Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  “Know what that’s going to be when it’s cooked?”

  “No, sir,” I said.

  “Well that’s going to be the guts, what they call the veehicle of the paint. Least it will be by time I git through putting other stuff with it.”

  “But I thought the paint was made upstairs …”

  “Naw, they just mixes in the color, make it look pretty. Right down here is where the real paint is made. Without what I do they couldn’t do nothing, they be making bricks without straw. An’ not only do I make up the base, I fixes the varnishes and lots of the oils too …”

  “So that’s it,” I said. “I was wondering what you did down here.”

  “A whole lots of folks wonders about that without gitting anywhere. But as I was saying, caint a single doggone drop of paint move out of the factory lessen it comes through Lucius Brockway’s hands.”

  “How long have you been doing this?”

  “Long enough to know what I’m doing,” he said. “And I learned it without all that education that them what’s been sent down here is suppose to have. I learned it by doing it. Them personnel fellows don’t want to face the facts, but Liberty Paints wouldn’t be worth a plugged nickel if they didn’t have me here to see that it got a good strong base. Old Man Sparland know it though. I caint stop laughing over the time when I was down with a touch of pneumonia and they put one of them so-called engineers to pooting around down here. Why, they started to having so much paint go bad they didn’t know what to do. Paint was bleeding and wrinkling, wouldn’t cover or nothing—you know, a man could make hisself all kinds of money if he found out what makes paint bleed. Anyway, everything was going bad. Then word got to me that they done put that fellow in my place and when I got well I wouldn’t come back. Here I been with ’em so long and loyal and everything. Shucks, I just sent ’em word that Lucius Brockway was retiring!

  “Next thing you know here come the Old Man. He so old hisself his chauffeur has to help him up them steep stairs at my place. Come in a-puffing and a-blowing, says, ‘Lucius, what’s this I hear ’bout you retiring?’

  “ ‘Well, sir, Mr. Sparland, sir,’ I says, ‘I been pretty sick, as you well know, and I’m gitting kinder along in my years, as you well know, and I hear that this here Italian fellow you got in my place is doing so good I thought I’d might as well take it easy round the house.’

  “Why, you’d a-thought I’d done cursed him or something. ‘What kind of talk is that from you, Lucius Brockway,’ he said, ‘taking it easy round the house when we need you out to the plant? Don’t you know the quickest way to die is to retire? Why, that fellow out at the plant don’t know a thing about those furnaces. I’m so worried about what he’s going to do, that he’s liable to blow up the plant or something that I took out some extra insurance. He can’t do your job,’ he said. ‘He don’t have the touch. We haven’t put out a first-class batch of paint since you been gone.’ Now that was the Old Man hisself!” Lucius Brockway said.

  “So what happened?” I said.

  “What you mean, what happened?” he said, looking as though it were the most unreasonable question in the world. “Shucks, a few days later the Old Man had me back down here in full control. That engineer got so mad when he found out he had to take orders from me he quit the next day.”

  He spat on the floor and laughed. “Heh, heh, heh, he was a fool, that’s what. A fool! He wanted to boss me and I know more about this basement than anybody, boilers and everything. I helped lay the pipes and everything, and what I mean is I knows the location of each and every pipe and switch and cable and wire and everything else—both in the floors and in the walls and out in the yard. Yes, sir! And what’s more, I got it in my head so good I can trace it out on paper down to the last nut and bolt; and ain’t never been to nobody’s engineering school neither, ain’t even passed by one, as far as I know. Now what you think about that?”

  “I think it’s remarkable,” I said, thinking, I don’t like this old man.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t call it that,” he said. “It’s just that I been round here so long. I been studying this machinery for over twenty-five years. Sho, and that fellow thinking ‘cause he been to some school and learned how to read a blueprint and how to fire a boiler he knows more ’bout this plant than Lucius Brockway. That fool couldn’t make no engineer ’cause he can’t see what’s staring him straight in the face … Say, you forgittin’ to watch them gauges.”

