Reluctant Neighbors

  Why did memory so readily revive pictures of me, perhaps four or five years old, kneeling beside my bed and repeating the prayers on which my mother insisted as part of the bedtime ritual. “ … and please bless Gram and Grandpa and Tantie Alma and Daddy and Mum. And please bless me.” Her strong warm hug and smiling kiss my reward for saying it correctly. Growing up. Able to repeat,

  Now I lay me down to sleep

  I pray the Lord my soul to keep.

  If I should die before I wake

  I pray the Lord my soul to take.

  Somewhat frightened by the words “die” and “soul to take,” but reassured by my mother’s powerful presence near by. Too young to understand the meaning of death. Then one day my father was unwell. The next day he was taken away to the hospital. I never saw him again. My mother explained that he had gone away to be with the angels. Sometimes, at night, I’d lie in my bed and look out through the window at the Guyana sky, black and heavy with stars, seeming close enough for me to reach upward and touch them. I’d imagine my father somewhere up there, able to move about as he wished, even without wings. A little hurt that he did not come down to see me and talk with me, but understanding that it was perhaps too far away.

  Later occasions when, in despair over my difficulties with a Latin or Greek assignment, or sweating through riders on a geometric theorem, I’d whisper the request “Please, God, help me,” sometimes even audibly. Doubling and redoubling the effort, then telling myself that the successful outcome was due to the prayer. Not quite believing it, but never quite doubting it either, just in case I’d need to do it again. And again.

  That day in 1943, returning to base, after a simple “recce” practice­ flight, to find the airfield covered in thick ground mists which had drifted or been blown over from near-by low-lying fenlands. The voice of Operations Control quietly encouraging. Checking my instruments. Not enough fuel for diversion elsewhere. Listening to that voice and its directions, carefully making my circuit to line up for approach. Depth perception distorted by the thick, swirling mists. Feeling the way down in a gentle glide, stick and rudder bars like extensions of myself, the altimeter my crystal ball of truth. Watching it inch away the feet. Prayer words in my mind, whispering them desperately to the God in whom my mother believed. The airplane a living, breathing thing, reaching blindly downward for its roost.

  Suddenly breaking through the mist, the runway directly ahead and little more than two hundred feet below. I’d made it. Shouting the words into the open-channel circuit, operations agreeing. Readily forgetting the unspoken promises of piety or penance.

  Religious? Hardly. Those weeks and months of job hunting. Embittered by rejection and my own helplessness against it. Passing a church early one morning, the side door open. Slipping in. Quietly alone in that towering, cold emptiness. The sun barely filtering through the orderly patterns of colored glass to break the heavy gloom. Self-consciously kneeling. Whispering my request for help in finding a job. Any job. Hearing nothing. Feeling nothing. Finally sitting up, disgusted with myself for being there and going through a tiresome rigmarole in which I did not believe. And yet, at the same time, wishing for the impossible miracle.

  Thinking, as if in mockery of myself, as if prompted by an adversary voice in my ear, “God created man in His own image. In the image of God, created He man.” I must have learned that at Sunday school. With all the other texts. God is love. Remembered now, when I found the face of man turned contemptuously from me, and the blending of God with man quite unbearable. “In His own image,” the text had said. God and me. Me and God. Okay. Then why the hell couldn’t all those white bastards see that? Why couldn’t they recog­nize His image in me? Why was I being forced to crawl to them, God-me begging the crust to fill my Divine stomach?

  I was forgetting. Oh Christ! I was forgetting. Up there in those windows, among the pieces of green and purple and blue and gold, red and yellow, among the black strips of sealing lead, the faces were all pinky white. On the illustrated text cards they’d given me at Sunday school, the faces had all been pinky white. Angels. Disciples. Mary. All of them. Christ, too. Bearded, slim and withdrawn, with upcast eyes. But white. And God. How had He been depicted? Faceless. Bodiless. Always a symbol. A huge all-seeing Eye. A flaming sword. A burning bush.

