I shuddered; he sounded as though he would like to throttle me. I couldn't see and there was much confusion and suddenly someone spun me around, pulling me off balance, and I felt myself pressed against warm feminine softness, holding on.
"Oh, Brother, Brother!" a woman's voice cried into my ear, "Little Brother!" and I felt the hot moist pressure of her lips upon my cheek.
Blurred figures bumped about me. I stumbled as in a game of blindman's buff. My hands were shaken, my back pounded. My face was sprayed with the saliva of enthusiasm, and I decided that the next time I stood in the spotlight it would be wise to wear dark glasses.
It was a deafening demonstration. We left them cheering, knocking over chairs, stomping the floor. Brother Jack guided me off the platform. "It's time we left," he shouted. "Things have truly begun to move. All that energy must be organized!"
He guided me through the shouting crowd, hands continuing to touch me as I stumbled along. Then we entered the dark passage and when we reached the end the spots faded from my eyes and I began to see again. Brother Jack paused at the door.
"Listen to them," he said. "Just waiting to be told what to do!" And I could still hear the applause booming behind us. Then several of the others broke off their conversation and faced us, as the applause muffled down behind the closing door.
"Well, what do you think?" Brother Jack said enthusiastically. "How's that for a starter?"
There was a tense silence. I looked from face to face, black and white, feeling swift panic. They were grim.
"Well?" Brother Jack said, his voice suddenly hard.
I could hear the creaking of someone's shoes.
"Well?" he repeated.
Then the man with the pipe spoke up, a swift charge of tension building with his words.
"It was a most unsatisfactory beginning," he said quietly, punctuating the "unsatisfactory" with a stab of his pipe. He was looking straight at me and I was puzzled. I looked at the others. Their faces were noncommittal, stolid.
"Unsatisfactory!" Brother Jack exploded. "And what alleged process of thought led to that brilliant pronouncement?"
"This is no time for cheap sarcasm, Brother," the brother with the pipe said.
"Sarcasm? You made the sarcasm. No, it isn't a time for sarcasms nor for imbecilities. Nor for plain damn-fooleries! This is a key moment in the struggle, things have just begun to move -- and suddenly you are unhappy. You are afraid of success? What's wrong? Isn't this just what we've been working for?"
"Again, ask yourself. You are the great leader. Look into your crystal ball."
Brother Jack swore.
"Brothers!" someone said.
Brother Jack swore and swung to another brother. "You," he said to the husky man. "Have you the courage to tell me what's going on here? Have we become a street-corner gang?"
Silence. Someone shuffled his feet. The man with the pipe was looking now at me.
"Did I do something wrong?" I said.
"The worst you could have done," he said coldly.
Stunned, I looked at him wordlessly.
"Never mind," Brother Jack said, suddenly calm. "Just what is the problem, Brother? Let's have it out right here. Just what is your complaint?"
"Not a complaint, an opinion. If we are still allowed to express our opinions," the brother with the pipe said.
"Your opinion, then," Brother Jack said.
"In my opinion the speech was wild, hysterical, politically irresponsible and dangerous," he snapped. "And worse than that, it was incorrect!" He pronounced "incorrect" as though the term described the most heinous crime imaginable, and I stared at him open-mouthed, feeling a vague guilt.
"Soooo," Brother Jack said, looking from face to face, "there's been a caucus and decisions have been made. Did you take minutes, Brother Chairman? Have you recorded your wise disputations?"
"There was no caucus and the opinion still holds," the brother with the pipe said.
"No meeting, but just the same there has been a caucus and decisions have been reached even before the event is finished."
"But, Brother," someone tried to intervene.
"A most brilliant, operation," Brother Jack went on, smiling now. "A consummate example of skilled theoretical Nijinskys leaping ahead of history. But come down. Brothers, come down or you'll land on your dialectics; the stage of history hasn't built that far. The month after next, perhaps, but not yet. And what do you think, Brother Wrestrum?" he asked, pointing to a big fellow of the shape and size of Supercargo.
"I think the brother's speech was backward and reactionary!" he said.
I wanted to answer but could not. No wonder his voice had sounded so mixed when he congratulated me. I could only stare into the broad face with its hate-burning eyes.
"And you," Brother Jack said.
"I liked the speech," the man said, "I thought it was quite effective."
"And you?" Brother Jack said to the next man.
"I am of the opinion that it was a mistake."
"And just why?"
"Because we must strive to reach the people through their intelligence . . ."
"Exactly," the brother with the pipe said. "It was the antithesis of the scientific approach. Ours is a reasonable point of view. We are champions of a scientific approach to society, and such a speech as we've identified ourselves with tonight destroys everything that has been said before. The audience isn't thinking, it's yelling its head off."
"Sure, it's acting like a mob," the big black brother said.
Brother Jack laughed. "And this mob," he said, "Is it a mob against us, or is it a mob for us -- how do our muscle-bound scientists answer that?"
But before they could answer he continued, "Perhaps you're right, perhaps it is a mob; but if it is, then it seems to be a mob that's simply boiling over to come along with us. And I shouldn't have to tell you theoreticians that science bases its judgments upon experiment! You're jumping to conclusions before the experiment has run its course. In fact, what's happening here tonight represents only one step in the experiment. The initial step, the release of energy. I can understand that it should make you timid -- you're afraid of carrying through to the next step -- because it's up to you to organize that energy. Well, it's going to be organized and not by a bunch of timid sideline theoreticians arguing in a vacuum, but by getting out and leading the people!"
He was fighting mad, looking from face to face, his red head bristling, but no one answered his challenge.
"It's disgusting," he said, pointing to me. "Our new brother has succeeded by instinct where for two years your 'science' has failed, and now all you can offer is destructive criticism."
"I beg to differ," the brother with the pipe said. "To point out the dangerous nature of his speech isn't destructive criticism. Far from it. Like the rest of us, the new brother must learn to speak scientifically. He must be trained!"
"So at last it occurs to you," Brother Jack said, pulling down the corners of his mouth. "Training. All is not lost. There's hope that our wild but effective speaker may be tamed. The scientists perceive a possibility! Very well, it has been arranged; perhaps not scientifically but arranged nevertheless. For the next few months our new brother is to undergo a period of intense study and indoctrination under the guidance of Brother Hambro. That's right," he said, as I started to speak. "I meant to tell you later."