Go Tell It on the Mountain

by James Baldwin

  “Sister Deborah,” he said, much later that night as he was walking her to her door, “the Lord done laid something on my heart and I want you to help me to pray over it and ask Him to lead me right.”

  He wondered if she could divine what was in his mind. In her face there was nothing but patience, as she turned to him, and said: “I’m praying all the time. But I sure will pray extra hard this week if you want me to.”

  And it was during this praying time that Gabriel had a dream.

  He could never afterward remember how the dream began, what had happened, or who he was with in the dream; or any details at all. For there were really two dreams, the first like a dim, blurred, infernal foreshadowing of the second. Of this first dream, the overture, he remembered only the climate, which had been like the climate of his day—heavy, with danger everywhere, Satan at his shoulder trying to bring him down. That night as he tried to sleep, Satan sent demons to his bedside—old friends he had had, but whom he saw no more, and drinking and gambling scenes that he had thought would never rise to haunt him again, and women he had known. And the women were so real that he could nearly touch them; and he heard again their laughter and their sighs, and felt beneath his hands again their thighs and breasts. Though he closed his eyes and called on Jesus—calling over and over again the name of Jesus—his pagan body stiffened and flamed and the women laughed. And they asked why he remained in this narrow bed alone when they waited for him; why he had bound his body in the armor of chastity while they sighed and turned on their beds for him. And he sighed and turned, every movement torture, each touch of the sheets a lewd caress—and more abominable, then, in his imagination, than any caress he had received in life. And he clenched his fists and began to plead the blood, to exorcise the hosts of Hell, but even this motion was like another motion, and at length he fell on his knees to pray. By and by he fell into a troublous sleep—it seemed that he was going to be stoned, and then he was in battle, and then shipwrecked in the water—and suddenly he awoke, knowing that he must have dreamed, for his loins were covered with his own white seed.

  Then, trembling, he got out of bed again and washed himself. It was a warning, and he knew it, and he seemed to see before him the pit dug by Satan—deep and silent, waiting for him. He thought of the dog returned to his vomit, of the man who had been cleansed, and who fell, and who was possessed by seven devils, the last state of that man being worse than his first. And he thought at last, kneeling by his cold bedside, but with the heart within him almost too sick for prayer, of Onan, who had scattered his seed on the ground rather than continue his brother’s line. Out of the house of David, the son of Abraham. And he called again on the name of Jesus; and fell asleep again.

  And he dreamed that he was in a cold, high place, like a mountain. He was high, so high that he walked in mist and cloud, but before him stretched the blank ascent, the steep side of the mountain. A voice said: “Come higher.” And he began to climb. After a little, clinging to the rock, he found himself with only clouds above him and mist below—and he knew that beyond the wall of mist reigned fire. His feet began to slip; pebbles and rocks began ringing beneath his feet; he looked up, trembling, in terror of death, and he cried: “Lord, I can’t come no higher.” But the voice repeated after a moment, quiet and strong and impossible to deny: “Come on, son. Come higher.” Then he knew that, if he would not fall to death, he must obey the voice. He began to climb again, and his feet slipped again; and when he thought that he would fall there suddenly appeared before him green, spiny leaves; and he caught onto the leaves, which hurt his hand, and the voice said again: “Come higher.” And so Gabriel climbed, the wind blowing through his clothes, and his feet began to bleed, and his hands were bleeding; and still he climbed, and he felt that his back was breaking; and his legs were growing numb and they were trembling, and he could not control them; and still before him there was only cloud, and below him the roaring mist. How long he climbed in this dream of his, he did not know. Then, of a sudden, the clouds parted, he felt the sun like a crown of glory, and he was in a peaceful field.

  He began to walk. Now he was wearing long, white robes. He heard singing: “Walked in the valley, it looked so fine, I asked my Lord was all this mine.” But he knew that it was his. A voice said: “Follow me.” And he walked, and he was again on the edge of a high place, but bathed and blessed and glorified in the blazing sun, so that he stood like God, all golden, and looked down, down, at the long race he had run, at the steep side of the mountain he had climbed. And now up this mountain, in white robes, singing, the elect came. “Touch them not,” the voice said, “my seal is on them.” And Gabriel turned and fell on his face, and the voice said again: “So shall thy seed be.” Then he awoke. Morning was at the window, and he blessed God, lying on his bed, tears running down his face, for the vision he had seen.

  When he went to Deborah and told her that the Lord had led him to ask her to be his wife, his holy helpmeet, she looked at him for a moment in what seemed to be speechless terror. He had never seen such an expression on her face before. For the first time since he had known her he touched her, putting his hands on her shoulders, thinking what untender touch these shoulders had once known, and how she would be raised now in honor. And he asked: “You ain’t scared, is you, Sister Deborah? You ain’t got nothing to be scared of?”

  Then she tried to smile, and began, instead, to weep. With a movement at once violent and hesitant, she let her head fall forward on his breast.

  “No,” she brought out, muffled in his arms, “I ain’t scared.” But she did not stop weeping.

