Murgunstrumm and Others

by Cave, Hugh

  "Oh, go home with the devil! You and your stiff-necked religion. You're just like mother."

  "I'd rather be like mother than like you! At least, she doesn't believe in a mess of idiotic tripe! There's no good in those dives you go to!"

  "Do many white people go, Meg?" Emma asks hesitantly.

  "No, not many."

  "Do they like people to go?"

  "You just walk in," Meg explains, "and take a seat, and act as if you're one of them. Don't let them get the idea you don't believe in their work."

  "What happens if they think that?"

  "You'll be put out."

  "They wouldn't put me out," Swede says defiantly. "I'd like to see a gang of niggers put me out of any place!"

  "You'd go, all right. When these people get worked up, they're on the verge

  of madness. They'd kill you!"

  "When's the next meeting?" Swede challenges.

  Peter shuts off the phonograph and says seriously: "There's one tonight. Do you want to go?"

  "Don't go with him!" Godfrey Langdon cries. "It's stuff and nonsense, that's all it is. Meg, you're not going!"

  "I'm going if Peter goes," Meg declares quietly.

  "Do you want to go?" Peter asks Swede.

  "How about it, Em? Shall we see the dive? It'll be as good as a movie, anyhow." Swede grins.

  "I'm afraid of those places, Swede. But if you want to go—"

  "What time does it start, Peter?"

  "Eleven."

  "All right—"

  "Well, I'm not going!" Godfrey Langdon says bitterly. "These kind of places weren't meant for white people. They're just circus sideshows, full of lies and mummery."

  "No one asked you to come," Meg retorts.

  "No, and you're not going either! You'll get into trouble. Just as sure as you're my sister, you'll get into trouble—and worse. I'm telling you now! I've got a queer feeling—"

  This amuses Peter. He smiles tolerantly and says: "I thought you didn't believe in hunches."

  "I don't! I don't believe in any of the idiotic rot that you do. But if you go there tonight, something awful will happen! I'm telling you!"

  "Hooey," Peter grins. "You give the horse-laugh to forebodings and omens and premonitions, yet you're the only cuss in this crowd shooting off your mouth about forebodings of evil. Kind of back-firing on yourself, aren't you?"

  Peter dripped sarcasm. "You can wait here for us. We'll be back about one o'clock. And don't do any floor-walking, because nothing's going to happen to us. Not a damned thing."

  "I tell you—something terrible—"

  Raymond Street, in the slums of this city, is a thin gloomy thoroughfare, poorly illuminated at night, separating a leering array of black buildings. It has ancient car-tracks and high curbings; the store windows on each side are gray with soot, and old newspapers mask the glass panes on the inner surfaces to hide nefarious interiors.

  You may purchase forbidden items in quantity in this section if you have been informed of the proper doorways; you may visit illicit upper rooms or procure positions at roulette tables and seatings at confidential gambling layouts if you are aware of the proper ascents of black stairways. Raymond Street is not too frequently patrolled by policemen, who prefer always to walk in pairs when they make the circuit.

  Three doors down from an unsavory sideway you will find the Omega Lunch. Here, too, if you are known by sight or properly introduced, you may obtain a variety of extraneous contrabands; but if you walk through, ignoring the unclean white-topped tables and opening the door beside the wash-stand, you will discover a flight of unlighted stairs which seem to extend upward for ever and ever into obscurity. Counting the steps as you ascend, you will reach the number twenty-seven and arrive upon a flat landing, from which the stairway continues upward even beyond. Opening the door beside you on your right, you will enter the meeting room.

  It is ten minutes after eleven o'clock when Peter opens this door. He stands aside, allowing Meg, Emma, and Swede to go in before him; and he says to Swede in an undertone:

  "Keep your mouth shut in here, Swede. If you want to argue, wait until we're outside again."

  Then he enters behind them.

  It is a small room. Meg has been here before and does not pay any particular attention to the surrounding discrepancies. Emma is timid; she feels the repelling atmosphere of the place but cannot force herself to be conscious of its details. Swede, however, stands wide-legged just inside the door, which Peter has quietly closed behind him, and gives the interior what he would call "the once over." He ignores deliberately the stares of the people who have turned curiously to inspect. His lips are pursed in a tolerant, unconsciously sneering curve. He looks around him as a skeptic would examine the interior of a "chamber of horrors" at an amusement resort.

