by Zakes Mda
There are other politicians too. There is the Jimmy Carter of old with a self-satisfied Plains, Georgia, peanut farmer grin. He holds a placard that reads: Without an independent electoral commission elections wouldn’t pass as free and fair anywhere else in the world. No one pays much attention to him though. The board he is holding is not easy to read since it is not big enough and the letters are all crowded together. And there is President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Bloody plastic dolls of different sizes hang all over his body in all sorts of grotesque positions, so that only his oversize black boots can be seen. Some of the dolls are limbless while others are without heads. He is flanked by two men in Hawaiian shirts and hula skirts holding a banner with bold letters in front: Stuff Happens, and at the back: Collateral Damage. Mr. Rumsfeld walks lifelessly under the banner despite the many admirers who crowd around him with breathless exclamations of “Ooooh!” and “Aaaah!”
One can’t see every creature in this parade, and I have tried very hard to look for President George W. Bush, to no avail. Even John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, don’t seem to be here and I wonder why. After all, it is October 30, 2004, only three days before the presidential election. One would have expected the three gentlemen to be all over the place canvasing for votes or just playing the fool as presidential candidates are wont to do. Instead, Mr. Bush has sent his surrogates in the form of the two Cheneys and one Rumsfeld, and Mr. Kerry is seen only on the Kerry/Edwards: A Stronger America buttons that some of the pagans are wearing. Not even Bill Clinton, an immediate past president, can be seen. Has he lost currency so soon?
The respectable citizens of Athens do not show any signs of missing these politicians. A few of them are sitting on the courthouse steps watching the creatures and their performances on the street below and on the sidewalks. They are stone-faced and do not seem to enjoy the spectacle, which makes me wonder why they came here in the first place. They do not seem amused even when a group of heavily bejeweled women wearing fur coats and elaborate hats stand in front of them and, inviting them to participate by looking directly into their eyes, chant in unison: “Stimulate the economy, start a new war! Stimulate the economy, bomb a third world country!” Those respectable citizens who are with their young children reach for them, giving them reassuring hugs. The children are all eyes agog, obviously envying the freedom of the creatures and hoping that one day when they are able to make decisions about their own lives they will initiate themselves into this cult and will prance about in all sorts of glorious identities.
I notice that the woman who leads the chants wears a sash with Billionaires for Bush embroidered on it. The respectable citizens are obviously scandalized by this group and look quite relieved when it moves on to torment other innocent souls. It leaves a stench in its wake, perhaps from a stink bomb. It smells like death.
I find it quite fascinating that death hangs so heavily in the air. Remember that as a professional mourner I am an angel of death—or at least that’s what I have been called by others. But I must admit I have never seen death glorified to the heights that I see here. This is definitely a celebration of a culture of death among the young: those who must die so that old men and women should live. Yet one does not see women celebrate the belligerent culture in this parade of creatures. Yes, some of them—quite a small number of them compared to the male of the species—are bloody, but none of these display any militaristic arrogance in their attire, performance and demeanor. They limp, one may surmise, from car accidents rather than from acts of war.
Even I who exult in death find the abundance of blood and bloody situations overwhelming. A bloody Yoko Ono passionately kissing a bloody John Lennon under mistletoe gingerly held by a bloody kaftan-robed Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The only throwback to another era that I have seen this evening. Well, besides Mr. Carter—although one can’t really call Mr. Carter a character of the past since his placard carries a contemporary message. A bloody marine in camouflage dragging with a rope around his neck a bloody boxer in the Rocky boxing shorts of stars and stripes. His boxing gloves are huge and heavy and on his head he wears an Arafatesque kaffiyeh. At the back of his off-white silk robe Enemy Combatant is printed in bold red letters.
Blood once more. This time it flows from the wounds of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. A group of men and women who are obviously in their own everyday identities are crowding around a tall thin wooden cross and singing hymns. A bulky preacherman—wearing a T-shirt with the words Live your life so that the Preacher won’t have to lie at your funeral—holds the cross with one hand and waves a Bible with the other. He is hollering something about the fires of hell that are waiting for those who observe pagan rites. His assistants are handing out business-card-size cards to passers-by. I reach for one. There is power in the blood, it declares in bold red letters. And then in tiny blue letters: In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:14. Some of the creatures boo the preacherman and mock him and his group, which responds with a loud hymn. The preacherman says, “They mocked Jesus Christ too. They went further than that and crucified him.”
I move on, weaving my way in the crowd, drawn by music at the corner of Court and Washington Streets. Another band is playing a very upbeat bluegrass tune. Three blonde bees are hovering about in black miniskirts with yellow horizontal stripes, black fishnet stockings and stilettos, flapping their silvery wings to the rhythm of the music. The band here seems to be more popular than the one I saw earlier on West Union.
It is beginning to be too crowded here so I elbow my way across the street, past a man who is holding a life-size inflated rubber doll upside down and is giving it a blow job between its legs; and a few Arabs in white robes and black kaffiyehs being hustled at gunpoint by marines in camouflage.
