The Outsider

by Richard Wright

  Sarah whispered to him, grinning and struggling to repress her laughter: “You’re something new, something special. You can go far with that face of yours. Nobody’ll think you’re up to anything.”

  Why do they have to crow so openly over me? Cross asked himself. Though he had agreed to give Gil’s offer a try, he could not avoid feeling cheapened at the way they boasted of how they had been wise enough to know a “good man” when they saw one. I’ll show ’em how good I am, Cross told himself.

  Sarah turned and looked at the clock on the mantel; then she and Bob looked at each other.

  “Where’s Jack?” Bob asked.

  “My dinner’s being ruined,” Sarah complained.

  “I say let’s eat,” Bob said defiantly. “He knew what time we were eating.”

  “Ditto,” said Sarah. “I don’t like slaving over a hot stove cooking a good meal and letting it get cold. That Jack Hilton’s always doing that. Who does he think he is?”

  “He’s held up at a meeting,” Gil said.

  “Come on, folks,” Sarah called, beckoning. “Go into the dining room and sit down.”

  Cross detected in Bob a feeling of hostility toward the absent Jack Hilton and he wondered about it. He joined the others at the dinner table, but even the deliciousness of Sarah’s cooking could not banish his sense of their regarding him as a strange fish that they had hauled up out of the sea. Gil downed his food wordlessly, his attention far away. Eva gossiped with Sarah, and Bob ate lustily, now and again looking proudly at Cross. They were eating dessert when the doorbell rang.

  “That’s Jack,” Sarah said with disgust.

  “I’ll let ’im in,” Bob said, rising and going to the door.

  Cross heard Bob greet the new guest: “Hey, Jack! You’re late. We’re eating dessert.”

  There was a low rumble of voices in the hallway and then Cross saw a slender man of about thirty enter the dining room with his overcoat still on. Flakes of melting snow clung to his hat, and a faint haze of vapor, precipitated by the warm air of the apartment, rose from his clothing. His eyes were dark brown, limpid, deep-set, and stared almost unblinkingly. The face was emaciated, the lips thin and hanging slightly open; the mouth was wide, a little loose. He had a shock of blond hair and his skin was sallow. Under his arm he carried a roll of papers which was slightly damp from the weather outside and he held both of his hands, which had no gloves, clasped tightly in front of him, as though his strained nerves had to have something to hold onto for sake of support. Cross had the impression that the man was under severe nervous strain, and that perhaps a slight emotional push would set him going.

  No one save Bob had spoken to him and so far he had said nothing to anyone. All waited for him to speak. He glanced at Sarah and said dryly:

  “I’m sorry I couldn’t come in time to eat. But I was detained at the control commission.”

  Sarah forced a smile and mumbled: “That’s all right, Jack.”

  “The Party comes first,” Bob agreed.

  “Sit down and have a drink, won’t you?” Sarah asked him.

  “I don’t want a drink,” he said. “I can stay but a minute. In fact, I’ve come on an important errand to speak to Bob.”

  “We can go into the bedroom,” Bob suggested.

  “No. I can say it right here,” Jack Hilton said in hard, cold, precise tones.

  He paused and Cross noticed that Hilton’s shoes had cracks in them. The man’s feet must be frozen…

  “Bob Hunter,” Jack Hilton began in a tone that sounded as though he was declaiming a prepared speech, “the Party has decided that you must not proceed any further in your attempt to organize any cells in the Dining Car Waiters’ Union. The Party does not wish to see that task undertaken at this time. You must forth with desist from all and any activities in that direction. For further instructions, you will report to your Fraction Cell. Is that clearly understood?”

  The man’s voice had gradually risen to a high pitch of oratory before he had finished; Cross felt that the importance of the message did not justify such a method of delivery, but he sensed behind the manner of speaking an attempt to impose a respect for higher authority.

  “But, man,” Bob protested, “what are you saying to me? I’m working at it night and day.”

  “Then stop it!” The words shot from Hilton’s mouth.

  “But, Jack,” Bob yelled, “I already sent out the letters for a meeting—”

  “Then send out letters and cancel the meeting!” Hilton said.

