Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  “I can use my fists!” I was annoyed.

  “Well, all right then. Here’s your chance. Come on, let’s see you duke!”

  He moved forward and seemed to dive into the whirling crowd, and I beside him, seeing them scatter into doorways and pound off in the dark.

  “There’s Ras, over there,” Clifton cried. And I heard the sound of breaking glass and the street went dark. Someone had knocked out the light, and through the dimness I saw Clifton heading to where a red neon sign glowed in a dark window as something went past my head. Then a man ran up with a length of pipe and I saw Clifton close with him, ducking down and working in close and grabbing the man’s wrist and twisting suddenly like a soldier executing an about-face so that now he faced me, the back of the man’s elbow rigid across his shoulder and the man rising on tiptoe and screaming as Clifton straightened smoothly and levered down on the arm.

  I heard a dry popping sound and saw the man sag, and the pipe rang upon the walk; then someone caught me hard in the stomach and suddenly I knew that I was fighting too. I went to my knees and rolled and pulled erect, facing him. “Get up, Uncle Tom,” he said, and I clipped him. He had his hands and I had mine and the match was even but he was not so lucky. He wasn’t down and he wasn’t out, but I caught him two good ones and he decided to fight elsewhere. When he turned I tripped him and moved away.

  The fight was moving back into the dark where the street lights had been knocked out clear to the corner, and it was quiet except for the grunting and straining and the sound of footfalls and of blows. It was confusing in the dark and I couldn’t tell ours from theirs and moved cautiously, trying to see. Someone up the street in the dark yelled, “Break it up! Break it up!” and I thought, Cops, and looked around for Clifton. The neon sign glowed mysteriously and there was a lot of running and cursing, and now I saw him working skillfully in a store lobby before a red CHECKS CASHED HERE sign and I hurried over, hearing objects sailing past my head and the crash of glass. Clifton’s arms were moving in short, accurate jabs against the head and stomach of Ras the Exhorter, punching swiftly and scientifically, careful not to knock him into the window or strike the glass with his fists, working Ras between rights and lefts jabbed so fast that he rocked like a drunken bull, from side to side. And as I came up Ras tried to bull his way out and I saw Clifton drive him back and down into a squat, his hands upon the dark floor of the lobby, his heels back against the door like a runner against starting blocks. And now, shooting forward, he caught Clifton coming in, butting him, and I heard the burst of breath and Clifton was on his back and something flashed in Ras’s hand and he came forward, a short, heavy figure as wide as the lobby now with the knife, moving deliberately. I spun, looking for the length of pipe, diving for it and crawling on hands and knees and here, here—and coming up to see Ras reach down, getting one hand into Clifton’s collar, the knife in the other, looking down at Clifton and panting, bull-angry. I froze, seeing him draw back the knife and stop it in mid-air; draw back and stop, cursing; then draw back and stop again, all very quickly, beginning to cry now and talking rapidly at the same time; and me easing slowly forward.

  “Mahn,” Ras blurted, “I ought to kill you. Godahm, I ought to kill you and the world be better off. But you black, mahn. Why you be black, mahn? I swear I ought to kill you. No mahn strike the Exhorter, godahmit, no mahn!”

  I saw him raise the knife again and now as he lowered it unused he pushed Clifton into the street and stood over him, sobbing.

  “Why you with these white folks? Why? I been watching you a long time. I say to myself, ‘Soon he get smart and get tired. He get out of that t’ing.’ Why a good boy like you still with them?”

  Still moving forward, I saw his face gleam with red angry tears as he stood above Clifton with the still innocent knife and the tears red in the glow of the window sign.

  “You my brother, mahn. Brothers are the same color; how the hell you call these white men brother? Shit, mahn. That’s shit! Brothers the same color. We sons of Mama Africa, you done forgot? You black, BLACK! You—Godahm, mahn!” he said, swinging the knife for emphasis. “You got bahd hair! You got thick lips! They say you stink! They hate you, mahn. You African. AFRICAN! Why you with them? Leave that shit, mahn. They sell you out. That shit is old-fashioned. They enslave us—you forget that? How can they mean a black mahn any good? How they going to be your brother?”