  He stroked her coarse, bowed head. “God bless you, little girl,” he said, helplessly. “God bless you.”

  The silence in the church ended when Brother Elisha, kneeling near the piano, cried out and fell backward under the power of the Lord. Immediately, two or three others cried out also, and a wind, a foretaste of that great downpouring they awaited, swept the church. With this cry, and the echoing cries, the tarry service moved from its first stage of steady murmuring, broken by moans and now and again an isolated cry, into that stage of tears and groaning, of calling aloud and singing, which was like the labor of a woman about to be delivered of her child. On this threshing-floor the child was the soul that struggled to the light, and it was the church that was in labor, that did not cease to push and pull, calling on the name of Jesus. When Brother Elisha cried out and fell back, crying, Sister McCandless rose and stood over him to help him pray. For the rebirth of the soul was perpetual; only rebirth every hour could stay the hand of Satan.

  Sister Price began to sing:

  “I want to go through, Lord,

  I want to go through.

  Take me through, Lord,

  Take me through.”

  A lone voice, joined by others, among them, waveringly, the voice of John. Gabriel recognized the voice. When Elisha cried, Gabriel was brought back in an instant to this present time and place, fearing that it was John he heard, that it was John who lay astonished beneath the power of the Lord. He nearly looked up and turned around; but then he knew it was Elisha, and his fear departed.

  “Have your way, Lord,

  Have your way.”

  Neither of his sons was here tonight, had ever cried on the threshing-floor. One had been dead for nearly fourteen years—dead in a Chicago tavern, a knife kicking in his throat. And the living son, the child, Roy, was headlong already, and hardhearted: he lay at home, silent now, and bitter against his father, a bandage on his forehead. They were not here. Only the son of the bondwoman stood where the rightful heir should stand.

  “I’ll obey, Lord,

  I’ll obey.”

  He felt that he should rise and pray over Elisha—when a man cried out, it was right that another man should be his intercessor. And he thought how gladly he would rise, and with what power he would pray if it were only his son who lay crying on the floor tonight. But he remained, bowed low, on his knees. Each cry that came from the fal
len Elisha tore through him. He heard the cry of his dead son and his living son; one who cried in the pit forever, beyond the hope of mercy; and one who would cry one day when mercy would be finished.

  Now Gabriel tried, with the testimony he had held, with all the signs of His favor that God had shown him, to put himself between the living son and the darkness that waited to devour him. The living son had cursed him—bastard—and his heart was far from God; it could not be that the curse he had heard tonight falling from Roy’s lips was but the curse repeated, so far, so long resounding, that the mother of his first son had uttered as she thrust the infant from her—herself immediately departing, this curse yet on her lips, into eternity. Her curse had devoured the first Royal; he had been begotten in sin, and he had perished in sin; it was God’s punishment, and it was just. But Roy had been begotten in the marriage bed, the bed that Paul described as holy, and it was to him the Kingdom had been promised. It could not be that the living son was cursed for the sins of his father; for God, after much groaning, after many years, had given him a sign to make him know he was forgiven. And yet, it came to him that this living son, this headlong, living Royal, might be cursed for the sin of his mother, whose sin had never been truly repented; for that the living proof of her sin, he who knelt tonight, a very interloper among the saints, stood between her soul and God.

  Yes, she was hardhearted, stiff-necked, and hard to bend, this Elizabeth whom he had married: she had not seemed so, years ago, when the Lord had moved in his heart to lift her up, she and her nameless child, who bore his name today. And he was exactly like her, silent, watching, full of evil pride—they would be cast out, one day, into the outer darkness.

  Once he had asked Elizabeth—they had been married a long while, Roy was a baby, and she was big with Sarah—if she had truly repented of her sin.

  And she had looked at him, and said, “You done asked me that before. And I done told you, yes.”

  But he did not believe her; and he asked: “You mean you wouldn’t do it again? If you was back there, where you was, like you was then—would you do it again?”

  She looked down; then, with impatience, she looked into his eyes again: “Well, if I was back there, Gabriel, and I was the same girl!…”

  There was a long silence, while she waited. Then, almost unwillingly, he asked: “And … would you let him be born again?”

  She answered, steadily: “I know you ain’t asking me to say I’m sorry I brought Johnny in the world. Is you?” And when he did not answer: “And listen, Gabriel. I ain’t going to let you make me sorry. Not you, nor nothing, nor nobody in this world. We is got two children, Gabriel, and soon we’s going to have three; and I ain’t going to make no difference amongst them and you ain’t going to make none either.”

  But how could there not be a difference between the son of a weak, proud woman and some careless boy, and the son that God had promised him, who would carry down the joyful line his father’s name, and who would work until the day of the second coming to bring about His Father’s Kingdom? For God had promised him this so many years ago, and he had lived only for this—forsaking the world and its pleasures, and the joys of his own life, he had tarried all these bitter years to see the promise of the Lord fulfilled. He had let Esther die, and Royal had died, and Deborah had died barren—but he had held on to the promise; he had walked before God in true repentance and waited on the promise. And the time of fulfillment was surely at hand. He had only to possess his soul in patience and wait before the Lord.