  “But—Man, you don’t know what you’re doing! I declared myself to ’em in public as a Party member—”

  Hilton took a step closer to Bob, and, taking the papers he had held under his arm, he doubled them in his right fist and slapped them against his leg to underscore each word he spoke.

  “Hunter, when will you ever learn to respect a decision of the Party? You don’t discuss decisions of the Party. You obey them!”

  “But what am I gonna do?” Bob wailed. “I want to organize my union like the Party told me.”

  “The Party has altered its decision!” Hilton stated flatly.

  “Jack,” Sarah spoke in a low, calm tone of voice, “listen, this is not as easy as you think. Bob has exposed himself as a member of the Party in order to recruit for the Party. Now, if he drops this work, what is he to do? He can’t work for the union and he can’t work for the company…And now you’re telling him he mustn’t go on working for the Party—”

  “This has nothing to do with you” Hilton told Sarah. “This decision is between Hunter and the Party—”

  Sarah leaped from the table and confronted Hilton. “It has something to do with me!” she blazed. “Bob’s my husband, and what concerns him concerns me!”

  “Not in the Party it doesn’t,” Hilton said.

  “Then Bob’s not going to obey any such damned decision!” Sarah shouted. “You wanted Bob to organize the waiters on the dining cars. Now, he’s doing that. Then you say stop. Now, why, why?”

  “The Party is not obliged to justify its decisions to you or anybody,” Hilton said.

  “I’m gonna keep on organizing,” Bob said uncertainly to Hilton.

  “Then you will be disciplined,” Hilton said.

  “What discipline? What can you do to me?” Bob asked, his eyes wide with wonder and anxiety.

  “You can be expelled,” Hilton told him. “And the Party will blacklist you throughout the labor movement. The Party will kill you. You can’t fight the Party! Understand that?”

  There was silence. Cross looked about the dining room. Gil leaned forward, listening, sucking contentedly at his pipe, his elbows resting on the table. There was a quiet twinkle in his eyes as he looked from Bob to Hilton and back again, following their dialogue. Eva was pale, stiff, and seemed not to be breathing; her eyes were full of a look that seemed to be protest. Sarah’s eyes were blazing and her chest rose and fell rapidly; Cross could see the throbbing of a tiny vein in her neck. Bob stood bent forward a little, his lips hanging open, his eyes wide and glassy. His stance was a combination of subservience and aggression; it seemed that he was about to bow to Hilton’s demands and yet at the same time he could have been ready to leap forward and grab Hilton’s throat. Cross wondered if it occurred to Bob that he was trying to drag him into an inhuman machine like this…? Maybe Bob’s mind did not possess enough elasticity to bring such ideas to his consciousness…?

  “But what can I do?” Bob finally asked in a wail.

  Gil rose and walked around the table to Bob and pointed the stem of his pipe into Bob’s face.

  “You’re going to be a Bolshevik and obey the Party,” Gil spoke with jerky authority.

  “But my fellow workers’ll think I’m crazy if I change my mind like that,” Bob pointed out.

  “That does not matter,” Gil said. “You are an instrument of the Party. You exist to execute the Party’s will. That’s all there is to it.”

  “But I feel—” Bob began.r />
  “Goddamn your damned feelings!” Gil spat. “Who cares about what you feel? Insofar as the Party is concerned, you’ve got no damned feelings!” Gil paused a moment; there was a look of wild exasperation in his bulbous eyes. “Bob, there’s a hell of a lot you don’t understand. What do you think men like Molotov do when they get a decision? They carry it out! Do you think the Party exists to provide an outlet for your personal feelings? Hell, no! What do you think the Party would be if such happened? We are not Socialists…We are Communists! And being a Communist is not easy. It means negating yourself, blotting out your personal life and listening only to the voice of the Party. The Party wants you to obey! The Party hopes that you can understand why you must obey; but even if you don’t understand, you must obey. If you don’t, then the Party will toss you aside, like a broken hammer, and seek another instrument that will obey. Don’t think that you are indispensable because you’re black and the Party needs you. Hell, no! The Party can find others to do what it wants! Is this asking too much? No. Why? Because the Party needs this obedience to carry out its aims. And what are those aims? The liberation of the working class and the defense of the Soviet Union. The Party, therefore, does not and cannot ask too much of any comrade. It’s logical, is it not? The Party is conducting this fight on your behalf and you must fit into it. Is that clear?”

