Native Son - Richard Wright [126]
Bigger stared unblinkingly at the white wall before him as the preacher’s words registered themselves in his consciousness. He knew without listening what they meant; it was the old voice of his mother telling of suffering, of hope, of love beyond this world. And he loathed it because it made him feel as condemned and guilty as the voice of those who hated him.
“Son….”
Bigger glanced at the preacher, and then away.
“Fergit ever’thing but yo’ soul, son. Take yo’ mind off ever’thing but eternal life. Fergit whut the newspapers say. Fergit yuh’s black. Gawd looks past yo’ skin ’n inter yo’ soul, son. He’s lookin’ at the only parta yuh tha’s His. He wants yuh ’n’ He loves yuh. Give yo’se’f t’ ’Im, son. Lissen, lemme tell yuh why yuh’s here; lemme tell yuh a story tha’ll make yo’ heart glad….”
Bigger sat very still, listening and not listening. If someone had afterwards asked him to repeat the preacher’s words, he would not have been able to do so. But he felt and sensed their meaning. As the preacher talked there appeared before him a vast black silent void and the images of the preacher swam in that void, grew large and powerful; familiar images which his mother had given him when he was a child at her knee; images which in turn aroused impulses long dormant, impulses that he had suppressed and sought to shunt from his life. They were images which had once given him a reason for living, had explained the world. Now they sprawled before his eyes and seized his emotions in a spell of awe and wonder.
…an endless reach of deep murmuring waters upon whose face was darkness and there was no form no shape no sun no stars and no land and a voice came out of the darkness and the waters moved to obey and there emerged slowly a huge spinning ball and the voice said let there be light and there was light and it was good light and the voice said let there be a firmament and the waters parted and there was a vast space over the waters which formed into clouds stretching above the waters and like an echo the voice came from far away saying let dry land appear and with thundering rustling the waters drained off and mountain peaks reared into view and there were valleys and rivers and the voice called the dry land earth and the waters seas and the earth grew grass and trees and flowers that gave off seed that fell to the earth to grow again and the earth was lit by the light of a million stars and for the day there was a sun and for the night there was a moon and there were days and weeks and months and years and the voice called out of the twilight and moving creatures came forth out of the great waters whales and all kinds of living creeping things and on the land there were beasts and cattle and the voice said let us make man in our own image and from the dusty earth a man rose up and loomed against the day and the sun and after him a woman rose up and loomed against the night and the moon and they lived as one flesh and there was no Pain no Longing no Time no Death and Life was like the flowers that bloomed round them in the garden of earth and out of the clouds came a voice saying eat not of the fruit of the tree in the midst of the garden, neither touch it, lest ye die….
The preacher’s words ceased droning. Bigger looked at him out of the corners of his eyes. The preacher’s face was black and sad and earnest and made him feel a sense of guilt deeper than that which even his murder of Mary had made him feel. He had killed within himself the preacher’s haunting picture of life even before he had killed Mary; that had been his first murder. And now the preacher made it walk before his eyes like a ghost in the night, creating within him a sense of exclusion that was as cold as a block of ice. Why should this thing rise now to plague him after he had pressed a pillow of fear and hate over its face to smother it to death? To those who wanted to kill him he was not human, not included in that picture of Creation; and that was why he had killed it. To live, he had created a new world for himself, and for that he was to die.