“Great costume,” says a voice behind me, while a hand taps me on the shoulder. I turn to face a tall young man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, with a dusky complexion and long black hair tied in a ponytail. He would have been classified a colored in my country. He is barefoot and is wearing a bloody tattered shirt and knee-length pants that are also bloody and frayed. He has red weals on his bare arms, face and legs, some of which have caked blood. He is inspecting me closely from toe to head and then back to toe. I do the same to him.
“Who’re you supposed to be?” he asks.
“I am Toloki the Professional Mourner,” I say, mustering as much dignity as I can and placing the necessary solemnity on the job title.
“A professional mourner? Never heard of that. From what story?”
“Ways of Dying.”
“A manual on how to die?”
“No. The story of my life.”
“Can’t say I know it. Can you guess who I am?”
“You are from a story too?”
“Ain’t we all from stories?”
“We are indeed all from stories. Every one of us. All humanity.”
“Guess?”
“I have no idea. I have never seen anyone like you before.”
“I’m a fugitive…from the slave breeding farms of Virginia. My name is Nicodemus. I escaped on the Underground Railroad to freedom. That’s who I’m; Nicodemus.”
“Nicodemus…Underground Railroad?”
“I was beaten to death. I was murdered.”
“You do look like death. Well, not you…you are a fine young man, I’m sure…your clothes, I mean.”
“You ain’t from these parts then? You got one heck of an accent.”
“I am from South Africa.”
“They have this sort of thing in Africa, or did you learn it here?”
“In South Africa, you mean? Africa is not a country. It is not a village. It is a continent with many countries and hundreds of cities and villages and cultures.”
“They have this kind of thing?” he insists.
“What kind of thing?”
“This…,” he says, sweeping his arm at the multitudes.
> “No, they don’t have it. I see it for the first time here. And I find it quite amazing.”
“Then how come you’re all dressed up for it?”
“I am dressed like this every time I mourn the dead.”
“You a minister or something?”
I tell him of my life in South Africa, of how I invented the profession of mourning, or thought I had until I learned of its existence in other cultures, both ancient and living. I tell him about Noria, how she taught me to take an active interest in the affairs of the living so as to mourn their deaths more effectively…with greater passion. That is part of the reason I am at this ritual, which actually turns out to be a celebration of death. I add that my aim is to travel the world in search of mourning. This is only the first leg of a long journey. Or the second leg if you count Durham.
“There’s mourning everywhere,” he says. “You don’t have to search for it. Ain’t you satisfied with all the mourning you can still do where you came from?”
He has a point. No mourner can finish all the mourning that can be done at any one place. However I do not want to bore him with a long story about my disillusionment. Instead I tell him of my feeling that the deaths I will mourn here are different kinds of deaths from the deaths I used to mourn back home. Variety will add another dimension to my routine. But most importantly I am keen to discover new ways of mourning. He is enthralled by all this, and says he wants to learn more about it. His own people, he adds, may find some of my “powers” useful. He sees a shaman in me, even though I assure him that I do not have any powers nor am I a priest of any kind. He says his people would love to meet me, and he invites me to his home. I gently turn the invitation down because I do not want to impose. He insists until I finally agree. He is so excited that he wants us to leave right away. After all, he says, nothing of great interest will be happening here tonight.
At this point the parties at the apartments two or three stories above the street are beginning to rock. Revelers are looking down at the parades and the parades are looking up at the revelers. Revelers are sipping beer from their Styrofoam cups quite ostentatiously, driving the creatures down below—forbidden from drinking in the streets by open container laws—mad with envy. Nicodemus is salivating, not because of the beer, although he does express a desire for a few sips before we leave, but because of the girls who are lining the balconies, flashing and mooning the milling crowds on the street. He joins the rest of the spectators to cheer the inspiring sight.
“It’s the full moon,” he explains to me. “People go crazy.”
“What’s with the full moon?” I ask.
“There’s more stuff going on when there’s a full moon. Ask any nurse or cop or ER worker…more stabbings…more shootings…more car accidents…more DUIs…more arrests.”
“All the more reason we should leave,” I suggest. “I have had my fill of the parade of creatures.”
“Sure thing,” he says. “But let’s have a beer first. One for the road.”
“You can have a beer. I’ll wait.”
Before we can slip into a Court Street bar we are stopped by two cops. One is a local Athenian officer and the other is from Belpre. Athens often seeks assistance from the police departments of neighboring towns when there are such rituals. Between the officers is a frightened girl in a nightgown and slippers. She points at Nicodemus and says: “That’s him, officer.”
The cops pounce on Nicodemus. He is struggling and proclaiming his innocence as they handcuff him.
“Bail me out,” he says to me as they drag him away with the girl in tow.
