Native Son - Richard Wright [87]
“Yessuh!”
“Open up!”
He pulled on the light, opened the door and met a white face.
“They want you downstairs.”
“Yessuh!”
The man stepped to one side and Bigger went past him on down the hall and down the steps into the basement, feeling the eyes of the white man on his back, and hearing as he neared the furnace the muffled breathing of the fire and seeing directly before his eyes Mary’s bloody head with its jet-black curly hair, shining and wet with blood on the crumpled newspapers. He saw Britten standing near the furnace with three white men.
“Hello, Bigger.”
“Yessuh,” Bigger said.
“You heard what happened?”
“Yessuh.”
“Listen, boy. You’re talking just to me and my men here. Now, tell me, do you think Jan’s mixed up in this?”
Bigger’s eyes fell. He did not want to answer in a hurry and he did not want to blame Jan definitely, for that would make them question him too closely. He would hint and point in Jan’s direction.
“I don’t know, suh,” he said.
“Just tell me what you think.”
“I don’t know, suh,” Bigger said again.
“You really saw him here last night, didn’t you?”
“Oh, yessuh.”
“You’d swear he told you to take that trunk down and leave the car out in the snow.”
“I—I’d swear to what’s true, suh,” said Bigger.
“Did he act like he had anything up his sleeve?”
“I don’t know, suh.”
“What time did you say you left?”
“A little before two, suh.”
Britten turned to the other men, one of whom stood near the furnace with his back to the fire, warming his hands behind him. The man’s legs were sprawled wide apart and a cigar glowed in a corner of his mouth.
“It must’ve been that Red,” Britten said to him.
“Yeah,” said the man at the furnace. “What would he have the boy take the trunk down for and leave the car out? It was to throw us off the scent.”
“Listen, Bigger,” said Britten. “Did you see this guy act in any way out of the ordinary? I mean, sort of nervous, say? Just what did he talk about?”
“He talked about Communists….”
“Did he ask you to join?”
“He gave me that stuff to read.”
“Come on. Tell us some of the things he said.”
Bigger knew the things that white folks hated to hear Negroes ask for; and he knew that these were the things the Reds were always asking for. And he knew that white folks did not like to hear these things asked for even by whites who fought for Negroes.
“Well,” Bigger said, feigning reluctance, “he told me that some day there wouldn’t be no rich folks and no poor folks….”
“Yeah?”
“And he said a black man would have a chance….”
“Go on.”
“And he said there would be no more lynching….”
“And what was the girl saying?”
“She agreed with ’im.”
“How did you feel toward them?”
“I don’t know, suh.”
“I mean, did you like ’em?”
He knew that the average white man would not approve of his liking such talk.
“It was my job. I just did what they told me,” he mumbled.
“Did the girl act in any way scared?”
He sensed what kind of a case they were trying to build against Jan and he remembered that Mary had cried last night when he had refused to go into the café with her to eat.
“Well, I don’t know, suh. She was crying once….”
“Crying?”
The men crowded about him.
“Yessuh.”
“Did he hit her?”
“I didn’t see that.”
“What did he do then?”
“Well, he put his arms around her and she stopped.”
Bigger had his back to a wall. The crimson luster of the fire gleamed on the white men’s faces. The sound of air being sucked upward through the furnace mingled in Bigger’s ears with the faint whine of the wind outside in the night. He was tired; he closed his eyes a long second and then opened them, knowing that he had to keep alert and answer questions to save himself.
“Did this fellow Jan say anything to you about white women?”
Bigger tightened with alarm.
“Suh?”
“Did he say he would let you meet some white women if you joined the Reds?”
He knew that sex relations between blacks and whites were repulsive to most white men.
“Nawsuh,” he said, simulating abashment.
“Did Jan lay the girl?”
“I don’t know, suh.”
“Did you take them to a room or a hotel?”
“Nawsuh. Just to the park.