The Minister Primarily

by John Oliver Killens

  He heard her shouting at him now. “Go screw yourself!” as she banged down the telephone.

  He dialed her back immediately and listened to it ring six or seven times before she answered.

  “You can go politely straight to hell, you bastard!” She banged it down again.

  He lay back on the bed and felt a migraine coming on. What could he do? What could he do? He heard a soft rap on his door. Two even softer raps.

  “Who is it?”

  A soft voice answered, “Maria Efwa here.”

  He felt a thumping where his heart had been. “May I come in?”

  His heart began to skip about, as if it might leap out of his chest. He was speechless, momentarily.

  Then he mumbled, “Of course,” as he left the bed and went toward the door to open it. Before he reached the door, she entered. He thought perhaps he had fallen asleep and was in a dream he hoped he would not awaken from. He stood stock still, transfixed, as he watched her moving toward him, gliding, like a moving picture in slow motion, a Tee Vee instant retake. He couldn’t believe his happy eyes.

  “May I sit down?” she asked him.

  “Of course!” He dragged a chaise lounge toward her. “Please be seated.”

  He watched her, as she lowered herself onto the lounge, kept his eyes on her as if he thought if he looked away, when he looked back, she would have disappeared. His sweet dream would have evaporated. He sat away from her on the side of his bed. He got up again. “Can I get you something? Tea, coffee, something stronger?”

  She said, “No thank you. I shan’t be here that long. I just wanted to know if Her Ladyship was all right. She sounded so upset.”

  He told her briefly of her conversation with “Her Ladyship.” She said sympathetically, “You are really in a mess.”

  He said, “She is in a terrible mess. And there’s nothing I can do about it.”

  She rose from the lounge. “I suppose I’d better be leaving now. I thought perhaps there was something we could do to help her.”

  He left the bed and went to her. “You’re such a beautiful and compassionate woman!” He took her in his arms and almost squeezed the breath out of her and kissed her fully deeply on her plentiful and curving lips. He thought she kissed him back, for a fleeting moment. He heard her sighing, breathing deeply. Then she pulled away from him. “How can I make you understand that there can never be anything romantic between us? I am a married woman!”

  He answered, “By not visiting me in my bedroom at this time of night.”

  She went out and slammed the door.

  * * *

  The following morning, they left town for the Big damn Apple.

  26

  Back in the Apple, they really felt like celebrating. They had conquered Mississippi and had emerged unscathed. The only thing left was his speech at the United Nations General Assembly. It was Tuesday. A party was planned for them on Wednesday. The executive suite exuded euphoria, which made the Minister Primarily uptight with suspicion and foreboding. To him, euphoria was a bad omen. Good feelings were a forecast for catastrophe. With only a few days left, something bad was bound to happen. Somebody would recognize him without a shadow of a doubt, and then, disgrace, shame, not only for him but also for the little nation of Guanaya and for all of Africa, and its peoples. He lived now in growing dread of his discovery. If Debby Bostick saw through his bearded disguise, others would do likewise. It was just a matter of time. And time was running out, and swiftly.

  The party was to be held at the Malaga Mission in Mount Vernon in Westchester. Guanaya was still in the process of setting up an embassy and mission in the USA. As they drove up the oval driveway to the Mission mansion, complete with police escort and a slew of security people, front and back, Guanayan and otherwise, he heard them strike up the Guanayan national anthem. Maria Efwa reached for him and took his hand and squeezed it.

  As they debarked from the limos, there was cheering and loud applause. It seemed that hundreds were standing on the portico, cocktails in hand, smiling, cheering. Blacks all over the country had watched, breathlessly, their courageous journey into darkness of the ’Sippi delta. On the television, in the newspapers, on the radio. Overnight Jaja and his entourage had become national heroes to African Americans. It was an event that might be compared with SHERMAN’S MARCH THROUGH GEORGIA.

