Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  “You did it, goddamnit! You did it!” And I was puzzled by the hot mixture of hate and admiration bursting through his words as I thanked him and removed my hand from his crushing grasp.

  “Thanks,” I said, “but the others had raised them to the right pitch.”

  I shuddered; he sounded as though he would like to throttle me. I couldn’t see and there was much confusion and suddenly someone spun me around, pulling me off balance, and I felt myself pressed against warm feminine softness, holding on.

  “Oh, Brother, Brother!” a woman’s voice cried into my ear, “Little Brother!” and I felt the hot moist pressure of her lips upon my cheek.

  Blurred figures bumped about me. I stumbled as in a game of blindman’s buff. My hands were shaken, my back pounded. My face was sprayed with the saliva of enthusiasm, and I decided that the next time I stood in the spotlight it would be wise to wear dark glasses.

  It was a deafening demonstration. We left them cheering, knocking over chairs, stomping the floor. Brother Jack guided me off the platform. “It’s time we left,” he shouted. “Things have truly begun to move. All that energy must be organized!”

  He guided me through the shouting crowd, hands continuing to touch me as I stumbled along. Then we entered the dark passage and when we reached the end the spots faded from my eyes and I began to see again. Brother Jack paused at the door.

  “Listen to them,” he said. “Just waiting to be told what to do!” And I could still hear the applause booming behind us. Then several of the others broke off their conversation and faced us, as the applause muffled down behind the closing door.

  “Well, what do you think?” Brother Jack said enthusiastically. “How’s that for a starter?”

  There was a tense silence. I looked from face to face, black and white, feeling swift panic. They were grim.

  “Well?” Brother Jack said, his voice suddenly hard.

  I could hear the creaking of someone’s shoes.

  “Well?” he repeated.

  Then the man with the pipe spoke up, a swift charge of tension building with his words.

  “It was a most unsatisfactory beginning,” he said quietly, punctuating the “unsatisfactory” with a stab of his pipe. He was looking straight at me and I was puzzled. I looked at the others. Their faces were noncommittal, stolid.

  “Unsatisfactory!” Brother Jack exploded. “And what alleged process of thought led to that brilliant pronouncement?”

  “This is no time for cheap sarcasm, Brother,” the brother with the pipe said.

  “Sarcasm? You made the sarcasm. No, it isn’t a time for sarcasms nor for imbecilities. Nor for plain damn-fooleries! This is a key moment in the struggle, things have just begun to move—and suddenly you are unhappy. You are afraid of success? What’s wrong? Isn’t this just what we’ve been working for?”

  “Again, ask yourself. You are the great leader. Look into your crystal ball.”

  Brother Jack swore.

  “Brothers!” someone said.

  Brother Jack swore and swung to another brother. “You,” he said to the husky man. “Have you the courage to tell me what’s going on here? Have we become a street-corner gang?”

  Silence. Someone shuffled his feet. The man with the pipe was looking now at me.

  “Did I do something wrong?” I said.

  “The worst you could have done,” he said coldly.

  Stunned, I looked at him wordlessly.

  “Never mind,” Brother Jack said, suddenly calm. “Just what is the problem, Brother? Let’s have it out right here. Just what is your complaint?”

  “Not a complaint, an opinion. If we are still allowed to express our opinions,” the brother with the pipe said.

  “Your opinion, then,” Brother Jack said.

  “In my opinion the speech was wild, hysterical, politically irresponsible and dangerous,” he snapped. “And worse than that, it was incorrect!” He pronounced “incorrect” as though the term described the most heinous crime imaginable, and I stared at him openmouthed, feeling a vague guilt.

  “Soooo,” Brother Jack said, looking from face to face, “there’s been a caucus and decisions have been made. Did you take minutes, Brother Chairman? Have you recorded your wise disputations?”

  “There was no caucus and the opinion still holds,” the brother with the pipe said.

  “No meeting, but just the same there has been a caucus and decisions have been reached even before the event is finished.”

  “But, Brother,” someone tried to intervene.

  “A most brilliant operation,” Brother Jack went on, smiling now. “A consummate example of skilled theoretical Nijinskys leaping ahead of history. But come down, Brothers, come down or you’ll land on your dialectics; the stage of history hasn’t built that far. The month after next, perhaps, but not yet. And what do you think, Brother Wrestrum?” he asked, pointing to a big fellow of the shape and size of Supercargo.

  “I think the brother’s speech was backward and reactionary!” he said.

  I wanted to answer but could not. No wonder his voice had sounded so mixed when he congratulated me. I could only stare into the broad face with its hate-burning eyes.

  “And you,” Brother Jack said.

  “I liked the speech,” the man said, “I thought it was quite effective.”

  “And you?” Brother Jack said to the next man.

  “I am of the opinion that it was a mistake.”

  “And just why?”

  “Because we must strive to reach the people through their intelligence …”

  “Exactly,” the brother with the pipe said. “It was the antithesis of the scientific approach. Ours is a reasonable point of view. We are champions of a scientific approach to society, and such a speech as we’ve identified ourselves with tonight destroys everything that has been said before. The audience isn’t thinking, it’s yelling its head off.”