  I had reached him now and brought the pipe down hard, seeing the knife fly off into the dark as he grabbed his wrist, and I raised the pipe again, suddenly hot with fear and hate, as he looked at me out of his narrow little eyes, standing his ground.

  “And you, mahn,” the Exhorter said, “a reg’lar little black devil! A godahm sly mongoose! Where you think you from, going with the white folks? I know, godahm; don’t I know it! You from down South! You from Trinidad! You from Barbados! Jamaica, South Africa, and the white mahn’s foot in your ass all the way to the hip. What you trying to deny by betraying the black people? Why you fight against us? You young fellows. You young black men with plenty education; I been hearing your rabble rousing. Why you go over to the enslaver? What kind of education is that? What kind of black mahn is that who betray his own mama?”

  “Shut up,” Clifton said, leaping to his feet. “Shut up!”

  “Hell, no,” Ras cried, wiping his eyes with his fists. “I talk! Bust me with the pipe but, by God, you listen to the Exhorter! Come in with us, mahn. We build a glorious movement of black people. Black People! What they do, give you money? Who wahnt the dahm stuff? Their money bleed black blood, mahn. It’s unclean! Taking their money is shit, mahn. Money without dignity— That’s bahd shit!”

  Clifton lunged toward him. I held him, shaking my head. “Come on, the man’s crazy,” I said, pulling on his arm.

  Ras struck his thighs with his fists. “Me crazy, mahn? You call me crazy? Look at you two and look at me—is this sanity? Standing here in three shades of blackness! Three black men fighting in the street because of the white enslaver? Is that sanity? Is that consciousness, scientific understahnding? Is that the modern black mahn of the twentieth century? Hell, mahn! Is it self-respect—black against black? What they give you to betray—their women? You fall for that?”

  “Let’s go,” I said, listening and remembering and suddenly alive in the dark with the horror of the battle royal, but Clifton looked at Ras with a tight, fascinated expression, pulling away from me.

  “Let’s go,” I repeated. He stood there, looking.

  “Sure, you go,” Ras said, “but not him. You contahminated but he the real black mahn. In Africa this mahn be a chief, a black king! Here they say he rape them godahm women with no blood in their veins. I bet this mahn can’t beat them off with baseball bat—shit! What kind of foolishness is it? Kick him ass from cradle to grave then call him brother? Does it make mahthematics? Is it logic? Look at him, mahn; open your eyes,” he said to me. “I look like that I rock the blahsted world! They know about me in Japan, India—all the colored countries. Youth! Intelligence! The mahn’s natural prince! Where is your eyes? Where your self-respect? Working for them dahm people? Their days is numbered, the time is almost here and you fooling ’round like this was the nineteenth century. I don’t understand you. Am I ignorant? Answer me, mahn!”

  “Yes,” Clifton burst out. “Hell, yes!”

  “You t’ink I’m crazy, is it c’ase I speak bahd English? Hell, it ain’t my mama tongue, mahn, I’m African! You really t’ink I’m crazy?”

  “Yes, yes!”

  “You believe that?” said Ras. “What they do to you, black mahn? Give you them stinking women?”

  Clifton lunged again, and again I grabbed him; and again Ras held his ground, his head glowing red.

  “Women? Godahm, mahn! Is that equality? Is that the black mahn’s freedom? A pat on the back and a piece of cunt without no passion? Maggots! They buy you that blahsted cheap, mahn? What they do to my people! Where is your brains? These women dregs, mahn! They bile wat
er! You know the high-class white mahn hates the black mahn, that’s simple. So now he use the dregs and wahnt you black young men to do his dirty work. They betray you and you betray the black people. They tricking you, mahn. Let them fight among themselves. Let ’em kill off one another. We organize—organization is good—but we organize black. BLACK! To hell with that son of a bitch! He take one them strumpets and tell the black mahn his freedom lie between her skinny legs—while that son of a gun, he take all the power and the capital and don’t leave the black mahn not’ing. The good white women he tell the black mahn is a rapist and keep them locked up and ignorant while he makes the black mahn a race of bahstards.

