The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  Cross admitted that he had made a psychological mistake; he should have observed Menti closer. Intuitively he sensed an almost organic servility that would make this man lend himself to any use by those whom he respected and loved. He had now to try to get to this man, for he felt that the influence of the Party on Menti’s mind now caused Menti to regard him as an opaque object that had to be accounted for. He studied Menti’s too-white, sensitive face, almost a woman’s face; he looked wonderingly at the deep, brooding eyes that never let you hold their gaze for long; at the bluish tint that always showed just beneath his dead-white, close-shaven skin; at those long and tapering fingers that were sensitive without being in any way delicate…The man seemed like an empty, waiting vessel that could be easily filled with either a frightened acquiescence or a strident brutality; or, if necessary, a combination of both.

  Cross sat next to Menti and asked him:

  “Menti, what have you got against me?”

  “Personally, nothing.” Menti’s voice was affable.

  “What do you think I’m up to?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “Have you seen me do anything that would make you suspicious of me?”

  “No.”

  “Then why are you prying into me?”

  “We don’t know you,” Menti said without anger.

  “What do you want to know about me?”

  “Everything.”

  “What do you call ‘knowing’ somebody, Menti?”

  Menti smiled, crushed out a cigarette, and lit another one.

  “It’s possible to know enough about a man to know when he would or wouldn’t do certain things,” Menti said.

  “You talk about people as if they were machines, something made,” Cross protested. “How can you predict behavior?”

  “By a man’s convictions,” Menti said. “By where he stands in the context of a concrete situation.”

  “So the Party can tell in advance if a man will be guilty or not in any given instance?” Cross asked. “You mean to say that?”

  “Just that,” Menti said. “The logic of a position will make a man act in a certain way. Given a man with a given set of convictions, and given a situation, the Party can tell what that man would do.”

  “And you could condemn him in advance of his deed?”

  “Certainly. It’s logical, isn’t it?” Menti asked earnestly.

  Cross knew that Menti was reflecting the attitude of the Party.

  “What are you trying to find out about me?”

  “Who you are and what you are doing.”

  Menti was fluent in his answers and Cross knew that the Party would soon know that he had asked these questions. He would try to send back a human answer.

  “I’m a Negro, Menti; I’m trying to learn,” Cross lied.

  “Learn what?”

  “How to live.”

  “Hunh. You mean how the Party lives?”

  “Hell, no. Have I ever asked you anything about the Party?”

  “No. But you got Eva—”

  “But Eva’s not a political person, Menti. You know that.”

  “She was Gil’s wife.”

  “So what? Are you moral?”

  “The Party is not moral,” Menti answered, declining to assert his personal opinion. “You love Eva, don’t you?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Why?”

  “She’s a woman, one I’ve been seeking all my life.”

  “And she happened to be a wife of a member of the Central Committee—”

  “She knows nothing of politics,” Cross protested.

  “You found that out, didn’t you?” Menti demanded.

  “Yes.”

  “Why?” Menti demanded in insolent tones.

  It was hopeless. Goddamn this dirty spoon in the hands of the Party! Cross rose. This man would not, could not believe that there existed men who could, at some moments of their lives, be honest as Cross was now honest with him about Eva. Indeed, Cross could feel that his love of Eva would assume baffling guises in the Party’s mind. The simpler and more human a thing was, the more the Party feared it…

  “Listen, Menti, if the Party wants to know anything about me, let ’em come and ask me,” Cross said. “They don’t have to go licking around the District Attorney…”

  “They’ll come to you; don’t worry,” Menti assured him. “They went to the D.A. because you know ’im.”

  And what would Houston think of their asking? Cross felt that he was in danger, but it was not acute yet. Yes, he would move Eva out of this apartment tonight. His real hope was that he could get Eva to trust him and run off somewhere with her. But what explanations could he give her for such a drastic move? The only reasons he could give her would be of a nature that would guarantee her not coming…Menti stood and put on his overcoat; he paused, a cigarette smouldering in his lips.

  “The Party’s checked at Fisk University and has found that you never went to school there,” Menti came to the point at last.

  “So?”

  “Then why did you tell the D.A. that you went there?”

  “Must I tell the D.A. the truth?” Cross hedged.

  “Tell me, what do you plan to do now?”

  “Nothing.”

  “You got any money?”

  “Not much.”

  “You’re staying with Eva here?”

  “If she lets me,” he said.

  “She’ll let you,” Menti said.

  Cross was angry, but he knew that he had invited that crack. He held his peace. But it was clear that the crux of the Party’s attitude was his relationship with Eva.

  “I’m blowing, guy,” Menti said and left.

  Cross sat and brooded. If the Party checked up on him, they would run into a blank wall, and then what would they do? Just because his life was not transparent, would they get suspicious? The secret side of him was a handicap in the Party’s eyes…The more they probed into his background to uncover his identity, the more inflamed would their suspicions become. But what would they be suspicious of? And suspicion was not proof of murder. They would have to peel off layer after layer of pretense, uncover front after front of make-believe and where would it lead them in the end?