  “Sure, it’s acting like a mob,” the big black brother said.

  Brother Jack laughed. “And this mob,” he said, “is it a mob against us, or is it a mob for us—how do our muscle-bound scientists answer that?”

  But before they could answer he continued, “Perhaps you’re right, perhaps it is a mob; but if it is, then it seems to be a mob that’s simply boiling over to come along with us. And I shouldn’t have to tell you theoreticians that science bases its judgments upon experiment! You’re jumping to conclusions before the experiment has run its course. In fact, what’s happening here tonight represents only one step in the experiment. The initial step, the release of energy. I can understand that it should make you timid—you’re afraid of carrying through to the next step—because it’s up to you to organize that energy. Well, it’s going to be organized and not by a bunch of timid sideline theoreticians arguing in a vacuum, but by getting out and leading the people!”

  He was fighting mad, looking from face to face, his red head bristling, but no one answered his challenge.

  “It’s disgusting,” he said, pointing to me. “Our new brother has succeeded by instinct where for two years your ‘science’ has failed, and now all you can offer is destructive criticism.”

  “I beg to differ,” the brother with the pipe said. “To point out the dangerous nature of his speech isn’t destructive criticism. Far from it. Like the rest of us, the new brother must learn to speak scientifically. He must be trained!”

  “So at last it occurs to you,” Brother Jack said, pulling down the corners of his mouth. “Training. All is not lost. There’s hope that our wild but effective speaker may be tamed. The scientists perceive a possibility! Very well, it has been arranged; perhaps not scientifically but arranged nevertheless. For the next few months our new brother is to undergo a period of intense study and indoctrination under the guidance of Brother Hambro. That’s right,” he said, as I started to speak. “I meant to tell you later.”

  “But that’s a long time,” I said. “How am I going to live?”

  “Your sala
ry will continue,” he said. “Meanwhile, you’ll be guilty of no further unscientific speeches to upset our brothers’ scientific tranquillity. In fact, you are to stay completely out of Harlem. Perhaps then we’ll see if you brothers are as swift at organizing as you are at criticizing. It’s your move, Brothers.”

  “I think Brother Jack is correct,” a short, bald man said. “And I don’t think that we, of all people, should be afraid of the people’s enthusiasm. What we’ve got to do is to guide it into channels where it will do the most good.”

  The rest were silent, the brother with the pipe looking at me unbendingly.

  “Come,” Brother Jack said. “Let’s get out of here. If we keep our eyes on the real goal our chances are better than ever before. And let’s remember that science isn’t a game of chess, although chess may be played scientifically. The other thing to remember is that if we are to organize the masses we must first organize ourselves. Thanks to our new brother, things have changed; we mustn’t fail to make use of our opportunity. From now on it’s up to you.”

  “We shall see,” the brother with the pipe said. “And as for the new brother, a few talks with Brother Hambro wouldn’t harm anyone.”

  Hambro, I thought, going out, who the hell is he? I suppose I’m lucky they didn’t fire me. So now I’ve got to go to school again.

  Out in the night the group was breaking up and Brother Jack drew me aside. “Don’t worry,” he said. “You’ll find Brother Hambro interesting, and a period of training was inevitable. Your speech tonight was a test which you passed with flying colors, so now you’ll be prepared for some real work. Here’s the address; see Brother Hambro the first thing in the morning. He’s already been notified.”

  When I reached home, tiredness seemed to explode within me. My nerves remained tense even after I had had a hot shower and crawled into bed. In my disappointment, I wanted only to sleep, but my mind kept wandering back to the rally. It had actually happened. I had been lucky and had said the right things at the right time and they had liked me. Or perhaps I had said the wrong things in the right places—whatever, they had liked it regardless of the brothers, and from now on my life would be different. It was different already. For now I realized that I meant everything that I had said to the audience, even though I hadn’t known that I was going to say those things. I had intended only to make a good appearance, to say enough to keep the Brotherhood interested in me. What had come out was completely uncalculated, as though another self within me had taken over and held forth. And lucky that it had, or I might have been fired.

  Even my technique had been different; no one who had known me at college would have recognized the speech. But that was as it should have been, for I was someone new—even though I had spoken in a very old-fashioned way. I had been transformed, and now, lying restlessly in bed in the dark, I felt a kind of affection for the blurred audience whose faces I had never clearly seen. They had been with me from the first word. They had wanted me to succeed, and fortunately I had spoken for them and they had recognized my words. I belonged to them. I sat up, grasping my knees in the dark as the thought struck home. Perhaps this was what was meant by being “dedicated and set aside.” Very well, if so, I accepted it. My possibilities were suddenly broadened. As a Brotherhood spokesman I would represent not only my own group but one that was much larger. The audience was mixed, their claims broader than race. I would do whatever was necessary to serve them well. If they could take a chance with me, then I’d do the very best that I could. How else could I save myself from disintegration?

