Native Son - Richard Wright [35]
“I won’t be long,” she said.
She started off, then turned back.
“Take it easy, Bigger. You’ll understand it better bye and bye.”
“Yessum,” he said, trying to smile; but couldn’t.
“Isn’t there a song like that, a song your people sing?”
“Like what, mam?”
“We’ll understand it better bye and bye?”
“Oh, yessum.”
She was an odd girl, all right. He felt something in her over and above the fear she inspired in him. She responded to him as if he were human, as if he lived in the same world as she. And he had never felt that before in a white person. But why? Was this some kind of game? The guarded feeling of freedom he had while listening to her was tangled with the hard fact that she was white and rich, a part of the world of people who told him what he could and could not do.
He looked at the building into which she had gone; it was old and unpainted; there were no lights in the windows or doorway. Maybe she was meeting her sweetheart? If that was all, then things would straighten out. But if she had gone to meet those Communists? And what were Communists like, anyway? Was she one? What made people Communists? He remembered seeing many cartoons of Communists in newspapers and always they had flaming torches in their hands and wore beards and were trying to commit murder or set things on fire. People who acted that way were crazy. All he could recall having heard about Communists was associated in his mind with darkness, old houses, people speaking in whispers, and trade unions on strike. And this was something like it.
He stiffened; the door into which she had gone opened. She came out, followed by a young white man. They walked to the car; but, instead of getting into the back seat, they came to the side of the car and stood, facing him. At once Bigger recognized the man as the one he had seen in the newsreel in the movie.
“Oh, Bigger, this is Jan. And Jan, this is Bigger Thomas.”
Jan smiled broadly, then extended an open palm toward him. Bigger’s entire body tightened with suspense and dread.
“How are you, Bigger?”
Bigger’s right hand gripped the steering wheel and he wondered if he ought to shake hands with this white man.
“I’m fine,” he mumbled.
Jan’s hand was still extended. Bigger’s right hand raised itself about three inches, then stopped in mid-air.
“Come on and shake,” Jan said.
Bigger extended a limp palm, his mouth open in astonishment. He felt Jan’s fingers tighten about his own. He tried to pull his hand away, ever so gently, but Jan held on, firmly, smiling.
“We may as well get to know each other,” Jan said. “I’m a friend of Mary’s.”
“Yessuh,” he mumbled.
“First of all,” Jan continued, putting his foot upon the running-board, “don’t say sir to me. I’ll call you Bigger and you’ll call me Jan. That’s the way it’ll be between us. How’s that?”
Bigger did not answer. Mary was smiling. Jan still gripped his hand and Bigger held his head at an oblique angle, so that he could, by merely shifting his eyes, look at Jan and then out into the street whenever he did not wish to meet Jan’s gaze. He heard Mary laughing softly.
“It’s all right, Bigger,” she said. “Jan means it.”
He flushed warm with anger. Goddamn her soul to hell! Was she laughing at him? Were they making fun of him? What was it that they wanted? Why didn’t they leave him alone? He was not bothering them. Yes, anything could happen with people like these. His entire mind and body were painfully concentrated into a single sharp point of attention. He was trying desperately to understand. He felt foolish sitting behind the steering wheel like this and letting a white man hold his hand. What would people passing along the street think? He was very conscious of his black skin and there was in him a prodding conviction that Jan and men like him had made it so that he would be conscious of that black skin. Did not white people despise a black skin? Then why was Jan doing this? Why was Mary standing there so eagerly, with shining eyes? What could they get out of