The Outsider

by Richard Wright

“Give me your address and the union’ll get in touch with you,” Hunter said, taking a frayed address book from his pocket.

  “It’s 128 West 137th Street,” Cross lied, never again wanting to look into Hunter’s eyes. He could not explain his unavailability to this man, yet it was wrong to allow him to think that he had his help.

  “Thanks,” Hunter said, jotting down the address. “You don’t live so far from me. Here; take my address. 142 West 144th. If you’re ever up there, drop in and we can kill a bottle, hunh?”

  “Sure,” Cross agreed.

  Hunter made him feel his impotence so keenly that he wanted to spit in his face. Hunter’s manner of pronouncing certain words bothered Cross and Cross asked him: “Where were you born, Hunter?”

  “Texas, man,” Hunter said, eyeing Cross closely. “Why?”

  “I don’t know. Just curious, that’s all.”

  “Say, you need any help with your bags?” Hunter asked.

  “Oh, no,” Cross said through clenched teeth. “I’ve only one suitcase.”

  “Just want to help you, man,” Hunter smiled. “We colored folks got to stick together, don’t we?”

  “Oh, yes,” Cross agreed with pretended heartiness.

  “Good-bye, now,” Hunter said, leaving and closing the door.

  Christ Almighty! Hunter was believing that he had his help, that he would be a friend. He had made Hunter a promise that he could not keep, just as he had made his mother, his sons, Dot, Gladys, and Jenny promises that he could not keep…His nonidentity was making Hunter believe in the unreal. Cross sighed. He had to break out of this dream, or he would surely go mad. He had to be born again, come anew into the world. To live amidst others without an identity was intolerable. In a strict sense he was not really in the world; he was haunting it for his place, pleading for entrance into life…He sat and rested his head in his hands. He must eventually find Bob Hunter and try to square this deception. But why did he care about Bob Hunter? No; it was not Hunter himself that bothered him; it was Hunter’s delusive belief in him that he found offensive. He started as another knock came. Hunter again? If so, he’d explain to the man that he could not help him. He rose and opened the door.

  “I’m not disturbing you, am I?” Houston asked him, smiling.

  “Oh, no,” Cross lied. His body seemed suddenly made of soft, melting wax. “Come in.”

  “Are you sure? I just wanted to talk a little,” Houston said.

  Houston’s manner seemed sincere. Maybe he was wrong? As he talked to Houston, he would be waiting for the trap to be sprung. Houston sat and held out his pack of cigarettes. Cross took one and Houston held his lighter. Cross strove for nonchalance, meeting Houston’s gaze with a smile. Houston studied Cross for some minutes. Why in hell doesn’t he speak…?

  “It’s not often that one meets someone who can grasp ideas,” Houston began. “If I’m bothering you now, it’s a little of your own fault; you ought not to have agreed with me in the dining car.” Houston laughed. “You know, to get to the point, I’ve never had a chance to talk to Negroes like I’d like to. There’s something about the Negro in America that almost hypnotizes me, really…By the way, quite frankly, talking about this problem does not bother you, does it?”

  “Not at all,” Cross said, grinding his teeth in anxiety.

  “People are so tender-skinned these days,” Houston went on. “Everybody’s trying to be other than what they really are: something official, approved of, safe—”

  “They are afraid,” Cross said, suppressing his own fear.

  “You strike me as being a man of pretty cool judgment and having some insight into life,” Houston said.

  Cross wanted to laugh out loud. If the man only knew how lost and guilty and scared he was! How wrapped in anxiety…!

  “I don’t know,” Cross said.

  “Whenever I’ve tried to talk to most educated Negroes, I’ve felt a barrier,” Houston continued. “I can understand why they feel constrained. They feel that I’m enjoying their humiliation. And many whites do enjoy talking to Negroes about this problem; it makes them feel superior and secure.”

  “That’s all too true,” Cross agreed.

