by Ishmael Reed
The pair moves down the steps. Outside T Malice is talking to a young woman who has her hands clasped behind her back and is swaying coquettishly. When he sees PaPa and Earline he pulls down the brim of his chauffeur’s cap and looks straight ahead. They tease him and of course being a good sport he can take it.
* B. Fuller terms this phenomenon “ultra ultra high frequency electromagnetic wave propagation.”
11
EVERY TIME WOODROW WILSON Jefferson chases the dogs, chickens, hogs and sheep, the animals recoup and follow him. W.W. turns on his pursuers.
Go on now. Heah. Go on before I chucks you good with a stick. I told you to go on back to the farm before daddy comes back from the deacons’ council and finds you gone, Woodrow Wilson Jefferson threatens his 4-footed friends. His head resembles that of a crocodile wearing granny glasses.
Woodrow Wilson Jefferson has decided to quit the farm and hit the Big City. He is ready. His grandfather had accompanied his slavemaster to New York in the 1850s and had returned with articles and editorials written by 2 gentlemen: Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. The old issues of the New-York Tribune edited by Horace Greeley had been in the attic all these years. He liked the style. Objective, scientific, the use of the collective We, Our. Therefore there were no illusions and unforeseen events like these country folks in Rē’-mōte Mississippi, believing in haints and things; and spirits and 2-headed men; mermaids and witches. He would abandon this darkness for the clearing. Make something out of himself. The local people had said that he would be a doctor or even a preacher, but what did they know, backward, lagging behind.
He feels some feathery object brush against his heel and turns again.
Now get out of here, damnit. Where’s my stick?
Jefferson goes over to a bush to make a switch. He commences to cut off a branch and whittles the stick so it would leave welts and draw blood. The animals get the message and begin to scamper toward the farmhouse, on the hill, in the background.
He continues on down the road apiece until he reaches the train depot. His bag is stuffed with the newspaper articles (487 to be exact. Wilson didn’t always understand the issues but he certainly appreciated the style). When he reaches the train depot, he comes upon 2 men sitting on the station’s porch, playing checkers. Behind them were ads for Doctor Pepper, hex signs, Chesterfield Cigarettes and Bull Durham tobacco.
Well if it ain’t Rev. Jefferson’s boy. Where you going with your hair all spruced down with butter? Where you on your way to?
Jefferson stands there at the Rē’-mōte train depot. He would ignore these men, lazy, shiftless, not ready. He would do something with his life. Not become just another hayseed whose only recreation is catching junebugs and chirping along with the crickets.
I’m gon on way from this damned town.
Well ex-cuuuuuuuuuuuuuu..s..e me! the man answers, mimicking. His companion spits some tobacco against the station house wall.
The train is in sight. The train that would take him to Jackson Mississippi. Then on to New York.
12
THE PARTY IS HELD at a Townhouse in Harlem. It was lent to the revelers by a wealthy patron. It isn’t an authentic Chitterling Switch but an imitation 1. It is what some of the New Negroes would imagine to be a Rent Party given, to meet the 1st of the month, by newly arrived immigrants from the South. In fact there is nowhere in evidence a delegate from the “brother-on-the-street.” A man is pounding out some blues on the piano. Once in a while he sips from a cup of King Kong Korn that someone has placed on its top. People are moving from room to room; some of them are passing drinks. Ladies are wearing richly colored dresses, earrings, bracelets, brooches and beads and are well-plumed in a style that neuter-living Protestants would call “garish.” 1 woman dressed in an exotic high-gypsy is taking in cash at the door, cash used to supply funds to anti-lynching campaigns.