  “When the black mahn going to tire of this childish perfidity? He got you so you don’t trust your black intelligence? You young, don’t play you’self cheap, mahn. Don’t deny you’ self! It took a billion gallons of black blood to make you. Recognize you self inside and you wan the kings among men! A mahn knows he’s a mahn when he got not’ing, when he’s naked—nobody have to tell him that. You six foot tall, mahn. You young and intelligent. You black and beautiful—don’t let ’em tell you different! You wasn’t them t’ings you be dead, mahn. Dead! I’d have killed you, mahn. Ras the Exhorter raised up his knife and tried to do it, but he could not do it. Why don’t you do it? I ask myself. I will do it now, I say; but somet’ing tell me, ‘No, no! You might be killing your black king!’ And I say, yas, yas! So I accept your humiliating ahction. Ras recognized your black possibilities, mahn. Ras would not sahcrifice his black brother to the white enslaver. Instead he cry. Ras is a mahn—no white mahn have to tell him that—and Ras cry. So why don’t you recognize your black duty, mahn, and come jine us?”

  His chest was heaving and a note of pleading had come into the harsh voice. He was an exhorter, all right, and I was caught in the crude, insane eloquence of his plea. He stood there, awaiting an answer. And suddenly a big transport plane came low over the buildings and I looked up to see the firing of its engine, and we were all three silent, watching.

  Suddenly the Exhorter shook his fist toward the plane and yelled, “Hell with him, some day we have them too! Hell with him!”

  He stood there, shaking his fist as the plane rattled the buildings in its powerful flight. Then it was gone and I looked about the unreal street. They were fighting far up the block in the dark now and we were alone. I looked at the Exhorter. I didn’t know if I was angry or amazed.

  “Look,” I said, shaking my head, “let’s talk sense. From now on we’ll be on the street corners every night and we’ll be prepared for trouble. We don’t want it, especially with you, but we won’t run either …”

  “Godahm, mahn,” he said, leaping forward, “this is Harlem. This is my territory, the black mahn’s territory. You think we let white folks come in and spread their poison? Let ’em come in like they come and take over the numbers racket? Like they have all the stores? Talk sense, mahn, if you talking to Ras, talk sense!”

  “This is sense,” I said, “and you listen as we listened to you. We’ll be out here every night, understand. We’ll be out here and the next time you go after one of our brothers with a knife—and I mean white or black—well, we won’t forget it.”

  He shook his head, “Nor will I forget you either, mahn.”

  “Don’t. I don’t want you to; because if you forget there’ll be trouble. You’re mistaken, don’t you see you’re outnumbered? You need allies to win …”

  “That there is sense. Black allies. Yellow and brown allies!”

  “All men who want a brotherly world,” I said.

  “Don’t be stupid, mahn. They white, they don’t have to be allies with no black people. They get what they wahnt, they turn against you. Where’s your black intelligence?”

  “Thinking like that will get you lost in the backwash of history,” I said. “Start thinking with your mind and not your emotions.”

  He shook his head vehemently, looking at Clifton.

  “This black mahn talking to me about brains and thinking. I ask both of you, are you awake or sleeping? What is your pahst and where are you going? Never mind, take your corrupt ideology and eat out your own guts like a laughing hyena. You are nowhere, mahn. Nowhere! Ras is not ignorant, nor is Ras afraid. No! Ras, he be here black and fighting for the liberty of the black people when the white folks have got what they wahnt and done gone off laughing in your face and you stinking and choked up with white maggots.”

  He spat angrily into the dark street. It flew pink in the red glow.

  “That’ll be all right with me,” I said. “Only remember what I said. Come on, Brother Clifton. This man’s full of pus, black pus.”

  We started away, a piece of glass crunching under my foot.

  “Maybe so,” Ras said, “but I ahm no fool! I ahm no black educated fool who t’inks everything between black mahn and white mahn can be settled with some blahsted lies in some bloody books written by the white mahn in the first place. It’s three hundred years of black blood to build this white mahn’s civilization and wahn’t be wiped out in a minute. Blood calls for blood! You remember that. And remember that I am not like you. Ras recognizes the true issues and he is not afraid to be black. Nor is he a traitor for white men. Remember that: I am no black traitor to the black people for the white people.”

