My Heart Laid Bare Part 38

After how many prolonged minutes, the waves of noise begin to fade. And Prince Elihu begins to speak, with theatrical abruptness, his voice raised, raw, or raw-seeming, trembling with emotion; he will address the gathering for ninety minutes, nonstop, in an atmosphere ever more highly charged, and commingled with odors of hair, flesh, sweated clothing, rank animal pa.s.sion. The Negro's love of America has not been returned, my brothers and my sisters Elihu begins his chant. The Negro's love of America has not been returned. At first Millie can't make out Elihu's words, she absorbs only the man's ecstatic rage, and begins to feel a sense of helplessness and panic, as on all sides men and women murmur, moan, sob, sway their bodies in sympathy with his chant which they seem to know, words wholly alien to Millie.

What is the tragic history of America cries Prince Elihu motionless as a pillar in the bright burning circle of light but the history of BROKEN PROMISES. OF LOVE NOT RETURNED.

Of enslavement of BODY AND SPIRIT.

Of enslavement to this day by FALSE FREEDOM.

Of Negro women scorned as dirt by the white cannibal-devil BUT EVER VICTIMS OF HIS UNCONTROLLABLE l.u.s.t; and Negro men EVER THE VICTIMS OF HIS DEVIL-HATRED OF HIMSELF.

And now, by way of Prince Elihu's message, A TEARING ASIDE OF THE VEIL.

A speaking-out of that WHICH HAS ONLY BEEN WHISPERED.

And woe be to those WHO LACK COURAGE.

And woe, woe! to OUR ENEMIES.

For he who is fearful and holds back BETRAYS HIS RACE. And the sacred undeniable AFRICAN BLOOD BEATING IN HIS VEINS.

For he who shrinks from acknowledging his kins.h.i.+p with all dark-skinned peoples, and his enmity toward all whites, BETRAYS HIS RACE. AND THE SACRED UNDENIABLE AFRICAN BLOOD BEATING IN HIS VEINS.

He who withholds his soul's fullest strength, in craven wors.h.i.+p of the false G.o.ds of the white man, JESUS CHRIST and MAMMON, will not be forgiven; nor will he have a place in AFRICA GLORIFIED.

He who aspires to a BLEACHING-OUT OF THE SOUL in denying the WISDOM OF THE FLESH must come to a tragic end.

For there are numberless kinds of EVISCERATIONS, my brothers and sisters, numberless kinds of LYNCHINGS . . . CASTRATIONS . . . PUBLIC STONINGS . . . LIVE CREMATIONS . . . FLOGGING . . . TARRING . . . HANGING . . . DEATH. Numberless kinds of DEATH, my brothers and sisters, numberless kinds of DEATH.

Fed screaming through a rock grinder in Bowman, Georgia, while a gathering of the Klan and fellow whites stand by, like a Negro male named Dale Scoggins in March of 1926, O my brothers and sisters THIS IS NOT THE ONLY OUTRAGE OUR RACE MUST ENDURE: DO YOU KNOW? DO YOU KNOW? DO YOU KNOW WHAT ELIHU TELLS YOU?

For history is nearing its fiery conclusion; a second War is close at hand, to be fought by the white cannibal-devils in Europe, and very likely in America; and the long reign of DISEASE AND WICKEDNESS WILL BE OVER.

