612
TONY TANNER
an ambiguous declaration, for if he is Elijah Thrush, where has Albert
Peggs gone?
It
could be the final victory for the white people to make
him negate his black identity in order to perpetuate their theatricalized
mythologies.
Let's take a closer look at the members of the family. Millicent
has all the power, though her role is not without its poignancy (Purdy
is, incidentally, one of the few American writers who seem to under–
stand women ). She has a hand like a claw, a tongue like a cow's, the
streng:th of a man. She seems to grow taller in her imperiousness, and
both Albert and Elijah find themselves on the floor in front of her
more than once. She giyes Elijah his clothes, his cosmetics, and - a
possibility conceded by Elijah - perhaps his very existence. Elijah is a
true mesmerist, an old man who can nevertheless play the "reincarna–
tion" of the Most Beautiful Man in the
"'"orld.
In his theater he holds
his audience in raptures w;th his erotic and hedonistic dances. On the
walls there are pictures showing the mime as "Hiawatha, the child
Moses, Apollo, and Jesus in the Garden with Mary Magdalene"; Indian
boy, Hebrew prophet, Greek God, Christ the Redeemer; beauty, wisdom,
li,ght, sah-ation - or a parodistic salmagundi of these once revered
figures. Where Millicent demands total "concession" and obedience,
Elijah asks for "total fidelity, total oneness." Either way, their attitudes
seem to contain little respect for the independent otherness of people, for
in their different ways they are both engorgers. Their marriage is scarcely
happy, though it might be said that they were made for each other.
And what of the "child" of this marriage, Albert Peggs? He is both
the recipient of Millicent's money, memories, and orders, and "the lover
of the spiritual world of Elijah Thrush." He is often ordered to kneel,
has seizures, feels ill, eyen thinks he is going mad. He is a sponge who
takes in e\'erything the \\hite people urge on him, including their own
projections of his blackhood; at the same time, while he absorbs he
exudes, as any pressed sponge will, and there is a constant flowing of
liquid out of his body - s\\'eat, foalll - just as he is drinkin,g in, ho\\,–
e\'er ul1\\'illingly, his ne\\' surroundings. And it must be emphasized
that there is a yery specific contemporary rele\'ance here. Albert is the
black who has lost his Southern self, and is as yet unable to find a new
self in the North. He is mythologized by the whites, but that is not
the same thing as rendering him an identity. In his position he is very
vulnerable and it is part of his fate to be s\\'amped in projections which
prematurely deform what is as yet his unformed self.
If
he is the in–
heritor he is also the victim; it may be "his period," but coming into his
"inheritance" is not an unambiguous priyilege. At the \\'edding of his
surrogate parents, Albert can no longer remember his name, which
would indicate the final loss of whatever there was to the original
