“But, Brother, didn’t we decide that the appeal had been improperly phrased?” a brother interrupted.
“Yeah, I know, but that wasn’t it …”
“But the committee analyzed the appeal and—”
“I know, Brothers, and I don’t aim to dispute the committee. But, Brothers, it just seems that way ‘cause you don’t know this man. He works in the dark, he’s got some kind of plot …”
“What kind of plot?” one of the brothers said, leaning across the table.
“Just a plot,” Wrestrum said. “He aims to control the movement uptown. He wants to be a dictator!”
The room was silent except for the humming of fans. They looked at him with a new concern.
“These are very serious charges, Brother,” two brothers said in unison.
“Serious? I know they’re serious. That’s how come I brought them. This opportunist thinks that because he’s got a little more education he’s better than anybody else. He’s what Brother Jack calls a petty—petty individualist!”
He struck the conference table with his fists, his eyes showing small and round in his taut face. I wanted to punch that face. It no longer seemed real, but a mask behind which the real face was probably laughing, both at me and at the others. For he couldn’t believe what he had said. It just wasn’t possible. He was the plotter and from the serious looks on the committee’s faces he was getting away with it. Now several brothers started to speak at once, and Brother Jack knocked for order.
“Brothers, please,” Brother Jack said. “One at a time. What do you know about this article?” he said to me.
“Not very much,” I said. “The editor of the magazine called to say he was sending a reporter up for an interview. The reporter asked a few questions and took a few pictures with a little camera. That’s all I know.”
“Did you give the reporter a prepared handout?”
“I gave her nothing except a few pieces of our official literature. I told her neither what to ask me nor what to write. I naturally tried to co-operate. If an article about me would help make friends for the movement I felt it was my duty.”
“Brothers, this thing was arranged,” Wrestrum said. “I tell you this opportunist had that reporter sent up there. He had her sent up and he told her what to write.”
“That’s a contemptible lie,” I said. “You were present and you know I tried to get them to interview Brother Clifton!”
“Who’s a lie?”
“You’re a liar and a fat-mouthed scoundrel. You’re a liar and no brother of mine.”
“Now he’s calling me names. Brothers, you heard him.”
“Let’s not lose our tempers,” Brother Jack said calmly. “Brother Wrestrum, you’ve made serious charges. Can you prove them?”
“I can prove them. All you have to do is read the magazine and prove them for yourself.”
“It will be read. And what else?”
“All you have to do is listen to folks in Harlem. All they talk about is him. Never nothing about what the rest of us do. I tell you, Brothers, this man constitutes a danger to the people of Harlem. He ought to be thrown out!”
“That is for the committee to decide,” Brother Jack said. Then to me, “And what have you to say in your defense, Brother?”
“In my defense?” I said. “Nothing. I haven’t anything to defend. I’ve tried to do my work and if the brothers don’t know that, then it’s too late to tell them. I don’t know what’s behind this, but I haven’t gotten around to controlling magazine writers. And I didn’t realize that I was coming to stand trial either.”
“This was not intended as a trial,” Brother Jack said. “If you’re ever put on trial, and I hope you’ll never be, you’ll know it. Meantime, since this is an emergency the committee asks that you leave the room while we read and discuss the questioned interview.”
I left the room and went into a vacant office, boiling with anger and disgust. Wrestrum had snatched me back to the South in the midst of one of the top Brotherhood committees and I felt naked. I could have throttled him—forcing me to take part in a childish dispute before the others. Yet I had to fight him as I could, in terms he understood, even though we sounded like characters in a razor-slinging vaudeville skit. Perhaps I should mention the anonymous note, except that someone might take it to mean that I didn’t have the full support of my district. If Clifton were here, he’d know how to handle this clown. Were they taking him seriously just because he was black? What was wrong with them anyway, couldn’t they see that they were dealing with a clown? But I would have gone to pieces had they laughed or even smiled, I thought, for they couldn’t laugh at him without laughing at me as well … Yet if they had laughed, it would have been less unreal—Where the hell am I?
“You can come in now,” a brother called to me; and I went out to hear their decision.
“Well,” Brother Jack said, “we’ve all read the article, Brother, and we’re happy to report that we found it harmless enough. True, it would have been better had more wordage been given to other members of the Harlem district. But we found no evidence that you had anything to do with that. Brother Wrestrum was mistaken.”
His bland manner and the knowledge that they had wasted time to see the truth released the anger within me.
“I’d say that he was criminally mistaken,” I said.
“Not criminal, over-zealous,” he said.
“To me it seems both criminal and over-zealous,” I said.
“No, Brother, not criminal.”
“But he attacked my reputation …”
Brother Jack smiled. “Only because he was sincere, Brother. He was thinking of the good of the Brotherhood.”
“But why slander me? I don’t follow you, Brother Jack. I’m no enemy, as he well knows. I’m a brother too,” I said, seeing his smile.
“The Brotherhood has many enemies, and we must not be too harsh with brotherly mistakes.”
Then I saw the foolish, abashed expression on Wrestrum’s face and relaxed.
