1
I COME TO a period in which I was literally a wandering student, a steady occupant of libraries, leading actually a hobo’s life, but with the outward leisure of gentleman and scholar. I supported myself by small jobs of free-lancing or other efforts of the brain, and what I lived on is all but incredible. I met many people, but I made few ties. I may seem to have been derelict, but such was not the case, not so much as when I was working up to be a buyer for Boshnack’s. I was waiting and watching constantly for some opening, that I might become a part of American intellectual life. When I got tired of one library, I packed my brief case and took up the hitchhiker’s station along the road. All things I could not carry in that brief case, I left with George. To travel I found was very easy. And food in the South was cheap. The Library of Congress held me up for a long time, for I was much interested in its Oriental department. (Following Kim’s advice, I was trying to specialize in Orientalia as from a Western viewpoint.) From Washington I went up to Johns Hopkins. These adventures I have now to tell found me in Baltimore.
On that day when I was to meet one of the strangest figures I had yet encountered in America, I had been to the Jewish Students’ Home, where they served me with some kind of drink. It was strong. When I came out, I was so dizzy I could not work. I had been worrying over financial problems and the big opportunity that never turned up, so that under the influence of the drink I walked and walked, my mind eagerly searching the horizon for some future. In Baltimore I was made much of by this little group of Jewish students. They procured small lectures for me, and gave me many invitations. Their minds were keen and forceful and they savored my position in the West with true appreciation. But even with their help my funds were almost gone. I wondered when I would hear from my last free-lancing paper.
Having walked all afternoon, from one end of Baltimore to another, I found myself toward evening coming out of Druid Hill Park into the Negro section. It was a warm day in late October. At that very moment I was the witness to an unusual drama. An elegant light-colored gentleman was forcibly ejecting a large, coarse woman from a little tailoring shop. “You nigger, take your hands off me!” the woman screamed, clutching and kicking. Her dress seemed half unfastened. The immaculate gentleman threw out after her a woman’s patent-leather belt, a purse and a hat. “Woman,” he said impressively, “The Lord bids you—Git!” As the woman picked up her belongings, cursing and muttering, another man sidled out from the shop, a rough-looking oily-faced Jew in shirt sleeves. The Jew, behind the back of the Spanish-looking gentleman, was forming words with his mouth and making gestures as if for a future assignation, but the woman heartily cursed them both and made off. I lingered curiously, to hear the conversation of the two remaining actors.
“Brother Ginsburg, you done fallen into the quagmire. I caught you, Brother Ginsburg. What you guess the Lord’s thinking now?”
“Well, Elder,” whined the other doggedly, “I told you I couldn’t hold out. You and the Saints is asking too much.”
The dark gentleman, having wiped the sins of the world from his hands with a large, snowy, linen handkerchief, hand-hemstitched and monogrammed, stopped now to apply the same handkerchief to his well-polished shoes. Over his shoulder he glanced at me standing and watching. From that moment he seemed to be very much aware of me, even while saying in a richly moving voice to the other, “That’s what you and me is going to pray about, Brother Ginsburg. The Lord done told me to help my poor lost brethren, black or white or yellow—all peoples.” Again he glanced my way. “So I ain’t going to leave you to no devil, even though he might deserve to git you. But let us pray,” he said abruptly. (Then he paused as if about to ask me to join them, but I made no move.) “There ain’t no time like the present for repentance, Brother Ginsburg,” he took up the same thread with passionate voice, “while sins of the world still burn as crimson and as hot as all hell-fire. Let us never be afraid to kneel down and put our troubles in the Lord’s hands wherever we be, and rise up innocent and cleansed in Jesus’ name, let us pray, Brother Ginsburg.” He himself kneeled right down on the pavement in front of Ginsburg’s tailoring shop, and his convert sheepishly followed suit just over the threshold. Since it was prayer, I took off my hat—a move which the Elder seemed to note with satisfaction. He made that prayer awfully short now, for he was in great haste to scramble to his feet again and take eager steps toward me. “Perhaps I could help out,” he said courteously. “Are you a stranger to this city? Are you lost by any chance?” His dark rolling eyes moved eagerly over my face.
I thought I would play up to him, so I asked the way back to Johns Hopkins University, and admitted that I was a stranger to Baltimore. The Elder seemed in no hurry to answer my question. He said eagerly, “Just come over here and sit down, Brother—Brother” he groped for my name.
“Han,” I supplied. “Chungpa Han.”
“Ah, yes, Brother Han,” he said it sonorously with satisfaction. “And then I’ll explain your whereabouts to you.” He ordered a chair brought out from Ginsburg’s shop, wiped it with his great white linen handkerchief, and waved for me to sit down, in elaborate ceremony. He stood over me, his hand resting persuasively on the back of the chair, giving long involved directions in an emotional voice and always in the biggest words possible.
“Wait, Brother,” I said. “I’m still confused in my way.”
