I think of Bayonne that way. I came on it in the night with a few addresses that had been given me. I had a briefcase under my arm with a prospectus of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. I was supposed to go under cover of dark and sell the bloody encyclopaedia to some poor devils who wanted to improve themselves. If I had been dropped off at Helsingfors I couldn’t have felt more ill at ease than walking the streets of Bayonne. It wasn’t an American city to me. It wasn’t a city at all, but a huge octopus wriggling in the dark. The first door I came to looked so forbidding I didn’t even bother to knock; I went like that to several addresses before I could summon the courage to knock. The first face I took a look at frightened the shit out of me. I don’t mean timidity or embarrassment – I mean fear. It was the face of a hod-carrier, an ignorant mick who would as lief fell you with an axe as spit in your eye. I pretended I had the wrong name and hurried on to the next address. Each time the door opened I saw another monster. And then I came at last to a poor simp who really wanted to improve himself and that broke me down. I felt truly ashamed of myself, of my country, my race, my epoch. I had a devil of a time persuading him not to buy the damned encyclopaedia. He asked me innocently what then had brought me to his home – and without a minute’s hesitation I told him an astounding lie, a lie which was later to prove a great truth. I told him I was only pretending to sell the encyclopaedia in order to meet people and write about them.
That interested him enormously, even more than the encyclopaedia. He wanted to know what I would write about him, if I could say. It’s taken me twenty years to answer that question, but here it is. If you would still like to know, John Doe of the City of Bayonne, this is it… I owe you a great deal because after that lie I told you I left your house and I tore up the prospectus furnished me by the Encyclopaedia Britannica and I threw it in the gutter. I said to myself I will never again go to people under false pretences even if it is to give them the Holy Bible. I will never again sell anything, even if I have to starve. I am going home now and I will sit down and really write about people. And if anybody knocks at my door to sell me something I will invite him in and say “why are you doing this?” And if he says it is because he has to make a living I will oner him what money I have and beg him once again to think what he is doing. I want to prevent as many men as possible from pretending that they have to do this or that because they must earn a living. It is not true. One can starve to death – it is much better. Every man who voluntarily starves to death throws another cog into the automatic process. I would rather see a man take a gun and kill his neighbour, in order to get the food he needs, than keep up the automatic process by pretending that he has to cam a living. That’s what I want to say, Mr. John Doe.
I pass on. Not the stabbing horror of disaster and calamity, I say, but the automatic throwback, the stark panorama of the soul’s atavistic struggle. A bridge in North Carolina, near the Tennessee border. Coming out of lush tobacco fields, low cabins everywhere and the smell of fresh wood burning. The day passed in a thick lake of waving green. Hardly a soul in sight. Then suddenly a clearing and I’m over a big gulch spanned by a rickety wooden bridge. This is the end of the world! How in God’s name I got here and why I’m here I don’t know. How am I going to eat? And if I ate the biggest meal imaginable I would still be sad, frightfully sad. I don’t know where to go from here. This bridge is the end, the end of me, the end of my known world. This bridge is insanity; there is no reason why it should stand there and no reason why people should cross it. I refuse to budge another step, I balk at crossing that crazy bridge. Nearby is a low wall which I lie against trying to think what to do and where to go. I realize quietly what a terribly civilized person I am – the need I have for people, conversation, books, theatre, music, cafes, drinks, and so forth. It’s terrible to be civilized, because when you come to the end of the world you have nothing to support the terror of loneliness. To be civilized is to have complicated needs. And a man, when he is full blown, shouldn’t need a thing.
All day I had been moving through tobacco fields, and growing more and more uneasy. What have I to do with all this tobacco? What am I heading into? People everywhere are producing crops and goods for other people – and I am like a ghost sliding between all this unintelligible activity. I want to find some kind of work, but I don’t want to be a part of this thing, this infernal automatic process. I pass through a town and I look at the newspaper telling what is happening in that town and its environs. It seems to me that nothing is happening, that the dock has stopped but that these poor devils are unaware of it. I have a strong intuition, moreover, that there is murder in the air. I can smell it. A few days back I passed the imaginary line which divides the North from the South. I wasn’t aware of it until a darkie came along driving a team; when he gets alongside of me he stands up in his seat and doffs his hat most respectfully. He had snow-white hair and a face of great dignity. That made me feel horrible: it made me realize that there are still slaves. This man had to tip his hat to me -because I was of the white race. Whereas I should have ripped my hat to him! I should have saluted him as a survivor of all the vile tortures the white men have inflicted on the black. I should have tipped my hat first, to let him know that I am not a part of this system, that I am begging forgiveness for all my white brethren who are too ignorant and cruel to make an honest overt gesture. To-day I feel their eyes on me all the time; they watch from behind doors, from behind trees. All very quiet, very peaceful, seemingly. Nigger never say nuthin’. Nigger he hum all time- White man think nigger learn his place. Nigger leam nuthin’. Nigger wait. Nigger watch everything white man do. Nigger no say nuthin’, no sir, no siree. But JUST THE SAME THE nigger IS KILLING THE WHITE MAN OFF!
Every time the nigger looks at a white man he’s putting a dagger through him. It’s not the heat, ifs not the hook worm, it’s not the bad crops that’s killing the South off – it’s the nigger 1 The nigger is giving off a poison, whether he means to or not. The South is coked and doped with nigger poison.
Pass on… Sitting outside a barber shop by the James River. I’ll be here just ten minutes, while I take a load off my feet. There’s a hotel and a few stores opposite me; it all tails off quickly, ends like it began – for no reason. From the bottom of my soul I pity the poor devils who are born and die here. There is no earthly reason why this place should exist. There is no reason why anybody should cross the street and get himself a shave and haircut, or even a sirloin steak. Men, buy yourselves a gun and kill each other off! Wipe this street out of my mind for ever – it hasn’t an ounce of meaning in it.
The same day, after nightfall. Still plugging on, digging deeper and deeper into the South. I’m coming away from a little town by a short road leading to the highway. Suddenly I hear footsteps behind me and soon a young man passes me on the trot, breathing heavily and cursing with all his might. I stand there a moment, wondering what it’s all about. I hear another man coming on the trot; he’s an older man and he’s carrying a gun. He breathes fairly easy, and not a word out of his trap. Just as he comes in view the moon breaks through the clouds and I catch a good look at his face. He’s a man hunter. I stand back
