The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  Cross had had the illusion of feeling at home with these outsiders, but now he felt himself being pushed more than ever into that position where he looked at others as though they were not human. He could have waved his hand and blotted them from existence with no more regret of taking human lives than if he had swatted a couple of insects. Why could he never make others realize how dangerous it was for them to make him feel like this? He lowered his eyes and stared at them, a tight smile hovering on his lips. He trembled to do something, but he clamped his teeth and reined himself in. He knew that he had the kind of face that would always look much younger than his age, but never in his life had another person grabbed hold of that face with their bare hands and made blatant fun of it. What kind of life had Sarah lived that made it possible for her to laugh so openly at him? Pity for her came into his mind, but he banished it, realizing that it was hard to hold pity for someone who most likely did not want it.

  Sarah’s breasts heaved and tears rolled down her cheeks; and Bob, more restrained—maybe because he had worked around whites and had learned more fear than Sarah—laughed a moment and, seeing that Cross was not angry enough to resort to action, started to laugh again, more uproariously than before, beating his palms against the walls of the hallway and stomping his feet on the floor.

  “Okay,” Cross said finally. “Maybe I look funny to you.”

  “Naw—You ain’t funny!” Sarah spluttered. “You’re just out of this world—And you want to be a Bolshevik! Why, child, they’ll eat you for dessert!”

  She could laugh no more; in fact, she had laughed so hard that her lips hung open and she breathed orgiastically. Bob stood before Cross, both of his hands resting lightly on Cross’s shoulders to show that Cross must not be angry, and he laughed with such a wide mouth that Cross could see the back of his red throat.

  “Sarah—stop it! You’re killing me!” Bob moaned.

  Cross sank into a chair and stared at a print of the Moscow Subway that hung on the wall. He had conquered his impulse to anger now; he did not respect them enough to be angry. In his eyes their value as human beings had gone; if they existed, all right; if they did not exist, that was all right too…

  “Okay. Don’t you think I deserve a drink for all that?” he asked them in tones of mild reproof.

  “All right, honey,” Sarah said at last. “I’m gonna show you my heart’s in the right place. I’m gonna give you a whole glass of whiskey—You had whiskey before, ain’t you?”

  “You’d be surprised,” Cross told her.

  “Know one thing,” Sarah said, pouring whiskey into a tumbler. “I’m laughing, but I wonder about you—”

  “Why?” Cross asked.

  “I see now how Bob made a mistake to trust you on that train,” Sarah said soberly. “But I wouldn’t’ve trusted you. No, sir! That nice suit you got on, that nylon shirt, that woolen handmade tie—all that don’t mean nothing to me. I’d trust that face of yours as far as I could throw an elephant, and you know that ain’t far! What you reckon the Communists gonna make out of you?”

  “I don’t know,” Cross answered.

  He understood now. Sarah and Bob felt that Communists ought to look like Communists; that is, ragged, desperate, with an air of something slightly crazy. Of course, there were exceptions: white men of cold, sharp minds who sat in dim offices and who ran things, the intellectuals. But Sarah and Bob never expected to see a black intellectual and did not know one when they saw one.

  “When did you join the colored race?” Sarah asked, sniggling.

  “I never joined,” Cross said.

  Sarah went off into the kitchen, shaking with laughter. Bob stood near him and kept his right hand on Cross’s shoulder. Cross took a long swig from the tumbler; he needed it.

  “Don’t be mad, man,” Bob said. “If we laugh at you, it’s ’cause we like you, see?”

  “I’m not angry,” Cross said in a far-away voice that made Bob sober quickly.

  The doorbell rang and Cross was glad. If white guests were arriving, Sarah and Bob would desist in their laughing at him. Repressing his chuckles, Bob went to the door.

  “Gil and Eva! Come in! I got somebody here I want you to meet,” Bob greeted his guests.

  A stolid white man and a tall, blonde white girl came in. Cross rose to meet them.

  “I’m Gilbert Blount,” the man said, extending his hand, holding a fixed smile on his face. The man’s eyes were hard, watchful, grey, and bulbous.

