All the while the thrust continued. Now gentle were the thrusts, serene relaxed, then quick excited, almost violent, as if they were the last ones on this planet earth. The little sucking sounds of tender thrusting now, in and out of her vulva, he thought, were like the faint and gentle slapping of ocean waves, eternally, against a distant shore. He looked into her lovely face, so beautiful with knowing, yet with innocence aglow, now suddenly a mask of tender seriousness; an overwhelming sincerity suffusing her sweet face, enhancing its beauty beyond the borders of imagination.
Reaching now, desperately, toward the final conflict, when recklessly they went for broke and for life’s sweetest treasures, as he felt a growing quaking in each of their bodies, and saw her dark head shake from side to side, now the quaking came in spasm, quick and rhythmic spasms, like the countdown at Cape Kennedy, and now there was no rhyme or reason. There was only love’s impassioned reaching for the crisis and the climax, the highest peak in all this earth, and ultimately the Great Blast Off, as they both fell from the earth, launched into infinite space, floating weightless and serene. Oh! If they could just drift out there forever and never come back down to earth.
She lay there biting at her fist, apparently to keep from screaming. As tardily she sought reconciliation. Belatedly she sought atonement, desperately.
“Oh, my husband, please forgive me! Dear God, I had no control over this whatever, this sin I have committed against you, my great and wonderful husband.” And deeper was the guilt because she could not really feel regretful. “It was the happiest most beautiful moment on this earth for me!”
* * *
He, who was an arrogant and self-proclaimed agnostic, perhaps even atheistic, a skeptic and a cynic, Second Coming Doubting Thomas, a backslider, an unbeliever, and an infidel, felt now an overwhelming moment of sacredness, a washing away of all skepticism and cynicism. He thought he now believed in saints, angels, and miracles divinely wrought. And what had he done to deserve such a blessed visitation, revelation? He lay there thinking, this place, this Waldorf of Astoria, stood alone on holy ground. This room, this bed, this canopied four-poster. He believed, credulously, in the legends of Saint Jeanne d’Arc d’Orleans, Saint Harriet Tubman of the Eastern Shore.
Time stood still for him now. Everything was momentary, ephemeral, and at the same time firmly ensconced in stone like the pyramids. Hours, days, weeks, months, years, centuries, were nonexistent. The millennium was then and now and premature and coming on like hurricanes and eternally forevermore. His heart sang as he thought, Sweet Mystery of Life, at last I found you. At last he knew the secret of it all.
He wanted to tell her that neither was he in control. But to her he whispered huskily, happily, guiltily, overcome with feelings of shame and solemn expiation, all mixed up with joyousness, “Hush! Hush! Hush, my dearest!” It was such a tender moment for him that his eyes began to fill.
As she cried herself to sleep.
27
The next day was work. Like the man said, THE PARTY WAS OVER. A meeting with Belafonte. Mr. B. had called about two thirty before day in the morning, directly following a midnight visit at Mr. B.’s on West End Avenue from crafty Carlton Carson of the US SS, questioning him about the Minister Primarily. “Is or not there a connection between His so-called Excellency and James Jay Leander Johnson of Lolliloppi, Mississippi? Didn’t he used to work for you?” . . . “Prime Minister Jaja working for me? Preposterous! You must be kidding.” . . . “I saw him talking with you at the party.” . . . “His Excellency spoke with lots of people at the party. What does that prove?”
Actually, the job was going to Carson’s head. Since assuming his appointment as chief of Secret Service, he had become a man beset with sudden brainstorms, holy-rolly visitations, divine revelations. Crafty Carson suffered greatly from these sudden strokes of genius (as he saw them), with which these days he was often stricken. Giving him sometimes dreadfully painful headaches, which he endured stoically, since he deemed them heavenly endowed. He believed the Good Lord spoke to him through these sudden so-called brainstorms. At these rare and rarified moments, his poor mind could hear the thunder, his brain could feel the sharp-bladed edge of the terribly swift lightning. He thought his brains caught fire sometimes. Also sometimes he blacked out momentarily (whited out?), came back a half a second later and went immediately into action like a robot programmed and motivated by a God-sent brain wave, of which he retained no remembrance. Belafonte said, “The cat has flipped out completely. What did you do to the dude? He was snorting like a dragon. His eyes were leaping like a madman.”
