The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [65]
After such mornings he returned to the show with relief. It eased him to push through the crowds of people. The noise, the rank stinks, the shouldering contact of human flesh soothed his jangled nerves.
Because of the blue laws hi the town the show closed for the Sabbath. On Sunday he got up early in the morning and took from the suitcase his serge suit. He went to the main street.
First he dropped into the New York Café and bought a sack of ales. Then he went to Singer’s room. Although he knew many people in the town by name or face, the mute was his only friend. They would idle in the quiet room and drink the ales.
He would talk, and the words created themselves from the dark mornings spent in the streets or hi his room alone. The words were formed and spoken with relief.
The fire had died down. Singer was playing a game of fools with himself at the table. Jake had been asleep. He awoke with a nervous quiver. He raised his head and turned to Singer.
‘Yeah,’ he said as though in answer to a sudden question.
‘Some of us are Communists. But not all of us. Myself, I’m not a member of the Communist Party. Because in the first place I never knew but one of them.
You can bum around for years and not meet Communists.
Around here there’s no office where you can go up and say you want to join--and if there is I never heard of it. And you just don’t take off for New York and join. As I say I never knew but one--and he was a seedy little teetotaler whose breath stunk. We had a fight. Not that I hold that against the Communists. The main fact is I don’t think so much of Stalin and Russia. I hate every damn country and government there is. But even so maybe I ought to joined up with the Communists first place. I’m not certain one way or the other. What do you think?’
Singer wrinkled his forehead and considered. He reached for his silver pencil and wrote on his pad of paper that he didn’t know.
‘But there’s this. You see, we just can’t settle down after knowing, but we got to act And some of us go nuts. There’s too much to do and you don’t know where to start It makes you crazy. Even me--I’ve done things that when I look back at them they don’t seem rational Once I started an organization myself. I picked out twenty lint-heads and talked to them until I thought they knew. Our motto was one word: Action. Huh! We meant to start riots--stir up all the big trouble we could.
Our ultimate goal was freedom--but a real freedom, a great freedom made possible only by the sense of justice of the human soul. Our motto, "Action," signified the razing of capitalism. In the constitution (drawn up by myself) certain statutes dealt with the swapping of our motto from "Action" to "Freedom" as soon as our work was through.’
Jake sharpened the end of a match and picked a troublesome cavity in a tooth. After a moment he continued: ‘Then when the constitution was all written down and the first followers well organized--then I went out on a hitch-hiking tour to organize component units of the society. Within three months I came back, and what do you reckon I found? What was the first heroic action? Had their righteous fury overcome planned action so that they had gone ahead without me? Was it destruction, murder, revolution?’
Jake leaned forward in his chair. After a pause he said somberly: ‘My friend, they had stole the fifty-seven dollars and thirty cents from the treasury to buy uniform caps and free Saturday suppers. I caught them sitting around the conference table, rolling the bones, their caps on their heads, and a ham and a gallon of gin in easy reach.’
A timid smile from Singer followed Jake’s outburst of laughter. After a while the smile on Singer’s face grew strained and faded. Jake still laughed. The vein in his forehead swelled, his face was dusky red. He laughed too long. Singer looked up at the clock and indicated the time--half-past twelve. He took his watch, his silver pencil and pad, his cigarettes and matches from the mantel and distributed them among his pockets. It was dinner-time.
But Jake still laughed. There was something maniacal in the sound of his laughter. He walked about the room, jingling the change in his pockets. His long, powerful arms swung tense and awkward. He began to name over parts of his coming meal. When he spoke of food his face was fierce with gusto.