Invisible Man

by Ralph Ellison

  “Wine, thank you,” I said, finding the idea of milk strangely repulsive. This isn’t at all what I expected, I thought. She returned with a tray holding two glasses and a decanter, placing them before us on a low cocktail table, and I could hear the wine trickle musically into the glasses, one of which she placed in front of me.

  “Here’s to the movement,” she said, raising her glass with smiling eyes.

  “To the movement,” I said.

  “And to Brotherhood.”

  “And to Brotherhood.”

  “This is very nice,” I said, seeing her nearly closed eyes, her chin tilting upward, toward me, “but just what phase of our ideology should we discuss?”

  “All of it,” she said. “I wish to embrace the whole of it. Life is so terribly empty and disorganized without it. I sincerely believe that only Brotherhood offers any hope of making life worth living again—Oh, I know that it’s too vast a philosophy to grasp immediately, as it were; still, it’s so vital and alive that one gets the feeling that one should at least make the try. Don’t you agree?”

  “Well, yes,” I said. “It’s the most meaningful thing that I know.”

  “Oh, I’m so pleased to have you agree with me. I suppose that’s why I always thrill to hear you speak, somehow you convey the great throbbing vitality of the movement. It’s really amazing. You give me such a feeling of security—although,” she interrupted herself with a mysterious smile, “I must confess that you also make me afraid.”

  “Afraid? You cant mean that,” I said.

  “Really,” she repeated, as I laughed. “It’s so powerful, so—so primitive!”

  I felt some of the air escape from the room, leaving it unnaturally quiet. “You don’t mean primitive?” I said.

  “Yes, primitive; no one has told you, Brother, that at times you have tom-toms beating in your voice?”

  “My God,” I laughed, “I thought that was the beat of profound ideas.”

  “Of course, you’re correct,” she said. “I don’t mean really primitive. I suppose I mean forceful, powerful. It takes hold of one’s emotions as well as one’s intellect. Call it what you will, it has so much naked power that it goes straight through one. I tremble just to think of such vitality.”

  I looked at her, so close now that I could see a single jet-black strand of out-of-place hair. “Yes,” I said, “the emotion is there; but it’s actually our scientific approach that releases it. As Brother Jack says, we’re nothing if not organizers. And the emotion isn’t merely released, it’s guided, channelized—that is the real source of our effectiveness. After all, this very good wine can release emotion, but I doubt seriously that it can organize anything.”

  She leaned gracefully forward, her arm along the back of the sofa, saying, “Yes, and you do both in your speeches. One just has to respond, even when one isn’t too clear as to your meaning. Only I do know what you’re saying and that’s even more inspiring.”

  “Actually, you know, I’m as much affected by the audience as it is by me. Its response helps me do my best.”

  “And there’s another important aspect,” she said; “one which concerns me greatly. It provides women the full opportunity for self-expression, which is so very important, Brother. It’s as though every day were Leap Year—which is as it should be. Women should be absolutely as free as men.”

  And if I were really free, I thought, lifting my glass, I’d get the hell out of here.

  “I thought you were exceptionally good tonight—it’s time the woman had a champion in the movement. Until tonight I’d always heard you on minority problems.”

  “This is a new assignment,” I said. “But from now on one of our main concerns is to be the Woman Question.”

  “That’s wonderful and it’s about time. Something has to give women an opportunity to come to close grips with life. Please go on, tell me your ideas,” she said, pressing forward, her hand light upon my arm.

  And I went on talking, relieved to talk, carried away by my own enthusiasm and by the warmth of the wine. And it was only when I turned to ask a question of her that I realized that she was leaning only a nose-tip away, her eyes upon my face.

  “Go on, please go on,” I heard. “You make it sound so clear—please.”

