The riotous living of the night before roared in his head and through his nostrils and seemed to have taken up permanent housekeeping in his mouth and throat. He could taste the smell of his breath like a host of ’Sippi bedbugs, dead from bloody inebriety. He breathed a deep sigh and turned to leave, realizing, shrewdly, he would never find his roots in this place. But alas, his great white American brother lunged from the bar across the lounge and high-tackled Jimmy around his neck, and they both went down into the very very plushness of the carpet, almost sinking out of sight. Jimmy panicked, thinking he was back in ’Sippi, where he was born and where his President spent so much of His time. When he and his Great White Brother came up for air, he wrestled himself loose from the big blond handsome crew-cut plug-ugly, and he drew back and started to throw a punch, but even way over in Guanaya, just several hundred miles from Timbuktu, as the vultures fly, he remembered the late Reverend Doctor Martin Luther King, and he drew himself up in all his dignity, and humility, and he eschewed violence, piously.
The big blond slob draped his heavy arms around Jimmy’s shoulders and slobbered happily and proudly. “You’re an American! A real honest-to-good-ness red-blooded full-blooded cotton-picking American! And you’re good for these poor sore eyes of mine!”
Jimmy thought he’d like to make both of this cat’s eyes poorer and sorer than they’d ever been. But he drew himself up to even greater heights of dignity, and lost his great innate humility, but only momentarily. “I’m not an American! I am an African!” he asserted firmly without shouting.
The big blond laughed in Jimmy’s face. His baby-blue eyes were bleary now. His heart overflowed with joy, or something. He wagged a pinky-white index finger at Jimmy. “You can’t fool me—you’re an American I know—I know—I’m an American myself.”
Jimmy said sourly, “I never would have guessed it. Like, baby, I thought you were a great big Housa-man from Kano.”
Whitey roared with laughter, almost crying, he was so happy. Jimmy wondered: How can I insult this cat? White folks wouldn’t believe you were insulting them, even when you intended them to believe you were insulting them. He threw his heavy arms around Jimmy again. “My name is Bill Barnsfield—William Clarence Barnsfield the Fifth, and I’m pleased to meet you, my fellow American.” His breath smelled like a concoction made up of the funk around the Calvert’s whiskey factory when you’re coming out of Baltimore together with a great big whiff of Chicago when the wind changed out at the stockyard, before they moved further westwardly. Meanwhile, he showered Jimmy’s face with his succulent dialogue.
Two chaps from the UK sat at the bar watching the two Americans (one hysterically happy, one rabidly reluctant), watched them absently, while they themselves religiously downed their beer-and-cognac highballs. One of them turned to the bartender and said, “Four more orders of proper scrambled eggs.” Which meant beer-and-cognac all over again. The Lebanese bartender smiled patronizingly and poured up more beer and cognac and shook it all together. It was like a hydrogen bomb explosion before the historic treaty was signed and the optimistic ban was consummated.
Jimmy spoke a little louder to his Great White Brother, and this time more emphatically. He was weary of being manhandled. He was damn tired of it. “I am an African! My father is Watusi! My mother is Ibo! One of my grandfathers was a great Hausa emir. The other was a Tuareg chief! The most notorious pirate ever to roam the great Sahara. He killed two hundred peckerwoods per annum!” In those days, dear reader, “peckerwood” was an affectionate name for European Americans, very similar to “cracker” and “Whitey” and “Charlie” and “bastard,” and so forth and so on.
Whitey laughed happily, knowingly, ecstatically, “You’re an American. I knew it as soon as I saw you. You’re an American. There’s something about you that gives you away.”
Probably my Brooks Brothers Ivy League suit, Jimmy thought. I’ll do something about that also tout-damn-suite. “How many times do I have to tell you? I’m an African!” the reluctant American shouted.
Whitey looked around him surreptitiously and back to Jimmy. He whispered softly into Jimmy’s ear, almost nibbling it. “Come on now. I won’t tell anybody. You might as well admit it. You’re an—” He leaned heavily on Jimmy.
