Going to Meet the Man (10 page)

My mouth was dry. I started to say something.

“I can’t have no colored people here,” she said. “All my tenants are complainin’. Women afraid to come home nights.”

“They ain’t gotta be afraid of me,” I said. I couldn’t get my voice up; it rasped and rattled in my throat; and I began to be angry. I wanted to kill her. “My friend rented this room for me,” I said.

“Well, I’m sorry, he didn’t have no right to do that, I don’t have nothin’ against you, but you gotta get out.”

Her glasses blinked, opaque in the light on the landing. She was frightened to death. She was afraid of me but she was more afraid of losing her tenants. Her face was mottled with rage and fear, her breath came rushed and little bits of spittle gathered at the edges of her mouth; her breath smelled bad, like rotting hamburger on a July day.

“You can’t put me out,” I said. “This room was rented in my name.” I started to close the door, as though the matter was finished: “I live here, see, this is my room, you can’t put me out.”

“You get outa my house!” she screamed. “I got the right to know who’s in my house! This is a white neighborhood, I don’t rent to colored people. Why don’t you go on uptown, like you belong?”

“I can’t stand niggers,” I told her. I started to close the door again but she moved and stuck her foot in the way. I wanted to kill her, I watched her stupid, wrinkled frightened white face and I wanted to take a club, a hatchet, and bring it down with all my weight, splitting her skull down the middle where she parted her iron-grey hair.

“Get out of the door,” I said. “I want to get dressed.”

But I knew that she had won, that I was already on my way. We stared at each other. Neither of us moved. From her came an emanation of fear and fury and something else. You maggot-eaten bitch, I thought. I said evilly, “You wanna come in and watch me?” Her face didn’t change, she didn’t take her foot away. My skin prickled, tiny hot needles punctured my flesh. I was aware of my body under the bathrobe; and it was as though I had done something wrong, something monstrous, years ago, which no one had forgotten and for which I would be killed.

“If you don’t get out,” she said, “I’ll get a policeman to put you out.”

I grabbed the door to keep from touching her. “All right. All right. You can have the goddamn room. Now get out and let me dress.”

She turned away. I slammed the door. I heard her going down the stairs. I threw stuff into my suitcase. I tried to take as long as possible but I cut myself while shaving because I was afraid she would come back upstairs with a policeman.

Jules was making coffee when I walked in.

“Good morning, good morning! What happened to you?”

“No room at the inn,” I said. “Pour a cup of coffee for the notorious son of man. I sat down and dropped my suitcase on the floor.”

Jules looked at me. “Oh. Well. Coffee coming up.”

He got out the coffee cups. I lit a cigarette and sat there. I couldn’t think of anything to say. I knew that Jules felt bad and I wanted to tell him that it wasn’t his fault.

He pushed coffee in front of me and sugar and cream.

“Cheer up, baby. The world’s wide and life—life, she is very long.”

“Shut up. I don’t want to hear any of your bad philosophy.”

“Sorry.”

“I mean, let’s not talk about the good, the true, and the beautiful.”

“All right. But don’t sit there holding onto your table manners. Scream if you want to.”

“Screaming won’t do any good. Besides I’m a big boy now.”

I stirred my coffee. “Did you give her a fight?” Jules asked.

I shook my head. “No.”

“Why the hell not?”

I shrugged; a little ashamed now. I couldn’t have won it. What the hell.

“You might have won it. You might have given her a couple of bad moments.”

“Goddamit to hell, I’m sick of it. Can’t I get a place to sleep without dragging it through the courts? I’m goddamn tired of battling every Tom, Dick, and Harry for what everybody else takes for granted. I’m tired, man, tired! Have you ever been sick to death of something? Well, I’m sick to death. And I’m scared. I’ve been fighting so goddamn long I’m not a person any more. I’m not Booker T. Washington. I’ve got no vision of emancipating anybody. I want to emancipate myself. If this goes on much longer, they’ll send me to Bellevue, I’ll blow my top, I’ll break somebody’s head. I’m not worried about that miserable little room. I’m worried about what’s happening to me,
to me
, inside. I don’t walk the streets, I crawl. I’ve never been like this before. Now when I go to a strange place I wonder what will happen, will I be accepted, if I’m accepted, can I accept?—”

“Take it easy,” Jules said.