  As he moved quickly up the walk with “his lady,” he recognized some of the great ones. But he hoped they would not recognize Jimmy Jay. He could not suppress the feeling of great pride that suffused him, as he came up the walk with the beautiful Her Excellency. He could hear the aahs and oohs and murmurs. Ernie Crichlow, Belafonte, Feelings, Louise Meriwether, John A. Williams, Rosa Guy, Bill Forde, Paule Marshall, Jimmy Baldwin, Killens, Angelou, Bambara, Loften Mitchell, young Arthur Flowers, Nunez-Harrell, Conner-Bey, Ramona, Carol, McMillan, all the up-and-coming young ones, and then his heart flip-flopped as he saw her, the smiling very lovely one, he once loved, the one he used to call “the Princess of the Black Experience.” Surely she would recognize him. She, of the happy darkly shining happy smiling eyes. One of them would surely recognize him. His heart stopped beating, momentarily, as he heard someone call out “JIMMY JAY!” Was it the princess? Was it his imagination?

  * * *

  Standing now at the head of the reception line beside Her Excellency and the rest of his entourage. Belafonte before him now in a warm handshake, staring at him long, intently. “Excuse me, please. Your Excellency reminds me so much of a friend of mine. It’s really uncanny, I mean, the resemblance. We used to work together.”

  His (so-called) Excellency smiled and responded shakily, “We all are from the same root source.” He sought to temper it with irony and humor. “After all, it’s a known fact, all Negroes look alike.”

  “I’d like to discuss with you a concert tour of your great country, Your Excellency. Perhaps you can spare me a brief moment during the evening.”

  “Definitely. I should be delighted.” He was also greatly relieved.

  Could it be that Harry actually did not recognize him? He had done a brief gig with the Belafonte Singers. Harry had sponsored him at the Village Gate. He exuded perspiration now as the famous one continued to stare. But finally said, “Later, Your Excellency.” And moved along.

  He had been standing in the line almost half an hour when it happened. Suddenly she appeared before him like a figment wrought purely out of the strength of his tremendous wish fulfillment. Debby Bostick had been coming before him off and on in recurring flashes ever since the experience at the Lenox Terrace apartments. All during his sojourn in Lolliloppi she would come before him, night and day, like a welcomed and recurring dream, sleep and wake. And now, when his mind was all at sea and rudderless, all of a sudden, here before him was the dream and beside him the reality. Maria Efwa and Debby Bostick. But who was who and which was which?

  “Your Excellency, I wonder if it would be an imposition to ask you for an interview? Just a half an hour of your time before you leave us. I’m just a poor working media slave.”

  He said, shakily, “I’d love to if I can work it in. Check with my secretary tomorrow morning. I’ll tell her to expect your call.”

  She did an outrageously flamboyant curtsey. “Thank you so very much, Your Excellency.”

  “That was obviously the one,” Maria Efwa whispered, after the media slave had departed.

  “The one and only,” Jimmy answered, mischievously. “Perhaps,” he said hastily, “I should have said, ‘the two and only.’”

  Maria Efwa said, “Doesn’t it get confusing sometimes. Remembering? All those broken hearts you’ve left behind you.”

  “Especially when who and which are so very much alike. Beautiful, determined, lovable, faithful, irresistible.” Then he added, “Please don’t make it more difficult than it has to be. Promise? Please?”

  Her Excellency said, “I promise.”

  He said, “The only way you could keep the promise would be to sud
denly become invisible.”

  The line was breaking up now and she walked rapidly away from him. The rest of the evening was like a continuing existence in fantasia. Music, people, familiar faces, voices, smiling, staring, on the brink of recognition. So many had been friends of his. How could they help knowing who he was? Did a beard make that much difference? He was a nervous piece of wreckage from the fear of recognition.

  He was amazed at the number of white folk at the party, especially the women.

  “My name is Norma Dingleboffer, Your Excellency. I work for the United States Information Agency.”

  She had an uncommonly handsome face, wide blue eyes, and skin of burnished ivory, as were her gleaming breasts, which were very much and heavily in evidence showing far below the usual cleavage. One could say accurately she was doubly double-breasted. It was impossible to look her in the face and not be totally aware of their formidable thrust. Indeed, it was the most prominent feature of the slender-waisted woman. She almost seemed afflicted. The kind of tits that came into a room a half a minute before she entered. He started to ask her, were they real? As Jimmy Johnson would have asked her so many experiences ago, it felt like years. But he remembered he was the dignified His Excellency, Prime Minister of the Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya.

