Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  Beside me, Brother Jack was still lost in thought. He seemed in no hurry to go elsewhere or to talk, and as the slow-motion bartender mixed our drinks I puzzled vainly as to why he had brought me here. Before me, in the panel where a mirror is usually placed, I could see a scene from a bullfight, the bull charging close to the man and the man swinging the red cape in sculptured folds so close to his body that man and bull seemed to blend in one swirl of calm, pure motion. Pure grace, I thought, looking above the bar to where, larger than life, the pink and white image of a girl smiled down from a summery beer ad on which a calendar said April One. Then, as our drinks were placed before us, Brother Jack came alive, his mood changing as though in the instant he had settled whatever had been bothering him and felt suddenly free.

  “Here, come back,” he said, nudging me playfully. “She’s only a cardboard image of a cold steel civilization.”

  I laughed, glad to hear him joking. “And that?” I said, pointing to the bullfight scene.

  “Sheer barbarism,” he said, watching the bartender and lowering his voice to a whisper. “But tell me, how have you found your work with Brother Hambro?”

  “Oh, fine,” I said. “He’s strict, but if I’d had teachers like him in college, I’d know a few things. He’s taught me a lot, but whether enough to satisfy the brothers who disliked my arena speech, I don’t know. Shall we converse scientifically?”

  He laughed, one of his eyes glowing brighter than the other. “Don’t worry about the brothers,” he said. “You’ll do very well. Brother Hambro’s reports on you have been excellent.”

  “Now, that’s nice to hear,” I said, aware now of another bullfight scene further down the bar in which the matador was being swept skyward on the black bull’s horns. “I’ve worked pretty hard trying to master the ideology.”

  “Master it,” Brother Jack said, “but don’t overdo it. Don’t let it master you. There is nothing to put the people to sleep like dry ideology. The ideal is to strike a medium between ideology and inspiration. Say what the people want to hear, but say it in such a way that they’ll do what we wish.” He laughed. “Remember too, that theory always comes after practice. Act first, theorize later; that’s also a formula, a devastatingly effective one!”

  He looked at me as though he did not see me and I could not tell whether he was laughing at me or with me. I was sure only that he was laughing.

  “Yes,” I said, “I’ll try to master all that is required.”

  “You can,” he said. “And now you don’t have to worry about the brothers’ criticism. Just throw some ideology back at them and they’ll leave you alone—provided, of course, that you have the right backing and produce the required results. Another drink?”

  “Thanks, I’ve had enough.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure.”

  “Good. Now to your assignment: Tomorrow you are to become chief spokesman of the Harlem District …”

  “What!”

  “Yes. The committee decided yesterday.”

  “But I had no idea.”

  “You’ll do all right. Now listen. You are to continue what you started at the eviction. Keep them stirred up. Get them active. Get as many to join as possible. You’ll be given guidance by some of the older members, but for the time being you are to see what you can do. You will have freedom of action—and you will be under strict discipline to the committee.”

  “I see,” I said.

  “No, you don’t quite see,” he said, “but you will. You must not underestimate the discipline, Brother. It makes you answerable to the entire organization for what you do. Don’t underestimate the discipline. It is very strict, but within its framework you are to have full freedom to do your work. And your work is very important. Understand?” His eyes seemed to crowd my face as I nodded yes. “We’d better go now so that you can get some sleep,” he said, draining his glass. “You’re a soldier now, your health belongs to the organization.”

  “I’ll be ready,” I said.

  “I know you will. Until tomorrow then. You’ll meet with the executive committee of the Harlem section at nine A.M. You know the location of course?”

  “No, Brother, I don’t.”

  “Oh? That’s right—then you’d better come up with me for a minute. I have to see someone there and you can take a look at where you’ll work. I’ll drop you off on the way down,” he said.