  I hurried over, finding all the needles steady.

  “They’re okay,” I called.

  “All right, but I’m warning you to keep an eye on ’em. You caint forgit down here, ’cause if you do, you liable to blow up something. They got all this machinery, but that ain’t everything; we the machines inside the machine.

  “You know the best selling paint we got, the one that made this here business?” he asked as I helped him fill a vat with a smelly substance.

  “No, I don’t.”

  “Our white, Optic White.”

  “Why the white rather than the others?”

  “ ’Cause we started stressing it from the first. We make the best white paint in the world, I don’t give a damn what nobody says. Our white is so white you can paint a chunka coal and you’d have to crack it open with a sledge hammer to prove it wasn’t white clear through!”

  His eyes glinted with humorless conviction and I had to drop my head to hide my grin.

  “You notice that sign on top of the building?”

  “Oh, you can’t miss that,” I said.

  “You read the slogan?”

  “I don’t remember, I was in such a hurry.”

  “Well, you might not believe it, but I helped the Old Man make up that slogan. ‘If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White,’ ” he quoted with an upraised finger, like a preacher quoting holy writ. “I got me a three-hundred-dollar bonus for helping to think that up. These newfangled advertising folks is been tryin’ to work up something about the other colors, talking about rainbows or something, but hell, they caint get nowhere.”

  “If It’s Optic White, It’s the Right White,’ ” I repeated and suddenly had to repress a laugh as a childhood jingle rang through my mind:

  “ ‘If you’re white, you’re right,’ ” I said.

  “That’s it,” he said. “And that’s another reason why the Old Man ain’t goin’ to let nobody come down here messing with me. He knows what a lot of them new fellers don’t; he knows that the reason our paint is so good is because of the way Lucius Brockway puts the pressure on them oils and resins before they even leaves the tanks.” He laughed maliciously. “They thinks ’cause everything down here is done by machinery, that’s all there is to it. They crazy! Ain’t a continental thing that happens down here that ain’t as iffen I done put my black hands into it! Them machines just do the cooking these here hands right here do the sweeting. Yes, sir! Lucius Brockway hit it square on the head! I dips my finger in and sweets it! Come on, let’s eat …”

  “But what about the gauges?” I said, seeing him go over and take a thermos bottle from a shelf near one of the furnaces.

  “Oh, we’ll be here close enough to keep an eye on ’em. Don’t you worry ’bout that.”

  “But I left my lunch in the locker room over at Building No. 1.”

  “Go on and git it and come back here and eat. Down here we have to always be on the job. A man don’t need no more’n fifteen minutes to eat no-how; then I say let him git on back on the job.”

  UPON opening the door I thought I had made a mistake. Men dressed in splattered painters’ caps and overalls sat about on benches, listening to a thin tubercular-looking man who was addressing them in a nasal voice. Everyone looked at me and I was starting out when the thin man called, “There’s plenty of seats for late comers. Come in, brother …”

  Brother? Even after my weeks in the North this was surprising. “I was looking for the locker room,” I spluttered.

  “You’re in it, brother. Weren’t you tol
d about the meeting?”

  “Meeting? Why, no, sir, I wasn’t.”

  The chairman frowned. “You see, the bosses are not co-operating,” he said to the others. “Brother, who’s your foreman?”

  “Mr. Brockway, sir,” I said.

  Suddenly the men began scraping their feet and cursing. I looked about me. What was wrong? Were they objecting to my referring to Brockway as Mister?

  “Quiet, brothers,” the chairman said, leaning across his table, his hand cupped to his ear. “Now what was that, brother; who is your foreman?”

  “Lucius Brockway, sir,” I said, dropping the Mister.

  But this seemed only to make them more hostile. “Get him the hell out of here,” they shouted. I turned. A group on the far side of the room kicked over a bench, yelling, “Throw him out! Throw him out!”

