The System of Dante's Hell

by Amiri Baraka

  46—You want immortality? Someone like you . . . You shd be happy you don’t sleep forever in the vestibule. That you don’t wipe your ass with newspapers or disappear into the marine corps. Damn. You know you cd turn up years later in a park studying drama. Thank whoever for that. You know it cd still happen!

  64—I think not. Hah, even this much concentration has made my stock rise. Certainly these trees’ shadows outside slant into my voice. That’s enough to etch with certainty my fingers on yr lives. Your endless movings thru halls. (Seriously) But I want more. I will spread over you like heaven & push black clouds thru your eyes.

  46—(Turns on stomach reading the book again) Perhaps, I am weak . . . but perhaps not.

  64—(Sitting on bunk begins to read book over 46’s shoulder. As they are reading 64 places his hands on the other’s shoulders, putting his face very close to the reader’s) What do you know? You sit right now on the surface of your life. I have, at least, all the black arts. The smell of deepest loneliness. (Moves his fingers slowly on the other’s shoulders) I know things that will split your face & send you wild-eyed to your own meek thoughts!

  46—Oh? I’m stronger than people think, I’m an athlete, and very quick witted. Ha, I’ll bet you wdn’t play the dozen with me. (Looking up)

  64—No . . . I wdn’t do that. You’d only make me mad and I’d have to kick yr ass. I want more than yr embarrassment! (He sprawls his legs across the bunk, still holding the other’s shoulders) You still have to leave the country. You’re not even out of high school yet. Paintings to see. Spend time in college. Spend money for abortions. Music to hear. Do you know about jazz yet?

  46—Jazz? Hell yes. What’s that got to do with anything?

  64—You don’t know yet, so why shd I bother. I don’t know really. I never will quite understand.

  But I do know you don’t see anything at all clearly. Who’s yr favorite jazz musician?

  46—Jazz at the Philharmonic. Flip Phillips. Nat Cole.

  64—Ha Ha . . . OK, sporty, you go on! Jazz at the Philharmonic, eh?

  46—Yeh, that’s right. I bet you like R & B & those quartets.

  64—You goddam right . . . and I probably will all my life. But that’s got nothing to do with anything. You’ll know that when you narrate my life. I’ll be a . . . . . foil! (Slides down to where he is lying parallel to 46, hands still around his shoulders)

  46—Bellyrub parties too.

  64—Yeh . . . I’m a bellyrub man! But that’s my circle, now. I’ve reached my tether. I am static & reflect it meaningfully. But you, my man, are still in a wilderness. Ignorant & weak. You can be taken. It’s 1947 and there are at least 13 years before anything falls right for you. If you live. (Laughs) I know names that control your life that you don’t even know exist. Whole families of definitions. Memories. (He moves his body onto the prone 46)

  Narrator—The mind is strange. Everything must make sense, must mean something some way. Whatever lie we fashion. Whatever sense we finally erect . . . no matter how far from what exists. Some link is made. Some blank gesture toward light.

  This is 1947 and all of you (out the flap) have not been born. Not yrselves I look at now. These ears, hands, lips of righteousness. This is a foetus drama. Yr hero is a foetus. Or if we are to remain academic . . . he is a man dying.

  46—You talk like a man with a paper ass. (Turns page)

  64—Hah, that’s all in your head, baby. I talk like Morton Street, Newark, where I live now. Three blocks down from Hillside Ave. I talk like a hippy dip negro with turned up shoes. I talk like where we are. My friend, my honorable poet, you hear, exclusively, what you want. (Lying on top 46, begins moving his hips from side to side)

  46—Are you Aubry?

  64—No . . . I told you to call me Herman. Herman Saunders, from Morton St. An underprivileged negro youth now in the boyscouts. You’re what’s known as a middleclass Negro youth, also in the boyscouts. You knew all that. (He loosens his belt and slips his trousers halfway down)

  46—Well that’s senseless enough. (Continues to read, but every now & again peering halfway over his shoulder at 64)

  64—Oh, don’t worry. Don’t worry. Hucklebuck Steamshovel blues. I Got. Deadeye, redeye, mean man, blues. I Got. Don’t worry. Just sit tight. (Laughs) Or no, you better not!

