(No answer.)
For God’s sake, listen to me. Do you see problems in that?
CLUMLY: Problems.
SUNLIGHT (impatiently): Good. That’s better. Well you’re right, yes. I’m glad you pointed it out. Very interesting. Yes. It’s a system which can only work when the total population is small, and the troubles are trifling. A very good point. But the problem is not that the system is wrong, it’s that the mind of man is limited. Beyond a certain point, intuition can no more deal with the world than intellect can. We’re doomed, in other words. Do you follow me?—Wake up!!
CLUMLY: Doomed! (He sighs.)
SUNLIGHT: Don’t go to sleep. You have no idea how little time we have, you and I.
CLUMLY: I’m not—
SUNLIGHT: You were, you were! I try like the devil to ignore it, but there it is, you were asleep. Well, all right. No time to go over it all again. Besides, you have your tape. But try to stay awake.
CLUMLY: This is all … What are you doing? What the devil are you up to, bringing me here, ranting and raving, acting as—
SUNLIGHT: Try to have faith.
CLUMLY: Faith!
SUNLIGHT (speaking rapidly): We’re wasting time. I wanted to talk to you about social progress.
CLUMLY: You wanted—
SUNLIGHT: Yes. All right. Take social progress. Listen now. Listen closely. One of the most remarkable differences between the Babylonian and the Hebrew mind is that the Babylonian places no value whatever on individual human life. Got that? Individual. Human. Life. Every Babylonian lives his life as fully as he can, but to the culture he is, himself, nothing, a unit, merely part of a physical and spiritual system. An atom. An instance. Compare Israel’s overwhelming concern with the individual accomplishment, the family name, the old man’s blessing. So what would the Babylonian say about civil rights? Pah, he would say. In other words, civil rights must work themselves out on their own, he would say—proceed by inevitable natural process at the usual gross natural cost in human lives. A sickness cures itself. So in physical medicine. The Babylonians had no science of medicine, at least nothing we’d recognize. Medicine is a half-Greek, half-Judeo-Christian product, that is, half result of pagan hedonism, half result of the Judeo-Christian notion of a reasonable God. But I’m obscuring what I mean, losing the thread again. I was saying …
Listen, I used to be involved with civil rights. Right up to my ears. I was in CORE in San Francisco when they decided to segregate it. That’s right. Man named Breely—Bill Breely. Dapper guy, handsome, big boss. Had these white guys, half-crazy they were, I swear it—big pasty-faced white guy named Schroeder or something. Breely would yell at the bastard: “Where those circulars, Schroeder?” and snap his fingers. “I’m sorry, Bill,” he’d say. Cry almost. “The press broke down and we—” Wrings his hands. Close to tears. “That’s enough there, Schroeder. I want those circulars, hear me?” And this Schroeder would cringe like a person whose penis you’ve cut off with a knife. “I’ll try Bill. Honest. I’ll try, I’ll try!” Loved it. Both of ’em. Old Breely say: “Difference between you and me, you whites, is you are the sons of Masters and I am the son of slaves. Yeah!” Half the whites in that room were Ukrainian, second-generation. Christ. Black Power they wanted, the black ones—most—and they got it. Had this meeting, going to segregate the CORE. It was a meeting right out of the Hitler days. You get to speak once if you’re against segregation, but Breely and his crew can talk as much as they please. “I know you,” they say. Man Jesus they wise. “You a social worker, see? You ’on’t know it, mothuh, but I seen you kind befo’, seen you plenny times, yeah.” “I’ve never done social work in my life,” you say. “Shut up, hear? You ain’t be reckanized.” A lady there. Speech therapist she was, talked like her tongue was in sideways. “I go in a wite neighborhood, baby, I’m dead, hear me? They gwine kill me, hear?” All the people: “Yeah.” They scared, man. They scare theirselves good, full of