The Intuitionist

by Colson Whitehead

  * * *

  Lila Mae has forgotten this incident. But no matter. It still happened. It happened like this:

  It was a night in late August, a night that rekindled in rattling windows and tree branch palsy that lost recollection of autumn, misplaced for the succession of bright summer distractions, trapped heat in small rooms and sweaty underarms. But it was always there waiting. Autumn always comes, and that first night late in summer is a reminder, a small hello, dear, that it is coming. That night toward the end of her sixth summer was the night of the annual visitation.

  She couldn’t sleep for the wind’s tiresome argument with the house. A minor player in that argument, almost a bystander, was the scraping of dry leaves across the field behind the house—it was to Lila Mae that it spoke, recommending a glass of water for her parched throat. It was silent downstairs, and late; this realization pit itself against her mother’s quite firm instructions that she be in bed by nightfall. And stay there. Here it was, a good ways into nightfall, and she was indeed in bed as instructed. And thirsty. Her parents must be asleep—she hadn’t heard a sound since that last sound, that loud hinge-squeaking of her parents’ bedroom door as they retired for the night. At the usual time, when they always went to bed. She had contemplated this larceny many times before and always persuaded herself against it: to steal a glass of water. The possibility of a spanking hand invariably convinced her against that course of action, so rebellious, going for a glass of water when she should be in bed. But not tonight. Tonight fall had happened by, and that meant another summer had passed. More or less—there would still be a hot day or two, but hot days under the brown pall of autumn. Another summer had passed. She could count summers and that meant she was older, or so her persuasions whispered. Old enough, her dry throat urged, to hazard discovery while on a late-night adventure for a glass of water. She pulled back the quilt with a dangerous flourish. So be it: a glass of water.

  The door opened without a sound. She knew it would—she’d gotten that far, at least, on her previous, scrubbed missions. She looked down the hallway to her parents’ room and saw no line of light beneath the door. They were asleep. She paused, knowing that her parents were everywhere, like air, and perhaps possessing bat-powers of hearing. She’d learned about bats and how they hang upside down on clothespin claws when they sleep, and how they have big ears because they have no eyes. She did not hear the springs in her parents’ bed sing as they did when her father heaved himself out of bed to investigate, for example, a little girl’s illegal trespass beyond her door. Creak—the floorboards creaked. With that first blush of courage she stepped into the hall and the floorboards creaked. So loud they’ll be out spanking her any second. But no. Still no sound from their room. If she stepped very slowly with just her little toes first, the floor did not give up creaks. She was brave after four steps, quickening her feet’s pressure on the gullible floorboards after four successful steps, and on the fifth they creaked. She could feel the dirt beneath her toes even though she’d watched her mother sweep that very afternoon, with her sure, strong strokes. There was invisible dirt and she felt it. She did not hear the bed springs sing. When she got to the head of the stairs, she remembered that the stairs were very loud if you stepped on them, but not loud at all if you stepped close to the wall, away from the center where there was less support. Needless to say, she was very thirsty when she finally made it down the stairs, for it took a long time for her to traverse the peril of the stairs. She remembered half a prayer and said that half a prayer to herself all the way down; she could not be bothered to remember that other half of the prayer because she only faked it in church, mouthing the words, only occasionally speaking them so her parents would not spank her. She did not hear any sound from the room upstairs, so maybe half a prayer is enough sometimes. Or has no effect one way or another. She wondered what she had been afraid of all the other times before when she had been thirsty at night and wanted to come downstairs but didn’t. Felt that same wonder as she padded across the parlor rug and slowly opened the door to the kitchen. After feeling her way around the kitchen table and its sharp corners, she reached into the sink for a glass, and that was when her father struck a match, loud and rough, on a leg of the kitchen table and lit the kitchen table candle. She almost wet her nightclothes. Thought, they really are everywhere. She pulled her arm back quickly and stood before her father’s hands.

