by Ishmael Reed
After a weak toast to Ball’s play, Shoboater skimmed through Ball’s script as though Ball wasn’t even sitting there. Ball could tell that this was the first occasion upon which Shoboater had availed himself of reading the manuscript. When the waiter came up and asked for their orders, Shoboater ordered in impeccable French, which must have impressed the waiter because he had a huge smile while scribbling the order. They both looked at Ball, who said that he would have the same thing as Shoboater.
“So what is this crazy shit of yours that the Lord Mountbatten is doing?” Shoboater said.
“It’s not going to be done at the Mountbatten. They’ve moved it over to the Queen Mother,” Ball said, choking on his pride. Shoboater grinned widely when he heard that.
“Reckless Eyeballing, heh. Nigger, you are crazy, like they say.” Ball wanted to knock his teeth out right there. But thought better of it. He gritted his teeth and in his mind’s eye saw Paul Shoboater falling from the chair and cracking his skull against one of those stone pillars of the restaurant, or the heavy pot that held ferns. He saw the waiter rise from where Paul lay—blood pouring from his head, spattering his three-piece French-cut suit—shaking his head before the shocked fellow diners, and announcing, “He’s dead.”
“And Ham Hill. Why Ham Hill?”
“Ham Hill gets lynched for staring at this southern white woman. I call him that because it’s kind of like Ham in the Bible, who gets cursed to be “black” and “elongated” for staring at Noah’s nakedness. Brashford tells me, however, that this version was perpetuated by a Jewish commentator and can’t be found in the Bible.”
“Well, I hope you don’t think that’s anything original,” Shoboater said sarcastically. “All over the world there are legends and myths about men staring at women or staring into their eyes or at them bathing, and being cursed.”
“I didn’t say anything about it being new,” Ball said. Their lunch arrived. It looked like vomit. Some kind of veal covered with a rich, creamy sauce. Shoboater began to eat; Ball pushed his plate away and continued to drink from his second Pabst. He couldn’t understand why Paul sneered at Pabst. If you ever examined the can or bottle closely you could see the reproduction of the medals the beer had received in international competitions with other beers, he thought. Shoboater kept scribbling in a leather-bound notebook with a red fountain pen that probably cost about five hundred dollars.
“Why are you so hung up on eyes? I remember in that travesty of yours, Suzanna, there were a lot of eye monologues and dialogues.”
“Eyes reveal a person’s true intentions. They are, as Rousseau said, the soul’s mirror. I also like to provide my actors and actresses an opportunity to do mime. I use the term ‘reckless eyeballing’ because on one level the play is about people intruding into spaces that don’t concern them.”
“Yeah. Well, you might try to rationalize it that way, but it seems to me that you’re trying to make amends for your awful reputation as a male chauvinist. Admit it. The tables have turned since the seventies and now this women’s thing is hot, you’re trying to cash in on it.”
“That’s your opinion, Paul.”
“My opinion, huh. Clever of you, I must admit. That bit about this woman having the body of Ham Hill exhumed twenty years after his lynching in hopes that a new trial might erase the lingering doubts that she brought the attention of his eyes upon herself—that is hilarious. Just like those dizzy feminists. I like that.” He chuckled, but in his column he was always pretending to be a feminist or a womanist, probably because women wielded some power at the Mandarin. There was something odd and weird about Paul. Come to think of it, the nigger did resemble Peter Lorre a bit with his Dr. Moto spectacles, his whiney, nasal voice.
“I’m glad you liked that,” Ball said, watching him eat the veal and sauce. Just watching him eat it made him feel nauseous.
Ball looked around because he felt some heat at the back of his neck. A woman dressed in the art nouveau fashion of the restaurant was staring at him, but when he caught her eyes, she fluttered them nervously and stared again toward her male companion. Lot’s wife, Ball thought.
“What do you think happened to Minsk?” Shoboater asked.
“I don’t know.”
“So they got Tremonisha to direct.”
“Yeah,” Ball said, looking down at his beer. He grinned.