  Bob nodded his head affirmatively and then Gil turned and stared at Cross. And Cross felt that a better demonstration of what he was in for could not have happened even if it had been arranged.

  “Lane,” Gil said, “you are looking at a Party problem. Do you understand it?”

  “I understand it,” Cross said.

  “I must go,” Hilton said; he turned and without another word walked out of the room. No one had moved to open the front door for him; Cross heard it slam shut. He looked at Gil and was astonished to see Gil watching him and smiling.

  “Do you understand what I mean, Lane, when I say you can’t learn this out of books?”

  “Yes. But, listen, I see here two points of view. I see—”

  His eyes caught sight of a gesture of Gil’s hand, a motion that meant for him to remain silent; Cross knew that Gil did not want him to discuss Bob’s Party problem in front of Bob.

  “It’s late,” Gil exclaimed. “We must be going, Eva.”

  “Oh, dear, yes,” Eva said. She turned to Sarah. “Darling, thank you for the wonderful dinner.”

  “It’s nothing,” Sarah said; she could not lift up her eyes.

  Gil asked Cross, when he was close enough to him to talk in a whisper: “Can I give you a lift to 116th Street?”

  “Sure,” Cross said. He longed to talk to Bob, but felt that it would be better to do so out of the presence of Gil. He rose, burning with protest at what he had seen and heard.

  Bob pretended to be brave; he grinned, wagged his head, and crooned: “Boy, the Party’s tough, hunh? It’s a great Party—”

  “That’s the spirit,” Gil said, going for his overcoat.

  “I don’t like it,” Sarah said, taking a pile of dirty dishes into the kitchen.

  “She’ll be all right,” Bob sought to apologize for her.

  “I won’t be all right!” Sarah shouted at him, her face twisted with anger.

  “Darling, let’s go,” Eva said.

  Cross shook hands with Bob and went to the kitchen door to say good-bye to Sarah. The door was closed and when he pushed it open he saw Sarah sitting with her head bowed. Her shoulders were shaking; she was weeping. She had not heard him open the door, and Cross closed it softly and joined the others. He followed Gil and Eva silently down the stairs to the street. Not a word was spoken until they had all gotten into the car and were rolling over the lumpy drifts of snow. Cross was next to Eva and his nostrils were full of the delicate perfume that she wore. He stared straight ahead of him, feeling that his life had at last touched something that stirred him to his depths…He was not angry or outraged, just deeply thoughtful, full of wonder. He had witnessed a scene of naked force in which obedience had been exacted through fear and the intensity of the emotions involved shook him.

  “Well, what are your impressions, Lionel?” Gil asked, smiling and looking ahead of him.

  “It’s interesting,” Cross said; he did not want to talk now.

  “Is that all?” Gil asked, chuckling.

  “It’s impressive,” Cross conceded.

  “I didn’t expect you to see that tonight,” Gil said soberly. “I’m just wondering if you understand it correctly. If you got the right interpretation?”

  “I got the right one,” Cross said tersely.

  “You have a big future ahead of you,” Eva said in a neutral, far-away tone that made Cross wonder what she meant.

  “You’ll be all right,” Gil said.

  “Here’s 116th Street; you can drop me here,” Cross said, relieved.

  The car slowed and Gil and Eva looked solemnly at Cross.

  “Well, Lionel, have you changed your mind?” Gil asked.

  “Absolutely not!”

  “Then we can expect you?”

  “When do you want me?”

  “Tonight. Now. Tomorrow. This week…Whenever you want to come,” Gil said.

  “Give me the address,” Cross said.

  “It’s 13 Charles Street, second floor,” Gil said.

