Invisible Man (51 page)

LET THERE BE LIGHT!

The whole scene quivered vague and mysterious in the green light, then the door closed and the sound muted down.

It was too much for me. I removed my glasses and tucked the white hat carefully beneath my arm and walked away. Can it be, I thought, can it actually be? And I knew that it was. I had heard of it before but I'd never come so close. Still, could he be all of them: Rine the runner and Rine the gambler and Rine the briber and Rine the lover and Rinehart the Reverend? Could he himself be both rind and heart? What is real anyway? But how could I doubt it? He was a broad man, a man of parts who got around. Rinehart the rounder. It was true as I was true. His world was possibility and he knew it. He was years ahead of me and I was a fool. I must have been crazy and blind. The world in which we lived was without boundaries. A vast seething, hot world of fluidity, and Rine the rascal was at home. Perhaps
only
Rine the rascal was at home in it. It was unbelievable, but perhaps only the unbelievable could be believed. Perhaps the truth was always a lie.

Perhaps, I thought, the whole thing should roll off me like drops of water rolling off Jack's glass eye. I should search out the proper political classification, label Rinehart and his situation and quickly forget it. I hurried away from the church so swiftly that I found myself back at the office before I remembered that I was going to Hambro's.

I was both depressed and fascinated. I wanted to know Rinehart and yet, I thought, I'm upset because I know I don't have to know him, that simply becoming aware of his existence, being mistaken for him, is enough to convince me that Rinehart is real. It couldn't be, but it is. And it can be, is, simply because it's unknown. Jack wouldn't dream of such a possibility, nor Tobitt, who thinks he's so close. Too little was known, too much was in the dark. I thought of Clifton and of Jack himself; how much was really known about either of them? How much was known about me? Who from my old life had challenged me? And after all this time I had just discovered Jack's missing eye. My entire body started to itch, as though I had just been removed from a plaster cast and was unused to the new freedom of movement. In the South everyone knew you, but coming North was a jump into the unknown. How many days could you walk the streets of the big city without encountering anyone who knew you, and how many nights? You could actually make yourself anew. The notion was frightening, for now the world seemed to flow before my eyes. All boundaries down, freedom was not only the recognition of necessity, it was the recognition of possibility. And sitting there trembling I caught a brief glimpse of the possibilities posed by Rinehart's multiple personalities and turned away. It was too vast and confusing to contemplate. Then I looked at the polished lenses of the glasses and laughed. I had been trying simply to turn them into a disguise but they had become a political instrument instead; for if Rinehart could use them in his work, no doubt I could use them in mine. It was too simple, and yet they had already opened up a new section of reality for me. What would the committee say about that? What did their theory tell them of such a world? I recalled a report of a shoeshine boy who had encountered the best treatment in the South simply by wearing a white turban instead of his usual Dobbs or Stetson, and I fell into a fit of laughing. Jack would be outraged at the very suggestion of such a state of things. And yet there was truth in it; this was the real chaos which he thought he was describing --so long ago it seemed now . . . Outside the Brotherhood we were outside history; but inside of it they didn't see us. It was a hell of a state of affairs, we were nowhere. I wanted to back away from it, but still I wanted to discuss it, to consult someone who'd tell me it was only a brief, emotional illusion. I wanted the props put back beneath the world. So now I had a real need to see Hambro.

Getting up to go, I looked at the wall map and laughed at Columbus. What an India he'd found! I was almost across the hall when I remembered and came back and put on the hat and glasses. I'd need them to carry me through the streets.

I took a cab. Hambro lived in the West Eighties, and once in the vestibule I tucked the hat under my arm and put the glasses in my pocket along with Brother Tarp's leg chain and Clifton's doll. My pocket was getting overloaded.

I was shown into a small, book-lined study by Hambro himself. From another part of the apartment came a child's voice singing
Humpty Dumpty,
awakening humiliating memories of my first Easter program during which I had stood before the church audience and forgotten the words . . .