  46—You talk a lot!

  64—Right, baby. Right, I do. I Got. Blues. Steamshovel blues. (Begins loosening 46’s belt, tugging gently at his trousers) Blues. I Got. Abstract Expressionism blues. Existentialism blues. I Got. More blues, than you can shake your hiney at. (Tugs harder at trousers) Kierkegaard blues, boy are they here, a wringing and twisting. I even got newspaper blues. Or, fool, the blues blues. Not one thing escapes. All these blues are things you’ll come into. I just got visions and words & shadows. I just got your life in my fingers. Everything you think sits here. Out thru that flap, the rest of your life. Hee hee, you don’t know do you?

  46—Oh shudup, shudup, willya, for christ’s sakes keep your fat mouth quiet. (Now tries to turn to get up from under 64 but the other has him secured and is pulling his pants down past his buttocks)

  64—You name it, I’ve got it. Pure description, thass me. Pure empathy for you, cocksucker.

  46—What? What’re you trying to do? I never sucked no cock!

  64—You did . . . but you wdn’t want to know now. Ask your grandmother. I mean about all those beaches and songs. Singing for your supper. Hah. You don’t have any of the worries I got. I’m pure impression. Yeh. Got poetry blues all thru my shoes. I Got. Yeah, the po-E-try blues. And then there’s little things like “The Modern Jazz Blues.” Bigot Blues. Yourself, my man . . . your stone self. Talkin bout blues. There’s a bunch. I mean, the 3 button suit blues. White buck blues (short short blues, go thru me like wind, I mean, pure wind). I’m pure expression. White friend blues. Adultery blues (comeon like you some dumb turkey, cool as you comeon to us, like a stone turkey they had you in the new world). Got what? Yeh, like love, baby, like love. I had the Kafka blues . . . and give it up. So much I give up. Chicago, Shreveport, puerto rico, lower east side, comeon like new days. Sun everywhere in your eyes. Blues, come-on, like yr beautiful self. (Sinks down on boy, and 46 gives short sharp moan, head raising up quickly, then, looking over at 64, slumps head on elbows & closes eyes)

  Come on, man, wiggle a little. (46 begins to move with the other, who is on top of him, pushing up and down as fast as he can)

  64—Oh, yeh, I came. I came in you. Yeh. (Takes out penis and shows it to 46) What’s that make you think?

  46—(Still on stomach, looking blankly over his shoulder at 64) I donno what it makes me think. Only thing is I guess I’ll get pregnant.

  64—(Smiling) Probably . . . so what?

  46—How long will it take?

  64—Not long, a few days.

  46—(Drops head on arms looking off outside tent)

  64—Now don’t worry bout it too much. Take it slow.

  (Another youth comes into the clearing outside the tent. He goes to the tent and pushes the flaps back. Stands in doorway looking in)

  62—Otis. Oh yeh! (46 tries to pull up pants. 64 backs away slightly) Yeh. I know what you guys were doing and I want some. (He unzips his pants and takes out a short black crooked penis. 46 pulls up his trousers and sits up on edge of bunk)

  46—What the hell you talking about?

  62—You know what I’m talking about. Comeon (Waves penis around)

  64—Look Otis, why don’t you be cool, huh? Make it.

  62—Whaddayoumean? Make it? You goddam pig, you want all the ass for yrself, huh?

  46—Look Otis, forget it will you. Leave me alone, for christ’s sake! Will you just leave me alone.

  62—Leave you alone? Oh, yeh . . . now huh? After that goddam Herman bangs the shit out of you! Bullshit. I want some too.

  64—Go fuck yrself, you crooked dick muthafucka. Nobody want nonea your crooked ass peter. Go jerk off.