  THE district offices were located in a converted church structure, the main floor of which was occupied by a pawnshop, its window crammed with loot that gleamed dully in the darkened street. We took a stair to the third floor, entering a large room beneath a high Gothic ceiling.

  “It’s down here,” Brother Jack said, making for the end of the large room where I saw a row of smaller ones, only one of which was lighted. And now I saw a man appear in the door and limp forward.

  “Evening, Brother Jack,” he said.

  “Why, Brother Tarp, I expected to find Brother Tobitt.”

  “I know. He was here but he had to leave,” the man said. “He left this envelope for you and said he’d call you later on tonight.”

  “Good, good,” Brother Jack said. “Here, meet a new brother …”

  “Pleased to meet you,” the brother said, smiling. “I heard you speak at the arena. You really told ’em.”

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “So you liked it, did you, Brother Tarp?” Brother Jack said.

  “The boy’s all right with me,” the man said.

  “Well, you’re going to see a lot of him, he’s your new spokesman.”

  “That’s fine,” the man said. “Looks like we’re going to get some changes made.”

  “Correct,” Brother Jack said. “Now let’s take a look at his office and we’ll be going.”

  “Sure, Brother,” Tarp said, limping before me into one of the dark rooms and snapping on a light. “This here is the one.”

  I looked into a small office, containing a flat-top desk with a telephone, a typewriter on its table, a bookcase with shelves of books and pamphlets, and a huge map of the world inscribed with ancient nautical signs and a heroic figure of Columbus to one side.

  “If there’s anything you need, just see Brother Tarp,” Brother Jack said. “He’s here at all times.”

  “Thanks, I shall,” I said. “I’ll get oriented in the morning.”

  “Yes, and we’d better go so you can get some sleep. Good night, Brother Tarp. See that everything is ready for him in the morning.”

  “He won’t have to worry about a thing, Brother. Good night.”

  “It’s because we attract men like Brother Tarp there that we shall triumph,” he said as we climbed into the car. “He’s old physically, but ideologically he’s a vigorous young man. He can be depended upon in the most precarious circumstance.”

  “He sounds like a good man to have around,” I said.

  “You’ll see,” he said and lapsed into a silence that lasted until we reached my door.

  THE committee was assembled in the hall with the high Gothic ceiling when I arrived, sitting in folding chairs around two small tables pushed together to form a unit.

  “Well,” Brother Jack said, “you are on time. Very good, we favor precision in our leaders.”

  “Brother, I shall always try to be on time,” I said.

  “Here he is, Brothers and Sisters,” he said, “your new spokesman. Now to begin. Are we all present?”

  “All except Brother Tod Clifton,” someone said.

  His red head jerked with surprise. “So?”

  “He’ll be here,” a young brother said. “We were working until three this morning.”

  “Still, he should be on time— Very well,” Brother Jack said, taking out a watch, “let us begin. I have only a little time here, but a little time is all that is needed. You all know the events of the recent period, and the role our new brother has played in them. Briefly, you are here to see that it isn’t wasted. We must achieve two things:
We must plan methods of increasing the effectiveness of our agitation, and we must organize the energy that has already been released. This calls for a rapid increase of membership. The people are fully aroused; if we fail to lead them into action, they will become passive, or they will become cynical. Thus it is necessary that we strike immediately and strike hard!

  “For this purpose,” he said, nodding toward me, “our brother has been appointed district spokesman. You are to give him your loyal support and regard him as the new instrument of the committee’s authority …”

  I heard the slight applause splatter up—only to halt with the opening of the door, and I looked down past the rows of chairs to where a hatless young man about my own age was coming into the hall. He wore a heavy sweater and slacks, and as the others looked up I heard the quick intake of a woman’s pleasurable sigh. Then the young man was moving with an easy Negro stride out of the shadow into the light, and I saw that he was very black and very handsome, and as he advanced mid-distance into the room, that he possessed the chiseled, black-marble features sometimes found on statues in northern museums and alive in southern towns in which the white offspring of house children and the black offspring of yard children bear names, features and character traits as identical as the rifling of bullets fired from a common barrel. And now close up, leaning tall and relaxed, his arms outstretched stiffly upon the table, I saw the broad, taut span of his knuckles upon the dark grain of the wood, the muscular, sweatered arms, the curving line of the chest rising to the easy pulsing of his throat, to the square, smooth chin, and saw a small X-shaped patch of adhesive upon the subtly blended, velvet-over-stone, granite-over-bone, Afro-Anglo-Saxon contour of his cheek.