"My kid," Hambro said, "filibustering against going to bed. A real sea lawyer, that kid." The child was singing
Hickory Dickory Dock,
very fast, as Hambro shut the door. He was saying something about the child and I looked at him with sudden irritation. With Rinehart on my mind, why had I come here?

Hambro was so tall that when he crossed his legs both feet touched the floor. He had been my teacher during my period of indoctrination and now I realized that I shouldn't have come. Hambro's lawyer's mind was too narrowly logical. He'd see Rinehart simply as a criminal, my obsession as a fall into pure mysticism . . . You'd better hope that is the way he'll see it, I thought. Then I decided to ask him about conditions uptown and leave . . .

"Look, Brother Hambro," I said, "what's to be done about my district?" He looked at me with a dry smile. "Have I become one of those bores who talk too much about their children?"

"Oh, no, it's not that," I said. "I've had a hard day. I'm nervous. With Clifton's death and things in the district so bad, I guess . . ."

"Of course," he said, still smiling, "but why are you worried about the district?"

"Because things are getting out of hand. Ras's men tried to rough me up tonight and our strength is steadily going to hell."

"That's regrettable," he said, "but there's nothing to be done about it that wouldn't upset the larger plan. It's unfortunate, Brother, but your members will have to be sacrificed." The distant child had stopped singing now, and it was dead quiet. I looked at the angular composure ot his face searching for the sincerity in his words. I could feel some deep change. It was as though my discovery of Rinehart had opened a gulf between us over which, though we sat within touching distance, our voices barely carried and then fell flat, without an echo. I tried to shake it away, but still the distance, so great that neither could grasp the emotional tone of the other, remained.

"Sacrifice?" my voice said. "You say that very easily."

"Just the same, though, all who leave must be considered expendable. The new directives must be followed rigidly."

It sounded unreal, an antiphonal game. "But why?" I said. "Why must the directives be changed in my district when the old methods are needed --especially now?" Somehow I couldn't get the needed urgency into my words, and beneath it all something about Rinehart bothered me, darted just beneath the surface of my mind; something that had to do with me intimately.

"It's simple, Brother," Hambro was saying. "We are making temporary alliances with other political groups and the interests of one group of brothers must be sacrificed to that ot the whole."

"Why wasn't I told of this?" I said.

"You will be, in time, by the committee --Sacrifice is necessary now --"

"But shouldn't sacrifice be made willingly by those who know what they are doing? My people don't understand why they're being sacrificed. They don't even
know
they're being sacrificed --at least not by us . . ." But what, my mind went on, if they're as willing to be duped by the Brotherhood as by Rinehart?

I sat up at the thought and there must have been an odd expression on my face, for Hambro, who was resting his elbows upon the arms of his chair and touching his fingertips together, raised his eyebrows as though expecting me to continue. Then he said, "The disciplined members will understand." I pulled Tarp's leg chain from my pocket and slipped it over my knuckles. He didn't notice.

"Don't you realize that we have only a handful of disciplined members left? Today the funeral brought out hundreds who'll drop away as soon as they see we're not following through. And now we're being attacked on the streets. Can't you understand? Other groups are circulating petitions, Ras is calling for violence. The committee is mistaken if they think this is going to die down." He shrugged. "It's a risk which we must take. All of us must sacrifice for the good of the whole. Change is achieved through sacrifice. We follow the laws of reality, so we make sacrifices."

"But the community is demanding equality of sacrifice," I said. "We've never asked for special treatment."

"It isn't that simple, Brother," he said. "We have to protect our gains. It's inevitable that some must make greater sacrifices than others . . ."

"That 'some' being my people . . ."

"In this instance, yes."

"So the weak must sacrifice for the strong? Is that it, Brother?"

"No, a part of the whole is sacrificed --and will continue to be until a new society is formed."

"I don't get it," I said. "I just don't get it. We work our hearts out trying to get the people to follow us and just when they do, just when they see their relationship to events, we drop them. I don't see it."

Hambro smiled remotely. "We don't have to worry about the aggressiveness of the Negroes. Not during the new period or any other. In fact, we now have to slow them down for their own good. It's a scientific necessity."

