The System of Dante's Hell

by Amiri Baraka

  The four of us went in the joint and the girls made noise to show this world their craft. The two rich boys from the castle. (Don looked at me to know how much cash I had and shouted and shook his head and called “18, man,” patting his ass.)

  The place was filled with shades. Ghosts. And the huge ugly hands of actual spooks. Standing around the bar, spilling wine on greasy shirts. Yelling at a fat yellow spliv who talked about all their mothers, pulling out their drinks. Laughing with wet cigarettes and the paper stuck to fat lips. Crazy as anything in the world, and sad because of it. Yelling as not to hear the sad breathing world. Turning all music up. Screaming all lyrics. Tough black men . . . weak black men. Filthy drunk women whose perfume was cheap unnatural flowers. Quiet thin ladies whose lives had ended and whose teeth hung stupidly in their silent mouths . . . rotted by thousands of nickel wines. A smell of despair and drunkenness. Silence and laughter, and the sounds of their movement under it. Their frightening lives.

  * *

  Of course the men didn’t dig the two imitation white boys come in on their leisure. And when I spoke someone wd turn and stare, or laugh, and point me out. The quick new jersey speech, full of italian idiom, and the invention of the jews. Quick to describe. Quicker to condemn. And when we finally got a seat in the back of the place, where the dance floor was, the whole place had turned a little to look. And the girls ate it all up, laughing as loud as their vanity permitted. Other whores grimaced and talked almost as loud . . . putting us all down.

  10 feet up on the wall, in a kind of balcony, a jew sat, with thick glasses and a cap, in front of a table. He had checks and money at the table & where the winding steps went up to him a line of shouting woogies waved their pay & waited for that bogus christ to give them the currency of that place. Two tremendous muthafuckers with stale white teeth grinned in back of the jew and sat with baseball bats to protect the western world.

  On the dance floor people hung on each other. Clutched their separate flesh and thought, my god, their separate thots. They stunk. They screamed. They moved hard against each other. They pushed. And wiggled to keep the music on. Two juke boxes blasting from each corner, and four guys on a bandstand who had taken off their stocking caps and come to the place with guitars. One with a saxophone. All that screaming came together with the smells and the music, the people bumped their asses and squeezed their eyes shut.

  Don ordered a bottle of schenley’s which cost 6 dollars for a pint after hours. And Peaches grabbed my arm and led me to the floor.

  The dancing like a rite no one knew, or had use for outside their secret lives. The flesh they felt when they moved, or I felt all their flesh and was happy and drunk and looked at the black faces knowing all the world thot they were my own, and lusted at that anonymous America I broke out of, and long for it now, where I am.

  We danced, this face and I, close so I had her sweat in my mouth, her flesh the only sound my brain could use. Stinking, and the music over us like a sky, choked any other movement off. I danced. And my history was there, had passed no further. Where it ended, here, the light white talking jig, died in the arms of some sentry of Africa. Some short-haired witch out of my mother’s most hideous dreams. I was nobody now, mama. Nobody. Another secret nigger. No one the white world wanted or would look at. (My mother shot herself. My father killed by a white tree fell on him. The sun, now, smothered. Dead.

  * * *

  Don and his property had gone when we finished. 3 or 4 dances later. My uniform dripping and soggy on my skin. My hands wet. My eyes turned up to darkness. Only my nerves sat naked and my ears were stuffed with gleaming horns. No one face sat alone, just that image of myself, forever screaming. Chiding me. And the girl, peaches, laughed louder than the crowd. And wearily I pushed her hand from my fly and looked for a chair.

  We sat at the table and I looked around the room for my brother, and only shapes of black men moved by. Their noise and smell. Their narrow paths to death. I wanted to panic, but the dancing and gin had me calm, almost cruel in what I saw.

  Peaches talked. She talked at what she thought she saw. I slumped on the table and we emptied another pint. My stomach turning rapidly and the room moved without me. And I slapped my hands on the table laughing at myself. Peaches laughed, peed, thinking me crazy, returned, laughed again. I was silent now, and felt the drunk and knew I’d go out soon. I got up feeling my legs, staring at the fat guard with me, and made to leave. I mumbled at her. Something ugly. She laughed and held me up. Holding me from the door. I smiled casual, said, “Well, honey, I gotta split . . . I’m fucked up.” She grinned the same casual, said, “You can’t go now, big eye, we jist gittin into sumpum.”

