Reckless Eyeballing

by Ishmael Reed

  “Staying for dinner?” O’Reedy asked, not even taking time to look up from his paper. The headlines read: FLOWER PHANTOM STRIKES AGAIN.

  “I don’t think so, Dad, I have a date tonight.”

  “Yeah, when do you think you’re going to settle down? Your mother keeps talking about grandchildren.” O’Reedy was uncomfortable being left in the same room with Sean. Something about the kid was strange. Always into the books, never any time for fun, and when O’Reedy took him to some chippies to get him broken in, the kid ran away. Scared of broads.

  “Dad, I came to say goodbye.” O’Reedy looked up.

  “Goodbye, what do you mean, goodbye?”

  “I’m going to California, Dad. I’m going to be teaching Irish studies.” His father slowly lowered the newspaper from his face.

  “Irish what?”

  “Irish studies. I’ve been hired by a foundation that’s begun an institute in ethnic studies.”

  “And what was it again that you were going to teach?”

  “Irish studies.”

  “And what, may I ask, is that?”

  “It’s the study of Irish culture, history, politics, literature—” O’Reedy laughed as his lanky son stood before him dressed in a tweed jacket, green turtleneck sweater, jeans, and sneakers.

  “Hey, you come here.” His wife came into the room, but not before turning down the portable television’s volume. Bette Davis was giving Anne Baxter a good scolding on the subject of ambition.

  “Tell her what you told me.”

  “He’s teaching Irish studies, he told me all about it,” she said.

  “Both of you are nuts,” O’Reedy said, rising. “I thought that you’d finally come to your senses. Thought that you might go into something worthwhile. The high tech stuff. Now that’s where the money is. I said give him time. He’ll shape up. Settle down. But no, none of these neighborhood girls are good enough for you. Downtown freaks, like that…the one you brought into your mother’s house, didn’t like me using the word broad or chick. And now this Irish studies. All about stupid micks.”

  “Dad, don’t say that.”

  “I think he’s doing the right thing, dear,” Mrs. O’Reedy said.

  “Who’s asking you. Get back into the kitchen.”

  “Yes, dear,” she said, returning to the kitchen.

  “What can you learn about Irishmen in a university that you can’t learn down at the local gin mill?”

  “Look, I have to go, Dad. My date.”

  “Probably some fucking hippie like the last one. Kept interrupting all of the male guests with her crazy ideas, embarrassing me in front of my buddies and their wives. She wouldn’t even offer to help with the dishes. Yet you got all high and mighty when I tried to introduce you to those hookers that time when I was trying to help you learn things.”

  “You hate yourself, Pop, you’re Irish, yet you don’t think that the Irish have produced anything worthwhile. You and your father, just carrying out the orders of people who hate you, who treat you no differently than they would a stage Irishman, a clown—”

  “Now, you wait—” O’Reedy said, rising.

  “A great Irish-American writer like James T. Farrell had to borrow money from friends because the Irish were so busy trying to assimilate that they didn’t support their artistic geniuses, ignored them because they were considered too ethnic by people on the make. Reminded them of a world they wanted to leave behind, and so they use your pop—”

  “How would you like to get a good belt—”

  “That’s right. Be their Dirty Harry Callahan. If you can’t get your way, use violence. You’re like the middle men all over the world, the muscle, the fists for people who spit on your kind, you’re protecting their property by beating up people. You and your father, both mercenaries. At the turn of the century they used your father against the Jews on the Lower East Side and against other Irish. Why do you think they call those vehicles that transport prisoners paddy wagons? Did you ever think of that? And now they use you against the blacks and the Puerto Ricans.”

  “That’s enough outta you.”

  “Don’t think I don’t know about those three Spanish guys and that jogger—” O’Reedy knocked his son over the sofa he was standing in front of.

  “Get up! Get up! I’ll teach you.” His wife ran from the kitchen screaming.

  “You keep out of this,” he said. One Spanish guy was standing behind Sean. He was thumb-nosing O’Reedy, mocking him. The other two Spanish guys sat on the edge of the couch behind which Sean was beginning to rise. One had a radio next to his head and the other was popping his fingers. They were wearing party shirts and dark glasses. O’Reedy stepped back, a look of horror on his face.

