The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  What malevolently psychological advantages were theirs in the waging of their war! Who best could track down criminals than reformed criminals! Gil and Hilton were spiritual bloodhounds on the trail of men whose spirits had not yet been broken as theirs had been. Since they had been defeated, they had decreed that defeat be the lot of all…

  It was not the objective reality of the revolutionary movement that was pulling so magnetically at Cross; it was something that that movement had and did not know it had that was seducing his attention. It was its believing that it knew life; its conviction that it had mastered the act of living; its will that it could define the ends of existence that fascinated him against his volition. Nowhere else save in these realms had he encountered that brand of organized audacity directed toward secular goals. He loathed their knowledge, their manners, their ends; but he was almost persuaded that they had in a wrong manner moved in a right direction for revealing the content of human life on earth. He knew that their bristling economic theories were simply but vastly clever fishing nets which they dragged skillfully through muddy social waters to snare the attention of shivering and hungry men; but many men, the best of them, would not yield their allegiances on purely economic grounds and he knew that the Party knew this.

  While packing his suitcase, he was struck by an idea. Suppose Gil was right in assuming that the Party was justified in coercing obedience from others purely on the basis of its strength? What was there, then, to keep an individual from adopting the same policy? Apparently nothing save cunning and ruthlessness…

  “Gil’d want to kill me if he knew how I felt,” he chuckled, lumbering down the stairway with his suitcase.

  A yellow sun was flooding the buildings with a pale light that had no warmth. He headed for the subway and had gone but ten yards when the image of Bob’s face rose before his eyes. Yes! How was Bob making out? Had he kept the Party’s decision? Instead of going to Gil’s place, he rode uptown and made his way to Bob’s apartment. Bob answered the door.

  “Speak of the devil!” Bob greeted him. “Come in, man. We were just talking ’bout you. You got your suitcase—Going to Gil’s, hunh?”

  “Yeah.” Cross looked searchingly at Bob whose face wore a mask of cheerfulness. “You seem all right after what happened last night.”

  “Yeah, man,” Bob boasted. “That ain’t nothing—”

  “The hell it ain’t!” Sarah’s voice boomed from the living room.

  “Man, Sarah’s mad,” Bob said, becoming crestfallen at the sound of her voice. “Go on in.”

  Bob followed him and the moment Cross stepped into the living room he saw Sarah’s angry face.

  “Hey, Pretty,” Sarah greeted him in cold tones.

  “I thought you were going to laugh at me today,” Cross said.

  “I ain’t laughing at no sonofabitch today,” Sarah replied.

  “She don’t understand that the Party has to have discipline,” Bob explained. “Women think we men can do as we like—”

  “You joined the Party to organize, didn’t you?” Sarah demanded.

  “Yeah; sure, Sarah. But listen—Lemme explain—”

  “You ain’t explaining nothing!” Sarah overrode him. “A white man held out a stick to you and said, ‘Jump!’ And, by God, you jumped, just like any nigger—”

  “Listen, woman! This is the Party! This—”

  “But it’s a white man’s Party, ain’t it?” Sarah demanded.

  Bob turned to Cross and shook his head helplessly.

  “Why don’t they want you to go on with your work?” Cross asked Bob.

  “He don’t know,” Sarah answered for Bob. “They walk in here and tell ’im what to do, and he hates it, but he obeys! They don’t even tell ’im why, but he obeys!” She glared at Bob. “Even in the South when the white folks lynched you, they told you why! You didn’t agree with ’em, but, by God, they told you why!”

  “Sarah,” Bob began, “the Party’s an army—”

  “Goddamn your Party!” Sarah blazed, leaping to her feet. “What in hell did I marry, a Marxist or a mouse? Listen, nigger, you’re going to organize, you hear?”

  “Baby,” Bob whined. “Look, Lionel’s new to the Party—”

  “Let ’im hear it all!” Sarah yelled. “Let ’im know what he’s getting into.” Bitter tears filled her eyes; she turned to Cross. “All my life I’ve seen niggers knuckling down to white people. I saw my mama knuckling down when I was a child in the South. And nothing hurt me so much as when I saw a white man kick her one day…Know what I mean? Kick her! I said kick her with his goddamn foot. I was ’bout six; mama was serving in the white man’s house; I was watching from the kitchen door. Mama tripped and fell with the tray and boiling soup splashed all over her. But the white man wasn’t worried ’bout that. Hell, naw! He was mad ’cause his dinner was spoiled, so he kicked her. It’ll stay in my mind till my dying day…And everywhere I’ve looked since I’ve seen nothing but white folks kicking niggers who are kneeling down… Know why I don’t go to church, Lionel? ’Cause I have to kneel in front of that white priest, and I’ll be goddamned if I’ll do it. Now, we’re in the revolution and the same goddamn white man comes along. But he’s in the Party now.”