pipedreams and idiot novels. Yeah. “Man I’m dead, I go were the wites are. Alla time talkin trash, man: We gwine hep you, nigger. Why they gwine kill me, dad, that’s wat they gwine do.” Time to vote, Bill Breely gets up and he reads us from a book about lynchings—a piece about some Negro they strung up down South, cut his feet off, then legs and arms and head, all the usual. Then we take the vote! I could tell you stories … Man named Gonzales, or something like that—we thought he was an idiot—rolled his eyes, never talked, wore old jeans all the time, old motorcycle cap—one time he got mad all at once and came out with this stream of high-falutin young writer’s talk, and then we knew him! He hated, man! He played idiot in front of whites because if he didn’t he would tell them the truth, he wanted their balls to hang up from the rear-view mirror in his car. Ok, I said. Black Power. Don’t tell me any stuff about political power, the Might of the Vote, all that razz-ma-tazz. It means guns and knives and fists and BBB. Ok. Man from Durham North Carolina was with us, a Negro that was human. They scared that man out of the cause. All right. So where do you go when CORE and SNCC and the rest go out for your blood? If you’re Schroeder you love it—“Yeah Bill! Cut me lower! Lower!” But if it’s not what you’re after, if what you really want is mere plain civil rights, what do you do when they come at you with a gun? You wring your hands and sweat, that’s what. But I’ll tell you the word from Babylon. Let it go. Cool it. Forget it. They want Power, let ’em have it. Go after the whites with violence and you’ll get violence back, and more and more until finally they drive it through your skull that your violence won’t work, you’re back where you started and then some. I’ll make it clearer. I’m saying there’s nothing you can do: try brotherhood and their hatred will eat you alive. Be understanding when they say they’re out to kill you and—surprise!—they’ll come and kill you. So this: all your grand American responsibility is trash: what will happen will happen. Make laws that’re practical, like the marriage of estates, and if you find anybody that believes in your laws, make ’em cops for defending the black and white estates, but don’t hope, don’t love: don’t expect and don’t give. Hate as freely as you love, by inclination. Wait and let progress happen when it can, because it will, if the gods will it, and if not, then it will not. Listen!
(Pause.)
I’ll tell you the truth. I didn’t live in San Francisco, I lived in St. Louis. This is true. I was lying. I’m sorry. I drove a diaper truck in St. Louis. One night I was going home late, driving my truck through Forest Park, and all of a sudden, near the art museum where the statue is, there was a woman right there in my headlights, waving at me, trying to stop me, and there was blood running down her face. I jerked the wheel to miss her and hit the brakes the same minute. “I been robbed,” she yells. “A nigger boy—he ran down toward the golfcourse.” I let her in, and then we took off in the direction he’d run. “Get him!” she says. And so forth. I swung the truck out onto the grass of the golfcourse so that the headlights splayed out over the fairway and there he was, running down the hill. I went after him. I realize this may be a little distasteful to a person like yourself, but there’s no avoiding it. I have to tell you the truth. Murder will out. I went after him. He tried to zig-zag, slipping and falling down sometimes, but he couldn’t get away. The lady was leaning forward, her face almost pressed to the windshield—I’ll never forget it, that white, white skin with the black-looking blood, and behind us the stink of the dirty diapers, and the kid zig-zagging, yelling “Please! Hey man, please!” Then suddenly it was like he gave up. Jesus! I saw him throw the purse, as if he didn’t want it wrecked, and he held his hands out toward me—he was running backwards—and I hit him. You hear what I’m saying? I ran that boy down!