And no black man must submit to the yoke of soldiery this time: THE LIE THAT THE WORLD IS TO BE MADE SAFE FOR DEMOCRACY. For we have seen, my brothers and sisters, since 1919 we have seen, ALL THAT DEMOCRACY IS, IS WHITE PRIVILEGE, WHITE POWER, WHITE INJURY, WHITE LOATHING OF ALL DARK-SKINNED PEOPLES. For we have seen, since 1919, in the decade following the Negro soldier's return from the European War, ever more atrocities toward our race. A decade of BLOOD VENGEANCE AGAINST OUR VERY PATRIOTISM. A decade of RAGING SCORN AGAINST OUR VERY n.o.bILITY. A decade of SHAME, my brothers and sisters, SHAME THAT WE DARE NOT RISE TO STRIKE THE MURDERERS DOWN. In East St. Louis in the summer of 1919, forty Negroes ma.s.sacred by a lynch mob . . . and no justice following. In Springfield, Illinois . . . in Los Angeles and San Francisco and Seattle and Philadelphia . . . the rise of the Ku Klux Klan . . . the privilege of the white lynchers . . . BEATING AND RAPING AND MURDERING AS THEY WISH. In Texas, nine Negro veterans hanged AND BESIDE THEM THE PREGNANT WIFE OF ONE OF THE VETERANS. In Macon County, Georgia, A LIVE FETUS RIPPED FROM THE WOMB OF A NEGRO WOMAN AND TRAMPLED UNDERFOOT BY WHITE-HOODED MEN. And no justice following. In ballparks in Louisiana, Alabama, Mississippi, North Florida . . . in public fairgrounds . . . squares . . . before the very courthouse . . . LIVE CREMATIONS OF NEGROES FOR THE ENTERTAINMENT OF WHITES: PUBLIC HANGINGS . . . EVISCERATIONS . . . FLOGGINGS . . . TARRING AND FEATHERING . . . CASTRATION b.l.o.o.d.y AND FOUL . . . .And no justice following. And no justice ever to follow. And the rise, my brothers and sisters, of the Klan: and the many admirers of the Klan.

For the Klan, now five million strong, is America: AMERICA HOODED AND TRUTHFUL IN ITS ANONYMITY.

For the Klan shouts the truth that ALL NEGROES MAY HEAR; while the white cannibal-devil, unhooded, tells lies THAT NEGROES MAY BE DECEIVED.

In West Virginia . . . in the Carolinas . . . in Ohio (boasting more than four hundred thousand members) . . . in New York State and New Jersey and Delaware and Maryland . . . in Illinois, in Michigan, in Indiana, in Tennessee and Kentucky and Arkansas . . . the rise of the Klan . . . AMERICA HOODED AND TRUTHFUL IN ITS ANONYMITY. Five million Klansmen, my brothers and sisters, but behind them wives and children, families, fellow citizens IN SUPPORT OF THE KLAN AND THE KLAN'S AVOWAL TO DESTROY THE NEGRO. Five million Klansmen, my brothers and sisters, and not yet one million Negroes in support of Prince Elihu WHO PREACHES RACE SALVATION AND AFRICA GLORIFIED. In Beaumont, Texas, where a twenty-two-year-old Negro named Willie Shelton was tied with barbed wire and dragged from the b.u.mper of an automobile UNTIL SCREAMING IN AGONY HE DIED not five months ago to this day there is A KLANSMAN MAYOR . . . A KLANSMAN DISTRICT ATTORNEY . . . A KLANSMAN EPISCOPAL MINISTER . . . AS WELL AS MANY THOUSANDS OF KLANSMEN AMONG ALL SOCIAL CLa.s.sES . . . and no justice for Negroes: NO JUSTICE TO FOLLOW. And when Dale Scoggins was murdered in March 1926 in Bowman, Georgia, begging for his life, screaming and struggling in terror, fed in unspeakable agony through a rock grinder TO THE CHEERS AND ANIMAL DELIGHT OF MORE THAN ONE HUNDRED WHITE MEN AND A SCATTERING OF WHITE WOMEN was justice to follow: Is justice ever to follow? A KLANSMAN GOVERNOR OF GEORGIA . . . A KLANSMAN STATE ATTORNEY GENERAL . . . A KLANSMAN SUPREME COURT . . . A KLANSMAN COUNTY PROSECUTOR . . . A KLANSMAN SHERIFF: each and every one of them dedicated to NEGRO ANNIHILATION.

While Prince Elihu is dedicated to NEGRO SALVATION; and AFRICA RECLAIMED.

While Prince Elihu cries aloud the TRUTH THAT CANNOT BE DENIED: THE NEGRO'S LOVE OF AMERICA HAS NOT BEEN RETURNED.

For the Democracy of America, for all dark-skinned races, DOES NOT EXIST; AND HAS NEVER EXISTED.

And those Negroes who believe that it has, or will, ARE SELF-DECEIVED VICTIMS.