  I sat there in the dark trying to recall the sequence of the speech. Already it seemed the expression of someone else. Yet I knew that it was mine and mine alone, and if it was recorded by a stenographer, I would have a look at it tomorrow.

  Words, phrases, skipped through my mind; I saw the blue haze again. What had I meant by saying that I had become “more human”? Was it a phrase that I had picked up from some preceding speaker, or a slip of the tongue? For a moment I thought of my grandfather and quickly dismissed him. What had an old slave to do with humanity? Perhaps it was something that Woodridge had said in the literature class back at college. I could see him vividly, half-drunk on words and full of contempt and exaltation, pacing before the blackboard chalked with quotations from Joyce and Yeats and Sean O’Casey; thin, nervous, neat, pacing as though he walked a high wire of meaning upon which no one of us would ever dare venture. I could hear him: “Stephen’s problem, like ours, was not actually one of creating the uncreated conscience of his race, but of creating the uncreated features of his face. Our task is that of making ourselves individuals. The conscience of a race is the gift of its individuals who see, evaluate, record … We create the race by creating ourselves and then to our great astonishment we will have created something far more important: We will have created a culture. Why waste time creating a conscience for something that doesn’t exist? For, you see, blood and skin do not think!”

  But no, it wasn’t Woodridge. “More human” … Did I mean that I had become less of what I was, less a Negro, or that I was less a being apart; less an exile from down home, the South? … But all this is negative. To become less—in order to become more? Perhaps that was it, but in what way more human? Even Woodridge hadn’t spoken of such things. It was a mystery once more, as at the eviction I had uttered words that had possessed me.

  I thought of Bledsoe and Norton and what they had done. By kicking me into the dark they’d made me see the possibility of achieving something greater and more important than I’d ever dreamed. Here was a way that didn’t lead through the back door, a way not limited by black and white, but a way which, if one lived long enough and worked hard enough, could lead to the highest possible rewards. Here was a way to have a part in making the big decisions, of seeing through the mystery of how the country, the world, really operated. For the first time, lying there in the dark, I could glimpse the possibility of being more than a member of a race. It was no dream, the possibility existed. I had only to work and learn and survive in order to go to the top. Sure I’d study with Hambro, I’d learn what he had to teach and a lot more. Let tomorrow come. The sooner I was through with this Hambro, the sooner I could get started with my work.

  Chapter seventeen

  Four months later

  when Brother Jack called the apartment at midnight to tell me to be prepared to take a ride I became quite excited. Fortunately, I was awake and dressed, and when he drove up a few minutes later I was waiting expectantly at the curb. Maybe, I thought, as I saw him hunched behind the wheel in his topcoat, this is what I’ve been waiting for.

  “How have you been, Brother?” I said, getting in.

  “A little tired,” he said. “Not enough sleep, too many problems.”

  Then, as he got the car under way, he became silent, and I decided not to ask any questions. That was one thing I had learned thoroughly. There must be something doing at the Chthonian, I thought, watching him staring at the road as though lost in thought. Maybe the brothers are waiting to put me through my paces. If so, fine; I’ve been waiting for an examination …

  But instead of going to the Chthonian I looked out to discover that he had brought me to Harlem and was parking the car.

  “We’ll have a drink,” he said, getting out and heading for where the neon-lighted sign of a bull’s head announced the El Toro Bar.

  I was disappointed. I wanted no drink; I wanted to take the next step that lay between me and an assignment. I followed him inside with a surge of irritation.

  The barroom was warm and quiet. The usual rows of bottles with exotic names were lined on the shelves, and in the rear, where four men argued in Spanish over glasses of beer, a juke box, lit up green and red, played “Media Luz.” And as we waited for the bartender, I tried to figure the purpose of the trip.

  I had seen very little of Brother Jack after beginning my studies with Brother Hambro. My life had been too tightly organized. But I should have known t
hat if anything was going to happen, Brother Hambro would have let me know. Instead, I was to meet him in the morning as usual. That Hambro, I thought, is be a fanatic teacher! A tall, friendly man, a lawyer and the Brotherhood’s chief theoretician, he had proved to be a hard taskmaster. Between daily discussions with him and a rigid schedule of reading, I had been working harder than I’d ever found necessary at college. Even my nights were organized; every evening found me at some rally or meeting in one of the many districts (though this was my first trip to Harlem since my speech) where I’d sit on the platform with the speakers, making notes to be discussed with him the next day. Every occasion became a study situation, even the parties that sometimes followed the meetings. During these I had to make mental notes on the ideological attitudes revealed in the guests’ conversations. But I had soon learned the method in it: Not only had I been learning the many aspects of the Brotherhood’s policy and its approach to various social groupings, but the city-wide membership had grown familiar with me. My part in the eviction was kept very much alive, and although I was under orders to make no speeches, I had grown accustomed to being introduced as a kind of hero.

  Yet it had been mainly a time for listening and, being a talker, I had grown impatient. Now I knew most of the Brotherhood arguments so well—those I doubted as well as those I believed—that I could repeat them in my sleep, but nothing had been said about my assignment. Thus I had hoped the midnight call meant some kind of action was to begin …