Part 14 (1/2)

The words of Karl Marx have always been known in our hearts: ”From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Doctor Copeland was silent a long time as though his words were complete. Then he spoke again: 'Our mission is to walk with strength and dignity through the days of our humiliation. Our pride must be strong, for we know the value of the human mind and soul. We must teach our children. We must sacrifice so that they may earn the dignity of study and wisdom. For the time will come. The time will come when the riches in us will not be held in scorn and contempt. The time will come when we will be allowed to serve. When we will labor and our labor will not be wasted.

And our mission is to await this time with strength and faith.'

It was finished. Hands were clapped, feet were stamped upon the floor and en the hard winter ground outside. The odor of hot, strong coffee floated from the kitchen. John Roberts took charge of the presents, calling out the names written on the cards. Portia ladled the coffee from the dish-pan on the stove while Marshall Nicolls pa.s.sed slices of cake.

Doctor Copeland moved about among the guests, a little crowd always surrounding him.

Someone nagged at his elbow: 'He the one your Buddy named for?' He answered yes. Lancy Davis followed him with questions; he answered yes to everything. The joy made him feel like a drunken man. To teach and exhort and explain to his people--and to have them understand. That was the best of all. To speak the truth and be attended.

'Us certainly have had one fine time at this party.'

He stood in the vestibule saying goodbye. Over and over he shook hands. He leaned heavily against the wall and only his eyes moved, for he was tired.

'I certainly do appreciate.'

Mr. Singer was the last to leave. He was a truly good man. He was a white man of intellect and true knowledge. In him there was none of the mean insolence. When all had departed he was the last to remain. He waited and seemed to expect some final word.

Doctor Copeland held his hand to his throat because his larynx was sore. 'Teachers,' he said huskily. 'That is our greatest need. Leaders. Someone to unite and guide us.'

After the festivity the rooms had a bare, ruined look. The house was cold. Portia was was.h.i.+ng the cups in the kitchen.

The silver snow on the Christmas tree had been tracked over the floors and two of the ornaments were broken.

He was tired, but the joy and the fever would not let him rest Beginning with the bedroom, he set to work to put the house in order. On the top of the filing case there was a loose card--the note on Lancy Davis. The words that he would say to him began to form in his mind, and he was restless because he could not speak them now. The boy's sullen face was full of heart and he could not thrust it from his thoughts. He opened the top drawer of the file to replace the card, A, B, C--he thumbed through the letters nervously. Then his eye was fixed on his own name: Copeland, Benedict Mady.

In the folder were several lung X-rays and a short case history.

He held an X-ray up to the light. On the upper left lung there was a bright place like a calcified star. And lower down a large clouded spot that duplicated itself in the right lung farther up. Doctor Copeland quickly replaced the X-rays in the folder. Only the brief notes he had written on himself were still in his hand. The words stretched out large and scrawling so that he could hardly read them. '1920--calcif. of lymph glands--very p.r.o.nounced thickening of hili. Lesions arrested--duties resumed. 1937--lesion reopened--X-ray shows--' He could not read the notes. At first he could not make out the words, and then when he read them clearly they made no reason. At the finish there were three words: 'Prognosis: Don't know.'

The old black, violent feeling came in him again. He leaned down and wrenched open a drawer at the bottom of the case.

A jumbled pile of letters. Notes from the a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Colored People. A yellowed letter from Daisy. A note from Hamilton asking for a dollar and a half.

What was he looking for? His hands rummaged in the drawer and then at last he arose stiffly.

Time wasted. The past hour gone.

Portia peeled potatoes at the kitchen table. She was slumped over and her face was dolorous.

'Hold up your shoulders,' he said angrily. 'And cease moping.

You mope and drool around until I cannot bear to look on you.'

'I were just thinking about Willie,' she said. 'Course the letter is only three days due. But he got no business to worry me like this. He not that kind of a boy. And I got this queer feeling.'

'Have patience, Daughter.'

'I reckon I have to.'

'There are a few calls I must make, but I will be back shortly.'

'O.K.'

