Barra said, “No way. No way you’re going to get me to even whisper the cat’s name. My man is not a small boy. He’s listening to our conversation at this very moment. He doesn’t need any kind of spy equipment. He doesn’t need any mechanical bugs or any other electronic devices. He’s got the biggest eyes and ears in Africa.” Barra began to sing, burlesquing,
He sees all you do ooh ooh,
He hears all you say—aye.
My man is watching all the time.
He stopped singing and he laughed at Jimmy Jay. “My man is so bad; he scares the hell out of himself sometimes. He’s no small boy, you’d better believe me.”
“Oh come on already.” Jimmy Jay was sweating freely now. He knew the term “small boy” was the “baddest” put-down in Guanaya. You call a man a “small boy” and you have relegated him to total insignificance. He is underneath beneath contempt. Likewise if you said, “He’s no small boy,” you have accorded him elevation to Mount Everest and beyond way up there to that big place in the sky.
“Baby, they got families here in high places who trust one another about as far as you could throw the motherfuckering Empire State Building. Go around all day watching one another, suspiciously. Everybody in the family suspecting one another of hexing them, casting a spell, their fathers mistrusting their mothers, sisters do not trust their brothers, and vice-fuckering-versa.”
Jimmy Jay said, “Now I know you’re joking. Be serious.” He laughed weakly. “Heh heh heh.”
Barra got up and went to the telephone. He picked it up and turned toward Jimmy. “Is there anything you want that you left back in the States?”
Jimmy mumbled, almost inaudibly, “I left my manuscripts for some lyrics back in New York with my landlady. Some calypso stuff. West Indian music.”
Barra said, “Say the word, and I can have it here into your hands in fifteen fuckering minutes.” Jimmy Jay felt that sudden giddiness again, severely now, like falling from the steepest cliff. He was vertiginous. He could hear Maria’s voice again. Stay away from it. His flesh began to crawl again. He shouted softly, “Hell naw! Forget it! Leave it alone! Leave it alone!”
Barra insisted, “You want it, or don’t you? All you have to do is say the word. We’ll see how tough Guanayan Juju is. Get you some of that mamba Juju. With them bad snakes all around you, and no evil can ever harm you.”
“Mamba snake Juju? Naw naw, hell naw! I’m deathly scared of snakes.”
Barra said, “But they’ll be there to surround you and protect you. You won’t be able to see them.”
Jimmy Jay envisioned invisible snakes. He could see them by the thousands all around him, even though they were invisible. He thought again that Barra must be kidding him.
Then his macho and his natural daring rose up in him. Jimmy said courageously, “What the hell—what can I lose? Get my manuscript. Let me see you do your stuff.” His heart began to leap about.
Barra answered, “You can’t lose a thing. It’s free of charge. However, once you’re into it, you’re into it indefinitely, from here unto eternity, and one of these days you’ll be called upon to pay your dues. Okay, what’s the landlady’s number?”
Jimmy Jay felt faint. He shouted in a froggy voice, “I told you to forget it. I don’t want anything to do with it.”
Barra said, “In the words of Purlie Victorious, ‘You the boss, boss.’” He burlesqued. “You is the natural massa, Massa.”
Jimmy Johnson felt a great relief, as the perspiration poured from him, as if his body had sprung leaks, suddenly.
6
Before he went to bed that last night before they flew away, he made up a poop sheet for the PM’s party. And he was dead serious the next morning when he distributed it to each of the ministers who would be traveling with him to the good old US of A. And so, the poop sheet—
JIMMY JOHNSON’S POOP SHEET FOR JUNGLE TRAVEL
Now you are going on a hazardous journey into the wilds of North America, where so-called Homo sapiens live in a vast jungle of steel and stone and concrete and run around like crazy in mechanical monsters on terra firma and way up in the atmosphere and pretend to each other and the world that they are highly civilized supermen, but that is hardly the case.
