by Claude McKay
“Africans and Aframericans everywhere,” said Alamaya, “we have the stupendous task of demonstrating always before the white world to prove that humanity is not a special privilege and that we also are part of the human race. The fate of Ethiopia has proved that such ideals as Collective Security and Popular Front will work only if organized on the basis of practical and mutual self-interest.”
“Precisely,” said Peixota. “I have held consistently to that point of view. Our Tammany Hall6 is a Popular Front of the kind you describe. Every group composing it has its own interests and the strength of its vote to promote them. Irish, Italians, Jews and the rest of us. It certainly isn’t God’s love among them holding them together in Tammany Hall. It’s just good old-fashioned horse trading, but it works. And at last we Aframericans are breaking in, since we’re beginning to learn how to organize in a practical way. But we’ve hardly begun before the Communists and their friends start maneuvering to capture our organizations. What for? Not for our interest but for their interest. To control us for their purpose. When we resist them they try to put us on the spot, saying we believe in segregation. They use their superior white position to promote a lie against our vital interests and whitewash it to make it appear like truth. The Maxim Tasans of today are the carpet-baggers of yesterday. They mean us no good. They use our Newton Castles and Prudhomme Bishops against us.”
“And with apparent success,” said Alamaya.
“Because such men have no principles of life and no feeling of fundamental human fellowship,” said Peixota. “To grow to an understanding and appreciation of universal human fellowship, you must first be nourished and reared with the feeling of fellowship within your own group. A man with a sense of the obligation of family life will appreciate family life in general. And a nation built upon the principle of self-respect will appreciate such principles in other nations.”
“The Maxim Tasans do not believe in the principles of human fellowship and national self-respect,” said Alamaya. “They regard such things as bourgeois virtues.”
“How a principle of human relationship may be bourgeois or proletarian, or Aryan, Mongolian or African any more than the sexual act can be, only Communists and Fascists can tell,” said Peixota. “I am going now. But I almost forgot to tell you that your former rooms at my house are still at your disposal.”
“Thank you, Mr. Peixota. I wish to ask you if the report about my friend Dorsey Flagg is true,” said Alamaya. “Gloria said she heard he was fired by his college.”
“Yes,” said Peixota. “He was notified that his services ended with his sabbatical because of his political activities. But Newton Castle still holds his job, although everybody knows that he’s too extremely neurotic to continue to teach. But that’s the way it goes. It’s the better men who always get it in the neck. They got Koazhy too.”
“Professor Koazhy!” said Alamaya.
“Yes, indeed,” said Peixota. “He had been living in a little old private house for twenty years, reserving one floor for himself and renting the rest. And we were all under the lasting impression that he owned it. So it created quite a stir last week when his furniture and a huge pile of books were dumped on the sidewalk. His landlord refused to renew his lease. The landlord said he had received a report that Koazhy was a Fascist and anti-Semite and was teaching Fascist doctrines to his Senegambian students. It was a terrible blow to the old professor. He had lived such a long time in the house and had piled up such a lot of books there that he regarded it as his permanent home and university. And he had it cheap, couldn’t get anything like it now. And he’s become so obsessed and mystical with African magic and glory that he has lost the skill of taking care of himself in a practical way.”
“Then how is he making out? What’s become of his big stack of books?” said Alamaya.
“I found a dummy to find him a temporary place to stay at,” said Peixota. “I have to do it secretly, for there are many more like him needing help in Harlem. It’s better for my health that I should live up to my reputation as a strict landlord instead of acquiring notoriety as a good samaritan.”
“Perhaps Friend Tasan had a hand in these new developments,” said Alamaya. “He is devilishly impish. I heard him say that Aframerican life passed through a bottleneck that was easy to control and he could make it hot like hell for any Aframerican who had the effrontery to fight the Comintern and the Popular Front.”
“He may turn on the heat all right, but it will only warm us up to keep on fighting,” said Peixota. “And now I must go,” he said, taking his hat.
