Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [140]
"Well?" he repeated.
Then the man with the pipe spoke up, a swift charge of tension building with his words.
"It was a most unsatisfactory beginning," he said quietly, punctuating the "unsatisfactory" with a stab of his pipe. He was looking straight at me and I was puzzled. I looked at the others. Their faces were noncommittal, stolid.
"Unsatisfactory!" Brother Jack exploded. "And what alleged process of thought led to that brilliant pronouncement?"
"This is no time for cheap sarcasm, Brother," the brother with the pipe said.
"Sarcasm? You made the sarcasm. No, it isn't a time for sarcasms nor for imbecilities. Nor for plain damn-fooleries! This is a key moment in the struggle, things have just begun to move -- and suddenly you are unhappy. You are afraid of success? What's wrong? Isn't this just what we've been working for?"
"Again, ask yourself. You are the great leader. Look into your crystal ball."
Brother Jack swore.
"Brothers!" someone said.
Brother Jack swore and swung to another brother. "You," he said to the husky man. "Have you the courage to tell me what's going on here? Have we become a street-corner gang?"
Silence. Someone shuffled his feet. The man with the pipe was looking now at me.
"Did I do something wrong?" I said.
"The worst you could have done," he said coldly.
Stunned, I looked at him wordlessly.
"Never mind," Brother Jack said, suddenly calm. "Just what is the problem, Brother? Let's have it out right here. Just what is your complaint?"
"Not a complaint, an opinion. If we are still allowed to express our opinions," the brother with the pipe said.
"Your opinion, then," Brother Jack said.
"In my opinion the speech was wild, hysterical, politically irresponsible and dangerous," he snapped. "And worse than that, it was incorrect!" He pronounced "incorrect" as though the term described the most heinous crime imaginable, and I stared at him open-mouthed, feeling a vague guilt.
"Soooo," Brother Jack said, looking from face to face, "there's been a caucus and decisions have been made. Did you take minutes, Brother Chairman? Have you recorded your wise disputations?"
"There was no caucus and the opinion still holds," the brother with the pipe said.
"No meeting, but just the same there has been a caucus and decisions have been reached even before the event is finished."
"But, Brother," someone tried to intervene.
"A most brilliant, operation," Brother Jack went on, smiling now. "A consummate example of skilled theoretical Nijinskys leaping ahead of history. But come down. Brothers, come down or you'll land on your dialectics; the stage of history hasn't built that far. The month after next, perhaps, but not yet. And what do you think, Brother Wrestrum?" he asked, pointing to a big fellow of the shape and size of Supercargo.
"I think the brother's speech was backward and reactionary!" he said.
I wanted to answer but could not. No wonder his voice had sounded so mixed when he congratulated me. I could only stare into the broad face with its hate-burning eyes.
"And you," Brother Jack said.
"I liked the speech," the man said, "I thought it was quite effective."
"And you?" Brother Jack said to the next man.
"I am of the opinion that it was a mistake."
"And just why?"
"Because we must strive to reach the people through their intelligence . . ."
"Exactly," the brother with the pipe said. "It was the antithesis of the scientific approach. Ours is a reasonable point of view. We are champions of a scientific approach to society, and such a speech as we've identified ourselves with tonight destroys everything that has been said before. The audience isn't thinking, it's yelling its head off."
"Sure, it's acting like a mob," the big black brother said.
Brother Jack laughed. "And this mob," he said, "Is it a mob against us, or is it a mob for us -- how do our muscle-bound scientists answer that?"
But before they could answer he continued, "Perhaps you're right, perhaps it is a mob; but if it is, then it seems to be a mob that's simply boiling over to come along with us. And I shouldn't