  62—You bastard. (Goes for 46
but 64 grabs him and they wrestle. 46 runs thru the flap)

  Narrator—It comes back. What you saw . . . of your own life. The past / is passd. But you come back & see for yourself.

  First Scene Again: Inside the tent. Night heavy in it. Four shapes covered on the bunks. Deep slow breath of sleep. A figure rises from a bed, and the moon throws his shadow twisted on the canvas. He moves across the floor, stopping at one of the bunks.

  64—(Whispering) Psst, hey. (Shaking 46) Wake up. Hey. (Looks over his shoulder at the other sleepers. 46 turns slow in sleep and 64 climbs into his bed)

  46—(Waking half-frightened) What? Who is it?

  64—(Grins . . . voice made low soothing) It’s me, Saunders. (He moves close to 46 and pushes himself onto the other’s hips)

  46—What do you want? (64 doesn’t answer, just leans back away from the other, taking off his shorts then pulling down the other’s pajama bottoms)

  64—Shh, don’t make so much noise. (He lies prone on 46. He begins slowly moving his hips) OOh, ooh, shit. (Makes noises thru his teeth)

  46—Is this all there is?

  64—Yes. And why do you let me do it?

  46—Because you say it’s all there is . . . I guess.

  (Now the other two figures under the tent rise from their bunks)

  Wattley—Hey what’s going on!

  Cookie—(Peering thru dark) Yeh, hell, what’s happenin captain?

  64—(Begins laughing . . . now making loud sounds for the others’ benefit) OOOOh yeh, get it, sweet cakes. Throw that ol nasty ass. OooO.

  Wattley—Oh, man . . . some free ass. I gotta get me some.

  Cookie—Yeh, hell, yeh. Hurry up, Herman. We gotta get some too. Uh-huh.

  64—(Still moaning and whining) Ok, Ok, don’t rush me. This is just gettin good.

  46—(Barely looks up at the others, turns his head looking out the tent) What other blues do you have, Herman? How many others?

  64—(Screaming with laughter) Oh, yes, yes, yes. I got all kinds, baby. Yes, indeed, as you will soon see. All kinds. Ooooh, thass elegant.

  (Wattley and Cookie crowd around the bed harassing 64 and screaming with anticipation)

  64—Goddamit don’t make so much noise!

  (Tent flap is pushed back and Otis–62 comes running in)

  62—Yeh, uhhuh, I knew it. I knew you’d be gettin off some more. Well, goddam it I’m gonna get somea this.

  (He rushes toward the others. There is a melee)

  46—But what kinds, Herman. What kinds?

  64—Oooh, baby, just keep throwin it up like that. Just keep throwin it up.

  THE NINTH DITCH: MAKERS OF DISCORD

  The Christians

  Next to nothing. Next to the street, from a window, under all the noise from radios, 9 Cliftons, slickheads in bunches wanting to beat punks up, cops whistling, my uncle coming in the room, changing his collars, putting on checkered coat & 3 pens in breast pocket. I’d be there shining one shoe, taking out the bellbottom “hip” suit (some girl at the Y, a Duke chick, first called it that. And my friends ridiculed it not realizing that I was moved away. Spirit hovered over the big king, the polacks, and Springfield Ave. I knew already how to dance, & hit Beacon St. a couple of times, late, when it was nice, and rubbed sweaty against unknown Negroes.

  My sister wd be somewhere in shadows pouting, looking down 4 stories at the chinese restaurant, & hump hatted cool daddies idling past in the cold. Snow already past our window quiet on the street. Friday, cool snow, for everyone cd run out new swag coats & slouch toward their breathing lives. And I’d be getting ready, folding my handkerchief, turning around toward the mirror, getting out the green tyrolean with the peacock band. Cool.

  I knew I’d be alone, or someone cd be picking me up in a car. (Later, or earlier, we’d crowd in Earl’s cadillac & he’d squirm thinking years later how to be an engineer, and confront me at my bohemian lady (who’d turned by now to elevator operator for a church. It shows what happens. I never got to fuck her either, just slick stammerings abt the world & Dylan Thomas & never got the Baudelaire book back either. But that’s over & not yet come to. A horizon to look both ways, when you stand straddling it.