  I saw the rapid, moth-wing fluttering of her lids become the softness of her lips as we were drawn together. There was not an idea or concept in it but sheer warmth; then the bell was ringing and I shook it off and got to my feet, hearing it ring again as she arose with me, the red robe falling in heavy folds upon the carpet, and she saying, “You make it all so wonderfully alive,” as the bell sounded again. And I was trying to move, to get out of the apartment, looking for my hat and filling with anger, thinking, Is she crazy? Doesn’t she hear? as she stood before me in bewilderment, as though I were acting irrationally. And now taking my arm with sudden energy, saying, “This way, in here,” almost pulling me along as the bell rang again, through a door down a short hall, a satiny bedroom, in which she stood appraising me with a smile, saying, “This is mine,” as I looked at her in outrageous disbelief.

  “Yours, yours? But what about that bell?”

  “Never mind,” she cooed, looking into my eyes.

  “But be reasonable,” I said, pushing her aside. “What about that door?”

  “Oh, of course, you mean the telephone, don’t you, darling?”

  “But your old man—your husband?”

  “In Chicago—”

  “But he might not—”

  “No, no, darling, he won’t—”

  “But he might!”

  “But, Brother, darling, I talked with him, I know.”

  “You what? What kind of game is this?”

  “Oh, you poor darling! It isn’t a game, really you have no cause to worry, we’re free. He’s in Chicago, seeking his lost youth, no doubt,” she said, bursting into laughter of self-surprise. “He’s not at all interested in uplifting things—freedom and necessity, woman’s rights and all that. You know, the sickness of our class—Brother, darling.”

  I took a step across the room; there was another door to my left through which I saw the gleam of chromium and tile.

  “Brotherhood, darling,” she said, gripping my biceps with her little hands. “Teach me, talk to me. Teach me the beautiful ideology of Brotherhood.” And I wanted both to smash her and to stay with her and knew that I should do neither. Was she trying to ruin me, or was this a trap set by some secret enemy of the movement waiting outside the door with cameras and wrecking bars?

  “You should answer the phone,” I said with forced calm, trying to release my hands without touching her, for if I touched her—

  “And you’ll continue?” she said.

  I nodded, seeing her turn without a word and go toward a vanity with a large oval mirror, taking up an ivory telephone. And in the mirrored instant I saw myself standing between her eager form and a huge white bed, myself caught in a guilty stance, my face taut, tie dangling; and behind the bed another mirror which now like a surge of the sea tossed our images back and forth, back and forth, furiously multiplying the time and the place and the circumstance. My vision seemed to pulse alternately clear and vague, driven by a furious bellows, as her lips said soundlessly, I’m sorry, and then impatiently into the telephone, “Yes, this is she,” and then to me again, smiling as she covered the mouthpiece with her hand, “It’s only my sister; it’ll only take a second.” And my mind whirled with forgotten stories of male servants summoned to wash the mistress’s back; chauffeurs sharing the masters’ wives; Pullman porters invited into the drawing room of rich wives headed for Reno—thinking, But this is the movement, the Brotherhood. And now I saw her smile, saying, “Yes, Gwen, dear. Yes,” as one free hand went up as though to smooth her hair and in one swift motion the red robe swept aside like a veil, and I went breathless at the petite and generously curved nude, framed delicate and firm in the glass. It was like a dream interval and in an instant it swung back and I sa
w only her mysteriously smiling eyes above the rich red robe.

  I was heading for the door, torn between anger and a fierce excitement, hearing the phone click down as I started past and feeling her swirl against me and I was lost, for the conflict between the ideological and the biological, duty and desire, had become too subtly confused. I went to her, thinking, Let them break down the door, whosoever will, let them come.

  I DIDN’T know whether I was awake or dreaming. It was dead quiet, yet I was certain that there had been a noise and that it had come from across the room as she beside me made a soft sighing sound. It was strange. My mind revolved. I was chased out of a chinkapin woods by a bull. I ran up a hill; the whole hill heaved. I heard the sound and looked up to see the man looking straight at me from where he stood in the dim light of the hall, looking in with neither interest nor surprise. His face expressionless, his eyes staring. There was the sound of even breathing. Then I heard her stir beside me.