  Eventually, of course, the police could trace him by his fingerprints back to his Post Office identity in Chicago. But what would that really prove? They would run into a truly bewildering set of facts…

  Sarah came out of Eva’s room.

  “She wants to see you, Funny Face,” Sarah said.

  Sarah looked lost, piqued; he could see that she was losing weight. And Eva’s happiness was exciting her jealousy.

  “I’m going to ask Eva to come to your place,” he told her. “We’ll all chip in together on the expenses, hunh?”

  “I could use some money,” Sarah told him flatly. “I’ve no work now. I got to look for something.”

  “Don’t worry,” Cross told her.

  He went in to Eva who lay pale and limp on the bed. She summoned a smile for him. He took her hand and they were silent for a long time.

  “Eva, I’ve an idea…Until Gil is buried, let us go and live with Sarah in Harlem. It’ll take you away from this apartment, those reporters, and you’ll be in different surroundings,” he explained.

  She was thoughtful for a moment, then nodded her head in assent.

  “That would be nice. I’ve always wanted to live there. Is it all right with Sarah?”

  “She loves it.”

  “And we can be alone there, Lionel,” Eva said with a sense of relief.

  Life in Sarah’s sixth-floor walk-up apartment eased the sense of strain in Cross, but it did not free him from the probing presence of Menti who came the next morning, expressing great astonishment at the fact that they had moved. He had gone to the Charles Street apartment, he said, and rang and rang and no one had answered the door.

  “Then I knew that if anyone would know where Eva was, it would be Sarah,” Menti explained.r />
  He had come, he told them unctuously, to bring Eva news of the Party’s elaborate arrangements for Gil’s funeral. All Sunday morning Gil’s body would lie in state in a union hall, guarded by Communist militants, and in the afternoon it would be shipped to Gil’s family in the Bronx for burial. As Menti described the reaction of the Party to Gil’s death, Cross could see that Gil’s dying was being used to excite admiration for Party leaders in general. Gil had already, in Party circles, been deified as a kind of god who had laid down his only life as a sacrifice on the altar of freedom. Menti then, with measured movements which were supposed to be consonant with death and grief, hauled from his pockets a huge batch of messages of condolence which had come from as far away as Moscow. But Cross observed that Communists were not good when it came to paying respects to the dead; there was something embarrassingly self-conscious about Menti’s manner as he sought to convince Eva of the touching solicitude of the Party for her in her bereavement. It’s hard to pretend something about death that you really don’t feel, Cross thought.

  “Now, Eva,” Menti went on, smiling slightly. “Don’t think the Party has forgotten you. The Party never forgets its own.” He drew forth from an inner coat pocket a big envelope and handed it to Eva.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “It’s for you. Look at it and see,” Menti urged.

  Cross was standing behind Eva when she tore open the envelope; it was filled with greenbacks.

  “But why?” Eva asked, her eyes round with surprise.

  “It’s yours,” Menti said. “You’re Gil’s widow. The Party will look after you…”

  “But I can work,” Eva’s voice faltered. “I’m an artist—”

  “Do you spurn the sympathy of the Party?” Menti asked.

  “Oh, no…It’s not that, Menti,” Eva said. “But I’ve never worked for the Party. I was only Gil’s wife…”

  “You helped Gil, you comforted him; you enabled him to keep up his hard pace of work for the Party…”

  Eva’s eyes filled with a look of terror and she sank to the floor and sobbed, shaking her head. Cross knew what was going through her mind. All that Menti had just said about Eva’s relationship to Gil was blatantly untrue; Eva had not helped him because she felt she had been deceived and turned into an object, a thing, a means…Then what was the meaning of this gesture of the Party? It was a threat wrapped in kindness…They were seeking a way to keep a hold over Eva, trying to buy her loyalty, laying the basis for future demands. Cross could feel that the Party was delicately making its first moves against him. He felt alarm, but he knew that he had some time yet before things would become serious enough to warrant his taking action.

  “But why are you crying so, my dear?” Menti asked. “Are you surprised?”

  “But I shouldn’t take it,” Eva evaded his question. “I’ve no right to it.”

  “The Party is loyal to you,” Menti pointed out.

  “Yes,” Eva gulped.

  “And don’t you want to be loyal to the Party?”

  Eva did not reply; she turned her fear-filled eyes questioningly upon Cross’s face, seeking his guidance. And Cross noticed that Eva’s appeal for his advice was not lost upon Menti’s smilingly observant eyes, eyes that traveled cryptically from Eva’s face to Cross’s, and then back to Eva’s again…

  Cross found himself paraphrasing a Biblical passage:

  “Thou shalt not depend upon others, nor trust them: for this your Party is a jealous Party, visiting the suspicions of the leaders upon the members unto the third and fourth friends of the friends around the Party…”

  He was now sure that Menti was reporting back to the Party every nuance which he could observe between him and Eva. He hated the money that the Party was offering, but he could not afford to tell Eva not to accept it. He must make them guess at what he knew and felt.

