The Outsider

  “And what is that third set of ideas?” Cross asked.

  “That no ideas are necessary to justify his acts,” Houston stated without hesitation.

  Cross felt a spasm go through his body. Yes, at last Houston was on the right track. But such a track did not lead to proof. He gave a gentle laugh to cover his terror.

  Houston continued: “Now, let’s see. Just for the sake of argument let us say that Blount, a Communist, hence an outlaw like you and me at heart, has his gang, that is, the Party on his side…Now, this Herndon is an outlaw too, but an old one. Tradition backs him…When he needs it, he has the law on his side, certain sections of society, money, the owners of property…Now, both of these men feel that it is beneath their dignity to obey the rules and laws made by what they would choose to call ‘others’, see? Now, this strange, dream-killer that lives on neither land nor sea, must be somehow akin to these two men, or he would not suspect that they are laws unto themselves. Only this outside killer who does not as yet exist knows that force and force alone guarantees the safety of these two tyrants. This mythical killer partakes of both their notions of lawlessness. That’s what makes it possible for him to kill them…”

  “Two questions I’d like to ask,” Cross interposed. “First, why would he partake of their lawlessness? And why do you think that Communist and Fascist ideas are alike?”

  “When did I mention ideas?” Houston asked scornfully. “Ideas are just so much froth on the top of a mug of beer, my dear boy. Men are inventing ideas every day to justify for themselves and others their actions and needs. What makes these three men akin is the identity of the impulses in their hearts—”

  It was not lost upon Cross that they were now discussing three men instead of two, and all three of these men were psychologically akin.

  “Mr. Houston, that’s a rather fantastic assumption,” Cross said; he hoped that Houston would not suspect how deeply he agreed with him. “How can you prove that the same impulse actuates all three men?”

  Houston paused in his pacing, turned, looked at Cross and then slowly tapped his broad chest with his right thumb.

  “I have proof right here, Lane,” he said quietly.

  “What do you mean?” Cross asked, trying to keep anxiety out of his voice.

  Houston did not answer at once; he resumed his pacing, his eyes deep with reflection.

  “The proof is easy to see, but it is rather a daring kind of proof. Of course, this kind of proof cannot be introduced into court. It has a psychological basis,” Houston explained. “It’s an ‘as if’ proof…Know what I mean? It’s an intuition; it must first come from your own heart, see? How do I know that all three men feel alike? I know because I feel that way…” Houston sized Cross up. “And I think you feel that way too; that is, if I recall correctly your attitude on the train. The only difference is this: you and I have not acted upon this impulse of ours. The moment we act ‘as if’ it’s true, then it’s true; get it? But we’ve both got it. The proof of that is that we both understand it; that’s the proof.

  “A lawless man has to rein himself in. A man of lawless impulses living amidst a society which seeks to restrain instincts for the common good must be a kind of subjective prison. How such a man must live and sweat behind the bars of himself! God, the millions of prisons in this world! Men simply copied the realities of their hearts when they built prisons. They simply extended into objective reality what was already a subjective reality. Only jailors really believe in jails…Only men full of criminal feelings can create a criminal code. Only an enemy of Christianity, like Saint Paul, could establish Christianity. Men who fear drink want laws passed against drinking. Men who cannot manage their sexual appetites launch crusades against vice…Lane, we’re outsiders and we can understand these new Twentieth Century outlaws, for in our hearts we are outlaws too.

  “Here are the psychological origins of tyranny. Don’t kid yourself, boy. Napoleon, Mussolini, Stalin, and Hitler knew what they were doing when they cast their beady eyes upon their subjects…When a man stood accused, objective evidence was of no avail. The dictator had but to glance into his own heart, and he knew at once that the prisoner at the bar was guilty! For, he reasoned, had he stood in the prisoner’s place, he would have been guilty…How in hell did he become dictator without becoming guilty? Without breaking all the laws in sight…?

  “Now, let’s get back to our third man who’s realized all of this without acting upon it…Two tyrants are fighting in a room and our third man shows up. He feels towards those two men as those two men feel towards the masses of people…He’s playing the same game, but on a much smaller scale. Who knows, maybe he’s been hurt by both sides? He kills ’em, and with no more compunction than if he were killing flies…That man who kills like that is a bleak and tragic man. He is the Twentieth Century writ small…Do you get what I’m driving at, Lane?”

  Was Houston teasing him? Or was he only talking? Cross laughed again to still his nervous dread. He told himself that he should keep quiet, that he was a damn fool to talk, yet he felt an overpowering desire to help Houston develop his theory.

  “The man you are describing,” Cross said slowly, listening with numbed dread at the sound of his own voice, “is one for whom all ethical laws are suspended. He acts like a god.”

  “Like a god!” Houston almost shouted. “That’s the word I’ve been groping for. That’s it exactly. But how can you tell when a man feels like that? You walk along the street and all faces look more or less alike. There’s no clue to what each man feels or thinks. Indeed, such a man would be hard to detect, for in normal behavior he would act like all other men, maybe a little more subdued than others. But, above all, this man must feel that he knows what’s right. Then, all at once, he sees something that violates that sense of right and he strikes out to set it as it ought to be. Then he resumes his cool and correct manner of living. But that, of course, is purely external. What must go on in a man like that? He must be something of an inferno, hunh? Something like the original chaos out of which life and order is supposed to have come.” Houston paused and stared again off into space, and when he spoke there was a note of wonder in his voice: “I wonder if such men have any value? Might not they be the real lawgivers…Maybe…Who knows?”