  The entry in which Swede stands is at the rear of the room. He looks left at the back wall; the wall is fashioned of plaster, the plaster painted brownish yellow and cracked pitifully, and the entire surface repaired in four places with sheets of blackened tin. He looks right and sees a double row of unpainted wooden benches, twelve in each row, divided by a single aisle of floor. The floor is black and gritty; it has the appearance of an improperly cured and very ancient layer of human skin.

  The aisle leads straightaway to a platform, whereupon stands a thin-bellied table supporting an open Bible of huge proportions and a glass of milky white liquid. The platform terminates in a semi-circular wall with three windows which overlook the street below. These windows are closed; cotton curtains, stiff with dirt, are drawn over them. Left is a piano. Right are three plain chairs.

  A colored woman is scuffing the length of the aisle. It is her intent, evidently, to find seats for the four white folk who have just come in. She takes Peter's arm and leads him toward the front. There are two vacant places in the front bench on the left side. There are two more vacancies in the right side, close to the rear.

  Peter hesitates. He says to Emma, who is walking timidly behind him: "You and Swede better sit up front; you'll see more. We've already seen it."

  Swede says, "O.K." He and Emma follow the colored woman to the first row of benches. They crowd into the two empty spaces, Emma next against the wall and Swede beside her. The piano is directly in front of them on the platform. They were very close to the Bible table.

  "A regular box seat," Swede grins. Emma says, "Shh!"

  Peter and Meg occupy the only other vacant places. The two seats are on the aisle, at the rear. Meg silently motions Peter to take the inner one, because it is next to a very old and very wretched colored man whose face suggests the presence of venereal disease. Peter tries to avoid rubbing against him, which is impossible. Meg sits stiffly upright next to the aisle.

  This has occupied about two minutes. There is a silent wait of five minutes now, interrupted by occasional whisperings and a scraping of benches. Men and women are still turning to stare at Peter and Meg and still watching Swede and Emma at the front of the room. Other white folk are here, but not of the same type. In all, three other whites were present: a sallow-featured, scrawny youth who slouches in the last bench and glares straight ahead of him out of wide-open, unmoving eyes; and two muttering women who sit close to the wall, under a large, very dirty American flag.

  There are twenty-two colored people here also. The youngest of them is perhaps eighteen years old; the oldest is the man who huddles on the piano stool in front of Swede and Emma. This one is extremely old. He wears a green sweater and two ragged overcoats; he is peering at a song-book through two pairs of metal-rimmed glasses, both of which are held together with brown string and hang from his ears. He wears also a cap which is torn at the brim.

  It is time now for something to begin. The people are restless. In the front row, across the aisle from Swede, a middle-aged colored woman has struggled to her feet, holding hard to her side. She paces down the aisle, talking to herself, and bends over the white boy who slouches in the last bench. The white boy nods indiff
erently. He goes with her to the open space in the back of the room. There he slumps to his knees. The woman stands stiff and inflexible beside him. His nervous fingers follow up and down her clothing, at first sluggishly, then erratically quick. The boy's face becomes as rigid as the woman's body. His eyes dilate; he begins to tremble, to quiver, to twitch violently. Spitting sounds come from his lips; he hisses through his teeth. The woman screams. She runs forward again, the length of the aisle. The boy gets mechanically to his feet and returns to his place.

  The woman sits down stiffly. Beside her a younger woman, also colored, reaches out to clutch her hand and says:

  "Feelin' better, honey?"

  "Dat Mister Johnson can sho' fix you up if anyone can. Missus Davis was tellin' me only yestidday how she done sent fer him when she got feelin' turrible pains in her haid. He jus' put his hands on her fer a minute an' de pains went clear gone. Dat man has de healin' touch sho'."

  Swede is staring at this in bewilderment. He hears it; he does not understand. He nudges Emma to listen. At the same time, a man has risen from the rear row right and is coming with heavy steps toward the platform. He is huge of stature, taller even than Swede, and heavier. His shoulders are rectangular, as if lined with a carpenter's square. He walks with his head down. He walks with his legs; his body does not move.

