by Ishmael Reed
Later they were driving toward the Eagle Hotel when Quaw Quaw said, “Weren’t they wonderful? Did you see how they swarmed about me? They love me, Raven! They love me!” She stretched her arms. “I’m out in the open now. Only me and an audience. Put in the open where dance should be. Where it’s always been.”
“Yeah, out in the open, all right. You seemed to lick it up. All of that open. Them loving you. I thought you were so abstract. A ‘pure’ artist you always said. Not a ‘star.’ That’s what you always said. Anyway, don’t you think walking on a tightrope across the Falls was a cheap stunt? Now all of the dancers in New York will be coming up here walking across the damned Falls. Making this … this supreme wonder into a sideshow. Long articles in the magazine sections of small-town newspapers. You belong to that pirate. You’re just like him. Only he’s honest with his. You’re an ambitious mountain climber. Only this time it’s the mountain of success.”
“How corny, ‘the mountain of success.’ And you’re a poet you think. And you use lines like ‘the mountain of success.’ You ought to study the ‘masters’ and then you won’t be so given to using lines like the mountain of success. You … you …”
“Go on and say it. Barbarian. That’s what you want to say, isn’t it? Pocahontas, that’s what you are. Turn in your own father for a pirate …”
“That’s not the way the story goes. Not only are you stupid, Raven, you’re inaccurate. Raven. Your name ought to be turkey. That’s what you are, a turkey. Drowned because he’s too stupid to bend his head from the raining sky. You turkey.”
“Don’t call me a turkey.”
“You fucking shithead turkey, turkey! Turkey! Turkey!” She started screaming. He removed one hand from the steering wheel and was about to slap her when he saw their commotion had gotten some traveling spectators. She and her Blondin thing were going too far.
“Look, when we go back to the Eagle, why don’t you return to your neo-Feudalistic life with your husband and sit around with his decadent pro-Gothic friends dining on caviar and discussing Chopin, Soho and birds like that, and eating mandarin fish and light-jeweled pigeon.” She had folded her arms and was sulking. “And another thing. Whenever someone confuses you with some other race, why don’t you tell them you don’t care about race and that you don’t have time to fool around with such subjects as race; and that you don’t identify with any group. Ha. Tell them you don’t identify with any group.”
He looked at her. She was staring straight ahead. She stared vacantly like that until they reached the Eagle Hotel.
When he checked in there was a note for him from Uncle Robin. The next morning he received another note. Her note. In the middle of the night, while he was sleeping, she had left the hotel.
28
“… AND TO MOE, MY white house slave, I leave my checkerboard and my checkers because, you see, we found it was a sport he enjoys. We found out that it was Moe who was taking my wine and distributing it at these singles parties he had for the white slaves. I knew about these parties because I had Nebraska Tracers to bug the motel rooms and install two-way mirrors where these free-wheeling affairs were held. He’s an expense-account rogue, too.”
Moe’s collar must have become tight because he started fidgeting with it. Some soft chuckling could be heard from those who had gathered for the reading of Swille’s will—the household staff and his relatives, two brothers and a sister, Anne, who were dressed, dignified, in millionaire-black. Uncle Robin sat next to Aunt Judy. He was gazing at the ceiling. His arms were folded. He was whistling very softly to himself.
“Otherwise, Moe has served me long and hard, and so in order to soften this insult I leave him Blue Cross, Blue Shield, old-age pension, paid vacations, Christmas and New Year’s off, an annual ticket to the circus, coffee breaks, a scholarship for two of his children, a year’s supply of Scotch tape, two hunting dogs, and a partridge in a pear tree …”
Then the Judge paused. What could be wrong? He must have stared at the document for a full minute. He peered at it over his glasses. He removed his glasses and blinked his eyes. He put them on again. He scratched his head. His mouth opened wide. He began to stutter and rattle the paper in his trembling hands.
“And to Uncle Robin, I leave this Castle, these hills and everything behind the gates of the Swille Virginia estate.”
Much commotion. The Judge called for silence. Moe slumped in his chair, the checkers dropping from their box, falling red and black to the floor. He stooped to gather them. Mammy Barracuda stood and shook her fist in Robin’s direction. Cato the Graffado pleaded with her to sit down. “We might not get nothing, Mammy.” She sat down.