'All will be well,' he said. Most of his joy was gone in the bright, cool noonday sun. The diseases of his patients lay scattered in his mind. An abscessed kidney. Spinal meningitis. Pott's disease. He lifted the crank of the automobile from the back seat. Usually he hailed some pa.s.sing Negro from the street to crank the car for him. His people were always glad to help and serve. But today he fitted the crank and turned it vigorously himself. He wiped the perspiration from his face with the sleeve of his overcoat and hurried to get beneath the wheel and on his way. How much that he had said today was understood? How much would be of any value? He recalled the words he had used, and they seemed to fade and lose their strength. The words left unsaid were heavier on his heart. They rolled up to his lips and fretted them. The faces of his suffering people moved in a swelling ma.s.s before his eyes. And as he steered the automobile slowly down the street his heart turned with this angry, restless love. J. HE town had not known a winter as cold as this one for years. Frost formed on the windowpanes and whitened the roofs of houses. The winter afternoons glowed with a hazy lemon light and shadows were a delicate blue. A thin coat of ice crusted the puddles in the streets, and it was said on the day after Christmas that only ten miles to the north there was a light fall of snow.

A change came over Singer. Often he went out for the long walks that had occupied him during the months when Antonapoulos was first gone. These walks extended for miles in every direction and covered the whole of the town. He rambled through the dense neighborhoods along the river that were more squalid than ever since the mills had been slack this winter. In many eyes there was a look of somber loneliness. Now that people were forced to be idle, a certain restlessness could be felt. There was a fervid outbreak of new beliefs. A young man who had worked at the dye vats in a mill claimed suddenly that a great holy power had come in him. He said it was his duty to deliver a new set of commandments from the Lord, The young man set up a tabernacle and hundreds of people came each night to roll on the ground and shake each other, for they believed that they were in the presence of something more than human. There was murder, too. A woman who could not make enough to eat believed that a foreman had cheated on her work tokens and she stabbed him in the throat. A family of Negroes moved into the end house on one of the most dismal streets, and this caused so much indignation that the house was burned and the black man beaten by his neighbors. But these were incidents. Nothing had really changed. The strike that was talked about never came off because they could not get together. All was the same as before. Even on the coldest nights the Sunny Dixie Show was open. The people dreamed and fought and slept as much as ever. And by habit they shortened their thoughts so that they would not wander out into the darkness beyond tomorrow.

Singer walked through the scattered odorous parts of town where the Negroes crowded together. There was more gaiety and violence here. Often the fine, sharp smell of gin lingered in the alleys. Warm, sleepy firelight colored the windows.

Meetings were held in the churches almost every night.

Comfortable little houses set off in plots of brown gra.s.s--Singer walked in these parts also. Here the children were huskier and more friendly to strangers. He roamed through the neighborhoods of the rich. There were houses, very grand and old, with white columns and intricate fences of wrought iron.

He walked past the big brick houses where automobiles honked in the driveways and where the plumes of smoke rolled lavishly from chimneys. And out to the very edges of the roads that led from the town to general stores where fanners came on Sat.u.r.day nights and sat around the stove. He wandered often about the four main business blocks that were brightly lighted and then through the black, deserted alleys behind. There was no part of the town that Singer did not know. He watched the yellow squares of light reflect from a thousand windows. The winter nights were beautiful. The sky was a cold azure and the stars were very bright Often it happened now that he would be spoken to and stopped during these walks. All kinds of people became acquainted with him. If the person who spoke to him was a stranger, Singer presented his card so that his silence would be understood. He came to be known through all the town. He walked with his shoulders very straight and kept his hands always stuffed down into his pockets. His gray eyes seemed to take in everything around him, and in his face there was still the look of peace that is seen most often in those who are very wise or very sorrowful. He was always glad to stop with anyone wis.h.i.+ng his company. For after all he was only walking and going nowhere.

Now it came about that various rumors started in the town concerning the mute. In the years before with Antonapoulos they had walked back and forth to work, but except for this they were always alone together in their rooms. No one had bothered about them then--and if they were observed it was the big Greek on whom attention was focused. The Singer of those years was forgotten.

So the rumors about the mute were rich and varied. The Jews said that he was a Jew. The merchants along the main street claimed he received a large legacy and was a very rich man. It was whispered in one browbeaten textile union that the mute was an organizer for the C.I.O. A lone Turk who had roamed into the town years ago and who languished with his family behind the little store where they sold linens claimed pa.s.sionately to his wife that the mute was Turkish. He said that when he spoke his language the mute understood. And as he claimed this his voice grew warm and he forgot to squabble with his children and he was full of plans and activity. One old man from the country said that the mute had come from somewhere near his home and that the mute's father had the finest tobacco crop in all the country. All these things were said about him.

