by Claude McKay
A voice started singing “John Brown’s Body,”9 and the crowd excitedly joined, singing and dancing, with happy heavy stamping, exultingly shouting the glory chorus. Not a vestige of formality remained and many of the people mounted the platform to greet Lij Alamaya. One woman kissed him and it was a signal for many others to emulate her. Dorsey Flagg received a share of the kissing also and he was as pleased as a pigeon. Long before the joyous demonstration had ended all the whites had disappeared.
Alamaya was bewilderingly happy that his speech had changed the furiously angry crowd into a merry mob of demonstrators. He did not imagine his speech was so good. Later he mentioned it to Peixota. Peixota told him that it was his unexpected gesture, throwing off his coat to take Flagg’s hand, which had fired the enthusiasm of the people. “But I did it merely from politeness,” said Alamaya, “as Mr. Flagg had no coat on.” But Peixota explained that shirt-sleeve diplomacy was one of the pillars upon which rested American democracy.10 And every American, even the most humble and ordinary, was aware of it. And so when Lij Alamaya threw off his coat to shake hands with Dorsey Flagg, the people thought that he was staging a little exhibition of Americanism for their benefit.
9
MRS. PEIXOTA CHAPERONES HER DAUGHTER
Mr. and Mrs. Pablo Peixota were at breakfast on Saturday morning when the telephone rang. The maid called from the vestibule: “It’s for you, Mrs. Peixota.” It was Mrs. Leah Arzell of the Colored Women’s Clubs calling: “Having breakfast, Kezia? I’ve just finished and couldn’t wait, as I wanted so much to have a little chat with you about last night’s hullabaloo.”
Mrs. Peixota: “It was perfectly disgraceful and those no-count white people ought to be shamed out of their skins. For Newton Castle is irresponsible. Just a phonograph which they wind up to spout what they want him to say.”
Mrs. Arzell: “Yes, Newton is a pest and a pain, but what he did was nothing compared to the way the women carried on with Lij Alamaya. Don’t you think?”
Mrs. Peixota: “What women, the white or the colored? What did they do?”
Mrs. Arzell: “Didn’t Peixota tell you about it?”
Mrs. Peixota: “No, he only mentioned Newton starting to fight with Flagg again and the white people supporting him and breaking up the meeting. But what did the women do? Tell me.”
Mrs. Arzell: “But how strange for Peixota not to tell you. Just like a man to be so indifferent about the most exciting thing.”
Mrs. Peixota: “Was it the white women? They’re all so radical these days, they’ll do things that colored women’d be ashamed to do.”
Mrs. Arzell: “But it wasn’t the white ones, Kezia. They only indulged in a little hissing, but our own sisters started kissing. Really, you’re fooling—didn’t Peixota tell you?”
Mrs. Peixota: “No, and I’m just itching for you to tell me everything. Kissing how? Kissing what?”
Mrs. Arzell: “The Harlem sisters started singing and shouting and shaking their feet as if they were celebrating with Father Divine1 in his kingdom. And Kezia! They raided the platform in a body and started hugging and kissing Lij Alamaya all over the place. My dear, it was contagious and wilder than you can ever imagine. I could hardly keep my seat myself. But I had to remember that I was on the platform and that I was there representing the higher type of colored women.”
Mrs. Peixota: “Oh, I’m so sorry I wasn’t there. But how did Lij Alamaya take it? Wasn’t he angry?”
Mrs. Arzell: “No, he was a perfect darling. Embarrassed, of course, but just as charming as his brogue and his ravishing eye. He’s sure going to go places. He has all the women on his side.”
Mrs. Peixota: “Well, I never—all that public smacking—”
Pablo Peixota had finished breakfast, and was about to leave the dining room, when his wife came back to the table. A few high phrases had reached his ears and given him a drift of the conversation. She reproved him for withholding from her the exciting incidents of the previous night’s meeting.
“I did tell you about Newton Castle with his delegation of white comrades creating a disturbance and breaking up the meeting,” he said.
