Dark Stain

by Appel, Benjamin

  “PEOPLE OF HARLEM — WE NEED YOUR HELP An organization calling themselves the United Negro Committee has distributed an anti-white man leaflet that in effect demands a race war in Harlem. This leaflet follows an earlier unsigned but very similar leaflet. “What are we Negroes to think about these leaflets? We know that our foes have already taken advantage of Harlem’s many just grievances against General Jim Crow. They have duped Negroes or hired misguided Negroes to assault Jewish storekeepers and to vandalize the Beth-Sholem Synagogue.

  “To the Negroes who have perpetrated these acts, we say: DESIST FOR THE GOOD OF ALL OF US NEGROES. We know that Harlem is disgruntled at the labor policy of the Italian-owned bars who make their money from Negro patronage but refuse to employ many Negroes. But to those Negroes who have perpetrated violent acts in these bars, we say: DESIST FOR THE GOOD OF ALL OF US NEGROES.

  “We Negroes do not want a riot in Harlem. We Negroes believe in law and order.

  “THEREFORE, we call upon the people of Harlem, BLACK and WHITE, JEW and GENTILE, to be on the ALERT.

  “THEREFORE, we urge all PEOPLE who have pertinent information about any of the above events or any events planned by our common foes to get in touch with the Managing Editors of THE PEOPLES ADVOCATE AND THE HARLEM INDEPENDENT NEWS, or with Mr. Hal Clair of THE HARLEM EQUALITY LEAGUE.”

  Sam reflected that they were making starts. Both sides were making starts. He recalled the sensational stories he had read about Suzy in some of the press despite Wajek’s promise to restrain the yellow sheets. Sam was positive that Wajek was on the level. Hadn’t Wajek suppressed the fact, to date, that Suzy was his girl. God, what some of the papers could have done with that fact. But it made no difference now what the other side did. He had a job to do. He noticed Negroes, passing-by and staring at him. He saw himself with their eyes, a white man reading Negro papers in the middle of the sidewalk. He ought to get going. The day was half gone and he had a job to do. He wanted to talk to Clair. He wanted to speak to Matty Rosenberg, a cop who might help him with the synagogue crime. And there was Marian Burrow.

  He walked east to the Harlem Equality League offices. In front of the building, a crowd of Negroes and a scattering of whites had gathered. Sam inched through the crowd to the doorway where two cops stood.

  “Nobody goes in unless they got business!” one cop chanted.

  The second cop kept waving his baton at the crowd. “Keep moving! Keep moving!”

  The crowd shifted at the barked commands, loitered, broke away. New spectators fed the crowd, their faces straining to see and to hear. Their heads tilted back on their necks to peer up at the window behind which the white girl had worked before she had been kidnapped. “I’ve got business in the building,” Sam said to the cops.

  “What kind of business?” one of the cops asked.

  “Hey!” the second cop exclaimed. “You’re — Come in here.” Inside the doorway, the cop whispered to Sam. “I’d vamoose out of Harlem, Miller. If that crowd knew who you was we’d have a time.”

  “I want to go upstairs,” Sam said.

  “What for?”

  “Business,” Sam said.

  “I heard you was on leave of absence?”

  “I’m doing a little work on the side.”

  “On the q.t., huh? Okay, Miller.”

  Sam looked up the flight of stairs and yesterday looked down at him, the yesterday with Clair and Marian in the office but not Suzy. He shook his head from side to side. A voice screamed her name inside of him and he stifled the voice. She was gone and he had a job to do. He had to see Clair now. He climbed the stairs slowly. Maybe, he shouldn’t have come here? What if one of the newspaper boys got wind of the fact that he and Suzy … He stood near the door of the Harlem Equality League and listened to the voices behind the door. Intense, sustained, the voices thundered. It was as if the newspapers had found a voice, speaking with metal mouth for the police stations, the magistrates’ courts, the dens, the tenements, the brothels, a metal-mouthed courier spouting out the red-hot words.

