I told Elijah that I did not care if white and black people married, and that I had many white friends. I would have no choice, if it came to it, but to perish with them, for (I said to myself, but not to Elijah), ‘I love a few people and they love me and some of them are white, and isn’t love more important than colour?’ Elijah looked at me with great kindness and affection, great pity, as though he were reading my heart, and indicated, sceptically, that I might have white friends, or think I did, and they might be trying to be decent – now – but their time was up. It was almost as though he
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