  He stared down into her face and had to stare away again. Her décolletage extended downward to her navel almost. He said, “And is that why you’re here tonight? Are you gathering information for the Agency?”

  “Indeed no,” she assured him. “I’m gathering information for myself. For example, what do you do when you’re not ministering primely? I’m an Africanist. I’m making an empirical study of folkways and mores of the African male. I’m an anthropologist. My specialty is the African male. What are his intellectual drives? What are his sexual drives? I believe absolutely in the efficacy of experimentation. I’ll go to any lengths to discover and uncover.” She was rambling now like a truck out of control, breathing deeply, downhill all the way then uphill again. Her bust was thrusting at him, threatening. And he actually felt threatened. She had obviously imbibed heavily.

  “Let us go somewhere in this palace so that we can experiment.”

  He said, “Lady! I am the guest of honor.”

  He remembered being pulled away by another fantasy of his wish fulfillment. “Come, Your Excellency. There is someone here whom you must meet.” Debby Bostick turned to the empirical anthropologist. “Please excuse us.”

  “That bitch pulls that shit every time she gets a chance,” Debby Bostick hissed. “Come now,” she said, “we have things we must discuss, and it isn’t anthropological. Here, over here in this little alcove, Jimmy Jay, Your Excellency.”

  The alcove was so constructed that they could almost be hidden from the view of the hundreds of other guests. “You must have reconnoitered the joint ahead of time,” Jimmy Jay observed. They sat on the softly cushioned ledges of the alcove opposite one another.

  “The interview?”

  She said, “Well, I finally met my rival face-to-face. Her Excellency is beautiful. Undoubtedly a formidable adversary.”

  He said, without thinking, “So now you see the problem.”

  She said, “So what’s it going to be, you coldhearted sonofabitch? I suppose what happened the other night at Lenox Terrace meant nothing at all to you.”

  He said, “That was not of my own making. You—”

  She said, “I suppose you’ve checked Her Excellency out, and now you’re making up your mind. How do I rate in comparison with her, I mean, beneath the sheets?”

  He was slowly definitely getting pissed. “You know I really have no basis for comparison. I’ve never shared Her Excellency’s bed.”

  “Please,” she said, sarcastically. “You’re talking to me, Debby Bostick. I’ve known you almost all my life. Remember?”

  “I’m talking to you and I’m telling you I have not been to bed with Her Excellency, although I don’t see how it’s any of your goddamn business. Her Excellency is a—”

  “A lady,” Debby Bostick finished for him. “She is a woman, just like any other woman. She pees, just like every other human being. And she doesn’t piss Scotch and soda.”

  “Her Excellency doesn’t know I exist, romantically. I tell you, she’s a very loyally married woman. I’ve never gotten out of line with her.”

  “So, what’s the problem? As if I actually believed your mouth is a prayer book.”

  “The problem is—me. I know that I love her, and I don’t know whether or not it’s because she reminds me of you.”

  “Have you made up your mind? Are you going to stay in Guanaya, hanging around her like a sick cow? Somehow that doesn’t fit my picture of you. Am I supposed to believe that you’re going back to Guanaya and hang around like a young sick calf, waiting forever for whatever?”

  He looked away and up into the face of Her Excellency Maria Efwa. She reached a slender hand out to him. “Come now, the banquet’s about to begin, and you’re expected to make a speech.” She took him by the hand to lead him away. She turned back to Debby Bostick. “Please excuse us. I’m sure there’ll be time for your interview. Somehow he’ll be able to work it in.”

  Debby was speechless momentarily. She mumbled, “Thank you very much.” The one thing she was certain of was—Her Excellency was aware of His (so-called) Excellency’s existence, romantically and otherwise.

  Another thing was clear, when the Malagans gave a party, they really did it.