For the Communists, Socialists, and their kind, who promise equality of the races in the cla.s.s struggle, deliberately lie in declaring that THE VERY WORKINGMAN WHO BELONGS TO THE KU KLUX KLAN WILL BE YOUR BROTHER; and the Christians who preach of love, and charity, and the redemption of sin, and forgiveness of enemies, and the reward of Heaven, deliberately lie in exhorting that CHRISTIANITY IS A BLACK FAITH: FOR IT IS NOT: IT IS BUT A SNARE AND A DELUSION: THE MOST CYNICAL OF GAMES.

For, only consider, in this Christian nation, in the decade following the War: the systematic reversal of government policies on the hiring of Negroes for civil service positions, public teaching positions, etc., BY SPECIFIC ORDER OF THE RACIST WOODROW WILSON. And this, after numberless speeches by Wilson and his fellow Democrats promising reform and equality of rights IF THE NEGRO WILL BUT SUPPORT THE WAR AND ENLIST IN THE ARMY (WHERE THE ARMY WOULD HAVE HIM). For the Negro's love of America has not been returned. For all white men are our enemies, then and now. FOR AMERICA, FOR US, HAS NEVER EXISTED.

Only consider: the refusal of Congress to pa.s.s a lynching law; the refusal of Congress to pa.s.s civil rights legislation; the refusal of Congress to honor the LAND AND INDEMNITY BILL sponsored by the only organization to pride itself upon being WHOLLY BLACK and WHOLLY DEVOTED TO THE RECLAMATION OF BLACK n.o.bILITY.

And the rise, in this past decade, of the KLAN.

The rise, my brothers and sisters, of THE WHITE CANNIBAL-DEVILS SWORN TO DESTROY US.

Five million Klansmen, thus ten or fifteen million Klansmen in spirit. Five million, ten and fifteen million, how many more million in the Kingdom of the d.a.m.ned: eleven Klansmen governors . . . yet more senators . . . numberless congressmen, from every district . . . mayors . . . councilmen . . . sheriffs, policemen, federal agents . . . lawyers . . . millionaire businessmen . . . clergy of the so-called Christian faith . . . school-teachers . . . workingmen: LOYAL MEMBERS OF THE KLAN SWORN TO DESTROY US.

So it is my brothers and my sisters on this historic night of 19 June 1929 upon this great occasion of the FIRST ANNUAL UNIVERSAL NEGRO CONFRATERNITY RALLY sponsored by THE WORLD NEGRO BETTERMENT & LIBERATION UNION, I, Prince Elihu, declare to you that we must unite that THE NEGRO RACE BE SAVED; and AFRICA RECLAIMED; and COLONIAL DESPOTISM OVERTHROWN; and THE WHITE CANNIBAL-DEVIL DEFEATED.

For all that we HAVE BEEN, we WILL BE AGAIN.

For the FUTURE IS OURS.

FOR HONOR IS THE SUBJECT OF OUR STORY.

FOR I SAY TO YOU MY BROTHERS AND MY SISTERS: HONOR IS THE SUBJECT OF OUR STORY.

THUS, THE FIRST Annual Universal Negro Confraternity Rally of 19 June 1929, which would also be the last such rally; and at its conclusion past 11 P.M. Millicent Stirling is too exhausted and distraught to rise from her seat, she's been crying silently for a long time, the front of her stylish silk dress is damp with tears, her black straw hat has fallen, or has been knocked, onto the floor; she has given herself up as years ago she'd given herself up to the nightmare of childbirth, a roaring in her ears, a roaring in all her veins, she's given herself up to grief, to shame, to the anguish of love, her heart is broken, this throbbing boiling pain is her heart, she will give herself up henceforth to sorrow, to middle age and eventually old age and death, she's scarcely aware of her surroundings, or even that Prince Elihu gleaming with perspiration like an oiled idol has left the stage, and the stage lights have been lowered, and the lights in the hall have been raised, she doesn't notice how she's being worriedly regarded by several of the neatly dressed young Negro ushers, for by this time most of the Garden has emptied out and Millie remains, a hunched broken figure in her seat-What's wrong ma'am? What you cryin' about ma'am? You need some help there ma'am?-but in her dove-gray silk dress and matching stockings, in her white eyelet gloves and her white, white skin, the pride of her white skin, its shame, its outrage, its horror from which there can be, so long as she lives, no salvation, she doesn't hear.