I looked at him, at the long, bony, almost Lincolnesque face. I might have liked him, I thought, he seems to be a really kind and sincere man and yet he can say this to me . . .

"So you really believe that," I said quietly.

"With all my integrity," he said.

For a second I thought I'd laugh. Or let fly with Tarp's link.
Integrity!
He talks to me of
integrity!
I described a circle in the air. I'd tried to build my integrity upon the role of Brotherhood and now it had changed to water, air. What was integrity? What did it have to do with a world in which Rinehart was possible and successful?

"But what's changed?" I said. "Wasn't I brought in to arouse their aggressiveness?" My voice fell sad, hopeless.

"For that particular period," Hambro said, leaning a little forward. "Only for that period."

"And what will happen now?" I said.

He blew a smoke ring, the blue-gray circle rising up boiling within its own jetting form, hovering for an instant then disintegrating into a weaving strand.

"Cheer up!" he said. "We shall progress. Only now they must be brought along more slowly . . ." How would he look through the green lenses? I thought, saying, "Are you sure you're not saying that they must be held back?"

He chuckled. "Now, listen," he said. "Don't stretch me on a rack of dialectic. I'm a brother."

"You mean the brakes must be put on the old wheel of history," I said. "Or is it the little wheels
within
the wheel?"

His face sobered. "I mean only that they must be brought along more slowly. They can't be allowed to upset the tempo of the master plan. Timing is all important. Besides, you still have a job to do, only now it will be more educational."

"And what about the shooting?"

"Those who are dissatisfied will drop away and those who remain you'll teach . . ."

"I don't think I can," I said.

"Why? It's just as important."

"Because they are against us; besides, I'd feel like Rinehart . . ." It slipped out and he looked at me.

"Like who?"

"Like a charlatan," I said.

Hambro laughed. "I thought you had learned about that, Brother." I looted at him quickly. "Learned what?"

"That it's impossible
not
to take advantage of the people."

"That's Rinehartism --cynicism . . ."

"What?"

"Cynicism," I said.

"Not cynicism --realism. The trick is to take advantage of them in their own best interest." I sat forward in my chair, suddenly conscious of the unreality of the conversation. "But who is to judge? Jack? The committee?"

"We judge through cultivating scientific objectivity," he said with a voice that had a smile in it, and suddenly I saw the hospital machine, felt as though locked in again.

"Don't kid yourself," I said. "The only scientific objectivity is a machine."

"Discipline, not machinery," he said. "We're scientists. We must take the risks of our science and our will to achieve. Would you like to resurrect God to take responsibility?" He shook his head. "No, Brother, we have to make such decisions ourselves. Even if we must sometimes appear as charlatans."

"You're in for some surprises," I said.

"Maybe so and maybe not," he said. "At any rate, through our very position in the vanguard we must do and say the things necessary to get the greatest number of the people to move toward what is for their own good."

Suddenly I couldn't stand it.

"Look at me! Look at
me!"
I said. "Everywhere I've turned somebody has wanted to sacrifice me for my good --only
they
were the ones who benefited. And now we start on the old sacrificial merry-go-round. At what point do we stop? Is this the new true definition, is Brotherhood a matter of sacrificing the weak? If so, at what point do we stop?"

Hambro looked as though I were not there. "At the proper moment science will stop us. And of course we as individuals must sympathetically debunk ourselves. Even though it does only a little good. But then," he shrugged, "if you go too far in that direction you can't pretend to lead. You'll lose your confidence. You won't believe enough in your own correctness to lead others. You must therefore have confidence in those who lead you --in the collective wisdom of Brotherhood." I left in a worse state than that in which I'd come. Several buildings away I heard him call behind me, watched him approach through the dark.

"You left your hat," he said, handing it to me along with the mimeographed sheets of instructions outlining the new program. I looked at the hat and at him, thinking of Rinehart and invisibility, but knew that for him it would have no reality. I told him good night and went through the hot street to Central Park West, starting toward Harlem.