  Meanwhile Maria Efwa was speaking with His (so-called) Excellency in an almost scolding tone of voice. “You can’t afford to give all of your time to one person, especially at an affair like this. You’re the guest of honor.”

  He had to fight to control the smile struggling to dominate his face. His whole heart felt like laughing hysterically. Could one so humbly born as James Jay Leander Johnson dare to think that Her Excellency could possibly be jealous regarding him and Miss Debby Bostick? “Should I dare to have the slightest hope that Her Excellency is jealous?”

  “Everyone has a right to hope and fantasize to his heart’s content. It’s a constitutional right in the Independent People’s Democratic Republic.”

  He spoke rapidly. “In my blessed fantasy, you and I are lovers. We fall madly in love. Nothing else matters. If King Edward could give up the British crown for his lady love, can humble Jimmy Jay do any less in manifestation of his love for the most beautiful woman on this earth?”

  They reached the head of the long rectangular table, overloaded now with delicacies of every kind and ethnicity. He had overheard a couple of old Englishmen talking earlier. “By Jove,” one said to the other, “the bloody Blacks really know how to give a bash.”

  “Well,” Her Excellency said, “here we are. Your Excellency, may I have the honor of introducing you to the president of Malaga.” The two African heads of state embraced one another and kissed each other’s cheeks. “A pleasure I have looked forward to for the longest time.”

  The tall regal though elderly president of Malaga stepped back and looked at the bogus PM admiringly. “The very spitting image of your father, as they say here in America.”

  All along the line of tables a chant had begun. “Jaja! Jaja! Long live Jaja!”

  President Bakadou El Salvadou held both hands up for silence. The chanting ultimately subsided. The president said, “His Excellency will speak to us briefly, but first things first. Let us first taste of this legendary cuisine, which even a hundred years of British colonialism could not corrupt.”

  His (so-called) Excellency lifted his glass. “Long live Malagan culinary distinction!” And fell back into the chair at the head of the table amid round after round of cheering and applause.

  “Hear! Hear! Hyah! Hyah!”

  “Right on! Right on!”

  He was quietly getting inebriated. Tables were piled high with African delicacies, British, French, Italian, Guanayan, and especially Malagan. All the while in th
e midst of the bedlam he was thinking, If both Maria and Debby love me, I must really be worthwhile. Beautiful, devious Debby, with a mind as sharp as a guillotine and equally as quick, and as deadly. Lovely, majestic Maria Efwa, Her undisputed Excellency, with a quiet saber-sharp all-encompassing intelligence. If they both loved him—well. It came to him now that it was not just their physical loveliness that bewitched him; it was the beauty of their intelligence that kept him off balance. Whereas Debby B. was glib, Maria Efwa was articulate. Debby was dazzlingly brilliant; Maria Efwa was quietly profound, self-assured! Hers was a blessed assurance. “It doesn’t matter whether or not I’m His Excellency or just plain old Jimmy Jay from ’Sippi.” They loved him for himself alone, he hoped. For some reason, the image of Jesse Jackson came to mind. He felt like getting up and shouting to them all, “I am somebody!” But he hadn’t had that much to drink. He sat there eating now with Maria Efwa on one side of him and the president of Malaga on the other. What would he say to them in his speech? Now he was mumbling to himself, “I may be Black, I may be born in Missi-damn-sippi, I may be Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson, I may not be the Prime Minister of Guanaya, but I am somebody!” Perhaps that was the profounder lesson to be learned from this entire charade, that everybody is somebody.

  Maria kept her large darkening worried eyes on him. What was he mumbling about? Almost an hour had passed since they sat down to eat. The chanting had begun again.

  “Jaja! Jaja! Long live Jaja!” . . .“Jaja! Jaja! Long they live Jaja!” And now the Black Americans had picked up their version of the chant.

  “We want Jaja!”. . . . “We want Jaja!” . . . “We want Jaja!”

  He thought, perhaps they wanted him for their dinner.

  President El Salvadou rose in his melon-colored princely robe and raised his hands for quiet. And when quiet was maintained, he quietly introduced the man of the hour, His Excellency Jaja Okwu Olivamaki.