“Don’t be so trifling, Pablo,” said Mrs. Peixota. “Everybody except the white folks knows that Newton is crazy and queer like an angel of Father Divine. You know quite well that the most exciting thing to a woman would be the women flocking to the platform to kiss Lij Alamaya.”
Peixota said the women were carried away by their feeling for Ethiopia and expressed themselves that way because Lij Alamaya was a living symbol of Ethiopia.
“Symbol, Pablo! You make me laugh and you don’t believe that either. You know as well as I that those women were not excited about Lij Alamaya as a symbol, but because he’s just plain it.”
Mr. Peixota tried to suppress a smile and went on upstairs.
At noon time Seraphine came from the office with more gossip about the incident. “All Harlem is wild about Tekla, Mother. I stopped at the beauty parlor to see my hairdresser and all the girls were talking about him. He made a big hit last night.”
“I am sorry now we didn’t go,” said Mrs. Peixota, “but public meetings make me tired and I didn’t imagine it would have been so exciting last night.”
“They say his speech was better than the first time. But, Mother, it’s too strange to be true. Imagine all those women smacking him like that. It makes me jealous.”
“You ought to be and you’d better get busy before you lose him. When any man is being built up like that, the women have a way of just going nuts. I’m sorry for him, he should have brought a princess with him.”
“Oh no, Mother, then I wouldn’t have a chance. Shall we see him again before he starts on his tour?”
“Certainly, he’s dining with us tonight with Dorsey Flagg. No other guests.”
“Suppose we drive downtown and pick him up at his hotel?”
“Well, that is not such a bad idea. I have to do a little shopping and in the meantime, you could be visiting. You’d better telephone and tell him.”
• • •
Later, Mrs. Peixota chaperoned her daughter downtown and went shopping, while Seraphine visited Lij Alamaya at his hotel.
Alamaya was packing his traveling bag when Seraphine entered. “Go on with your packing,” she said, “and don’t let me bother you.” But he couldn’t go on. Instead he sat down on the couch beside her. “I thought it would be nice to be with you a little while, as we won’t be seeing each other for some time. Are you glad I came?”
“Very.”
“Well, you might be a little more demonstrative about it,” she said, turning to rub her cheek against his.
They kissed. “I thought you said you were coming with your mother when you telephoned.”
“She did chaperone me downtown, but she had to go shopping.” She got up and inspected his bag and some neckties and other articles on the bed. She picked out a dark-green necktie with diagonal yellow and white stripes and said: “This is lovely, but you should have a valet to pack your things and all that.”
“Oh, your father had one ready for me, but I didn’t need him. What’s the use of a valet in a hotel? To lace my shoes and give me my hat? I still want to feel that I can use my hands. So I let him go.”
“I don’t think you should. That was a job for somebody, and there’s a lot of agitation about the scarcity of jobs in Harlem.”
“I didn’t think of that. I only felt I didn’t want a personal servant hanging around and no work to do—like an empty title. I couldn’t feel right.”
“That’s fine, Tekla. You will make a good American.”
“I thought you would prefer me to be a good Ethiopian. But perhaps you don’t think so much of Ethiopia.”
“Oh, please don’t say that, Tekla. I like you and prefer you as you are—a handsome man, with all the women so mad about you. But,
Tekla, how did you feel with all those women round your neck, like a satyr or a sultan in his harem?”
“Neither. I was really a little frightened at first. But I quickly thought that maybe it was an American custom and surrendered myself. I remember I had read about prominent American statesmen always kissing babies at public meetings.”
“That’s true, Tekla. And so you took your share of baby-kissing too. You are a diplomat. Well, I don’t feel so terribly jealous, as it was many and not one. Although they say the savage Africans—forgive me, honey, I mean tribal Africans. They say one man is accustomed to many females. But you are civilized—you wouldn’t keep a harem, would you, Tekla?”
“I am not a Moslem; I’m a Christian.”