  He stands behind the thin-bellied table, facing the people in the benches, and turns the brown pages of the big book. He reads from it slowly, faltering many times and repeating himself, and mispronouncing a number of words. Then he closes the book and says:

  "Friends, we are heuh tonight because the spirit wills ut. The spirit brings us togedder so come we will furder unnerstan' the workin's of Almighty God. Let us be thankful fer bein' able ter be heuh, an' fer havin' our health, an' fer havin' unnerstandin' of the works of God. We thank God fer revealing unter us the secruts of his glorious ways, an' we thank God fer bringin' us heuh tonight. Our Father Who art in heaven, hullowed—"

  The people join him reverently, loudly or softly as individual minds seem to desire. Swede says nothing. Emma whispers the words of the Lord's Prayer because she feels the penetrating eyes of the old man at the piano focused on her, and she is uncomfortable.

  The prayer ends. Swede reaches down automatically and picks up a songbook. It is grimy and so worn that the title page is illegible. He reads the list of prices on the last leaf and notices that one hundred of these books may be purchased for twenty dollars. The man at the piano hammers a sudden penetrating chord; it is a chord, but three of the notes in it are notably flat, because the piano is cracked. Swede grins at this. He notices, too, that the piano has not been dusted for a long time, and the unpolished brass bowl on top of it contains blackened roses which were once alive but which are now very dead.

  "Bufore we begins the readin's," the big negro was saying, "let's us sing togedder one er two hymns. Has anybody heuh a perticaler hymn which him er her wants us to sing?"

  The woman beside Swede gets to her feet and says:

  "I wish y'all 'ud sing nummer sixty-foah, Revrun Dali. Nummer sixty-foah was my husban's mos' fav'rite hymn an' if'n he heuhs it tonight might-be he'll come ter me an' say somethin' ter comfort me."

  The big man repeats the number. Swede mechanically turns the pages of the song-book until he finds it. He stares at the piano while the old negro pounds out a discordant introduction. But he does not sing.

  He listens, however, to the others. He even turns to look at them, especially at the woman who requested the hymn, because she is wailing the words shrilly, her voice rising bitter high above all other voices. Emma touches Swede's arm nervously and whispers: "Sing it, Swede. They might say something."

  Swede laughs. The man at the piano hears him and glares at him through double lenses. Swede returns the glare with equal intensity, wondering if he can stare hard enough to make the old man turn away. But the old man does not turn; he glares and glares throughout four verses of the simple melody. Swede is tempted to twist the man's ugly head the other way. He knows that this one, at least, cannot fight him; a single push would crumble the skeletal frame into itself and topple it off the stool.

  But Swede is disappointed in the singing. He turns full around to catch Peter's eye and let Peter know what he thinks; but Peter is singing loudly, standing very straight and holding the book on a level with his eyes. Peter likes loud music.

  Swede leans over and says to Emma in an undertone:

  "If this is what Peter calls wild singing—"

  "Keep still, Swede. Please!"

  The singing goes on for another five minutes. When it is over, the last verse is repeated increasingly soft. As the words drone out and become a hum, Swede watches the big man on the platform. He is pacing back and forth with regular steps, rubbing his face with his fat hands, staring intently at the ceiling.

  Swede, too, looks at the ceiling. He sees nothing there of particular interest. The top of the room is covered with white squares of oil-cloth which have begun to turn yellow.

  "I would like to ask," the big man says after a moment's silence, "if there is someone in the room heuh who can place a liddle boy baby what passed out of this expression of life not more than t'ree weeks er t'ree mont's ago. It would be a boy baby about five yeuhs of age, with curly hauh and dark eyes, an' it seems ter me I feel a sharp pain heuh in my ches' like I passed out er this expression of life wid my lungs hurtin' somepin awful. It seems ter me I'm look-in' over the lef side of the room heuh, an' I'm reachin' out fer ter hold onto somepin same as I reached out w'en I entered the spirit world. Can some 'un unnerstan' what I'm sayin'?"