“Jules, I’m beaten.”

“I don’t think you are. Drink your coffee.”

“Oh,” I cried, “I know you think I’m making it dramatic, that I’m paranoiac and just inventing trouble! Maybe I think so sometimes, how can I tell? You get so used to being hit you find you’re always waiting for it. Oh, I know, you’re Jewish, you get kicked around, too, but you can walk into a bar and
nobody
knows
you’re Jewish and if you go looking for a job you’ll get a better job than mine! How can I say what it feels like? I don’t know. I know everybody’s in trouble and nothing is easy, but how can I explain to you what it feels like to be black when I don’t understand it and don’t want to and spend all my time trying to forget it? I don’t want to hate anybody—but now maybe, I can’t love anybody either—are we friends? Can we be really friends?”

“We’re friends,” Jules said, “don’t worry about it.” He scowled. “If I wasn’t Jewish I’d ask you why you don’t live in Harlem.” I looked at him. He raised his hand and smiled—“But I’m Jewish, so I didn’t ask you. Ah Peter,” he said, “I can’t help you—take a walk, get drunk, we’re all in this together.”

I stood up. “I’ll be around later. I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry. I’ll leave my door open. Bunk here for awhile.”

“Thanks,” I said.

I felt that I was drowning; that hatred had corrupted me like cancer in the bone.

I saw Ida for dinner. We met in a restaurant in the Village, an Italian place in a gloomy cellar with candles on the tables.

It was not a busy night, for which I was grateful. When I came in there were only two other couples on the other side of the room. No one looked at me. I sat down in a corner booth and ordered a Scotch old-fashioned. Ida was late and I had three of them before she came.

She was very fine in black, a high-necked dress with a pearl choker; and her hair was combed page-boy style, falling just below her ears.

“You look real sweet, baby.”

“Thank you. It took fifteen extra minutes but I hoped it would be worth it.”

“It was worth it. What’re you drinking?”

“Oh—what’re you drinking?”

“Old-fashioneds.”

She sniffed and looked at me. “How many?”

I laughed. “Three.”

“Well,” she said, “I suppose you had to do something.” The waiter came over. We decided on one Manhattan and one lasagna and one spaghetti with clam sauce and another old-fashioned for me.

“Did you have a constructive day, sweetheart? Find a job?”

“Not today,” I said. I lit her cigarette. “Metro offered me a fortune to come to the coast and do the lead in
Native Son
but I turned it down. Type casting, you know. It’s so difficult to find a decent part.”

“Well, if they don’t come up with a decent offer soon tell them you’ll go back to Selznick.
He’ll
find you a part with guts—the very
idea
of offering you
Native Son!
I wouldn’t stand for it.”

“You ain’t gotta tell me. I told them if they didn’t find me a decent script in two weeks I was through, that’s all.”

“Now that’s talking, Peter my lad.”

The drinks came and we sat in silence for a minute or two. I finished half of my drink at a swallow and played with the toothpicks on the table. I felt Ida watching me.

“Peter, you’re going to be awfully drunk.”

“Honeychile, the first thing a southern gentleman learns is how to hold his liquor.”

“That myth is older than the rock of ages. And anyway you come from Jersey.”

I finished my drink and snarled at her: “That’s just as good as the South.”

Across the table from me I could see that she was readying herself for trouble: her mouth tightened slightly, setting her chin so that the faint cleft showed: “What happened to you today?”

I resented her concern; I resented my need. “Nothing worth talking about,” I muttered, “just a mood.”

And I tried to smile at her, to wipe away the bitterness.

“Now I know something’s the matter. Please tell me.”

It sounded trivial as hell: “You know the room Jules found for me? Well, the landlady kicked me out of it today.”

“God save the American republic,” Ida said. “D’you want to waste some of my husband’s money? We can sue her.”

“Forget it. I’ll end up with lawsuits in every state in the union.”

“Still, as a gesture—”

“The devil with the gesture. I’ll get by.”

The food came. I didn’t want to eat. The first mouthful hit my belly like a gong. Ida began cutting up lasagna.

“Peter,” she said, “try not to feel so badly. We’re all in this together the whole world. Don’t let it throw you. What can’t be helped you have to learn to live with.”

“That’s easy for you to say,” I told her.