  “Dad, what’s wrong?” Sean said. As he said that, the black jogger ran through the room, entering through one wall and exiting through another. O’Reedy went for his gun, but before he could fire Sean knocked it out of his hand.

  “I…” his father was in a daze. Sean and Mrs. O’Reedy escorted him to the couch.

  “I’ll be all right. I just need a drink. Son, I’m sorry, I just haven’t…”

  “It’s all right,” Sean said, going to the kitchen to remove a bottle of whiskey from the cabinet. O’Reedy’s wife remained in the room. She sat next to him on the couch. He put his head in her lap and began to sob.

  “Don’t worry, dear,” she said. “You’ll be retiring soon.”

  18

  Opening night. The play was going splendidly. The ninety-nine people were sitting on top of one another, and must have been uncomfortable, but they were paying close attention to the developments onstage. Tremonisha had supervised every detail: costumes, lighting, props, sets, et cetera. But where was Tre? He’d called her house, but there hadn’t been an answer for a week or so. Nobody had seen her since their encounter in the office where her blowup with Becky had taken place. Becky had brought in another director who merely supervised the details of mounting the play that Tre had created. Becky insisted that Tre’s version of the play not be tampered with. They waited a half hour after the scheduled opening time for her to show up, but when she didn’t they decided to begin. She’d worked out every detail with such professionalism that there was really no need for her now. Ian’s respect for her had certainly increased, and he hoped that she’d never learn what he and the fellas said about her behind her back, all of the scurrilous, unprintable things. They talked about Clotel the mulatto and Coretha the black woman, and how they and their Native-American, Asian, and Hispanic sisters had had babies by every conceivable European man from the tip of Argentina to the Arctic—how they’d performed the hemispheric sixty-nine with Frenchmen, Dutchmen, Spaniards, Portuguese, Russians, British, Scots, Irishmen, and God knows what other kind of European white eyes.

  Act I was a tremendous hit, with some of the audience breaking into applause after particularly dramatic lines and speeches. The only male member of the cast was the skeleton of Ham Hill, which they’d borrowed from one of the local medical schools. The play opened with the female judge, who wore her hair in a dignified bun, Cora Mae, her lawyer, Ham Hill’s lawyer, played by an excellent black actress, though on the plump side—but the casting director had said that they’d lose one-third of the white male audience if they didn’t include “a ham,” as this type of actress was called—the female jury, and female bailiff. Even the two gravediggers were female. They all stood around the grave as the coffin of Ham Hill was raised. Ball had included some telling eye exchanges in this scene. Ham Hill’s defense lawyer, who was wearing a black pin-striped suit, white silk blouse, and huge black bow tie, her hair straightened and glossy, was glaring with contempt at the plaintiff, Cora Mae, now a radical feminist lesbian, part owner of a bookstore, and her lover, a woman with short hair, a round face, and wearing glasses. The two embraced and sobbed as the coffin lid was raised. Cora Mae’s lawyer, who was dressed like one of the female executives one sees in Ms. magazine—attaché case, business suit—r
emained expressionless during the entire scene, which ended with the skeleton of Ham Hill being removed from the coffin and placed into a patrol car—offstage—for the trip to the courthouse, accompanied by thunder, lightning, and great applause. Though one drunken black male first-nighter was ejected from the theater for standing and shouting—“Looks like a case of dig the nigger up and kill him again.”

