Ralph Ellison's "Invisible Man" Chapters 6-12

Here in this room my defenses were negated, stripped away, checked at the door as the weapons, the knives and razors and owlhead pistols of the country boys were checked on Saturday night at the Golden Day. I kept my eyes lowered, mumbling "Pardon

Maybe he was dissimulating, like some of the teachers at the college, who, to avoid trouble when driving through the small surrounding towns, wore chauffeur caps and pretended that their cars belonged to white men.

All my limbs seemed amputated.

"Good-bye," he said, his voice noncommittal.

My lungs were compressed like a bellows and each time my breath returned I yelled, punctuating the rhythmical action of the nodes.

What I mean is, do you believe it possible for us, the two of us, to throw off the mask of custom and manners that insulate man from man, and converse in naked honesty and frankness?"

Somehow I felt that Bledsoe and Norton were behind it, and all day I was inhibited in both speech and conduct, for fear that I might say or do something scandalous.

It was an aviary of tropical birds set near one of the broad windows, through which, as the clapping of wings settled down, I could see two ships plying far out upon the greenish bay below.

I looked around the room, amazed.

Snatches of their conversation fluttered to me as they discussed Barbee's talk with enthusiasm, recalled the times of the Founder, their quavering voices weaving and embroidering his story.

From somewhere across the quiet of the campus the sound of an old guitar-blues plucked from an out-of-tune piano drifted toward me like a lazy, shimmering wave, like the echoed whistle of a lonely train, and my head went over again, against a tree this ti

I tried, thinking vainly of many names, but none seemed to fit, and yet it was as though I was somehow a part of all of them, had become submerged within them and lost.

Somehow I felt that Bledsoe and Norton were behind it, and all day I was inhibited in both speech and conduct, for fear that I might say or do something scandalous.

In twenty minutes he can inflate that symbol with all the freedom which he'll be too busy working to enjoy the rest of the time.

A pair of eyes peered down through lenses as thick as the bottom of a Coca-Cola bottle, eyes protruding, luminous and veined, like an old biology specimen preserved in alcohol.

A flash of movement drew my eye to the side of the highway now, and I saw a moccasin wiggle swiftly along the gray concrete, vanishing into a length of iron pipe that lay beside the road.

Or to give myself some kind of sadistic catharsis.

The man who moved out of the shadow and looked at me sullenly was small, wiry and very natty in his dirty overalls.

A huge iridescent bubble seemed to enfold me.

I was exasperated.

Really Pre-Renaissance—and that game has been analyzed, put down in books.

And remember, you'll be adequately compensated for your experience."

Here in this room my defenses were negated, stripped away, checked at the door as the weapons, the knives and razors and owlhead pistols of the country boys were checked on Saturday night at the Golden Day. I kept my eyes lowered, mumbling "Pardon me, pardon me," all the way to the drab green locker, where I removed the sandwich, for which I no longer had an appetite, and stood fumbling with the bag, dreading to face the men on my way out.

Faces hovered above me like inscrutable fish peering myopically through a glass aquarium wall.

Let the Negroes snicker and the crackers laugh!

It was a most painful position, for at the same time, Mary reminded me constantly that something was expected of me, some act of leadership, some newsworthy achievement; and I was torn between resenting her for it and loving her for the nebulous hope she kept alive.

In spite of me, such notions seep in along with the gimcrack teachers and northern-trained idealists.

You don't want to go home to be humiliated, I understand that, because you have some vague notions about dignity.

You need to become readjusted and get your strength back."

Now a man sitting with his back to me, manipulating dials on a panel.

Scenes of a shaded lawn in summer drifted past; I saw a uniformed military band arrayed decorously in concert, each musician with well-oiled hair, heard a sweet-voiced trumpet rendering "The Holy City" as from an echoing distance, buoyed by a choir of muted horns; and above, the mocking obbligato of a mocking bird.

And I saw the squat man shake his fist angrily over the uplifted faces, yelling something in a staccato West Indian accent, at which the crowd yelled threateningly.

Then he'd clear his throat and give a deeply intoned order, as though each syllable were pregnant with nuances of profoundly important meaning.

"Oh, I didn't come for that, sir," I said, seeing him turn quickly, looking down upon me, his eyes quizzical.

Chapter 12
When I came out of the subway, Lenox Avenue seemed to careen away from me at a drunken angle, and I focused upon the teetering scene with wild, infant's eyes, my head throbbing.

He is very complicated."

He'll experience no major conflict of motives, and what is even better, society will suffer no traumata on his account."

What if he'd lied out of some ulterior motive of his own?