  “Why not, honey? It’s for you…”

  “But I don’t want it, Lionel,” she whispered; she was still afraid that the Party would try to dictate her life.

  Cross cursed himself. Each step he took carried him deeper into a morass of lies and deceit.

  “The Party feels an obligation,” Cross said, trying to make his lie sound genuine. “If you refuse, they’ll wonder what reasons you could have.”

  “Exactly,” Menti said.

  Cross did not believe what Menti had said, and he knew that Menti knew that he did not believe it.

  “Oh, all right,” Eva sighed. “But I’m young and I have my painting!”

  “As soon as you’re rested and settled, the Party wants you to paint,” Menti told her hurriedly. “Now, tomorrow’s Sunday. I’ll pick you up in the morning at nine and take you to the union hall, hunh?”

  Eva nodded her head. Menti shook hands with her and left. Sarah, who had overheard it all from the back of the room, came forward with a tight and angry face.

  “Well, I’ll be goddamned,” Sarah swore.

  “What’s the matter?” Eva asked.

  “They pay you, but me…? I lost Bob, but do they give me one red cent? They took Bob from me, but do they care?” Bitter tears welled in her eyes.

  “Oh, Sarah,” Eva protested guiltily. “Here, you take this money. You need it.” She held out the envelope with a gesture of childish generosity.

  “I don’t want it!” Sarah shouted.

  “But, Sarah,” Eva wept, “I didn’t ask the Party for it…”

  “I ain’t mad at you,” Sarah stormed. “I’m mad at them! I’m convinced that there’s something fishy behind this. They don’t give a good goddamn about what happens to you. They’re trying to buy your loyalty for some reason.” Sarah turned to Cross. “What do you think, Lionel?”

  “I don’t know, Sarah,” he lied helplessly; he agreed with Sarah, but he could not tell her so, at least not yet.

  Cross wondered if he was underestimating the Party. Though the Party was not an official adjunct to the police department, it did have wide powers of an effective and peculiar nature; it had its own underground apparatus and special methods of investigation. But what could they do with their findings? And he was convinced that he would have more than ample warning of their movements before they got too close to him.

  Late that evening, immediately following dinner, Cross knew that the Party was adamantly on his trail, for Menti showed up accompanied by a short, dark Negro who hovered silently behind him, keeping on his hat and overcoat. This man, known as Hank, had a black, blank mask for a face, a greyish scar that went diagonally across his lips and chin, eyes that held a look of chronic hate whose origin seemed to go back to some inaccessible past. Cross knew that the Party had given Menti assistance in the form of this thug to help in spying upon him and Eva. This meant that the Party had not acted because it had not quite made up its mind. But what were the leaders thinking? Did they regard him as a spy? If so, for whom? And would they ever be able to fathom his motive in killing Gil? Or would they in the end just create some imaginary crime and try to brand him with its guilt? He knew that they were fully capable of that…

  Menti pretended that the Party had asked for papers of an urgent political nature that Gil had left behind in his desk. Eva willingly surrendered to Menti the keys of the apartment on Charles Street. Cross had no fear of the Party finding anything incriminating in Eva’s apartment, for he had brought his only suitcase with him. Before leaving, Menti lingered at the door, smiling, looking thoughtfully off into space. Hank stood behind Menti, morose, his eyes darting about.

  “How are you getting on, Lane?” Menti asked.

  “Oh, so-so,” Cross said.

  “Only so-so?” Menti asked. “You need money?”

  “No.”

  Hank was listening so intently that his eyes glittered.

  “The Party’s curious about you,” Menti said.

  “You’ve told me I’m under suspicion,” Cross said. “But you haven’t told me what I’m suspected of.”

  “Say, where were you born
?” Menti asked suddenly. “I want to know.”

  “You mean the Party wants to know—Tell the Party folks to come and ask me what they want to hear—”

  “I’m the Party; I’m asking—”

  “You think I’m with the police, don’t you?” Cross evaded him.

  Menti laughed, then playfully slapped Cross on the shoulder.

  “Hell, Lane, we’re not children,” Menti said. “You’ve no connections with the police; we’ve investigated and we know…Say, tell me, when did you last see Hilton?”

  “I tried to see him yesterday afternoon. But he wasn’t in.”

  “What time was that?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know,” Cross smiled. “Is it important?”

  “Could be.” Menti was baffled at Cross’s casual manner. “Can you prove you didn’t see ’im?”

  “I haven’t bothered to think about that,” Cross said.

  “The hotel clerk said a guy of your description asked for Hilton around four o’clock,” Menti told him. “That must have been you, hunh?”

  “Maybe. There are many Negroes who look like me,” Cross said; he knew that they were trying clumsily to link him with Hilton’s death.

  “Not likely,” Menti said. “At least they don’t act like you. The hotel clerk remembers you because you acted self-assured, like a man who knows his way around.”

  “I know my way around,” Cross laughed.

  “Good-bye,” Menti said suddenly.

  They left. Cross shut the door and at once Sarah came out of the living room and Cross could see that she had overheard the conversation.

  “What are they after you for?” she asked.