23
THE LEOPARDS DANCE
There were seven weeks of calm like a truce. And the Aframerican community was sobered like a high-spirited person convalescing from the frenzy of an emotional collapse. Suddenly the Spanish Civil War1 belched its flames and roared, shaking like Samson the pillars of Civilization. The heat of its passion spread and seared and divided the Latin-American colony of Harlem and its sparks flared over the horizon of the Aframerican community. And soon it too was touched by the ardent agitation of the Spanish-Americans and the powerful, organized efforts to help the cause of the Spanish Republic.
The White Friends of Ethiopia was rechristened the Friends of Ethiopia-and-Spain, and a campaign was launched to bring the Aframerican minority actively into the ranks of the liberal and radical groups that were aiding the defense of the Republican Loyalists. New slogans were coined: “Fight for Spain to Free Ethiopia”; “A Fascist Spain Will Help Perpetuate a Fascist Ethiopia”; “If Spain Wins Freedom, Ethiopia Will Obtain Liberty”; “Stop the Fascists in Spain and Block Them in Africa.”
The propaganda was projected not only for its local but also for its international effect. As native African troops were mustered by the Spanish militarists in their attack upon the Republic and as Aframericans were more or less ideologically grouped with native Africans, it was a thing of international significance to have the Aframericans siding with the Spanish Republic. But the Hands to Ethiopia had disintegrated, the popular Aframerican leaders, beaten and discouraged, could not be whipped together again into the first line of propaganda activity, and the masses were apathetic. The comrades paraded and slugged their slogans into the air, but the Communist leadership was weak and ineffective without the support of the local leaders.
The leading spirits of the Hands to Ethiopia were still sore and resentful from their skirmish with Maxim Tasan and his tools among the White Friends of Ethiopia. It was Professor Koazhy who started the agitation to oppose the new propaganda of the White Friends among the Aframericans. Koazhy went to see Peixota and asked him to release a public statement that the Hands to Ethiopia was not supporting the Friends of Ethiopia in their campaign for Spain-and-Ethiopia and that the latter organization was not truly representative of the Aframericans.
• • •
Peixota demurred at first. He was reluctant to be associated with such a statement, because all his sympathies went to the Loyalists. But he agreed with Koazhy that the Friends of Ethiopia were using defeated Ethiopia for their own purposes. Lij Alamaya supported Koazhy. He considered it a despicable thing that the Friends were dragging the prostrate body of his nation into the campaign for the Spanish Loyalists. To him it was like the defiling of a corpse. He knew that the idea originated in the mind of Maxim Tasan. And he knew that Tasan felt nothing but contempt for Ethiopia. Why should such a vile person be allowed to make a travesty of the misery of Ethiopia? Why should he continue in his attempt to deceive and confuse the Aframericans and the white humanitarians who still believed in human justice? How was it possible that the Maxim Tasans of the world were so agile and adept at changing their colors and jumping from one side to the other at the opportune moment? What was wrong with humanity that it still accepted the leadership of such men? For something is wrong; humanity is fatally sick without any principle to guide or morality to sustain it. And the Maxim Tasans are always ahead,
outmaneuvering and defeating the honest-minded persons who seek to oppose them.
Persisting in his efforts, Professor Koazhy succeeded in getting the Executive Committee of the remnant of the Hands to Ethiopia to release a statement repudiating the Spain-and-Ethiopia campaign among Aframericans. The statement was prominently featured in Aframerican weeklies, but ignored by the daily press. Indirectly the Labor Herald noticed it when its Aframerican writer printed an indictment of reactionary Aframerican leaders who, ignorant of the power politics, were refusing to lead their people onto the international stage of affairs.
Professor Koazhy made sidewalk speeches and collected money, with which he printed the statement of the Hands to Ethiopia leaders in the leaflet form and distributed thousands of copies among the Harlem people.