  He pushed open the door. Marian was not there, he noticed. Two men were sitting on her desk. A slim woman in a tailored tweed suit was writing at Suzy’s desk. A cop stood guard at the door into the inner office, barring anybody from entering. Ten or twelve other people, mostly men, were smoking, leaning against the files, speaking incessantly as if their tongues were tiny printing presses spinning out headlines.

  “Damn secrecy — ”

  “Clair won’t say a thing.”

  “I see the fine Italian hand, let me tell you.”

  “But I’d sooner hang out in a pool parlor all day — ”

  “I think the gal’s right here in town.”

  “Maybe.”

  “See the dish at the desk?”

  “Who is she?”

  “She’s the writer, Jennie Sand. She’s doing a feature for the slicks.”

  “Not bad looking. A lil he-mannish though.”

  “This Suzy wasn’t bad looking either.”

  “Who cares? I want news. You can’t keep on writing she’s a beauty in my paper as you can in your rag.”

  A bald man with a pipe in his mouth lounged over to Sam. “Nothing doing, pal.”

  “No?” said Sam.

  “Who you writing for?”

  Sam shrugged.

  “Mum’s the word,” the bald man said bitterly. “I won’t hold it against you.”

  “Did Marian Burrow show up?”

  “No, the cops still got her. Give me a match, pal.”

  Sam gave him a booklet of matches. “Keep them.”

  “Your free and easy generosity’s won my heart. Anything you want to know, just ask.”

  “Is Clair here?”

  “He is. He’s been there since the morning.” The bald man poked his pipe at the door in the partition. “He’s locked up tight as a box of sardines. We’ve heard what they’re talking about but you can’t print it. Clair doesn’t know a damn about where the girl is. The Negro big-shots in there make political speeches to the dicks who don’t give a damn. But can you print that, I ask you, mother of Jesus?”

  “Who’s in there with Clair?”

  “Matches don’t buy me completely, pal. What are you digging up?”

  “Nothing much.”

  “Don’t you know that the day of the scoop is over. It’s Richard Harding Davis. It’s over.”

  “Who’s in there?”

  “Three or four dicks. Councilman Vincent and Christ knows who else. How do you like Jennie Sand over there? I hear she’s fond of newspaper men. She was married to two of them.” The bald man ambled away from Sam to look over the novelist’s shoulder as she wrote.

  God, Sam thought: I’d like to give you a story! He could shout at them: I’m Miller! She’s my girl! She came to this office to help me run down … But what good would it do, he wondered. Even if they wrote it up, the blue pencils would censor the truth or garble it. Sam glanced at the files. Inside one of them was the anonymous letter about Aden that Suzy had shown him yesterday. But even if he had the letter, what could he do with it? Go to the anti-fascist groups and compare its style with other documents? God, what could he do to really help Suzy?

  He got to see Clair at Clair’s apartment late in the afternoon. Clair led him into a small room; the walls were all books. There were hundreds of them, reaching from the floor to a few feet below the ceiling line. Clair seated himself behind a desk and asked Sam to take the easy chair. It was a room that fitted Clair, Sam thought; a room like a den but not too comfortable, a cloistered work room and library more than a place where a man removes his shoes to read a magazine and smoke in private. There were no pictures, no decorations.

  “What a day it’s been!” Clair said. “I am glad that you telephoned my wife. I left her instructions that I wanted to see you.” He kept glancing at Sam, while fiddling with his Phi Beta Kappa key. “You were fine last night. Very fine.”

  “I tried to see you at the office. Bu
t the office was in an uproar and there was a cop at the door.”

  “The detectives came in a few minutes after nine.”

  “Have they still got Marian?”

  “As far as I know.”

  “Where did they take her? To Headquarters?”

  “Yes.”

  “She was the last person to see Suzy. I was thinking I ought to see her.”

  “I can phone her home if you desire. She should be there. Or at her sister’s.”

  “Thanks.”

  “Please accept my sympathy,” Clair said suddenly.

  Sam winced. “We’ve got to run them down! Do you hear, Mr. Clair. We’ve got to, got — ” Then he controlled himself. “What did the detectives have to say?”

  “You know the police, Miller. One of them, a Detective Maddigan, practically accused me of being in with the kidnappers. Not in so many words but in the way he expressed himself.”

