Fanon

by John Edgar Wideman

  Without comment Thomas signs and looks a pleasant look to cover up his unease, his uncertainty about tipping protocol, whether a tip is expected or optional in these situations, how large or small, should he offer a tip whether it's required or not, and if he doesn't, will he be sent to hell as a cheap bastard in the brown uniformed messenger's brown thoughts. Is brown-on-brown tipping a special case requiring a huge tip or maybe only a brother-to-brother wink, a deeply satisfying exchange worth more than money can buy with the delivery person standing there holding an electronic tablet Thomas must mark with an electronic pen which agitates neurons and electrons, the first letter of Thomas's name spinning away to register in Hong Kong before he finishes scratching the second letter on the miniscreen whose bluish gray glow reminds him of those magic slates when he was a kid. Remember. With a plastic stylus you wrote on a plasticky transparent cover sheet and the marks appeared on the gray-blue page beneath. Lifting the top sheet erased the nasty drawings and swear words Thomas liked to practice back then anywhere anonymous, like fences or walls of abandoned buildings or like on the carbon-backed magic page where he wouldn't be caught, except one day, raising both sheets with thumb and finger, he noticed the stiff purple slab retained a copy of his evil scribble-scrabble, not only the latest production but layer upon layer accumulated over days and weeks, of sinful ideas and dirty pictures and curses good boy Thomas knew he wasn't supposed to know, let alone express, preserved there to expose him to punishment or worse, ridicule. Thomas's tender secrets unveiled, betraying him like the credit card bill his ex-wife, apoplectic, once waved in his face as unimpeachable evidence of Thomas rendezvousing in a fancy restaurant with some female not her.

  You never learn, do you, Thomas. Busted again the instant you signed the tiny window of the UPS guy's gadget. Now it's your head, forever. If there is a head in the box. Never trust technology's toys. No more than you trust the novels you toy with, the novels toying with you. One thing always connected to other things, endless chains of words and messages looping backward, forward, sideways, rope around your neck. Remember the exhibit of sepia photos, the droopy-headed brown victims of lynching, crackers leering at the victim's limp private parts. Keep your business to yourself, Thomas, or your business everybody's business, nobody's business. If you're not careful, your business displayed word by word, scratch by scratch, and you're dead. No magic sheet to lift. The evidence of your guilt indelible everywhere you believed, foolish boy, you could safely spray your tag.

  Your signature now belongs to the ages. One small step for you, Thomas, a giant leap for mankind. Like Michael's moonwalk. Like this thing. This head (if there is one) in a box belongs to you for eternity once the delivery person, after a proper credentializing, passes it to you and Sayonara backpedals into the hallway, pushing the door shut behind his Japanese-sampling brown self.

  The narrative forges ahead. And doesn't. Giving Thomas a headache either way. A bad head. Stop, Thomas. Nothing funny here. One more atrocious head pun and it's off with yours.

  Wordplay a common symptom of aftershock. Nothing to be ashamed of, Thomas responds. Could happen to anybody. A natural reaction, the studies say. The mind dividing to protect itself while performing unbearably grim duties. A means of buying time, creating a little distance, you know. Yaketty-yak. Entire nations and epochs have employed the stratagem. How else are people supposed to cope with horror beyond comprehension. Wordplay better than completely numbing out. You know, like that numb look Igbo slaves got in their eyes before they hanged themselves.

  Words, however, don't help much, do they. Neither does time. Minute by minute passing, none of them altering the unalterable truth that Thomas may have received, accepted, and signed for a package containing a human head and it's his head now on the desk, daring him to look. He's run out of words, excuses, patience with himself, and the box still sits. Patient. Beyond words. Not speaking. Unspeakable. He must deal with it. Where's his magic slate. Each day dawning a new page to scribble on. A new Thomas. No questions asked. Now only one question: what's in the box. Why not return the package unopened to UPS. Let them deal with it. Well, if you don't open the box, Thomas, no story. Nothing. Zero. No Thomas. Who would want to hear your story without a bloody head in it. Without terrorists, torture, sizzling sex. Without an intricate plot linking Thomas to a secret brotherhood with a plan to destroy civilization as we know it, a diabolical plan linking the brotherhood to Frantz Fanon, linking the devil Fanon to you, Thomas. Who would pay to read what Thomas thinks about Thomas. Thomas knows the answer to that one. Hears the crinkle of the plastic sheet the reader's raising to expose him, erase him.