  “I’ll be there about ten in the morning,” Cross said. “I’ve one suitcase, that’s all.”

  “Right,” Gil said.

  “Good night, Lionel,” Eva said.

  Gil waved his hand and the car moved off through the dim, snowy streets. Cross stood a moment, looking at its red taillight disappear. He mounted to his room, undressed, and lay on his bed. There was a smile on his face as he stared up into the darkness. They think I’m a little child, he told himself. I don’t mind the way they act in organizing…I don’t mind the wild way they give out their decisions…I don’t even mind their self-righteousness…But that naked force…Why? At the mere recollection of Hilton’s biting tones, he sucked in his breath. They didn’t have to treat Bob that way…Bob’ll follow any strong person…You can take his hand and lead ’im…

  He sat on the side of the bed; sleep was far from him. “Once you get that kind of attitude structuralized in an organization that goes on from year to year, how can you ever get it removed…?” he asked out loud.

  Cross felt that he was at last awaking. The dream in which he had lived since he had fled Chicago was leaving him. The reality about him was beginning to vibrate: he was slowly becoming himself again, but it was a different self.

  Finally, toward dawn, he turned over on his side and slept like a rock for the first time in many weeks.

  BOOK THREE

  DESCENT

  For that which I do I allow not: for what I would, that I do not; but what I hate, that I do.

  —ST. PAUL

  CROSS WAS AWARE of every echo of meaning surrounding his decision to live with the Blounts. He had accepted their invitation in bad faith which was now almost a congenital condition with him; but he realized that his adversaries were also acting in bad faith, a bad faith of which they were cynically proud. Bad faith, though reprehensible and regrettable, was not unknown to Cross; not only had he been long guilty of it in his personal relations, but he was convinced that bad faith of some degree was an indigenous part of living. The daily stifling of one’s sense of terror in the face of life, the far-flung conspiracy of pretending that life was tending toward a goal of redemption, the reasonless assumption that one’s dreams and desires were realizable—all of these hourly, human feelings were bad faith. But when Cross saw bad faith being practiced as a way of life, when he saw men mobilizing the natural hopes and anxieties of other men for their own selfish ends, he became all but hypnotized by the spectacle.

  He had no illusions regarding the complexity of the situation into which he was voluntarily entering. His past life had prepared him for participating in such compounded duplicities. His t
emperament made him love to understand those who thought that they were misleading him and it was fun to use his position of being misled to, in his turn, mislead them into a position where they thought that he was misunderstanding them. He knew, of course, that such complicated games carried a risk of his misunderstanding those whom he was supposed to understand, but he was willing to shoulder such handicaps. Perhaps we might both misunderstand each other, he mused.

  Need for money was not pulling him into this. He had no hankering for publicity, for to be known might mean the return of Cross Damon from the grave, and that would blast his life anew. Also his was not the itch to right wrongs done to others, though those wrongs did at times agitate him. And, above all, he possessed no notion of personal or social wrongs having been done to him; if any such wrongs had existed, he felt fully capable of righting them by his own lonely strength and effort.

  It was an emotional compulsion, religious in its intensity, to feel and weigh the worth of himself that was pushing him into the arms of the one thing on earth that could transform his sense of dread, shape it, objectify it, and make it real and rational for him. Logic was guiding his sense of direction, but his emotional needs were dictating the kind of directions he chose.

  His affinities with the turbulent instincts of Gil and Hilton were undeniable; he was, in a manner, their brother, just as Houston was his. His difference lay in his intractability being at bottom sharper and more recondite. Too full he was of personal pride to regard himself as an exploited victim; his was not the demand that he be given his share of a mythical heritage. His was a passion to recast, reforge himself anew, and he was certain that Gil and Hilton had once in their lives felt what he was now feeling, that his reaching out for another pitch of consciousness had haunted them just as now it plagued him. But they had resolved their tangled emotions in the rigid disciplines of Communist politics, thereby ejecting from their hearts the pathos of living, purging their consciousness of that perilous subjective tension that spells the humanity of man. And now they were warring to slay in others that same agony of life that had driven them to the wall.