  He’d been sitting in the dark with a glass of his whiskey. The dark grease from his day’s work on his automobile was smeared up his large arms to his elbows. She saw that he was half slumped over the table and making words with his mouth but not making sounds. He looked at her through heavy eyes. Her father pushed the wooden chair away from the table and tapped his lap. He told her to come here. She sat on his lap, hesitating for a second because she thought the machine grease on his pants might stain her nightclothes and she would get in trouble with her mother, but her father said to come so she sat on his broad lap. He tapped the paper on the table and asked her, “They teaching you how to read, girl?”

  She nodded, looking at the yellow paper on the table before her. It had drawings on it, and words.

  Her father said, “Tell me what that says, then,” tapping the paper again and leaving a portion of black fingerprint on the page.

  She peered down at the paper, which was yellow in the candle’s light. Above and below the drawings the words sat in small lumps and taunted her. She thought she would get in trouble. There were a lot of words she had never seen before so she looked for a few reassuring words she did know and found them scattered around. At. The. She struggled. She didn’t know where to start because the words she had learned aready were far apart, not grouped together so that she could pick a spot and begin there. Starting one place was the same as starting any other place. So she picked one of the drawings at the top of the page, the one that looked like her mother’s loom, and drew the tiny letters together, taking them one at a time and drawing them together. Where the white space was, that was the end of the word. The wind still aggravated the windows in their frames, and the leaves chortled. She said haltingly, “On … yon … ho-host-ing …”

  Her father said, she felt the words in his chest against her back, “Union Hoisting Engine.” Her father read, “ ‘Arbo’s Patent Double Gear Hoisting Engine, adapted in connection with Safety Platform for Storage Warehouses, Packing Houses, Shipping Docks, Mines and etc. Motion of Platform at will of attendant up to a hundred feet per minute.’ That means it’s strong and fast,” he added. Her father pointed to another drawing that looked like two small water barrels connected by a wooden frame. Her father read, “ ‘Lifting Power-Gear Combination. For Universal Hoisting Machine, as illustrated below, showing the ‘Belt Attachment’ by which the machine is instantly stopped in case the Gearing reaches an unsafe motion from any cause, as in the breaking of a Belt while the machine is in use.’ That means if anything goes wrong, that will hold the elevator up. So it won’t break.” He continued through the Arbo Elevator Co.’s old catalog, reading out to her the names of machines, the Universal Hoisting Machine, the Metropolitan Hoisting Engine, the Relief Hoisting Engine, the Automatic Safety Drum, the Lifting Power-Screw Combination—this last one almost looking like a fat metal bat to her, hanging on the ceiling like it did in the drawing. Her father read every word on the page to her and when he was done he told her, “You better listen to your teacher. You better listen to your teacher and learn what she tells you.”

  He shook her off his lap and drank his whiskey. “What’d you come down here for?” he asked her, talking loud now, not like when he was reading and he whispered.

  “A glass of water.”

  “Then get it and get your ass in bed,” he told her.

  She was in the parlor with her glass of water when she heard him blow out the candle in the kitchen. Like he was autumn.

  * * *

  Everything is a mess. Her bureau rifled, oddly sad stockings hang limp out a drawer. Papers in
no stack, their perpendicular corners mapping the better part of 360 degrees across the rug. Her potted plant depotted, an akimbo regret of roots and soil. Her plastic pear, Lila Mae’s one salvo toward knicknackery, dud on the floor. Some of her books are downright gone, Ettinger’s Hoists and Pulleys an agony of broken spine, The Counterweight and Its Effects hiding under the radiator among cobwebs. Cushions overturned and exposing cleaner faces. Window shades askew, indolently slouching in their frames. A mess. Untidy.

  Lila Mae closes the door of her apartment. This is not Shush’s style, unless they wanted to underscore her discussion with Chancre. As if her drive out to the warehouse weren’t enough. (Markham had the gall to tip his chauffeur’s cap to her when he dropped her off here.) The two men who were here the other night were religious in their neatness. They’d obviously been here a while before she came upon them, Lila Mae thinks, and had left no mark. Respectful guests. These new men did not need to make a secret of their work, didn’t care. They thought she had it, or had a clue, a scratchmark on a pad, that might lead them to it. The black box.