  “But this hump on my back ought to give me some licence,” Houston argued. “I know what it means to be an object outside of the normal lives of men. I know how it feels to be stared at, to have some silly woman want to touch your hump for luck…When I was a child, I hated myself, cursed my ill-fortune; but now I’d not want to give up what my peculiar situation has taught me about life. This damned hump has given me more psychological knowledge than all the books I read at the university.

  “My deformity made me free; it put me outside and made me feel as an outsider. It wasn’t pleasant; hell, no. At first I felt inferior. But now I have to struggle with myself to keep from feeling superior to the people I meet…Do you understand what I mean?”

  “I do,” Cross said quietly.

  “Some men are so placed in life by accident of race or birth or chance that what they see is terrifying,” Houston said, carried away by his theme. “Life converts the lives of such men into something almost dreamlike. And I’ve often wondered why I could not detect this feeling of the outsider in the Negroes I’ve met. In America the Negro is outside. Our laws and practices see to it that he stays outside…Or, am I mistaken in looking for this in Negroes, Mr.—?”

  “Addison Jordan’s the name,” Cross lied, murmuring softly. Was Houston spying on him? If he acted afraid, Houston would wonder why. The best policy would be to talk frankly, and when he spoke he was talking of himself, a self pushed away from him and described in abstract terms. “Yes, Mr. Houston, the Negro feels exactly what you are asking about. But he hides it. The American Negro, because of his social and economic situation, is a congenital coward. He’s scared to reveal what he feels. He fears reprisals from his white neighbors.” Cross was feeling how much he was hiding from Houston.

  “But they ought to be able to talk to me without fear,” Houston said with a note of pleading in his voice. “After all, in a psychological sense, I’m a brother to them.”

  “They’re even afraid of you,” Cross said, smiling, wondering if Houston too was being ironical.

  Cross could feel that Houston sensed the quality of the demonical in him, and he could feel the same in Houston. But this man, of all men, must not get too close to him. He represented the law and the law condemned what he was and what he had done. Cross felt the hot breath of danger as Houston continued.

  “My position’s difficult,” he said. “I feel outside of the lives of men. Yet my job demands that I enforce the law against the outsider who breaks that law.”

  “How do you manage it?” Cross asked with a constricted throat.

  Houston laughed and did not answer.

  “Do you have sympathy for those who break the laws of civilization?” Cross felt compelled to ask.

  “In a way, yes,” Houston confessed. “But it all depends upon how the laws are broken. My greatest sympathy is for those who feel that they have a right to break the law. But do you know that there are not many criminals who feel that? Most of them almost beg you to punish them. They would be lost without the law. The law’s vengeance is what gives meaning to their lives.” Houston paused and stared at the floor. “You asked something about civilization…Ha-ha-ha! Civilization,” Houston repeated the word, letting it roll slowly on his tongue. He looked at Cross, smiled, then asked teasingly: “You call this civilization? I don’t. This is a jungle. We pretend that we have law and order. But we don’t, really. We have imposed a visible order, but hidden under that veneer of order the jungle still seethes.”

  “But why do you call it a jungle?” Cross asked. “Isn’t it normal life and we’ve tried to hide it with order because it is too terrible, maybe?”

  “Maybe,” Houston admitted.

  “Is not life exactly what it ought to be, in a certain sense? Isn’t it only the naïve who find all of this baffling? If
you’ve a notion of what man’s heart is, wouldn’t you say that maybe the whole effort of man on earth to build a civilization is simply man’s frantic and frightened attempt to hide himself from himself? That there is a part of man that man wants to reject? That man wants to keep from knowing what he is? That he wants to protect himself from seeing that he is something awful? And that this ‘awful’ part of himself might not be as awful as he thinks, but he finds it too strange and he does not know what to do with it? We talk about what to do with the atom bomb…But man’s heart, his spirit is the deadliest thing in creation. Are not all cultures and civilizations just screens which men have used to divide themselves, to put between that part of themselves which they are afraid of and that part of themselves which they wish, in their deep timidity, to try to preserve? Are not all of man’s efforts at order an attempt to still man’s fear of himself?”