The Judge turned to Robin. “Robin, I’ve known you a long time. You’ve gotten the trust of the Planters. We all admire you about these parts.”
“I deem it a pleasure to be so fortunate that God would ordain that I, a humble African, would be so privileged as to have a home in Virginia like this one. Why, your Honor, it’s like paradise down here. The sun just kinda lazily dropping in the evening sky. The lugubrious, voluptuous tropical afternoons make me swoon, Judge. Make me swoon.”
“Very poetical, Robin. Very poetical,” the Judge said. “Then you won’t take offense if I ask you a delicate question?”
“What’s that, Judge?”
“Science says … well, according to science, Robin, the Negro doesn’t … well, your brain—it’s about the size of a mouse’s. This is a vast undertaking. Are you sure you can handle it? Juggling figures. Filling out forms.”
“I’ve watched Massa Swille all these many years, your Honor. Watching such a great genius—a one-in-a-million genius like Massa Swille—is like going to Harvard and Yale at the same time and Princeton on weekends. My brains has grown, Judge. My brains has grown watching Massa Swille all these years.”
Then turning to Swille’s relatives, Robin stood, tearfully. “I’m going to run it just like my Massa run it,” he said, clasping his hands and gazing toward the ceiling. “If the Good Lord would let me live without my Massa—Oh, what I going to do without him? But if the Lord ’low me to continue—”
Cato muttered, “Allow, allow,” putting his hand to his forehead and slowly bringing it down over his face in embarrassment.
“If I can just go on, I’m going to try to make Massa Swille up in hebbin proud of me.”
Ms. Anne Swille rose. “Oh, Judge, don’t be mean to Robin. Let him have it. My brother would have wanted it this way. It’s in the will.”
Donald Swille, the banker, rose too. “Yes, Judge. Uncle Robin is quite capable of managing this land. My brother always spoke highly of his abilities. I’m sure he can manage it. My brother often said he didn’t know what he’d do without Robin. That Robin treated him as though he were a god. This is the least the Family can do for Robin’s long service,” Donald Swille said, resting his hand on Robin’s shoulder. Robin, his head in his hands, was being comforted by Aunt Judy.
“So be it,” the Judge said.
He continued the reading of the will. Aunt Judy cuddled up next to Robin, who stared straight ahead, his eyes dry, unfazed by the whispers going on about him.
“I have set aside a quantity of land in Washington, D.C., for the erection of a Christian training school for the newly liberated slaves, who, without some moral code, will revert to their African ways and customs known to be barbarous and offensive to the civilized sensibility. In this school, Mammy Barracuda will see to it that the students are austere and abstemious. So that this school might be truly structured, I leave my closetful of precious whips and all of my fettering devices to Mammy.”
With that, Mammy Barracuda lit up, raising her feet from the floor. She rubbed her hands and smiled at Cato.
“And my final request may sound a little odd to the Yankees who’ve invaded our bucolic haven, but I wish to be buried in my sister’s sepulcher by the sea, joined in the Kama Sutra position below …”—the Judge blushed as he examined the illustration on the document—�
��that we may be joined together in eternal and sweet Death.”
The reading was over. Mammy Barracuda and the rest of the house people, including Moe, walked out. Others came up to congratulate Robin. Pompey was last.
“Hey, Uncle Robin, that’s nice,” he said, grinning.
Swille’s brothers came to congratulate Robin on his good fortune and to comment upon their brother’s philanthropy. The sister, Anne, shook his hand and smiled behind her veil. They headed out of the Castle toward their limousines.
29
THE NEXT MORNING UNCLE Robin and Aunt Judy were having their first breakfast in their new home. The whippoorwills were chirping outside. In the distance a Negro harmonica could be heard twanging dreamily.
“Isn’t it amazing,” Aunt Judy said, lifting a mouthful of pancake with her silver fork, “last night we were in the Frederick Douglass Houses and now we’re in the Master’s Castle.”
“An incredible reversal of fortune, but not as incredible as it may seem. You know the expression Mammy Barracuda used to say, ‘God helps those who helps themselves.’ Well, sometimes the god that’s fast for them is slow or even indifferent to us, so we have to call on our own gods who work for us as fast as theirs works for them. When we came here, our gods came with us. They’ll never go away. No slavemaster can make them go away. They won’t budge from this soil.”