They were holding me firm and it was fiery and above it all I kept hearing the opening motif of Beethoven's Fifth—three short and one long buzz, repeated again and again in varying volume, and I was struggling and breaking through, rising up, to find myself lying on my back with two pink-faced men laughing down.

I had kept unswervingly to the path placed before me, had tried to be exactly what I was expected to be, had done exactly what I was expected to do—yet, instead of winning the expected reward, here I was stumbling along, holding on desperately to one of my eyes in order to keep from bursting out my brain against some familiar object swerved into my path by my distorted vision.

Holding on grimly, I could hear the sound of someone wading, sloshing, nearby, and an old man's garrulous voice saying, "I tole 'em these here young Nineteen-Hundred boys ain't no good for the job.

They were arguing some point heatedly, but I was too agitated to listen and simply followed in their shadows, noticing the dull gleam of their polished shoe-leather in the rays of the street lamps.

It was for a laugh, for a laugh, all the kids had laughed and laughed, and the droll tuba player of the old Elk's band had rendered it solo on his helical horn; with comical flourishes and doleful phrasing, "Boo boo boo booooo, Poor Robin clean"—a mock funeral dirge .

I kept trying to formulate what I would say to Dr. Bledsoe, and the boys must have turned into their building, for suddenly finding myself outside the gates of the campus and heading down the highway, I turned and ran back to the building.

We're both frustrated, understand?

He glowered at me silently, then pointed to the floor.

Somewhere beneath the load of the emotion-freezing ice which my life had conditioned my brain to produce, a spot of black anger glowed and threw off a hot red light of such intensity that had Lord Kelvin known of its existence, he would have had to revise his measurements.

In my mind's eye I continued to see him gazing into his watch, but now he was joined by another figure; a younger figure, myself; become shrewd, suave and dressed not in somber garments (like his old-fashioned ones) but in a dapper suit of rich material, cut fashionably, like those of the men you saw in magazine ads, the junior executive types in Esquire.

But that bit, that fraction, was irrevocable.

"What the hell, you trying to sabotage the company?

He reached out, touching my skull gingerly, and said something encouraging, as though I were a child.

I became alert again as he mumbled something incomprehensible about "nostalgia for Harvard yard."

Suddenly he reached for something beneath a pile of papers, an old leg shackle from slavery which he proudly called a "symbol of our progress."

Due, however, to circumstances the nature of which I shall explain to you in person on the occasion of the next meeting of the board, it is to the best interests of the college that this young man have no knowledge of the finality of his expulsion.

If, I thought, one could slow down his heartbeats and memory to the tempo of the black drops falling so slowly into the bucket yet reacting so swiftly, it would seem like a sequence in a feverish dream .

Sure, that's the way it was, I thought, a short, concise verbal coup de grace, straight to the nape of the neck.

Green hedges, dazzling with red wild roses appeared behind my eyes, stretching with a gentle curving to an infinity empty of objects, a limpid blue space.

A whirring began that snapped and cracked with static, and suddenly I seemed to be crushed between the floor and ceiling.

The very thought of my contacts gave me a feeling of sophistication, of worldliness, which, as I fingered the seven important letters in my pocket, made me feel light and expansive.

A nauseating stench arose.

"We require an affidavit releasing the company of responsibility," he said.

Walking about the streets, sitting on subways beside whites, eating with them in the same cafeterias (although I avoided their tables) gave me the eerie, out-of-focus sensation of a dream.

I barely raised my eyes until a car, passing with a thudding of skid chains whirled completely around on the ice, then turned cautiously and thudded off again.

Only a few flecks of snowy cloud hung high in the morning-blue sky, and already a woman was hanging wash on a roof.

Somewhere an engine ground in furious futility, grating loudly until a pain shot around the curve of my head and bounced me off into blackness for a distance, only to strike another pain that lobbed me back.

In my mind's eye I continued to see him gazing into his watch, but now he was joined by another figure; a younger figure, myself; become shrewd, suave and dressed not in somber garments (like his old-fashioned ones) but in a dapper suit of rich material, cut fashionably, like those of the men you saw in magazine ads, the junior executive types in Esquire.

I turned and watched it recede from the rear window; the sun caught its treetops, bathed its low-set buildings and ordered grounds.

And remember, you'll be adequately compensated for your experience."

Really Pre-Renaissance—and that game has been analyzed, put down in books.

"Well, I don't like a lot of bickering and confusion myself," he said, avoiding my eyes.

Then a great weight landed upon me and I seemed to sprawl in an interval of clarity beneath a pile of broken machinery, my head pressed back against a huge wheel, my body splattered with a stinking goo.

