Cane

by Jean Toomer

  Dan: Old stuff. Muriel—bored. Must be. But she’ll smile and she’ll clap. Do what youre bid, you she-slave. Look at her. Sweet, tame woman in a brass box seat. Clap, smile, fawn, clap. Do what youre bid. Drag me in with you. Dirty me. Prop me in your brass box seat. I’m there, am I not? because of you. He-slave. Slave of a woman who is a slave. I’m a damned sight worse than you are. I sing your praises, Beauty! I exalt thee, O Muriel! A slave, thou art greater than all Freedom because I love thee.

  Dan fidgets, and disturbs his neighbors. His neighbors glare at him. He glares back without seeing them. The man whose corns have been trod upon speaks to him.

  “Keep quiet, cant you, mister. Other people have paid their money besides yourself to see the show.”

  The man’s face is a blur about two sullen liquid things that are his eyes. The eyes dissolve in the surrounding vagueness. Dan suddenly feels that the man is an enemy whom he has long been looking for.

  Dan bristles. Glares furiously at the man.

  “All right. All right then. Look at the show. I’m not stopping you.”

  “Shhh,” from some one in the rear.

  Dan turns around.

  “Its that man there who started everything. I didnt say a thing to him until he tried to start something. What have I got to do with whether he has paid his money or not? Thats the manager’s business. Do I look like the manager?”

  “Shhhh. Youre right. Shhhh.”

  “Dont tell me to shhh. Tell him. That man there. He started everything. If what he wanted was to start a fight, why didnt he say so?”

  The man leans forward.

  “Better be quiet, sonny. I aint said a thing about fight, yet.”

  “Its a good thing you havent.”

  “Shhhh.”

  Dan grips himself. Another act is on. Dwarfs, dressed like prizefighters, foreheads bulging like boxing gloves, are led upon the stage. They are going to fight for the heavyweight championship. Gruesome. Dan glances at Muriel. He imagines that she shudders. His mind curves back into himself, and picks up tail-ends of experiences. His eyes are open, mechanically. The dwarfs pound and bruise and bleed each other, on his eyeballs.

  Dan: Ah, but she was some baby! And not vulgar either. Funny how some women can do those things. Muriel dancing like that! Hell. She rolled and wabbled. Her buttocks rocked. She pulled up her dress and showed her pink drawers. Baby! And then she caught my eyes. Dont know what my eyes had in them. Yes I do. God, dont I though! Sometimes I think, Dan Moore, that your eyes could burn clean…burn clean…BURN CLEAN!…

  The gong rings. The dwarfs set to. They spar grotesquely, playfully, until one lands a stiff blow. This makes the other sore. He commences slugging. A real scrap is on. Time! The dwarfs go to their corners and are sponged and fanned off. Gloves bulge from their wrists. Their wrists are necks for the tight-faced gloves. The fellow to the right lets his eyes roam over the audience. He sights Muriel. He grins.

  Dan: Those silly women arguing feminism. Here’s what I should have said to them. “It should be clear to you women, that the proposition must be stated thus:

  Me, horizontally above her.

  Action: perfect strokes downward oblique.

  Hence, man dominates because of limitation.

  Or, so it shall be until women learn their stuff.

  So framed, the proposition is a mental-filler, Dentist, I want gold teeth. It should become cherished of the technical intellect. I hereby offer it to posterity as one of the important machine-age designs. P. S. It should be noted, that because it is an achievement of this age, its growth and hence its causes, up to the point of maturity, antedate machinery. Ery…”

  The gong rings. No fooling this time. The dwarfs set to. They clinch. The referee parts them. One swings a cruel upper-cut and knocks the other down. A huge head hits the floor. Pop! The house roars. The fighter, groggy, scrambles up. The referee whispers to the contenders not to fight so hard. They ignore him. They charge. Their heads jab like boxing-gloves. They kick and spit and bite. They pound each other furiously. Muriel pounds. The house pounds. Cut lips. Bloody noses. The referee asks for the gong. Time! The house roars. The dwarfs bow, are made to bow. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led from the stage.