“Very well, Brother Jack,” I said. “I suppose I should be glad you found me innocent—”
“Concerning the magazine article,” he said, stabbing the air with his finger.
Something tensed in the back of my head; I got to my feet.
“Concerning the article! You mean to say that you believe that other pipe-dream? Is everyone reading Dick Tracy these days?”
“This is no matter of Dick Tracy,” he snapped. “The movement has many enemies.”
“So now I have become an enemy,” I said. “What’s happened to everybody? You act as though none of you has any contact with me at all.”
Jack looked at the table. “Are you interested in our decision, Brother?”
“Oh, yes,” I said. “Yes, I am. I’m interested in all manner of odd behavior. Who wouldn’t be, when one wild man can make a roomful of what I’d come to regard as some of the best minds in the country take him seriously. Certainly, I’m interested. Otherwise I’d act like a sensible man and run out of here!”
There were sounds of protest and Brother Jack, his face red, rapped for order.
“Perhaps I should address a few words to the brother,” Brother MacAfee said.
“Go ahead,” Brother Jack said thickly.
“Brother, we understand how you feel,” Brother MacAfee said, “but you must understand that the movement has many enemies. This is very true, and we are forced to think of the organization at the expense of our personal feelings. The Brotherhood is bigger than all of us. None of us as individuals count when its safety is questioned. And be assured that none of us have anything but goodwill toward you personally. Your work has been splendid. This is simply a matter of the safety of the organization, and it is our responsibility to make a thorough investigation of all such charges.”
I felt suddenly empty; there was a logic in what he said which I felt compelled to accept. They were wrong, but they had the obligation to discover their mistake. Let them
go ahead, they’d find that none of the charges were true and I’d be vindicated. What was all this obsession with enemies anyway? I looked into their smoke-washed faces; not since the beginning had I faced such serious doubts. Up to now I had felt a wholeness about my work and direction such as I’d never known; not even in my mistaken college days. Brotherhood was something to which men could give themselves completely; that was its strength and my strength, and it was this sense of wholeness that guaranteed that it would change the course of history. This I had believed with all my being, but now, though still inwardly affirming that belief, I felt a blighting hurt which prevented me from trying further to defend myself. I stood there silently, waiting their decision. Someone drummed his fingers against the table top. I heard the dry-leaf rustle of onionskin papers.
“Be assured that you can depend upon the fairness and wisdom of the committee,” Brother Tobitt’s voice drifted from the end of the table, but there was smoke between us and I could barely see his face.
“The committee has decided,” Brother Jack began crisply, “that until all charges have been cleared, you are to have the choice of becoming inactive in Harlem, or accepting an assignment downtown. In the latter case you are to wind up your present assignment immediately.”
I felt weak in my legs. “You mean I am to give up my work?”
“Unless you choose to serve the movement elsewhere.”
“But can’t you see—” I said, looking from face to face and seeing the blank finality in their eyes.
“Your assignment, should you decide to remain active,” Brother Jack said, reaching for his gavel, “is to lecture downtown on the Woman Question.”
Suddenly I felt as though I had been spun like a top.
“The what!”
“The Woman Question. My pamphlet, ‘On the Woman Question in the United States,’ will be your guide. And now, Brothers,” he said, his eyes sweeping around the table, “the meeting is adjourned.”
I stood there, hearing the rapping of his gavel echoing in my ears, thinking the woman question and searching their faces for signs of amusement, listening to their voices as they filed out into the hall for the slightest sound of suppressed laughter, stood there fighting the sense that I had just been made the butt of an outrageous joke and all the more so since their faces revealed no awareness.
My mind fought desperately for acceptance. Nothing would change matters. They would shift me and investigate and I, still believing, still bending to discipline, would have to accept their decision. Now was certainly no time for inactivity; not just when I was beginning to approach some of the aspects of the organization about which I knew nothing (of higher committees and the leaders who never appeared, of the sympathizers and allies in groups that seemed far removed from our concerns), not at a time when all the secrets of power and authority still shrouded from me in mystery appeared on the way toward revelation. No, despite my anger and disgust, my ambitions were too great to surrender so easily. And why should I restrict myself, segregate myself? I was a spokesman—why shouldn’t I speak about women, or any other subject? Nothing lay outside the scheme of our ideology, there was a policy on everything, and my main concern was to work my way ahead in the movement.
I left the building still feeling as though I had been violently spun but with optimism growing. Being removed from Harlem was a shock but one which would hurt them as much as me, for I had learned that the clue to what Harlem wanted was what I wanted; and my value to the Brotherhood was no different from the value to me of my most useful contact: it depended upon my complete frankness and honesty in stating the community’s hopes and hates, fears and desires. One spoke to the committee as well as to the community. No doubt it would work much the same downtown. The new assignment was a challenge and an opportunity for testing how much of what happened in Harlem was due to my own efforts and how much to the sheer eagerness of the people themselves. And, after all, I told myself, the assignment was also proof of the committees goodwill. For by selecting me to speak with its authority on a subject which elsewhere in our society I’d have found taboo, weren’t they reaffirming their belief both in me and in the principles of Brotherhood, proving that they drew no lines even when it came to women? They had to investigate the charges against me, but the assignment was their unsentimental affirmation that their belief in me was unbroken. I shivered in the hot street. I hadn’t allowed the idea to take concrete form in my mind, but for a moment I had almost allowed an old, southern backwardness which I had thought dead to wreck my career.
