Colson Whitehead - The Intuitionist

No jokes or other forms of gentle and not-so-gentle ribbing right now, however: Chuck has been more or less accepted by the rest of the Department after a brief period of imperceptible hazing (imperceptible to New Guys like Chuck and perennial outsiders like Lila Mae on account that most of it consists of secret code words and birdlike hand gestures only members recognize, let alone notice), and besides, tonight everyone’s crowded around the radio listening to the press conference. The big news. Lila Mae, having crept out of the garage and walked over to O’Connor’s so tentatively that anyone watching her would have thought her to have just that morning discovered her legs, is not surprised to find her colleagues listening to the radio describe an event unfolding a scant hundred yards away. They could have easily joined the newsmen outside the front of HQ, but that would have been too direct. The trip is everything to elevator inspectors — the bumps and shudders, not the banalities of departure and destination — and if the radio waves must first amble from the reporters’ microphones to the receiver atop the WCAM Building and dally there a bit before returning (nearly) to the humble spot of their nativity, so much the better. The intrinsic circuitousness of inspecting appeases certain dustier quarters of her and her colleagues’ mentalities, the very neighborhoods, it turns out, where the key and foundational character deficits reside. Nobody’s quite up to investigating those localities, or prepared to acknowledge or remark upon them anyway; to do so would lead to instructive, yes, but no doubt devastating revelations about their jobs, about themselves. They’re that important. Really. The first one to suggest they go over to O’Connor’s to hear Chancre and the Mayor, the one who made it easy for them to indulge their widening array of avoidances and circumabulations, is probably drinking free all night.

The day shift and the night shift are firmly installed in slouching semicircles around O’Connor’s radio, which is enshrined behind the bar underneath an emerald neon shamrock. She spots Chuck’s red hair halfway into the pack. The wolves are intent on the sounds. On the radio, the Mayor says we’ll get to the bottom of this affair, pillory the guilty parties, launch a full-scale investigation into the terrible accident at the Fanny Briggs building, dedicated to one of our country’s most distinguished daughters.

“Do you think that a party or parties resistant to colored progress may be responsible?” a reporter asks the Mayor, to much furious murmuring in O’Connor’s. Everyone thinks, as they must, of last summer’s riots, of how strange it was to live in a metropolis such as this (magnificent elevated trains, five daily newspapers, two baseball stadiums) and yet be too afraid to leave the house. How quickly things can fall into medieval disorder.

“Right now we’re hesitant to speculate on who may or may not be responsible,” the Mayor says. “We don’t want to inflame any emotions or incite the baser impulses. I was present at the scene and all I know is that there was a great clanging, a loud clangalang, and much confusion, and I knew that something terrible had transpired at the Fanny Briggs Memorial Building. Right now we’re concentrating on the facts at hand, such as the inspection records. But Mr. Chancre, the Chair of the Department of Elevator Inspectors, will be handling those questions. Mr. Chancre?”

Needless to say, Lila Mae doesn’t frequent O’Connor’s very often, usually just on the Department’s bowling nights, when it’s just her and Chuck and the resident alcoholics, this latter party posing no threat except to clean floors. Because her father taught her that white folks can turn on you at any moment. She fears for her life in O’Connor’s because she believes that the unexpected scrape of a chair across the floor or a voice’s sudden intensity contains the potentiality of a fight. On the few occasions Lila Mae has been in O’Connor’s during the broadcast of a baseball game or a boxing match, every cheer sent her looking for makeshift weapons. It doesn’t help matters that the bartender rings a large brass bell when a patron doesn’t tip; she jumps every time. Jumps at that sound and at the starter’s pistol they fire to quell disagreements, heated exchanges over the various merits and drawbacks of heat dispersal in United Elevator’s braking systems, say. They can turn rabid at any second; this is the true result of gathering integration: the replacement of sure violence with deferred sure violence. Her position is precarious in the office, she understands that, and in O’Connor’s as well; she’s a lost tourist among heavy vowels, the crude maps of ancestral homelands, and the family crests of near-exterminated clans. Her position is precarious everywhere she goes in this city, for that matter, but she’s trained dread to keep invisible in its ubiquity, like fire hydrants and gum trod into black sidewalk spackle. Makeshift weapons include shoes, keys and broken bottles. Pool cues if they’re handy.

“I’ll bet you ten dollars Chancre makes a campaign speech.”

“Sucker bet.”

Peril tonight especially. Imagine it like this: Everything known is now different.

“She really put her foot in it now.”

“Her and the rest of that bunch, by Roland.”

“Chancre’s a cinch now.”

Never mind that Lila Mae hasn’t been in a fight since the third grade, when a young blonde girl with horse teeth asked her, Why do niggers have curly hair?

“That’s what happens when you let freaks and misfits into the Guild.”

“Shut up — I want to hear the man.”

The first thing a colored person does when she enters a white bar is look for other colored people. There is only one other colored person besides Lila Mae who ever ventures past the sneering leprechaun who cavorts on O’Connor’s door, and that’s Pompey, who’s here tonight, elbows on the bar, sipping whiskey daintily as if it were the Caliph’s tea, the cuffs of his shirt bold out of sad and comically short jacket sleeves. The bartender sweeps away empty glasses with a clockhand’s impatience so there’s no estimating the margin of safety. For Lila Mae, not Pompey. These men would never hurt Pompey, little Pompey, who surely would have commanded some limp mare at the racetrack had he not found his illustrious vocation. (Or it found him, for there’s something akin to fatal resignation in the inspectors’ attitude toward their life’s work.) Here’s a story about Pompey that’s true or not true: it doesn’t matter. One time George Holt, Chancre’s predecessor, called Pompey into his office near quitting time. The Guild Chair’s office is on the executive floor above the Pit, and since reprimands and termination notices arrive in official Department interoffice mail envelopes, invitations upstairs are universally regarded as omens of good fortune. Promotions, plum assignments, keys to the better sedans. Again: Pompey, the first colored elevator inspector in the city, is summoned up to see Holt for the first time, after putting in four years on the streets. The difficulty of all colored “firsts” is well documented or at the very least easily imaginable, and need not be elaborated except to say that Pompey had an exceedingly hard time of things. When Holt called him upstairs, Pompey believed his appallingly obsequious nature, cultivated to exceptional degree during his time in the Department, had finally served him well. Holt had never spoken to him before and Pompey found him surprisingly affable. Holt offered him a cigar, the scent of which Pompey was well acquainted with, as it lingered in random pockets of the Department’s hallways and offices, marking where Holt had walked and surveyed, an acrid reminder of authority: bodiless, unseen, everywhere. Pompey brushed his tongue across the inside of his cheeks to forage the residue of the faintly cinnamon smoke, the very wisps of Holt’s esteem. He expected confidences; Holt told him he was going to kick him in the ass. Pompey laughed (this executive humor was going to take a little getting used to) and went along with the joke, even after Holt told him to bend over. Which he did. Pompey continued to chortle until Holt kicked him in the left ass cheek with the arrowhead of one of his burgundy wingtips (Pompey’s angle of vision precluded determination of exactly which shoe). Then Holt told him to leave his office. The next day a small memo appeared on Pompey’s desk informing him of his promotion to Inspector Second Grade. True, Holt didn’t first ask him to shine the shoe. And he got to keep the cigar.