  The second act took place inside the courtroom and was highlighted by Ham Hill’s attorney demolishing the testimony of Cora Mae. She showed the jury photos of Cora as she appeared twenty years before, in the sixties, with heavy makeup, miniskirt, eye shadow, rouge, blond hair with black roots: a sleaze and a tease. Over the objection of Cora’s defense lawyer, Ham Hill’s attorney said that there was no difference between Cora Mae and the man who opens his coat and displays his genitals to females in public places. Her description of Cora Mae as a flasher brought an eruption of discussion from the courtroom, whereupon the judge banged the gavel for order. Cora Mae, the defense attorney claimed, craved attention from men and only complained about Ham Hill when she noticed that Ham Hill wasn’t staring at her in the fateful encounter outside the supermarket where Ham Hill worked as a packer. At that moment the skeleton, with a sardonic grin, began to slide to the floor; the bailiff propped it up. This gesture by the corpse, as if done to make a point, was applauded wildly by the audience. The judge overruled the objections of Cora Mae’s lawyer, stating that Ms. Mae’s reputation in the sixties was certainly relevant to the case. The second act ended with Cora Mae’s lover—both of them were dressed in men’s clothes and looked as though they’d just climbed from beneath a manhole—jumping to her feet and complaining about Cora’s treatment and the judge citing the woman for contempt and ejecting her from the courtroom. It took five strong women to accomplish this deed.

  During the intermission Ball went out into the lobby. Average everyday normal middle-class people were congratulating him and parting him on the back, while the white feminists stared at him stonily. He could tell that their black feminist friends had really enjoyed the performance of Ham Hill’s defense attorney but wouldn’t let on before their white sisters; one came up to him later and told him so. The fellas had said that a lot of feminists were okay when you had a one-on-one relationship with them, but when they were around the sisters they’d get all fired up. The academic black Marxist-Leninists were in one corner sneering, and the black avant-garde members of the audience segregated themselves from the rest of the people in the lobby. They were standing near the wall, sulking.

  Drat them, Ball thought. He figured that he had it made. The third act would begin with Cora Mae back on the stand. Under questioning, Cora Mae would reveal that it took her twenty years to bring charges against Ham Hill, the lynch mob victim, because she’d been converted from a rock and roll sex kitten to a radical feminist and was only now capable of assessing the heinousness of Ham Hill’s crime. That she felt it was important to clear her name. That if there was no trial, there’d always be the suspicion that she was trying to lure Ham Hill, the supermarket packer, who’d been lynched by her husband and his friends. That sex with her husband was no good after the incident and that he’d spent many nights during their married life pacing the floor and sitting on the porch, staring at the stars. She would testify that her social life had been ruined until she took up with her lover and opened the radical lesbian bookstore. The audience would hiss and catcall at this explanation, Ball was sure. Confident, Ball decided to leave the workshop performance of his play and head upstairs to the Lord Mountbatten, where “the important play” was taking place. As he walked up the aisle well-wishers touched his elbows or shook his hands.

  19

  They had the Lord Mountbatten set up like a German cabaret of the 1930s. The audience was seated at tables, and was being served liquor and sandwiches. The actress playing Eva Braun sat on a dressing room bench before a large mirror. It was supposed to be her bedroom inside the Führerbunker. She was adjusting a bridal headdress and powdering her face. She wore a frilly pink slip and was speaking her lines to the audience through the mirror. A tiny orchestra of tuba, trombone, two violins, saxophone, bass, and drums was positioned behind the mirror. On one flat board that represented the bedroom’s wall was a photo of Klara Hitler, Hitler’s mother, who looked like the dictator. Ms. Braun must have just made some kind of pungent point because as Ball entered, the audience of mostly women was applauding loudly. He sat down at one of the tables and the two women who were occupying the other chairs frowned. During the scene the sound person had simulated the noise of airplanes and bombing taking place in the background.

  “Now he’s going to marry me. Now that the enemy is closing in, he wants to tie the knot. Well, I have news for him.” (The audience applauds wildly and Becky French, seated with her party of feminist celebrities at the front table, beams out over the audience. She notices Ball. Ball waves at her, but she ignores him.) “All these nights he kept me locked up in this Romanesque cemetery with its stone walls and security guards while he was gallivanting all over Europe. I knew what he was doing. Don’t think that I’m not aware of the other women. All of them, Goebbels, Göring with his big bovine bitch of a wife, and his cream-colored uniforms. Don’t think that little Eva doesn’t know what’s going on.”

  (Audience applauds madly.)