  Yes. That was it. The representations and the symbols had all been white. So why the hell was I wasting my time? Getting up and striding out, the steel tips on my heels ringing my aggressive despair on the intricately tiled floor.

  And the next time. Michelle, my beloved. Lovely and intelligent beyond her nine years, suddenly stricken and dying of an incurable illness. Again I prayed to God, to all the gods, out of a desperate need I had not imagined possible. Begging their collective pity. Desperately, sincerely, offering myself on whatever altar they might choose, only that she should live. Watching the light gradually fade from her pain-filled eyes. Mute to her barely audible question, “Will I get well and go home with you, Daddy?” The last vestige of my belief slipping away into the void with her final breath.

  He was quite extraordinary, this neighbor of mine. I’d really believed that we’d said the final words to each other, but he’d opened it again. This time he’d switched to religion. Maybe he was merely being friendly and seeking ways of showing it. Perhaps, in spite of his so-called black friends and business associates, being in this captive situation with me confused him. Anyway, a friendly gesture is a friendly gesture. The least I could do was meet him halfway. It was really no strain. I’d had plenty of experience in the techniques of observing the social civilities.

  “What about you?” I asked him. “Are you religious?”

  “Yes. I consider myself a religious man,” he replied.

  “A churchman?” I was simply feeding him his own cues. For civility’s sake.

  “Yes. My family has attended the same church for generations.” He said it with a certain pride, continuing with, “Nowadays religion is considered old-fashioned. My own children are much less interested in going to church than I was at their age. In the final analysis we all need something to believe in, to give us spiritual anchorage.” Pausing, looking at me as if expecting either confirmation or denial. Nothing from me.

  “I believe that God is the divine architect and director of man’s destiny,” he went on. “I believe in truth and justice and the responsibility for dealing fairly with my fellow man.”

  Still nothing from me. I wondered why he felt compelled to talk. I didn’t give a damn what he believed or did not believe. The words were coming out of him like water from a tap, without any hint of conviction. I wondered what he meant by the words “truth” and “justice” and “fellow man.” They fell from his lips as casually as “fairly” and “destiny.” Just words. Was I included among his “fellow man”?

  “I know you said you’re not religious,” he said. “Perhaps we’re not using the same terms for the same things, but I’m sure that a man like you must believe in something.”

  “I do.” I told him.

  “Good.” Leaning closer. “What is it? Can you talk about it?”

  “Certainly. I believe in challenge.” Saying it to him as the thought coalesced in my mind. Surprising myself with the sudden recognition of it. Hearing the words of the idea I’d been struggling with these many years. At last it had surfaced, bursting out from its hiding place, teased into the open by persistent pressure from this neighbor. I’d finally confronted myself with it. The look on his face told me he did not understand.

  “Challenge?” He removed the spectacles to peer nearsightedly at me. The quiver of little muscles around his mouth signaled the beginning of a smile.

  “Yes. Challenge.”

  “I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

  “Perhaps it’s more important for me fully to understand it myself than attempt to explain it to you. In any case I don’t believe that explainin
g it to you would serve any purpose. However, I’ll tell you this much. All around me there are influences which seek to reduce me, limit me or obstruct me. You are part of those influences. Wherever I look I am confronted with proscriptions designed and maintained by you. For much of my life I struck out blindly at them, threatened by them, frightened of them. At last, perhaps a bit late, I’m seeing the challenge implicit in them. I see each of them, wherever or whenever it occurs, as a challenge to myself, to my right to be fully myself, to realize my full potential. I am no longer frightened. I accept the challenge.”

  “I still don’t get it,” he said, moving his head negatively to reinforce the words.

  “That does not surprise me.” I replied, then thought I’d pull the issue a little closer around him. “Wouldn’t you agree that six feet one inch of intelligent humanity should be a truly considerable force? That’s how I see myself, and the sight of you challenges me to be exactly that. A considerable force, determined to occupy every inch of physical and spiritual space my stature requires. Every kind of contact with you reaffirms that challenge. Day in, day out.”

