Invisible man - Ralph Ellison [68]
She looked at me oddly and smiled. "I'm very sorry," she said, "but Mr. Bates is just too busy to see you this morning and asks that you leave your name and address. You'll hear from him by mail."
I stood silent with disappointment. "Write it here," she said, giving me a card.
"I'm sorry," she said again as I scribbled my address and prepared to leave.
"I can be reached here at any time," I said.
"Very good," she said. "You should hear very soon."
She seemed very kind and interested, and I left in good spirits. My fears were groundless, there was nothing to it. This was New York.
I succeeded in reaching several trustees' secretaries during the days that followed, and all were friendly and encouraging. Some looked at me strangely, but I dismissed it since it didn't appear to be antagonism. Perhaps they're surprised to see someone like me with introductions to such important men, I thought. Well, there were unseen lines that ran from North to South, and Mr. Norton had called me his destiny . . . I swung my brief case with confidence.
With things going so well I distributed my letters in the mornings, and saw the city during the afternoons. 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. My clothes felt ill-fitting; and for all my letters to men of power, I was unsure of how I should act. For the first time, as I swung along the streets, I thought consciously of how I had conducted myself at home. I hadn't worried too much about whites as people. Some were friendly and some were not, and you tried not to offend either. But here they all seemed impersonal; and yet when most impersonal they startled me by being polite, by begging my pardon after brushing against me in a crowd. Still I felt that even when they were polite they hardly saw me, that they would have begged the pardon of Jack the Bear, never glancing his way if the bear happened to be walking along minding his business. It was confusing. I did not know if it was desirable or undesirable . . .
But my main concern was seeing the trustees and after more than a week of seeing the city and being vaguely encouraged by secretaries, I became impatient. I had distributed all but the letter to a Mr. Emerson, who I knew from the papers was away from the city. Several times I started down to see what had happened but changed my mind. I did not wish to seem too impatient. But time was becoming short. Unless I found work soon I would never earn enough to enter school by fall. I had already written home that I was working for a member of the trustee board, and the only letter I had received so far was one telling me how wonderful they thought it was and warning me against the ways of the wicked city. Now I couldn't write them for money without revealing that I had been lying about the job.
Finally I tried to reach the important men by telephone, only to receive polite refusals by their secretaries. But fortunately I still had the letter to Mr. Emerson. I decided to use it, but instead of handing it over to a secretary, I wrote a letter explaining that I had a message from Dr. Bledsoe and requesting an appointment. Maybe I've been wrong about the secretaries, I thought; maybe they destroyed the letters. I should have been more careful.
I thought of Mr. Norton. If only the last letter had been addressed to him. If only he lived in New York so that I could make a personal appeal! Somehow I felt closer to Mr. Norton, and felt that if he should see me, he would remember that it was I whom he connected so closely to his fate. Now it seemed ages ago and in a different season and a distant land. Actually, it was less than a month. I became energetic and wrote him a letter, expressing my belief that my future would be immeasurably different if only I could work for