He took out a gold fountain pen and drew an elaborate diagram. By this time he had brought another chair, and he interspersed his directions with social questioning. In fact it was evident that I had made some great impression on this elegant light-colored gentleman quite out of proportion to my own importance. But he had never heard of Korea. He just wouldn’t believe I hadn’t come from China. (In fact, all the time I knew him, I could never make him understand about Korea. I remained Brother Han, from China, a “Chinee.”) He seemed never to have heard of the big Eastern colleges either, nothing but Johns Hopkins. But he knew I was very learned, for my destination was Johns Hopkins that evening. When I rose to go, he said, “Well, well . . . er . . . Brother Han, are you in some hurry?”
“Only for some studying.”
“First, won’t you join me at dinner, Brother Han?”
He drew out his card and handed it to me. I read,
Elder Bonheure
Temple of The Saints
Baltimore, Norfolk, and Atlantic Beach
“I would be delighted.”
“Then step this way,” said Elder Bonheure with a flourish. “My chauffeur is waiting.”
Sure enough, around the corner from Ginsburg’s shop, there was a big Cadillac car waiting, and in the driver’s seat a very black and beaming Negro with a kind, honest, innocent face, dressed in the shiniest kind of chauffeur’s uniform, with black leather puttees, cap, gloves, everything to match. He jumped out and bowed and bowed, first to the Elder and then me, and opened the door for us in the most aristocratic manner.
Bonheure motioned for me to go first. We sank back on the rich cushions and the car rolled grandly away. As we drove, Elder Bonheure asked me gently if I knew anything about God. Not much, I said modestly. Well, had I ever been converted, was I baptized a Christian? I hedged, at that, though of course I really had been baptized once in the Presbyterian Church. But I saw Bonheure did not really think I was a Christian. He would almost be disappointed if I was. I let him think that I was undecided. Still, I said, I thought the Christian faith very beautiful. I quoted the Sermon on the Mount, and St. Paul’s words on Charity, and some other chapters that I knew by heart. Bonheure listened, enraptured. He wiped his face with his handkerchief. He sank back on the luxuriant cushions again, staring at me hard. Finally he jumped forward excitedly and gripped my arm. “Oh, Brother Han!” he cried with tears in his voice. “The Lord has planned it all! He was good to us this day. Blessed be the name of the Lord! He put me in your path, Brother Han, to show you the way home. This is our happy day, the day of the New Jerusalem!”
We drove up to a large three-story brick house of rather institutional appearance, still in the Negro section of Baltimore. Inside all was very neat and decent-looking. Everywhere were seen Negroes working. They all beamed and smiled at me and Elder Bonheure; they all bowed low. The chauffeur followed us inside. I noticed that as soon as we got in the house, Bonheure addressed him, too, as Brother, Brother Green. Then he introduced me to him for the first time. “Brother Han, meet Brother Green.” All these working Negroes were the Elder’s brothers and sisters, though they were humble while he was very fine.
On the ground floor, through an open door I saw a big, rough-looking dining room with long tables as in a charity house. But the Elder led me upstairs to his private apartment, which was more like a rich hotel suite. He threw open a large white-tiled bathroom and indicated with princely gesture one of the many snowy hand towels. When I came out, a tall, very dark-brown colored lady was standing there, whom the Elder introduced to me as “Sister Bonheure.” She was plainly but neatly dressed in black taffeta and I remember especially her long skirt which fell below the ankles, and this at a time when the style for ladies, even grandmas, in America, was somewhere around the knees.
“Sister Bonheure,” cried the Elder, clasping her round the shoulder ecstatically and looking at the ceiling, “I have just received a revelation from the Lord! The Lord has planned that I should meet this Chinee gentleman. I looked up from prayer, and I saw Brother Han standing there. Then it came to me what I should do. I went straight up and spoke to him, as the Lord breathed it into my ear. He harkened. And here he is, Sister Bonheure, he has not made up his mind yet to leave the world, but he followed to hear what more shall come to me from the Lord. I am sure the Lord has great blessings planned out for this Chinee. And all shall come about through me, the Lord’s servant, Elder Bonheure. O praise God for His goodness, Sister Bonheure. Down on your knees and thank the Lord God!”
Both sank on their knees and Elder Bonheure plainly wished me to do likewise, so I sank, too. But Sister Bonheure was not quite so ardent and wholehearted in thanksgiving as Elder Bonheure. The Lord’s plan seemed hidden from her, if not from Elder Bonheure. She regarded me hard and a little distrustfully. Afterwards, Elder Bonheure murmured in domestic confabulation with Sister Bonheure, “How about putting Brother Han in that little room off our own, Sister Bonheure?”
Sister Bonheure hesitated, but the Elder, without waiting for a reply, drew away and showed me a small room with bed and window and dresser and armchair, all very clean and comfortable-looking. “How about being our guest, Brother Han, while making up your mind? Step right in and make yourself to home. Later I hope you will join with us. We are all fellow workers for God here, and you are in the company of saints.”
I protested that I couldn’t think of accepting hospitality this way without doing some service in return. Was he in need of a secretary? If so, I might be his secretary for a while. (For I was very curious to learn what was going on here.) “The Lord will tell in time, Brother Han,” answered Elder Bonheure mysteriously, “what it is you are to do. Now we must just be patient and not go against His will. He has some plan. He tell me it is best you stay now in the Saints’ House. But we’ll talk about this after dinner. Now whenever you’re ready, Brother Han, we’ll sit down to table.”
