Unit 4 - The Library Card
As a black boy growing up in America in the early 1900s, Richard Wright knew well the meaning of racial prejudice. He was not allowed to play in a park or borrow books from a library. While working as an office boy in a bank, though, he found a way into the library and discovered the power of the written word. In the following story, Richard Wright tells us how his thirst for books grew with each passing day and what changes took place in him as he did more and more reading.
THE LIBRARY CARD
Richard Wright
One morning I arrived early at work and went into the bank lobby where the Negro porter was mopping. I stood at a counter and picked up the Memphis Commercial Appeal and began my free reading of the press. I came finally to the editorial page and saw an article dealing with one H. L. Mencken. I knew by hearsay that he was the editor of the American Mercury, but aside from that I knew nothing about him. The article was a furious denunciation of Mencken, concluding with one, hot, short sentence: Mencken is a fool.
I wondered what on earth this Mencken had done to call down upon him the scorn of the South. The only people I had ever heard enounced in the South were Negroes, and this man was not a Negro. Then what ideas did Mencken hold that made a newspaper like the Commercial Appeal castigate him publicly? Undoubtedly he must be advocating ideas that the South did not like.
Now, how could I find out about this Mencken? There was a huge library near the riverfront, but I knew that Negroes were not allowed to patronize its shelves any more than they were the parks and playgrounds of the city. I had gone into the library several times to get books for the white men on the job. Which of them would now help me to get books?
I weighed the personalities of the men on the job. There was Don, a Jew; but I distrusted him. His position was not much better than mine and I knew that he was uneasy and insecure; he had always treated me in an offhand, bantering way that barely concealed his contempt. I was afraid to ask him to help me to get books; his frantic desire to demonstrate a racial solidarity with the whites against Negroes might make him betray me.
Then how about the boss? No, he was a Baptist and I had the suspicion that he would not be quite able to comprehend why a black boy would want to read Mencken. There were other white men on the job whose attitudes showed clearly that they were Kluxers or sympathizers, and they were out of the question.
There remained only one man whose attitude did not fit into an anti-Negro category, for I had heard the white men refer to him as "Pope lover". He was an Irish Catholic and was hated by the white Southerners. I knew that he read books, because I had got him volumes from the library several times. Since he, too, was an object of hatred, I felt that he might refuse me but would hardly betray me. I hesitated, weighing and balancing the imponderable realities.
One morning I paused before the Catholic fellow's desk.
"I want to ask you a favor," I whispered to him.
"What is it?"
"I want to read. I can't get books from the library. I wonder if you'd let me use your card?"
He looked at me suspiciously.
"My card is full most of the time," he said.
"I see," I said and waited, posing my question silently.
"You're not trying to get me into trouble, are you, boy?" he asked, staring at me.
"Oh, no, sir."
"What book do you want?"
"A book by H. L. Mencken."
"Which one?"
"I don't know. Has he written more than one?"
"He has written several."
"I didn't know that."
"What makes you want to read Mencken?"
"Oh, I just saw his name in the newspaper," I said.
"It's good of you to want to read," he said. "But you ought to read the right things."
I said nothing. Would he want to supervise my reading?
"Let me think," he said. "I'll figure out something."
I turned from him and he called me back. He stared at me quizzically.
"Richard, don't mention this to the other white men," he said.
"I understand," I said. "I won't say a word."
A few days later he called me to him.
"I've got a card in my wife's name," he said. "Here's mine."
"Thank you, sir."
"Do you think you can manage it?"
"I'll manage fine," I said.
"If they suspect you, you'll get in trouble," he said.
"I'll write the same kind of notes to the library that you wrote when you sent me for books," I told him. "I'll sign your name."
He laughed.
"Go ahead. Let me see what you get," he said.
That afternoon I addressed myself to forging a note. Now, what were the name of books written by H. L. Mencken? I did not know any of them. I finally wrote what I thought would be a foolproof note: Dear Madam: Will you please let this nigger boy -- I used the word "nigger" to make the librarian feel that I could not possibly be the author of the note -- have some books by H.L. Mecken? I forged the white man's name.