  “Oh, hello, dear,” she said, her voice sounding far away. “Back so soon?”

  “Yes,” he said. “Wake me early, I have a lot to do.”

  “I’ll remember, dear,” she said sleepily. “Have a good night’s rest …”

  “Night, and you too,” he said with a short dry laugh.

  The door closed. I lay there in the dark for a while, breathing rapidly. It was strange. I reached out and touched her. There was no answer. I leaned over her, feeling her breath breezing warm and pure against my face. I wanted to linger there, experiencing the sensation of something precious perilously attained too late and now to be lost forever—a poignancy. But it was as though she’d never been awake and if she should awaken now, she’d scream, shriek. I slid hurriedly from the bed, keeping my eye on that part of the darkness from where the light had come as I tried to find my clothes. I blundered around, finding a chair, an empty chair. Where were my clothes? What a fool! Why had I gotten myself into such a situation? I felt my way naked through darkness, found the chair with my clothes, dressed hurriedly and slipped out, halting only at the door to look back through the dim light from the hall. She slept without sigh or smile, a beautiful dreamer, one ivory arm flung above her jet-black head. My heart pounded as I closed the door and went down the hall, expecting the man, men, crowds—to halt me. Then I was taking the stairs.

  The building was quiet. In the lobby the doorman dozed, his starched bib buckling beneath his chin with his breathing, his white head bare. I reached the street limp with perspiration, still unsure whether I had seen the man or had dreamed him. Could I have seen him without his seeing me? Or again, had he seen me and been silent out of sophistication, decadence, over-civilization? I hurried down the street, my anxiety growing with each step. Why hadn’t he said something, recognized me, cursed me? Attacked me? Or at least been outraged with her? And what if it were a test to discover how I would react to such pressure? It was, after all, a point upon which our enemies would attack us violently. I walked in a sweat of agony. Why did they have to mix their women into everything? Between us and everything we wanted to change in the world they placed a woman: socially, politically, economically. Why, goddamit, why did they insist upon confusing the class struggle with the ass struggle, debasing both us and them—all human motives?

  All the next day I was in a state of exhaustion, waiting tensely for the plan to be revealed. Now I was certain that the man had been in the doorway, a man with a brief case who had looked in and given no definite sign that he had seen me. A man who had spoken like an indifferent husband, but who yet seemed to recall to me some important member of the Brotherhood—someone so familiar that my failure to identify him was driving me almost to distraction. My work lay untouched before me. Each ring of the telephone filled me with dread. I toyed with Tarp’s leg chain.

  If they don’t call by four o’clock, I’m saved, I told myself. But still no sign, not even a call to a meeting. Finally I rang her number, hearing her voice, delighted, gay and discreet; but no mention of the night or the man. And hearing her so composed and gay I was too embarrassed to bring it up. Perhaps this was the sophisticated and civilized way? Perhaps he was there and they had an understanding, a woman with full rights.

  Would I return for further discussion, she wanted to know.

  “Yes, of course,” I said.

  “Oh, Brother,” she said.

  I hung up with a mixture of relief and anxiety, unable to shrug off the notion that I had been tested and had failed. I went through the next week puzzling over it, and even more confused because I knew nothing definite of where I stood. I tried to detect any changes in my relations with Brother Jack and the others, but they gave no sign. And even if they had, I wouldn’t have known its definite meaning, for it might have had to do with the charges. I was caught between guilt and innocence, so that now they seemed one and the same. My nerves were in a state of constant tension, my face took on a stiff, noncommittal expression, beginning to look like Brother Jack’s and the other leaders’. Then I relaxed a bit; work had to be done and I would play the waiting game. And despite my guilt and uncertainty I learned to forget that I was a lone guilty black Brother and to go striding confidently into a roomful of whites. It was chin up, a not too wide-stretched smile, the out-thrust hand for the firm warm hand shake. And with it just the proper mixture of arrogance and down-to-earth humility to satisfy all. I threw myself into the lectures, defending, asserting the rights of women; and though the girls continued to buzz around, I was careful to keep the biological and ideological carefully apart—which wasn’t always easy, for it was as though many of the sisters were agreed among themselves (and assumed that I accepted it) that the ideological was merely a superfluous veil for the real concerns of life.