  “Maddigan? I don’t know him. What’d he say?”

  “He wanted a list of all white girls who had ever worked for the H.E.L. He wanted to know their present whereabouts. From the H.E.L. to the brothel!” Clair burst out. Instantly, he apologized. “What am I saying? Please forgive me, Miller. I’m over-wrought — ”

  “Don’t spare my feelings. We won’t get anywhere being polite.”

  Clair nodded. “About last night — I thought that even the most skeptical Negro would have been convinced.” Clair was breathing rapidly, Sam observed. At times Clair made an effort to breath more shallowly but he wasn’t successful.

  “I convinced you,” Sam said. “I’m glad.”

  Clair turned to the rows of books as if going over their titles. “I trust you as much as if you weren’t a white man,” he said. “As if you were a Negro like myself.” His jaw muscles clenched and unclenched in his white-skinned face. “Forgive me for my initial distrust. I’ve had my fill of distrust today.” His eyes were sad. “I have been a man without a race for too many years to trust readily. But I won’t take up precious time with my personal history. What do you want to do? How can I help you?”

  “You might try to get Marian.”

  Clair picked up the phone. There was no answer at Marian’s or her sister’s place. “I’ll try a little later. Would you like a sandwich, a drink?”

  “No, thanks,” Sam said. A plan of action was slowly maturing in his brain. Matty Rosenberg, the Jewish cop he wanted to see, Marian Burrow, Johnny and the union, all were links in the plan. “I have hopes that Marian might recall some details about the man who spoke to Suzy yesterday. I feel she’d be more at ease with me than with the detectives at Headquarters. This has become a chase, a pursuit. I feel if we keep on trying we’ll catch up with them. Your editorial in the Negro press is part of the chase. It was good. Too soon for results, though, isn’t it?”

  “I have been in touch with both managing editors. Both of them have received a number of phone calls. Threats and advice. Crank calls, Sam!” he said. “I felt sure of myself writing that editorial. I always feel sure when I am alone at my desk. The issues are clear. I have faith at my desk. But I don’t trust people, especially white people.” He smiled in apology. “I trust the books of white men. I believe in their writings; Lincoln’s, Jefferson’s, Lenin’s writings on equality between the races — I believe in their writings,” he continued as if alone. “Their writings are like last wills and testaments that cannot be altered. Living men are always changing, can always change for the worse. That’s why I said I am, or was a man without a race. Years ago, I passed the color line. Sam, I haven’t spoken to anybody like this. And the time I pick! Stupid!” he exclaimed, a wry smile on his thin lips.

  “No, you’re not,” Sam said. The precise scholarly man whom he had known had been supplanted by a man with a twisted face. It was surprising and yet not surprising. He had learned last night that underneath the type, the type and stereotype, underneath the facade of features and the color of skin there was often a human being. Would he have ever known that Mrs. Buckles, genteel in her lace collar, Protestant in her prejudices, this ‘real goyicker’ as his mother might have said, possessed a basic courage, a basic humanity? Would he have ever known, a few weeks ago, that Sam Miller, the Jew and liberal, with his sensitive suspicions had a latent pity innocent as a child’s hand, a pity that had reached out to Suzy’s mother?