61 lynchings occurred in 1920 alone. In 1921, 62, some of the victims, soldiers returning from the Great War who after fighting and winning significant victories—just as they had fought in the Revolutionary and Civil wars and the wars against the Indians—thought that America would repay them for the generosity of putting their lives on the line, for aiding in salvaging their hides from the Kaiser who had been tagged “enemy” this time. Instead, a Protestant country ignorant even of Western mysteries executes soldiers after a manner of punishments dealt to witches in the “Middle Ages.” Europe and the Catholic Church are horrified but not surprised at this “tough guy” across the waters whose horrendous murders in Salem led Europe to reform its witch laws.” Until Marcus Garvey came along to rescue the American Negro he was basking in his lethargy like a crocodile sleeping in the sun. The man the Guianese art critic is directing his comments to mutters something about “ringtail” or “monkey chaser”; LaBas and Earline move on to avoid the ensuing conflict this exchange usually brings.
They see Berbelang and a well-dressed young blond White man whom they recognize from the society pages as Thor Wintergreen, the son of a famous tycoon.
O hello…Berbelang greets PaPa LaBas and Earline. Berbelang, what are you doing here?
No time to explain. We’re leaving. I’ll be home later on.
Berbelang and his friend move toward the door.
But…but what time are you going to be home?
I’ll call you, Berbelang says, edging toward the exit.
Come up to the Kathedral sometime, Berbelang; I’d like to talk to you, LaBas calls after Berbelang.
He and his companion are putting on their coats which have been handed to them by the Hostess.
Yes I will…maybe 1 day next week. I’d like to talk to you too.
You see, pop? He doesn’t seem to have any time for me at all.
This unhappy plea from Earline is a contrast to the gay laughter, the couples dancing, and the sound of glasses touching in the many rooms.
I think I’m going to leave, PaPa.
But we just got here, Earline. It looks interesting.
You stay. I’m going to go home to wait for him. Maybe we can have a talk.
PaPa LaBas helps Earline with her coat. No sooner does she have it on than she rushes from the house, almost tearfully.
Shaking his head, LaBas turns around. Nothing like an affair of the heart, LaBas thinks, remembering the bittersweet days of his youth. They’ll work it out. They’re beautiful young people, LaBas thinks to himself as he moves through the halls and among the guests and into 1 of the back rooms inhabited only by 2 men and a Kathedral radio resting on a table, where 1 of them is playing cards. PaPa LaBas recognizes him immediately as Black Herman the noted occultist who after a triumphant engagement in Chicago is visiting New York. He sits at the table: the famous batwinged eyebrows, goatee, and narrow mustache which travels from the bridge of his nose to the top of his upper lip. He wears a tuxedo over a white vest and about his neck he is wearing an amulet made in the shape of a triangle. He looks like his picture on his book jacket in which he sits on a globe, 1 booted foot atop a stack of 3 books, the top 1 entitled The Missing Key and subtitled Key to Success. In the photo his body is framed by designs of an arabesque nature.
A ribbon of black and red travels from his left shoulder to his waist. He sits quietly at a table, sipping from a cup and playing cards. Solitaire. Against the wall Abdul Hamid, the noted magazine editor, stands, his arms folded. He stares in the direction of the merrymakers in the other room. There seems to be a permanently fixed scowl on his face. They are listening to the Situation Report which comes from the 8-tubed Radio.
S.R.: JES GREW ONFLYING GIVING AMERICA A RISE IN THE TOWN OF MUNCIE INDIANA WHERE IT IS ENGENDERING MORE EXCITEMENT THAN THE LAST DENTAL INSPECTION. 800 CASES REPORTED SINCE LAST NIGHT WHICH WERE IMMEDIATELY ISOLATED IN HASTILY BUILT Y.M.C.A. BARRACKS. A HEAVY TOLL OF STRUT GALS AND O YOU KIDS…SIMILAR OUTBREAKS REPORTED IN ST. PAUL MINNESOTA AND WHEELERSBURG PENNSYLVANIA…POTENTIAL VICTIMS GATHER ABOUT THE ALREADY INFECTED REJOICING CHANTING GIVE ME FEVER GIVE ME FEVE
R…
As the news report dies down the radio begins to blare the song “When The Pussy Willow Whispers To The Catnip.”
Turn off that ofay music, Abdul almost snarls. He walks over to the radio and turns it off himself and then returns to the wall where he has been standing watching the other people dance. He wears a bright red fez and a black pinstriped suit and a black tie emblazoned with the crescent moon symbol.