  Dan: Strange I never really noticed him before. Been sitting there for years. Born a slave. Slavery not so long ago. He’ll die in his chair. Swing low, sweet chariot. Jesus will come and roll him down the river Jordan. Oh, come along, Moses, you’ll get lost; stretch out your rod and come across. LET MY PEOPLE GO! Old man. Knows everyone who passes the corners. Saw the first horse-cars. The first Oldsmobile. And he was born in slavery. I did see his eyes. Never miss eyes. But they were bloodshot and watery. It hurt to look at them. It hurts to look in most people’s eyes. He saw Grant and Lincoln. He saw Walt—old man, did you see Walt Whitman? Did you see Walt Whitman! Strange force that drew me to him. And I went up to see. The woman thought I saw crazy. I told him to look into the heavens. He did, and smiled. I asked him if he knew what that rumbling is that comes up from the ground. Christ, what a stroke that was. And the jabbering idiots crowding around. And the crossing-cop leaving his job to come over and wheel him away…

  The house applauds. The house wants more. The dwarfs are led back. But no encore. Must give the house something. The attendant comes out and announces that Mr. Barry, the champion, will sing one of his own songs, “for your approval.” Mr. Barry grins at Muriel as he wabbles from the wing. He holds a fresh white rose, and a small mirror. He wipes blood from his nose. He signals Jim Clem. The orchestra starts. A sentimental love song, Mr. Barry sings, first to one girl, and then another in the audience. He holds the mirror in such a way that it flashes in the face of each one he sings to. The light swings around.

  Dan: I am going to reach up and grab the girders of this building and pull them down. The crash will be a signal. Hid by the smoke and dust Dan Moore will arise. In his right hand will be a dynamo. In his left, a god’s face that will flash white light from ebony. I’ll grab a girder and swing it like a walking-stick. Lightning will flash. I’ll grab its black knob and swing it like a crippled cane. Lightning…Some one’s flashing…some one’s flashing…Who in hell is flashing that mirror? Take it off me, godam you.

  Dan’s eyes are half blinded. He moves his head. The light follows. He hears the audience laugh. He hears the orchestra. A man with a high-pitched, sentimental voice is singing. Dan sees the dwarf. Along the mirror flash the song comes. Dan ducks his head. The audience roars. The light swings around to Muriel. Dan looks. Muriel is too close. Mr. Barry covers his mirror. He sings to her. She shrinks away. Nausea. She clutches the brass box-rail. She moves to face away. The audience is square upon her. Its eyes smile. Its hands itch to clap. Muriel turns to the dwarf and forces a smile at him. With a showy blare of orchestration, the song comes to its close. Mr. Barry bows. He offers Muriel the rose, first having kissed it. Blood of his battered lips is a vivid stain upon its petals. Mr. Barry offers Muriel the rose. The house applauds. Muriel flinches back. The dwarf steps forward, diffident; threatening. Hate pops from his eyes and crackles like a brittle heat about the box. The thick hide of his face is drawn in tortured wrinkles. Above his eyes, the bulging, tight-skinned brow. Dan looks at it. It grows calm and massive. It grows profound. It is a thing of wisdom and tenderness, of suffering and beauty. Dan looks down. The eyes are calm and luminous. Words come from them…Arms of the audience reach out, grab Muriel, and hold her there. Claps are steel fingers that manacle her wrists and move them forward to acceptance. Berny leans forward and whispers:

  “Its all right. Go on—take it.”

  Words form in the eyes of the dwarf:

  Do not shrink. Do not be afraid of me.

  Jesus

  See how my eyes look at you.

  the Son of God

  I too was made in His image.

  was once—

  I give you the rose.

  Muriel, tight in her revulsion, sees black, and daintily reach
es for the offering. As her hand touches it, Dan springs up in his seat and shouts:

  “JESUS WAS ONCE A LEPER!”

  Dan steps down.

  He is as cool as a green stem that has just shed its flower.

  Rows of gaping faces strain towards him. They are distant, beneath him, impalpable. Squeezing out, Dan again treads upon the corn-foot man. The man shoves him.

  “Watch where youre going, mister. Crazy or no, you aint going to walk over me. Watch where youre going there.”

  Dan turns, and serenely tweaks the fellow’s nose. The man jumps up. Dan is jammed against a seat-back. A slight swift anger flicks him. His fist hooks the other’s jaw.

  “Now you have started something. Aint no man living can hit me and get away with it. Come on on the outside.”

  The house, tumultuously stirring, grabs its wraps and follows the men.

