Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  “I’m so sorry that this had to happen,” she said in a slow Yankee voice, “really and truly sorry. Some of our brothers aren’t so highly developed, you know. Although they mean very well. You must allow me to apologize for him …”

  “Oh, he was only tipsy,” I said, looking into her thin New England face.

  “Yes, I know, and revealingly so. I would never ask our colored brothers to sing, even though I love to hear them. Because I know that it would be a very backward thing. You are here to fight along with us, not to entertain. I think you understand me, don’t you, Brother?”

  I gave her a silent smile.

  “Of course you do. I must go now, good-bye,” she said, extending her little white-gloved hand and leaving.

  I was puzzled. Just what did she mean? Was it that she understood that we resented having others think that we were all entertainers and natural singers? But now after the mutual laughter something disturbed me: Shouldn’t there be some way for us to be asked to sing? Shouldn’t the short man have the right to make a mistake without his motives being considered consciously or unconsciously malicious? After all, he was singing, or trying to. What if I asked him to sing? I watched the little woman, dressed in black like a missionary, winding her way through the crowd. What on earth was she doing here? What part did she play? Well, whatever she meant, she’s nice and I like her.

  Just then Emma came up and challenged me to dance and I led her toward the floor as the piano played, thinking of the vets prediction and drawing her to me as though I danced with such as her every evening. For having committed myself, I felt that I could never allow myself to show surprise or upset—even when confronted with situations furthest from my experience. Otherwise I might be considered undependable, or unworthy. I felt that somehow they expected me to perform even those tasks for which nothing in my experience—except perhaps my imagination—had prepared me. Still it was nothing new, white folks seemed always to expect you to know those things which they’d done everything they could think of to prevent you from knowing. The thing to do was to be prepared—as my grandfather had been when it was demanded that he quote the entire United States Constitution as a test of his fitness to vote. He had confounded them all by passing the test, although they still refused him the ballot … Anyway, these were different.

  It was close to five A.M., many dances and many bourbons later, when I reached Mary’s. Somehow, I felt surprised that the room was still the same—except that Mary had changed the bed linen. Good old Mary. I felt sadly sobered. And as I undressed I saw my outworn clothes and realized that I’d have to shed them. Certainly it was time. Even my hat would go; its green was sun-faded and brown, like a leaf struck by the winter’s snows. I would require a new one for my new name. A black broad-brimmed one; perhaps a homburg … humbug? I laughed. Well, I could leave packing for tomorrow—I had very little, which was perhaps all to the good. I would travel light, far and fast. They were fast people, all right. What a vast difference between Mary and those for whom I was leaving her. And why should it be this way, that the very job which might make it possible for me to do some of the things which she expected of me required that I leave her? What kind of room would Brother Jack select for me and why wasn’t I left to select my own? It didn’t seem right that in order to become a Harlem leader I should live elsewhere. Yet nothing seemed right and I would have to rely upon their judgment. They seemed expert in such matters.

  But how far could I trust them, and in what way were they different from the trustees? Whatever, I was committed; I’d learn in the process of working with them, I thought, remembering the money. The bills were crisp and fresh and I tried to imagine Mary’s surprise when I paid her all my back rent and board. She’d think that I was kidding. But money could never repay her generosity. She would never understand my wanting to move so quickly after getting a job. And if I had any kind of success at all, it would seem the height of ingratitude. How would I face her? She had asked for nothing in return. Or hardly anything, except that I make something of myself that she called a “race leader.” I shivered in the cold. Telling her that I was moving would be a hard proposition. I didn’t like to think of it, but one couldn’t be sentimental. As Brother Jack had said, History makes harsh demands of us all. But they were demands that had to be met if men were to be the masters and not the victims of their times. Did I believe that? Perhaps I had already begun to pay. Besides, I might as well admit right now, I thought, that there are many things about people like Mary that I dislike. For one thing, they seldom know where their personalities end and yours begins; they usually think in terms of “we” while I have always tended to think in terms of “me”—and that has caused some friction, even with my own family. Brother Jack and the others talked in terms of “we,” but it was a different, bigger “we.”

  Well, I had a new name and new problems. I had best leave the old behind. Perhaps it would be best not to see Mary at all, just place the money in an envelope and leave it on the kitchen table where she’d be sure to find it. It would be better that way, I thought drowsily; then there’d be no need to stand before her and stumble over emotions and words that were at best all snarled up and undifferentiated … One thing about the people at the Chthonian, they all seemed able to say just what they felt and meant in hard, clear terms. That too, I’d have to learn … I stretched out beneath the covers, hearing the springs groan beneath me. The room was cold. I listened to the night sounds of the house. The clock ticked with empty urgency, as though trying to catch up with the time. In the street a siren howled.

  Chapter fifteen

  Then I was awake

  and not awake, sitting bolt upright in bed and trying to peer through the sick gray light as I sought the meaning of the brash, nerve-jangling sound. Pushing the blanket aside I clasped my hands to my ears. Someone was pounding the steam line, and I stared helplessly for what seemed minutes. My ears throbbed. My side began itching violently and I tore open my pajamas to scratch, and suddenly the pain seemed to leap from my ears to my side and I saw gray marks appearing where the old skin was flaking away beneath my digging nails. And as I watched I saw thin lines of blood well up in the scratches, bringing pain and joining time and place again, and I thought, The room has lost its heat on my last day at Mary’s, and suddenly I was sick at heart.

