Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  “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 beli
eve 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.

  “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 hi
m 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.”