  He leaned there, looking at us all with a remote aloofness in which I sensed an unstated questioning beneath a friendly charm. Sensing a possible rival, I watched him warily, wondering who he was.

  “Ah, so, Brother Tod Clifton is late,” Brother Jack said. “Our leader of the youth is late. Why is this?”

  The young man pointed to his cheek and smiled. “I had to see the doctor,” he said.

  “What is this?” Brother Jack said, looking at the cross of adhesive on the black skin.

  “Just a little encounter with the nationalists. With Ras the Exhorter’s boys,” Brother Clifton said. And I heard a gasp from one of the women who gazed at him with shining, compassionate eyes.

  Brother Jack gave me a quick look. “Brother, you have heard of Ras? He is the wild man who calls himself a black nationalist.”

  “I don’t recall so,” I said.

  “You’ll hear of him soon enough. Sit down, Brother Clifton; sit down. You must be careful. You are valuable to the organization, you must not take chances.”

  “This was unavoidable,” the young man said.

  “Just the same,” Brother Jack said, returning to the discussion with a call for ideas.

  “Brother, are we still to fight against evictions?” I said.

  “It has become a leading issue, thanks to you.”

  “Then why not step up the fight?”

  He studied my face. “What do you suggest?”

  “Well, since it has attracted so much attention, why not try to reach the whole community with the issue?”

  “And how would you suggest we go about it?”

  “I suggest we get the community leaders on record in support of us.”

  “There are certain difficulties in face of this,” Brother Jack said. “Most of the leaders are against us.”

  “But I think he’s got something there,” Brother Clifton said. “What if we got them to support the issue whether they like us or not? The issue is a community issue, it’s non-partisan.”

  “Sure,” I said, “that’s how it looks to me. With all the excitement over evictions they can’t afford to come out against us, not without appearing to be against the best interests of the community …”

  “So we have them across a barrel,” Clifton said.

  “That is perceptive enough,” Brother Jack said.

  The others agreed.

  “You see,” Brother Jack said with a grin, “we’ve always avoided these leaders, but the moment we start to advance on a broad front, sectarianism becomes a burden to be cast off. Any other suggestions?” He looked around.

  “Brother,” I said, remembering now, “when I first came to Harlem one of the first things that impressed me was a man making a speech from a ladder. He spoke very violently and with an accent, but he had an enthusiastic audience … Why can’t we carry our program to the street in the same way?”

  “So you have met him,” he said, suddenly grinning. “Well, Ras the Exhorter has had a monopoly in Harlem. But now that we are larger we might give it a try. What the committee wants is results!”

  So that was Ras the Exhorter, I thought.

  “We’ll have trouble with the Extortor—I mean the Exhorter,” a big woman said. “His hoodlums would attack and denounce the white meat of a roasted chicken.”

  We laughed.

  “He goes wild when he sees black people and white people together,” she said to me.

  “We’ll take care of that,” Brother Clifton said, touching his cheek.

  “Very well, but no violence,” Brother Jack said. “The Brotherhood is against violence and terror and provocation of any kind—aggressive, that is. Understand, Brother Clifton?”

  “I understand,” he said.

  “We will not countenance any aggressive violence. Understand? Nor attacks upon officials or others who do not attack us. We are against all forms of violence, do you understand?”

  “Yes, Brother,” I said.