  Houston stood in front of Cross and laughed. Cross joined him in laughter, feeling something creeping over the surface of the skin of his body.

  “Some idea, hunh?” Houston asked.

  “Yes,” Cross said.

  Cross waited to be challenged, to be accused. Houston turned and went to the door.

  “Farrel,” he called.

  Cross held his breath. Had he called Farrel to arrest him?

  “We’ll wash this thing up,” Houston said over his shoulder to Cross.

  Farrel came to the door.

  “Make it manslaughter,” he told Farrel. “Double manslaughter. Any other theory is too fantastic.”

  “Just as you say, Mr. D.A.,” Farrel said.

  “Now,” Houston began, “let’s talk about us. When can I see you sometime?”

  “Any time you like.”

  “What are you doing now?”

  “I’m planning to attend some classes at the university…”

  Cross was conscious as he talked that he was speaking as out of a dream. A moment ago he had been positive that he was about to be arrested, and now he sat here free. The room seemed to sway slowly around him.

  “Will you have dinner with me some evening?”

  “With pleasure.”

  “What about Sunday evening at Frank’s in Harlem?”

  “Sure. What time?”

  “Eight. Right?”

  “Right.”

  “And forget this mess about Blount and Herndon,” Houston said, winking. “Good riddance, I think.”

  They shook hands and Houston strode to the door, then turned and said casually: “You’ll have to testify, maybe, at a hearing of the Medical Examiner, you know.”

 
“Oh, all right,” Cross murmured.

  Houston left. Cross sat alone and closed his eyes; he wanted to keep them closed and not look any more upon the sight of the world. He recalled Houston’s saying that most lawbreakers longed to be punished and he wondered if such was smouldering in him…Why did not this thing rest easily on his heart? Or was he only deluding himself in thinking that he was free? He was suddenly tired. Was it worthwhile going on? Eva…Yes! There was a hope that one day he could talk to her. She would understand. She too was a victim. But—suppose she knew what he had done? How would she feel about him then? He leaned his forehead on the palm of his hand and the only answer he could find was no answer…

  Half an hour later he pulled to his feet and went in search of Eva. The door of her room was open and he saw her lying fully dressed across her bed. He should leave; his staying was no good for her…He pictured himself getting his suitcase, hat, and coat and going in search of a hiding place…A slight nervousness went through him and he was about to act when he heard her voice.

  “Lionel?”

  “Yes.”

  “Come in, Lionel,” she said.

  He went to the bed and bent to her.

  “Are you all right?” he asked.

  “I’m numb. Are they gone?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did they decide?”

  “It’s double manslaughter.”

  “Poor Gil…”

  “Listen, Eva—”

  “Yes.”

  “You know that Gil asked me to come and stay here. He wanted to send me to the Workers’ School. Now, Gil’s gone. I don’t know what to do.”

  She lifted her head and her hazel eyes looked at him.

  “Do you want to leave, Lionel?”

  “No. I never want to leave you, Eva.”

  Her eyes fell; he could see her chest heaving with effort. She finally looked at him, reached out her hand and touched him, and said in a low, clear voice:

  “If you leave, I shall kill myself—”

  “God, no,” he said. “I’m here. I want to be here near you—Listen, tell me; have you any money?”

  “Money?” she repeated with a bitter laugh. “I’ve nothing. I’ve not worked at my painting in six months. All Gil and I had was his salary from the Party. I’ve not sold a picture in over a year…I don’t know what the Party thinks of me.”

  Her voice died and her eyes assumed a scared, haunted look. Cross knew that she was wondering if they would let her wander free with her guilty knowledge.

  “Look, I have a few hundred dollars,” he said.

  “Oh, no, Lionel,” she protested. “That’s impossible! I can’t touch that.”

  “Why?”

  “It isn’t right. I must work—”

  “Eventually, yes. But right now, you need not worry. Look, after this is over, let’s go away somewhere together. The Gatineau Mountains in Canada. It’ll be safe there, quiet, far from all this—”

  Her eyes shone, then tears clouded them.

  “I’m sorry about Gil, but Lionel, I’m glad that you are out of that trap,” she spoke softly.

  “Trap?” he asked; he could not let her know that he knew.

  “There’s so much I have to tell you—” She gazed off. “Gil told you he wanted to fight for you. It’s true; he wanted to. But he was fighting for something else too. His idea of the world—”

  “But aren’t the two things one thing?” he asked to get her notion of it. “He’s fighting for Russia; Russia needs men like me; so when he fights for me he’s hitting at the rotten basis that holds up the world that’s against Russia. Isn’t that it?”

  Eva sighed and shook her head.