I expected dinner to be served on those rough tables on the floor below with all the other saints, but no, there was a private dining room in the Elder’s suite, with tablecloth and napkins and real silver, and no one had seats here but Elder Bonheure and Sister Bonheure and myself. But Brother Johnson, in white uniform, stood behind Elder Bonheure’s chair to wait on him, and Sister Johnson, in white uniform, stood behind Sister Bonheure’s, to serve her. What a dinner that was! My, but Sister Somebody downstairs could cook! There was real green turtle soup, and there was fried chicken, lots of it, great juicy drumsticks and many breasts, and pan-smothered sweet potatoes and many different kinds of fresh vegetables, and at the end a deep, fat blackberry pie straight from the oven.
After dinner, when we were all three feeling very plump and good-humored, Bonheure revealed a little more of the Lord’s plan for me. He was telling Bonheure to take me with him when he went to Norfolk and Atlantic Beach in a couple of days. Sister Bonheure’s face lighted up with comprehension, especially when Bonheure remarked, “Brother Han is a powerful speaker, Sister Bonheure.”
And we did start off immediately for Atlantic Beach, before I got the chance to become better acquainted with the other brothers and sisters who ate downstairs and who seemed to hold a service of dancing and singing every night. Elder Bonheure did not ask me to join them, and besides I was very busy getting ready for the journey. But I remained curious about them, and wondered how they all came to be the servants of Elder Bonheure, while he, it appeared, took orders only from the Lord—the Lord’s Servant.
After a tremendous breakfast in the private dining room (chicken again, with waffles, and honey-dew) Elder Bonheure and Sister Bonheure and I swept out like royalty, and all bowed before us, and Brother Green held open the door of the Cadillac car. And there to my surprise was Ginsburg, up in the space beside the driver’s seat, with a clean shirt on, but no necktie and still looking very rough. He, too, it seemed, had some place in the Lord’s plan. At least he was to accompany us to Atlantic Beach.
2
At Atlantic Beach was a house even bigger than the one in Baltimore—a five-story house, and it was occupied by a hundred of Bonheure’s brothers and sisters who were all living communally and working for him like the ones in Baltimore. They lined up to greet Bonheure and to shake hands with me and with Ginsburg, after which they fell back to stare at us, with amazed rolling eyes, too stirred for speech. You could see it meant something special, our arrival down here. And Elder Bonheure, too, seemed much moved, and he called them his saints instead of his brothers. Saint White, and Saint Owen, and Saint Washington, he now addressed them, though on all ordinary occasions they were just Brother and Sister, or if Bonheure were talking to outsiders, “My Atlantic Beach cook, valet, or chauffeur.”
My room was especially nice in the Atlantic Beach house, being large with a big double bed, and ruffled white curtains at the windows; the floor was so spotlessly clean it looked as if Sister White, who showed me in there, had cleaned it all round with her tongue. Later, I guessed she must do nothing all day but just wait around the corner, and as soon as I left for a moment, in she would jump, smoothing wrinkles, picking up every single hair or thread that had dropped, and plumping the big starched pillows until they were straight as boards.
I made myself at home and got out my copies of The New Republic and The Nation, and I placed Elmer Gantry on the table, to read in my spare time in my research upon Elder Bonheure. In fact, I was just beginning to like my room very much, when along in the afternoon, I found Ginsburg in it, too. Ginsburg had been washing up with my pitcher and bowl—he was still at it when I came in, and he had made an awful mess. I sat down on the big double bed and tried to talk to him, but there wasn’t anything to talk about. He himself seemed in a dazed, humble, religious mood, after that excellent lunch in which he had joined Brother and Sister Bonheure and me in the Atlantic Beach private dining room, for he addressed me unctuously as Saint Han. But I couldn’t help thinking he had come down for the ride, or just to get in on the ice cream and turkey. Certainly that man was very dumb. He couldn’t read. He had nothing to say. And yet he could talk a few broken words, so it wasn’t like having an animal in the room, which would have been better. Before words came to be, man got along with his fellow man without embarrassment, but as soon as language was invented, he became embarrassed when not talking.
By and by Bonheure came in and shook hands with us both. He acted as if he were surprised to see Ginsburg in my room, but I am sure Ginsburg had been led straight there by his orders. “Well, well,” remarked Elder Bonheure, rubbing his hands in benevolent approval. “You two seem to be chums already. Do you think this is too crowded, Brother Han? Of course, there’s room for Brother Ginsburg up on the next floor if you two brothers don’t like each other. How about it, Brother Ginsburg?”
Brother Ginsburg said my room suited him. Elder Bonheure looked at me. I was sewed up. Nothing left to say. Oh, how it tortured me to nod “all right!” Oh, how I was tortured all that night with that dumb Ginsburg, who snored most horribly!
But meanwhile Elder Bonheure asked Brother Ginsburg if he would like to have a little conversation on spiritual matters. So they sat down on the side of the bed, and I listened.
