A single tear spilled from a bright and darkening eye. “I have wrestled with that question for a long time, almost ever since I met you, and watched your growing and your change. And you never lost your sense of humor. You never took yourself more seriously than you took the crazy job that we imposed upon you. I thought you were a jive chicken, I mean turkey, as you say in your country. But I realize now, you have no idea of how great you are. It isn’t just the way you look, your physical beauty. You’re much much more than that.” The tears were spilling freely now. “I do love my husband.” She took a handkerchief from her pocketbook. She wiped her eyes and blew her nose. “I respect him. I revere him. I worship him. But my love for you is different. I am in love with you, excitedly, turbulently. I love you and I’m glad I love you. I love to hear me say I love you. With my husband our love is calm. It is the great gift of peace and serenity. He is a haven in a time of stress. With you, I never knew such excitement existed, or was possible. My husband is like a lighthouse in a tropical storm at sea. You are the storm itself. I want the storm, Jimmy Jay. I want the tempest. I want the thunder and the lightning.”
“My husband” . . . “My husband,” he thought, as he stared into her anguished face, wondering to himself why it was that most women, even great ones like Maria, hang on so desperately to that which no longer existed. The myth of holy matrimony, inviolate and inviolable, eternally. Why did she continue this charade with this human antiquity? Was it respectability? She had loads of it. Certainly it was not for security or protection that she could not let go. She was an independent woman, economically, intellectually. So why not psychologically? Why did “My husband” have such a powerful hold on a woman like Her Excellency? Father image? True, he was old enough to be her father, “My husband” was, but she had a father of her own. She had never wanted for affection or protection. Was “My husband” a status symbol, a fashionable adornment, a woman felt naked if divorced or dispossessed of? Was it like the ownership of a television set that once was a luxury but had now become an absolute necessity like food, clothing, and shelter? He thought, what was it with womenfolks?
Breakfast was extending irresistibly toward lunchtime. The waiters were politely clearing the tables and their throats, readying the dimly lighted dining room for a lunchtime clientele. He was aware that one of the waiters stood unusually close to their table, as if to overhear their conversation. They were the only couple left.
Her Excellency invaded his sorrowful stream of consciousness, heatedly. “I’m tired of being a legend, tired of being dignified and proper,” she stated. “I’m sick and tired of living up to other people’s image of me. I want to be me. Right now, I don’t know who I am. I want to live, Jimmy Jay. And I want to live with you.” He caught the waiter staring directly into his mouth as if he wanted to do some fancy lipreading. Jimmy Jay stared back.
Jimmy Jay said quietly, tremulously, “I love you. I’m in love with you. And I want to do what you want to do, wherever such a commitment takes me. But you must do some heavy thinking.”
* * *
The cadence of the happenings quickened even further. Jaja had prepared his speech in flight. Now they discussed what was to become of Jimmy Jay as if he had no actual existence. Ellison’s INVISIBLE MAN again. He thought indignantly, what if he didn’t want to co-chair the Ministry of Information and Education and Culture? What if he wanted just to go back to his job singing at the Lido? What if he preferred to remain here in the States? They didn’t really require his service any longer.
The stewards were busily packing and preparing for their departure back to the old “countree.” He seemed again to be living through a dream sequence, as he watched the real Prime Minister move about the quarters as if he had been there all the while. Jimmy felt left out. Perdido. He felt like there should be some recognition that he still existed.
All through the night before he had heard them arguing back and forth from his isolated room the great debate about the PM’s speech and the cobanium. They went at each other hot and heavy. He even heard Maria Efwa’s voice raised in anger. He thought, the least they could have done, in recognition of his contribution, was to call him in and seek his counsel. But they never called. Not even Maria Efwa called. And that was more than hurtful. He had played his role successfully. With dignity. It was as if they no longer considered him a Guanayan, or even an African for that matter. He was getting pissed off. Moment by moment. With all the activity around him, he felt like he was in the way. Excess baggage. A supernumerary. Perhaps most of all he was losing Maria Efwa.