* * *
His Excellency’s interview with Debby Bostick was an exercise in futility and frustration. They simply got nowhere very swiftly. The rest of the time had to be spent with His (so-called) Excellency and Maria Efwa working together on his historic speech at the United Nations, supposedly.
All morning long their eyes had avoided one another, as if they had committed some mortal sin together. It was like this during the usual tea-and-crumpet get-together of the delegation to discuss their program for the day. At breakfast they hardly spoke to each other, except to bid a stiff good morning. When she would come into a room, he felt a bulging knot doubling up his stomach like the great knot of his Boy Scout days pulling tighter in the middle from both ends like a great tug-of-war. He swallowed solid his saliva deep into his troubled belly and thought the same knot had reached up into his throat to choke him for his evil ways. He found difficulty breathing. Was this what true love was about? A couple of times he tried deliberately to catch her eye, darkly brilliant, to let her know he suffered too. Which would have made him feel even guiltier if he but understood himself. He was a selfish bastard, he thought, wishing her to share his suffering. Perhaps she understood more profoundly her great impact upon him. For her brown-to-black sloe eyes avoided him as if he were too ghastly an abomination for her to gaze upon. He felt the jaw muscles just beneath his ears pulsating.
The Foreign Minister watched them worriedly.
* * *
Ultimately, they got together by themselves, ostensibly to talk about his UN speech. Obviously, he could not make the same speech over and over again, like the one he made at the Armory, or in ’Sippi or the other night in Mount Vernon. Surely, he could not do his singing act at the august United Nations. They talked around the question like boxers sparring for an opening shot at the other’s chin, avoided looking into the faces of each other. But it was there between them and it could not be kept eternally at bay. The world had changed for them forever. Everlastingly.
Finally, she blurted out, “What’re we going to do?” Like a lone voice in a wilderness of unquiet desperation.
“Well,” Himself answered shakily, “we could agree upon a premise and sketch a rough outline, you know, a first draft. Then we could—”
“Oh, you know that’s not what I’m referring to. I mean what we did last night.” He could tell that she was agonizing. She repeated anguishly, “You know what I’m talking about.”
“Yes, I do know what you’re talking about.” His face burned with guilt and shamefulness. Even as he thought to himself, What in the hell do I have to be ashamed of? If there were guilt or shame, well then, they both must share them equally. So, what was there to talk about? He made himself feel angrier than he actually felt. He forced himself to be indignant.
“It was not a trivial thing with me, Jimmy, I don’t know how you feel, but never before have I been unfaithful to my husband. It goes against everything I—I mean—” she stammered.
“Nor is it trivial with me, Your Excellency. It was just the excitement of the moment. The trip to ’Sippi, the party, the drinking, the euphoria, the celebration, the ambience. Like I say, the excitement of the moment.” He even sounded phony to himself. Even his voice to him was fraudulent.
“Don’t you ‘Your Excellency’ me,” she said angrily. Then she said, despondently, “Is that all it really meant to you, Jimmy Jay? A moment’s e
xcitement?”
“Dear Maria Efwa,” he answered in a trembling voice, “it meant everything in the world to me. But what can we do about it? You’re married to a human legend, an international institution. You belong to your people. I wish we could think only of ourselves. I don’t know what I’ll do with my life now that all of this is coming to an end. Perhaps I’ll go back and be just a jive folk singer at the Club Lido. You’re the Minister of Information and Education and Culture. You’re married to a living legend. Me, I’m nothing. As the great Nat Cole used to sing, THE PARTY IS OVER.
