32
PARTISAN REVIEW
One night I accidentally bumped into a man, and perhaps be–
cause of the near darkness he saw me and called me an insulting
name. I sprang at him, seized his coat lapels and demanded that he
apologize. He was a tall blond man, and as my face came close to his
he looked insolently out of
his
blue eyes and cursed and cursed me,
his breath hot in my face as he struggled. I pulled his chin down
sharp upon the crown of my head, butting him as I had seen the
West Indians do, and I felt his flesh tear and the blood gush out, and
I yelled, "Apologize! Apologize!" But he continued to curse and
struggle, and I butted him again and again until he went down
heavily, on his knees, profusely bleeding. I kicked him repeatedly, in
a frenzy because he still uttered insults though his lips were frothy
with blood. Oh yes, I kicked him! And in my outrage I got out my
knife and prepared to slit his throat, right there beneath the lamp–
light in the deserted street, holding him in the collar with one hand,
and opening the knife with my teeth-when it occurred to me that
the man had not
seen
me, actually; that he, as far as he knew, was in
the midst of a walking nightmare! And I stopped the blade, slicing
the air as I pushed him away, letting him fall back to the street. I
stared at him hard as the lights of a car stabbed through the darkness.
He lay there, moaning on the asphalt; a man almost killed by a
phantom.
It
unnerved me. I was both disgusted and ashamed. I
was like a drunken man myself, wavering about on weakened legs.
Then I was amused: Something in this man's thick head had
sprung out and beaten him within an inch of his life. I began to
laugh at this crazy discovery. Would he have awakened at the
point of death? Would Death himself have freed him for wakeful
living? But I didn't linger. I ran away into the dark, laughing so
hard I feared I might rupture myself. The next day I saw his picture
in the
Daily News,
beneath a caption stating that he had been
"mugged." Poor fool, poor blind fool, I thought with sincere com–
passion, mugged by an invisible man!
Most of the time (although I do not choose as I once did to deny
the violence of my days by ignoring it) I am not so overtly violent.
I remember that I am invisible and walk softly so as not to awaken
the sleeping ones. Sometimes it is best not to awaken them; there are
few things in the world as dangerous as sleepwalkers. I learned in
time though that it
is
possible to carry on a fight against them with-