IN OLD MUIRKIRK.

Am I defeated?-I am not.

Do I smell of mortality?-I do not.

Will I return to my former triumphs?-I will. I will.

AT LAST IN a fierce-howling March 1932 Katrina dies. If Abraham Licht could blame Katrina's death on the infamous Wall Street Crash of some years previous he would, he would!

Katrina has died, and is buried in the village cemetery but Abraham Licht, an aging (yet not-old) man himself-ivory-pale filmy-floating hair grown past his ears, though papery-thin across the crown of his head, eyes sharp with suspicion and mouth quivering with irony-knows better. He knows the household will never be rid of the old woman.

"Listen. There she is, Katrina scolding me again," Abraham says, c.o.c.king his head as wind, or winds, whistle in the chimney and tear along the eaves like shrieking bats. Abraham shakes his head in disgust. "Katrina, dear: do leave us alone! We must get on with our lives, you know." Is Abraham joking, or serious, often it isn't clear; as, now, it isn't at all clear; for Rosamund pauses to regard her husband with fond, worried eyes; and little Melanie, playing on the floor with a rag-lynx that Katrina sewed for her, stares blinking and smiling up at her father, perplexed. Darian, entering the kitchen, feels he's entering a scene that has all but played itself out and he doesn't know his lines or what is expected of him. Then, hearing the wind, the perpetual wind of Muirkirk, and seeing the expression on his father's face that is both mock-grave and genuinely alarmed, he supposes it's Katrina again, or in any case the subject of Katrina. "Y'hear, Darian?" Abraham asks, a forefinger upraised. "That old woman scolding. Laughing. At us. At me."

They hadn't parted on the most civil of terms, it seems. For Katrina hadn't approved of Abraham Licht marrying a "girl younger than Millie" and she certainly hadn't approved of Abraham Licht fathering "a daughter who should be a granddaughter" and most of all she hadn't approved of Abraham Licht's most recent bankruptcy-no matter that, as he'd explained dozens of times, it was not his fault but the fault of certain wealthy manipulators of the stock market.

Darian, like Rosamund, chooses to interpret Abraham's jesting about Katrina as simply that, jesting. Sometimes the cry is clearly the wind, sometimes it's the cry of a hawk, an owl, a wild creature in the marsh, sometimes it resembles a baby's cry and sometimes, yes, you might say it resembles Katrina's voice lifted in annoyance, but at the moment the sound is obviously the wind-isn't it? At any rate, it's growing fainter.

"She's retreating for now, back into the swamp," Abraham says thoughtfully. "But we'll never be rid of her-never."

A chill windy evening in April 1932 and Darian is experimenting with his "echo-chamber piano," an instrument of his own invention, in his high-ceilinged music studio at the rear of the old Church of the Nazarene, and he hears a light footfall behind him; not the child's, for Melanie always runs head-on into "Uncle" Darian's studio no matter how many times she's been reprimanded; and surely not Abraham Licht's-for Abraham would have made it a point to knock formally on the door, in ironic acknowledgment that, patriarch of the family as he is, and owner of the property, he might not be welcome in his eccentric composer-son's studio.

Not Melanie, and not Abraham. Darian turns, calmly. "Yes?-oh, h.e.l.lo."

Darian speaks calmly. A calm smile. Though so nervous he has botched an intricate pa.s.sage of crossed triads he's been playing, fortunately this composition for echo-chamber piano isn't the sort of music one can easily judge is botched or played with perfect command, and it's natural for him to lift his eyes to his father's wife's face, and smile. Though this is the first time (rapidly he's calculating) since he came here to live eighteen months, three and a half weeks ago, that Rosamund has entered his studio alone or uninvited.

Strange how, even now that Katrina has died, and the house is relatively empty, Darian and Rosamund are rarely alone together. And, alone together, rarely do they speak.

Now the woman's image floats in a cloudy mirror propped against one of the pews Darian dragged into the room, and Darian at his keyboard observes it calmly. Rosamund facing him, yet in the mirror in profile. His fingers return to the keys, plucking out delicate, subtle notes, less strident now, for these notes are being struck like harp strings, even the strings' vibrations are music; even Darian's slightly faltering, thrown-off playing is part of the composition, the instrument, the music itself. Notation: music may be interrupted at this point. An air of calm surprise! Rosamund stands motionless for a beat or two, listening. Darian wonders what she hears. He knows what he hears, but what does another person hear? As all composers must wonder.