The spiritual conversation was difficult, for they didn’t have the vocabulary. Bonheure, of course, knew a few big words, but Ginsburg didn’t know any. But their sex-phraseology was the most limited, at least when they wanted to be very delicate and nice as at a time like this, which was a pity, as this spiritual matter was all about sex. Though neither had even the word for that. So they had to use some expressions overtime, such as “sleeping with a woman” and “going to bed,” and things like that, with intonation and quavering pause to convey the real meaning.
“Well, has the Lord done help you to overcome, Brother Ginsburg?” began Elder Bonheure cheerfully, “Has you done forgot that temptation I yanked you away from?”
Brother Ginsburg admitted he had received grace. He had been looking as timid as a rabbit ever since arriving in Atlantic Beach, but as Elder Bonheure went on, reminding him, some of his old irritation came back.
“Only I know sanctification can’t last,” he said doggedly. “Too much I got habit.”
“You can’t hold out, Brother, I know, not alone, but the Lord’s going to be with you . . .”
“Take it this way, Elder, a man that’s been having three meals a day all his life—he can’t stop sudden, can he?”
“That’s all right, Brother Ginsburg.” (This was always Bonheure’s first position in any argument. He always approved of you first, no matter what you said, and if possible he would always try to find a straw on your trousers to brush off. He sat a little nearer to Ginsburg and brushed off his trousers.) “That’s all right. The Lord ain’t going to let you hunger and thirst. It’s the devil do that.”
“It’s sleeping with women, I mean,” blurted Ginsburg. “I’m an old man, used to that thing. If I ain’t never begun . . .”
“I know, I know, Brother Ginsburg, I understand. God plans everybody to have a woman. Ain’t that good? He don’t say you can’t have no woman at all, never. What he say: Marry. Then everything’s all right with God. It’ll be all right with me too, Brother Ginsburg. Why don’t you do what the Lord plan for you, marry and stay sanctified?”
“Well, Elder, I already got a wife.”
“Then why don’t you sleep with your wife, Brother Ginsburg? That’s what all the saints does.”
“You see, Elder, my wife don’t live here. She’s in the old country with all her kids. I ain’t made enough cash to bring her already. How I going to do like your saints with all the Atlantic Ocean between, Elder?”
This was a poser, I could see, but Bonheure glided softly over it, saying, “Ah, we must pray about that, Brother Ginsburg.”
But Ginsburg wouldn’t be put off with anything superficial like that. He got irritated again.
“You talk like all people with money and a big house. Yes, prayer, prayer. What good it does me? You mean, if I pray, I get money and a big house? I bring my woman and kids over here, to stay? But I got only one room. Just my shop. A poor lonely old man . . . say, Elder, what harm does it do, if once in a while I get with that woman you drove out? I pay her a little money—everybody’s made happy, see? You got all these big houses and a fine car. And a woman in with you every night. . . .”
“None but my own dear sister, Sister Bonheure,” insisted the Elder firmly. “And money ain’t much, Brother, under God’s eyes. I’m a poor man. Them is not my goods, but the goods of the saints. Now when you’re a good enough saint, Brother, all will come right for you. We bring your wife over, we baptize her, too—t’won’t do for a saint to sleep with a Jew. . . .”
Ginsburg looked alarmed at the flow of Bonheure’s mellow, juicy language making all things possible. He saw himself really a reformed man. “I ain’t married to her,” he exclaimed hastily, “though we got four kids. Four kids and her in one tailor shop, that’s too much!”
“Oh, that’s sin you ain’t never told me about yet, Brother Ginsburg,” said Bonheure reproachfully. “Now you got to make things right. You got to marry her. And after you marry, stick. That’s it. Just one. Not like cows and horses and dogs; Brother Ginsburg, you’re not a pig. The Lord says, just one.”
Something about the “one” displeased Brother Ginsburg again, and he wormed and squirmed and complained, until the Elder said, sternly:
“This is all I got to say to you, Brother Ginsburg. When you think of the devil, you want devilish things. When you think of God, then you want heavenly things. You want to be one of these saints in this church, and eat with the saints, and sing with the saints, and pray with the saints—you don’t want nothing to do with nobody but saints.”
Well, Elder Bonheure worked on Ginsburg, until they both got up and danced around the room, shouting Glory, hallelujah.
After that the Elder turned to me a little awkwardly. “And now Brother Han, is there anything you would like to discuss about your sanctification?” he said with dignity. (He always treated me as one apart, the man whom he might like, someday, to make his partner; for he had already let many hints drop about this.) So he was rather surprised when I said, “Yes, Elder Bonheure. I’ve been reading and reading in this Bible Sister Bonheure gave me. And it bothers me a lot that I can’t find out any arguments against smoking here. So I don’t believe that is down in this Book.”
“No, no, you’re in error, Brother Han. I’ll convince you.”
“Still, I don’t think we find the word ‘smoking’ here at all.” (Smoking was one of the deadliest sins to the saints.) “And it certainly isn’t in the Ten Commandments.”
