John Gardner - The Sunlight Dialogues

(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!