She looked at me quickly and looked away. “I’m not pretending that it’s easy to do,” she said.

I didn’t believe that she could really understand it; and there was nothing I could say. I sat like a child being scolded, looking down at my plate, not eating, not saying anything. I wanted her to stop talking, to stop being intelligent about it, to stop being calm and grown-up about it; good Lord, none of us has ever grown up, we never will.

“It’s no better anywhere else,” she was saying. “In all of Europe there’s famine and disease, in France and England they hate the Jews—nothing’s going to change, baby, people are too empty-headed, too empty-hearted—it’s always been like that, people always try to destroy what they don’t understand—and they hate almost everything because they understand so little—”

I began to sweat in my side of the booth. I wanted to stop her voice. I wanted her to eat and be quiet and leave me alone. I looked around for the waiter so I could order another drink. But he was on the far side of the restaurant, waiting on some people who had just come in; a lot of people had come in since we had been sitting there.

“Peter,” Ida said, “Peter please don’t look like that.”

I grinned: the painted grin of the professional clown. “Don’t worry, baby, I’m all right. I know what I’m going to do. I’m gonna go back to my people where I belong and find me a nice, black nigger wench and raise me a flock of babies.”

Ida had an old maternal trick; the grin tricked her into using it now. She raised her fork and rapped me with it across the knuckles. “Now, stop that. You’re too old for that.”

I screamed and stood up screaming and knocked the candle over: “Don’t
do
that, you bitch, don’t
ever
do that!”

She grabbed the candle and set it up and glared at me. Her face had turned perfectly white: “Sit down! Sit
down!
”

I fell back into my seat. My stomach felt like water. Everyone was looking at us. I turned cold, seeing what they were seeing: a black boy and a white woman, alone together. I knew it would take nothing to have them at my throat.

“I’m sorry,” I muttered, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

The waiter was at my elbow. “Is everything all right, miss?”

“Yes, quite, thank you.” She sounded like a princess dismissing a slave. I didn’t look up. The shadow of the waiter moved away from me.

“Baby,” Ida said, “forgive me, please forgive me.”

I stared at the tablecloth. She put her hand on mine, brightness and blackness.

“Let’s go,” I said, “I’m terribly sorry.”

She motioned for the check. When it came she handed the waiter a ten dollar bill without looking. She picked up her bag.

“Shall we go to a nightclub or a movie or something?”

“No, honey, not tonight.” I looked at her. “I’m tired, I think I’ll go on over to Jules’s place. I’m gonna sleep on his floor for a while. Don’t worry about me. I’m all right.”

She looked at me steadily. She said: “I’ll come see you tomorrow?”

“Yes, baby, please.”

The waiter brought the change and she tipped him. We stood up; as we passed the tables (not looking at the people) the ground under me seemed falling, the doorway seemed impossibly far away. All my muscles tensed; I seemed ready to spring; I was waiting for the blow.

I put my hands in my pockets and we walked to the end of the block. The lights were green and red, the lights from the theater across the street exploded blue and yellow, off and on.

“Peter?”

“Yes?”

“I’ll see you tomorrow?”

“Yeah. Come by Jules’s. I’ll wait for you.”

“Goodnight, darling.”

“Goodnight.”

I started to walk away. I felt her eyes on my back. I kicked a bottle-top on the sidewalk.

God save the American republic.

I dropped into the subway and got on an uptown train, not knowing where it was going and not caring. Anonymous, islanded people surrounded me, behind newspapers, behind make-up, fat, fleshy masks and flat eyes. I watched the empty faces. (No one looked at me.) I looked at the ads, unreal women and pink-cheeked men selling cigarettes, candy, shaving cream, nightgowns, chewing gum, movies, sex; sex without organs, drier than sand and more secret than death. The train
stopped. A white boy and a white girl got on. She was nice, short, svelte. Nice legs. She was hanging on his arm. He was the football type, blond, ruddy. They were dressed in summer clothes. The wind from the doors blew her print dress. She squealed, holding the dress at the knees and giggled and looked at him. He said something I didn’t catch and she looked at me and the smile died. She stood so that she faced him and had her back to me. I looked back at the ads. Then I hated them. I wanted to do something to make them hurt, something that would crack the pink-cheeked mask. The white boy and I did not look at each other again. They got off at the next stop.