Black Herman raises his head from the cards and sees LaBas standing in the doorway.
Why PaPa LaBas, you old jug-blower you! I haven’t seen you since the last Black Numerology convention. How have you been?
PaPa LaBas walks into the room; Abdul stares sneeringly at his shoes. Then his face.
I didn’t want to interrupt you, how have you been? I hear you’re packing them in at Liberty Hall.
That’s right. 4000 per night; as big as Garvey.
The man stood, a rare and elegantly limbed tree springing from the soil in time-capsule film.
That’s a beautiful medal you’re wearing.
Yes, Black Herman answers, shaking hands with LaBas. It was awarded to me by a foreign Potentate for my ability to perform the trick of the Human Seed. Lying buried underground for 8 days. Looks as if the prophecy you made at the Black Numerology convention is all around us, LaBas. This Jes Grew thing. How did you predict that? Mundane astrology?
No. Knockings.
Knockings, huh? You’re quite good at that. What do you think that this Jes Grew is up to?
It’s up to its Text. For some, it’s a disease, a plague, but in fact it is an anti-plague. You will recall, Black Herman, that in the past there were germs that avoided words.
S A T A N
A D A M A
T A B A T
A M A D A
N A T A S *
was used to charm a germ in the old days. Being an anti-plague I figure that it’s yearning for The Work of its Word or else it will peter out as in the 1890s, when it wasn’t ready and had no idea where to search. It must find its Speaking or strangle upon its own ineloquence.
Interesting theory.
I don’t quite agree with it, in fact I think it’s a whole lot of Bull.
Black Herman and PaPa LaBas direct their attention to the man standing against the wall. Gradually, Abdul came from the wall.
You both are filling people’s heads with a lot of Bull. Do you think that Harlem will always be as it is now? Poorer people are traveling north and the signs are already showing of its deterioration. The people will have to shape up or they won’t survive. Cut out this dancing and carrying on, fulfilling base carnal appetites. We need factories, schools, guns. We need dollars.
But surely, Abdul my friend, you don’t believe that the Epidemic is a hoax. It is taking the country by storm; affecting everything in its path, PaPa LaBas challenges.
O that’s just a lot of people twisting they butts and getting happy. Old, primitive, superstitious jungle ways. Allah is the way. Allah be praised.
The door is filling with others who’ve been attracted to the discussion. Abdul, seeing them, begins to turn up the decibels.
It’s you 2 and these other niggers imbibing spirits and doing the Slow Drag who’s holding back our progress.
We’ve been dancing for 1000s of years, Abdul, LaBas answers.
It’s part of our heritage.
Why would you want to prohibit something so deep in the race soul? Herman asks.
That’s right, LaBas joins Black Herman. When you reviewed my last work in your Journal of Black Case Histories—that magazine whose contents resemble the scrawls the patients compose with their excreta on the walls of those Atonist “hospitals”—you accused me of having a French woman on my staff. I guess your teachings haven’t made you realize your bad manners. The people who support your magazine are no longer available since some of your vitriolic remarks about them, and now you have turned against us. A new phenomenon is occurring. The Black Liberal; a new mark extorted in the manner of your former victims who became fed up with it and have withdrawn funds for your support. You are no different from the Christians you imitate. Atonists Christians and Muslims don’t tolerate those who refuse to accept their modes.
Some of the people who were listening have decided that it’s 1 of those discussions and have drifted away.
Christianity? What has that to do with me?
They are very similar, 1 having derived from the other.
Muhammed seems to have wanted to impress Christian critics with his knowledge of the Bible, LaBas continues. They agree on the ultimate wickedness of woman, even using feminine genders to describe disasters that beset mankind. Terming women cattle, unclean. The Koran was revealed to Muhammed by Gabriel the angel of the Christian apocalypse. Prophets in the Koran: Abraham Isaac and Moses were Christian prophets; each condemns the Jewish people for abandoning the faith; realizing that there has always been a pantheistic contingent among the “chosen people” not reluctant to revere other gods. The Virgin Mary figures in the Koran as well as in the Bible. In fact, 1 night you were reading a poem to the Black woman. It occurred to me that though your imagery was with the sister, the heart of your work was with the Virgin.