  “How are you, Mr. Blount?” Cross asked.

  “I’m Gil to my friends,” Blount said.

  “I’m Lionel,” Cross lied.

  “And I’m Eva,” the girl said and extended an incredibly soft, white hand.

  “Here’s something in here to wet your throats!” Bob called to them to come into the living room.

  It was clear that Bob intended to leave them to talk together and Cross sensed that the meeting had been arranged. What had Bob told Gil about him? Had he led Gil to believe that he had done some great stroke of racial retaliation against whites? It would be like Bob to do such. All right, he’d let these Communists look him over and he would look them over.

  But he did not like Gil; there was about the man, even before he had found more valid reasons for his aversion, a rigidity of bodily pose that irked him. Gil was thin without being wiry, tall without being big, aged without being old, and intellectual without partaking of the processes of thought. He spoke in a manner that seemed to indicate that he had difficulty getting the words out of his mouth. Life to Gil was a stubborn, humorless effort that revealed itself in the stiffness of his lips that barely moved as he spoke and a kind of mouthing of his huge teeth when he laughed, which was not often. And back of this was a kind of cold hunger in the man that Cross could not name, a waiting, calculating consciousness whose ends seemed remote.

  Gil caught Cross’s elbow in a firm grip and said: “Bob told me you were coming here tonight, and I’m glad you came. Whatever your background is, you can feel at home with us.”

  Cross smiled a smile that he hoped would be interpreted as gratitude. How quickly they work together, Cross thought with wonder. Gil had swallowed the lies he had palmed off on Bob and his reference to his background delighted him. What would Gil think if he really knew? Two strange backgrounds are meeting tonight, Cross told himself. I’m just as complicated as they are…

  “I’d like to talk to you,” Gil continued, guiding him into the living room. “Let’s sit over here.”

  Yes, they’ve discussed me and they’re losing no time. They feel that my being wanted by the police will make me rest my weary head on their red pillow…A slow tide of confidence and curiosity was seeping into Cross’s consciousness.

  “Sure. Whatever you like,” Cross said, allowing himself to be led to a sofa in the corner of the room. Gil was going to try to recruit him, all right. But this baby doesn’t know what he’s got hold of tonight, Cross mused ironically. I’ve got as many fronts as he’s got…

  Gil sat opposite Cross and Eva pulled over a chair and sat at the side of her husband. Bob came in and poured drinks, handed each of them a glass and left.

  “What are you doing now?” Gil asked him bluntly.

  Cross smiled and spread out his hands. “Frankly, nothing.”

  “How do you live?”

  “From hand to mouth,” he lied; he had almost seven hundred dollars in cash in his pocket.

  “Where do you live?”

  “On 116th Street in a rented room.”

  “Are you married?”

  “Well, I was once—”

  “That’s all right. We’re not prudes or moralists. That’s your business. I just wanted to know if you are free—”

  “I’m quite free,” Cross said readily. He doesn’t know how free I really am, Cross mused. If he knew how free I was, he’d jump out of his skin…

  He was not a little shocked at Gil’s colossal self-conceit. He acts like a God who is about to create a man…He has n
o conception of the privacy of other people’s lives…He saw Gil’s eyes regarding him steadily, coolly, as though Gil was already seeing to what use his life could be put.

  “You don’t mind my questioning you like this, do you?” Gil asked with a cold smile.

  “No. Why should I?” Cross lied with friendly unctuousness.

  “We Communists do not admit any subjectivity in human life,” Gil said with a slow, even smile, as though proud that he could utter such a horrible statement with such lightmindedness.

  “I see,” Cross said, striving to keep his voice neutral.

  He was seething with resentment at Gil’s effrontery. Who in hell does he think he is? He had to brace himself to keep from taking issue not only with Gil’s statement but with the whole attitude toward life implied in it. Cross felt himself slowly coming awake, feeling the real world about him. Here was a challenge the measure of which might meet his needs…Keep still, he told himself.

  “Do you know anything about the revolutionary movement?”