I stand there for a few seconds, watching them disappear in the crowd. All the while he is screaming that he “didn’t do nothing” and that this is a matter of mistaken identity and that he is going to sue their pants off for wrongful arrest and that for centuries his people have suffered indignities. I rush in the direction they are taking. I do not know why I am following them, or what I can do to help poor Nicodemus. I lose them when I stop to give way to a giant mouse chasing a giant cat. The musophobic cat hits me very hard in the stomach in its frantic attempt to escape. I am reeling a little bit and the mouse apologizes very quickly on behalf of the cat and then resumes the chase.
The natives are gradually dispersing and I gather they are going to parties all over the town. But diehards are still out there when mounted police decide to clear the streets at about 2 A.M. Even the ambulances and emergency vehicles at the corner of Court and Washington Streets drive away.
I have to go somewhere too. I have no idea where. Damn that sciolist!
I open my eyes just before sunrise. Fall leaves of golden brown and yellow have piled up on me under the tree at the West State Street ball fields where I spent the night. I am debating with myself as to whether I should look for Nicodemus or not. For all I know he may be a scoundrel who deserves to be in jail. But what if an injustice has been done? He mentioned something about his people, whoever they are, who have suffered indignities and he asked me to pay bail for him. There may just as well be an injustice here; but who am I to right American wrongs? I have left quite a few where I come from.
I pick up my little suitcase and slowly walk back to the uptown area. I find my way to the police station. After waiting for almost five hours—many pagans were arrested last night for unruly behavior or for carrying open containers of beer in the street or even one or two for stabbing fellow pagans—my turn finally comes to be assisted. At first the police do not take me seriously because they think I am one of the pagans. I tell them about Nicodemus and they say there was never anyone of that name in their custody. They do not seem to have much patience even after I have given them a detailed description of the young man. Did I perhaps dream Nicodemus under the ball fields tree?
Fortunately on my way out I see the cop who arrested him and I confront him about Nicodemus. He arrested quite a few offenders last night, but none of them was named Nicodemus. I must be talking about someone else. Recognition dawns on his face after looking me over and he asks me to follow him back into the office where he punches a computer.
“His name is Obed Quigley,” he tells me.
As soon as he mentions the name the other officers laugh.
Obed Quigley, I later learn, is in jail for impersonating the ghost of Nicodemus, a slave who was murdered in the basement of a house on Washington Street about a hundred and sixty years ago. He had escaped from the plantations of Virginia across the Ohio River through the Underground Railroad. He found refuge in a house that served as one of the Underground Railroad stations in Athens. But pursuers got wind of his whereabouts and invaded the house in the deep of the night. He fought back valiantly, but was shot dead.
Today the house belongs to a sorority. The ghost of Nicodemus continues to take permanent residence in the basement. For long periods, sometimes months, it rests silently and everyone forgets its presence. And then out of the blue there’ll be strange noises on an otherwise calm night. Invariably when there are such scratching and moaning sounds a sleeping sorority girl will feel her breasts being fondled. In the morning the girl will have a strange giddy feeling and her sisters will say she has been “touched.” All the females who have had contact with Nicodemus feel touched.
Some girls are known to go to the basement alone just to challenge Nicodemus. A girl may be by herself in the house and she would hear whining sounds and footsteps coming from the basement. She would tiptoe to the basement hoping to be touched. Often she would come back disappointed because Nicodemus ignored her. But sometimes Nicodemus fondles the girl’s breasts with his long thin fingers, and she runs up the steps giggling and breathing quite heavily in what she professes to be fear. No one has ever admitted to the others that she has gone to the basement to be touched. And yet everyone knows that everyone else does just that when no one is around. A girl really feels like the chosen one when Nicodemus touches her in her sleep without any provocation from her.
Apparently last night when ev
eryone was busy appropriating identities from American icons—living or dead or fictional—Obed Quigley decided to steal Nicodemus’s identity. He did not only end there; he stole his pastime as well. He slipped into the sorority house and hid himself in the basement. In the evening when all the girls had left for Court Street, Beth Eddy went down to the basement hoping to be touched before she joined the others. And she was touched. She giggled as Nicodemus’s fingers dug deep into her firm mammary glands. But soon she realized that there was something different about the fingers today. She had been touched before and Nicodemus’s fingers never felt solid at all. The fingers she knew so well were like mild electric currents that ran through her veins. But these seemed to be crude and fumbling. And the breath that came from the ghost stank of a combination of beer and garlic. She screamed and reached for the switch that dangled in the middle of the room. And there was Obed cowering in the corner, bloody tattered clothes and all. He dashed out and disappeared in the night. Beth Eddy told the cops that she was just grateful that she had not been raped by the bloody imposter. Of course in the police report she omitted the little fact that she had remained alone specifically to be touched by the real McCoy. And that lately she had developed an addiction to the touch.
I get most of this story from Obed himself after I had paid the bond for him. It is late in the afternoon by now because I had to wait for a long time at the police station. Then the police sent me to the sheriff’s office to pay the bond. Again there I had to wait for three hours before the papers could be processed and Obed released from jail.
“I slept in the pokey,” he complains. “I thought you was gonna bail me out last night.”