  “Very well, having made this clear I leave you now,” he said. “See what you can accomplish. You’ll have plenty support from other districts and all the guidance you need. Meanwhile, remember that we are all under discipline.”

  He left and we divided the labor. I suggested that each work in the area he knew best. Since there was no liaison between the Brotherhood and the community leaders I assigned myself the task of creating one. It was decided that our street meetings begin immediately and that Brother Tod Clifton was to return and go over the details with me.

  While the discussion continued I studied their faces. They seemed absorbed with the cause and in complete agreement, blacks and whites. But when I tried to place them as to type I got nowhere. The big woman who looked like a southern “sudsbuster” was in charge of women’s work, and spoke in abstract, ideological terms. The shy-looking man with the liver splotches on his neck spoke with a bold directness and eagerness for action. And this Brother Tod Clifton, the young leader, looked somehow like a hipster, a zoot suiter, a sharpie—except his head of Persian lamb’s wool had never known a straightener. I could place none of them. They seemed familiar but were just as different as Brother Jack and the other whites were from all the white men I had known. They were all transformed, like familiar people seen in a dream. Well, I thought, I’m different too, and they’ll see it when the talk is finished and the action begins. I’ll just have to be careful not to antagonize anyone. As it is, someone might resent my being placed in charge.

  But when Brother Tod Clifton came into my office to discuss the street meeting I saw no signs of resentment, but a complete absorption in the strategy of the meeting. With great care he went about instructing me how to deal with hecklers, on what to do if we were attacked, and upon how to recognize our own members from the rest of the crowd. For all his seeming zoot-suiter characteristics his speech was precise and I had no doubt that he knew his business.

  “How do you think we’ll do?” I said when he had finished.

  “It’ll go big, man,” he said. “It’ll be bigger than anything since Garvey.”

  “I wish I could be so sure,” I said. “I never saw Garvey.”

  “I didn’t either,” he said, “but I understand that in Harlem he was very big.”

  “Well, we’re not Garvey, and he didn’t last.”

&
nbsp; “No, but he must have had something,” he said with sudden passion. “He must have had something to move all those people! Our people are hell to move. He must have had plenty!”

  I looked at him. His eyes were turned inward; then he smiled. “Don’t worry,” he said. “We have a scientific plan and you set them off. Things are so bad they’ll listen, and when they listen they’ll go along.”

  “I hope so,” I said.

  “They will. You haven’t been around the movement as I have, for three years now, and I can feel the change. They’re ready to move.”

  “I hope your feelings are right,” I said.

  “They’re right, all right,” he said. “All we have to do is gather them in.”

  THE evening was almost of a winter coldness, the corner well lighted and the all-Negro crowd large and tightly packed. Up on the ladder now I was surrounded by a group of Clifton’s youth division, and I could see, beyond their backs with upturned collars, the faces of the doubtful, the curious and the convinced in the crowd. It was early and I threw my voice hard down against the traffic sounds, feeling the damp coldness of the air upon my cheeks and hands as my voice warmed with my emotion. I had just begun to feel the pulsing set up between myself and the people, hearing them answering in staccato applause and agreement when Tod Clifton caught my eye, pointing. And over the heads of the crowd and down past the dark storefronts and blinking neon signs I saw a bristling band of about twenty men quick-stepping forward. I looked down.

  “It’s trouble, keep talking,” Clifton said. “Give the boys the signal.”

  “My Brothers, the time has come for action,” I shouted. And now I saw the youth members and some older men move around to the back of the crowd, and up to meet the advancing group. Then something sailed up out of the dark and landed hard against my forehead, and I felt the crowd surge in close, sending the ladder moving backwards, and I was like a man tottering above a crowd on stilts, then dropping backwards into the street and clear, hearing the ladder clatter down. They were milling in a panic now, and I saw Clifton beside me. “It’s Ras the Exhorter,” he yelled. “Can you use your hands?”