  “You were only a means,” she said. “Lionel, the Party sees facts in motion…God, what language! But there’s no other way to say it. Facts in motion… You are a fact to them, not a person. You’re oppressed, so, to gain your help, they claim they’ll fight for you but only in so far as your fight helps them.” She looked fearfully about the dim room, as though afraid that someone was listening. “You must break away from this…”

  He agreed with her, but where could he go? She thought him a helpless victim; but, rather, he was what she hated. He had been using the Party in the same manner that the Party had been using him.

  “I understand,” he lied softly to her.

  “I’m free now,” she breathed. “But for how long? What will they say to me now that Gil’s gone? Will they let me go? Will I be able to work again? Can I find new friends?” A twisted smile was on her lips. “Don’t mind me, Lionel. I’ll tell you what’s worrying me later.”

  “Tell me now, Eva,” he urged her. “It’s better for you.”

  She hesitated; she was struggling with herself. Her life was in crisis.

  “Lionel, I’ve been deceived in a way that you’ll never know,” she whimpered, trying to keep her lips from trembling. “You’re colored and maybe you can understand…Perhaps you’ve lived all of your life with something that I’ve met only recently…When you were a child, you studied the same books I studied in school, yet you knew that what you read in those books did not apply to you; you knew you were colored and that the white world made an exception…You could prepare yourself against disillusionment. With me, I believed in the Party, all they told me…Then I found that it was make-believe…I can’t even now tell you what they did to me…They’ve blighted me, my life, my work…I’m filled with shame and I want to hide…Where can I hide, Lionel?”

  “Eva, I’d feel happier than I ever dreamed if I could win your trust. You can believe again in life…You can! You must… I shall trust you, and if my trust helps you, then you’ll trust me in the end. I know it. You’ve never really been trusted; you’ve been told what to do, what to think and what to feel, and when it failed you, betrayed you, you hated yourself and the world. I shall trust you—”

  “Oh, God, Lionel, I do so much want to try,” she gasped, reaching out her arms and pressing him convulsively to her bosom.

  He held her tightly, full of a sense of hot despair. What was he doing? Did he, as lost as he was, have the right to talk to her like this? How could he make promises to her? How could he believe in her when he did not believe in himself? Could he tell her of how he had abandoned his mother, Gladys, his three sons, how he had killed Joe Thomas, Gil, Herndon…? Could he tell her that his life was steeped in deception, that he was the essence of the world that she hated and feared? Yet he felt that the cure of his nameless malady lay in winning her trust and love…

  But could this shrinking and delicate Eva bear the mere hearing of his story? Would she not turn from him in loathing? He felt her tiny, cool hands on his face; he looked into her giving, pleading eyes.

  “I want your people to be my people,” she said, surrendering her life to him. “I want to feel all the hurt and shame of being black—Let me bear some of it, then I’ll feel that I’m worth something. I wish I was black. I do, I do—Let me share the fear, the humiliation—”

  She was wanting to love him for his being black, and he wanted her love to help him to redeem himself in his own eyes for his crimes! How could this ever be? Could he allow her to love him for his Negritude when being a Negro was the least important thing in his life? He wanted her for reasons which he doubted he could ever tell her, and she loved him for reasons which he did not have. He closed his eyes and rested his head on her shoulder. Yet he wanted that sensitive heart of hers to be his monitor, to check him from sinking into brutality, from succumbing to cruelty, and she wanted to love him for his being black because she thought he was an innocent victim.

  “What’s the matter, darling?” she asked.

  “Nothing,” he whispered. “Just tired.”

  “Poor Lionel…”

  He was not Lionel Lane. He was nothing, nobody…He had tossed his humanity to the winds, and now he wanted it back. He would shatter this poor girl’s heart if he took what she was offering. He pulled away from her and walked aimlessly abou
t the room, his eyes unseeing. He needed her if he was to go on living, but would his taking of her kill her?

  “Don’t worry, Lionel,” she smiled at him. “In the future when white men strike at you, they’ll see me there at your side.”

  He buried his face in his hands, closed his eyes and groaned: “God…”

  She rose and ran to him.

  “What’s the matter? Don’t you want me to be with you?”

  “Yes,” he whispered despairingly.

  “Then why are you so wrought up?”

  He must not heap his troubles upon her. He should fly from this room, this girl, this hope of love…He seized her face tenderly in his palms and forced a smile to his lips.

  “I’ll be all right,” he said.

  “I only want to help you,” she said. “For the first time in my life I am beginning to feel I can help somebody—”

  Gently Cross crushed her face to his chest to keep her from seeing the bleak look on his face.

  “Bless you, Eva,” he whispered.

  “We’ll be together,” she pledged herself.

  “Together,” he repeated wonderingly; but his eyes were gazing toward a distant shore which he was certain he would never reach.

  The doorbell rang. Eva broke from him, smiled, kissed him and turned and ran to the door. It was Sarah, grim, gaunt of face, her eyes dark and full of anger.

  “Is Hilton here?” she asked without ceremony.

  “No; he’s gone,” Eva told her.

  Cross went to Sarah.

  “What’s the matter? Where’s Bob?” Cross asked her.

  “I want to see Hilton,” Sarah said, ignoring his question. “I’m going to kill him—”