Now they sat together there this morning ignoring him, discussing the essentials of the United Nations speech. And he was losing Maria Efwa. That was the greatest loss of all.
Sensitive Maria Efwa could feel Jimmy Jay’s growing resentment, his angered indignation. She looked at him and said to Jaja, “You really do have something to live up to, cousin. James Jay Leander Johnson has made a tremendous impression on behalf of the people of our country. He has truly been magnificent.”
Jaja looked around at Jimmy, as if he had just become aware of his existence. Jimmy felt like he imagined a french poodle must feel when being admired, having just left the doggie beauty parlor. Jaja said, “I’m well aware of his contribution.” The real PM came over to Jimmy Jay as if he were about to stroke the gleaming luster on his fur. If he’d had a tail, he would have wagged it. The real Jaja took the fake PM’s hand in a warm handshake. Jimmy stood up for the gentleman. And they embraced each other cheeks to cheeks. “I’m aware that we owe you a debt of profound gratitude. And we will find a way of expressing it to you some time soon. Perhaps the co-chairpersonship?”
Jimmy Jay said, “It was really nothing at all.” He had never known how to accept extravagant praise even for a job well done. He’d always been essentially a shy person. But he’d learned to disguise his reticence with extravagant bravado.
28
Meanwhile Brainstorm Carson of the US SS was getting his act together. Carefully putting the pieces of the puzzle into place. He’d made a couple of trips back to ’Sippi and had finally gotten it out of the old man in the cell at Lolliloppi that the so-called Prime Minister was in reality none other than Jimmy Jay Leander Johnson, the-used-to-be-called “Hot Shot,” who had caddied for the President out at Ye Olde Golfe Course in the Big ’Sipp Near-the-Gulf. Carson had in his possession a picture of Hot Shot (many copies made), and it was clear that all you had to do was to put a beard on the lower part of Hot Shot’s face, and he immediately became the Prime Minister of the Independent People’s Democratic Republic of Guanaya. He was breathing hard now; he was hot on the trail. He was brainstormed out of his skull. Thought exploding in his mind like firecrackers on the Fourth of July. He paid Belafonte another visit. He got no help from those quarters.
He was like a dog who had just caught the fresh smell of the rabbit. It made no difference whether or not his brainstorms made sense. When a brainstorm struck our man of the Secret Service, he went immediately into action. The more “nays” he received, the more suspicious he became. Clearly Brainstorm Carson was not as stupid as he seemed to be. Perhaps his down-home homespun inane facade was an act to throw the sophisticated up-South people off their guard, so to speak, and notwithstanding.
He even took the Hot Shot picture down to Washington to the President. While the President had to admit there was a strong resemblance of his erstwhile Lolliloppi caddy, sans beard, to His Excellency, the cock-and-bull story that Crafty Carson had woven out of ’Sippi cotton was too far-fetched for the President, who had also gotten to like the bogus PM.
“How in the fuh-fucking hell could somebody like Hot Shot be smart enough to pull a fuh-fuh-fucking stunt like that?”
Brainstorm Carson was puffing and huffing like an old hound dog who had the smell and, President or no, was not about to let it go. “I tell you, Mr. President, there’s something fishy in the rotten woodpile in Denmark somewhere. My nose don’t never lead me wrong.”
Brainstorm Carson caught the next plane back to New York City. There was something up there he was overlooking. Deborah Bostick, Belafonte, Art D’Lugoff, notwithstanding. Mamadou Ben-Hannibala of the Black Alliance including. But what fucking was it?
He sat down at his desk in the security room in the Waldorf staring at the record of the coming and goings of His Excellency and his entourage. There was nothing strange here. Nothing out of the way at all. No matter, the storm in his so-called brain had blown up a whirlwind. And he noted that there was the time when His Excellency and the Vice–Prime Minister had left the hotel before day in the morning in a taxi. Where had they gone? Carlton began to breathe like he was having an asthmatic seizure. His brain was burning. He circulated pictures of Hot Shot around to all the cabbies who had been on duty that morning. His stubborn perseverance finally hit pay dirt.