  Clair was saying. “I want to tell you about myself. God knows why! But I want to! Unless you must go. But I’ll phone Marian again. I want to! My mother was half-Spanish, half-Negro. My father was also half-Negro and half-Scotch. He was a dentist in Minnesota. I knew I was a Negro but people in town treated me as a white. They thought my father was a white man who had married a woman with Negro blood. My mother looked Negro. Not my father. My mother said that she was Spanish and most people let it go at that. We lived there, in the iron ore country. There were few prejudices to speak of. Most of the people were Finns, Swedes, who had brought progressive ideas with them. We had fine schools in our little towns. The old American stock were the sons of pioneers. It wasn’t the South. It wasn’t the North either for that matter. That gave my father the idea of my passing over completely. He sent me on to Harvard. He wasn’t a rich man but he managed. And I became a white man. I passed the color line. I heard ‘nigger talk’ in the East. It hurt. I refused to join a fraternity at Harvard because I knew I was a Negro. I felt that really I didn’t belong. Yet, all the time I lived with whites and went out with whites. At the same time, I became curious about Negroes who had not passed. I visited the Negro section. One summer I travelled South. I was shocked by what I saw and when I returned to school, I began to read everything I could about the Negro people. I still avoided the few Negroes at Harvard. I still lived as a white man. But I had become unsure. I kept on thinking that if my white friends knew I was a Negro they would change. I wanted to be accepted for what I was, an American, but that was just an idealistic hope. In my senior year I screwed up courage to put it to the test. I admitted I had Negro blood to some of my closest friends. They didn’t believe me at first. Some of the fault was my own. I was hyper-sensitive. When one of them, honestly enough as I see it now, advised me to never tell anyone I had Negro blood again, I quarreled with him, with this friend. I’m boring you. But — but I became a Negro! I worked for the N.A.A.C.P. after I graduated. Sam, you were right! There must be complete understanding between men. We must know each other and then — We won’t have to worry about the then. The then will take care of itself if understanding precedes it.”

  The phone rang. “Hello,” Clair said. “Yes, what is that? Yes? Who are you? All right. What? Say that again. Yes?” He hung up. “That was somebody who read the editorial I wrote. He wouldn’t give me his name.”

  “What did he say?”

  “He said that a white man with burn scars on his face is the man we want.”

  “No business ‘til I eat,” Matty Rosenberg said to Sam as they seated themselves in the garden of an Italian restaurant in downtown Brooklyn. Rosenberg was off duty, having served his eight to four shift. He had told Sam to meet him at half past four on the northwest corner of Flatbush Avenue Extension and Fulton Street. “No business ‘til I eat,” he repeated. “I want nothin’ to upset my appetite.”

  “Okay.”

  “They got no menus here,” Rosenberg said, chewing on a chunk of Italian bread. He was in his uniform, a burly six-footer who was proud of the fact that he could knock out a man with one punch. His face was a flat moon, his eyes small and black, his lips red. He had removed his officer’s hat and his black hair was shiny. “This La Palina’s run by one family, a father and mother and a whole slew of children. The food’s swell. Do you like Italian food?”

  “Yes.”

  “I love to eat wop. I like it better’n Jewish cooking any time. It’s just as heavy as Jewish cooking but it’s got class to it. All the bandleaders and stars from the Brooklyn shows come here. Did you notice their pictures framed on the walls?”

  “
No.”

  “Anyway they make a nice penny here.”

  They were alone in the garden, an alleyway and a brick wall to one side. The waiters had long cleaned up after the lunch hour crowd. The red and white checkered tablecloths were fresh and unspotted. Rosenberg started on a second chunk of bread. Sam lit a cigarette. God, it was maddening, he thought; here he was on the speedup and this copper wouldn’t spoil his appetite. He had spoken to Johnny after leaving Clair’s apartment; Johnny had said that Cashman had interested the secretary of the C.I.O. Council who would be glad to talk to Sam at seven sharp; and Clair had fixed it for him to see Marian at eight. “Matty, what I’ve got to say can’t wait.”

  “Where’s that waiter?” Rosenberg raised his voice, a hoarse voice like an old traffic officer’s. “Waiter, waiter! Where are you? Come here! Take our order! I want spaghetti marinara. Plenty sauce. Veal and peppers and coffee and pie. What you want, Sam?”

  “Coffee.”

  “What kind of meal’s coffee? Get a veal and peppers anyway. No, get veal chops with sauce and we can split.”

  “Okay. While we’re waiting.” As the waiter left their table, Sam said. “This can’t wait!”

  “No business until I eat. You get me!” He picked up a third slice of bread and remarked morosely. “Always have to ask for butter in this joint. Maybe I got no right to gripe. The boss and me are pals if you get me. But when you get used to butter, you get used to butter, and that’s all there is to it.”

  “Don’t put me off, Matty. Suzy Buckles is my girl.”

  Rosenberg drank his glass of water and then he said. “She is?”

  “She is.”