“But you were the one who went about bad-mouthing her after Wrong-Headed Man hit the big time. What made you change?” He grinned even wider.
“I’ve matured. You know my play Suzanna, well, it was written at a time when these guys were into a big macho thing. You know, going around bragging about how they knocked this bitch over and that bitch over. Now we’ve entered a new period. I’ve grown with the times. I’m used to working with Jim, but I can adjust, I am adjusting.”
“Yeah. The Jews were the only ones keeping you guys going. But instead of expressing gratitude, the fellas keep coming down hard on the Jews, and commenting on the Middle East when most of you don’t even know where it is on the map. Instead of fighting the Jews, you ought to be like them. They’ve survived all of their enemies, the Assyrians, the Babylonians, the Persians, the Pharonic and Ptolemaic Egyptians, Rome. All dead. In fifty years they will have outlived the Germans, a vanishing race hung up on Föhn. Germany’s population growth is zero. They don’t have the will to continue. It’s as though they’ve been obeahed or dybukked. Günter Grass has written a book about it: Headbirths, or The Germans Are Dying Out.” He kept on yammering about how the blacks ought to be like Jews. The waiter took the plates away. Ball was glad. He was really getting sick. How could Shoboater eat that shit, he thought.
“These blacks ought to save their money instead of loafing around and break-dancing.”
“Brashford said that the reason the Jews came up with monotheism is because they were too cheap to buy idols.”
“You’re still hanging out with him, huh. He hasn’t written a play in over twenty years and the only reason they’re still backing him is because of that long monologue in the middle of his one and only play where the character renounces militancy and the end where that black guy comes out dressed in drag. He knew what he was doing. And then in the epilogue all of the black male bar patrons go off and register for World War Two so’s they could fight Hitler. That’s how the clever second-rate writer got to Broadway. That monologue in the middle and the ending. That’s what got him over. The producers propped him up so that they wouldn’t have to deal with Randy Shank. Incidentally, what happened to him? He was quite a character.”
“He’s working uptown as a doorman at Tremonisha’s apartment building.” Shoboater got a big kick out of that. He thought it to be so hilarious that he didn’t stop cackling for a couple of minutes.
“Serves him right. He alienated the women, the Jews, and now he’s out on the street. All those things he said about the Jews. Now he’s suffering the retribution that eventually catches up with all of their enemies. That Jehovah, or Jah, is the Dirty Harry among the gods. He don’t play. You fuck with his people, he’ll get you. Now you know if he punishes his own followers so harshly, calling the children of Israel harlots and nasty things for disobeying him, you can imagine what he has in store for his people’s enemies. The Jews are the only ones standing between black people and these barbarians from Europe that are over here. What do you think that the Posse Comitatus, the Order, and the other right-wing outpatient clinic is talking about when they say “bleeding heart liberals.” They’re talking about the Jews. Plain and simple. And every year I send one-tenth of my salary to the Anti-Defamation League because they’re keeping an eye on these people who not only hate the Jews but hate blacks too. You can’t depend upon this black middle-class to do that, or the black intellectuals. All of them have become buppies. They spend an hour sometimes talking about condos and these wine-tasting clubs they belong to, or their computers. If it wasn’t for Jewish morality these people would be burning niggers left and right. Th
e Jews went into Europe and civilized these Anglos Nordics and Germans who were painting themselves blue and eating one another. Go read their texts. Read Hamlet— the play that tells you about the Nordic soul: a cold-blooded serial murderer who kills all of these people because he heard voices. Man, the only difference between Son of Sam and Hamlet is that Hamlet speaks blank verse. And their music, full of killing, like those Wagnerian operas where people ride into fire and things. Man, that’s where this whole idea of nuclear war comes from. When one travels through Europe and visits the museums as I have done”—big deal, Ball thought—“one is struck by the violence on those walls. If violence is as American as apple pie, then Europe provided the oven, because on the public buildings, in the churches, and in the paintings there are scenes of violence. People stabbing one another and hacking each other to pieces, or beheading one another, and when there are no scenes of that they’re killing dragons. Armies clashing and people wrapped up by snakes. They even have these women warriors there, Amazons who are dealing blows to men left and right. It’s all over the place. The most frequent object you see in European art is a weapon. And their stories. Full of murder and mayhem. Man, if the Jews hadn’t gone in there and tried to civilize these people with their blood-thirsty Viking gods, these people would still be on the rampage. And every time there’s a period of reaction against compassion and mercy, these gods start to rumble again. They even named this new laser weapon The Excalibur; they can’t get swords out of their minds. If Judaism hadn’t required those people to renounce their blood-thirsty war gods, the world would have been finished long ago.” The waiter brought Shoboater a tiny cup full of espresso. Ball was on his third Pabst.
