Native Son - Richard Wright [118]
He stretched out on the floor and sighed. He was drowsy, but when he was on the verge of sleep he jerked abruptly to a dull wakefulness. Finally, he slept, then sat up, half-awake, following an unconscious prompting of fear. He groaned and his hands flayed the air to ward off an invisible danger. Once he got up completely and walked a few steps with outstretched hands and then lay down in a spot almost ten feet from where he had originally slept. There were two Biggers: one was determined to get rest and sleep at any cost; and the other shrank from images charged with terror. There came a long space of time in which he did not move; he lay on his back, his hands folded upon his chest, his mouth and eyes open. His chest rose and fell so slowly and gently that it seemed that during the intervals when it did not move he would never breathe again. A wan sun came onto his face, making the black skin shine like dull metal; the sun left and the quiet room filled with deep shadows.
As he slept there stole into his consciousness a disturbing, rhythmic throbbing which he tried to fight off to keep from waking up. His mind, protecting him, wove the throb into patterns of innocent images. He thought he was in the Paris Grill listening to the automatic phonograph playing; but that was not satisfying. Next, his mind told him that he was at home in bed and his mother was singing and shaking the mattress, wanting him to get up. But this image, like the others, failed to quiet him. The throb pulsed on, insistent, and he saw hundreds of black men and women beating drums with their fingers. But that, too, did not answer the question. He tossed restlessly on the floor, then sprang to his feet, his heart pounding, his ears filled with the sound of singing and shouting.
He went to the window and looked out; in front of him, down a few feet, through a window, was a dim-lit church. In it a crowd of black men and women stood between long rows of wooden benches, singing, clapping hands, and rolling their heads. Aw, them folks go to church every day in the week, he thought. He licked his lips and got another drink of water. How near were the police? What time was it? He looked at his watch and found that it had stopped running; he had forgotten to wind it. The singing from the church vibrated through him, suffusing him with a mood of sensitive sorrow. He tried not to listen, but it seeped into his feelings, whispering of another way of life and death, coaxing him to lie down and sleep and let them come and get him, urging him to believe that all life was a sorrow that had to be accepted. He shook his head, trying to rid himself of the music. How long had he slept? What were the papers saying now? He had two cents left; that would buy a Times. He picked up what remained of the loaf of bread and the music sang of surrender, resignation. Steal away, Steal away, Steal away to Jesus…. He stuffed the bread into his pockets; he would eat it some time later. He made sure that his gun was still intact, hearing, Steal away, Steal away home, I ain’t got long to stay here…. It was dangerous to stay here, but it was also dangerous to go out. The singing filled his ears; it was complete, self-contained, and it mocked his fear and loneliness, his deep yearning for a sense of wholeness. Its fulness contrasted so sharply with his hunger, its richness with his emptiness, that he recoiled from it while answering it. Would it not have been better for him had he lived in that world the music sang of? It would have been easy to have lived in it, for it was his mother’s world, humble, contrite, believing. It had a center, a core, an axis, a heart which he needed but could never have unless he laid his head upon a pillow of humility and gave up his hope of living in the world.