  “Baby, it’s different,” Bob wailed.

  “Don’t tell me it’s different; it’s the same damn thing!” Sarah sat heavily in a chair and her head dropped; she seemed ashamed of her outburst. “Maybe the Party wanted you to expose yourself that way,” she began again in a reflective tone. “You’re no good to the union, you’re no good to the company, and, if you don’t obey the Party, you’re no good to them. They got you trapped—”

  “Sarah,” Bob spoke solemnly. “A good Bolshevik obeys. Lenin obeyed, didn’t he? Molotov obeys—”

  “Then, honey,” Sarah sneered at him, “I want you to be one of them who tells the others to obey, see? Read your Marx and organize. Hunh? That scares you, don’t it? They done put the fear of God in your soul!” She rose again, trembling with anger. “Listen, I’m working and helping to support you to organize! I’m feeding you to organize! Now, you either organize or go!” She whirled to Cross. “The Party scared the pee out of him this morning. He went to the Control Commission to find out why they didn’t want him to go on with his work. When he got back here, he was sick—”

  “I wasn’t sick,” Bob protested, ashamed that Cross should know.

  “You looked green,” Sarah said. “And when a man as dark as you looks green, he sick!”

  Bob grabbed his head with his hands, sank into a seat; his body began to tremble. He was suffering, a wet rag billowing between the blasts of Sarah and the Party. Cross was unable to look at him; he stared out of the window.

  “What are you going to do, Bob?” Cross asked patiently.

  “Hell, man. I don’t know,” Bob sighed.

  “What do you want to do?” Cross asked.

  Bob’s eyes searched Cross’s face as though seeking an answer there; he licked his lips and mumbled despairingly:

  “I want to organize Negroes—”

  “Well, why don’t you?”

  “You reckon I could do it? Reckon I ought to?” he asked sheepishly.

  “You ought to do what you want to do,” Cross told him.

  Sarah watched Bob with the cold eyes that only a woman can have for her husband. Cross knew that Bob would never win. Bob was too scared to act alone; he had to have a master. The Party had sunk its hold deep in Bob’s heart and, if Bob left the Party, he would have to find another…

  “I’m gonna stick to my own people,” he said heavily, his eyes glistening. He had run from one master to another: his race. “That’s what I’m gonna do.”

  “Then, do it, Bob,” Cross said. “I’ll help you.”

  “You want to help organize Negroes?” Bob asked eagerly, jumping to his feet.

  “No. I want to help you,” Cross told him in clipped tones.

  Bob was puzzled; he brushed the meaning in Cross’s word
s aside. He paced nervously with eyes full of anxiety. “One thing’s got me worried,” he mumbled. “The Party knows I’m illegally in this country—”

  “So what?” Sarah asked.

  “Supposed they turn me in to the Immigration folks to get rid of me—?”

  “The Communists?” Cross asked.

  “Sure, man,” Bob said. “When the Party fights, they fight with everything.”

  “They wouldn’t dare,” Sarah said.

  Cross felt that Bob’s worries were farfetched. After all, was Bob that important to the Party? He rose to leave and Bob grabbed his hand in gratitude. Sarah followed him to the door. As Cross descended the stairs he wondered why some men wanted to be free and some did not, why some needed freedom and others did not even feel its loss when they did not have it.

  After witnessing Bob’s turmoil, he had doubts about going to Gil’s. Was not Gil but another Hilton? And why did the Party demand abject obedience? He recalled Bob’s having told him that the Party was “now your mother and your father”, which meant that if he obeyed, the Party would take care of him, but, if he disobeyed, the Party would destroy him. And he had not the right to know why he was obeying…Why blind obedience? Yet, upon reflection, he found some cynical merit in the Party’s demand for it. If no reasons are assigned for a given command, then you cannot criticize, for you do not understand what you are doing. And if obedience without reasons is demanded for little things, it would hold, as a matter of ingrained habit, for bigger and more dangerous things…But why had the Party chosen that procedure? Had they found that men would not obey otherwise? That could hardly be true, for each day millions of southern Negroes obeyed southern whites; millions of South African natives obeyed the white powers above them; millions of Germans had obeyed Hitler; and in most cases these millions had been given some fantastic excuse to justify the command of obedience. The Nazis tried to win the loyalty of their subjects by conferring upon them ornate titles, noneconomic rewards of various sorts, and by devising schemes of sport and joy. But the only motive that Hilton had held out to Bob was fear. Did the Communists prefer fear? He sighed and glanced out of the subway window just in time to discover that the train was slowing for his stop. Well, the answer to his questions was in Gil’s apartment…

  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.”