While in the land of the free and home of the brave, the venerable Dr. Du Bois called it “The Land of the Thief and the home of the home of the slave,” always wear your Guanayan attire and thereby avoid unnecessary unpleasantries. Remember! It is a peculiar land that treats any foreigner in the world better than it does its own Black citizens. However, if for any reason any one of you are caught alone, God and/or Allah, Buddha, honorable ancestors, etc., should forbid, on one of their asphalt footpaths, and you are not wearing your Guanayan robes, but wearing instead the skimpy costumes of the drab American natives, you are accosted by one of the pale-faced natives, you are to immediately forget you ever knew English and move swiftly in Swahili, Hausa, Yoruba, Pig Latin, patois, Chinese, whatever, gesturing violently to make your point. Take my word for it. They will not know a word of Swahili or whatever, but they will understand what’s happening. If you spoke to them in Americanese it would cause a great misunderstanding. The subtlety here is: All they need to know is that you are not an American citizen. Dig? Understood? Secondly: Wherever you go out into the jungle, North, South, East, West, beware of masked men-like figures, sometimes even child-like figures, wearing white costumes, with tent-shaped heads and carrying lighted torches and illumined crosses. They will not be of your own kind. Neither will the torches represent the torch of freedom, nor will the illumine crosses represent the cross of Jesus. These torch-bearing, white-sheeted, cross-bearing pyramidal-headed natives are an unfriendly lot, to say the very least. The torches and the sheets and crosses are all a part of their savage ritual. Cannibalistic at the core, except for the fact that they do not eat their victims, usually. Notwithstanding, these natives are absolutely hostile.
Finally, here is a glossary of American terms you might run into from time to time. This is just so you will understand their peculiar nuances. I will add to this list from time to time during our sojourn in the Western jungle. The important thing to remember is white is white and black is black regardless of the pigmentation.
GLOSSARY
WHITE
BLACK
White American Citizens
Black American Subjects
White man—Courageous, with strength of his convictions
Black man—Loudmouthed, arrogant, downright sassy
American Revolution—Glorious, patriotic
Black Revolt—Irresponsible, hate-inspiring, racist
White man—Militant, courageous, honorable
Black man—“Crazy nigger”
Hungarians—Freedom fighters
Black demonstrators—Extremists, radicals, troublemakers, “Commonists,” NAACPers even
White man who drives a Cadillac is affluent
Black man who drives a Cadillac is a conspicuous consumer, uncouth, stupid, loud, etc., etc.
NOTE: My own attitude is: Black man driving Caddy is symbol of rebellion. White man’s Caddy is a monument to his insecurity. We call them “hang-ups” in the USA.
7
MEANWHILE BACK AT THE GREAT GOLF COURSE, in Lolliloppi, ’Sippi, Near-the-Gulf, that region of the USA where the living was easy and the colored folks were always happy with plenty of nothing, and forever weeping when ’Ol Mass’r got the cold cold ground that was coming to him. ’Twas indeed an idyllic picture of romantic degradation—difficult to imagine these days (in any context), two of America’s most famous golf pros were engaged in the annual “Battle of the Century.” Once a year, and aside from any of the national or international tournaments, they always got together in Lolliloppi, Mississippi, Near-the-Gulf (deep deep in the ’Sippi bush, whose only claim to fame was its great golf course where professional golfers played and Presidents and other big shots. Had it not been for the golf course, Lolliloppi would have suffered the terri
ble fate of absolute oblivion and total invisibility.).
Notwithstanding, these two old cronies played eighteen rounds of their greatest most competitive cut-throat golf at a thousand bucks a hole. It was not the money they won from each other that counted. That wasn’t the reason they went for each other like it was the last golf game on earth. They did it mainly for kicks and out of deep and lasting friendship, they would tell you, Bobby Snide and Johnny Higginsby. All year long they looked forward to the “Struggle of the Titans,” as a certain newspaper columnist gained immortality by describing it so originally. It was winner-take-every-damn-thing.
