Go tell it on the mountain - James Baldwin [93]
And his father looked on him. His father’s eyes looked down on him, and John began to scream. His father’s eyes stripped him naked, and hated what they saw. And as he turned, screaming, in the dust again, trying to escape his father’s eyes, those eyes, that face, and all their faces, and the far-off yellow light, all departed from his vision as though he had gone blind. He was going down again. There is, his soul cried out again, no bottom to the darkness!
He did not where he was. There was silence everywhere—only a perpetual, distant, faint trembling far beneath him—the roaring perhaps, of the fires of Hell, over which he was suspended, or the echo, persistent, invincible still, of the moving feet of the saints. He thought of the mountain-top, where he longed to be, where the sun would cover him like a cloth of gold, would cover his head like a crown of fire, and in his hands he would hold a living rod. But this was no mountain where John lay, here, no robe, no crown. And the living rod was uplifted in other hands.
‘I’m going to beat sin out of him. I’m going to beat it out.’
Yes, he had sinned, and his father was looking for him. Now, John did not make a sound, and did not move at all, hoping that his father would pass him by.
‘Leave him be. Leave him alone. Let him pray to the Lord.’
‘Yes, Mama. I’m going to try to love the Lord.’
‘He done run off somewhere. I’m going to find him. I’m going to beat it out.’
Yes, he had sinned: one morning, alone, in the dirty bathroom, in the square, dirt-gray cupboard room that was filled with the stink of his father. Sometimes, leaning over the cracked, ‘tattle-tale gray’ bath-tub, he scrubbed his father’s back; and looked, as the accursed son of Noah had looked, on his father’s hideous nakedness. It was secret, like sin, and slimy, like the serpent, and heavy, like the rod. Then he hated his father, and longed for the power to cut his father down.
Was this why he lay here, thrust out from all human or heavenly help to-night? This, and not the other, his deadly sin, having looked on his father’s nakedness and mocked and cursed him in his heart? Ah, that son of Noah’s had been cursed, down to the present groaning generation: A servant of servants shall be unto his brethren.
Then the ironic voice, terrified, it seemed, of no depth, no darkness, demanded of John, scornfully, if he believed that he was cursed. All niggers had been cursed, the ironic voice reminded him, all niggers had come from this most undutiful of Noah’s sons. How could John be cursed for having seen in a bath-tub what another man—if that other man had ever lived—had seen ten thousand years ago, lying in an open tent? Could a curse come down so many ages? Did it live in time, or in the moment? But John found no answer for this voice, for he was in the moment, and out of time.
And his father approached. ‘I’m going to beat sin out of him. I’m going to beat it out.’ All the darkness rocked and wailed as his father’s feet came closer; feet whose tread resounded like God’s tread in the garden of Eden, searching the covered Adam and Eve. Then his father stood just above him, looking down. Then John knew that a curse was renewed from moment to moment, from father to son. Time was indifferent, like snow and ice; but the heart, crazed wanderer in the driving waste, carried the curse for ever.
‘John,’ said his father, ‘come with me.’
Then they were in a straight street, a narrow, narrow way. They had been walking for many days. The street stretched before them, long, and silent, going down, and whiter than the snow. There was no one on the street, and John was frightened. The buildings on this street, so near that John could touch them on either side, were narrow, also, rising like spears into the sky, and they were made of beaten gold and silver. John knew that these buildings were not for him—not to-day—no, nor to-morrow, either! Then, coming up this straight and sil