  Belmont wd be jammed. And even in the winter sound trucks slashed thru the snow yowling blues. The world had opened and I stood in it smelling masturbation fingers. Slower, faster, than my time.

  The hill slanted & blind men came up cold, coming out of the valentine store pushing snuff under their lips. Guitars blistering, the three kegs liquor store sides pushed out, and red whores dangled out the windows.

  The bus came finally. 9 Clifton (Becky, her friend, sometimes Garmoney . . . and all the loud drooping-sock romeos from Central).

  Friday, it was mine tho. White people fleeing the ward (from where?). Parties I didn’t care about, old slick-haired cats from the south with thin mustaches.

  The bus stopped & I looked out the window, or counted buicks, or wondered about the sky sitting so heavy on the Krueger (pronounced Kreeger) factory. Down W. Kinney St., I knew I’d gotten out. Left all that. The Physical world. Under jews, for quarters, or whatever light got in. What talk I gave. My own ego, expanded like the street, ran under a bridge, to the river.

  But after, loot against my leg, I’d move up the hill, thru Doug-lass, & finally up on the hill (unless I was late, taking meat out of Steve’s window . . . then I’d pack into the Kinney).

  It was contrast, doing things both ways . . . & then thinking about it all shoved in my head, grinning at my lips, & hunting echoes of my thot.

  Central Ave., near my old neighborhood. (The Secret Seven, Nwk. St., The Boose Bros., Staring Johnny, Board, &c. yng pussies.)

  From there, get out, rush across the street, the 24 or 44 wd come/wild flashes then with the frontier coming up. East Orange. Talk to anybody, but not now this was like Oregon. Or at least an airport now showing up loaded.

  I barely drank tho, & it was the sharp air turned me on. Moving out, already. The project. But, again, alone.

  No. Nwk. was where the party was. Cookie’s place. (They were hip mostly because they were foreign, for that matter, myself too. No one knew who I was in the ward. A hero maybe, with foreign friends. Pretty cool. Some kind of athlete. So when I came to places like that (in time) I’d show up loose, rangy, very nice. Somedays wind swept thru my eyes and I’d stare off whistling. This Was An ATTRIBUTE.

  Al came down from there to go to Barringer also Carl Hargraves, Jonesy, most of Nat’s band & a lot of freckle-faced negroes in Nwk.)

  A balance could form then, could tear you up & set itself so soon before you. The snow increased. Made drifts and the wind was colder slammed snow against the streetlights.

  The party was downstairs in a basement, impressive for me because of Warren & my father’s real middleclass specters. Straight-haired lightskinned girls I met only at picnics. There were some here, & some reputations got to me peeling tenderness from my fingers.

  Slanted lights, Ivory Joe Hunter at Yvette’s earlier. But her people naturally I guess wd move in. Shadows were fascinating and I might have danced w/ some anonymous american sweating when I missed her feet. Stronger than I was. More sophisticated in that world, that dungeon of ignorance. Snow veiled the windows and the tin music squealed.

  Barringer people, north newark hoods (there were such, & I was, like the reputations, amazed. I loved the middleclass & they wd thrust pikes at me thru my shadows. Everybody rubbed stomachs & I stood around and wished everyone knew my name.

  The Dukes were killing people then. They were talked about like the State. Like flame against wood. They swooped in Attila & his huns. They made everything & had brown army jackets & humped hats like homburgs pulled down on their ears. One knew Garmoney well, one got killed i heard last month, one, a guy named rabbit who was lightweight golden gloves, loved my sister & turned up at my house for my father to scream at. We were rich I insist. (As Kenny or any of the hillside people cd tell you.)

  No Cavaliers made these th
ings, only, as I sd, occasionally Earl. All that had ended and I still didn’t know. They envied me my interests and slunk outside the windows weeping.