  The clock, its alarm lost in the larger sound, said seven-thirty, and I got out of bed. I’d have to hurry. There was shopping to do before I called Brother Jack for my instructions and I had to get the money to Mary— Why didn’t they stop that noise? I reached for my shoes, flinching as the knocking seemed to sound an inch above my head. Why don’t they stop, I thought. And why do I feel so let down? The bourbon? My nerves going bad?

  Suddenly I was across the room in a bound, pounding the pipe furiously with my shoe heel.

  “Stop it, you ignorant fool!”

  My head was splitting. Beside myself, I struck pieces of silver from the pipe, exposing the black and rusted iron. He was using a piece of metal now, his blows ringing with a ragged edge.

  If only I knew who it was, I thought, looking for something heavy with which to strike back. If only I knew!

  Then near the door I saw something which I’d never noticed there before: the cast-iron figure of a very black, red-lipped and wide-mouthed Negro, whose white eyes stared up at me from the floor, his face an enormous grin, his single large black hand held palm up before his chest. It was a bank, a piece of early Americana, the kind of bank which, if a coin is placed in the hand and a lever pressed upon the back, will raise its arm and flip the coin into the grinning mouth. For a second I stopped, feeling hate charging within me, then dashed over and grabbed it, suddenly as enraged by the tolerance or lack of discrimination, or whatever, that allowed Mary to keep such a self-mocking image around, as by the knocking.

  In my hand its expression seemed more of a strangulation than a grin. It was choking, filled to the throat with coins.

  How the hell did it get h
ere, I wondered, dashing over and striking the pipe a blow with the kinky iron head. “Shut up!” I screamed, which seemed only to enrage the hidden knocker. The din was deafening. Tenants up and down the entire line of apartments joined in. I hammered back with the iron naps, seeing the silver fly, striking like driven sand against my face. The pipe fairly hummed with the blows. Windows were going up. Voices yelled obscenities down the airshaft.

  Who started all this, I wondered, who’s responsible?

  “Why don’t you act like responsible people living in the twentieth century?” I yelled, aiming a blow at the pipe. “Get rid of your cottonpatch ways! Act civilized!”

  Then came a crash of sound and I felt the iron head crumble and fly apart in my hand. Coins flew over the room like crickets, ringing, rattling against the floor, rolling. I stopped dead.

  “Just listen to ’em! Just listen to ’em!” Mary called from the hall. “Enough noise to wake the dead! They know when the heat don’t come up that the super’s drunk or done walked off the job looking for his woman, or something. Why don’t folks act according to what they know?”

  She was at my door now, knocking stroke for stroke with the blows landing on the pipe, calling, “Son! Ain’t some of that knocking coming from in there?”

  I turned from side to side in indecision, looking at the pieces of broken head, the small coins of all denominations that were scattered about.

  “You hear me, boy?” she called.

  “What is it?” I called, dropping to the floor and reaching frantically for the broken pieces, thinking, If she opens the door, I’m lost …

  “I said is any of that racket coming from in there?”

  “Yes, it is, Mary,” I called, “but I’m all right … I’m already awake.”

  I saw the knob move and froze, hearing, “Sounded to me like a heap of it was coming from in there. You got your clothes on?”

  “No,” I cried. “I’m just dressing. I’ll have them on in a minute.”

  “Come on out to the kitchen,” she said. “It’s warm out there. And there’s some hot water on the stove to wash your face in … and some coffee. Lawd, just listen at the racket!”

  I stood as though frozen, until she moved away from the door. I’d have to hurry. I kneeled, picking up a piece of the bank, a part of the red-shirted chest, reading the legend, FEED ME in a curve of white iron letters, like the team name on an athlete’s shirt. The figure had gone to pieces like a grenade, scattering jagged fragments of painted iron among the coins. I looked at my hand; a small trickle of blood showed. I wiped it away, thinking, I’ll have to hide this mess! I can’t take her this and the news that I’m moving at the same time. Taking a newspaper from the chair I folded it stiffly and swept the coins and broken metal into a pile. Where would I hide it, I wondered, looking with profound distaste at the iron kinks, the dull red of a piece of grinning lip. Why, I thought with anguish, would Mary have something like this around anyway? Just why? I looked under the bed. It was dustless there, no place to hide anything. She was too good a housekeeper. Besides, what of the coins? Hell! Maybe the thing was left by the former roomer. Anyway, whosever it was, it had to be hidden. There was the closet, but she’d find it there too. After I was gone a few days she’d clean out my things and there it’d be. The knocking had gone beyond mere protest over heatlessness now, they had fallen into a ragged rumba rhythm:

  Knock!

  Knock-knock

  Knock-knock!

  Knock!

  Knock-knock

  Knock-knock!

  vibrating the very floor.