  “As for Der Führer, as he calls himself, he nearly screwed his little niece Geli to death because he couldn’t deal with an older, more mature woman. They said that Geli committed suicide, but I know. He killed her because she got pregnant by a Jew. A woman that would come between him and Klara, his mother. Look at that bitch.” (She points to the photo of Klara Hitler hanging on the wall.) “Boy, was she a nudge.” She walks up and down the floor with her hands on her hips, occasionally making sweeping gestures with one hand. She’s constantly smoking a cigarette. “‘Adolf, why do you want to go to Vienna to study art? Adolf, why don’t you try to settle into a legitimate business?’‘Yes, mama.’ Boy, was he devoted to her. Even spared the Jewish doctor who took care of her. As for his thing about the Jews—well, everybody knows why he does that. They talk about him behind his back. Those insane speeches he makes when he’s had all of that cocaine and heroin. The Jewish problem. The only Jewish problem Germany has is him.” (Applause.) “God, that woman has been dead these many years, but she still controls him. Sometimes when he’s making love to me, if you want to call it that, he calls out her name. Klara. Oh, Klara. It’s disgusting. And if you knew what I know about him in bed, then you’d understand why he’s trying to conquer all of these countries and be such a big man.” (The actor playing Hitler emerges from where he’s been seated in the audience and joins Eva, the spotlight following him. There’s a chorus of boos from the women in the audience. The trombone makes a clownish sound, and there’s a clash of cymbals from the drummer.) “Eva. Eva. The allies are bickering among themselves, according to the shortwave. There’s hope yet. Are you ready? The preacher will be here soon.” (He rushes back into the audience, the spotlight following him. Eva turns to the audience.) “That’s that cocaine and heroin talking. There’s no way he’s going to get out of this place alive. That’s his problem,” she says, lighting a cigarette. (A black woman in the audience says, “Tell it, honey.” Other women join in. “Tell it, honey,” followed by titters. The two women at Ball’s table smile at him. He turns his eyes away.) “Well, I’m not going to be like those other women.” (Wild applause.) “Eva’s got some sense.” (More applause. Hitler emerges from the audience again, this time with a priest in priestly garb carrying a Bible.)0

  “Eva. Are you ready, my sweet?” (Eva, to audience: “Watch this.”)

  “Ready for what?” (She turns toward the two men. The priest gets a load of her thighs where the slip line ends. She crosses her legs. His eyes grow large and he almost drops his Bible.)

  “Ready for the wedding, Eva. Eva. You’re not even dressed.” (Eva rises.)

  “Look, you little shrimp. I�
�m not going to stand for this dreckscheisse any longer.” (Both the priest and the Führer are horrified. The audience laughs and applauds.)

  “Eva, what’s come over you? Father, she doesn’t know what she’s saying.”

  “I do know what I’m saying. Boy, did you have me fooled. All that sweet talk about destiny and how you were going to get me a job as a Hollywood film editor. I should have known.”

  “Eva, what are you talking about?” Hitler says.

  “While you were away getting yours I was here getting mine, or as the American song says, you should have been concerned about who was making love to your old lady while you were out making love.” (This line brings the house down.)

  “Eva, you’ve been listening to those nigger records. I’m going to take them away from you.” (A huge, blond, blue-eyed chauffeur approaches the front from the audience. Eva turns to him.)

  “Are you ready, Otto?” (Otto nods.)

  Hitler says, “Eva, what is the meaning of this?” (Stunned, Hitler turns to the priest, who shrugs his shoulders.) “I’m going to get married all right, but not to you. I’m marrying Otto,” Eva says, closing her eyes and bobbing her leg in defiance. (The priest sneaks a glance at her legs.)

  “You and him!!” To Otto: “Otto, you’re a loyal German, I need you.”

  “He’s not German, he’s Jewish.” (The audience goes wild.) “A better man than you will ever be.” The priest says, “But he has blue eyes, and an Aryan nose.”

  “Many Jews have such features,” Eva says. “Besides, I decided, why should I have a half-breed when I can have the real thing.” (Eva removes a revolver from the dressing table drawer. Hitler and the priest do a double take and take a few steps backward.) “My own private, intimate gun, where—what are you doing?” Hitler says.