I entered the library as I had always done when on errands for whites, but I felt that I would somehow slip up and betray myself. I doffed my hat, stood a respectful distance from the desk, looked as unbookish as possible, and waited for the white patrons to be taken care of. When the desk was clear of people, I still waited.
The white librarian looked at me.
"What do you want, boy?"
As though I did not possess the power of speech, I stepped forward and simply handed her the forged note, not parting my lips.
"What books by Mencken does he want?" She asked.
"I don't know, ma'am," I said, avoiding her eyes.
"Who gave you this card?"
"Mr. Falk," I said.
"Where is he?"
"He's at work, at M -- Optical Company," I said. "I've been in here for him before."
"I remember," the woman said. "But he never wrote notes like this."
Oh, God, she's suspicious. Perhaps she would not let me have the books? If she had turned her back at that moment, I would have ducked out the door and never gone back. Then I thought of a bold idea.
"You can call him up, ma'am," I said, my heart pounding.
"You're not using these books, are you?" she asked pointedly.
"Oh, no, ma'am. I can't read."
"I don't know what he wants by Mencken," she said under her breath.
I knew now that I had won; she was thinking of other things and the race question had gone out of her mind. She went to the shelves. Once or twice she looked over her shoulder at me, as though she was still doubtful. Finally she came forward with two books in her hand.
"I'm sending him two books," she said. "But tell Mr. Falk to come in next time, or send me the names of the books he wants. I don't know what he wants to read."
I said nothing. She stamped the card and handed me the books. Not daring to glance at them. I went out of the library, fearing that the woman would call me back for further questioning. A block away from the library I opened one of the books and read a title: A Book of Prefaces. I was nearing my nineteenth birthday and I did not know how to pronounce the word "preface". I thumbed the pages and saw strange words and strange names. I shook my head, disappointed. I looked at the other book; it was called Prejudices, I knew what that word meant; I had heard it all my life. And right off I was on guard against Mencken's books. Why would a man want to call a book Prejudices? The word was so stained with all my memories of racial hate that I cold not conceive of anybody using it for a title. Perhaps I had made a mistake about Mencken? A man who had prejudices must be wrong.
When I showed the books to Mr. Falk, he looked at me and frowned.
"That librarian might telephone you," I warned him.
"That's all right," he said. "But when you're through reading those books, I want you to tell me what you get out of them."
That night in my rented room, while letting the hot water run over my can of pork and beans in the sink, I opened A Book of Preface and began to read. I was jarred and shocked by the style, the clear, clean, sweeping sentences. Why did he write like that? And how did one write like that? I pictured the man as a raging demon, slashing with his pen, consumed with hate, denouncing everything American, extolling everything European or German, laughing at the weaknesses of people, mocking God, authority. What was this? I stood up, trying to realize what reality lay behind the meaning of the words … Yes, this man was fighting, fighting with words. He was using words as a weapon, using them as one would use a club. Could words be weapons? Well, yes, for there they were. Then, maybe, perhaps, I could use them as a weapon? No. It frightened me. I read on and what amazed me was not what he said, but how on earth anybody had the courage to say it.
I ran across many words whose meanings I did not know, and either looked them up in a dictionary or, before I had a chance to do that, encountered the word in a context that made its meaning clear. But what strange world was this? I concluded the book with the conviction that I had somehow overlooked something terribly important in life. I had once tried to write, had once reveled in feeling, had let my crude imagination roam, but the impulse to dream had been slowly beaten out of me by experience. Now it surged up again and I hungered for books, new ways of looking and seeing. It was not a matter of believing or disbelieving what I read, but of feeling something new, of being affected by something that made the look of the world different.
I forget more notes and my trips to the library became frequent. Reading grew into a passion. My first serious novel was Sinclair Lewis's Main Street. It made me see my boss, Mr. Gerald, and identify him as an American type. I would smile when I saw him lugging his golf bags into the office. I had always felt a vast distance separating me from the boss, and now I felt closer to him, though still distant. I felt now that I knew him, that I could feel the very limits of his narrow life. And this had happened because I had read a novel about a mythical man called George F. Babbitt.
