins, good food, fragrant cigars, aged whiskey, land, gold…But what these men wanted was something much harder to get and their mere getting of it was in itself a way of their keeping it. It was power, not just the exercise of bureaucratic control, but personal power to be wielded directly upon the lives and bodies of others. He recalled now how Hilton and Gil had looked at Bob when Bob had pled against the Party's decision. They had enjoyed it, loved it!

“Do you understand?” he heard Gil asking him.

Cross sighed, looked up and met Gil's eyes with a level stare. “Yes, I understand,” he said.

He understood now why Gil had moved so slowly, why his manner was so studied. He had been giving Cross a chance to observe! And he remembered that Gil had been watching him to see that he was watching! The heart of Communism could not be taught; it had to be learned by living, by participation in its rituals.

He heard a key turning in the lock of the door.

“That's Eva,” Gil said.

A moment later Eva, wind-blown and cherry-cheeked, with an armful of packages, rushed into the room. Her face held a bright, fixed expression of cheerfulness.

“Welcome,” she sang out in her nervous, high-strung way.

Cross stood and smiled at her and wondered if her strained manner was covering her distaste at his presence in the apartment…There was something in her attitude that bothered him.

“Thank you,” he told her. “I'm here and we're planning—”

“And you'll get action,” Eva promised him selfconsciously. “If Gil planned it, it's really planned. Hunh, darling?” She bent and kissed Gil lightly on the forehead. “I must get lunch ready now.” She turned to Cross. “Just make yourself at home.”

“Oh, Eva,” Gil called. “I'm not eating lunch in. In fact, I must leave now. Why don't you eat with Lionel? I've got to make a speech at the Dyers' Union. I'll be in for dinner.”

“Very well, Gil,” Eva said; her face showed no expression.

Gil turned to Cross. “Keep your eyes open, boy.” He laughed for the first time. “The fight is on!”

Eva walked slowly into the hallway and a moment later Cross heard her rattling pots and pans in the kitchen. Gil got into his overcoat and left. Cross went to his room and stretched out on his bed, thinking, mulling. His was the hungry type of mind that needed only a scrap of an idea to feed upon, to start his analytical processes rolling. This thing of power…Why had he overlooked it till now…? Well, he had not been in those areas of life where power had held forth or reigned openly. Excitement grew in him; he felt that he was beginning to look at the emotional skeleton of man. He understood now the hard Communist insistence on strict obedience in things that had no direct relation to politics proper or to their keeping tight grasp of the reins of power. Once a thorough system of sensual power as a way of life had gotten hold of a man's heart to the extent that it ordered and defined all of his relations, it was bound to codify and arrange all of his life's activities into one organic unity. This systematizing of the sensual impulses of man to be a god must needs be jealous of all rival systems of sensuality, even those found in poetry and music. Cross, lying on his bed and staring at the ceiling, marveled at the astuteness of both Communist and Fascist politicians who had banned the demonic contagions of jazz. And now, too, he could understand why the Communists, instead of shooting the capitalists and bankers as they had so ardently sworn that they would do when they came to power, made instead with blood in their eyes straight for the school teachers, priests, writers, artists, poets, musicians, and the deposed bourgeois governmental rulers as the men who held for them the deadliest of threats to their keeping and extending their power…