The pigment and heavy oils came free of the bottom much quicker, and when Kimbro returned I was going at top speed.

But here in the North I would slough off my southern ways of speech.

It was for a laugh, for a laugh, all the kids had laughed and laughed, and the droll tuba player of the old Elk's band had rendered it solo on his helical horn; with comical flourishes and doleful phrasing, "Boo boo boo booooo, Poor Robin clean"—a mock funeral dirge .

However, it is to the best interests of the great work which we are dedicated to perform, that he continue undisturbed in these vain hopes while remaining as far as possible from our midst.

His way of talking to Mr. Norton had been a foreshadowing of my misfortune—just as I had sensed that it would be.

Even when the shirt-sleeved crowd cried out in angry affirmation of some remark of the speaker, they paid no attention.

All were the same, a brilliant white diffused with gray, I closed my eyes for a moment and looked again and still no change.

I watched him peer into the graduate, lifting the dropper and sniffing it, his face glowing with exasperation.

He gave me a gruff look.

I blurted.

"It was presumptuous of me to even suggest another school.

It was not paint because I had been told that the paint was made on the floors above, where, passing through, I had seen men in splattered aprons working over large vats filled with whirling pigment.

I spent several hours on the typing, destroying copy after copy until I had completed one that was immaculate, carefully phrased and most respectful.

It was confusing.

"Look," he said, drawing in his breath with an exaggerated show of patience.

"We require an affidavit releasing the company of responsibility," he said.

My dear Mr. Emerson:
The bearer of this letter is a former student of ours (I say former because he shall never, under any circumstances, be enrolled as a student here again) who has been expelled for a most serious defection from our strictest rules of deportment.

A terrible sense of loneliness came over me; they seemed to enact a mysterious pantomime.

If only all the contradictory voices shouting inside my head would calm down and sing a song in unison, whatever it was I wouldn't care as long as they sang without dissonance; yes, and avoided the uncertain extremes of the scale.

"Come on, son," his voice amused and conciliatory.

In my mind's eye I continued to see him gazing into his watch, but now he was joined by another figure; a younger figure, myself; become shrewd, suave and dressed not in somber garments (like his old-fashioned ones) but in a dapper suit of rich material, cut fashionably, like those of the men you saw in magazine ads, the junior executive types in Esquire.

I could feel the odor of frying bacon reach deep into my stomach as I watched the counterman open the doors of the grill and turn the lean strips over and bang the doors shut again.

"You aren't ready for the rigors of industry.

The car roared and swayed, pressing me hard against her, but when I took a furtive glance around no one was paying me the slightest attention.

He blanched at being called old, and I repeated it, adding insults I'd heard my grandfather use.

"Oh, goddog, daddy-o," he said with a sudden bluster, "who got the damn dog?

It was for a laugh, for a laugh, all the kids had laughed and laughed, and the droll tuba player of the old Elk's band had rendered it solo on his helical horn; with comical flourishes and doleful phrasing, "Boo boo boo booooo, Poor Robin clean"—a mock funeral dirge .

Faces hovered above me like inscrutable fish peering myopically through a glass aquarium wall.

Crenshaw grimaced.

Here in this room my defenses were negated, stripped away, checked at the door as the weapons, the knives and razors and owlhead pistols of the country boys were checked on Saturday night at the Golden Day. I kept my eyes lowered, mumbling "Pardon me, pardon me," all the way to the drab green locker, where I removed the sandwich, for which I no longer had an appetite, and stood fumbling with the bag, dreading to face the men on my way out.

And the obsession with my identity which I had developed in the factory hospital returned with a vengeance.

"I suppose I've been evading the issue again—as always.

"Some things are just too unjust for words," he said, expelling a plume of smoke, "and too ambiguous for either speech or ideas.

I followed the boy down an aisle between endless cans, buckets and drums labeled with the company's trademark, a screaming eagle.

It was as though I were being put through a fraternity initiation and found myself going back.

And remember, you'll be adequately compensated for your experience."

I followed the boy down an aisle between endless cans, buckets and drums labeled with the company's trademark, a screaming eagle.

He gave me a long, suspicious look and spat upon a hot pipe, causing it to steam furiously.

I hurried to my address and was challenged by the sheer height of the white stone with its sculptured bronze façade.

I had kept unswervingly to the path placed before me, had tried to be exactly what I was expected to be, had done exactly what I was expected to do—yet, instead of winning the expected reward, here I was stumbling along, holding on desperately to one of my eyes in order to keep from bursting out my brain against some familiar object swerved into my path by my distorted vision.