I read Dreiser's Jennie Gerhardt and Sister Carrie and they revived in me a vivid sense of my mother's suffering; I was overwhelmed. I grew silent, wondering about the life around me. It would have been impossible for me to have told anyone what I derived from these novels, for it was nothing less than a sense of life itself. All my life had shaped me for the realism, the naturalism of the modern novel, and I could not read enough of them.
Steeped in new moods and ideas, I bought a ream of paper and tried to write; but nothing would come, or what did come was flat beyond telling. I discovered that more than desire and felling were necessary to write and I dropped the idea. Yet I still wondered how it was possible to know people sufficiently to write about them? Could I ever learn about life and people? To me, with my vast ignorance, my Jim Crow station in life, it seemed a task impossible of achievement. I now knew what being a Negro meant. I could endure the hunger. I had learned to live with hate. But to feel that there were feelings denied me, that the very breath of life itself was beyond my reach, that more than anything else hurt, wounded me. I had a new hunger.
参考译文——借书证
作为20世纪初期在美国长大的黑人男孩，理查德·赖特非常清楚种族偏见的含义。他不得在公园里玩耍，不得向图书馆借书。不过，在一家银行做勤杂员时，他找到了进入图书馆的方法，并且发现了文字的力量。在下面的故事中，理查德·赖特向我们讲了他对书的渴望是如何与日俱增的，讲了书越读越多后身上发生了什么变化。
借书证
理查德·赖特
一天早晨，我上班早了，就走进了银行的门厅，门厅里黑人清洁工正在拖地板。我站在一个柜台前，随手拿起孟菲斯《商业呼声报》，不花钱看起了报纸。最后，我翻到社论版，看到一篇写一个叫做H·L·门肯的人的文章。我听说过，他是《美国信使》的主编，但除此之外，对他一无所知。文章猛烈抨击门肯，结尾是火辣辣的一个短句：门肯是个傻瓜。
我不知道门肯究竟干了些什么，惹得南方这般奚落他。我所听到过的在南方遭谴责的只有黑人，可此人并非黑人。那么，门肯有什么思想使得像《商业呼声报》这样的报纸公开对他大加斥责呢？毫无疑问，他所宣扬的思想肯定是南方各州不喜欢的。
我怎样才能了解到门肯到底是怎么样的一个人呢？该市江畔倒有一个大图书馆，但是我知道，它是不允许黑人光顾的，就像市内的公园和运动场不让黑人光顾一样。我曾几次去该图书馆，为在这里干活的白人借过书。现在他们之中有谁肯帮我弄到书呢？
我掂量了一下在这里干活的一些人的为人。有一个叫唐的，是个犹太人，但我不信任他。他的处境不比我好多少，我知道他不自在，觉得什么都没有保障。他对我总是敷衍，嘲弄，不难看出他对我的轻蔑。我不敢叫他帮我借书。他拼命想表露他与白人的种族团结和对黑人的歧视，他很可能出卖我。
那么老板怎么样呢？不行。他是个浸礼会教徒，我怀疑他不会理解一个黑人孩子为什么要看门肯的书。在这里工作的还有其他白人，他们的态度清楚地表明他们是三K党徒或其同情者，他们是决不会帮忙的。
只剩下一个人，他的态度不属于歧视黑人的一类，因为我曾听到白人称他为"拍教皇马屁的人"。他是个爱尔兰天主教徒，受到南方白人的憎恨。我知道他看书，因为我曾好几次为他到图书馆去借书。既然他也是个被仇恨的对象，我感到他虽有可能拒绝帮助我，但不太可能出卖我。我犹豫不决，反复掂量着，权衡着这无法估量的现实。
一天上午，我在这位天主教徒的办公桌前停下来。
"我想求你帮个忙，"我低声对他讲。
"帮什么忙?"
"我想看书，却无法从图书馆借到。我在想，你肯不肯把借书证借给我用?"
