Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  “Boo’ful,” she said as I came up. “Damn, boo’ful, you push me?”

  “Get up,” I said without anger. “Get up,” taking her soft arm. She stood, her arms flung wide for an embrace.

  “No,” I said, “this isn’t Thursday. I’ve got to get there … What do they plan for me, Sybil?”

  “Who, boo’ful?”

  “Jack and George … Tobitt and all?”

  “You ran me down, boo’ful,” she said. “Forget them … bunch of dead-heads … unhipped, y’know. We didn’t make this stinking world, boo’ful. Forget—”

  I saw the taxi just in time, approaching swiftly from the corner, a double-decker bus looming two blocks behind. The cabbie looked over, his head out of the window, sitting high at the wheel as he made a swift U-turn and came alongside. His face was shocked, disbelieving.

  “Come now, Sybil,” I said, “and no tricks.”

  “Pardon me, old man,” the driver said, his voice concerned, “but you’re not taking her up in Harlem are you?”

  “No, the lady’s going downtown,” I said. “Get in Sybil.”

  “Boo’ful’s ‘n ole dictator,” she said to the driver, who looked at me silently, as though I were mad.

  “A game stud,” he muttered, “a most game stud!”

  But she got in.

  “Just ’n ole dictator, boo’ful.”

  “Look,” I told him, “take her straight home and don’t let her get out of the cab. I don’t want her running around Harlem. She’s precious, a great lady—”

  “Sure, man, I don’t blame you,” he said. “Things is popping up there.”

  The cab was already rolling as I yelled, “What’s going on?”

  “They’re taking the joint apart,” he called above the shifting of the gears. I watched them go and made for the bus stop. This time I’ll make sure, I thought, stepping out and flagging the bus and getting on. If she comes back, she’ll find me gone. And I knew stronger than ever that I should hurry but was still too foggy in my mind, couldn’t get myself together.

  I sat gripping my brief case, my eyes closed, feeling the bus sailing swift beneath me. Soon it would turn up Seventh Avenue. Sybil, forgive me, I thought. The bus rolled.

  But when I opened my eyes we were turning into Riverside Drive. This too I accepted calmly, the whole night was out of joint. I’d had too many drinks. Time ran fluid, invisible, sad. Looking out I could see a ship moving upstream, its running lights bright points in the night. The cool sea smell came through to me, constant and thick in the swiftly unfolding blur of anchored boats, dark water and lights pouring past. Across the river was Jersey and I remembered my entry into Harlem. Long past, I thought, long past. It was as if drowned in the river.

  To my right and ahead the church spire towered high, crowned with a red light of warning. And now we were passing the hero’s tomb and I recalled a visit there. You went up the steps and inside and you looked far below to find him, at rest, draped flags …

  One Hundred and Twenty-fifth Street came quickly. I stumbled off, hearing the bus pull away as I faced the water. There was a light breeze, but now with the motion gone the heat returned, clinging. Far ahead in the dark I saw the monumental bridge, ropes of lights across the dark river; and closer, high above the shoreline, the Palisades, their revolutionary agony lost in the riotous lights of roller coasters. “The Time Is Now …” the sign across the river began, but with history stomping upon me with hobnailed boots, I thought with a laugh, why worry about time? I crossed the street to the drinking fountain, feeling the water cooling, going down, then dampened a handkerchief and swabbed my face, eyes. The water flashed, gurgled, sprayed. I pressed forward my face, feeling wet cool, hearing the infant joy of fountains. Then heard the other sound. It was not the river nor the curving cars that flashed through the dark, but pitched like a distant crowd or a swift river at floodtide.