You’d better be careful with your critique PaPa LaBas, Abdul replies. Remember “He that worships other gods besides Allah shall be forbidden to Paradise and shall be cast into the fires of Hell.”
Precisely, Black Herman replies. Intolerant just as the Christians are.
Yes, LaBas joins in, where does that leave the ancient Vodun aesthetic: pantheistic, becoming, 1 which bountifully permits 1000s of spirits, as many as the imagination can hold. Infinite Spirits and Gods. So many that it would take a book larger than the Koran and the Bible, the Tibetan Book of the Dead and all of the holy books in the world to list, and still room would have to be made for more.
And I resent you accusing us of taking advantage of the people, Black Herman joins in. Why have you established yourself as an arbiter for the people’s tastes? Granted that there are as many charlatans in our fields as in yours. Some sell snake oils, others propose the establishment of separate states and countries while at the same time accepting all of the benefits of this 1. I think that what bothers me most is your review of my dreambook in which you call me “crazy.”
Abdul smiles. The smile of sheer mockery that makes you want to pulverize.
Strange, Herman says, for isn’t the Koran accused of lacking chronological order, and hasn’t your prophet Muhammed been accused of being prolix contradictory and unclear by critics? Accused of inaccuracy because he confuses Miriam, Moses’ sister, with Mary.
Besides, “crazy” is a strange description for a man to be using who cane-whipped those flappers outside the Cotton Club just because they wore their dresses short, LaBas accuses.
I didn’t do it, but they had it coming. This time a cunning smile sweeps Abdul’s face.
The girls pointed you out at the lineup, why do you deny it, Abdul?
Because I didn’t do it, but they still deserved what they got, wearing their dresses like that. Tricks. Sluts. Swinging their asses nasty.
Maybe they felt that they should decide themselves what was best for them to wear, Abdul. It wasn’t any of your business. And if you weren’t the person who meted out those beatings of the high-yellow chorus girls, why were you suspiciously loitering about the Cotton Club?
None of your business, gris-gris man, Abdul utters with contempt.
Sounds as if you’ve picked up the old Plymouth Rock bug and are calling it Mecca. In the ancient Egyptian religions the emblems used in ritual were so bold that foreign countries burned their temples of worship and accused the participants of “obscenity” and “pornography.”
Abdul sees that the doorway is empty. Deprived of an audience, he changes his demeanor. He suddenly becomes polite affable patient reasonable.
O.K. LaBas, Herman. You got me. Johnny James Chicago South Side. Are you satisfied? I wasn’t born with a caul o
n my face, PaPa LaBas. Nor was my coming predicted by a soothsayer as yours was, Black Herman, the old woman who predicted that you would be “the marvel of your age.” I haven’t developed a Hoo Doo psychiatry as you have, PaPa LaBas, nor can I talk to animals or spend 1 dollar twice as you’ve done, Herman. You see, while you are cloistered protected by your followers and patrons and clients I’m out here on the street watching what was once a beautiful community become a slave hole. People are beginning to trickle in here from down home and I’ll bet that sooner or later there will be an exodus rivaling the 1 of the Good Book. Who is going to help them? Happy Dust is here now. What strange enslaving drugs will be here later? Where are these people going to work and who is going to feed them? Are they going to eat incense, candles? Maybe what you say is true about the nature of religions which occurred 1000s of years ago, but how are we going to survive if they have no discipline? Look. I spent 9 long years in prison for stabbing a man who wanted to evict my mother because she wouldn’t fuck him. I walked into the house 1 day and there he was, her clothes nearly off and his grubby fat fingers plying her flesh. 