  The man leads Dan up a black alley. The alley-air is thick and moist with smells of garbage and wet trash. In the morning, singing niggers will drive by and ring their gongs…Heavy with the scent of rancid flowers and with the scent of fight. The crowd, pressing forward, is a hollow roar. Eyes of houses, soft girl-eyes, glow reticently upon the hubbub and blink out. The man stops. Takes off his hat and coat. Dan, having forgotten him, keeps going on.

  Prayer

  My body is opaque to the soul.

  Driven of the spirit, long have I sought to temper it unto the spirit’s longing,

  But my mind, too, is opaque to the soul.

  A closed lid is my soul’s flesh-eye.

  O Spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger,

  Direct it to the lid of its flesh-eye.

  I am weak with much giving.

  I am weak with the desire to give more.

  (How strong a thing is the little finger!)

  So weak that I have confused the body with the soul,

  And the body with its little finger.

  (How frail is the little finger.)

  My voice could not carry to you did you dwell in stars,

  O Spirits of whom my soul is but a little finger…

  Harvest Song

  I am a reaper whose muscles set at sundown. All my oats are cradled.

  But I am too chilled, and too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger.

  I crack a grain between my teeth. I do not taste it.

  I have been in the fields all day. My throat is dry. I hunger.

  My eyes are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.

  I am a blind man who stares across the hills, seeking stack’d fields of other harvesters.

  It would be good to see them…crook’d, split, and iron-ring’d handles of the scythes. It would be good to see them, dust-caked and blind. I hunger.

  (Dusk is a strange fear’d sheath their blades are dull’d in.)

  My throat is dry. And should I call, a cracked grain like the oats…eoho—

  I fear to call. What should they hear me, and offer me their grain, oats, or wheat, or corn? I have been in the fields all day. I fear I could not taste it. I fear knowledge of my hunger.

  My ears are caked with dust of oatfields at harvest-time.

  I am a deaf man who strains to hear the calls of other harvesters whose throats are also dry.

  It would be good to hear their songs…reapers of the sweet-stalk’d cane, cutters of the corn…even though their throats cracked and the strangeness of their voices deafened me.

  I hunger. My throat is dry. Now that the sun has set and I am chilled, I fear to call. (Eoho, my brothers!)

  I am a reaper. (Eoho!) All my oats are cradled. But I am too fatigued to bind them. And I hunger. I crack a grain. It has no taste to it. My throat is dry…

  O my brothers, I beat my palms, still soft, against the stubble of my harvesting. (You beat your soft palms, too.) My pain is sweet. Sweeter than the oats or wheat or corn. It will not bring me knowledge of my hunger.

  Bona and Paul

  1

  On the school gymnasium floor, young men and women are drilling. They are going to be teachers, and go out into the world…thud, thud…and give precision to the movements of sick people who all their lives have been drilling. One man is out of step. In step. The teacher glares at him. A girl in bloomers, seated on a mat in the corner because she has told the director that she is sick, sees that the footfalls of the men are rhythmical and syncopated. The dance of his blue-trousered limbs thrills her.

  Bona: He is a candle that dances in a grove swung with pale balloons. Columns of the drillers thud towards her. He is in the front row. He is in no row at all. Bona can look close at him. His red-brown face—

  Bona: He is a harvest moon. He is an autumn leaf. He is a nigger. Bona! But dont all the dorm girls say so? And dont you, when you are sane, say so? Thats why I love—Oh, nonsense. You have never loved a man who didnt first love you. Besides—

  Columns thud away from her. Come to a halt in line formation. Rigid. The period bell rings, and the teacher dismisses them.

  A group collects around Paul. They are choosing sides for basket-ball. Girls against boys. Paul has his. He is limbering up beneath the basket. Bona runs to the girl captain and asks to be chosen. The girls fuss. The director comes to quiet them. He hears what Bona wants.

  “But, Miss Hale, you were excused—”

  “So I was, Mr. Boynton, but—”

  “—you can play basket-ball, but you are too sick to drill.”

  “If you wish to put it that way.”

  She swings away from him to the girl captain.

  “Helen, I want to play, and you must let me. This is the first time I’ve asked and I dont see why—”

  “Thats just it, Bona. We have our team.”

  “Well, team or no team, I want to play and thats all there is to it.”

  She snatches the ball from Helen’s hands, and charges down the floor.