  There is quiet for an instant. Swede grins and turns to look at the left benches. A woman gets to her feet suddenly with eyes alight and hands clawing: a youngish colored woman who wears a black, sack-fitting dress with white lace collar which needs washing.

  "Tha's my baby!" she screeches. "Tha's my Baby Paul! He's come back tuh me! He's got somepin tub say tuh me!"

  The big man on the platform stands still now, and leans on the Bible table, covering his face in his hands. He remains in this position for some time. The woman who is standing up is watching him with wide, glittering, expectant eyes; she is silent again.

  The big man pushes himself up and looks toward her.

  "This baby boy is a-tuggin' at me an' tellin' me not to worry no more," he says. "He says he's gwine be a-waitin' fer me w'en I comes inter the spirit expression. I got pains in my haid, he says, which come at me of a sudden an' most drive me crazy wil hurtin'. He says don' worry 'bout 'em no mo'; just take a glass er wahter like dis glass heuh in front er me on dis table, an' look inter it until the pains go out'n my haid and dissol' 'emselves in 'at water. Does you unnerstan' dis message I'm tryin' ter convey ter you?"

  "Yes, suh. Does he say I won' get dem pains no mo'? Does he say dat?"

  "He says you lissen fer him an' he come ter you often. He says he don' come ter you now 'cause you don' listen. Does you unnerstan'?"

  "Yes, yes. What else he say?"

  "He don' say nothin' else 'ceptin' he be waitin' fer you w'en you comes. An' I wants ter say ter you, mysel', not ter worry no mo', sister. Does you unnerstan' dis work?"

  "I unnerstan' some; not much."

  "Den you do like dis message says. Don't worry none. You is downcas' mos' all de time, isn't you? What I wan' ter say is, you is all de time thinkin' what other peoples is tryin' ter do ter you. Ain't dat right?"

  "Yes, suh. Dem odder peoples all time tryin' ter—"

  "Dey ain't gwine hurt you. Dey jus' thinks an' talks foolish. Dey can' do nuttin', can dey? You jus' stop worryin' over 'em. An' I wants ter tell yer, everythin' is gwine turn out all right befo' t'ree weeks more has done gone by. Would you unnerstan' dat?"

  "Yes, suh. I sho' would."

  "Den I leaves you in de hands er de devine spirit, an' I hopes you do all He tells yer. May de blessin' er God be upon yer."

  "Thank yer, suh. Thank yer---"

  The woman sits d
own. She is smiling; her face is not the same face she possessed when she stood up a moment ago. It is alive now; it was dead before.

  The big man paces again, back and forth across the platform. He stops before the table, fumbling with the pages of the book. He slides a cloth out from under the heavy cover and wipes the perspiration from his forehead with it. He drinks from the glass of milky water and continues his walking.

  Swede is regarding him vigilantly, trying to discover whether this morose pacing is an intentional scheme to create suspense, or whether it is mechanical. He cannot fully comprehend that the people in this room with him are sympathetic believers of what is going on. He is eager to have it over with, so that he may tear the big negro's words bit for bit and prove to Peter that they are strictly generalities. Meanwhile he is slightly amused at the entire proceedings and has forgotten that Emma, beside him, is very still with a very real terror.

  At the rear of the room the aged black beside Peter has suddenly lurched to his feet. His eyes are unnaturally wide and intensely white; the pupils are not visible. He is thrashing the air with erratic jerks of his arms and torso; he mutters continually; his mouth is flecked with spittle. As Swede turns to look the old man stumbles past Peter and Meg into the aisle, where he writhes to the floor upon his face with a prolonged screech of agony.

  His fingers scratch frantically at the dirty wood. His legs and body are thrashing from side to side as the extended coils of a snake might lash if impaled through the middle. Peter cringes from him. Meg watches him with a steady, fixed, horrified gaze.

  The diseased white boy stands up from the last bench and steps forward. He bends over, seizing the prostrate man by the shoulders, and jerks him upright. Swede realizes, at this moment, that the other people in the room are not staring and are evidently not even interested; they have seen this same thing occur many times before.

  The Reverend Dali is speaking again now, as the white boy leads the pitiful old man to the rear bench and helps him to be quiet. The big negro on the platform is pointing directly at Peter, and saying: