Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [175]
"Yes, that's true; some of our best ideas have been thought in prison. Only you haven't been in prison, Brother, and you were not hired to think. Had you forgotten that? If so, listen to me: You were not hired to think." He was speaking very deliberately and I thought, So . . . So here it is, naked and old and rotten. So now it's out in the open . . .
"So now I know where I am," I said, "and with whom --"
"Don't twist my meaning. For all of us, the committee does the thinking. For all of us. And you were hired to talk."
"That's right, I was hired. Things have been so brotherly I had forgotten my place. But what if I wish to express an idea?"
"We furnish all ideas. We have some acute ones. Ideas are part of our apparatus. Only the correct ideas for the correct occasion."
"And suppose you misjudge the occasion?"
"Should that ever happen, you keep quiet."
"Even though I am correct?"
"You say nothing unless it is passed by the committee. Otherwise I suggest you keep saying the last thing you were told."
"And when my people demand that I speak?"
"The committee will have an answer!"
I looked at him. The room was hot, quiet, smoky. The others looked at me strangely. I heard the nervous sound of someone mashing out a cigarette in a glass ash tray. I pushed back my chair, breathing deeply, controlled. I was on a dangerous road and I thought of Clifton and tried to get off of it. I said nothing.
Suddenly Jack smiled and slipped back into his fatherly role.
"Let us handle the theory and the business of strategy," he said. "We are experienced. We're graduates and while you are a smart beginner you skipped several grades. But they were important grades, especially for gaining strategical knowledge. For such it is necessary to see the overall picture. More is involved than meets the eye. With the long view and the short view and the overall view mastered, perhaps you won't slander the political consciousness of the people of Harlem."
Can't he see I'm trying to tell them what's real, I thought. Does my membership stop me from feeling Harlem?
"All right," I said. "Have it your way, Brother; only the political consciousness of Harlem is exactly a thing I know something about. That's one class they wouldn't let me skip. I'm describing a part of reality which I know."
"And that is the most questionable statement of all," Tobitt said.
"I know," I said, running my thumb along the edge of the table, "your private source tells you differently. History's made at night, eh, Brother?"
"I've warned you," Tobitt said.
"Brother to brother, Brother," I said, "try getting around more. You might learn that today was the first time that they've listened to our appeals in weeks. And I'll tell you something else: If we don't follow through on what was done today, this might be the last . . ."
"So, he's finally gotten around to predicting the future," Brother Jack said.
"It's possible . . . though I hope not."
"He's in touch with God," Tobitt said. "The black God."
I looked at him and grinned. He had gray eyes and his irises were very wide, the muscles ridged out on his jaws. I had his guard down and he was swinging wild.
"Not with God, nor with your wife, Brother," I told him. "I've never met either. But I've worked among the people up here. Ask your wife to take you around to the gin mills and the barber shops and the juke joints and the churches, Brother. Yes, and the beauty parlors on Saturdays when they're frying hair. A whole unrecorded history is spoken then, Brother. You wouldn't believe it but it's true. Tell her to take you to stand in the areaway of a cheap tenement at night and listen to what is said. Put her out on the corner, let her tell you what's being put down. You'll learn that a lot of people are angry because we failed to lead them in action. I'll stand on that as I stand on what I see and feel and on what I've heard, and what I know."
"No," Brother Jack said, getting to his feet, "you'll stand on the decision of the committee. We've had enough of this. The committee makes your decisions and it is not its practice to give undue importance to the mistaken notions of the people. What's happened to your discipline?"