  “Are you saying that just being here, talking like this, is a challenge to you?” Asking the question in a tone of voice which implied that the idea was incredible to him.

  “Sure. Your presence beside me challenges me to project my humanity. You took that seat reluctantly because you are conditioned to think of me as less than human. My natural inclination is to avoid contact with you, even conversational contact, because you wear the whole history of your attitude to me. But now I see you in that history and I am challenged to acknowledge your presence, talk with you, be courteous to you, as a man. See what I mean?”

  The spectacles were back in place, the face still inclined to me. I felt the gaze but could not see the eyes. Silence from him.

  Perhaps I’d wasted my time talking to him that way, saying all that to him. Could he just now overcome his conditioned way of seeing me to really hear what I was saying? Not bloody likely! I could never explain to him the unnaturalness of being challenged spiritually to respond to the most natural of human needs, the most ordinary of human conditions? I’d mentioned courtesy, but what of the other wider, deeper areas of human relationship? Friendship. Love. Would he ever be able to understand what it means to be challenged to respond to friendship readily, spontaneously offered against the ubiquitous historical backdrop of racial mistrust? And what about love? This one had circuitously inquired at “deeper relationships” in Paris. He’d never dare ask about “deeper relationships” in New Canaan. We’d never dare talk about love. Not him and me.

  For me, to me, the word had become bigger than him and his whiteness and me and my blackness. Every day it stared me in the face, prodding me to live up to its challenges. As it had done for the past twenty years, ever since that evening when my first class graduated.

  For nine months I’d worked with them, swinging hourly like a pendulum between hope and despair. At myself. At them. For most of those nine months I was so preoccupied with trying to teach them, as pupils, that I very nearly missed the opportunity of seeing them as persons. Even when, belatedly, I discovered them behind and beneath the superficialities of the way they dressed, spoke and deported themselves, my concern was for myself. Find out about them the better to teach them. That was the strategy.

  In the last hour of the last day we spent together they made me a gift. On the container box they’d written: “To Sir, With Love.”

  In the instant of reading it I’d learned another lesson. In using the word “love” they’d declared themselves to me. So easily they could have used words like “respect” and “affection.” Either of those would have been right considering the early nature and difficult progress of our relationship. But they’d used the word “love.” They’d handed it to me with their gift, meaning every letter of it, and had then gone their separate ways, leaving it to haunt the rest of my life with its challenge. Its challenge to growth; its challenge to stature; its challenge to live.

  Suddenly remembering that day, December 28, 1971. Still shaken up from a recent bout of flu in London, and waiting at Heathrow Airport for my plane to Paris. Sitting in the airport lounge, trying to select the flight announcements from the general hubbub of multilingual conversations and the rise and fall of engine noise from the crowded tarmac. Two small children, a boy and a girl, dressed so alike they may have been twins, chased each other in a noisily, endless game of hide-and-seek, darting among the passengers and their baggage. Now and then they’d return, breathless, to an attractive blonde woman who’d hug them absentmindedly then quickly disengage themselves to continue their game. The girl was the leader, imperiously dictating each venture to her sturdier but compliant playmate. They were an attractive couple in their red woolen ski suits and sealskin ankle boots. The boy’s hair was close cropped, the girl’s a shoulder-length mass of blonde curls. Finns or Icelanders, I guessed.

  Their play eventually brought them racing along near where I sat, the boy ahead. His sister caught sight of me, stopped and came to me, a look of wonder on her face. Unhesitating, she came near and touched both sides of my face with her hands, looked at her fingers, laughed delightedly, then threw her arms about my neck and kissed me. Releasing me, she said some words which were quite unintelligible to me and, laughing, hurried off in pursuit of her brother. The wonderful innocence of it. She saw the difference between us, wondered at it, accepted it.

  How could I explain any of that to this man beside me?