  “I know it sketchily in general outline, from 1917 onwards—”

  “Where did you pick it up?”

  “From books, of course. What do you think?” Cross had difficulty keeping irritation out of his voice.

  “Accounts written by counter-revolutionary historians, no doubt,” Gil pronounced placidly. He brought out his pipe and began to fill it leisurely with an aromatic tobacco.

  Cross had come by his account of the Russian Revolution from the pens of Russian Bolsheviks themselves, but he did not bother to correct Gil’s assumption. He sensed that accuracy was not the point here. Gil was trying to impress him, not with learning, but with some attitude of scorn so deep that argument was futile against it. Instead, he took advantage of Gil’s silence to observe Eva who sat with her shapely nyloned knees close together and regarded him with wide, enigmatic eyes. When his gaze met hers, she smiled and looked off. She seemed tense, yet rigidly contained. She was a fragile girl of about twenty-four; her attitude was so distracted that one could feel that she would never speak frankly what was really on her mind. Despite this, she seemed kind, impulsive. Her eyes were a clear hazel; her nose small and straight; and her mouth, which was only slightly rouged, was almost severe in its sharpness. The overall aspect of her face, despite the shadow of a smile that flitted over it now and then, was one of tortured, organized concentration. Cross wondered how on earth had she come to be married to a coarse, inhuman character like Blount. Cross now shifted his gaze to Gil and was chagrined to find that Gil had been observing his observation of Eva. Gil smiled tolerantly and Cross found himself boiling with rage. He thinks I’ve never met a white girl before…

  Something decisive was transpiring in him regarding Gil. He knew that Gil did not take his inner life into account and he felt compelled to do the same with Gil. This damn thing’s catching, he told himself. You have to descend to their level if you are to deal with them…There’s no other way out…But he really liked this; there was an absoluteness about it that appealed to him, excited him. To grapple with Gil would involve a total mobilization of all the resources of his personality, and the conflict would be religious in its intensity.

  “What do you think of the position of the Communist Party on the Negro Question?” Gil asked him.

  “I know nothing concrete about the Communist position on the Negro,” Cross replied. “I know that you fight for Negro rights—”

  “I’m surprised,” Gil said rudely, ignoring what Cross had been about to say. “How can a man of your intelligence afford not to know the most important contribution on the Negro question that has yet been made?”

  “Look, Gil,” Cross said in spite of himself; he had not met this provocative kind of argument before and he felt a desire to plead extenuating circumstances. “I’ve not come across this question in a way that would make me want to go into it that deeply. I’m twenty-six years old and I’ve not paid much attention to politics.”

  “The whole of human life is politics, from the cradle to the grave,” Gil said, sweeping Cross’s explanation into a heap of dust. “For those who don’t know this, so much the worse for them. In England and Germany the ruling classes start training their future rulers when they are mere boys. The Party does the same. That’s why Communists have something to say about what happens on this earth. Men are not born masters; they are made into masters. We Communists understand that. And, my friend, it’s time that you understood it too. History will not respect you nor forgive you for not knowing it. How can you sit there and be indifferent to the forces that shape and control your destiny? It’s your job to find out how this world is run, Lionel. What do you know about dialectical materialism?”

  Cross knew a little about the theory, but he knew that his scanty knowledge would never satisfy Gil, so he answered: “Nothing.”

  “Too bad for you,” Gil said; there was no pity in his voice; he spoke as though a man as ignorant as Cross did not deserve to live.

  Cross looked at Eva whose eyes flitted at once from his face. He clenched his teeth to keep down his anger. His feelings were bridling so that he found himself picking nervously at his lips with his fingernails. Goddamn this cool, brash man who, though in a different way, was treating him as Bob and Sarah had. How easily he could kill Gil with no regret; Gil was making him feel that he was his enemy, not his personal enemy, but his enemy in general and in principle. And at the moment he could think of no words that he could ever muster that would convey to Gil the depth of his rejection of him. Cross recalled that he had once wished to be a rock that could feel nothing; well, he had met a man who had apparently tried to turn himself into one…

  Bob passed the open door, poked his head in, grinned, and asked: “Everything’s all right?”