“Man, is that all you’re going to drink? You don’t touch your food. I’m on an expense account. What’s the matter with you?”
“I’m not hungry,” Ball said.
“Black people are strongest when they emulate the Jews. How do you think they got through slavery? Those old biblical metaphors, that’s how. They used them. They identified with the children of Israel. That’s how they survived their suffering. Through the gospel they were able to define their situation. These intellectuals who denounce the Jews are making the same mistake that Hitler made.”
“I don’t understand.”
“If Hitler had listened to the Jews, he would have won the war.”
“How’s that?”
“The V-1 rocket designed at Peenemünde was the ancestor of the modern missile. It would have enabled Hitler to strike England and the U.S. with A-bombs. He rejected the A-bomb. Called the theory behind it ‘Jewish physics.’ His wrongheaded bigotry finally did him in.”
“Tremonisha says that Hitler was Jewish and that the reason he hated the Jews was because he actually hated himself, or wanted the approval of white people.”
“She got it all wrong. It was the German nation that tried to become white. You ask a Swede, a Norwegian or a Dane, or an Icelander whether the Germans are Nordic, as Hitler claimed, and he will laugh in your face. I mean, this Nibelungen thing that Hitler was raving about—it doesn’t even belong to the Germans. It’s under lock and key in a museum in Reykjavik. It’s the sacred work of the Nordic people. Written on cowhide, and in different colors of ink. The Germans have too much Tartar blood to be Nordic. The Khans left onion-shaped domes all over Germany, and that is not all they left. Hitler probably had more Mongol blood than anything else; most of those people come out of central Asia. There’s still no hard evidence that Hitler was Jewish, regardless of what Tremonisha says. It was the German nation that went crazy trying to be white; they tried everything, they tried to claim the Greeks, they tried to claim the Egyptians. Nothing worked, and so Hitler came along and said you’re white so often that they believed it, and so for as long as Hitler was in power, every German person stood in front of his mirror and didn’t see himself, but saw a blond, blue-eyed Aryan. Talking about schizophrenia. He had them mesmerized.
“As for Tre, they don’t even understand her plays. But as long as she takes swipes at the brothers, Becky will keep her.” He leaned over. Whispering. “Between you and me, I think it’s because of some affair Becky had when she was in the South organizing during the sixties. Some black dude. Fucked over her. Stole her credit cards, and forged her checks, and now she’s using Tremonisha to get even with all black men. Kind of like a circus act where the ringmaster shoots a dummy out of a cannon. She dared not tamper with your play because of Jim Minsk. I’m surprised that they even gave you a workshop, now that he’s dead.”
“Brashford says that the Jews are using blacks to keep the goyim off their case. All this stuff about pathology—welfare, crime and dope, single parent households—he says that the conservative Jews keep those issues on the front burner so’s the goyim will be so angry with blacks that they will ignore the Jews and leave them alone. He says that the black criminals might mug somebody or relieve them of a gold chain, but they never built no empire of crime like Murder Incorporated like the Jews did.”
“Ninety-five percent of the audience for his stuff is Jewish. The blacks don’t like him, nor his work. Listen, you’re going to have to wean yourself away from Brashford. Hasn’t he gotten you enough grants and fellowships? I mean, it must be embarrassing.”
Ball didn’t say anything. The waiter came and handed Shoboater the check. He pulled out his American Express and signed for it.