  THOMAS OPENS THE BOX

  No more dodging. No more reprieves. Get busy, Thomas. Innocent people are being slaughtered and mutilated daily. If not in your neighborhood, if not next door, the horror's much closer than you think. This head in a box somebody's crude way of announcing the fact to you. In your face, Thomas. Somebody powerful and ruthless has gone to an awful lot of trouble and not inconsiderable expense to deliver awful news to your door. Remember the guy in The Godfather screaming when he wakes up next to a severed head on his pillow. But that was just a movie, wasn't it, and this isn't. Not yet anyway. Somebody sent you a head in a box, and it doesn't belong to an Arabian racehorse. It's your head. You're sure now, aren't you. Sure. Sure of what. Do you really want to know, Thomas. The whole truth. Whole story. The perpetrators. The victim. Friend or foe. Colored or not. Could it be you, Thomas. Hurry up. Open the goddamn box...

  He spreads last week's Village Voice over the metal-topped kitchen table, no incriminating booties or boobs from the personals when he sets down the box containing the head (does it really). On the way from desk to table the box weighs more than when the UPS guy passed it through the door, more than it weighed when Thomas carried it to his desk. Does blood with no place to drain become darker, heavier, the longer it sits. Though it's morning, the city already somber through the smidgen of kitchen window. Is everybody's dread leaking, leaking with no place to go, piling up, darker, heavier, higher than his building.

  How long before the head begins to stink. Did the delivery person smell it. Is Thomas being spared by his chronically clogged sinuses. How long has he been sitting, staring. Talking to himself. A serrated steak knife purchased at K-mart rests on a headline next to the box. What color is the knife. What color is the head. Do you really want to know. Not too late to call the cops. Let the cops unpack the box. You're innocent, Thomas. Nothing to fear but fear itself. Look. Don't look. Flip a coin. Maybe it will come up tails.

  With determination and tongue in cheek like the other Michael when a big hoop game winds down, he slices through all four corners of the box. Slowly, carefully sawing so what's inside doesn't roll off the table. He's not ready to touch it. Uses one loose cardboard wing of the box to nudge it, steady it, while the blade gnaws through the final corner. Why does he believe it's real. Could be a cabbage, a hunk of carved wood, a plaster mannequin's head beneath the plastic shrinkwrap. Whatever it is, he wouldn't actually be touching it, would he, if he only touches the wrapping. Thomas doesn't take the risk. The head or whatever it is, outside the box now. Or rather, no box now. Box deader than the head. Except you could tape the sides together again. Box good as new.

  With plastic tight as a condom mashing its features the head (what else could it be) looks like it's trying to suck air through its covering. A bank robber wearing a stocking over his face. An Igbo mask to scare away an egwugwu. A face slammed into a windshield at 80 mph. Emmett Till's gnawed, nibbled face when they dragged his body from the Tallahatchie River.

  A man's head for sure. A pig-faced man. How can you be sure of gender, color of anything unless you remove the plastic. Will you be sure if you remove the wrap. And you don't want to remove the wrap, do you, scaredy-cat Thomas. Afraid you'll find yourself staring at yourself many days dead in the East River. You'll never remove the mask, will you.

  No. You would rather write about an imaginary
head, right. Dream up words for its awfulness and send them hurrying after it, chasing it, chasing yourself so Thomas doesn't get away and never return. Writing it until you get it right. Until its words, a story, not Thomas coming apart, not something words can't grasp. Maybe you only need to tell the story once. If you can write it perfectly once, the horror will be words, the words appearing, the horror disappearing. The ordinary world real again. You real again. Then you'll be able to walk out the door and never come back. Leave the damned thing sitting on the kitchen table. Leave it alone. Forget it. Alone. Alone.

  No room in the freezer compartment. If Thomas shifts the red-and-white plastic salad spinner clotted with shreds of rotting arugula, gets rid of the rack the spinner rests on, the head might fit in the fridge. Balled-up paper protects his fingers as he lifts the thing from the table. Tomorrow he'll buy disposable gloves. He'll buy a fridge with a larger freezer. Buy another apartment. Buy another city. Another name. Leave this nasty motherfucker on ice to whine its sorry tale to anybody dumb enough to listen.