“True, of course,” said Bonheure, after a pause, for his first sentence was always to approve you, “but there are many words in the Good Book that warns against this sin.” Then he quoted to me several passages, among them the one about keeping the temple of the body pure. “You see, smoking’s not clean, Brother Han. It’s filthy and rotten.”
“Then ashes are not really a clean form of dirt?” I inquired. “Do you think we could find a good argument there against smoking, Elder Bonheure? And yet people get cremated. . . . It worries me, Elder, not to be able to find that ‘no smoking’ verse in the Bible. Maybe, somebody might say, it’s all right to smoke.”
It pleased me to see Bonheure get irritated, for he lost his power when he got irritated. Very few people really irritated Elder Bonheure. But now he was irritated.
“Smoke, and you will go to hell,” he said dogmatically.
“I, too, think smoking is a bad habit,” I hastened to say. “Still, is it sin? But once I saw a man put a lighted cigarette down on a beautiful mahogany piano and scar the top. The furniture was ruined. And his mother wept. I might tell that man, to convince him, it is sinful to spoil furniture.”
“Yes, yes, Brother Han. I ain’t understood you, at first. I think we agree upon smoking.”
Bonheure changed the subject. He wanted to get back to sanctification and Glory hallelujah. I saw that he was really no arguer. I might have helped Ginsburg out, too, citing verses I knew in the Bible about more than one woman. But Ginsburg was too dumb. Suppose I told him, when Bonheure went out, what to say? No, he could never remember it all.
3
I soon found out that God’s plan was a revival in Atlantic Beach, with baptism of the converts in the river. Posters were already up all over town, advertising this revival. The posters read, “Jews and Chinamen to be sanctified!”
Then I thought I had been brought there under false pretenses. I went to Bonheure and spoke up. I refused to have anything to do with the baptizing. I had already been baptized once, and I wasn’t going to do it again. Elder Bonheure listened thoughtfully and said, Well, did I object to speaking? No, I told him, I was a very good lecturer. I wouldn’t mind speaking in his church. I would speak about the Bible and literature. So Bonheure said, “Well, well, Brother Han, yours is an exceptional case. And you know, we got to hang together, till we see what the Lord’s going to do about us. The Lord told me to go and git you. He wasn’t saying what for. As for the saints, you know we don’t hold for no Presbyterian baptizing. Immersion or not at all with us. But your case is somewhat different. I think, having listened to you, Brother Han—you are very strong in the quoting of Scripture—I think you have received immersion of the spirit, and your inner man has been rightly baptized. Something tells me, Brother Han, you is staying right by me in this revival, going to be my right-hand man.”
Now while in Atlantic Beach I began to get more and more hints as to how this Saints business was run. To make those posters, Bonheure had his own private printing press. There was an office, too, in the Saint’s House, with big typewriters and adding machines, where Negro girls worked all the time attending to “God’s work.” These girls were specially picked. Bonheure believed, with Carlyle, “There is a perennial nobleness, even sacredness in work, and blessed is he who has found his work.” So he devoted a good deal of talent to picking the right person for the right job. He was really a genius at this, and all the saints seemed happy and industrious. “All work for one and one for all,” said Elder Bonheure, and from what I saw, this was strictly true. And Bonheure was the one.
But my, what a marvellous and effective organization! That man really had the big business brain. Thanks to him, for the whole thing was his idea, the saints had a meat market of their own, a vegetable and fruit market, they had a business making ice cream and one making doughnuts. And the saints were not only self-subsistent. They engaged in commerce with the outside world and brought home the profits. Some of the women-saints could sew very well, and besides making clothes for the other brothers and sisters, they went out by the day; others went out as charwomen, washer-women and cooks, and all the money they made they brought to “The Church.” Yes, every cent earned by anybody went straight to the pocket of Bonheure, for the “work of God.” He pretended this money was not his, but belonged to the common store. But why did he always dress so much better than they did, then? I knew a little about overcoats and his overcoat was the kind that sells in Wanamaker’s for $200. His shirts were of the finest cloth, his socks of the best silk. His closets were full of clothes. Nothing fancy, of course. He always avoided the fancy or the bright as not being suited to one who had renounced the World. But everything elegant, expensive and grand. Why did he live with such luxury, he alone among the saints? I made my own investigation. In the common dining room, the saints had a good diet. Everything was well-cooked, clean and wholesome. But plain. And all the honey-dew melons and chicken and turkey and duck went to serve Elder and Sister Bonheure in private dining rooms.
The saints were supposed to live together communally, with clothes and food provided by the house. Every month each man and each woman received a pay envelope from the House, all neatly inscribed with his or her name. This was spending money. Each envelope contained exactly the same amount, only a few dollars. It was all a saint ever got, no matter what was originally earned. Even that, for the most part, found its way back to God’s treasury (which was Bonheure’s bank account). For the saints had no vices and no responsibilities and they threw it all on the collection plate again, as soon as they became intoxicated by the Gospel. All the saints worked hard, some inside, some outside. And Bonheure saw that there was a job for every man. And no new jobs were taken without consulting him. Sometimes he objected and vetoed, if he thought the new job might take a member too far out into the world, or could in any way slacken the old bonds. Of course, such a life was good for those unable to take care of themselves. Most of the saints were very lowly and ignorant and unquestionably better off working for Bonheure than before, cleaner and healthier and better-looking. But, as you can see, such a system was very bad for the abler ones. It killed all initiative and was just like slavery. So I could not help wondering how sincere Bonheure was. I tried to get his opinion on Elmer Gantry, by reading him certain passages and offering to let him borrow the book, but Bonheure was so ignorant he did not know what it was about, anyhow. “Well, what could you expect of any Baptist or Methodist minister?” was all that he said. Bonheure was of the “Holiness” persuasion.