Darian's father's wife. A city-bred woman, a woman born to affluence, yet a woman, as Darian has learned, not to be swiftly summed up, or understood. Now she's a country wife, a Muirkirk wife, the mother of a three-year-old, she lets her smoke-colored hair loose to her shoulders, sometimes tied back by a scarf; she wears men's trousers, wide-legged slacks and oversized sweaters, several of Abraham Licht's formerly white, starched cotton s.h.i.+rts that billow about her like maternity blouses. Since her pregnancy she walks solidly on her heels as if still balancing a swollen stomach on her thin frame; there's a boyish raffish air about her, a habit of smiling quizzically, though sometimes, like now, she's strangely still, even solemn. In the kitchen, at Katrina's ancient iron stove, Rosamund has been baking sourdough bread, the house is filled with its warm yeasty delicious smell, and Rosamund's already soiled ap.r.o.n is splotched with flour. Darian murmurs again, "Yes?" and Rosamund smiles that quizzical smile, and says, "I thought you called me."

Calmly regarding each other across a s.p.a.ce of approximately six feet, now that the echo-chamber strings have ceased their vibrating, in exquisite silence.

All defeat not extinction Abraham Licht records in his journal is but temporary.

His journal, his voluminous memoir. A ledger whose pages have been covered in handwriting and in coded hieroglyphics, into which loose sheets of paper have been inserted. Once the victim identifies his enemies he is no longer a victim. For revenge is the final act.

TRUE, ABRAHAM LICHT has retired "into the country" but he has not retired from business. In his seventy-second year he's never felt more vigorous, more energetic; his brain swirling ceaselessly with plans, plots, bold new ventures.

"Once I regain some of what I've lost, I will begin again."

Abraham needs to regain only a fraction of what he has lost, and he tells himself this is crucial. The merest 1/2000 of those lost millions, which would give him more than $12,000 to purchase a partners.h.i.+p in a cider mill in Paie-des-Sables ("apple cider" being but the mill's official, legal product) or an investment in a Thoroughbred horse ranch in Manitowick or laboratory equipment that would allow him to manufacture Liebknecht's Formula himself-which, given its tranquilizing effect, would prove hugely popular in this troubled, anxiety-ridden nation. If only the elixir could be manufactured in sufficient quant.i.ty, distributed, marketed, advertised, sold . . . he'd be a millionaire again, many times over! Of course, the small pharmaceutical company in Easton, Pennsylvania, that had been selling the elixir went bankrupt shortly after 29 October 1929, without having paid Abraham Licht more than $75,000 owed him.

"If I had but that $75,000 . . . like Archimedes with a lever, what might I accomplis.h.!.+"

Brooding these ever-lengthening spring days upon a new business enterprise . . . a legitimate variation of The Game; legitimate in the sense of not being illegal. For since marrying Rosamund whom he loves beyond his own life, and since the birth of beautiful little Melanie, Abraham can't hear the thought of even the possibility of being sent away to prison or indicted to stand trial. (How close he'd come, back in '28! On the very eve of his wedding to Rosamund, in fact; when the Parris Clinic was under investigation by the New York State attorney general, and that fool Bies reluctant to pay the proper "fine.") This new invention, however, as he's tried to explain to Rosamund in their bed at night (for some reason, Abraham prefers to speak to Rosamund about such matters when they're lying peacefully in the dark and when the sharp-eyed woman can't see his face), would involve the manufacture not of a mere "product" but of the idea of a product; the fleeting, glistening, inviolable image of a product; to be sold to businessmen and politicians for their private use, who might then broadcast it to the American consumer who would then purchase, or vote for, not the product itself but the idea. "For why not systematically and scientifically manufacture those idiosyncratic notions fools have in their heads?-why allow them to remain haphazard or but partly controlled?" Abraham mused grandly. Rosamund murmured she didn't understand, could he please explain more clearly? Abraham told her that the germ of the venture first came to him during his stint as a government agent in Was.h.i.+ngton when it came to be cheerfully known that Warren Harding had been elected President of the United States only because, by the merest comical (or cynical) chance, the man had the appearance of a "Roman senator"!-not that the American voter had the slightest idea of what a Roman senator might have looked like.