  A MOTE

  Thomas doesn't trust the white envelope enclosed in the box. Why should he trust anything arriving in a package with a severed head. Don't touch that envelope, Thomas. Full of anthrax, I bet. The head a trick to lower your defenses. Some super-slick terrorist somewhere has anticipated your response to a grisly head. After the shock of a head in a box, why would anybody worry about a little innocent-looking white envelope. Who wouldn't snatch it up and rip it open. Who wouldn't be anxious to read the message. Are human heads so cheap, so easy to obtain, the person or persons unknown sending this one can afford to use it as bait.

  Thomas considers pinning down the envelope with a fork, slitting it open with the knife. His hands are too shaky. C'mon. No harder than boning a fish. He'd almost missed the envelope in the mess of packing he'd guided by knife blade off the table's edge into a black plastic garbage bag. Why hadn't the envelope been secured inside or outside the box. With one end of the envelope squeezed in a pot-holder, gingerly, he scissors off the other end and shakes out the contents. No sprinkle of white powder. Just a note, handwritten on a 3-by-5 index card.

  We must immediately take the war to the enemy,

  leave him no rest, harass him. Cut off his breath.

  Just a second, Thomas. Are you sure a Fanon quote a good idea here. Why add to Fanon's bad rap as apostle of violence, hater of whites, spawner of terrorists. Posterity already blames the messenger for his message. Like the pharaohs used to kill bearers of bad news to scare bad news away. One death not enough to chase Fanon. His reputation lynched. Reading Fanon's critics, you'd think he committed the crimes against humanity his words accuse others of perpetrating. I understand why you need Fanon in your story, why you're anxious to hook up with him by any means possible, but think about the consequences of introducing Fanon in this manner. And Thomas thinks. Or would he. Think. With a human head (or what he believes is a head) on his kitchen table, wouldn't Thomas be feeling rather than thinking. Feel chilled. Queasy. Scared. Scared of what. Whom. Of everything and nothing. Of himself. The worst kind of fear. Formless. All encompassing. Thought trumped, he listens to himself thinking anyway, clickety-click, blah-blah-blah.

  If the Fanon quote fits, if it pumps up the action ... so what if Fanon guilty by association. Fanon's reputation not Thomas's problem. Not in this scene, anyway. Later, maybe. In a different scene, another story. In the Fanon book he's intending to write. If he ever starts it. If he ever finishes the fiction he's writing now. If he ever finishes reading everything he's able to lay his hands on about Fanon and Martinique and the Algerian revolution. With Fanon so much on his mind, no wonder Fanon's bleeding into everything Thomas writes. Fanon his hero. Pinpoint of light in a darkening world. Doctor, philosopher, freedom fighter, writer, a man of color, man of peace who said no to color, no to peace if the price of color or peace is hiding behind a mask. But how would the sender of the note be aware of his plan for a Fanon book. Beyond mentioning the possibility to his brother and mom, he's told no one (except Fanon) about his project. Not even himself, exactly. Who's spying on Thomas. Listening in on his thoughts. Who knows the head's name. Who's reading stuff Thomas hasn't written yet. The plot thickens.

  Why not some other message in the box with the head. A love quote, since whatever story he writes he wants love in it. The nice bit from Rilke, for example, which an Episcopalian priest recited during a wedding ceremony Thomas attended recently, something about love being when two people appoint themselves guardians forever of each other's solitude. Or Fanon's warning from Les Damnés de la Terre, his prescient words, ignored when they were written and still unheeded over four decades later, the quote about a long-suffering Third World stepping forward, an awakening Colossus in Europe's face, determined to resolve problems for which Europe has offered no solutions, words quoted in a Fanon biography Thomas just happened to be reading the morning he saw smoke billowing from the Twin Towers. Or another, less confrontational Fanon quote. Oh, my body. Make of me a man who questions, Thomas thinks. Would he think that thought with a head on a platter staring at him. For sure, he'd be asking questions. Question after scared question. Where's the rest of the body. Whose body is it. Who disposed of the body after detaching the head and sending it to Thomas. Who indeed. Who doesn't like Thomas very much. Why not. Isn't Thomas struggling valiantly to make the best of a bad situation. Isn't his life, his fate, like everybody else's in these days of hate and terror, out of his hands—anybody's hands. Too late for Fanon or any other savior to salvage. Doesn't the crawl say so daily in the small packets of information flowing across our screens. Yes. No. Yes. Thomas spinning in place like the hip-hop Sambo kids in the subway for tips. Slow down, Thomas. Nothing to fear but fear itself. But I already used that quote, didn't I, Thomas thinks. You're not responsible for the mess, Thomas. Neither is Fanon. This is work-in-progress, not a story anybody's written. Too early to tell what's going to happen next. Will I be the book's hero, the head inquires. Hold on, my friend. Can't give away the ending. Let's say the Fanon quote, take the war to the enemy, etc., included in the box to heighten suspense. Thicken the soup. Teach somebody a lesson. Who. Who knows. Who sez.

