Blind Man With a Pistol Read Online Free PDF Page A

trouble was, he wasn't very bright.
          Then one night at Buttercup's he met this Swedish woman, Birgit, who was famous for her glass. She had dropped in to look over the brothers. She and Marcus found their affinity immediately. Both of them were serious, both were seeking, both were extraordinarily stupid. But she taught him brotherly love. She was hipped on brotherly love. Although it didn't mean the same thing to her as it did to him. She had had a number of brothers as lovers and in time she had become enthusiastic about brotherly love. But Marcus had the vision of Brotherhood.
          The same night he met her, he gave up on the idea of plain Christian love. Buttercup was sitting at a big table where she could oversee the entrance, the bar and the dance floor at the same time, surrounded as usual by a number of sycophants, like a big fat mother hen with a brood of wet chicks and ugly ducklings, and she had introduced Marcus to Birgit, seeing as they were both serious, both seeking. At one end of the same table a fattish erudite white man vacationing from his teaching post in Black Africa was holding forth on the economy of the new African states. Feeling the man was getting too much of Birgit's attention, as he had just met her and didn't as yet know about her brotherly love, Marcus sought to steer the conversation away from Black African economy to the American Negro Problem where he could shine. He wanted to shine for Birgit. He didn't know he already shone to her satisfaction. Suddenly he interrupted the man. He held forth his Bible, dangling the gold cross. He was absorbed by Christian love. "What does that mean to you?" he challenged, pointing to the cross, preparing to expound his brilliant idea. The man looked from the cross to Marcus's face. He smiled sadly. He said, "It don't mean a damn thing to me, I'm a Jew." Right then and there Marcus dropped his ideas on Christian love. He was ready for brotherly love when Birgit took him home. But he was serious.
          Birgit took him to live with her in the South of France. She had a good business in glassware and was famous. But she was more interested in the welfare of the American Negro than in glass. She was a perfect foil to the wild ideas of Marcus. They spent most of their waking hours discussing ways and means to solve this problem. Once she declared she would become the richest and most famous woman in the world and then she would go to the American South and call a press conference and let it be known that she lived with a Negro. But Marcus didn't think much of that idea. He felt she should be in the background and he should take the lead. It was inevitable that two such wildly enthusiastic people would have some misunderstandings. But the only serious one they had was about the correct way to stand on one's head. She did it her way. He said it was wrong. They argued. He was stubborn. She pointed out that she was older than he was, and heavier. He left her and went back to Detroit. She hopped on a plane and went to Detroit and took him back to France. It was after then that he became convinced of the efficacy of Brotherly Love. He woke up one morning with a vision of Brotherhood. In this vision he saw it solving all the problems of the world. He already knew about the March. That much the US Army had taught him. Put the two together and they'd work, he concluded.
          The next week he and Birgit arrived in New York and took a room in the Texas Hotel near the 125th Street station and went into the business of organizing the "March of Brotherhood".
          Now the moment had arrived. Birgit took her place beside him in the command car. She pulled up her large striped cotton dirndl skirt made by her fellow national, Katya of Sweden, and looked around with an excited smile. But to onlookers it was more like the strained expression of a Swedish farm woman in a Swedish outhouse in the dead of a Swedish winter. She was trying to restrain