“I don’t follow, Robin.”
“I dabbled with the will. I prayed to one of our gods, and he came to me in a dream. He was wearing a top hat, raggedy britches and an old black opera waistcoat. He had on alligator shoes. He was wearing that top hat, too, and was puffing on a cigar. Look like Lincoln’s hat. That stovepipe. He said it was okay to do it. The ‘others’ had approved.” Uncle Robin poured some syrup on a pancake. “He asked me for a drink and a cigar.”
“Okay to do what, Robin?”
“To dabble with the will. He said that we should work Taneyism right back on him.”
“I don’t understand, Robin,” Judy said, pouring a cup of coffee from one of Swille’s pitchers.
“Taney was that old man with twisted locks who used to dress up like the Masque of the Red Death and was born with a twisted lip under his left eye. The one who said that Dred Scott was property. Well, if they are not bound to respect our rights, then I’ll be damned if we should respect theirs. Fred Douglass said the same thing. Well, anyway, Swille had something called dyslexia. Words came to him scrambled and jumbled. I became his reading and writing. Like a computer, only this computer left itself Swille’s whole estate. Property joining forces with property. I left me his whole estate. I’m it, too. Me and it got more it.”
“But, Robin, isn’t that somewhat un-Christian?”
“I’ve about had it with this Christian. I mean, it can stay, but it’s going to have to stop being so bossy. I’d like to bring the old cults back. This Christian isn’t going to work for us. It’s for desert people. Grey, arid, cold. It’s a New Mexico religion. There’s not a cloud there often, and when they do come, it looks like judgment. Sure was lively out in the woods when they had them horn cults, blacks dressed up like Indians. Everybody could act a fool, under controlled conditions.”
“I don’t follow you sometimes, Robin, but what you say makes a lot of sense.”
“It’s all in those books and newspapers. You want to learn?”
“To read and write?”
“Yes.”
“You’d teach me?”
“Sure. We can start next week.”
“That’s wonderful, Robin.”
She rose and began to clear the table. Bangalang came in. “You sit down, girl,” she said to Judy. “That’s my job. You’re not the head of the kitchen any more. You’re supposed to raise lilacs, sew flags and have teas for the ladies nearby.”
Judy looked angry. “I don’t need you to take care of my table. I’ll take care of it. I’m not Ms. Swille. I’d go out of my mind if I had to go through what she did.”
“Let Bangalang do it for now, Judy. I’ll think of something,” Robin said.
“Well, you’d better. You’re not going to make me no belle. I wasn’t cut out to be no belle. Fluttering my eyelashes. Japanese fans.”
“Speaking of belles, Judy, Ms. Swille will be out of the sanitarium next week. The Judge told me when he gave me the first monthly stock check.”
“That’s nice. Is she going to stay here?” Judy asked, sipping from the one cup of coffee Bangalang left behind.
“No, she’s gotten a job in a Toronto museum as part of a super-rich rehabilitation program. Guess what her first project is, Judy.”
“What, Robin?”
“Creating a replica of a Virginia plantation. Strange world, isn’t it, Judy?”
“Strange indeed,” Judy said, lighting a cigarette. “I wonder did she really push him into the fire?”
“We’ll never know. Those distinguished parapsychologists got her off. That evidence they provided was impressive. What they said about Ectoplasm and Etheric Doubles. Etheric Doubles. I sure hope I don’t run into my Etheric Double if it’s in the same condition as Ms. Vivian. That Etheric Double was out for blood if Ms. Swille is telling the truth.”
“If anything could come up out of the grave, it would be that Vivian. Bangalang said that Swille’s daddy, Swille II, was poisoned by that old hateful green-eyed girl. That he just didn’t die of natural causes. Bangalang hinted that Swille II and that old evil gal were engaged in … in … lots of sin. Bangalang told only me. She was scared that she knew.”