CLUMLY (a whisper): Now wait—
SUNLIGHT: I stopped the truck as soon as the bump came, and I backed away and turned around to shine the lights toward the place where he’d thrown the purse. There it was, sharp black against the white of the dew on the grass. I got out and got it and I gave it to the lady. She reached out for it, and her ha
nds were shaking like she’d gone crazy. “Thank you,” she said. I’ll never forget it. It was as if she’d lost her mind. Well, I drove her back as far as the Jefferson Memorial—she’d been heading someplace on Dehnar, I remember—and I let her out. She didn’t say anything. Just walked away holding the purse in her two hands like it was her dead baby and she’d lost her mind. I was laughing. Not because I was crazy, you understand. I wasn’t. I laughed because I’d done what she wanted and the poor bitch woman couldn’t stand it. I drove back and I picked up the boy. He was alive, so I took him home with me and made a place for him in the cellar. He was unconscious, mostly, but now and then he’d come to. Both his legs were broken, that’s all it was. I put splints on him, and I went up and made him some soup, and then I gave him some whiskey to knock him out again. I don’t drink, myself, but I always keep some around for times like that. After that I locked the cellar door and went up to my bed. I’d hear him moaning sometimes, but it wasn’t too bad. The next day he was better, well enough to yell for the police and things like that. I had to whip him a little with a chain, but I managed to control him. So ok. I kept him down there for two years. He never saw daylight. No windows. I put some straw down there for him—
CLUMLY: Now wait a minute. This is—
SUNLIGHT: Just listen. You can talk in a minute. I put straw down there for him, and once in a while I would clean the place up. He got thin, of course. A lot of times he wouldn’t eat. He was stubborn, you know. It was only natural. But after the first three months or so he came around a little, even though he did leave his food sometimes. It got so when I’d come down to feed him or clean the place or just have a look at him, he’d act almost glad to see me. He’d even talk. At first all he did was swear, but after a while he got to crying and whining and things, acting like a human, and I liked him. He couldn’t help seeing it, of course. What the devil! Imagine what it’s like, living in a cellar, a captive, no better than a dog! All right. “Look, boy,” I said, “you’re here for life, you understand? You might as well make the best of it.” He was half-crazy by this time, and a lot of times I had to say a thing over and over before he would get it. Still, he did get it, eventually. He began to make the best of it. One morning he said, “Hey. What’s happening outside?” He was twelve or thirteen at this time. (I never knew how old he was exactly. I never asked.) “Oh, war,” I said. “Riots. Troubles.” “Yeah,” he said. “Yeah.” I began to tell him about outside. I told him something had happened to the sun and the whole world was dark now. The Government was working on it, I said, but the prospect wasn’t good. All the crops dying, not even any grass growing. Just dirt where there used to be grass. The trees all dead. People starving by the thousands. There weren’t any dogs or cats left, I told him. They’d been eaten long ago. But he didn’t need to worry. I had another six months’ worth of food in the freezer. He was grateful to me. He said once, “Why you keeping me here?” It was winter now. I told him the cold was a result of the sun’s being out, and of course he believed me. Well, I sat down on the door sill—he never bothered to try to push past me any more—and I looked at him, all compassion. I lit my pipe. “Son,” I said, “I’ll tell you the truth. It was a hell of a thing that night in the park, the night I ran you down. I must’ve lost my head. Anyway, I couldn’t just leave you there to die, so I went back for you, and I healed you as well as I could.” (Actually, the legs had never healed right. He kept fighting the splints or something, so now the legs were all twisted. He could hardly walk.) “The trouble was,” I said, “after I’d healed you, how could I go to the police and tell them what I’d done?” The boy said, “Yeah.” He understood about policemen. “But then a new problem came up,” I said. “There was the sun problem. The Government shot a rocket at the sun, for some scientific purpose too complicated for me to explain, and somehow—I don’t pretend to understand it—the sun went out.” He believed me. That’s strange, you’ll say. But remember, he had no one but me. I was reality. Alone! “Well,” I said, “when all the dogs and cats were eaten the Government passed a law that we should eat felons. That means you,” I said. “Robbers, murderers, disturbers of the peace.” He believed that too. “It also meant me. If I turned you in, we’d both be cooked and eaten.” He was very impressed. As for me—I won’t deny it—I was deeply moved, horrified. I too believed it. We wept.