  “We’re doing all right,” Gil told Bob.

  You conceited sonofabitch, Cross told Gil in his mind.

  Gil leaned back and stared at the ceiling, puffing gently at his pipe. Yes, they are definitely trying to recruit me, Cross mused. But I need them, just as much as they need me…Then, why not? He could always leave them when he wanted to, couldn’t he? And in the meanwhile he would have a chance to establish a new base, a new set of friends…As Cross waited on Gil to speak, he did not let his facial expression betray his acute consciousness of Gil’s consciousness; through it all he sat listening with a soft, ambiguous smile. But could he, even for the sake of his own selfish ends, stomach this preposterous Gil?

  “You must never be a victim,” Eva said, stressing the word “victim”.

  Cross loved her for saying it so sweetly, but hated her assumption of superiority. Yet, in the end it was the soft light in Eva’s eyes that made Cross say at last:

  “Well, Gil, we’re not all lucky enough to be able to keep abreast of events as well as you do.”

  “I’m not keeping abreast of events,” Gil corrected him with imperturbable aloofness. “You learn revolutionary logic by working in the revolutionary movement. Yes, Lionel, you need to stop throwing your life away in individual protests against your exploiters. Pool your strength with your natural allies; get in the revolutionary movement and soak up the lessons of history.”

  “I’d never try to act before knowing what I was about,” Cross told him.

  “Look, guy,” Gil took his pipe from his mouth and leaned and pointed the stem at him. “I like you, see? I’ve seen you for about ten minutes and I’m willing to take a chance on you. If I made you a gift, would you accept it?”

  Cross smiled and looked at him. These Communists mean business…

  “My mother used to tell me: ‘When somebody gives you something, take it; when somebody takes something away from you, cry’,” Cross said.

  Gil managed a wry smile, as though he did not approve of the folk-saying because it had not the sanction of Karl Marx; but Eva clapped her hands and laughed delightedly.

  “I want to send you to the Workers’ School,” Gil said, “at my own expense. But there’s only one catch t
o my offer…”

  “What’s that?”

  “If I stake you to study, then you’ll have to come and live with us.”

  “Why?” Cross asked, puzzled.

  Did this man want him in the same house with a girl as beautiful as Eva? He was crazy…

  “For many reasons,” Gil explained. “First, I’d like to keep track of your progress. Second, I want you to help me in a fight against racism which I’m going to wage in the building in which I live. Third, I want to demonstrate to a certain man, my landlord, who needs to learn a lot, that a Negro is not afraid to live in his building. My landlord’s a Fascist, an open Fascist! I want you to move into my apartment. We’ve a spare room.”

  Cross looked at Eva.

  “We’d be happy to have you,” she said; but she did not smile.

  Cross sighed. He had not expected this. Well, why not? This man thinks he is cold; well, I’m just as cold as he is…Maybe more…He is trying to use me, but I’ll make use of his trying to use me…

  “I like to gamble sometimes,” Cross said, rising. “I’m doing nothing with myself. I’ll take you up on this and see where it leads. About the Fascist, lead me to him. I’ve been accused of many things in my life, but no one has yet said that I was afraid.”

  Gil rose; he beamed for the first time since he had been in the room and he clapped his hand on Cross’s shoulder.

  “You’re a man in a million! That’s the spirit I like to see, boy!” Gil said with stiff, jerky lips.

  “The freedom of your people ought to be the most precious thing on earth to you,” Eva said solemnly.

  Smiling a smile that they thought was acquiescence but which was really irony, Cross stood to one side and watched them. As if at a signal, Bob and Sarah came into the room; there was no attempt to conceal the fact that all of them had discussed Cross previously and had decided to make the offer that Gil had tendered him. Bob was jubilant, slapping Cross on the back and telling him:

  “You ain’t got no worries now, boy. The Party’ll take care of you…From now on, the Party’s going to be your mother and your father.”