• • •
Meanwhile Maxim Tasan had decided to stage a farewell party in Harlem before sailing away to devote his genius to the cause of the Spanish Republic. Since the defection of Newton Castle, Tasan had found a willing collaborator in Prudhomme Bishop. But actually Tasan despised Bishop and his debased jumbled imitation of the art of elocution, which had imparted a perpetual nauseating sweet expression to his pumpkin-pie face. Tasan’s estimate of Prudhomme Bishop was perhaps an indicator of his reaction to the entire Aframerican group. Close contact had filled him with contempt for it. As a man whose life was consecrated to active action by the manipulation of propaganda and intrigue he had discovered the minor theatre of Aframerican life altogether inadequate for his ideas. It was like a tower crowded with somber shadows with a narrow entrance and no exits.
Tasan projected the plan of an all-night fiesta in Harlem for Ethiopia-and-Spain. He confided to Prudhomme Bishop that he was ambitious to put over something unforgettable: something that could assemble a multitude of people and make money. The intake was to be divided between Prudhomme Bishop’s Equal Rights Action and the Friends of Ethiopia-and-Spain.
Tasan desired to stage a glorified modernized version of an authentic African pastime. He discussed his conception of it with Prudhomme Bishop. His idea was that as Aframericans were obsessed with synthetic ideas of Africa, with so many pseudo-African societies among them, he would treat them to something genuine.
Tasan was introduced to Diup Wuluff. Diup was a West African who had made several attempts to create an African theatre in Harlem by drawing upon his extensive knowledge of native African amusement patterns. But he had never tasted the sweet fruit of success with any of his ventures. He possessed original ideas of the native African scene but could not develop and clothe them properly to meet the exigencies of the modern American stage. He had staged impressive exhibitions in obscure Harlem places. There were parts that came up heaving like the hulk of an elephant or sharp like the menacing horn of a furious rhinoceros, but they were never expertly welded together to make the whole of the performance a triumph. And apparently Diup could not or would not learn the sophisticated tricks.
When Maxim Tasan made contact with Diup, the latter was destitute and willing to sell his talents for any fee. He supplied Tasan with details of the various native African pastimes. And one above all fascinated Tasan—the Society of African Leopard Men. Tasan thought that nothing could be more original than staging a leopard dance in Harlem. Harlem had witnessed many curiously native African things: dances of African masks, fetishers and medicine men in an orgy of supernatural manifestations, totem-taboo extravaganzas, festivals of circumcision, and rituals of obscure primitive phallicisms. But Harlem had never had a leopard dance. And that was Maxim Tasan’s choice.
He planned a gala of the Society of Leopard Men with Africans supplemented by Aframericans. Tasan promised to supply all the skins of the leopards and Diup to find all the men to wear them. Tasan employed a designer and a decorator to work on the plan, with Diup furnishing the details. They planned to erect a kraal in the middle of the hall and create a jungle atmosphere with prowling leopards and the sound of tom-tom.
Tasan gave the requisite publicity to his last gesture in Harlem, and supported by his considerable circle of friends and their friends, and the followers of Prudhomme Bishop, he had the assurance of success in the novel venture. He found eager sponsors among the high lights and big guns of the theatrical world. Diup Wuluff rounded up all the available African natives in New York, whether they came from the West or the North or the South or the East—all were partial to the idea of luxuriating in the skin of the leopard for one night. Diup was boundlessly enthusiastic. In the dance of the leopard men he felt the elastic steps leading up the ladder of successful achievement. The white men who Tasan chose to work with him were extremely tactful. They made him feel that he was the genius of the grandiose plan and they merely technical assistants to him.
Meanwhile the date of the dance of the Society of Leopard Men was announced and carried gloriously brightly along on the crest of the movement to give aid to Republican Spain. But the real Aframerican friends of Ethiopia in Harlem remained sullen and unmoved. They agitated against the Communist efforts to recruit Aframerican youth to fight in Spain, citing that no effort had been made to send a black army to Ethiopia. They were resentful of the high degree of perfection of the efficiently organized and smoothly running campaign in the hands of the same whites who had employed every conceivable stratagem to handicap the Aframerican Hands to Ethiopia.