Thus we continued for many years. We became the closest of friends, though also we were enemies. And then one day—horrible! horrible!—I forgot to lock his door. He didn’t leave. In fact he may not even have noticed, I’ve no idea. But I was excited—almost feverish. And that night I left his door unlocked again, but this time on purpose. I left it unlocked for months and months, and still he stayed, a creature of habit. Only natural. It was as if I had him chained to the wall. Spring came, and it got warmer. I told him the Government had discovered a way of making heat by some atomic process. But I knew I was finished. Sooner or later he would venture out of the cellar and into the street. I waited for it. We went on talking, night after night, and I went on leaving the door unlocked. I didn’t know whether I wanted him to stay or wanted him to leave. I merely waited, tortured by anxiety, sweating, terrorized by nightmares. And so, inevitably, it happened. He came out of the cellar. He must have known for weeks that he could do it if he wanted. What agony he must have undergone! Nevertheless, at last he came out. Picture it. A creature crawling on hands and knees, unspeakably grotesque! His beard hung down like an emperor’s—he must have been eighteen or nineteen by now—and his eyes had grown enormous, like the eyes of a fish who’s spent all his life in some cavern, looking at darkness. Slowly, tentatively, he crawled from his prison to the cellar stairs, all his body awake to the memory of the whippings I’d given him long ago. Up he went, step by step, an agony of guilt. At the top of the stairs he found the entryway, the door leading out to the garden, and in the door’s glass pane he saw—God forgive him!—sunlight! Fantastic! He couldn’t believe it! His wits reeled! He was nauseous! Perhaps he fainted, fell away into madness. But there was no turning back! Perhaps hours passed, or perhaps he went back to his cellar, shaking like a leaf, and did not come out until two days later. In any case, out he came, at last, and he saw that beyond any shadow of a doubt, the sun was still burning. He crawled onto the sidewalk and called out to passersby for explanation. They ignored him, fled from him. Nevertheless, the sun was burning. Eventually he attracted the attention of a child and asked his questions and learned the truth. I had lied. All his life had been a lie, for years and years! The pity of it! Christ! So then tell me. What would you have done, Clumly? What?
CLUMLY: You’re mad!
SUNLIGHT: No, sane. What would you have done?
CLUMLY: I would have killed you.
SUNLIGHT: Yes!
(Long pause.)
CLUMLY: What are you up to? What does all this mean?
SUNLIGHT: Yes! What meaning?
(Long pause.)
CLUMLY: I don’t believe you. The whole thing’s a lie.
SUNLIGHT: Yes. No.
(Long pause.)
CLUMLY: I’m old. I’m tired. What are you talking about?
SUNLIGHT: He returned to the cellar.
(Long pause.)
CLUMLY: Incredible!
SUNLIGHT: Yes. He was a philosopher.
CLUMLY: You’re mad.
SUNLIGHT: He died three weeks later.
(Long pause.)
CLUMLY: I don’t know what to say.
SUNLIGHT: No. Nor I.
(Long pause.)
CLUMLY: Does all this have to do with civil rights? Or with … Babylonia?
SUNLIGHT: Babylon.
CLUMLY: Yes of course. I meant to say Babylon.
(A pause of two full minutes.)
SUNLIGHT: He’d misunderstood reality, and so he died. And so I say this. Suppose you’re wrong. You ask me what my answer is to America’s problems—psychological, social, political. I have none. I do not deny that we ought, theoretically, t
o continue fighting, labor on, struggle for improvement. But I doubt that anything in all our system is in tune with, keyed to, reality. How can one fight for what he doesn’t believe in for a moment?
CLUMLY: You make things too complicated. Law and Order …
SUNLIGHT: Bullshit! That boy I freed from your jailhouse was an Indian. Do you know what it’s like to grow up on a Reservation? I don’t mean pity him. I don’t mean sob. I mean your laws are irrelevant, stupid, inhuman. I mean you support civilization by a kind of averaging. All crimes are equal, because you define the crime, not the criminal. It’s effective, I admit it. But it has nothing to do with reality. There is good and evil in the world, but they have nothing to do with your courts. I know better than anyone, believe me! I have been the victim. But that’s in the past. Assault and battery is always the same, no matter who does the assaulting and battering. That’s your Jewish law. Well I reject your law!