  “And what is man that he has to hide from himself?” Houston asked, smiling; there was a look of frightened delight in his eyes.

  Involuntarily Cross drew in his breath and looked past Houston to the bleak landscape of snow sweeping past the train’s window. The conversation was making him feel a sense of intense isolation, and, even though Houston was there in the compartment with him, for a moment he was unaware of it. He was man who had killed and fled, man who had broken all of his ties and was free…

  “Maybe man is nothing in particular,” Cross said gropingly. “Maybe that’s the terror of it. Man may be just anything at all. And maybe man deep down suspects this, really knows this, kind of dreams that it is true; but at the same time he does not want really to know it? May not human life on this earth be a kind of frozen fear of man at what he could possibly be? And every move he makes, might not these moves be just to hide this awful fact? To twist it into something which he feels would make him rest and breathe a little easier? What man is is perhaps too much to be borne by man…”

  Houston rose quickly; there was intense excitement in his face and Cross grew afraid. Maybe he had talked too much?

  “Maybe my theory is too wild,” Cross said with hasty self-deprecation.

  “No,” Houston pulled down the corners of his mouth. “I’ve had the same notion and I can’t get rid of it.” Houston looked directly at Cross and smiled. “I knew that this existed! By God, I knew that someday I’d hear this from your side of the fence. The Negro has to know this. How could he escape knowing it…? He looks right at it every day of his life, every hour…” Houston paused, smiled cynically. “All my life I’ve been haunted by the notion that this life we live is a pretense, and all the more deadly because it is a pretense. And woe to the man who tries to reveal that pretense. He is the criminal…” He pulled deeply at his cigarette and laughed softly. “‘Man’s nothing in particular’,” he repeated Cross’s words. “I think you’re pretty close to something there, guy. It’s not often that one meets somebody with whom one can talk, somebody who sees that deeply into things…Say, we seem to be getting into the city…Look, here’s my card. Call me up sometimes and we can chat a little, eh? I’d love it.”

  “Sure,” Cross said, rising and taking the card. “I’d be glad to.”

  Houston left, smiling, seemingly satisfied. Alone, Cross sat again and stared unseeingly at the dreary apartment-building landscape of the Bronx as it heaved into view. Of one thing he was certain: he could never see Houston again. It was Houston’s job to bring him to justice. The man’s mind seemed to find its recreation by delving directly into problems of consciousness like those that were possessing him. He felt like a bird veering and fluttering toward the wide, unblinking eyes of the crouching cat…He had to master himself; he had to steer clear of being always drawn toward that which he dreaded. And, intuitively, he knew that Houston was caught in the same psychological trap. That was why Houston was a District Attorney sworn to uphold a system of law in which he did not really believe. Houston was an impulsive criminal who protected himself against himself by hunting down other criminals! How cleverly the man had worked out his life, had balanced his emotional drives! He could experience vicariously all destructive furies of the murderer, the thief, the sadist, without being held to accountability!

  The train slowed and was passing 125th Street and Cross looked down at the wintry drabness of Harlem, at its rows of towering tenements, at black men and women huddled in overcoats, trudging through snowy streets. Well, here I am…I’ve made no promises…I’m nobody…I’m responsible for nothing…He sighed as the train slid into the underground, making for Grand Central Station.

  Half an hour later, Cross, lugging his heavy suitcase, followed the crowd down the ramp toward the waiting rooms. As he edged forward, his anxieties began to mount. Care seemed to bring him these compulsive moods which, when they first made their presence felt, when they first declared their emotional authority, were nothing definite. They simply rose seemingly out of nowhere and in defiance of his rational capacity and began seeking their own object; failing to find it, they created it out of what was at hand, anything…Cross knew that this was himself acting, and that self was alien to him.

  He passed the train’s huge, sighing, black engine and longed to become as uncaring and passively brutish as that monster of steel and steam that lived on coal. But, no; his was to feel all of these anxieties in his shivering flesh. Goddamn! To swap the burden of this sorry consciousness for something else! To be a God who could master feeling! If not that, then a towering rock that could feel nothing at all! His life was becoming a tense prayer interspersed with curses. He wondered if the priest felt life as keenly as he did. Or had not the priest become a priest precisely in order not to feel it?

