Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [128]
In my hand its expression seemed more of a strangulation than a grin. It was choking, filled to the throat with coins.
How the hell did it get here, I wondered, dashing over and striking the pipe a blow with the kinky iron head. "Shut up!" I screamed, which seemed only to enrage the hidden knocker. The din was deafening. Tenants up and down the entire line of apartments joined in. I hammered back with the iron naps, seeing the silver fly, striking like driven sand against my face. The pipe fairly hummed with the blows. Windows were going up. Voices yelled obscenities down the airshaft.
Who started all this, I wondered, who's responsible?
"Why don't you act like responsible people living in the twentieth century?" I yelled, aiming a blow at the pipe. "Get rid of your cottonpatch ways! Act civilized!"
Then came a crash of sound and I felt the iron head crumble and fly apart in my hand. Coins flew over the room like crickets, ringing, rattling against the floor, rolling. I stopped dead.
"Just listen to 'em! Just listen to 'em!" Mary called from the hall. "Enough noise to wake the dead! They know when the heat don't come up that the super's drunk or done walked off the job looking for his woman, or something. Why don't folks act according to what they know?"
She was at my door now, knocking stroke for stroke with the blows landing on the pipe, calling, "Son! Ain't some of that knocking coming from in there?"
I turned from side to side in indecision, looking at the pieces of broken head, the small coins of all denominations that were scattered about.
"You hear me, boy?" she called.
"What is it?" I called, dropping to the floor and reaching frantically for the broken pieces, thinking, If she opens the door, I'm lost . . .
"I said is any of that racket coming from in there?"
"Yes, it is, Mary," I called, "but I'm all right . . . I'm already awake."
I saw the knob move and froze, hearing, "Sounded to me like a heap of it was coming from in there. You got your clothes on?"
"No," I cried. "I'm just dressing. I'll have them on in a minute."
"Come on out to the kitchen," she said. "It's warm out there. And there's some hot water on the stove to wash your face in . . . and some coffee. Lawd, just listen at the racket!"
I stood as though frozen, until she moved away from the door. I'd have to hurry. I kneeled, picking up a piece of the bank, a part of the red-shirted chest, reading the legend, FEED ME in a curve of white iron letters, like the team name on an athlete's shirt. The figure had gone to pieces like a grenade, scattering jagged fragments of painted iron among the coins. I looked at my hand; a small trickle of blood showed. I wiped it away, thinking, I'll have to hide this mess! I can't take her this and the news that I'm moving at the same time. Taking a newspaper from the chair I folded it stiffly and swept the coins and broken metal into a pile. Where would I hide it, I wondered, looking with profound distaste at the iron kinks, the dull red of a piece of grinning lip. Why, I thought with anguish, would Mary have something like this around anyway? Just why? I looked under the bed. It was dustless there, no place to hide anything. She was too good a housekeeper. Besides, what of the coins? Hell! Maybe the thing was left by the former roomer. Anyway, whose ever it was, it had to be hidden. There was the closet, but she'd find it there too. After I was gone a few days she'd clean out my things and there it'd be. The knocking had gone beyond mere protest over heatlessness now, they had fallen into a ragged rumba rhythm:
Knock!
Knock-knock
Knock-knock!
Knock!
Knock-knock!
Knock-knock!
vibrating the very floor.
"Just a few minutes more, you bastards," I said aloud, "and I'll be gone! No respect