  I inched backwards, hearing the little man bang on the table for order. “Men, brothers! Give the brother a chance …”

  “He looks like a dirty fink to me. A first-class enameled fink!”

  The hoarsely voiced word grated my ears like “nigger” in an angry southern mouth …

  “Brothers, please!” The chairman was waving his hands as I reached out behind me for the door and touched an arm, feeling it snatch violently away. I dropped my hand.

  “Who sent this fink into the meeting, brother chairman? Ask him that!” a man demanded.

  “No, wait,” the chairman said. “Don’t ride that word too hard …”

  “Ask him, brother chairman!” another man said.

  “Okay, but don’t label a man a fink until you know for sure.” The chairman turned to me. “How’d you happen in here, brother?”

  The men quieted, listening.

  “I left my lunch in my locker,” I said, my mouth dry.

  “You weren’t sent into the meeting?”

  “No, sir, I didn’t know about any meeting.”

  “The hell he says. None of these finks ever knows!”

  “Throw the lousy bastard out!”

  “Now, wait,” I said.

  They became louder, threatening.

  “Respect the chair!” the chairman shouted. “We’re a democratic union here, following democratic—”

  “Never mind, git rid of the fink!”

  “… procedures. It’s our task to make friends with all the workers. And I mean all. That’s how we build the union strong. Now let’s hear what the brother’s got to say. No more of that beefing and interrupting!”

  I broke into a cold sweat, my eyes seeming to have become extremely sharp, causing each face to stand out vivid in its hostility.

  I heard, “When were you hired, friend?”

  “This morning,” I said.

  “See, brothers, he’s a new man. We don’t want to make the mistake of judging the worker by his foreman. Some of you also work for sonsabitches, remember?”

  Suddenly the men began to laugh and curse. “Here’s one right here,” one of them yelled.

  “Mine wants to marry the boss’s daughter—a frigging eight-day wonder!”

  This sudden change made me puzzled and angry, as though they were making me the butt of a joke.

  “Order, brothers! Perhaps the brother would like to join the union. How about it, brother?”

  “Sir … ?” I didn’t know what to say. I knew very little about unions—but most of these men seemed hostile … And before I could answer a fat man with shaggy gray hair leaped to his feet, shouting angrily.

  “I’m against it! Brothers, this fellow could be a fink, even if he was hired right this minute! Not that I aim to be unfair to anybody, either. Maybe he ain’t a fink,” he cried passionately, “but brothers, I want to remind you that nobody knows it; and it seems to me that anybody that would work under that sonofabitching, double-crossing Brockway for more than fifteen minutes is just as apt as not to be naturally fink-minded! Please, brothers!” he cried, waving his arms for quiet. “As some of you brothers have learned, to the sorrow of your wives and babies, a fink don’t have to know about trade unionism to be a fink! Finkism? Hell, I’ve made a study of finkism! Finkism is born into some guys. It’s born into some guys, just like a good eye for color is born into other guys. That’s right, that’s the honest, scientific truth! A fink don’t even have to have heard of a union before,” he cried in a frenzy of words. “All you have to do is bring him around the neighborhood of a union and next thing you know, why, zip! he’s finking his finking ass off!”

  He was drowned out by shouts of approval. Men turned violently to look at me. I felt choked. I wanted to drop my head but faced them as though facing them was itself a denial of his statements. Another voice ripped out of the shouts of approval, spilling with great urgency from the lips of a little fellow with glasses who spoke with the index finger of one hand upraised and the thumb of the other crooked in the suspender of his overalls:

  “I want to put this brother’s remarks in the form of a motion: I move that we determine through a thorough investigation whether the new worker is a fink or no; and if he is a fink, let us discover who he’s finking for! And this, brother members, would give the worker time, if he ain’t a fink, to become acquainted with the work of the union and its aims. After all, brothers, we don’t want to forget that workers like him aren’t so highly developed as some of us who’ve been in the labor movement for a long time. So I says, let’s give him time to see what we’ve done to improve the condition of the workers, and then, if he ain’t a fink, we can decide in a democratic way whether we want to accept this brother into the union. Brother union members, I thank you!” He sat down with a bump.