Antonapoulos! Within Singer there was always the memory of his friend. At night when he closed his eyes the Greek's face was there in the darkness--round and oily, with a wise and gentle smile. In his dreams they were always together.

It was more than a year now since his friend had gone away.

This year seemed neither long nor short. Rather it was removed from the ordinary sense of time--as when one is drunk or half-asleep. Behind each hour there was always his friend. And this buried life with Antonapoulos changed and developed as did the happenings around him. During the first few months he had thought most of the terrible weeks before Antonapoulos was taken away--of the trouble that followed his Illness, of the summons for arrest, and the misery in trying to control the whims of his friend. He thought of times in the past when he and Antonapoulos had been unhappy. There was one recollection, far in the past, that came back to him several times.

They never had no friends. Sometimes they would meet other mutes--there were three of them with whom they became acquainted during the ten years. But something always happened. One moved to another state the week after they met him. Another was married and had six children and did not talk with his hands. But it was their relation with the third of these acquaintances that Singer remembered when his friend was gone.

The mute's name was Carl. He was a sallow young man who worked in one of the mills. His eyes were pale yellow and his teeth so brittle and transparent that they seemed pale and yellow also. In his blue overalls that hung limp over his skinny little body he was like a blue-and-yellow rag doll.

They invited him to dinner and arranged to meet him beforehand at the store where Antonapoulos worked. The Greek was still busy when they arrived. He was finis.h.i.+ng a batch of caramel fudge in the cooking room at the back of the store. The fudge lay golden and glossy over the long marble-topped table. The air was warm and rich with sweet smells.

Antonapoulos seemed pleased to have Carl watch him as he glided the knife down the warm candy and cut it into squares.

He offered their new friend a corner of the fudge on the edge of his greased knife, and showed him the trick that he always performed for anyone when he wished to be liked. He pointed to a vat of syrup boiling on the stove and fanned his face and squinted his eyes to show how hot it was. Then he wet his hand in a pot of cold water, plunged it into the boiling syrup, and swiftly put it back into the water again. His eyes bulged and he rolled out his tongue as though he were in great agony.

He even wrung his hand and hopped on one foot so that the building shook. Then he smiled suddenly and held out his hand to show that it was a joke and hit Carl on the shoulder.

It was a pale winter evening, and their breath clouded in the cold air as they walked with their arms interlocked down the street Singer was in the middle and he left them on the sidewalk twice while he went into stores to shop. Carl and Antonapoulos carried the sacks of groceries, and Singer held to their arms tightly and smiled all the way home. Their rooms were cozy and he moved happily about. making conversation with Carl. After the meal the two of them talked while Antonapoulous watched with a slow smile. Often the big Greek would lumber to the closet and pour out drinks of gin. Carl sat by the window, only drinking when Antonapoulos pushed the gla.s.s into his face, and then taking solemn little sips. Singer could not ever remember his friend so cordial to a stranger before, and he thought ahead with pleasure to the time when Carl would visit them often.

Midnight had pa.s.sed when the thing happened that ruined the festive party. Antonapoulos returned from one of his trips to the closet and his face had a glowering look. He sat on his bed and began to stare repeatedly at their new friend with expressions of offense and great disgust. Singer tried to make eager conversation to hide this strange behavior, but the Greek was persistent. Carl huddled in a chair, nursing his bony knees, fascinated and bewildered by the grimaces of the big Greek. His face was flushed and he swallowed timidly. Singer could ignore the situation no longer, so at last he asked Antonapoulos if his stomach pained him or if he perhaps felt bad and wished to go to sleep. Antonapoulos shook his head.

He pointed to Carl and began to make all the gestures of obscenity which he knew. The disgust on his face was terrible to see. Carl was small with fear. At last the big Greek ground his teeth and rose from his chair. Hurriedly Carl picked up his cap and left the room. Singer followed him down the stairs.

He did not know how to explain his friend to this stranger.

Carl stood hunched in the doorway downstairs, limp, with his peaked cap pulled down over his face. At last they shook hands and Carl went away.

Antonapoulos let him know that while they were not noticing, their guest had gone into the closet and drunk up all the gin.

No amount of persuasion could convince Antonapoulos that it was he himself who had finished the bottle. The big Greek sat up in bed and his round face was dismal and reproachful.