“Yeah,” the pudgy-faced cabbie said, “I remember that face all right. I’ll never forget that face. He was clean shaved just like this here pitcher here. Then he put on his beard, and right away he changed to Prime Minister Olliemackey.”
Brainstorm Carson began literally to jump up and down, breaking wind in his excitement. “I knew it! I knew it! I knew it!” Then he calmed down momentarily. “Are you sure? You sure this is the man you took out to Jamaica? You absolutely positive without no shadow of a doubt?”
“There ain’t no doubt about it. I’d swear to it on a stack of Holy Bibles. That’s him all right. He talked so much he gave me a headache, and when he got where he was going, he put on his beard and became the Prime Minister of Africa. But he sure did give a big tip.” Brainstorm Carson was trying to control his excitement. Breathing hard like he had just run up a long steep hill. “Well, if what you say is true, you have just helped to expose one of the biggest international frauds in history. You have saved the fair name of America.”
The fat-faced cabbie said, “Do I get a ree-ward?”
“There ain’t no ree-ward. Sorry,” Carlton Carson answered.
“Do I get my pitcher in the papers? Do I git on television?” The anxious cabbie was overweight, built in big chunks like a baseball catcher. He seemed to squat eternally. Most of his weight had taken up heavy housekeeping in his face and in the lower regions of his body. If he weighed 240 pounds, 189 of them resided from his hips on down. He was sloppily constructed.
The Great Brainstorm said, “I guarantee it. You’ll be on the day after tomorrow morning news. The Today show. Johnny Carson. You’ll be the most popular cabdriver in the Big Apple. Only one thing. You can’t say nothing to nobody about this till after it hits the fan tomorrow at the United Nations.”
“The one thing I can keep is a secret,” the flabby cabbie said excitedly.
The cabbie was gone now, and Great Brainstorm sat behind his desk brainstorming crazily, his heart thumping like thunder in his chest, thoughts crowding one another in his mind like the traffic on old Broadway just at curtain time. How would he carry it off? Should he get back to the President with this new development? The poor gullible good-hearted President would probably forbid him to take any action. To hell with it. He would do this one on his own. God had given him the brainstorm.
Then he thought it over, then thought perhaps he’d better not risk going against the specific orders of his personal friend the President, the Great God notwithstanding. He could hear the voice of the President clearly now. “His fuh-fucking Excellency’s security is your only fuh-fuh-fucking responsibility. And don’t you fucking forget it.”
He dialed the direct line to the President in the White House. He listened to it ring exactly a dozen times, which was his rule and habit. His mind strayed away off somewhere in the wild blue yonder, perhaps way up there in “them Green Pastures.” He’d loved that moom pitcher. And just as he was about to say, “Fuck it,” and hang up, he heard the President’s first personal secretary on the other end. He came back down to earth instantly. “This is Carlton Carson, Marybelle. Can you get the President on the line for me? It’s an emergency. You mights even say it’s urgent even.” He was drenched with perspiration. His mind was leaping all over the place as if invaded by a swarm of locusts.
Marybelle said, “The President is involved on the highest level. Triple A-One Priority. His orders were for him not to be disturbed under any circumstances short of Doomsday Emergency. He’s interviewing a young thing for special secretarial work. Cute little thing. With scarlet ribbons in her hair. Somebody must’ve given her the message. And you know how that is. You know how conscientious he is about things like that. It might take him all night long. Top secret and that kind of stuff.” She paused. “Would you have a message I might pass along to him?”
“No thank you, Marybelle.” Brainstorm Carson hung up, thinking:
“Fuck the fucking President!”