Bonheure’s church in Atlantic Beach had been originally a movie theatre; and once in a while it had been a sinful dance hall as well. He had bought it over with money earned by the saints and he was proud of having done this and so hatched it from the devil’s hands. There it was, a permanent symbol of the saints’ great fight that time with the devil. To spend an evening in Bonheure’s church, I found, was as different from ordinary life as to spend it in heaven or hell. (Bonheure of course would say heaven and not pandemonium.) But Bonheure preached on Black Sin, and every time that God or Christ or Heaven was mentioned, the congregation would jump up and cry Hallelujah. Every time Black Sin or Hell or the devil was mentioned, they would cry Hallelujah, too. So they had a great opportunity to cry Hallelujah, for Bonheure liked to use the helliest, strongest Shakespearean, and his topics, in spite of his limited sex vocabulary, were of the sort usually prohibited by censorship and the Sumner committee. He made the most of Ginsburg, whom he put up on the platform beside him and figuratively stripped. He described how he had found this brother in a little dirty tailor shop, with only a curtain between bedroom and business office, and behind that curtain the bed of Black Sin, all soiled, shouted Elder Bonheure, and in that bed, a woman of the streets. Elder Bonheure told how he hauled this woman up and made her get dressed and told her to leave Ginsburg, for God had him now. “Oh, oh, oh, Lord, what a difference!” and Bonheure pointed his long skinny finger at Ginsburg. “Brother Ginsburg is saved and sanctified!”
“Thank God, brothers and sisters, thank God!” cried the Negroes. “Hallelujah!”
“But think of the time he was on that soiled dirty bed naked with a woman!” Bonheure shook his fingers and closed his eyes. “Yes, sir, Brothers and Sisters, we all know what sin is. It’s black, black. It’s the way of flesh. It is not God’s way. What do God say unto you? If burning, get married. Choose your own dear sister in Christ. All the fun we want, we can have, brothers and sisters, when it’s holy and sanctified! . . . Well, you know how God come to me and say ‘Save Brother Ginsburg. He’s low, he’s a black sinner, he’s a Jew, he crucified my son. But ain’t nobody, Elder, too low to be saved and sanctified.’ That’s what the Lord say to me. Welcome him, brothers and sisters. Make him happy here among God’s saints. No high, no low, here among us. Brother Ginsburg done show now he wants to be a saint before the Lord. Praise God, hallelujah!”
I looked and all the Negroes were crying about Ginsburg’s conversion. They cried so easily. All except Bonheure. He alone had the control. Almost it left him sometimes. You thought the next moment he might break, his quavering voice became choked in tears and hysteria, and his whole body sink writhing in convulsions, as he swayed up there on the platform with shut eyes. (That was always the tensest moment, just before the passing of the collection plate. When the collection plate went round, Bonheure recovered; his eyes were open then.)
Now all the Negroes were jumping. The women would start. “O bless our dear Brother Ginsburg,” and they crowded around him, tears falling, to shake his hand, to hug him, then to turn and hug one another. The whole congregation joined in, jumping and shouting hoarsely, “I’se so happy. Lordy, I’se happy. Bless our Elder, our dear Elder Bonheure. Bless Sister Bonheure too!”
Rich waves of emotion and brotherly love buffeted you on all sides. It was a very moving atmosphere, and I found it hard not to cry too. I saw that the Negro is richer emotionally than other peoples. He could unite with his brothers harmoniously as if under one soul, but that soul was Elder Bonheure.
It was my turn to stand up and make a speech. I preached on racial prejudice, using Walt Whitman as text. And I told them to wake up, wake up and join the world of higher things. “Make something of yourselves. Be educated.” My voice was fervent, too. I was deeply moved. Bonheure, sitting on the stage behind me, would pluck my coat every little while and whisper, “Brother Han, Brother Han, once in a while mention the name of God.” That was easy, “My God, wake and come out of the slum! Leave off your ignorance and laziness, for Christ’s sake! Don’t depend on leaders. They can’t help you. Nothing can, but your own will to make something of yourself!” With everybody round gaping to cry Hallelujah, it was the easiest place to swear in the world. Hell to it! Devil! Christ! Everything you couldn’t say in polite missionary households, here for every swear-word the chorus came back, “Hallelujah! Praise God! Christ is here!” Even so, if Bonheure hadn’t constantly prompted, “More about God, Brother Han,” they might have been puzzled.
I stopped and for a moment there was a big silence. Then a Negro woman jumped up and cried, “A-ai-ai. . . . Praise God. . . . Judgment Day is comin’! . . . Chinaman can speak, too! Chinaman can read!”
