The Sunlight Dialogues (53 page)

The Babylonian gods were, to ordinary perception, brute objects. Their physicality had no rational connection with their spirituality. Witness. For the ancient Jews, as for the Greeks, feeding the gods was a rational matter: it was the
scent
of the food which appealed to gods, they being less substantial than we are. So in Homer the emphasis on the smell of the offering. But in Mesopotamian culture, the smell was
purged!
The cella were fumigated, cleansed of all scent. In short, nothing ordinarily human was offered to the gods. It would be impolite, grotesque, and above all, irrelevant. What was offered was nothing more or less than an act, absolutely symbolic—if you wish. There was the world of matter and the world of spirit, and the connection between the two was totally mysterious, which is to say, holy. Were they wrong? Can you define the relationship between love and sex?
(Pause.) Can
you?

(Regular breathing on the tape.)

Or take politics. In politics the Babylonian would assert a close but mystical connection between rulers and the mumbling gods. He would make governing, laws, contracts, and the rest merely
practical matters,
but he would finally leave the welfare of the state to the ruler’s intuition—aided, of course, by the diviner’s reading of omens. I grant you, it’s obvious that the system didn’t work in ancient Mesopotamia—but compare the failure of Israel, where law was wholly rational, as no one has shown more clearly than Spinoza, in his
Tractatus Theologico-Politicus,
or whatever it’s called. I forget, for certain reasons. Just the same, the principle that a ruler’s great freedom and great responsibility make possible great wisdom, an ability to act flexibly, moment by moment, not on a basis of hard and fast principles but on a basis of action and intuitive reaction—is worth thinking about. But I’m getting off the track. I was saying (
Pause.)
I was saying … Ah! In ancient Mesopotamian politics, exactly as in ancient Mesopotamian religion, there’s a sharp distinction between the practical, that is, the physical, and the spiritual. The king rules, establishes simple laws and so on, but he judges by what we would call whim—though it isn’t whim, of course: it’s the whole complex of his experience and intuition as a man trained and culturally established as finally responsible. You see problems in that, I imagine.

(No answer.)

For God’s sake,
listen
to me. Do you see problems in that?

CLUMLY:
Problems.

SUNLIGHT
(impatiently):
Good. That’s better. Well you’re right, yes. I’m glad you pointed it out. Very interesting. Yes. It’s a system which can only work when the total population is small, and the troubles are trifling. A very good point. But the problem is not that the system is wrong, it’s that the mind of man is limited. Beyond a certain point, intuition can no more deal with the world than intellect can. We’re doomed, in other words. Do you follow me?—Wake up!!

CLUMLY:
Doomed!
(He sighs.)

SUNLIGHT:
Don’t go to sleep. You have no idea how little time we have, you and I.

CLUMLY:
I’m not—

SUNLIGHT:
You were, you were! I try like the devil to ignore it, but there it is, you were asleep. Well, all right. No time to go over it all again. Besides, you have your tape. But try to stay awake.
CLUMLY:
This is all … What are you doing? What the devil are you up to, bringing me here, ranting and raving, acting as—
SUNLIGHT:
Try to have faith.
CLUMLY:
Faith!

SUNLIGHT
(speaking rapidly)
: We’re wasting time. I wanted to talk to you about social progress.

CLUMLY:
You wanted—

SUNLIGHT:
Yes. All right. Take social progress. Listen now. Listen closely. One of the most remarkable differences between the Babylonian and the Hebrew mind is that the Babylonian places no value whatever on individual human life. Got that? Individual. Human.
Life.
Every Babylonian lives his life as fully as he can, but to the culture he is, himself, nothing, a unit, merely part of a physical and spiritual system. An atom. An instance. Compare Israel’s overwhelming concern with the individual accomplishment, the family name, the old man’s blessing. So what would the Babylonian say about civil rights? Pah, he would say. In other words, civil rights must work themselves out on their own, he would say—proceed by inevitable natural process at the usual gross natural cost in human lives. A sickness cures itself. So in physical medicine. The Babylonians
had
no science of medicine, at least nothing we’d recognize. Medicine is a half-Greek, half-Judeo-Christian product, that is, half result of pagan hedonism, half result of the Judeo-Christian notion of a reasonable God. But I’m obscuring what I mean, losing the thread again. I was saying …