  Helen shrugs. One of the weaker girls says that she’ll drop out. Helen accepts this. The team is formed. The whistle blows. The game starts. Bona, in center, is jumping against Paul. He plays with her. Out-jumps her, makes a quick pass, gets a quick return, and shoots a goal from the middle of the floor. Bona burns crimson. She fights, and tries to guard him. One of her team-mates advises her not to play so hard. Paul shoots his second goal.

  Bona begins to feel a little dizzy and all in. She drives on. Almost hugs Paul to guard him. Near the basket, he attempts to shoot, and Bona lunges into his body and tries to beat his arms. His elbow, going up, gives her a sharp crack on the jaw. She whirls. He catches her. Her body stiffens. Then becomes strangely vibrant, and bursts to a swift life within her anger. He is about to give way before her hatred when a new passion flares at him and makes his stomach fall. Bona squeezes him. He suddenly feels stifled, and wonders why in hell the ring of silly gaping faces that’s caked about him doesnt make way and give him air. He has a swift illusion that it is himself who has been struck. He looks at Bona. Whir. Whir. They seem to be human distortions spinning tensely in a fog. Spinning…dizzy…spinning…Bona jerks herself free, flushes a startling crimson, breaks through the bewildered teams, and rushes from the hall.

  2

  Paul is in his room of two windows.

  Outside, the South-Side L track cuts them in two.

  Bona is one window. One window, Paul.

  Hurtling Loop-jammed L trains throw them in swift shadow.

  Paul goes to his. Gray slanting roofs of houses are tinted lavender in the setting sun. Paul follows the sun, over the stock-yards where a fresh stench is just arising, across wheat lands that are still waving above their stubble, into the sun. Paul follows the sun to a pine-matted hillock in Georgia. He sees the slanting roofs of gray unpainted cabins tinted lavender. A Negress chants a lullaby beneath the mate-eyes of a southern planter. Her breasts are ample for the suckling of a song. She weans it, and sends it, curiously weaving, among lush melodies of cane and corn. Paul follows the sun into himself in Chicago.

  He is at Bona’s wind
ow.

  With his own glow he looks through a dark pane.

  Paul’s room-mate comes in.

  “Say, Paul, I’ve got a date for you. Come on. Shake a leg, will you?”

  His blond hair is combed slick. His vest is snug about him.

  He is like the electric light which he snaps on.

  “Whatdoysay, Paul? Get a wiggle on. Come on. We havent got much time by the time we eat and dress and everything.”

  His bustling concentrates on the brushing of his hair.

  Art: What in hell’s getting into Paul of late, anyway? Christ, but he’s getting moony. Its his blood. Dark blood: moony. Doesnt get anywhere unless you boost it. You’ve got to keep it going—

  “Say, Paul!”

  —or it’ll go to sleep on you. Dark blood; nigger? Thats what those jealous she-hens say. Not Bona though, or she…from the South…wouldnt want me to fix a date for him and her. Hell of a thing, that Paul’s dark: youve got to always be answering questions.

  “Say, Paul, for Christ’s sake leave that window, cant you?”

  “Whats it, Art?”

  “Hell, I’ve told you about fifty times. Got a date for you. Come on.”

  “With who?”

  Art: He didnt use to ask; now he does. Getting up in the air. Getting funny.

  “Heres your hat. Want a smoke? Paul! Here. I’ve got a match. Now come on and I’ll tell you all about it on the way to supper.”

  Paul: He’s going to Life this time. No doubt of that. Quit your kidding. Some day, dear Art, I’m going to kick the living slats out of you, and you wont know what I’ve done it for. And your slats will bring forth Life…beautiful woman…

  Pure Food Restaurant.

  “Bring me some soup with a lot of crackers, understand? And then a roast-beef dinner. Same for you, eh, Paul? Now as I was saying, you’ve got a swell chance with her. And she’s game. Best proof: she dont give a damn what the dorm girls say about you and her in the gym, or about the funny looks that Boynton gives her, or about what they say about, well, hell, you know, Paul. And say, Paul, she’s a sweetheart. Tall, not puffy and pretty, more serious and deep—the kind you like these days. And they say she’s got a car. And say, she’s on fire. But you know all about that. She got Helen to fix it up with me. The four of us—remember the last party? Crimson Gardens! Boy!”