9 years I was in the clink and 2 of them in solitary confinement. It was then that I began to read omnivorously. I always wondered why the teachers just threw the knowledge at us when we were in school, why they didn’t care whether we learned or not. I found that the knowledge which they had made into a cabala, stripped of its terms and the private codes, its slang, you could learn in a few weeks. It didn’t take 4 years, and the 4 years of university were set up so that they could have a process by which they would remove the rebels and the dissidents. By their studies and the ritual of academics the Man has made sure that they are people who will serve him. Not 1 of them has equaled the monumental work of J. A. Rogers, a 1-time Pullman porter. Some of these people with degrees going around here shouting that they are New Negroes are really serving the Man who awarded them their degrees, who has initiated them into his slang and found them “qualified,” which means loyal. I applied myself. I went through biochemistry philosophy math, I learned languages, I even learned the transliteration and translation of hieroglyphics, a skill which has come in handy recently. I had no systematic way of learning but proceeded like a quilt maker, a patch of knowledge here a patch there but lovingly knitted. I would hungrily devour the intellectual scraps and leftovers of the learned. Every day I would learn a new character and learn how to mark it. It occurred to me that I was borrowing from all of these systems: Religion, Philosophy, Music, Science and even Painting, and building 1 of my own composed of their elements. It was like a Griffin. I had patched something together out of my own procedure and the way I taught myself became my style, my art, my process. Look, LaBas, Herman. I believe that you 2 have something. Something that is basic, something that has been tested and something that all of our people have, it lies submerged in their talk and in their music and you are trying to bring it back but you will fail. It’s the 1920s, not 8000 B.C. These are modern times. These are the last days of your roots and your conjure and your gris-gris and your healing potions and love powder. I am building something that people will understand. This country is eclectic. The architecture the people the music the writing. The thing that works here will have a little bit of jive talk and a little bit of North Africa, a fez-wearing mulatto in a pinstriped suit. A man who can say give me some skin as well as Asalamilakum. Haven’t you heard? This is the country where something is successful in direct proportion to how it’s put over; how it’s gamed. Look at the Mormons. Did they recruit 1000s of whites to their cause by conjuring the Druids? No, they used material the people were familiar with and added their own. The most fundamental book of the Mormon Church, the Book of Mormon, is a fraud. If we Blacks came up with something as corny as the Angel of Moroni, something as trite and phony as their story that the book is the record of ancient Americans who came here in 600 B.C. and perished by A.D. 400, they would deride us with pejorative adjectival phrases like “so-called” and “would-be.” They would refuse to exempt our priests from the draft, a privilege extended to every White hayseed’s fruit stand which calls itself a Church. But regardless of the put-on, the hype, the Mormons got Utah, didn’t they? Perhaps I will come up with something that will have a building shaped like a mosque, the interior furnishings Victorian, the priests dressed in Catholic garb, and soul food as offerings. What of it as long as it has popular appeal? This is the reason for Garvey’s success with the people. O yes, he may look outlandish, loud to you, but the people respect him because they know that he is using his own head and is master of his own art. No, gentlemen, I don’t think I would be so smug if I were you. The authorities are already talking about outlawing VooDoo in Harlem. These are your last great days, Herman, packing them in for 60 nights as you do your prestidigitation. A new generation is coming on the scene. They will use terms like “nitty gritty,” “for real,” “where it’s at,” and use words like “basic” and “really” with telling emphasis. They will extend the letter and the meaning of the word “bad.” They won’t use your knowledge and they will call you “sick” and “way-out” and that will be a sad day, but we must prepare for it. For on that day they will have abandoned the other world they came here with and will have become mundanists pragmatists and concretists. They will shout loudly about soul because they will have lost it. And their protests will be a shriek. A panic sound. That’s just the way it goes, brothers. You will be just a couple of eccentric characters obsolete out-of-date unused as the appendix. Funny looking like the Australian zoo. But me and my Griffin politics, my chimerical art will survive. Maybe I won’t be around but someone is coming. I feel it stirring. He might even have the red hair of a conjure man but he won’t be 1. No, he will get it across. And he will be known as the man who “got it across.” And people like you will live in seclusion and your circle will be limited and the people who read you will pride themselves on their culture and their selectiveness and their identification with the avant garde.