  And his mind, dwelling bitterly on Elizabeth, yet moved backward to consider once again Esther, who had been the mother of the first Royal. And he saw her, with the dumb, pale, startled ghosts of joy and desire hovering in him yet, a thin, vivid, dark-eyed girl, with something Indian in her cheekbones and her carriage and her hair; looking at him with that look in which were blended mockery, affection, desire, impatience, and scorn; dressed in the flamelike colors that, in fact, she had seldom worn, but that he always thought of her as wearing. She was associated in his mind with flame; with fiery leaves in the autumn, and the fiery sun going down in the evening over the farthest hill, and with the eternal fires of Hell.

  She had come to town very shortly after he and Deborah were married, and she took a job as serving-girl with the same white family for which he worked. He saw her, therefore, all the time. Young men were always waiting for her at the back door when her work was done: Gabriel used to watch her walk off in the dusk on a young man’s arm, and their voices and their laughter floated back to him like a mockery of his condition. He knew that she lived with her mother and stepfather, sinful people, given to drinking and gambling and ragtime music and the blues, who never, except at Christmastime or Easter, appeared in church.

  He began to pity her, and one day when he was to preach in the evening he invited her to come to church. This invitation marked the first time she ever really looked at him—he realized it then, and was to remember that look for many days and nights.

  “You really going to preach tonight? A pretty man like you?”

  “With the Lord’s help,” he said, with a gravity so extreme that it was almost hostility. At the same time, at her look and voice something leaped in him that he thought had been put down forever.

  “Well, I be mighty delighted,” she said after a moment, seeming to have briefly regretted the impetuosity that had led her to call him a “pretty” man.

  “Can you make yourself free to come tonight?” he could not prevent himself from asking.

  And she grinned, delighted at what she took to be an oblique compliment. “Well, I don’t know, Reverend. But I’ll try.”

  When the day was ended, she disappeared on the arm of yet another boy. He did not believe that she would come. And this so strangely depressed him that he could scarcely speak to Deborah at dinner, and they walked all the way to church in silence. Deborah watched him out of the corner of her eye, as was her silent and exasperating habit. It was her way of conveying respect for his calling; and she would have said, had it ever occurred to him to tax her with it, that she did not wish to distract him when the Lord had laid something on his heart. Tonight, since he was to preach, it could not be doubted that the Lord was speaking more than usual; and it behooved her, therefore, as the helpmeet of the Lord’s anointed, as the caretaker, so to speak, of the sanctified temple, to keep silence. Yet, in fact, he would have liked to talk. He would have liked to ask her—so many things; to have listened to her voice, and watched her face while she told him of her day, her hopes, her doubts, her life, and her love. But he and Deborah never talked. The voice to which he listened in his mind, and the face he watched with so much love and care, belonged not to Deborah, but to Esther. Again he felt this strange chill in him, implying disaster and delight; and then he hoped that she would not come, that something would happen that would make it impossible for him ever to see her again.

  She came, however; late, just before the pastor was about to present the speaker of the hour to the congregation. She did not come alone, but had brought her mother with her—promising what spectacle Gabriel could not imagine, nor could he imagine how she had escaped her young man of the evening. But she had; she was here; she preferred, then, to hear him preach the gospel than to linger with others in carnal delight. She was here, and his heart was uplifted; something exploded in his heart when the opening door revealed her, smiling faintly and with eyes downcast, moving directly to a seat in the back of the congregation. She did not look at him at all, and yet he knew immediately that she had seen him. And in a moment he imagined her, because of the sermon that he would preach, on her knees before the altar, and then her mother and that gambling, loud-talking stepfather of hers, brought by Esther into the service of the Lord. Heads turned when they came in, and a murmur, barely audible, of astonishment and pleasure swept over the church. Here were sinners, come to hear the Word of God.

  And, indeed, from their apparel the sinfulness of their lives was evident: E
sther wore a blue hat, trimmed with many ribbons, and a heavy, wine-red dress; and her mother, massive, and darker than Esther, wore great gold earrings in her pierced ears and had that air, vaguely disreputable, and hurriedly dressed, of women he had known in sporting-houses. They sat in the back, rigid and uncomfortable, like sisters of sin, like a living defiance of the drab sanctity of the saints. Deborah turned to look at them, and in that moment Gabriel saw, as though for the first time, how black and how bony was this wife of his, and how wholly undesirable. Deborah looked at him with a watchful silence in her look; he felt the hand that held his Bible begin to sweat and tremble; he thought of the joyless groaning of their marriage bed; and he hated her.

  Then the pastor rose. While he spoke, Gabriel closed his eyes. He felt the words that he was about to speak fly from him; he felt the power of God go out of him. Then the voice of the pastor ceased, and Gabriel opened his eyes in the silence and found that all eyes were on him. And so he rose and faced the congregation.