The Heart is a Lonely Hunter - Carson McCullers [9]
At two o’clock Blount entered the restaurant again. He brought in with him a tall Negro man carrying a black bag.
The drunk tried to bring him up to the counter for a drink, but the Negro left as soon as he realized why he had been led inside. Biff recognized him as a Negro doctor who had practiced in the town ever since he could remember.
He was related in some way to young Willie back in the kitchen. Before he left Biff saw him turn on Blount with a look of quivering hatred.
The drunk just stood there.
‘Don’t you know you can’t bring no nigger in a place where white men drink?’ someone asked him. Biff watched this happening from a distance. Blount was very angry, and now it could easily be seen how drunk he was. ‘I’m part nigger myself,’ he called out as a challenge. Biff watched him alertly and the place was quiet. With his thick nostrils and the rolling whites of his eyes it looked a little as though he might be telling the truth. ‘I’m part nigger and wop and bohunk and chink. All of those.’ There was laughter. ‘And I’m Dutch and Turkish and Japanese and American.’ He walked in zigzags around the table where the mute drank his coffee. His voice was loud and cracked. ‘I’m one who knows. I’m a stranger in a strange land.’
‘Quiet down,’ Biff said to him.
Blount paid no attention to anyone in the place except the mute. They were both looking at each other. The mute’s eyes were cold and gentle as a cat’s and all his body seemed to listen. The drunk man was in a frenzy.
‘You’re the only one in this town who catches what I mean,’ Blount said. ‘For two days now I been talking to you in my mind because I know you understand the things I want to mean.’
Some people in a booth were laughing because without knowing it the drunk had picked out a deaf-mute to try to talk with. Biff watched the two men with little darting glances and listened attentively.
Blount sat down to the table and leaned over close to Singer.
There are those who know and those who don’t know. And for every ten thousand who don’t know there’s only one who knows. That’s the miracle of all time--the fact that these millions know so much but don’t know this. It’s like in the fifteenth century when everybody believed the world was flat and only Columbus and a few other fellows knew the truth.
But it’s different in that it took talent to figure that the earth is round. While this truth is so obvious it’s a miracle of all history that people don’t know. You savvy.’
Biff rested his elbows on the counter and looked at Blount with curiosity. ‘Know what?’ he asked.
‘Don’t listen to him,’ Blount said. ‘Don’t mind that flat-footed, blue-jowled, nosy bastard. For you see, when us people who know run into each other mat’s an event. It almost never happens. Sometimes we meet each other and neither guesses that the other is one who knows. That’s a bad thing. It’s happened to me a lot of times. But you see there are so few of us.’
‘Masons?’ Biff asked.
‘Shut up, you! Else I’ll snatch your arm off and beat you black with it,’ Blount bawled. He hunched over close to the mute and his voice dropped to a drunken whisper. ‘And how come? Why has this miracle of ignorance endured? Because of one thing. A conspiracy. A vast and insidious conspiracy.
Obscurantism. The men in the booth were still laughing at the drunk who was trying to hold a conversation with the mute. Only Biff was serious. He wanted to ascertain if the mute really understood what was said to him. The fellow nodded frequently and his face seemed contemplative. He was only slow--that was all. Blount began to crack a few jokes along with this talk about knowing. The mute never smiled until several seconds after the funny remark had been made; then when the talk was gloomy again the smile still hung on his face a little too long. The fellow was downright uncanny. People felt themselves watching him even before they knew that there was anything different about him. His eyes made a person think that he heard things nobody else had ever heard, that he knew things no one had ever guessed before. He did not seem quite human. Jake Blount leaned across the table and the words came out as though a dam inside him had broken. Biff could not understand him any more. Blount