  She hadn’t wanted to go back to Intuitionist House. She wanted to see her apartment, sit on her couch where she has boiled away so many hours, until they lifted away in a fog. Where she feels as much peace as she ever feels in this city. Chancre’s words rippling out, perturbations, even to here. She thinks, he’s trying to get under her skin but does not understand that Reed and Lever do not have her loyalty. Her loyalty is to Fulton, to his words, and she is involved now because she has been wronged. They have sullied her name. He will not confuse her.

  Will she sleep here tonight. Will the man Natchez still be at the Intuitionist House, and will she hear his comforting rap at her door.

  She hasn’t eaten since breakfast and here it is after midnight and most of her neighbors’ windows are dark. Her block is a working block, where the lids rest firm on the metal trash cans in front of the buildings, because that is how they do things in this country they have sailed to, to scrabble up. Things are different here than on the dear islands they have departed. Packing, cramming a life into a few tattered bags as an offering for a better life. They go to sleep early because hard work is how you get ahead in this country. So they have been told.

  The door to her icebox is ajar, the snout of a milk bottle peeks out, its issue a dry white cloud on the floor. She picks up a can of tinned meat from the kitchen tile. She digs out some of the gray material onto a piece of bread and mashes the meat into a lumpy layer with the underside of her spoon. The meat and the bread are of the same consistency. The hunger dizziness in her head drains away down some inner sluice. She eats and thinks: to visit her house on Friday and then trash it today is redundant except to prime her fear. Reel in their threats from abstraction. She looks over her room, at the things they have touched: there is no indication as to when they were here. They could have wrecked her room late Friday night after she left, or any time on Saturday, before they were sure she did not possess it. Chancre’s invidious spell: we did not sabotage the Fanny Briggs stack, we have not been to your apartment. Who else, then? A shard of gristle digs into her gums. What’s left of the animal when you have ground it up: a few stubborn pieces. She will not be so easily dislodged. He cannot make her distrust Reed because she has never trusted Reed.

  The painting has not been moved. She removes it from the wall, twists the combination into the lock and opens the safe. Everything is there. She thinks, these white men see her as a threat but refuse to make her a threat, cunning, duplicitous. They see her as a mule, ferrying information back and forth, not clever or curious enough to explore the contents. Brute. Black.

  She goes into her bedroom and replaces the mattress on the box spring. She is soon asleep in her clothes. The sheet is dislodged from one corner, and its loose and untucked edge cuts beneath her neck, a soft guillotine.

  * * *

  She grabs the griffin’s head and rams it against the plate. The griffin was, Lila Mae guesses, a gift from Griffin Elevator Co., the now-defunct British firm. Siding with the Intuitionists is never terribly wise.

  After a time, the heavy door of Intuitionist House opens and she sees Natchez. His broad face is glad after an initial moment of surprise. He says, “You’re back, Lila Mae,” and shifts the paneled door wide.

  “Did you miss me?” Lila Mae asks, before she can check herself. Check that impulse.

  Natchez sweeps his arm into the foyer. “Mr. Reed was running around like a chicken with his head cut off yesterday.” He surveys, assesses: “But you seem to be in one piece.”

  She sees herself in the long mirror on the other edge of the hall. She is in one piece. For now.

  “May I?” Natchez asks and Lila Mae reluctantly gives him her trenchcoat. He has to do his job. His employers are always watching. Everywhere the pair are under cruel gazes from the smoky portraits of men she recognizes from textbooks, paintings that entomb their subjects with the final slash of brown paint. Any dispensation she has been granted is provisional: she is not wanted here. “They’re in the parlor,” Natchez says. If he considers his position and place, his face does not betray it.

  They walk toward the parlor, Natchez trailing a step behind her. She wants him parallel, equal. “Your uncle is still sick?” she asks.

  “It takes some time when he gets his spells,” Natchez answers. “He’ll be up again soon.”