  POINT OF VIEW

  Let's get it straight then. Once and for all. If Thomas is imagining Thomas receiving a head in a box, who imagines receiving the thoughts of Thomas. Who's dead. Who survives and imagines me. Thomas for one for sure because it's his story and for his story or anybody else's story to be written, somebody must imagine a second self, a made-up self like Thomas makes up, outside Thomas, imagining that other somebody as we each imagine ourselves, a she or he, black or white, old or young, alive or dead, a second self imagining. Where. Inside the first self which must be imagined first so it believes it could be the author of the second or third or however many other selves the story we imagine requires. Are we making progress here. Precious little, I'm afraid. Where are we. Where do we wish to go. Someplace simple, I hope. A story with an arc and ending. Fanon's story, the one Thomas can't write.

  An old friend, my idol and housemate one year during college, Charley T., whose misfortune was to love Pat, a girl who gave any guy who smiled and asked nicely a hand job because it was such a small, easily managed task for her and seemed such a big happy deal for the guy, Charley decided that his fellow painters who worked the medium of watercolors had things assbackwards. Reversing the traditional practice of moving from light to dark by gradually deepening shade and adding color with washes of paint that conspire with a canvas's original pristine bright white, Charley started by painting his canvases a muddy blue-black. Then with the ass end of his brushes, with sticks, rags, spatula, razor, fingernails, kitchen utensils, an X-Acto blade, sponges, and occasionally paint on the bristles of his brushes, Charley worked darkness back to light. Inevitably the wear and tear of scrubbing, rubbing, scraping, licking, erasing, flogging, and washing destroyed not only the dark skin he'd applied. At some point along the way at the slightest touch from one
of Charley's implements the tortured canvas would collapse in tatters and droop from its frame. There it would hang for weeks, months sometimes, until Charley talked himself into beginning again, stripping the old skin, stretching and thumbtacking a new one in place, propping the frame back on the easel. The last time I saw Charley he remained as adamant as ever about the superiority of his method and just as critical of the old way. And remained just as hopelessly in love with Pat, missing for years, presumed dead in a bus crash in Mexico. Charley still optimistic, digging a hole and burying himself like Houdini in boxes, blindfolds, and handcuffs, a hole deep within the darkness of the canvas, convinced he can burrow out and bring back alive the fabulous light people swear sleeps down there at the end of the tunnel. Hey Charley, mi amigo, say hello if you bump into my head down there.

  Romare Bearden, the world-famous painter who attended Pea-body, the same high school in Pittsburgh my incarcerated brother and I attended, said that at the beginning of the Italian Renaissance some artists resisted the demands of their patrons for paintings conforming to the rules of perspective that had become fashionable. Artists feared the deep thrusts cut into their paintings by the new science and math of rendering space. Tintoretto, for example, screwed up on purpose. He believed that illusory holes in a painting could become real holes in which the gaze, maybe the gazer's body and soul, might plunge and be lost forever. Who knew. The point is resist. Painters might tumble in too. Bearden relates how a buddy and mentor of his, Robert Holty, hipped him to an example of resistance one afternoon as they stood studying Tintoretto's "Finding the Body of St. Mark." Holty pointed and whispered something like, See, this goes back and then something happens up here so that you have an hourglass effect. Instead of going right into the depth here—Tintoretto could have if he'd wanted to, he certainly possessed the chops—he made it like this ... so you don't get too much of the illusion of space receding.