  “Just a few minutes more, you bastards,” I said aloud, “and I’ll be gone! No respect for the individual. Why don’t you think about those who might wish to sleep? What if someone is near a nervous breakdown … ?”

  But there was still the package. There was nothing to do but get rid of it along the way downtown. Making a tight bundle, I placed it in my overcoat pocket. I’d simply have to give Mary enough money to cover the coins. I’d give her as much as I could spare, half of what I had, if necessary. That should make up for some of it. She should appreciate that. And now I realized with a feeling of dread that I had to meet her face to face. There was no way out. Why can’t I just tell her that I’m leaving and pay her and go on off? She was a landlady, I was a tenant—No, there was more to it and I wasn’t hard enough, scientific enough, even to tell her that I was leaving. I’ll tell her I have a job, anything, but it has to be now.

  She was sitting at the table drinking coffee when I went in, the kettle hissing away on the stove, sending up jets of steam.

  “Gee, but you slow this morning,” she said. “Take some of that water in the kettle and go wash your face. Though sleepy as you look, maybe you ought to just use cold water.”

  “This’ll do,” I said flatly, feeling the steam drifting upon my face, growing swiftly damp and cold. The clock above the stove was slower than mine.

  In the bathroom I put in the plug and poured some of the hot water and cooled it from the spigot. I kept the tear-warm water upon my face a long time, then dried and returned to the kitchen.

  “Run it full again,” she said when I returned. “How you feel?”

  “So-so,” I said.

  She sat with her elbows upon the enameled table top, her cup held in both hands, one work-worn little finger delicately curved. I went to the sink and turned the spigot, feeling the cold rush of water upon my hand, thinking of what I had to do …

  “That’s enough there, boy,” Mary said, startling me. “Wake up!”

  “I guess I’m not all here,” I said. “My mind was wandering.”

  “Well, call it back and come get you some coffee. Soon’s I’ve had mine, I’ll see what kind of breakfast I can whip together. I guess after last night you can eat this morning. You didn’t come back for supper.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “Coffee will be enough for me.”

  “Boy, you better start eating again,” she warned, pouring me a full cup of coffee.

  I took the cup and sipped it, black. It was bitter. She glanced from me to the sugar bowl and back again but remained silent, then swirled her cup, looking into it.

  “Guess I’ll have to get some better filters,” she mused. “These I got just lets through the grounds along with the coffee, the good with the bad. I don’t know though, even with the best of filters you apt to find a ground or two at the bottom of your cup.”

  I blew upon the steaming liquid, avoiding Mary’s eyes. The knocking was becoming unbearable again. I’d have to get away. I looked at the hot metallic surface of the coffee, noticing an oily, opalescent swirl.

  “Look, Mary,” I said, plunging in, “I want to talk to you about something.”

  “Now see here, boy,” she said gruffly, “I don’t want you worrying me about your rent this morning. I’m not worried ‘cause when you get it I know you’ll pay me. Meanwhile you forget it. Nobody in this house is going to starve. You having any luck lining up a job?”

  “No—I mean not exactly,” I stammered, seizing the opportunity. “But I’ve got an appointment to see about one this morning …”

  Her face brightened. “Oh, that’s fine. You’ll get something yet. I know it.”

  “But about my debt,” I began again.

  “Don’t worry about it. How about some hotcakes?” she asked, rising and going to look into the cabinet. “They’ll stick with you in this cold weather.”

  “I won’t have time,” I said. “But I’ve got something for you …”

  “What’s that?” she said, her voice coming muffled as she peered inside the cabinet.

  “Here,” I said hurriedly, reaching into my pocket for the money.

  “What?—Let’s see if I got some syrup …”

  “But look,” I said eagerly, removing a hundred-dollar bill.

  “Must be on a higher shelf,” she said, her back still turned.

  I sighed as she dragged a step ladder from beside the cabinet and mou
nted it, holding onto the doors and peering upon an upper shelf. I’d never get it said …

  “But I’m trying to give you something,” I said.

  “Why don’t you quit bothering me, boy? You trying to give me what?” she said looking over her shoulder.

  I held up the bill. “This,” I said.

  She craned her head around. “Boy, what you got there?”

  “It’s money.”

  “Money? Good God, boy!” she said, almost losing her balance as she turned completely around. “Where’d you get all that much money? You been playing the numbers?”

  “That’s it. My number came up,” I said thankfully—thinking, What’ll I say if she asks what the number was? I didn’t know. I had never played.

  “But how come you didn’t tell me? I’d have at least put a nickel on it.”

  “I didn’t think it would do anything,” I said.

  “Well, I declare. And I bet it was your first time too.”

  “It was.”

  “See there, I knowed you was a lucky one. Here I been playing for years and the first drop of the bucket you hits for that kinda money. I’m sho glad for you, son. I really am. But I don’t want your money. You wait ’til you get a job.”

  “But I’m not giving you all of it,” I said hastily. “This is just on account.”

  “But that’s a hundred-dollar bill. I take that an’ try to change it and the white folks’ll want to know my whole life’s history.” She snorted. “They want to know where I was born, where I work, and where I been for the last six months, and when I tell ’em they still gonna think I stole it. Ain’t you got nothing smaller?”