Leaving Harlem was not without its regrets, however, and I couldn’t bring myself to say good-bye to anyone, not even to Brother Tarp or Clifton—not to mention the others upon whom I depended for information concerning the lowest groups in the community. I simply slipped my papers into my brief case and left as though going downtown for a meeting.
Chapter nineteen
I went to my first
lecture with a sense of excitement. The theme was a sure-fire guarantee of audience interest and the rest was up to me. If only I were a foot taller and a hundred pounds heavier, I could simply stand before them with a sign across my chest, stating I KNOW ALL ABOUT THEM, and they’d be as awed as though I were the original boogey man—somehow reformed and domesticated. I’d no more have to speak than Paul Robeson had to act; they’d simply thrill at the sight of me.
And it went well enough; they made it a success through their own enthusiasm, and the barrage of questions afterwards left no doubts in my mind. It was only after the meeting was breaking up that there came the developments which even my volatile suspicions hadn’t allowed me to foresee. I was exchanging greetings with the audience when she appeared, the kind of woman who glows as though consciously acting a symbolic role of life and feminine fertility. Her problem, she said, had to do with certain aspects of our ideology.
“It’s rather involved, really,” she said with concern, “and while I shouldn’t care to take up your time, I have a feeling that you—”
“Oh, not at all,” I said, guiding her away from the others to stand near a partly uncoiled firehose hanging beside the entrance, “not at all.”
“But, Brother,” she said, “it’s really so late and you must be tired. My problem could wait until some other time …”
“I’m not that tired,” I said. “And if there’s something bothering you, it’s my duty to do what I can to clear it up.”
“But it’s quite late,” she said. “Perhaps some evening when you’re not busy you’ll drop in to see us. Then we could talk at greater length. Unless, of course …”
“Unless?”
“Unless,” she smiled, “I can induce you to stop by this evening. I might add that I serve a fair cup of coffee.”
“Then I’m at your service,” I said, pushing open the door.
Her apartment was located in one of the better sections of the city, and I must have revealed my surprise upon entering the spacious living room.
“You can see, Brother”—the glow she gave the word was disturbing—“it is really the spiritual values of Brotherhood that interest me. Through no effort of my own, I have economic security and leisure, but what is that, really, when so much is wrong with the world? I mean when there is no spiritual or emotional security, and no justice?”
She was slipping out of her coat now, looking earnestly into my face, and I thought, Is she a Salvationist, a Puritan-with-reverse-English?—remembering Brother Jack’s private description of wealthy members who, he said, sought political salvation by contributing financially to the Brotherhood. She was going a little fast for me and I looked at her gravely.
“I can see that you’ve thought deeply about this thing,” I said.
“I’ve tried,” she said, “and it’s most perplexing—But make yourself comfortable while I put away my things.”
She was a small, delicately plump woman with raven hair in which a thin streak of white had begun almost imperceptibly to show, and when she reappeared
in the rich red of a hostess gown she was so striking that I had to avert my somewhat startled eyes.
“What a beautiful room you have here,” I said, looking across the rich cherry glow of furniture to see a life-sized painting of a nude, a pink Renoir. Other canvases were hung here and there, and the spacious walls seemed to flash alive with warm, pure color. What does one say to all this? I thought, looking at an abstract fish of polished brass mounted on a piece of ebony.
“I’m glad you find it pleasant, Brother,” she said. “We like it ourselves, though I must say that Hubert finds so little time to enjoy it. He’s much too busy.”
“Hubert?” I said.
“My husband. Unfortunately he had to leave. He would have loved to’ve met you, but then he’s always dashing off. Business, you know.”
“I suppose it’s unavoidable,” I said with sudden discomfort.
“Yes, it is,” she said. “But we’re going to discuss Brotherhood and ideology, aren’t we?”
And there was something about her voice and her smile that gave me a sense of both comfort and excitement. It was not merely the background of wealth and gracious living, to which I was alien, but simply the being there with her and the sensed possibility of a heightened communication; as though the discordantly invisible and the conspicuously enigmatic were reaching a delicately balanced harmony. She’s rich but human, I thought, watching the smooth play of her relaxed hands.
“There are so many aspects to the movement,” I said. “Just where shall we start? Perhaps it’s something that I’m unable to handle.”
“Oh, it’s nothing that profound,” she said. “I’m sure you’ll straighten out my little ideological twists and turns. But sit here on the sofa, Brother; it’s more comfortable.”
I sat, seeing her go toward a door, the train of her gown trailing sensuously over the oriental carpet. Then she turned and smiled.
“Perhaps you’d prefer wine or milk instead of coffee?”