  I moved forward, found the steps and started down. Below the bridge lay the hard stone river of the street, and for a second I looked at the waves of cobblestones as though I expected water, as though the fountain above had drawn from them. Still I would enter and go across to Harlem. Below the steps the trolley rails gleamed steely. I hurried, the sound drawing closer, myriad-voiced, humming, enfolding me, numbing the air, as I started beneath the ramp. It came, a twitter, a coo, a subdued roar that seemed trying to tell me something, give me some message. I stopped, looking around me; the girders marched off rhythmically into the dark, over the cobblestones the red lights shone. Then I was beneath the bridge and it was as though they had been waiting for me and no one but me—dedicated and set aside for me—for an eternity. And I looked above toward the sound, my mind forming an image of wings, as something struck my face and streaked, and I could smell the foul air now, and see the encrusted barrage, feeling it streak my jacket and raising my brief case above my head and running, hearing it splattering around, falling like rain. I ran the gantlet, thinking, even the birds; even the pigeons and the sparrows and the goddam gulls! I ran blindly, boiling with outrage and despair and harsh laughter. Running from the birds to what, I didn’t know. I ran. Why was I here at all?

  I ran through the night, ran within myself. Ran.

  Chapter twenty-five

  When I reached

  Morningside the shooting sounded like a distant celebration of the Fourth of July, and I hurried forward. At St. Nicholas the street lights were out. A thunderous sound arose and I saw four men running toward me pushing something that jarred the walk. It was a safe.

  “Say,” I began.

  “Get the hell out the way!”

  I leaped aside, into the street, and there was a sudden and brilliant suspension of time, like the interval between the last ax stroke and the felling of a tall tree, in which there had been a loud noise followed by a loud silence. Then I was aware of figures crouching in doorways and along the curb; then time burst and I was down in the street, conscious but unable to rise, struggling against the street and seeing the flashes as the guns went off back at the corner of the avenue, aware to my left of the men still speeding the rumbling safe along the walk as back up the street, behind me, two policemen, almost invisible in black shirts, thrust flaming pistols before them. One of the safe rollers pitched forward, and farther away, past the corner, a bullet struck an auto tire, the released air shrieking like a huge animal in agony. I rolled, flopping around, willing myself to crawl closer to the curb but unable, feeling a sudden wet warmth upon my face and seeing the safe shooting wildly into the intersection and the men rounding the corner into the dark, pounding, gone; gone now, as the skittering safe bounded off at a tangent, shot into the intersection and lodged in the third rail and sent up a curtain of sparks that lit up the block like a blue dream; a dream I was dreaming and through which I could see the cops braced as on a target range, feet forward, free arms akimbo, firing with deliberate aim.

  “Get hold of Emergency!” one of them called, and I saw them turn and disappear where the dull glint of trolley rails faded off into the dark.

  Suddenly the block leaped alive. Men who seemed to rise up out of the sidewalks were rushing into the store fronts above me, their voices rising excitedly. And now the blood was in my face and I could move, getting to my knees as someone out of the crowd was helping me to stand.

  “You hurt, daddy?”

  “Some—I don’t know—” I couldn’t quite see them.

  “Damn! He’s got a hole in his head!” a voice said.

  A light flashed in my face, came close. I felt a hard hand upon my skull and moved away.

  “Hell, it’s just a nick,” a voice said. “One them forty-fives hit your little finger you got to go down!”

  “Well, this one over here is gone down for the last time,” someone called from the walk. “They got him clean.”

  I wiped my face, my head ringing. Something was missing.

  “Here, buddy, this yours?”

  It was my brief case, extended to me by its handles. I sei
zed it with sudden panic, as though something infinitely precious had almost been lost to me.

  “Thanks,” I said, peering into their dim, blue-tinted features. I looked at the dead man. He lay face forward, the crowd working around him. I realized suddenly that it might have been me huddled there, feeling too that I had seen him there before, in the bright light of noon, long ago … how long? Knew his name, I thought, and suddenly my knees flowed forward. I sat there, my fist that gripped the brief case bruising against the street, my head slumped forward. They were going around me.

  “Get off my foot, man,” I heard. “Quit shoving. There’s plenty for everybody.”

  There was something I had to do and I knew that my forgetfulness wasn’t real, as one knows that the forgotten details of certain dreams are not truly forgotten but evaded. I knew, and in my mind I was trying to reach through the gray veil that now seemed to hang behind my eyes as opaquely as the blue curtain that screened the street beyond the safe. The dizziness left and I managed to stand, holding onto my brief case, pressing a handkerchief to my head. Up the street there sounded the crashing of huge sheets of glass and through the blue mysteriousness of the dark the walks shimmered like shattered mirrors. All the street’s signs were dead, all the day sounds had lost their stable meaning. Somewhere a burglar alarm went off, a meaningless blangy sound, followed by the joyful shouts of looters.