From somewhere across the quiet of the campus the sound of an old guitar-blues plucked from an out-of-tune piano drifted toward me like a lazy, shimmering wave, like the echoed whistle of a lonely train, and my head went over again, against a tree this time, and I could hear it splattering the flowering vines.

Returning, he looked at me sharply, his withered face an animated black walnut with shrewd, reddish eyes.

I stood in the path holding my eye and trying to push back the day, but each time I floundered upon Dr. Bledsoe's decision.

I want to help, but there is a tyranny involved .

No sounds beyond the sluggish inner roar of the blood.

I moved clumsily away, seeing Brockway grin like a dried prune.

"I'm looking for the man in charge," I called, straining to locate the voice.

One wall was almost covered by a huge colored map, from which narrow red silk ribbons stretched tautly from each division of the map to a series of ebony pedestals, upon which sat glass specimen jars containing natural products of the various countries.

I kept expecting her to scream, until finally the car lurched and I was able to free my left arm.

But he stirred it vigorously until it became glossy white, holding the spatula like a delicate instrument and studying the paint as it laced off the blade, back into the bucket.

I took the subway and it still droned through my mind after I had reached my room at Men's House and lay across the bed.

Like the servant about whom I'd read in psychology class who, during a trance, had recited pages of Greek philosophy which she had overheard one day while she worked.

Moving into the subway I was pushed along by the milling salt-and-pepper mob, seized in the back by a burly, blue-uniformed attendant about the size of Supercargo, and crammed, bags and all, into a train that was so crowded that everyone seemed to stand with his head back and his eyes bulging, like chickens frozen at the sound of danger.

"Smelted!" he roared.

"Good morning," she said, betraying none of the antagonism I had expected.

I felt giddy.

Back along the shore, gulls soared through the mist above the docks, and down, so far below that it made me dizzy, crowds were moving.

My eyes were out of focus.

With things going so well I distributed my letters in the mornings, and saw the city during the afternoons.

Shucks, I just sent 'em word that Lucius Brockway was retiring!

And why describe anyone in such contradictory words?

Brockway took a shovel and scooped up a load of brown crystals from a pile on the floor, pitching them skillfully into a receptacle on top of the machine.

But I no longer listened, nor saw more than the play of light upon the metallic disks of his glasses, which now seemed to float within the disgusting sea of his words.

Yet as my eyes focused upon Old Friendly Face he seemed pleased.

So while my roommate grinned and mumbled unaware in his sleep I packed my bags.

Except the Bible; I picked it up and sat back on the bed, allowing its blood-red-edged pages to ripple beneath my thumb.

I went on to the corner and got on a bus and went automatically to the rear.

White folks were funny; Mr. Bates might not wish to see a Negro the first thing in the morning.

I raised my eyes, seeing two indefinite young women in white, looking down at me.

No, he was making something down here, something that had to do with paint, and probably something too filthy and dangerous for white men to be willing to do even for money.

In fact, I'maseventhsonofaseventhsonbawnwithacauloverbotheyesandraisedonblackcat-boneshighjohntheconquerorandgreasygreens —" he spieled with twinkling eyes, his lips working rapidly.

"The man was raving."

We are going to release you.

My being early would be, I hoped, an indication of both how badly I wanted work, and how promptly I would perform any assignment given me.

I strode along, hearing the cartman's song become a lonesome, broad-toned whistle now that flowered at the end of each phrase into a tremulous, blue-toned chord.

If, I thought, one could slow down his heartbeats and memory to the tempo of the black drops falling so slowly into the bucket yet reacting so swiftly, it would seem like a sequence in a feverish dream .

The jacket of his blue serge suit was open, revealing a heavy gold chain linked between his vest pockets as he moved toward me with a noiseless tread.

"Goddamit, don't you know you can't smell shit around all those fumes?

Holding on grimly, I could hear the sound of someone wading, sloshing, nearby, and an old man's garrulous voice saying, "I tole 'em these here young Nineteen-Hundred boys ain't no good for the job.

Before me a gathering of people were almost blocking the walk, while above them a short squat man shouted angrily from a ladder to which were attached a collection of small American flags.

Lights began to appear in the girls' dormitories, like the bursting of luminous seeds flung broadside by an invisible hand.

I handed it over, noticing the gold links in the soft white cuffs as he extended his hand.

"Come on, come," he said, removing his glasses and wiping his eyes.

The jacket of his blue serge suit was open, revealing a heavy gold chain linked between his vest pockets as he moved toward me with a noiseless tread.

"But what of his psychology?"