  The parlor door is ajar. She can see one long bookcase; she can hear, “I stand before you a fellow disciple, here to talk to you about the pernicious visible.” She turns to say goodbye to Natchez, but he is no longer there. She knocks lightly and strides inside, her step suddenly strong.

  Mr. Reed and Orville Lever rise from their brown leather armchairs when she enters. Polite for a lady. The fireplace between them is orange and live, to warm their cold blood. It is not cold outside. Mr. Reed places his folder at his feet and says, “Orry, this is Miss Lila Mae Watson.” His expression is hard for Lila Mae to read, stone.

  Lever extends his hand. “Mr. Reed has told me so much about you, Miss Watson, about all you’ve done for us.” Lever is a perennial sapling despite his gray hair and loose neck-flesh. There is room at his cuffs, his collar, and his pants drape deflated off small knees. She cannot remember if he looked this wasted the last time she saw him, but that was before the campaign. Lila Mae thinks she would probably look worse than this if she had to talk all day, she who abhors speaking. He wears a nailhead suit in a Saville Row cut, in contrast to Chancre’s street thug look: their contest is between the academy and the pool hall, chess and boxing. The Intuitionists have chosen an appropriate champion.

  “Orry,” Mr. Reed says, “why don’t you run along upstairs and continue rehearsing by yourself? That’s probably a more constructive use of your time than worrying yourself over these matters.”

  Lever nods and gathers his speech. “Yes, yes,” he agrees sleepily, “You’re right. I’ll be upstairs if you need me.” He turns to the elevator inspector. He is one of those translucent white people, every vein swims up to the surface of his skin. “Miss Watson, it was a pleasure. I hope we’ll meet again soon.”

  Once the door is shut, Reed directs Lila Mae to Lever’s seat and she sinks into it. It seems to close around her body. He says, “Where have you been, Miss Watson? We were worried when you didn’t return yesterday with Sven.” His tone is even, emotionless.

  “I decided to make my own way home,” Lila Mae answers. She has no doubts about the efficacy of her game face, the cadences she reserves for white men like Mr. Reed. “I haven’t been back to the Institute for a long time.”

  “I thought something had happened to you.”

  “Mrs. Rogers wasn’t much help, I’m afraid.”

  Mr. Reed nods quickly. His mind is turning on itself. “Sven says she let you in. You’re the first person she’s said more than two words to since we received the packet. What did she tell you?”

  “She says she doesn’t know anything about the blueprin
t,” Lila Mae tells him. “She was adamant about that. That she’s already given up all she had.”

  “Do you believe her?”

  “It’s hard to say. I don’t think she trusts anyone.”

  Mr. Reed sets his head back against the chair and crosses his legs, considering this. “The postmark. The postmark on the package was from the Institute’s post office. I was sure …” He drifts off for a moment. “Do you think she may be holding out for an offer of monetary compensation?”

  Lila Mae shakes her head. “I don’t think that’s it,” she says. “I saw her face. I don’t think she’ll talk to me again.”

  Mr. Reed doesn’t say anything. He gets up and walks over to the writing table. He hovers there, then remembers something and tries to look nonchalant as he locks a drawer. Lila Mae can’t see it but she can hear it. So what do you have in there Mr. Reed? He removes a magazine from a pile of papers and gives it to Lila Mae. She looks at the cover of Lift, the silly illustration of Santa Claus, and searches through the contents page. She is aware that Mr. Reed is watching her, and makes a show of searching for the article on Fulton even though Chancre informed her that it would not appear. She looks up finally and asks, “Where is it?”

  “Exactly the question I asked when I picked it up off our doorstep this morning. I put a call through to the editor-in-chief, a fellow I know. The switchboard informed me that he had called in sick. Then I asked to speak to the reporter, Ben Urich, and the operator told me he hadn’t shown up for work today.”

  “Are you saying that Chancre got to them?”

  He looks at her. Does he suspect? His eyes are holes. He says, “That would be the logical conclusion. Our opponent has a long reach.” Mr. Reed sits back in the chair. “I thought you were going to return here after the Institute,” he says.

  “I decided to spend the night in my own bed,” Lila Mae responds.