  “Come on,” someone called nearby.

  “Let’s go, buddy,” the man who had helped me said. He took my arm, a thin man who carried a large cloth bag slung over his shoulder.

  “The shape you in wouldn’t do to leave you round here,” he said. “You act like you drunk.”

  “Go where?” I said.

  “Where? Hell, man. Everywhere. We git to moving, no telling where we might go—Hey, Dupre!” he called.

  “Say, man—Goddam! Don’t be calling my name so loud,” a voice answered. “Here, I am over here, gitting me some work shirts.”

  “Git some for me, Du,” he said.

  “All right, but don’t think I’m your papa,” the answer came.

  I looked at the thin man, feeling a surge of friendship. He didn’t know me, his help was disinterested …

  “Hey, Du,” he called, “we go’n do it?”

  “Hell yes, soon as I git me these shirts.”

  The crowd was working in and out of the stores like ants around spilled sugar. From time to time there came the crash of glass, shots; fire trucks in distant streets.

  “How you feel?” the man said.

  “Still fuzzy,” I said, “and weak.”

  “Le’s see if it’s stopped bleeding. Yeah, you’ll be all right.”

  I saw him vaguely though his voice came clear.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Man, you lucky you ain’t dead. These sonsabitches is really shooting now,” he said. “Over on Lenox they was aiming up in the air. If I could find me a rifle, I’d show ’em! Here, take you a drink of this good Scotch,” he said, taking a quart bottle from a hip pocket. “I got me a whole case stashed what I got from a liquor store over there. Over there all you got to do is breathe, and you drunk, man. Drunk! Hundred proof bonded whiskey flowing all in the gutters.”

  I took a drink, shuddering as the whiskey went down but thankful for the shock it gave me. There was a bursting, tearing movement of people around me, dark figures in a blue glow.

  “Look at them take it away,” he said, looking into the dark action of the crowd. “Me, I’m tired. Was you over on Lenox?”

  “No,” I said, seeing a woman moving slowly past with a row of about a dozen dressed chickens suspended by their necks from the handle of a new straw broom …

  “Hell, you ought to see it, man. Everything is tore up. By now the womens is picking it clean. I saw one ole woman with a whole side of a cow on her back. Man, she was ’bout bent bowlegged trying to make it home—Here come Dupre now,” he said, breaking off.

  I saw a little hard man come out of the crowd carrying several boxes. He wore three hats upon his head, and several pairs of suspenders flopped about his shoulders, and now as he came toward us I saw that he wore a pair of gleaming new rubber hip boots. His pockets bulged and over his shoulder he carried a cloth sack that swung heavily behind him.

  “Damn, Dupre,” my friend said, pointing to his head, “you got one of them for me? What kind is they?”

  Dupre stopped and looked at him. “With all them hats in there and I’m going to come out with anything but a Dobbs? Man, are you mad? All them new, pretty-colored Dobbs? Come on, let’s get going before the cops git back. Damn, look at that thing blaze!”

  I looked toward the curtain of blue fire, through which vague figures toiled. Dupre called out and several men left the crowd and joined us in the street. We moved off, my friend (Scofield, the others called him) leading me along. My head throbbed, still bled.

  “Look like you got you some loot too,” he said, pointing to my brief case.

  “Not much,” I said, thinking, loot? Loot? And suddenly I knew why it was heavy, remembering Mary’s broken bank and the coins; and now I found myself opening the brief case and dropping all my papers—my Brotherhood identification, the anonymous letter, along with Clifton’s doll—into it.

  “Fill it up, man. Don’t you be bashful. You wait till we tackle one of these pawnshops. That Du’s got him a cotton-picking sack fulla stuff. He could go into business.”