  The room roared. Biting anger grew inside me. So I was not so highly developed as they! What did he mean? Were they all Ph.D.’s? I couldn’t move; too much was happening to me. It was as though by entering the room I had automatically applied for membership—even though I had no idea that a union existed, and had come up simply to get a cold pork chop sandwich. I stood trembling, afraid that they would ask me to join but angry that so many rejected me on sight. And worst of all, I knew they were forcing me to accept things on their own terms, and I was unable to leave.

  “All right, brothers. We’ll take a vote,” the chairman shouted. “All in favor of the motion, signify by saying ‘Aye’ …”

  The ayes drowned him out.

  “The ayes carried it,” the chairman announced as several men turned to stare at me. At last I could move. I started out, forgetting why I had come.

  “Come in, brother,” the chairman called. “You can get your lunch now. Let him through, you brothers around the door!”

  My face stung as though it had been slapped. They had made their decision without giving me a chance to speak for myself. I felt that every man present looked upon me with hostility; and though I had lived with hostility all my life, now for the first time it seemed to reach me, as though I had expected more of these men than of others—even though I had not known of their existence. Here in this room my defenses were negated, stripped away, checked at the door as the weapons, the knives and razors and owlhead pistols of the country boys were checked on Saturday night at the Golden Day. I kept my eyes lowered, mumbling “Pardon me, pardon me,” all the way to the drab green locker, where I removed the sandwich, for which I no longer had an appetite, and stood fumbling with the bag, dreading to face the men on my way out. Then still hating myself for the apologies made coming over, I brushed past silently as I went back.

  When I reached the door the chairman called, “Just a minute, brother, we want you to understand that this is nothing against you personally. What you see here is the results of certain conditions here at the plant. We want you to know that we are only trying to protect ourselves. Some day we hope to have you as a member in good standing.”

  From here and there came a half-hearted applause that quickly died. I swallowed and stared unseeing, the words spurting to me from a red, misty distance.

  “Okay, brothers,” the voice said, “let hi
m pass.”

  I STUMBLED through the bright sunlight of the yard, past the office workers chatting on the grass, back to Building No. 2, to the basement. I stood on the stairs, feeling as though my bowels had been flooded with acid. Why hadn’t I simply left, I thought with anguish. And since I had remained, why hadn’t I said something, defended myself? Suddenly I snatched the wrapper off a sandwich and tore it violently with my teeth, hardly tasting the dry lumps that squeezed past my constricted throat when I swallowed. Dropping the remainder back into the bag, I held onto the handrail, my legs shaking as though I had just escaped a great danger. Finally, it went away and I pushed open the metal door.

  “What kept you so long?” Brockway snapped from where he sat on a wheelbarrow. He had been drinking from a white mug now cupped in his grimy hands.

  I looked at him abstractedly, seeing how the light caught on his wrinkled forehead, his snowy hair.

  “I said, what kept you so long!”

  What had he to do with it, I thought, looking at him through a kind of mist, knowing that I disliked him and that I was very tired.

  “I say …” he began, and I heard my voice come quiet from my tensed throat as I noticed by the clock that I had been gone only twenty minutes.

  “I ran into a union meeting—”

  “Union!” I heard his white cup shatter against the floor as he uncrossed his legs, rising. “I knowed you belonged to that bunch of troublemaking foreigners! I knowed it! Git out!” he screamed. “Git out of my basement!”

  He started toward me as in a dream, trembling like the needle of one of the gauges as he pointed toward the stairs, his voice shrieking. I stared; something seemed to have gone wrong, my reflexes were jammed.

  “But what’s the matter?” I stammered, my voice low and my mind understanding and yet failing exactly to understand. “What’s wrong?”

  “You heard me. Git out!”