"The essence is, public opinion can be manipulated at will," Abraham said, "provided of course there's enough money to invest in advertising, in the right quarters."

Rosamund laughed, or may have sighed. "But where is the satisfaction, Abraham, in that sort of thing? How could one take pride in accomplis.h.i.+ng something 'unreal'-and under such circ.u.mstances-making money, being elected to public office-"

Abraham cut her off impatiently. Rosamund was an intelligent woman, yet often not a very smart woman. "Pride, my dear," he said, "is in our technique."

UNTIL THE LAST breath is drawn, Abraham Licht writes, the last blow has not been dealt.

In his memoir he's making a list of enemies: the men whom one day he will boldly and publicly name as the manipulators of the so-called Crash of 1929, in which billions of investors' dollars were lost. He, Abraham Licht, will compile a dossier against them and file a complaint with the Justice Department! (Though he's learned to his surprise that an old rival of his and Gaston Bullock Means's is now director of the Bureau of Investigation-J. Edgar Hoover.) These men are Richard F. Whitney of the Banker's Pool; Charles E. Mitch.e.l.l of the National City Bank; the officers of the House of Morgan; the directors of the Federal Reserve Bank; John D. Rockefeller, Sr.; the "Aluminum King" Andrew Mellon, Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury; and the Republican President Hoover himself, who maintains three years after the catastrophe, that nothing serious has happened to the economy.

Abraham confides in Rosamund, and more recently in Darian who has come to live with them following the bankruptcy of the Westheath School of Music, that he will not be silenced, and will not be bought off or bribed; nor will he slink away in defeat-"Or blow out my brains like so many of my brother victims."

For indeed, a number of Abraham Licht's Manhattan a.s.sociates have killed themselves. Or sunk into such dissolute habits of drinking bootleg liquor, it has come to the same thing.

AM I DEFEATED?-I am not.

Do I smell of mortality?-I do not.

Will I return to my former triumphs?-I will. I will.

IN HIS SECRET mirror, of which even Katrina knew nothing: a n.o.ble countenance from which, through suffering, all excess flesh has burned away . . . a forehead stark, ridged with bone beneath the papery skin . . . skin drawn tight across the cheekbones (not creased and flabby, repulsive, like that of others his age) . . . the eyes shrewd and ever-watchful, clear as washed gla.s.s. And, framing the face, a floating halo of hair suddenly white, purely white, very fine, very thin, diaphanous as milkweed pollen. Why, he has pa.s.sed through the Fire; he has pa.s.sed through; and the "fainting-spell" (or brain seizure, or stroke) he suffered in 1929 hasn't touched him at all.

"Fate, do your worst! I am no craven coward."

I thought you called me.

Not I. My music.

Yet your music is you.

Impulsively he'd seized her hand, a warm rather grubby-floury hand, and would have pulled her to him, to kiss her, or to try to kiss her; but, with a childlike squeal, as if this were but a game and not achingly, heartrendingly real, his father's young wife managed to turn, an elbow in his ribs, it's an accident, they're panting and laughing and little Melanie rushes into the studio laughing, shrieking-"Uncle Dar-yn! Play for us like you were! Don't stop!"

Darling I will never stop. My music for you, and for your mother, never will I stop.

HIS ELDERLY FATHER'S wife. His elderly father's daughter.

Can I? Dare I? Must I?

"Like this, Melanie!-no, sweetheart, not so hard! Like this."

Rosamund stands barefoot beside the kitchen table, little Melanie in the crook of one strong arm, balanced on her hip, mother and daughter absorbed in the proper playing of the "icicle" Darian has made for Melanie (a musical instrument of his own invention, several lengths of silver attached to a silver ring of about four inches in diameter, that, when shaken, gives off lovely delicately varying notes) . . . not conscious of how Darian stares . . . yearning, anxious, greedy . . . defiantly happy . . . not conscious (or is she? has she been, since the other day?) of how warmly and urgently his blood pulses, his very heart swells, and the sinewy-ropy vein of his groin.

Look at me. I love you.