A week before the date of the dance, Tasan and Diup were eating late one evening in the dingy Suckabone Barbecue on Harlem’s Seventh Avenue. Tasan had been attending a Popular Front meeting whose purpose was to band the matrons of Harlem in a league to work with the special Women’s Auxiliary for Spanish Aid. Now nearly all the assembled Aframerican women were wives and daughters of doctors and lawyers, schoolteachers and heads of social institutions and stars of the stage. They had come to the meeting dressed in all the elegance of late-spring styles, and with an open mind to listen to the words of their white sisters. But they were affronted by the remarks of the lady in the chair, who appealed to them to help by saying: “You can make a very real contribution to the work of helping Spain. Downtown we have women who have volunteered and are working in teams knitting socks and sweaters for the brave Loyalist soldiers, others are busy assorting various articles of clothing to be dispatched and still others are wrapping up packages. We want our colored sisters to join us. We all know that you colored women are the best cooks in the world and we would like some of you to come downtown to cook some of your delicious meals for our brave workers.”
While the chairman was speaking the expression on the faces of the Harlem matrons was one of chagrin and hostility. When she finished there was an unpleasant silence. The chairman stood up again and she said: “The discussion is open and we would like to have some words of encouragement from our colored friends.”
Finally Mrs. Austinette Burns rose from her seat. She was tall as a ladder with the aplomb of a mannikin, pale like sawdust and haughty like a spirited horse. She was the wife of a prosperous physician and specialist in kidney diseases and also the acknowledged social leader of the matrons of Harlem. Mrs. Burns said: “I am so sorry to disappoint the chairman and our downtown friends. But I employ a cook to do my own cooking, I am so busy with more important affairs. Besides, cooking is injurious to my health. I don’t know if the chairman employs a cook, but if it is cooks you are looking for you should not have invited us to this meeting. You can find all you need up at the Bronx Slave Market.”
Mrs. Burns walked out of the hall and all the other Harlem matrons trooped after her.
Maxim Tasan was extremely irritated by the tactlessness of the lady in the chair. He was leaving the funny little diversion of the Aframerican scene for really big and serious assignments in Spain, and he desired to emphasize the impression externally that the Aframerican people were resigned to linking the fate of Ethiopia with Spain. He wanted to make it appear that the chauvinist-racial and Fascist-motivated policy of the Hands to Ethiopia had bank
rupted itself and that the colored folk preferred the Comintern’s Friends of Ethiopia operating through the Popular Front. His irritation was increased because earlier in the evening he had espied Professor Koazhy and some of his Senegambians distributing the broadsides against the newly improvised programme of the Friends of Ethiopia-and-Spain.
Diup was long and lanky, and wearing black he made one think more of a hooded serpent than a leopard and leader of leopard men.
Said Tasan to him: “When you stage a carnival of the leopard men in Africa, doesn’t something tragic sometimes take place?”
“In Africa, yes,” said Diup. “There is always a human victim who is slain to make a sacrifice of blood to the leopards.”
“Who does the killing?” asked Tasan.
“One of the leopard men, of course,” said Diup.
“And do they merely kill indiscriminately?” asked Tasan. “Just any innocent person?”
“They generally choose a bad person, one who is an evil influence in the community,” said Diup.
Tasan remained silent for a while and Diup sucked at his sparerib.
“It would be more exciting if you could put over the real African thing in Harlem,” said Tasan, “if you could get away with it as smoothly as they say they do in Africa.”
“You mean to have one of the leopards kill somebody,” said Diup.
“That’s just what I mean,” said Tasan. “It would make the affair wonderfully mysterious and reveal the real power of the magic of Africa. I would stand all expenses.”
“The killing must be done by a special person,” said Diup. “In Africa it is the privilege of certain families. I know only one man in New York who has the right to do it. The mark of it is branded on his arm.”