“Oh, you darling, forgive my ignorance. I forgot all about Ethiopia being a Christian nation.”
“It was the first nation to embrace Christianity—long before Rome—and every Ethiopian is proud of the fact. You know the legend. It was the eunuch of the Queen Candace who fanatically fell in love with Jesus, and as he was a person of great authority, he succeeded in converting the Ethiopians to Christianity.2 Before then, they were pagans, each man possessing many wives, like the other Africans and the Arabs.”
“It is a lovely story and your voice was so beautiful in telling it, Tekla, but—h’m—you’re not sorry that the Ethiopians were converted from the Barbarism of many wives to the civilized practice of one wife, are you?”
“Not at all. I’m a good Christian.”
“That’s nice. It seems silly to me that a man should want a lot of wives. How can he love all of them unless he’s an abnormal sexomaniac. It would be more natural for a woman to have many husbands.”
“Do you think so?”
“Well, not for myself, but for cats like Bunchetta, yes. And the majority of women are feline. But me, I want one man I can worship and who will adore me.”
“You are adorable, Seraphine.”
“You dear darling duck”—she embraced him—“you say such lovely sweet things as if you were raised on palm wine and wild honey. It’s no wonder all the women are batty about you.”
“But I don’t like bawdy women.”
“I didn’t say ‘bawdy.’ That’s a bad expression. I said batty women, but perhaps there isn’t much difference. There was something bawdy about last night’s performance, even though it happened in a church.”
Alamaya laughed. “They certainly did prance around on the platform. Your people are wonderfully demonstrative.”
“My people nothing. But I warn you, Tekla. No more orgies of kissing, even if you were captured by an army of black Amazons. For in spite of my education and training, I’m just another savage woman when my feelings are aroused. I don’t believe in everybody sipping out of the same cup like taking Communion, for I’m no Communist one way or the other. And your mouth is not a public piece of property, even though you may be the symbol of Ethiopia.”
“To receive one must be willing to give. And when a person is a symbol he must submit to things like Harlequin at a carnival,3 things which might be worse than public kissing.”
“But a symbol is also something like a fetish, is it not? Something sacred that should not be touched by everybody?”
“Yes, there is the symbol and there are symbols. They may be more important than what they seem to be. Many may touch a symbol and never reach the symbol. Or I might say many may feel the body, but few, perhaps only one, can move the heart.” She was leaning on his left shoulder with her right hand hanging against his breast and he caressed it.
“Tekla,” she said, “your thoughts are so perfectly beautiful, you could make even Cleopatra your slave. Promise me, you will never say these last words to another woman, will you?”
“I’ll promise you anything.”
“Oh, Tekla, I’m the happiest girl in Harlem and I would like to make you the happiest of men.”
“You are very nice and sweet,” he said.
“Please don’t flatter me, Tekla, or I’ll become hysterical. Bunchetta says I’m selfish and spoiled and I know I’m not a sleek purring tabby cat like her around men, but when I fall for one man I do in a big way. I want you to understand me.”
“I’ll try to,” he said, and kissed her.
“Yes, but go on now and finish packing. Mother may call for us at any moment now. Go on, Tekla, hurry up. Oh, I wish I was your secretary or something and going on the tour with you instead of Mr. Flagg.”
She picked up a magazine and started turning the pages.
10
“ALL WE LIKE SHEEP HAVE GONE ASTRAY”
—Isaiah 53:61
That night while they were on the train traveling west, Dorsey Flagg extracted from his briefcase a copy of Saturday’s issue of the Labor Herald and drew Lij Alamaya’s attention to a little article on Harlem. It contained an oblique reference to Lij Alamaya and was headed: “Ethiopian Prince?”