  “Yeh, yeh, I know . . . but I can’t make it.” My head was shaking on my chest, fingers stabbed in my pockets. I staggered like an acrobat toward the stars and trees I saw at one end of the hall. “UhUh . . . baby where you goin?”

  “Gotta split, gotta split . . . really, baby, I’m fucked . . . up.” And I twisted my arm away, moving faster as I knew I should toward the vague smell of air. Peaches was laughing and tugging a little at my sleeve. She came around and rubbed my tiny pecker with her fingers. And still I moved away. She had my elbow when I reached the road, head still slumped, and feet pushing for a space to go down solid on. When I got outside she moved in front of me. Her other girls had moved in too, to see what was going on. Why Peaches had to relinquish her share so soon. I saw the look she gave me and wanted somehow to protest, say, “I’m sorry. I’m fucked up. My mind, is screwy, I don’t know why. I can’t think. I’m sick. I’ve been fucked in the ass. I love books and smells and my own voice. You don’t want me. Please, Please, don’t want me.”

  But she didn’t see. She heard, I guess, her own blood. Her own whore’s bones telling her what to do. And I twisted away from her, headed across the road and into the dark. Out of, I hoped, Bottom, toward what I thot was light. And I could hear the girls laughing at me, at Peaches, at whatever thing I’d brought to them to see.

  So the fat bitch grabbed my hat. A blue “overseas cap” they called it in the service. A cunt cap the white boys called it. Peaches had it and was laughing like kids in the playground doing the same thing to some unfortunate fag. I knew the second she got it, and stared crazily at her, and my look softened to fear and I grinned, I think. “You ain’t going back without dis cap, big eye nigger,” tossing it over my arms to her screaming friends. They tossed it back to her. I stood in the center staring at the lights. Listening to my own head. The things I wanted. Who I thot I was. What was it? Why was this going on? Who was involved? I screamed for the hat. And they shot up the street, 4 whores, Peaches last in her fat, shouting at them to throw the hat to her. I stood for a while and then tried to run after them. I cdn’t go back to my base without that cap. Go to jail, drunken nigger! Throw him in the stockade! You’re out of uniform, shine! When I got close to them, the other three ran off, and only Peaches stood at the top of the hill waving the hat at me, cackling at her wealth. And she screamed at the world, that she’d won some small niche in it. And did a dance, throwing her big hips at me, cursing and spitting . . . laughing at the drunk who had sat down on the curb and started to weep and plead at her for some cheap piece of cloth.

  And I was mumbling under the tears. “My hat, please, my hat. I gotta get back, please.” But she came over to me and leaned on my shoulder, brushing the cap in my face. “You gonna buy me another drink . . . just one more?”

  * * *

  She’d put the cap in her brassiere, and told me about the Cotton Club. Another place at the outskirts of Bottom. And we went there, she was bouncing and had my hand, like a limp cloth. She talked of her life. Her husband, in the service too. Her family. Her friends. And predicted I would be a lawyer or something else rich.

  The Cotton Club, was in a kind of ditch. Or valley. Or three flights down. Or someplace removed from where we stood. Like movies, or things you think up abstractly. Poles, where the moon was. Signs, for streets, bee
rs, pancakes. Out front. No one moved outside, it was too late. Only whores and ignorant punks were out.

  The place when we got in was all light. A bar. Smaller than the joint, with less people and quieter. Tables were strewn around and there was a bar with a fat white man sitting on a stool behind it. His elbows rested on the bar and he chewed a cigar spitting the flakes on the floor. He smiled at Peaches, knowing her, leaning from his talk. Four or five stood at the bar. White and black, moaning and drunk. And I wondered how it was they got in. The both colors? And I saw a white stripe up the center of the floor, and taped to the bar, going clear up, over the counter. And the black man who talked, stood at one side, the left, of the tape, furtherest from the door. And the white man, on the right, closest to the door. They talked, and were old friends, touching each other, and screaming with laughter at what they said.