It was so unlike Her Excellency, he thought, who had always held both hands on the controls. It was an essential part of his image of her, which he did not wish to relinquish. He had her always in the driver’s seat. The Supreme Navigator. She almost sobbed uncontrollably, “You’re everything to me, Jimmy. Don’t ever say you’re nothing. You’re everything I want out of this crazy life. I’ve watched you grow from a jive folk singer, as you are want to regard yourself, to a man of stature and of daring and of great dignity, even as I felt my heart growing fonder of you day by day, even as I fought against it. And I never knew till last night that making love could be like that. Making love. Now I understand the metaphor.”
“Maria Efwa, I swear to you, I’ve never made love before last night. All else before was fornicating. Last night we made love with each other. There is nothing I’d want more than anything else than to spend the rest of my life with you, but you’re so much greater than that. You’re not only the most beautiful woman on this earth. You’re a spiritual and intellectual happening that comes once in a lifetime, perhaps once in a century. You’re a colossus, you rank up there with the pyramids, the Temple of Artemis at Ephesus, the lighthouse at Alexandria. You’re the eighth wonder of the world. You’re the grandeur of the Sphinx. You’re the Great Wall of the Chinese people. You’re—” He thought, where were the words coming from that were pouring from him like the rapids in their overflow, Niagara Falls? Words he had never known before. Had he been bewitched? Or was he suddenly possessed? Or had he been inspired? Of one thing he was sure. She brought out the very most in him. Like a maestro who wrought music from an ordinary instrument, a music unparalleled up to the very moment.
She said, unheedingly, “I never dreamed it could be like this. That I could love two men at the same time. Because I do love my husband. I respect him. I adore him. I revere him. You could even say I worship him. But there’s a different kind of love I have for you. And I need the love I have for you.” She sobbed. “And I despise the love I have for you.” She shook her lovely head in anguish. “No, I don’t. I’m glad I love you. I need to love you terribly. And it makes me feel like a trollop, because I can’t help feeling what I feel for you. It’s like a terminal disease.”
His eyes began to fill, with tears of joyousness and sorrow. His face, all through his shoulders, overflowed with a great gladness that such a lovely great one loved him in all his unworthiness. The bogus Minister Primarily, the dude from Lolliloppi. At the same time, he was overcome with a deepening distress that their love must come to naught but frustration and unhappiness. He tried desperately to speak calmly to her. “Dearest Maria, if there ever were such things as angels, you would certainly more than qualify. Don’t you ever call yourself a trollop.” Then his voice hardened. “And now we’d better get down to the immediate question of the United Nations speech. We’ll discuss this question later on.”
* * *
Later that night, led by Maria Efwa, the entire group discussed the thrust of his speech in detail. Foreign Minister Tangi raised some crucial points, as did His Wife’s (inevitable) Bottom, but on the whole, they agreed upon the premise and the thrust, as proposed by Maria Efwa. Then they discussed the future of Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson, aka His Excellency, so-called prime minister of the Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya. After kicking the question back and forth as if he weren’t present (he felt like Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN), the suggestion was made by Her Excellency Maria Efwa and agreed heartily upon by the rest of the cabinet, that Jimmy Jay be appointed the co-chairman of the Ministry of Information and Education and Culture, sharing the responsibilities (the creative and artistic aspects, books, films, radio, TV, etc.) of the office with Her Excellency. At which point the phone rang with the information (in Hausa code language, triply encrypted), that the real Prime Minister Jaja had just flown in to Kennedy under heavy security and secrecy and would be arriving at the hotel within the hour. He would speak for himself at the UN. THE MASQUERADE WAS TRULY OVER.
It seemed that all along they had hoped that the real Jaja would be able to make his own appearance before the United Nations, but had not mentioned it to Jimmy Jay in case it had not proved to be possible. But all subversive problems had been cleared up on the home front. There was no further need for the bogus Minister Primarily.