Bonheure bowed and shook hands with me, in tall impressive dignity. “Amen, Brother Han! Amen!” he turned to the congregation. “Now you hear what he say, Brothers and Sisters? Lift yourselves up. Listen to your pastor and learn. Watch your speech, Brothers and Sisters. I heard my sister say just now, ‘Chinaman can speak.’ Chinaman! That ain’t the way. I ask you, Brother Han, is that the way to speak? No! You womans must speak good English from now on. One—Chinee . . . two—Chinese. . . .”
“Chinee—Chinee can speak!” they all cried, jumping up and down and embracing each other, and me as well.
“That was a good speech, Brother, you made,” Bonheure took me aside confidentially. “But some words you don’t speak right. You, too, Brother Han. It’s genu-wine, you know, not genuine. You want to look out for that.”
It was the longest church meeting I ever attended, for it lasted from half-past seven until twelve o’clock at night. They jumped more than if they had been to a dance. All solo performance, too—real blackbottom, hands clapping and voices shouting. Afterwards everybody was tired and happy. But that was the night I had to sleep with Brother Ginsburg. He kept up a steady snoring and groaning. To make him stop snoring, I would grab him by the shoulder and shake, “Brother, you’re in nightmare. You’re dreaming about Hell, Brother, too much.” Because I couldn’t say he was snoring. How glad I was to hear Brother Washington knock in the morning with summons to breakfast, hot cakes, melons, partridges, things like that . . . (eggs were always secondary with Bonheure). But afterwards I took Bonheure off and complained about Brother Ginsburg. Either Brother Ginsburg or I was leaving, I said. Bonheure smoothed me down and said Ginsburg had to go back to his business anyway after the baptizing. “But you, Brother Han, you must stay and help me out in the work of God.” And then he said something vague about a Negro school he had in mind to found, out of the saints’ money, and he wanted to place me at its head. Again I was impressed by Bonheure’s big vision. I thought in that event I might play a real intellectual part in America. So I stayed.
4
Well, Brother Ginsburg had to have the baptizing, but I got out of that. I watched from the river bank. Bonheure had about twenty-five or thirty converts which he was to duck in the river. Tall and handsome, he waded out, a white silk surplice over his clothes, until he was over waist-deep. The converts were not so well protected. They wore white robes of a thin sleezy cheesecloth, and nothing on besides but the birthday suit. So I guess I was squared with poor Ginsburg, who was such an annoyance to me. How he sputtered and swore coming up, it was so cold in that water! And how ridiculous and vulgar he looked! Spectators were lined up ranks deep on the river bank, and I saw them laughing and laughing, for they had come for the show. It was a burlesque. I don’t suppose Bonheure really meant it to be so sexy (though always he knew how to appeal to the crowd, white as well as black). But those nightgowns, as soon as they got wet, clung like filmy gauze and carved out every mold. Nudity would have been less noticeable. It looked as if the young girls had a thin veil, just to tantalize young men, and the young men also the same, to tantalize young girls. But the saints didn’t see that, neither the old ones nor the new ones. They were exalted and serious. Tears came in their eyes, as they watched the long line of Negroes in white robes going down into the river, and coming up clean, with howls and hosannas, made more intense and vibrational by the cold water and wind. With the saints, the spirit was moving too much . . . the flesh wasn’t weak enough to think how the flesh looks sometimes.
In Bonheure’s Holiness Church, all the sanctification of the saints seemed founded on sex-morale. That was the perennial subject of his sermons; that was the point at which the Devil and the Flesh kept up perpetual opposition. The saints believed in the Devil as much as they believed in God, and they thought a man and woman saint, no matter how old or ugly, couldn’t be together in private for an hour without the Devil proving too much. One day one poor young saint of seventeen or eighteen came to prayer meeting in a new blue dress that fell just below the knee. It was when all girls were wearing short dresses and showing much of the silk stocking leg—that which to George was the best part of a girl’s looks. And, of course, here the Negro girl would have just as good a chance in the contest as the bathing beauties from Florida. To Bonheure this part was too much flesh. He pointed his finger at that poor girl, and he preached an extemporaneous sermon on the wickedness of short-dressing, how it is designed to arouse the devilish emotions of men and beckon them into the hell-fire of unlawful burning. That poor young thing was so overcome with shame, she repented herself so sincerely! She was one of the new converts Bonheure had just baptized, and now she felt she had fallen into sin again. Next night, her dress became as long as Sister Bonheure’s and the saints rejoiced that she was won back to God. But she had ruined her dress to save her soul. She had to put on a flounce of a different color—perhaps she cut up another dress to patch it, perhaps ruined both. That was hard. No woman anywhere wants to look out of style. But Bonheure had no spirit of compromise.
Sex was the subject, too, of all the testimonials. In the first flush of revival the saints held testimonial over and over. The penitent, and everybody else, got a kick out of that. Nothing was too embarrassing to tell. Not even the women were shy, when they began to feel saved and sanctified.