“Oh, that’s just Bangalang. You know how she talks. But then again, it’s really immoral down here. Andrew Johnson called it that. An immoral land. The devil’s country home. That’s what the South is. It’s where the devil goes to rest after he’s been about the world wearying the hunted and the haunted. This is the land of the hunted and haunted. This is where he comes. The devil sits on the porch of his plantation. He’s dressed up like a gentleman and sitting on a white porch between some white columns. All the tormented are out in fields, picking cotton and tobacco and looking after his swine, who have human heads and scales on their pig legs and make pitiful cries as they are whipped. And the devil just grins, sitting there on his devil’s porch. Rocking. Rocking like the devil rocks. And that old wicked Quantrell, his overseer, with his blazing Simon Legree blue eyes, is whipping a malnutritioned woman for the devil’s entertainment. And the devil laughs his ungodly laugh. And the woman is Lawrence Kansas. And there’s blood coming from Lawrence Kansas’ mouth. This is the devil’s vacation spot where he personally takes care of all the reservations and arranges for the tour buses to reach various parts of Virginia Hell. Immoral is too polite a word. Devildom. Virginia is where the devil reigns. Can we save Virginia?”
Pompey stands at the doorway; he holds a pillow bearing a silver telephone. “Uncle Robin, telephone. Says it’s Harriet Beecher Stowe calling from Jewett Publishers in Boston.”
“Uncle Robin?”
“Yes.”
“This is Harriet Beecher Stowe, calling from the plush-carpeted walnut-wooded offices of Jewett Publishers in Boston.”
“Yes, my employee told me.”
“Your … er … man? Yes, of course, I did read where Arthur Swille left you his entire fortune. What was wrong with him?”
“I don’t understand, Ms. Stowe. Mr. Swille was a good man. We were all fond of him down here.”
“Oh yes, of course. Look, I’m putting together an anthology of slave poetry. Can you tell me where I can find Henry Bibb?”
“I’m not exactly the ledger keeper for all of the fugitives in the world, but I think you might find him in Canada these days, Ms. Stowe.”
“Well, I hope he’s playing the harp for Christ and not up to his bad habits. Is he still refusing to talk to white people?”
“Uncle Robin … by the way, are you the Uncle Robin I interviewed for my book?”
“Yes, Ms. Stowe. You gave me a pig, a duck and a goose. Remember?”
“I got somebody already, Ms. Stowe.”
“You have somebody? Who could you know?”
“Raven Quickskill. He’s going to do it.”
“But I’ve already told Mr. Jewett that you’d do it for me. I need to buy a new silk dress. I have to go to England … I …”
Robin hangs up.
“What was that all about?” Aunt Judy said.
“Nothing, dear,” Robin said.
“Robin?”
“Yes, dear?”
“There was something I always meant to ask you. But I figured it was your business. It always struck me as being curious.”
“What, dear?”
“Why did you provide that man with those poor slave mothers’ milk each morning? That was hard to swallow. But you were my husband and so I never brought it up,” Aunt Judy said, squashing her Turkish cigarette in one of Swille’s ashtrays.
“That wasn’t slave mothers’ milk,” Uncle Robin said, puffing on a Brazilian cigar. “That was Coffee Mate,”* he said, blowing out smoke rings. “Every time I went on trips for Swille, I’d load up on it. They serve it on the airplanes. I’m an old hand at poisons, and so I’d venture a guess that if Swille’s wife, or Vivian or whatever or whoever pushed him hadn’t he’d of ‘gone on’ from the cumulative effects of the Coffee Mate. Cartwright ain’t the only scientist. Those Double Etherics that Ms. Swille’s defense witnesses talked about sounded more scientific than that bull he been laying down. I was keeping busy around here, and now that Swille’s finished I think I’ll return to my old job, and let Pompey handle the figures. It’s about time he learned. The boy’s fast. He’s so fast that some of the people are talking about seeing him in two places at the same time. He’s a good voice-thrower too. He’s got a little act he entertains us with. He puts on animal clothes and will do an impersonation of any animal you know. If you want him to be an eagle, he’ll get up and flap his wings and jump up and down. If you want him to be a turtle, he’ll walk ponderously about on all fours and do his neck like a rubbery telescope. The other night he dressed up like a low-budget peacock. He can do impersonations too. He got the whole Swille family down pat. He can do all of the men and women, and the dead ones too. His room is full of all kinds of animal and reptile and bird masks. I’m going to let him juggle the books around here for a while. Then I can go back to my plants. The camellias, the azaleas, and the ones only I know.”