  We got vodka. And my head slumped, but I looked around to see, what place this was. Why they moved. Who was dead. What faces came. What moved. And they sat in their various skins and stared at me.

  Empty man. Walk thru shadows. All lives the same. They give you wishes. The old people at the window. Dead man. Rised, come gory to their side. Wish to be lovely, to be some other self. Even here, without you. Some other soul, than the filth I feel. Have in me. Guilt, like something of God’s. Some separate suffering self.

  Locked in a lightless shaft. Light at the top, pure white sun. And shadows twist my voice. Iron clothes to suffer. To pull down, what had grown so huge. My life wrested away. The old wood. Eyes of the damned uncomprehending. Who it was. Old slack nigger. Drunk punk. Fag. Get up. Where’s your home? Your mother. Rich nigger. Porch sitter. It comes down. So cute, huh? Yellow thing. Think you cute.

  And suffer so slight, in the world. The world? Literate? Brown skinned. Stuck in the ass. Suffering from what? Can you read? Who is T. S. Eliot? So what? A cross. You’ve got to like girls. Weirdo. Break, Roi, break. Now come back, do it again. Get down, hard. Come up. Keep your legs high, crouch hard when you get the ball . . . churn, churn, churn. A blue jacket, and alone. Where? A chinese restaurant. Talk to me. Goddamnit. Say something. You never talk, just sit there, impossible to love. Say something. Alone, there, under those buildings. Your shadows. Your selfish tongue. Move. Frightened bastard. Frightened scared sissy motherfucker.

  * * *

  I felt my head go down. And I moved my hand to keep it up. Peaches laughed again. The white man turned and clicked his tongue at her wagging his hand. I sucked my thin mustache, scratched my chest, held my sore head dreamily. Peaches laughed. 2 bottles more of vodka she drank (half pints at 3.00 each) & led me out the back thru some dark alley down steps and thru a dark low hall to where she lived.

  She was dragging me, I tried to walk and couldn’t and stuck my hands in my pockets to keep them out of her way. Her house, a room painted blue and pink with Rheingold women glued to the wall. Calendars. The Rotogravure. The picture of her husband? Who she thot was some officer, and he was grinning like watermelon photos with a big white apron on and uncle jemima white hat and should’ve had a skillet. I slumped on the bed, and she made me get up and sit in a chair and she took my hat out of her clothes and threw it across the room. Coffee, she said, you want coffee. She brought it anyway, and I got some in my mouth. Like winter inside me. I coughed and she laughed. I turned my head away from the bare bulb. And she went in a closet and got out a thin yellow cardboard shade and stuck it on the light trying to push the burned part away from the huge white bulb.

  Willful sin. in your toilets jerking off. You refused God. All frauds, the cold mosques glitter winters. “Morsh-Americans.” Infidels fat niggers at the gates. What you want. What you are now. Liar. All sins, against your God. Your own flesh. TALK. TALK.

  And I still slumped and she pushed my head back against the greasy seat and sat on my lap grinning in my ear, asking me to say words that made her laugh. Orange. Probably. Girl. Newark. Peaches. Talk like a white man, she laughed. From up north (she made the “th” an “f”).

  And sleep seemed good to me. Something my mother would say. My grandmother, all those heads of heaven. To get me in. Roi, go to sleep, You need sleep, and eat more. You’re too skinny. But this fat bitch pinched my neck and my eyes would shoot open and my hands dropped touching the linoleum and I watched roaches, trying to count them getting up to 5, and slumped again. She pinched me. And I made some move and pushed myself up standing and went to the sink and stuck my head in cold water an inch above the pile of stale egg dishes floating in brown she used to wash the eggs off.

  I shook my head. Took out my handkerchief to dry my hands, leaving my face wet and cold, for a few seconds. But the heat came back, and I kept pulling my shirt away from my body and smelled under my arms, trying to laugh with Peaches, who was laughing again.

  I wanted to talk now. What to say. About my life. My thots. What I’d found out, and tried to use. Who I was. For her. This lady, with me.

  She pushed me backward on the bed and said you’re sleepy I’ll get in with you. and I rolled on my side trying to push up on the bed and couldn’t, and she pulled one of my shoes off and put it in her closet. I turned on my back and groaned at my head told her again I had to go. I was awol or something. I had to explain awol and she knew what it meant when I finished. Everybody that she knew was that. She was laughing again. O, God, I wanted to shout and it was groaned. Oh, God.