29
It was a decision arrived at after much discussion, that Himself should not accompany the delegation to the United Nations. SS persons would be all over the place. CIA, FBI, Secret Service, G-persons, T-persons, men and women. Someone might notice his strong resemblance to the real Jaja. There was no sense taking chances at this late hour. Of course, Jimmy Jay heartily agreed, or seemed to, or pretended to. Even so, it was extremely hurtful to him. He felt left out, adrift and rudderless, like a man without a country. His mind accepted the wisdom of it, but his feelings were as if they lived on another planet altogether. What hurt more than he was willing to admit, even to himself, was the fact that Maria seemed wholeheartedly to agree that he be left out of everything. It didn’t matter whether it was true or not. It was the way it made him agonize. He couldn’t give her up as easily as she seemed to be able to give him up. The poor boy from Lolliloppi suffered bitterly. Felt profoundly sorry for himself.
* * *
Just as the real PM was about to leave backstage for the widest broadest most far-reaching stage on this crazy planet earth, Brainstorm Carson came backstage with his favorite fat-faced cabbie. The real Jaja had just risen from his chair in which he had been seated chatting with his cabinet members. He was resplendent in his long silken burgundy boubou underneath a jaunty Touré chapeau. He wore the golden map of Africa as an amulet around his neck. The real PM was splendor personified, and effortlessly.
Brainstorm Carson was momentarily intimidated by so much magnificent Blackness in the flesh. So much awesome majesty, but only momentarily. For he was, after all, a red-blooded American patriot of the first water, and the Mississippi River itself ran in his bloodstream. He stood now before the awesome Jaja.
Even though he sensed a disturbing difference between this PM and the one he had become accustomed to deal with, he nevertheless turned to his favorite flabby cabbie. “Is this the man you drove out to Jamaica?”
“Without a doubt,” agreed the flabby cabbie.
“You absolutely sure?”
“Sure as I am of the nose that’s on your face.”
The simplistic mention of Carlton Carson’s nose made the SS chief’s heavy nostrils flare and glow suddenly like a red light at the intersection. Brainstorm Carson possessed a proud bulbous nose that reminded, especially his New York colleagues, of bagels, two of them, situated contiguously in the middle of his pudgy face. He was breathing now heavily through his bagels, puffing, snorting like Porky Pig, for whom there was a strange resemblance. “Sir,” he said to the real PM in a trembly voice, “you are an imposter. You are none other than James Jay Leander Johnson of Lolliloppi, Mississippi, better known as Shot Hooter, I mean Hot Shooter, and I hereby place you under arrest for commonist subversion,
fraudulent impersonation, and attempt to overthrow the constituted government of the Uniney States. I am duly bound to Miranda you that anything you say may be used against you in a court of law. I fur—”
* * *
Meanwhile up in the tense expectant gallery, a Black uniformed security person tapped Jimmy Jay on the shoulder and said in a strangely foreign accent Jimmy could not identify, “You’re wanted on the telephone.”
Jimmy Jay’s heart sank. He could actually feel it diving toward his stomach like a belly buster. “Wanted on the telephone?” he mumbled.
“So to speak,” the Black security person with the familiar face and the strangely unfamiliar foreign accent said. The Black security person definitely looked like someone he had seen before. Jimmy Jay was puzzled. Round-faced, Black, and formidable. “You might say ‘the die is cast.’” Familiar Face and Unfamiliar Accent then added “Or you might say the shit is about to hit the fan.”
Jimmy Jay quipped grimly, “Or you might say, as the Queen would, that the excrement has come into sharp contact with the blasted air conditioner.”
Familiar Face said, “You got it, H.E.” Now his voice sounded like the one who had offered him marty-dam.
Jimmy Jay felt tremendous shame, saw abominable disgrace, he heard the clanging of prison cells closing in around him. The Tombs? Sing Sing? Leavenworth? Atlanta? Just when he thought he was, at long last, home free. His premonitions had deserted him. PRIDE COMES BEFORE A FALL. All the signs had been there for him. The era of good feelings, the euphoria, Maria’s love. Positive signs, which must all be always read by him as negative presentiments. He felt a churning in his stomach. Perhaps his heart was down there acting up. But then he felt it thumping in his forehead, leaping loudly in his eardrums, as if his heart were geared with amplifiers.
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