When I emerged, the lights were still there.

Reluctantly I sat, torn between anger and fascination, hating myself for obeying.

Shucks, I just sent 'em word that Lucius Brockway was retiring!

I started toward my room, covering one eye with my hand to avoid crashing into trees and lampposts projected into my path.

His hand was large and strangely limp.

I had entered a large reception room decorated with cool tropical colors.

It would be more scientific to try to define the case.

Below me lay South Ferry, and a ship and two barges were passing out into the river, and far out and to the right I could make out the Statue of Liberty, her torch almost lost in the fog.

I followed the boy down an aisle between endless cans, buckets and drums labeled with the company's trademark, a screaming eagle.

I wanted to call him, but the Fifth Symphony rhythm racked me, and he seemed too serene and too far away.

The man who moved out of the shadow and looked at me sullenly was small, wiry and very natty in his dirty overalls.

I thought, Oh, hell, and before I could follow, he burst out of the door in a frenzy.

Did old Chaplin-pants, old dusty-butt, love her or hate her; or was he merely singing?

I went over, tense inside me.

A third, a desert of heat waves away, sat at a panel arrayed with coils and dials.

Whatever my responsibility was for what had occurred, I knew that I would pay for it, knew that I would be expelled, and the very idea stabbed my insides again.

I stared for about a minute, wondering if I were seeing things, inspected another and another.

The train seemed to plunge downhill now, only to lunge to a stop that shot me out upon a platform feeling like something regurgitated from the belly of a frantic whale.

I stood, hesitating in the door, aware suddenly of the old heavy furnishings, the relics from the times of the Founder, the framed portrait photographs and relief plaques of presidents and industrialists, men of power-fixed like trophies or heraldic emblems upon the walls.

I looked around the room, amazed.

I paid my way with my compensation money and found living with her pleasant except for her constant talk about leadership and responsibility.

He was looking me in the eye now, his voice charged and sincere, as though uttering a confession, a fantastic revelation which I could neither believe nor deny.

Snatches of their conversation fluttered to me as they discussed Barbee's talk with enthusiasm, recalled the times of the Founder, their quavering voices weaving and embroidering his story.

The hoarsely voiced word grated my ears like "nigger" in an angry southern mouth .

It must have happened when the metal struck the desk, for suddenly I was leaning toward him, shouting with outrage.

And now to drive me wild I felt suddenly that my grandfather was hovering over me, grinning triumphantly out of the dark.

It's really a very crude affair.

Then touching the shackle gently with his index finger, he said, "Very well.

And you could never be sure, for at home an old man employed as a janitor at the Water Works was the only one who knew the location of all of the water mains.

Then he sat before me, making a cage of his fingers and nodding for me to begin.

We came to a strange-looking machine consisting of a huge set of gears connecting a series of drum-like rollers.

Ahead of me a huge electric sign announced its message through the drifting strands of fog:
KEEP AMERICA PURE
WITH
LIBERTY PAINTS
Flags were fluttering in the breeze from each of a maze of buildings below the sign, and for a moment it was like watching some vast patriotic ceremony from a distance.

"Good morning," she said, betraying none of the antagonism I had expected.

I want to help, but there is a tyranny involved .

Armored cars with alert guards went past as I looked for the number.

In my mind's eye I continued to see him gazing into his watch, but now he was joined by another figure; a younger figure, myself; become shrewd, suave and dressed not in somber garments (like his old-fashioned ones) but in a dapper suit of rich material, cut fashionably, like those of the men you saw in magazine ads, the junior executive types in Esquire.

Somehow, I convinced myself, I had violated the code and thus would have to submit to punishment.

There were paintings, bronzes, tapestries, all beautifully arranged.

Perhaps he is the engineer, I thought, watching him inspect the gauges and go to another part of the room to adjust a series of valves.

"When do you expect to graduate?"

From somewhere across the quiet of the campus the sound of an old guitar-blues plucked from an out-of-tune piano drifted toward me like a lazy, shimmering wave, like the echoed whistle of a lonely train, and my head went over again, against a tree this time, and I could hear it splattering the flowering vines.

From somewhere across the quiet of the campus the sound of an old guitar-blues plucked from an out-of-tune piano drifted toward me like a lazy, shimmering wave, like the echoed whistle of a lonely train, and my head went over again, against a tree this time, and I could hear it splattering the flowering vines.

And if there's someone who has tampered with my letter, I'll prove my identity .

I recalled my expulsion, feeling quick anger and attempting to suppress it immediately; but now I was not quite successful, my resentment stuck out at the edges, making me uncomfortable.