Harlem is the magic quarter, which thrives lustily on sensations, even though hunger ravishes the increasing ranks of its vast army of unemployed. The masses recklessly indulge in the luxuries of numbers game, the aggrandizement of cultists, and the animistic manifestation of mystic magic makers. The brazen swing bands drown out the pitiful bleating of underfed children and the Lindy Hop exhibitionists perform from sundown to sunrise like specters merry-making at a carnival. Chauvinistic social profiteers of a people’s misery raise their standards at street intersections and entertain the crowds with wisecracks about their unenviable situation, even as the ebony masters of ceremonies, those peerless princes of their profession, tickle the jaded passions of the privileged few in the hot cabarets.
The latest sensation is the hectic excitement stirred by the Fascist war against Ethiopia. Many bogus organizations have been formed with the sole purpose of milking the poor credulous colored people, who retain a strong religious feeling for Ethiopia and are keenly interested about the fate of that country. And besides bogus organizations there also are equivocal envoys who pretend to be personal representatives of Emperor Haile Selassie and lay claim to the title of “Prince.”
There is evidence that some of these fakers are tools of the Fascists. The Fascists are at work in Harlem, penetrating the organizations of the colored people. These international gangsters have sent their spies among the Harlemites to discover the strength of the sentiment for Ethiopia. They secretly support the bogus Aid to Ethiopia organizations, because they are afraid of the power of the Popular Front gathering the broad masses of all peoples, regardless of race and color, under its banner to crush and annihilate the evil forces of Fascism and Nazism.
The colored people must be awakened to the danger of Fascist agents in their midst. They must be made to realize that all Fascists are not white, that there are also black Fascists of their own race and blood who must be exterminated. They must be weaned from their simple faith in “race” leaders and vicarious hankering after African “princes” tricked out with trinkets and plumes. It must be drilled into them that Soviet Russia is the only nation that is a true friend of Ethiopia and of all the colored and colonial peoples of the world.
The article was signed by a well-known pro-Soviet Harlem journalist. When Alamaya finished reading, he said: “Well, they have given me a fine bon voyage prick in my hide.”
“Yes,” said Flagg, “they’re assassins in ambush. When they were hounded by the Czarists they developed that offensive weapon. And when they got the power they could not rid themselves of it, for it had become an ineradicable attribute of their minds, which carried it over into their new system.”
• • •
The Sunday edition of the Labor Herald carried an elaborated full-page feature of the previous day’s article regarding the Fascist penetration of Harlem. There was a photograph of Lij Alamaya with the statement that it was rumored he was not really a representative of Emperor Haile Selassie nor a
Prince of Ethiopia. There was also a photograph of the turbaned Sufi Abdul Hamid in his Oriental makeup,2 with the subtitle of “Black Hitler.” And he also was designated as an anti-Semitic leader of Harlem, an active member of the pro-Japanese Pacific movement and chauvinistic Aframerican race leader and labor racketeer. Professor Koazhy too was pictured there as the philosophical mentor of the Harlem Fascists, and the Rev. Zebulon Trawl had a niche of honor as their religious leader.
On this Sunday the Rev. Zebulon Trawl had announced a special service to further publicize the Hands to Ethiopia. Without being officially denominated as such, his church, because of his active interest, had become the devotional center of the Hands to Ethiopia activities. The Rev. Zebulon Trawl was eminently fitted to rally the religious-minded Harlemites to the cause. He was one of the clerics who had led his church, exalted to action, in support of the grand upsurge of the Pan-African movement,3 when the Back-to-Africa slogan stimulated the heartbeat of thousands of Aframericans. He was frequently criticized for permitting persons like Sufi Abdul Hamid and Professor Koazhy to proclaim their heresies from his platform. But he was rewarded in his church becoming something of a social center, where groups of different persuasions met to exchange opinion. And secular-minded visitors this Sunday were Sufi Abdul Hamid, Professor Koazhy and Pablo Peixota.
Just before the service began a group of people appeared with placards and started marching back and forth on the pavement before the church. The placards proclaimed their purpose:
DRIVE THE FASCISTS OUT OF HARLEM
COLORED AND WHITE UNITE TO DEFEND ETHIOPIA
JOIN THE FIGHT AGAINST FASCISM NAZISM ANTI-SEMITISM