  “Well, I’ll be damn,” a man on the other side of me said. “I thought that was a cotton sack. Where’d he get that thing?”

  “He brought it with him when he come North,” Scofield said. “Du swears that when he goes back he’ll have it full of ten-dollar bills. Hell, after tonight he’ll need him a warehouse for all the stuff he’s got. You fill that brief case, buddy. Get yourself something!”

  “No,” I said, “I’ve enough in it already.” And now I remembered very clearly where I’d started out for but could not leave them.

  “Maybe you right,” Scofield said. “How I know, you might have it full of diamonds or something. A man oughtn’t to be greedy. Though it’s time something like this happened.”

  We moved along. Should I leave, get on to the district? Where were they, at the birthday celebration?

  “How did all this get started?” I said.

  Scofield seemed surprised. “Damn if I know, man. A cop shot a woman or something.”

  Another man moved close to us as somewhere a piece of heavy steel rang down.

  “Hell, that wasn’t what started it,” he said. “It was that fellow, what’s his name … ?”

  “Who?” I said. “What’s his name?”

  “That young guy!”

  “You know, everybody’s mad about it …”

  Clifton, I thought. It’s for Clifton. A night for Clifton.

  “Aw man, don’t tell me,” Scofield said. “Didn’t I see it with my own eyes? About eight o’clock down on Lenox and 123rd this paddy slapped a kid for grabbing a Baby Ruth and the kid’s mama took it up and then the paddy slapped her and that’s when hell broke loose.”

  “You were there?” I said.

  “Same’s I’m here. Some fellow said the kid made the paddy mad by grabbing a candy named after a white woman.”

  “Damn if that’s the way I heard it,” another man said. “When I come up they said a white woman set it off by trying to take a black gal’s man.”

  “Damn who started it,” Dupre said. “All I want is for it to last a while.”

  “It was a white gal, all right, but that wasn’t the way it was. She was drunk—” another voice said.

  But it couldn’t have been Sybil, I thought; it had already started.

  “You wahn know who started it?” a man holding a pair of binoculars called from the window of a pawnshop. “You wahn really to know?”

  “Sure,” I said.

  “Well, you don’t need to go no further. It was started by that great leader, Ras the Destroyer!”

  “T
hat monkey-chaser?” someone said.

  “Listen, bahstard!”

  “Don’t nobody know how it started,” Dupre said.

  “Somebody has to know,” I said.

  Scofield held his whiskey toward me. I refused it.

  “Hell, man, it just exploded. These is dog days,” he said.

  “Dog days?”

  “Sho, this hot weather.”

  “I tell you they mad over what happen to that young fellow, what’s-his-name …”

  We were passing a building now and I heard a voice calling frantically, “Colored store! Colored store!”

  “Then put up a sign, motherfouler,” a voice said. “You probably rotten as the others.”

  “Listen at the bastard. For one time in his life he’s glad to be colored,” Scofield said.

  “Colored store,” the voice went on automatically.

  “Hey! You sho you ain’t got some white blood?”

  “No, sir!” the voice said.

  “Should I bust him, man?”

  “For what? He ain’t got a damn thing. Let the mother-fouler alone.”

  A few doors away we came to a hardware store. “This is the first stop, men,” Dupre said.

  “What happens now?” I said.

  “Who you?” he said, cocking his thrice-hatted head.

  “Nobody, just one of the boys—” I began.

  “You sho you ain’t somebody I know?”

  “I’m pretty sure,” I said.

  “He’s all right, Du,” said Scofield. “Them cops shot him.”

  Dupre looked at me and kicked something—a pound of butter, sending it smearing across the hot street. “We fixing to do something what needs to be done,” he said. “First we gets a flashlight for everybody … And let’s have some organization, y’all. Don’t everybody be running over everybody else. Come on!”

  “Come on in, buddy,” Scofield said.

  I felt no need to lead or leave them; was glad to follow; was gripped by a need to see where and to what they would lead. And all the time the thought that I should go to the district was with me. We went inside the store, into the dark glinting with metal. They moved carefully, and I could hear them searching, sweeping objects to the floor. The cash register rang.