It had been nip and tuck all the way, and sometimes even tuck and nip, ever since they had teed off from the first hole. They always took a little nip along with them (two fifths of bourbon) and had it tucked away in their golf cart. If the slightest breeze blew they would cuss aloud and storm and rage. It was dog-eat-dog, rat-eat-rat (choose your own metaphor), every step of the way. And now they were “nipping and tucking,” as they called it, laughingly, at the thirteenth hole and Snide had just nipped and passed it on to Higgy, who likewise tuck another nip. He was on the green about twelve feet from the fourteenth hole and one shot down, standing there in his tweedy knickers. (Both men were old-fashioned and imagined they were the Second Coming of Bobby Jones. Therefore they were always tweedily knickered.) Higgy’s sun-cooked leathery skin pulled tightly over the bony frame of his cunning face (He almost looked colored sometimes), and his face was red-nosed and leaking perspiration and sweat was draining, ungentrifiedly, from his armpits. His light brown eyes narrowed into slits. He took another short nip and tucked it back into the golf cart, and again he sighted long and carefully from ball to hole. He stared up at the merciless sun of the Southland and swore underneath his bourboned breath as was his habit lately as he moved through the middle ages of his sojourn on this earth. Now he was ready with his putter with a thousand dollars riding on each shot, not that money mattered, BUT, and notwithstanding even. He had just assumed that pose, that concentration, that inimitable form, for which he was world famous, and which had won him numerous international loving cups and other stuff, including that filthy currency of the realm. It was that moment of dramatic rectitude, when a group of extra-duty caddies went around the edge of the crowd of spectators shushing them for absolute quietude, one of the most tranquil moments on this earth. Then at that split-hundredth-of-a-second before the club made contact with the ball, when the whole world held its breath, on television even, he was interrupted. Well, sir! I mean, that is, well sir! His language we will censor here, dear patient readers. Because, as you must have gathered by now, we are a high-class author. Though sometimes we have felt compelled, for the sake of verisimilitude, to tell it like it is and let it all hang out, obscene linguistics notwithstanding. Pray forgive us for these earthy lapses.
Old Higgy turned violently toward the interrupter and swung his golf club like he was driving down the fairway. The serious-faced young pale-faced gentleman jumped from ’neath his panama hat like Willie Mays running bases, and just in time to avoid his head being substituted for a golf ball and a possible decapitation. He shouted softly, dignifiedly, “Secret Service! Secret Service, Mr. Higgingsby!” He and his colleague quickly produced identification.
But this could not pacify old Higgy, when you interrupted his kicks. It was against his way of life and it was unconstitutional and surely did upset his constitution. He was so irate his voice was trembling. “What the hell do you want with me? And I know damn well it can wait!”
The other panama-hatted gentleman said politely. “The President wants to—”
Old Higgy growled, “The President can wait too. This is a free—The President!?”
“Yes, sir. We’re very sorry, but we have to ask you to kindly step aside for a moment and let the President’s party through. It is of international importance that he gets to the eighteenth hole just as rapidly as he possibly can. A national emergency!”
Higgy and Snide stared past the two serious-faced young men at the party standing patiently on the edge of the green near a golf cart, a classy glassy Fairway VI fiberglass job with the dignified inscription on the front: OUR BELOVED PREXY, FRIEND AND BENEFACTOR OF ALL MANKIND. There were panama-hatted gentlemen all over the place interspersed among the crowd. There were almost as many SS men as there were spectators.
It was then that their eyes filled as they saw that famous smiling chubby-wubby face that always made the “Free World” know everything would be all right in those weary nervous Cold War days of “Brinkmanship.” The two old crotchety middle-aged tweedily knickered golf pros pulled off their tweedy caps respectfully, and then a frightened look came into Higgy’s craggy face. You could see him aging.
“What happened?” he asked the two young men, and he was deathly scared of the answer. “Has World War Three been declared? Good Lord! Have they dropped the bomb?”
The first young man said indignantly in his accent which was a curious mixture of Georgia cane syrup and Harvard Yard, “Certainly now! Everybody knows His Excellency Olivamaki Okwu is arriving in the nation’s capital on tomorrow!”
Higgy and Snide were profoundly impressed, yes, and greatly relieved. “In that case we would be honored to make way for our beloved President,” Old Higgy said respectfully.