“I got to hand it to you, Ball. You’re the original malevolent rabbit. You couldn’t care less about what happened to Brashford. As soon as you stop using him, you’ll use somebody else. Your mother was like that. Wasn’t she arrested?” Ball leaned over and grabbed the sucker by the collar. The diners looked at the pair, but Ball didn’t care. He let him go. Shoboater was trembling.
“Hey man. Calm down. Here, have some coffee, it’s like the kind they have down home. None of this weak northern stuff.” He poured Ball some coffee from the silver pot the waiter had left.
“I’m sorry, Paul. But when somebody puts my mother down, I just go crazy.” Besides, he wanted Shoboater to write a good review of Reckless Eyeballing.
“So Randy Shank is a doorman uptown,” Shoboater said, changing the subject, smiling profusely and straightening his clothes.
“He’s an important playwright. He paved the way for us all. Now that he’s down on his luck, you guys are pouncing on him like buzzards, lingering over his bones.”
Shoboater looked at his watch. “Hey, I’m late. I have to go uptown for the interview with—” He mentioned the name of another black feminist writer who had finished a book.
She wrote in a style that Brashford sarcastically called “finishing school lumpen.” Brashford accused the woman of having maimed the speech of ghetto women for the benefit of white women who didn’t know any better.
He rose and hurried out of the restaurant. The tailor-made suit had his butt sticking out. That amused Ball.
“Anything else, monsieur?” the waiter asked.
“Yeah. Give me another Pabst,” Ball said. The waiter turned up his nose.
That night he dreamed that all of those giant Amazon women that Shoboater had said were on the walls of museums on the domed ceilings of churches, and on public buildings in Europe had escaped and were chasing him and the fellas through the streets. These giant women didn’t seem to have much difficulty in catching them, despite the heavy clothing they were wearing. None of them tripped over her skirt. They were “monstropolous,” as Zora Neale Hurston would say.
17
O’Reedy was getting nowhere with his search for the Flower Phantom. The bastard’s somewhere right now, probably laughing at me, he thought as he entered his house in Queens. He hung up his coat and hat in the hall.
“Where’s dinner?” he said gruffly. He heard low voices talking in the living room. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.
He sees things. I think that he needs a rest, and the other day he didn’t know that I was in the house, and he was in the bedroom
with that thing.
What thing?
That gun. He had it next to him.
Maybe he was keeping it under the pillow.
No, he had it next to his cheek. He had a smile on his face.
I’ll try to talk Dad into taking a vacation.
He calls the gun Nancy. I mean, Sean, I wouldn’t…I mean I’ve been a good wife, and, well, if it was another woman, I’d understand, and even another man, I mean, I try to keep up with the times, but Sean, competing with a gun— He stood in the doorway. He cleared his throat.
“Oh, dear, we didn’t hear you come in, Sean is here.”
“Yeah, I see him with my own eyes. So what were you two gabbing about?” He folded his arms and leaned against one side of the threshold.
“We, ah, we—” his wife began. “Oh, I’d better see about dinner.” She went into the kitchen, leaving Sean to his father. His son looked more like O’Reedy’s father, Captain Timothy O’Reedy, who was known as a great risk taker, and finally made captain after a controversial career and many unnecessary homicides, which he claimed took place in the line of duty. Freckled face, red hair, but unlike his grandfather Sean O’Reedy was a wimp, in the eyes of his dad. He was thirty-five years old and still in school.
“Mom and I were thinking, Dad, you’ve built all of this vacation time up, maybe you ought to take a vacation, kind of get your schedule ready for retirement.”
“I haven’t missed a day’s work in the thirty years I’ve been on the force.” O’Reedy picked up the newspaper from the doorway entrance and sat down on a sofa and began reading as though Sean wasn’t even there. On the wall of the living room were framed portraits of the Virgin Mary, Queen Elizabeth and Prince Philip. The queen was seated. The wall also bore a painting of a landscape, and there were furnishings that elitists would consider kitsch. He could smell the roast beef coming from the kitchen.