Listen, I used to be involved with civil rights. Right up to my ears. I was in CORE in San Francisco when they decided to segregate it. That’s right. Man named Breely—Bill Breely. Dapper guy, handsome, big boss. Had these white guys, half-crazy they were, I swear it—big pasty-faced white guy named Schroeder or something. Breely would yell at the bastard: “Where those circulars, Schroeder?” and snap his fingers. “I’m sorry, Bill,” he’d say. Cry almost. “The press broke down and we—” Wrings his hands. Close to tears. “That’s enough there, Schroeder. I want those circulars, hear me?” And this Schroeder would cringe like a person whose penis you’ve cut off with a knife. “I’ll try Bill. Honest. I’ll try, I’ll try!” Loved it. Both of ’em. Old Breely say: “Difference between you and me, you whites, is
you
are the sons of
Masters
and
I
am the son of
slaves.
Yeah!” Half the whites in that room were Ukrainian, second-generation. Christ. Black Power they wanted, the black ones—most—and they got it. Had this meeting, going to segregate the CORE. It was a meeting right out of the Hitler days. You get to speak once if you’re against segregation, but Breely and his crew can talk as much as they please. “I
know
you,” they say. Man Jesus they wise. “You a
social
worker, see? You ’on’t know it, mothuh, but I seen you kind
befo’,
seen you
plenny
times,
yeah.”
“I’ve never done social work in my life,” you say. “Shut up, hear? You ain’t be
reckanized.”
A lady there. Speech therapist she was, talked like her tongue was in sideways. “I go in a wite neighborhood, baby, I’m
dead,
hear me? They gwine
kill
me, hear?” All the people: “Yeah.” They scared, man. They scare theirselves good, full of pipedreams and idiot novels. Yeah. “Man I’m
dead,
I go were the wites are. Alla time talkin
trash,
man: We gwine
hep
you, nigger. Why they gwine
kill
me, dad, that’s wat they gwine do.” Time to vote, Bill Breely gets up and he reads us from a book about lynchings—a piece about some Negro they strung up down South, cut his feet off, then legs and arms and head, all the usual.
Then
we take the vote! I could tell you stories … Man named Gonzales, or something like that—we thought he was an idiot—rolled his eyes, never talked, wore old jeans all the time, old motorcycle cap—one time he got mad all at once and came out with this stream of high-falutin young writer’s talk, and
then
we knew him! He
hated,
man! He played idiot in front of whites because if he didn’t he would tell them the truth, he wanted their balls to hang up from the rear-view mirror in his car. Ok, I said. Black Power. Don’t tell me any stuff about political power, the Might of the Vote, all that razz-ma-tazz. It means guns and knives and fists and BBB. Ok. Man from Durham North Carolina was with us, a Negro that was human. They scared that man out of the cause. All right. So where do you go when CORE and SNCC and the rest go out for your blood? If you’re Schroeder you love it—“Yeah Bill! Cut me lower!
Lower!”
But if it’s not what you’re after, if what you really want is mere plain civil rights, what do you do when they come at you with a gun? You wring your hands and sweat, that’s what. But I’ll tell you the word from Babylon. Let it go. Cool it. Forget it. They want Power, let ’em have it. Go after the whites with violence and you’ll get violence back, and more and more until finally they drive it through your skull that your violence won’t work, you’re back where you started and then some. I’ll make it clearer. I’m saying there’s nothing you can do: try brotherhood and their hatred will eat you alive. Be understanding when they say they’re out to kill you and—surprise!—they’ll come and kill you. So this: all your grand American responsibility is trash: what will happen will happen. Make laws that’re practical, like the marriage of estates, and if you find anybody that believes in your laws, make ’em cops for defending the black and white estates, but don’t hope, don’t love: don’t expect and don’t give. Hate as freely as you love, by inclination. Wait and let progress happen when it can, because it will, if the gods will it, and if not, then it will not. Listen!

(Pause.)

I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t live in San Francisco, I lived in St. Louis. This is true. I was lying. I’m sorry. I drove a diaper truck in St. Louis. One night I was going home late, driving my truck through Forest Park, and all of a sudden, near the art museum where the statue is, there was a woman right there in my headlights, waving at me, trying to stop me, and there was blood running down her face. I jerked the wheel to miss her and hit the brakes the same minute. “I been robbed,” she yells. “A nigger boy—he ran down toward the golfcourse.” I let her in, and then we took off in the direction he’d run. “Get him!” she says. And so forth. I swung the truck out onto the grass of the golfcourse so that the headlights splayed out over the fairway and there he was, running down the hill. I went after him. I realize this may be a little distasteful to a person like yourself, but there’s no avoiding it. I have to tell you the truth. Murder will out. I went after him. He tried to zig-zag, slipping and falling down sometimes, but he couldn’t get away. The lady was leaning forward, her face almost pressed to the windshield—I’ll never forget it, that white, white skin with the black-looking blood, and behind us the stink of the dirty diapers, and the kid zig-zagging, yelling “Please! Hey man, please!” Then suddenly it was like he gave up. Jesus! I saw him throw the purse, as if he didn’t want it wrecked, and he held his hands out toward me—he was running backwards—and I hit him. You hear what I’m saying? I ran that boy down!