“Will you get off my back, motherfucker!” Jimmy was slowly but surely losing touch with his Black nonviolent temperament. He pulled violently away from his Great White Brother and began to amble out of the cocktail lounge with fireworks exploding in his head like it was celebrating the Fourth of July. William Clarence Barnsfield the Fifth lunged for him like he was gang-tackling a quarterback for the LA Rams, his arms around Jimmy’s neck, as they went down to the floor again. Jimmy got up swinging. And his Great White Brother’s undernourished mouth got in the way. He felt the bite of Barnsfield’s teeth on the knuckles of his fist, as a tooth leaped gaily from his Great White Brother’s mouth. Barnsfield’s smile was bleeding, as still he stumbled toward Jimmy mumbling, blindly, sublimely, ecstatically, “You’re an American—You’re an American—I know it—I know it!”
Jimmy breathing deeply. “All right. So I’m an American. So what, mother—dear?”
The big blond smiling now, sweetly and triumphantly. “Know something?” he said seriously, his mouth still dripping blood, “I’d have never guessed it in a million years. Like you had me fooled completely.”
Jimmy stared at Whitey, angrily at first, incredulous. Then he started to laugh and moved with Whitey toward the bar to join the British chaps for breakfast. Whitey introduced him. “Trying to deny his true heritage, just because he thinks all white Americans are mothersfuckers,” Whitey explained to them triumphantly.
“Don’t worry about it, boopy,” Jimmy said offhandedly. “Some of my best damn friends are motherfuckas.”
The Lebanese bartender creased with laughter and winked his eye at Jimmy and proceeded to mix up another portion of the hydrogen bomb concoction.
Three or four atomic breakfasts and a couple of hours later, his Guanayan brothers rescued him and took him away in their great Land Rover. The Ambassador Palace Hotel was located on the outskirts of town, away from the teeming hustle-and-bustle humanity of the Capital city, out where the pretty white government buildings were, which originally had been constructed “for the British, of the British, and by the African,” in the words of Jaja Segu. Jimmy thought grimly, some of his African brothers were bitter too, even some of the friendly lighthearted ones. As they moved closer to the heart of town, the traffic got more and more frenetic and chaotic, like Broadway before curtain time. Like moving toward the Meadowlands at the time of Super Bowl. The World Series at Yankee Stadium. A traffic moving irresistibly to and away from the hub of the city. Automobiles, trucks, buses, goats, men, women, children on foot. Some people on bikes with their raincoats on backward and ballooning in the wind and rain. It had begun to drizzle. Misty California dew. Now and then an ugly distrustful Tuareg-ridden antihuman camel clogging up the traffic. People walking, thousands of them, women with babies on their backs and the marketplace atop their heads. C’est ça! These Guanayan women could walk that walk. They made the products of the New York charm schools look like skinny pimply-faced unsophisticated and ungainly adolescents.
They were well into the city now, and the traffic got slower and slower, actually crawling. People everywhere. The long and short and the tall, all ages and denominations, a caravan of Black humanity in perpetual motion, and a sprinkling here and there of Americans and British and all types of combinations. Sartorially speaking, the average Guanayan wore anything that came to mind. Or to hand. The most noncommitted, nonconformist, unconventional dressers Jimmy Johnson ever witnessed. He grinned from ear to ear and kept telling himself, sometimes aloud, “You’re in Africa! You’re at long damn last in Africa!” His eyes his ears his nose his mouth his throat his heart his mind his spirit saturated with his long-lost Africa. He had fifty dollars in his pocket, and change. Other than that, he was as broke as a New Year’s R
esolution of the Ten Commandments. His only clothes were on his back, but he felt no pain or apprehension. He felt at home for the first time in his life.
They took him to the Hotel Lido, not one-tenth as fabulous as the Ambassador Palace, or nearly as expensive, but it was inhabited by proper Africans with Club Lido on its first floor. And he dug in for the duration however long it lasted. He meant to get to the heart of being African and all at once and in a hurry.