* * *
Meanwhile on the front pages of the nation’s press was nothing but news of the PM’s visit and his arrival on the morrow. His face had been plastered on the front page of every newspaper in the USA, on every TV station. There was not a single red-blooded American, red, white, yellow, black, or brown, or otherwise, who would not know the briefly bearded young PM on sight. His face was as familiar as Muhammad Ali’s had once been. An Emergency Presidential Order declared the day of his arrival a holiday for government workers in the nation’s capital. Even the filibuster, which was already six or seven years old, stopped filibustering for a time. Washington exuded an air of festivity as if it was Inauguration Day. Like the time the last of the Great White Mothers and her consort made their visit from the You-Kay, and it rained forty days and forty-five nights, and Charlton Heston grew a beard and declared that he was the Second Coming of Noah and began to construct an ark, with approval of adequate appropriations from the Congress and the President. Like the time the hostages had come back from Iran.
In downtown New York City and along Seventh Avenue they were also getting ready. Stands were being constructed along the line of march or the line of ride, whichever, and a platform had been constructed where His Honor would give to Olivamaki the keys to the greatest city in the world. Buttons with the PM’s handsome picture were being sold down in Times Square, on Broadway, and even on sleazy Forty-Second Street. East side, west side, all around the town. They sold sweatshirts with the PM’s picture.
Take the A train up to Harlem, USA, where the people are preparing to welcome their very own. On the corner of 125th Street and Seventh Avenue diagonally across the intersection from the Hotel Theresa, the house that Fidel had made even more famous than it already was, on the sidewalk in front of where the famous Michaux bookstore with its “HOUSE OF PROPER PROPAGANDA” and its “HUNDRED THOUSAND FACTS ABOUT THE NEGRO” used to be, a leader of one of the countless Black Nationalist organizations is holding forth on a stepladder to a gathering of black and brown, and light-brown brethren; women, men, and children too. He is just finishing his speech with: “And Ethiopia shall stretch forth her arms, in the words of our own Langston Hughes, but dig, she damn sure ain’t gon draw back no nub. Not in the year of this nineteen hunnert and eighty whatsoever!”
The people laughed and shouted and applauded and waved their brand-new flags of young Guanaya.
Somebody yelled, “Talk that talk!”
The speaker said, “Am I right or wrong?”
The crowd shouted back, “You’re right!” “You’re right!” “Right on! Right on!”
The speaker waved his fists and shouted, “Uhuru! Uhuru!
Uhuru!”
And they shouted back, “Uhuru! Uhuru! Uhuru!” “Freedom! Freedom!”
All over Harlem Town the top-drawer leadership-of-the-colored, as Ossie Davis’s Reverend Purlie would have called them (all those colored deputies), were vying with each other for spokesmanship in their welcome to the great African leader whom a couple of months ago they’d never heard of. At least a dozen Black Nationalist organizations, including the Sepia Moslems, the National Improvement Committee for the Colored, the Suburban Guild, and Mamadou Allah from Birmingham and Bambidido Mamadou from Mississippi. Each of them claimed seniority and priority and statesmanship superiority. It was a power struggle pure and simple among the Negro “power structure,” another phrase somewhat like the “Black Establishment” that had been overused and underdefined back in those days, until Lerone Bennett clarified it in the Negro Digest almost two decades ago.
One fine-as-wine slightly overfed brown-skinned lady got up at one of the welcome-planning meetings in her gorgeous mink. (It should be stated here, categorically: This was not a meeting of radical Black Nationalists or even Militant Integrationists. This was E. F. Frazier’s fabulously classic, unbelievable “Bourgeoisie.” Brother Nathan Hare designated them “Black Anglo-Saxons.”) Remember The Cotillion?
“Let me tell you Negroes something.” She had her hands on her high-placed hips.
A very high soprano voice came from the back of the hall. “You starting off on the wrong foot, Sister.”
“I ain’t your sister, Sister, and it ain’t nothing wrong with neither one of my feet. No corns and no bunions, no nothing. What I mean to say, and Mother is beautifully shod. These are three-hundred-dollar shoes from Gucci’s and I got the sale slip here to prove it.”
Somebody yelled, “You’re out of order.”
The thin shrieking voice from the lady in the back pitched higher and higher. “Don’t make no never mind if you bought your shoes from Hoochie Koochie’s, you listen to Mother McCree. You ain’t talking to no Negroes here tonight.”
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