  Through the bars of the gate he saw crowds milling in the station; porters rushed to and fro; hand-trucks piled with luggage rolled toward the exits; he heard shouts of friends greeting friends. If his apprehensions were true, if Houston were playing a game, he could expect the police to accost him. When he was out of the gate, he saw Houston and Father Seldon smiling and waving at him and he smiled and waved back. He was still safe.

  Twice before he had been in New York with Gladys on summer vacations and he knew his way about. He headed for the Grand Central subway station and took the shuttle to Times Square where he changed for a Harlem train and stood at the front window of the first coach with his back to the other passengers, his emotions reading a secret language in the red and amber and green lights that swept past in the noisy night of the underground. At 110th Street he began to wonder where he would get off. Such were now the tiny decisions that clogged his consciousness. He was too free! For no reason at all he rode past 110th Street and at 125th Street he decided to get off simply because it was one of the best known thoroughfares in Harlem. Standing uncertainly on the platform, he debated: Maybe 125th Street is too crowded; it’s just possible I might meet somebody I know…He waited for a local and rode to 135th Street and got off and climbed the stairs to the upper world.

  Loitering, holding his suitcase, his cheeks stinging from the icy wind, he pondered what direction to take to find a room. When he finally ambled forward, he avoided looking into the faces of the passersby, feeling instinctively that he did not have the right to do so. He was without a name, a past, a future; no promises or pledges bound him to those about him. He had to become human before he could mingle again with people. Yet he needed those people and could become human only with them. Dimly he realized that his dilemma, though personal, bore the mark of the general. The lives of children, too, were subjected to this same necessity; they, too, could become human only by growing up with human beings…

  He came to Seventh Avenue and walked up to 136th Street, turned left, looking for FOR RENT signs. At last he saw a brick house set well back from the sidewalk with shutters closed and it appealed to him. It was as though his doubt about his right to exist blended with the closed shutters and the distance the house was from the street. He mounted stone steps and rang the bell; the opening door disclosed a woman with a brown face
,—a burning cigarette slanting across her chin made her seem sluttish at first—wearing a dark blue dressing gown. He saw the tip of a soiled brassiere struggling to keep her bulging breasts to the dimensions of modesty. She was about twenty-eight or thirty, had hard surfacy eyes that might have indicated that she was limited in her thinking. Woman as body of woman shot through his senses, but he pushed the impulse from him; he was in too much danger now to play around…

  “What can I do for you?” she asked bluntly.

  “You have a room for rent, I think,” Cross said, a little taken aback by her abrupt manner. Yet he liked her. She was the kind of woman who would most likely take him for granted and not pry into his past; her attitude seemed to place her in the sane, ordinary events of Harlem life.

  “Come on in if you want to see it,” she said.

  He stepped inside, sat his suitcase in a corner, and followed her down a hallway and up a flight of steps to a second floor. She trailed an odor of tobacco smoke. She opened the door of a large room and threw him a defiant glance.

  “There it is,” she spoke flatly.

  He sized her up as a naïve woman who had created about herself a hard-boiledness of manner to protect a too-believing nature that had been tramped on and abused by sundry men. In appearance, she was intensely feminine, seemingly ready to surrender in a yearning for a happiness which she was certain that she would be cheated out of in the end.

  “How much is the rent?” he asked her.

  “Ten dollars a week,” she said.

  “I’ll take it.”

  “You don’t have to decide right now,” she told him; she seemed to be uncertain of herself.

  “I want a room and here is one: large, airy, clean. I’ll take it,” he smiled at her, took out his wallet and gave her a ten-dollar bill.

  “When do you want to move in?” she asked.

  “I’m here,” he said. “My bag’s downstairs. It’s simple.”

  Having identified himself as Addison Jordan, Cross, half an hour later, was lying on his bed, trying to plot out his life.