First thing on his agenda: learn the language of the people! He bought book after book written by enterprising Englishmen out to make an honest quid. Language books with such titles as How to Learn Conversational Hausa the Proper Painless Way. The first book was written by the very pious Reverend Michael Bodley Richardson, benign benevolent missionary from Yorkshire in the old You-Kay. On Page 1, the first translation into English was a deeply profound question calculated to make it easy for a greenhorn like Jimmy to win friends and influence people. It was: “How much sodomy is there in this town?” The second translation was “This one will do as our housekeeper. She is nice and strong and plump.”
“I know where that missionary was at,” Jimmy said aloud to himself, and tossed the book into his wastebasket. “I know what his mind was on.” The second primer was equally provocative, written as it was by a British Army captain. Translation I, Page 1: “Whose donkey is kicking my daughter?” It quickly joined the other primer in the basket, as did others and others and countless others.
Nevertheless our dauntless hero learned the language of the people by talking to them, endlessly, incessantly, ad infinitum, ad nauseum. Sometimes he talked too blooming much. Sometimes his foot found its inevitable way into his irresistible mouth—always and forever with the very best of intentions. Par exemplar. Or, to give you a for instance:
That first week he went everywhere and all at once, all over town all over the suburbs and out into the fervid, ecstatic countryside. Talking talking talking touching tasting loving everything and everybody. He loved the touch and taste and sound of things and life and love and things. It was like he really thought he was at long last home.
He stood with beautiful womanful Linda Okwuchuku one evening way out on the northwestern edge of town and stared westwardly and watched the sun sit down out on the rim of the endless desert. He knew a sweet full choking sensation, as he thought he saw the sunset dripping with unbelievable greenness and splashing the whole horizon with varying shades from soft pastels to the deep green of the ocean’s edge. He’d never heard or even dreamed of green sunsets before. He closed his eyes. He squeezed Linda’s hand unknowingly. Keep your big mouth shut, he thought to himself. You are overwhelmed by the reality that is Africa and the romance that is Africa and the fact of your actually being here, so if you happen to see one little old green sunset, who the hell’s business is it? I mean, everybody has optical illusions under certain circumstances. The conversation with himself kept his mouth shut for a moment only. He opened his eyes and beheld again the glory of the dying day. Aquamarine! He could contain himself no longer. He turned toward Linda and heard his foolish self say ecstatically, maybe even argumentatively, “That’s a green sunset. My eyes don’t fool me. It’s really green. I mean, don’t tell me it isn’t.”
“Exactly!” she answered him with great and righteous indignation. “Did you expect the sunsets of ‘exotic’ Guanaya to be different from the ones in Europe or America? Black or white—you Europeans are all alike. Of all the colossal arrogance!”
That kept him quiet for a terrible moment.
And when the moon rose it was a deep deep dark blue, but Jimmy did not mention it. He learned later that the whole thing had something to do with the desert haze due to the winds and sand and so forth and so on. But he never learned to keep his big mouth shut.
His Guanayan brothers helped him to get a permanent visa and a job at the Club Lido. And so, Jimmy Johnson like had it made. Not only was he happy, he was joyous even, maybe even just a little slap-happy. He loved Afrique unreservedly. And his great love did not go unrequited.
This is where he was in time and space just after Guanaya caught up with Independence. This is where he was shortly after cobanium was discovered and the whole world caught up with Guanaya. Jimmy Johnson never had it so good. The way he figured, he was the luckiest Negro ever to escape from that state of colored happiness by the name of Mississippi, known affectionately as “’Sippi.”
Then suddenly his luck ran out.
4
In Bamakanougou, intrigue was as ubiquitous as London fog. Rumors were a shilling a dozen, plotting was as frequent as the scampering playful monkeys and the thornbushes and the greedy goats out on the nearby blinding-beiged Sahara. You could not tell who was who or what was what or where you were going or whence you came, or what you were going to do when you got where you were going. Sometimes it was a proper mess. Sometimes it even got confusing. Take our venerable Foreign Minister, Mamadou Tangi, for example.