  “It seems to me,” he was speaking again, spacing each word separately from the other, perhaps for effect, “that anyone who considers it a challenge to engage in an ordinary conversation like this must have a lot of hatred locked up inside him.” Looking away, as if the words were enough to damn me forevermore. They didn’t bother me, not one little bit.

  “I told you before,” I answered. “The word is rage, not hatred. Anyway, even hating you would be no problem for me. No problem at all. Everything around me easily encourages it. The trick is to try the opposite thing.” Whether he believed me or not was of little consequence.

  “And the opposite thing is loving.” Investing each word with his cynical disbelief.

  “I need something big enough to counterbalance my racist feelings.” I threw it at him. The gray eyes bulged perceptibly.

  “Are you now saying that you’re a racist? Advertising it?” I’m sure his voice was up an octave.

  “Not a racist. Just racist. I’m racist. You’re racist. We’re all racist. All of us. Every bloody member of this racist society.”

  “I’d suggest that you speak for yourself. Not for me. I’m certainly not a racist.”

  “Good for you. It takes some doing to be the only one in step while everyone else is stumbling around. In Guyana we have a saying, ‘If you attend the crabs’ dance you must get muddy.’ We live in a racist society. We work, eat, sleep, fornicate, are born and die in a racist environment. Differences are more important to us than similarities. Those differences govern our lives. All our lives. The most obvious ones, the most exploited and exploitable ones, are race and color.” The telltale red appeared at his neck, spreading irregularly upward. The smile was gone. In its place a look of shock. Anger. His mouth opened once or twice, then closed tight, the area around his lips turning white under the pressure. I felt quite calm.

  “The single fact of color or race is the most divisive element in many societies. Including this one. Too black to attend this school. Too black to live in this neighborhood. Too black to swim on this beach. Too black to run for high political office. Too black to be buried in this piece of earth. We’re all involved in it. All of us. Those who aggressively pursue racist policies. Those who are victimized by those policies. Those who are in-between, like Minnehaha, neither willing nor reluctant. We’re all racist.”

  “That’s your opinion, and you’re welcome to it.” He finally
got the words out. “I concede that in this country we have many problems but that does not make us all raving racists.” Even now, in spite of the anger still shining in his eyes, the words came out without much heat.

  “I didn’t use the word ‘raving,’ but perhaps it’s very apropos. I watched the television coverage of things like the Selma march, the Watts riots, the pickets at Pontiac, Michigan and Forest Hills, New York. Did you look at the faces of the men and women as they screamed their threats and abuse? Black faces. White faces. All contorted with fury and anger. Unreason. Yes, I think the term ‘raving’ would have been just right. And the other things. Bombing of school buses. Burning of occupied homes while the families are asleep. Bombing churches while children sat in Sunday school worshipping your familiar God. Who but raving lunatics would do such things?”

  “Those are extreme cases,” he managed.

  “Are they? Then would you say that those angry pickets at Forest Hills are extremists? No, my friend. Sometimes the cameras­ would focus on a face twisted in passionate anger, like a fury from hell. A few moments later I’d notice that face again, the anger less rabid, belonging to an ordinary body in ordinary clothes. Tall, short, slim, fat, handsome or homely. But ordinary. That’s the sobering part. They are all so bloody ordinary. As I am. As you are.”

  “The people of Forest Hills are mainly Jewish,” he said, reprovingly.

  “Are they? So racism is no respecter of persons or religions. Do you know what I did last Sunday?” He’d been asking all the questions until now, or nearly all. Now it was my turn.

  “I’m listening,” he replied.

  “I drove up Park Street to the Shell gas station, left my car to be filled and serviced, and walked behind the station to look at the church, that beautifully white structure with its tall finger probing the clouds. I watched the people arriving, parking their cars, chatting with each other and going inside. Ordinary people. No doubt very nice people. Models of suburban respectability. Perhaps comfortably off. Easily fitting the mould of the decent, law-abiding, hard-working, God-fearing citizen. The salt of the earth. And sane. I closed my eyes for a moment and the transition was easy. Forest Hills to New Canaan. New Canaan to Forest Hills.”