他怀疑地看着我。
"我的借书证大部分时间都是满的，"他说。
"哦，"我说后便等待着，无声地提出我的问题。
"你不是想给我找麻烦吧，伙计?"他两眼直盯着我，问道。
"喔，不会的，先生。"
"你想要什么书?"
"一本H·L·门肯写的书。"
"哪一本?"
"我不知道。他写了不止一本书吧?"
"他写过好几本书。"
"我原本不知道。"
"你怎么会想到要看门肯的书?"
"哦，我只是在报纸上看见他的名字，"我说。
"你想看书是好的，"他说，"但你该看那些正当的书。"
我没有回答。他是不是要监督我看哪些书？
"让我想想，"他说。"我想想办法。"
我转身离开，但他把我叫了回来。他疑惑地盯着我看。
"理查德，不要对别的白人提这件事，"他说。
"我明白，"我说。"我一个字也不会说。"
几天以后，他把我叫了去。
"我已经以我妻子的名义弄了张借书证，"他说。"我的给你。"
"谢谢你，先生。"
"你觉得你行吗?"
"一定行，"我说。
"如果他们怀疑你，你就要遇到麻烦了，"他说。
"我会写张便条到图书馆的，跟你派我借书时写的一样，"我告诉他说，"我将签你的名字。"
他笑了。
"去吧，让我看看你借的什么书，"他说。
那天下午，我下工夫伪造了一张便条。可是，H·L·门肯写的书的名字是什么呢？我一本都不知道。最后，我写了一张我认为是绝对保险的条子：亲爱的夫人：请你让这个小黑鬼——我用了"黑鬼"这个词，以使图书管理员觉得我不会是写这张条子的人——借几本H·L·门肯的书。我伪造了这位白人的签名。
我像往常替白人当差那样，进了图书馆，但我总觉得我会莫名其妙地出差错而露馅的。我脱了帽子，离办公桌一段相当距离恭恭敬敬地站着，尽量装出不是读书人的样子，等候白人读者先借。当桌旁已经无人时，我仍然等着。
这时，白人图书管理员看着我。
"你要什么，小家伙?"
我像不会说话似的走向前去，只是把伪造的条子递给她，没有开口。
"他要门肯的哪几本书?"她问道。
"我不知道，夫人，"我说着，避开她的视线。
"谁给你这个借书证的?"
"福尔克先生，"我说。
"他在哪儿?"
"他在办公，在M—光学仪器公司，"我说。"以前我来这里帮他借过书。"
"我记得，"这女人说。"但他从未写过这样的条子。"
哦，上帝，她起了疑心。说不定她不肯让我借这些书。如果她当时转过身去，我就会一下子钻出门外，永不回去。正在这时，我想出了一个大胆的主意。
"你可以给他打个电话，夫人，"我说着，心怦怦直跳。
"你不看这些书吧?"她直截了当地问道。
"哦，不，夫人。我不识字。"
"我不知道他要门肯的哪些书，"她小声说道。
这时，我知道我胜利了。她已在想着别的事儿，种族问题已经被忘记了。她走到书架跟前。此后，她掉头看过我一两回，似乎还有些怀疑。末了，她拿着两本书走上前来。
"我给他两本书，"她说。"不过你告诉福尔克先生，下次自己来，要不就给我写来他要的书的书名。我不知道他想看什么书。"
我没有说话。她在借书证上打了印，把书给了我。我不敢看书一眼，径直走出图书馆，惟恐这女人把我叫回去，进一步盘问。走出图书馆一个街区，我打开其中一本书，看到书名是：《序言集》。我快过十九岁生日了，但我却不知道"序言"这个词怎么念。我一页一页翻过去，看到一些奇怪的词和一些古怪的名字。我摇摇头，大失所望。我又看了另一本书，书名叫《偏见》。我知道这个词的意思，自我出世以来，就一直听到这个词。因此，我立即对门肯的书警觉起来。为什么一个人要把一本书取名为《偏见》？这个词沾满了我记忆所及的一切种族仇恨，我不能想像任何人用它作书名。说不定我把门肯看错了？一个有偏见的人肯定是不对的。