“Two years ago, on Saturday night, the Devil came to me. And I wanted to run out with a man into the woods and under a bush. I didn’t care about that man’s soul! All I care about, that man’s body, low-down dog in man’s body. I went out with that man. I couldn’t keep away from that man. Devil sent me to him all the time. Then my dear pastor come along. He pulled the Devil off of me. He said, ‘Sister, you got to be saved and sanctified. You got to forget the flesh and come with me.’ And I done went, Brothers and Sisters. Now I got a husband, brothers and sisters. There he is. Sitting right there beside Brother Washington. Now I don’t want no low-down pig for a man. My husband, he’s good enough for me!”
Brother Washington stood up. And when he spoke, I jumped, I was so surprised. He waited on Elder Bonheure in the Atlantic Beach private dining room, a little, meek, thin man, bow-legged, with a childish high thin voice. That voice didn’t go with the words he was saying:
“Ten years ago, I was a wild man! I drank! I smoked! I fit with razor blades. I went out with women. Yes, sir, Brothers and Sisters, every night a wild woman lay by me. Not my wife neither. I never had no wife in those days, Sisters. A different one every night, and I left them all. Thank God, those days is over and done, I got a wife. (She’s my dear sister over there.) Wild man ain’t wild no more!”
He had all the emotional exuberance of the rest, but it wasn’t thick-sounding, because of his trebling voice. Now when Brother Jones got up, he had a deep bass voice. He really sent a Mephistophelian thrill up the spine, when he counted off his sins, thrusting out his great broad chest: “Seven years ago, I was blacker than Hell. I went out with a virgin—my own cousin. I taught her to sin with me. That’s what I done, low-down, dirty, black scoundrel! Now I let my cousin alone. My sister’s good enough for me. I don’t look at no woman’s legs on the street. My eye’s straight on the Lord. And I don’t steal no more. When I go to that farm where the melons grow, I leaves them. Why, if I picked up a pocketbook with a hundred dollars in it, know what I’d do? Run to our good Elder here. He’ll tell me what to do with all my money!” (And I thought, Brother Jones is right, there.) “Yes, sir, Brothers and Sisters, I sleeps with my own dear sister now, and I’se saved and sanctified.”
Once every month the saints had a fast, to put the pinch on the flesh. A fast is all right, if you are used to it, a little, day by day. But not when you have been living on turkey and duck and turtle soup at Elder Bonheure’s private table. Oh, how I suffered on those fast days! And how I hated them! Nobody was given anything to eat all day long, not even the guest in the house. I would debate with myself about running around the corner and buying a chicken sandwich at the drugstore, but I knew it wouldn’t look right, and I couldn’t bear to disappoint the saints. They must have felt it even more, for all were hearty eaters, and keeping up hard work besides. On fast day evenings, they met and jumped, too, higher than ever, all on the empty stomach. At twelve o’clock midnight, fast was broken. A big supper was served, with everything better than usual. Oh, how full they were then, and how good they felt and how happy!
Bonheure was certainly a man with ideas. Being a dictator, he had to keep his followers excited all the time. And besides the revival, he was training all the true saints to take part in an orchestra. He had hired a German music teacher whom he paid from the church funds. And he bought all kinds of instruments for them, cornets, drums, trombones, fiddles, banjos. I played the cymbals. I reminded Bonheure about my school. But he remained very vague as to that. Once he suggested that he and I might go to France sometime soon, and hold a revival there. That man had cosmopolitan ideas, all right! I kept wondering what was the truth about him. Was he interested in the glory and money-making, or was he interested in the welfare of the Negro race?
But one of the most eloquent sermons I ever heard him preach was on the subject of that new Pierce Arrow car he had set his heart upon. The revival was going very well. Every night that church, that had been a movie-house, was packed. Of course, Bonheure had all the saints’ money anyhow, but most of that was tied up. He needed two or three hundred more, for that new Pierce Arrow car he had already picked out. It had to come from the audience and from new converts. I saw Bonheure, by his passionate and persuading words, make almost everybody there as interested as he in seeing Elder Bonheure of the Temple of Saints whirl down upon Atlantic Beach in that great shiny new car, like a chariot of fire. That car, before he got through, had personality, it had a soul, it almost grew wings, and you could see it had to belong to the Saints and to Elder Bonheure, as a symbol of sanctified glory. “United is heaven, divided is hell,” he preached to those Virginia Negroes, who all their lives had watched and washed and driven only white people’s cars for white people. “This way we rise up and climb the spiral way to the golden gates of new Jerusalem. Saint Brown, he digs the ditch, Saint Jones, he drives the truck. Saint Lee, he scrubs the floor, and Saint Green, he’s the chauffeur to drive your pastor on errands of God’s work, all round, saving and sanctifying for the glory of this colored man’s Church of the Lord.”
As soon as he got the money for the first payment, we rushed up to Baltimore to see a well-known Negro lawyer there, from whom Bonheure wanted to borrow enough to pay cash for the car. This lawyer was a Methodist . . . and Bonheure’s doctrine was that all Methodists go to hell. But this lawyer was nice to Bonheure and only kidded him along a little.
“You know why I’m going to help you, Elder? So you’ll help me when I go to heaven. I’m only a Methodist.”