* * *
Things were happening much too quickly for Himself. Like the brightness of noonday in Bamakanougou just before a tropical storm. The sun is shining dazzlingly bright. Blazing, blinding. Then suddenly raindrops begin to fall down through the sunbeams. Back home in ’Sippi, they used to say the devil was whipping his wife. And if you put your ear to a seashell you could hear her weeping. Back in Bama in Guanaya the thunder rumbles from afar, the lightning flashes, and suddenly a torrential downpour, without warning.
Jimmy did not know how he felt now that the great charade had ended. He had taken off his beard forever. All during the following days he glanced secretly in the mirror, every time he passed one, and nobody was looking. He didn’t recognize himself. The transition had occurred too swiftly. The man, the real Jaja, had come in looking good and hale and hardy, and especially he looked ready. Perhaps a little weary in the eyes. He thanked Jimmy Jay properly and profusely. But it was clear that now he was ready to take charge. TCB. The meetings with the President, the ’Sippi trip, the party in Mount Vernon, the love night with Maria Efwa, the return of the real Jaja. Quick. Quick. Quick Quick. Decisions to be made. New positions to assume. Himself had to talk with Her Excellency. So much to say, so little time, the way things were.
Jimmy told her the next morning, within the hearing of the others of the delegation, “We have to discuss this co-chairpersonship.” But they knew why they had to talk, alone. Their excuse to the cabinet was that they had to go more fully into the question of co-chairpersonship, the pros and cons, the significance of such a transition, the implications, alone at breakfast.
They were seated downstairs at the Waldorf in one of the several breakfast rooms. “Well, what’s it going to be?” she asked him. “We can’t go on like this, pretending that it didn’t happen.”
He said, “I don’t understand.”
“If I go back to him, of course you know I’ll have to tell him,” she said.
“What do you mean, if you go back?”
“How can I look him in the face and say, ‘My husband, I’m in love with another man’? ‘I’ve made love with another man’?”
His heart beat stethoscopic thunder in his frowning forehead. He repeated, “What do you mean, if you go back?”
“After the other night, after all this time with you, it seems like years, the length of time we’ve been together. Things can never be like they used to be. I can’t live a lie with my husband. He’s too good a man. Do you know he gave up the practice of polygamy just for me? He went against a national tradition just for me. My husband is a saint.”
He stared into her anguished eyes and looked away again. He could not stand the agonizing torture in the dark eyes, the mesmerizing color of smoky topaz, that had become so dear to him. He wanted them always to be happy eyes. And he blamed himself for her agonizing. He said, sadly, “Your husband is a saint. And his wife is an angel. I thought we had settled that already.”
She stared him in the face unflinchingly. “Do you wish to marry me, or don’t you?” She had not meant the words to come from her in this kind of juxtapositi
on. She had only meant to ask him if he truly loved her.
He was in temporary shock. His face and shoulders were aflame. “You haven’t thought this through thoroughly, Your Excellency. You’re already married.”
She said, “What do you think caused these sleepless nights? These red eyes?” She paused. She plunged headlong into the quicksand. She didn’t want to stop to think. She demanded, “Yes or no?”
Jimmy Jay said, “I want you more than I want my own life, but obviously, you have not weighed the consequences.”
She stared at him. She shook her head, almost as if she sorrowed for him his enormous ignorance, his colossal lack of understanding. “Do you think it just began for me the other night?”
“I didn’t know,” he stammered. “I-I-I didn’t dare to hope, or even dream. I thought, I hoped. It was driving me crazy. I couldn’t sleep either.”
“Well now you know,” she said. “Now you dare. What’s it going to be? Just how daring are you, Jimmy Jay?”
He thought his ears must be deceiving him. “Are you sure? I don’t understand. You’re like a different person. The big decision’s up to you. You’re a leader in your country, a legend in your own time. So is your husband. I’ve seen how your people look upon you. They adore you. They look up to you. Of course, I’d love to marry you. But, how can we? I mean, you also love your husband. You just said so.”
The Minister Primarily Page 42