当我把书给福尔克先生看时，他看看我，皱皱眉。
"那个图书管理员可能会打电话给你，"我预先警告他说。
"那不打紧，"他说。"不过你读完这些书后，我要你告诉我，你从中学到些什么。”
那天夜里，在我租的房间里，我一边让热水冲着水池里的猪肉烧豆罐头，一边打开《序言集》读了起来。书的文体，那干净、利落、有力的句子令我大为震惊。他为什么要那样写？他又是如何写成那个样子的？在我的想像里，这个人是个凶猛的恶魔，用他的笔四处挞伐，心中充满了仇恨，对美国的一切大加谴责，对欧洲的或德国的一切大加颂扬，嘲笑人的缺点，嘲弄上帝，嘲弄权威。这是怎么回事？我站起身来，想弄清楚隐藏在这些词义背后的现实……是的，这个人在战斗，用文字战斗。他把文字当作武器，使用起它们来，就像人们使用棍棒一样。文字可以成为武器吗？可以，因为在这里它们就是武器。那么，说不定我也可以把文字当作武器使用了？不，这使我害怕。我接着往下读。令我惊愕的不是他说了些什么，而是天底下竟有人敢这么说。
我碰到许多我不认识的词，有时我查字典，有时，还没来得及查，就在另一边上下文中又见到了，这个上下文将该词的意思表明得清清楚楚。可这是一个多么奇怪的世界？当我读完这本书的时候，我深深感到，不知怎的，我把生活中某些非常重要的东西忽略了。我曾经想学写作，曾经非常喜欢去感受事物，曾经听任我的原始想像力遨游，但是生活中的种种遭遇渐渐地将我这种爱幻想的冲动磨灭掉了。而如今，这种冲动又重新抬头了。我渴望书，渴望新的观察和了解世界的方法。这不是一个相信不相信我所读的书的问题，而是感受一种新的东西，并受其影响，这东西使得世界的面貌变了样。
我又伪造了一些便条，我到图书馆也去得频繁了。读书成了一种嗜好。我读的第一本严肃的小说是辛克莱·刘易斯的《大街》。它使我了解了我的老板杰拉尔德先生，发觉他是一种典型的美国人。每当我看到他吃力地提着他的高尔夫球袋走进办公室的时候，我就要发笑。过去我一直感到我和老板之间相隔千里，现在我觉得离他近了，尽管我们之间还有一定的距离。我现在觉得我理解他了，我能感觉到他狭隘生活的种种局限性。这个变化的发生，是因为我读了一部写一个叫乔治·F·巴比特的虚构人物的小说。
我读了德莱塞的《珍妮·格哈特》和《嘉莉妹妹》，它们重新使我真切地感受到我母亲遭受到的痛苦。我完全被感动了。我变得沉默寡言，对我周围的生活感到疑惑不解。那时，我不可能告诉别人我阅读这些小说有何收益，因为我所获得的就是对生活自身的感受。我一生的经历造成我喜欢现代小说的现实主义、自然主义，这些小说我怎么也读不够。
我完全沉浸在新的情绪和思想之中，我买了一令纸，试着写作。但我什么也写不出来，即使勉强写出来，也是极其平淡无味。我发现要写作，只有愿望和感情是不够的。于是我放弃了写作的念头。然而我仍然想知道，怎样才能充分了解人们，进而描写他们？我到底能不能做到理解生活、理解人呢？对我来说，由于我极端无知，由于作为黑人的我在现实生活中所处的地位，这似乎是一个不可能达到的目标。我现在知道了做一个黑人意味着什么。我可以忍受饥饿，我学会了容忍仇恨。但有一点比其他任何东西都更伤我的心。那便是，我觉得我被拒之于感情的某些方面之外，我感到就连生活中必不可少的东西，对我来说，也是可望而不可即的。我产生了一种新的饥饿。
参考资料：
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