  She had my pants in her fingers pulling them over my one shoe. I was going to pull them back up and they slipped from my hands and I tried to raise up and she pushed me back. “Look, Ol nigger, I ain’t even gonna charge you. I like you.” And my head was turning, flopping straight back on the chenille, and the white ladies on the wall did tricks and grinned and pissed on the floor. “Baby, look, Baby,” I was sad because I fell. From where it was I’d come to. My silence. The streets I used for books. All come in. Lost. Burned. And soothing she rubbed her hard hair on my stomach and I meant to look to see if grease was there it was something funny I meant to say, but my head twisted to the side and I bit the chenille and figured there would be a war or the walls would collapse and I would have to take the black girl out, a hero. And my mother would grin and tell her friends and my father would call me “mcgee” and want me to tell about it.

  When I had only my shorts on she pulled her purple dress over her head. It was all she had, except a gray brassiere with black wet moons where her arms went down. She kept it on.

  Some light got in from a window. And one white shadow sat on a half-naked woman on the wall. Nothing else moved. I drew my legs up tight & shivered. Her hands pulled me to her.

  *

  It was Chicago. The fags & winter. Sick thin boy, come out of those els. Ask about the books. Thin mathematics and soup. Not the black Beverly, but here for the first time I’d seen it. Been pushed in. What was flesh I hadn’t used till then. To go back. To sit lonely. Need to be used, touched, and see for the first time how it moved. Why the world moved on it. Not a childish sun. A secret fruit. But hard things between their legs. And lives governed under it. So here, it can sit now, as evil. As demanding, for me, to have come thru and found it again. I hate it. I hate to touch you. To feel myself go soft and want some person not myself. And here, it had moved outside. Left my wet fingers and was not something I fixed. But dropped on me and sucked me inside. That I walked the streets hunting for warmth. To be pushed under a quilt, and call it love. To shit water for days and say I’ve been loved. Been warm. A real thing in the world. See my shadow. My reflection. I’m here, alive. Touch me. Please. Please, touch me.

  * * *

  She rolled on me and after my pants were off pulled me on her thick stomach. I dropped between her legs and she felt between my cheeks to touch my balls. Her fingers were warm and she grabbed everything in her palm and wanted them harder. She pulled to get them harder and it hurt me. My head hurt me. My life. And she pulled, breathing spit on my chest. “Comeon, Baby, Comeon . . . Get hard.” It was like being slapped. And she did i
t that way, trying to laugh. “Get hard . . . Get hard.” And nothing happened or the light changed and I couldn’t see the paper woman.

  And she slapped me now, with her hand. A short hard punch and my head spun. She cursed. & she pulled as hard as she could. I was going to be silent but she punched again and I wanted to laugh . . . it was another groan. “Young peachtree,” she had her mouth at my ear lobe. “You don’t like women, huh?” “No wonder you so pretty . . . ol bigeye faggot.” My head was turned from that side to the other side turned to the other side turned again and had things in it bouncing.

  “How’d you ever get in them airplanes, peaches (her name she called me)? Why they let fairies in there now? (She was pulling too hard now & I thot everything would give and a hole in my stomach would let out words and tears.) Goddam punk, you gonna fuck me tonight or I’m gonna pull your fuckin dick aloose.”

  How to be in this world. How to be here, not a shadow, but thick bone and meat. Real flesh under real sun. And real tears falling on black sweet earth.

  I was crying now. Hot hot tears and trying to sing. Or say to Peaches. “Please, you don’t know me. Not what’s in my head. I’m beautiful. Stephen Dedalus. A mind, here where there is only steel. Nothing else. Young pharaoh under trees. Young pharaoh, romantic, liar. Feel my face, how tender. My eyes. My soul is white, pure white, and soars. Is the God himself. This world and all others.

  And I thot of a black man under the el who took me home in the cold. And I remembered telling him all these things. And how he listened and showed me his new suit. And I crawled out of bed morning and walked thru the park for my train. Loved. Afraid. Huger than any world. And the hot tears wet Peaches and her bed and she slapped me for pissing.