  I found that most downtown audiences seemed to expect some unnamed something whenever I appeared. I could sense it the moment I stood before them, and it had nothing to do with anything I might say. For I had merely to appear before them, and from the moment they turned their eyes upon me they seemed to undergo a strange unburdening—not of laughter, nor of tears, nor of any stable, unmixed emotion. I didn’t get it. And my guilt was aroused. Once in the middle of a passage I looked into the sea of faces and thought, Do they know? Is that it?—and almost ruined my lecture. But of one thing I was certain, it was not the same attitude they held for certain other black brothers who entertained them with stories so often that they laughed even before these fellows opened their mouths. No, it was something else. A form of expectancy, a mood of waiting, a hoping for something like justification; as though they expected me to be more than just another speaker, or an entertainer. Something seemed to occur that was hidden from my own consciousness. I acted out a pantomime more eloquent than my most expressive words. I was a partner to it but could no more fathom it than I could the mystery of the man in the doorway. Perhaps, I told myself, it’s in your voice, after all. In your voice and in their desire to see in you a living proof of their belief in Brotherhood, and to ease my mind I stopped thinking about it.

  Then one night when I had fallen asleep while making notes for a new series of lectures, the phone summoned me to an emergency meeting at headquarters, and I left the house with feelings of dread. This is it, I thought, either the charges or the woman. To be tripped up by a woman! What would I say to them, that she was irresistible and I human? What had that to do with responsibility, with building Brotherhood?

  It was all I could do to make myself go, and I arrived late. The room was sweltering; three small fans stirred the heavy air, and the brothers sat in their shirtsleeves around a scarred table upon which a pitcher of iced water glistened with beads of moisture.

  “Brothers, I’m sorry I’m late,” I apologized. “There were some important last-minute details concerning tomorrow’s lecture that kept me.”

  “Then you might have saved yourself the trouble and the committee this lost time,” Brother Jack said.

  “I don’t understand you,” I said, suddenly feverish.

  �
�He means that you are no longer to concern yourself with the Woman Question. That’s ended,” Brother Tobitt said; and I braced myself for the attack, but before I could respond Brother Jack fired a startling question at me.

  “What has become of Brother Tod Clifton?”

  “Brother Clifton—why, I haven’t seen him in weeks. I’ve been too busy downtown here. What’s happened?”

  “He has disappeared,” Brother Jack said, “disappeared! So don’t waste time with superfluous questions. You weren’t sent for for that.”

  “But how long has this been known?”

  Brother Jack struck the table. “All we know is that he’s gone. Let’s get on with our business. You, Brother, are to return to Harlem immediately. We’re facing a crisis there, since Brother Tod Clifton has not only disappeared but failed in his assignment. On the other hand, Ras the Exhorter and his gang of racist gangsters are taking advantage of this and are increasing their agitation. You are to get back there and take measures to regain our strength in the community. You’ll be given the forces you need and you’ll report to us for a strategy meeting about which you’ll be notified tomorrow. And please,” he emphasized with his gavel, “be on time!”

  I was so relieved that none of my own problems were discussed that I didn’t linger to ask if the police had been consulted about the disappearance. Something was wrong with the whole deal, for Clifton was too responsible and had too much to gain simply to have disappeared. Did it have any connection with Ras the Exhorter? But that seemed unlikely; Harlem was one of our strongest districts, and just a month ago when I was shifted Ras would have been laughed off the street had he tried to attack us. If only I hadn’t been so careful not to offend the committee I would have kept in closer contact with Clifton and the whole Harlem membership. Now it was as though I had been suddenly awakened from a deep sleep.

  Chapter twenty

  I had been away long