CLUMLY
(a whisper)
: Now wait—

SUNLIGHT:
I stopped the truck as soon as the bump came, and I backed away and turned around to shine the lights toward the place where he’d thrown the purse. There it was, sharp black against the white of the dew on the grass. I got out and got it and I gave it to the lady. She reached out for it, and her hands were shaking like she’d gone crazy. “Thank you,” she said. I’ll never forget it. It was as if she’d lost her mind. Well, I drove her back as far as the Jefferson Memorial—she’d been heading someplace on Dehnar, I remember—and I let her out. She didn’t say anything. Just walked away holding the purse in her two hands like it was her dead baby and she’d lost her mind. I was laughing. Not because I was crazy, you understand. I wasn’t. I laughed because I’d done what she wanted and the poor bitch woman couldn’t stand it. I drove back and I picked up the boy. He was alive, so I took him home with me and made a place for him in the cellar. He was unconscious, mostly, but now and then he’d come to. Both his legs were broken, that’s all it was. I put splints on him, and I went up and made him some soup, and then I gave him some whiskey to knock him out again. I don’t drink, myself, but I always keep some around for times like that. After that I locked the cellar door and went up to my bed. I’d hear him moaning sometimes, but it wasn’t too bad. The next day he was better, well enough to yell for the police and things like that. I had to whip him a little with a chain, but I managed to control him. So ok. I kept him down there for two years. He never saw daylight. No windows. I put some straw down there for him—

CLUMLY:
Now wait a minute. This is—

SUNLIGHT:
Just listen. You can talk in a minute. I put
straw
down there for him, and once in a while I would clean the place up. He got thin, of course. A lot of times he wouldn’t eat. He was stubborn, you know. It was only natural. But after the first three months or so he came around a little, even though he did leave his food sometimes. It got so when I’d come down to feed him or clean the place or just have a look at him, he’d act almost glad to see me. He’d even talk. At first all he did was swear, but after a while he got to crying and whining and things, acting like a human, and I liked him. He couldn’t help seeing it, of course. What the devil! Imagine what it’s like, living in a cellar, a captive, no better than a dog! All right. “Look, boy,” I said, “you’re here for life, you understand? You might as well make the best of it.” He was half-crazy by this time, and a lot of times I had to say a thing over and over before he would get it. Still, he did get it, eventually. He began to make the best of it. One morning he said, “Hey. What’s happening outside?” He was twelve or thirteen at this time. (I never knew how old he was exactly. I never asked.) “Oh, war,” I said. “Riots. Troubles.” “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” I began to tell him about outside. I told him something had happened to the sun and the whole world was dark now. The Government was working on it, I said, but the prospect wasn’t good. All the crops dying, not even any grass growing. Just dirt where there used to be grass. The trees all dead. People starving by the thousands. There weren’t any dogs or cats left, I told him. They’d been eaten long ago. But he didn’t need to worry. I had another six months’ worth of food in the freezer. He was grateful to me. He said once, “Why you keeping me here?” It was winter now. I told him the cold was a result of the sun’s being out, and of course he believed me. Well, I sat down on the door sill—he never bothered to try to push past me any more—and I looked at him, all compassion. I lit my pipe. “Son,” I said, “I’ll tell you the truth. It was a hell of a thing that night in the park, the night I ran you down. I must’ve lost my head. Anyway, I couldn’t just leave you there to die, so I went back for you, and I healed you as well as I could.” (Actually, the legs had never healed right. He kept fighting the splints or something, so now the legs were all twisted. He could hardly walk.) “The trouble was,” I said, “after I’d healed you, how could I go to the police and tell them what I’d done?” The boy said, “Yeah.” He understood about policemen. “But then a new problem came up,” I said. “There was the sun problem. The Government shot a rocket at the sun, for some scientific purpose too complicated for me to explain, and somehow—I don’t pretend to understand it—the sun went out.” He believed me. That’s strange, you’ll say. But remember, he had no one but me. I was reality. Alone! “Well,” I said, “when all the dogs and cats were eaten the Government passed a law that we should eat felons. That means you,” I said. “Robbers, murderers, disturbers of the peace.” He believed that too. “It also meant me. If I turned you in, we’d both be cooked and eaten.” He was very impressed. As for me—I won’t deny it—I was deeply moved, horrified. I too believed it. We wept.