  And before I could answer Clifton spun in the dark and there was a crack and I saw Ras go down and Clifton breathing hard and Ras lying there in the street, a thick, black man with red tears on his face that caught the reflection of the CHECKS CASHED HERE sign.

  And again, as Clifton looked gravely down he seemed to ask a silent question.

  “Let’s go,” I said. “Let’s go!”

  We started away as the screams of sirens sounded, Clifton cursing quietly to himself.

  Then we were out of the dark onto a busy street and he turned to me. There were tears in his eyes.

  “That poor, misguided son of a bitch,” he said.

  “He thinks a lot of you too,” I said. I was glad to be out of the dark and away from that exhorting voice.

  “The man’s crazy,” Clifton said. “It’ll run you crazy if you let it.”

  “Where’d he get that name?” I said.

  “He gave it to himself. I guess he did. Ras is a title of respect in the East. It’s a wonder he didn’t say something about ‘Ethiopia stretching forth her wings,’ ” he said, mimicking Ras. “He makes it sound like the hood of a cobra fluttering … I don’t know … I don’t know …”

  “We’ll have to watch him now,” I said.

  “Yes, we’d better,” he said. “He won’t stop fighting … And thanks for getting rid of his knife.”

  “You didn’t have to worry,” I said. “He wouldn’t kill his king.”

  He turned and looked at me as though he thought I might mean it; then he smiled.

  “For a while there I thought I was gone,” he said.

  As we headed for the district office I wondered what Brother Jack would say about the fight.

  “We’ll have to overpower him with organization,” I said.

  “We’ll do that, all right. But it’s on the inside that Ras is strong,” Clifton said. “On the inside he’s dangerous.”

  “He won’t get on the inside,” I said. “He’d consider himself a traitor.”

  “No,” Clifton said, “he won’t get on the inside. Did you hear how he was talking? Did you hear what he was saying?”

  “I heard him, sure,” I said.

  “I don’t know,” he said. “I suppose sometimes a man has to plunge outside history …”

  “What?”

  “Plunge outside, turn his back … Otherwise he might kill somebody, go nuts.”

  I didn’t answer. Maybe he’s right, I thought, and was suddenly very glad I had found Brotherhood.

  THE next morning it rained and I reached the district before the others arrived and stood looking through the window of my office, past the jutting wall of a building, and on bey
ond the monotonous pattern of its bricks and mortar I saw a row of trees rising tall and graceful in the rain. One tree grew close by and I could see the rain streaking its bark and its sticky buds. Trees were rowed the length of the long block beyond me, rising tall in dripping wetness above a series of cluttered backyards. And it occurred to me that cleared of its ramshackle fences and planted with flowers and grass, it might form a pleasant park. And just then a paper bag sailed from a window to my left and burst like a silent grenade, scattering garbage into the trees and pancaking to earth with a soggy, exhausted plop! I started with disgust, then thought, The sun will shine in those backyards some day. A community clean-up campaign might be worthwhile for a slack season, at that. Everything couldn’t possibly be as exciting as last night.

  Turning back to my desk I sat facing the map now as Brother Tarp appeared.

  “Morning, son, I see you already on the job,” he said.

  “Good morning. I have so much to do that I thought I’d better get started early,” I said.

  “You’ll do all right,” he said. “But I didn’t come in here to take up your time. I want to put something on the wall.”

  “Go right ahead. Can I give you a hand?”

  “No, I can make it all right,” he said, clambering with his lame leg upon a chair that sat beneath the map and hanging a frame from the ceiling molding, straightening it carefully, and getting down to come over beside my desk.

  “Son, you know who that is?”

  “Why, yes,” I said, “it’s Frederick Douglass.”

  “Yessir, that’s just who it is. You know much about him?”

  “Not much. My grandfather used to tell me about him though.”

  “That’s enough. He was a great man. You just take a look at him once in a while. You have everything you need—paper and stuff like that?”

  “Yes, I have, Brother Tarp. And thanks for the portrait of Douglass.”