It was an hour and fifteen minutes since the Foreign Minister left his colleagues at the Executive Mansion. He had exactly forty-five minutes to deliver the coup. He was as serious as a midair collision and a massive heart attack, combined. As sincere a man as was ever a Foreign Minister in any country on this earth. Why in the name of all the gods and devils, and Europeans, had he wandered into Club Lido? Of all places! This night of all nights? True, almost every Friday night you could see him at the Lido, ordinarily. True, Tangi was a real-gone devotee of highlife and calypso and modern jazz and Black folk songs, which were the club’s chief staples. It was the sole diversion from his work that he allowed himself, except that he was an avid reader. Sometimes he would be at the Lido with his wife, but more often than not he would sit alone at the table near the back. Sometimes he would dance, but more often, he would just sit and look and drink his palm wine and dig the sounds and nod his head and pat his feet. True, Jimmy Johnson had become his favorite performer, but this was no ordinary night. But force of habit is a powerful factor. And so the Foreign Minister had come to the Lido this night of nights when he should have been concerning himself with the most important matters of state. With the fate of Guanaya hanging in the proverbial balance (where else?), here he was sitting alone listening to an African American singing highlife. A six-piece orchestra was wailing a tune the lyrics of which were written by the fabulous Jimmy Johnson himself—come lately. The Lido was low ceilinged and dimly lit and filled to capacity with Guanayans and a sprinkling of Europeans (American and British). Jimmy Johnson was swinging his hips in that inimitable style that African Americans used when imitating Africans and singing his song with a very very British accent.
“Now why don’t the natives love us anymore?”
Sir Winston did inquire.
I ask you, why don’t the natives love us anymore?
The Guanayans laughed, the Europeans smiled good-naturedly, uneasily, but good-sportedly. That’s the way they were, you know. Tangi hated to take Jimmy Johnson away from this life he had carved out for himself in his beloved Africa. But precisely because Mother Africa came first and last with Tangi, Jimmy Johnson had to go. The first time he had seen Jimmy, there had been something strongly familiar about him, something he could not put his finger on. He had been strangely fascinated, Tangi had come again and again and again but Jimmy had always remained just out of reach. Then, a week ago, suddenly everything had come together, and Tangi had had Jimmy placed in time and space. He was sure he had his man now. There could be no doubt about it.
Why aren’t they like they used to be?
So simple and naive, so gloriously primitive?
Noble savage, what has happened?
You’re too sophisticated and much too complicated
Oh the natives just don’t act like natives anymore.
Guanayans laughed and shouted and applauded. Naturally the Europeans were jolly good sports about it. Mamadou Tangi stared unsmilingly and blank-faced at the African American. He regretted what he had to do, even as
he nodded at the internal security men at a table near the front. They got up and moved with a vengeance toward blissful, unsuspecting Jimmy, who was bowing and smiling to his applauding public. They loved him dearly, even as he loved them. The two big Savoy Ballroom bouncer-type men seized him and took him protesting to a big car outside the Lido where Tangi was waiting.
“I didn’t do anything!” Jimmy shouted. “It’s a lie! I didn’t do it! I know my rights! I’m a loyal African!” It did him no good. He didn’t fool anybody. They had their man and knew it. They shoved him quietly into the back of the car. He was still resisting arrest when they dragged him into the conference room where the rest of the Ministers had already gathered and were waiting, but impatiently.
“I haven’t done a thing! This is a free country. Jaja Segu will vouch for me. You can’t do this to me. I’m not a spy! I’m a true friend of Africa! Uhuru!” he shouted, waving his arms frantically, “Uhuru-Uhuru-Uhuru! Freedom! Freedom!”
The Ministers, excepting Tangi, were even more puzzled than Jimmy Johnson.
“Be calm, brother,” Tangi told him. “You’re not under arrest. Not yet.” He introduced the perspiring Jimmy to the Ministers generally and to the Prime Minister primarily. He told them what Jimmy was doing in Guanaya and how the people loved him and how he loved the people. Some of the Ministers already knew Jimmy, and particularly his reputation. And that was all very well, but what the devil was Tangi driving at? The Foreign Minister asked them to be seated again, including Jimmy, and for God’s sake (and Africa’s) have a little patience.
The Minister Primarily Page 6