Mumbo Jumbo (14 page)

Monotonously, PaPa LaBas answers some routine questions. His mind is on other things.

 a
handbill for the play
Harlem
by Wallace Thurman

H
INCKLE VON VAMPTON READS
of PaPa LaBas’ grim discovery on the front page of the New York
Sun:

HATE MONGERER MEETSWELL DESERVED END

HINT WAR BETWEEN BLACK FACTIONS

NO SUSPECTS IN MURDER OF CULTIST

MU’TAFIKAH
QUESTIONED

Later Hinckle Von Vampton’s car pulls to the front of Buddy Jackson’s cabaret. It is 1 of the more famous 1s in New York City along with Percy Brown’s Gold Grabbers, Edmund’s, Leroy’s and Connie’s. The basement is an Indonesian soul food restaurant featuring such exotic numbers as:

CHICKEN IN COCONUT MILK

BAR-BE-CUED FISH

BREGEDEL DJAGUNG

FRIED PINEAPPLE.

On the 2nd floor is a theater where all the young Black actors come to recite Shakespeare, dreaming of becoming a 2nd Ira Aldridge, the famed Negro thespian.

W.W., Hubert “Safecracker” Gould and Von Vampton alight from the car and head toward the entrance of the cabaret where the review is in progress. The mulatto doorman halts their progress.

What’s wrong? queries Hinckle Von Vampton.

That man, sir, he’s a mite too dark.

Too dark? an astonished Hinckle Von Vampton replies, but isn’t this Harlem where the darkies cavort?

They cavorts, sir, but on stage; we cater to Brown Yellow and White.

That’s ridiculous, Hubert “Safecracker” Gould remarks. I’ve seen Buddy Jackson in this place and he is as black as anthracite as black as ebony as black as the abyss, an Ethiopian if there ever was.

That’s different, sir.

What do you mean different? Hinckle Von Vampton asks.

He’s the owner.

I see, Hinckle Von Vampton says, turning to W.W. You will have to wait outside in the car. Here is 3 cents, go and buy yourself an August Ham.

An August Ham, Hink? What’s that?

Dammit, W.W.! An August Ham is watermelon. Don’t you know your own people’s argot? Get with it, Jackson, maybe it will enliven your articles a bit. You still haven’t made a transition from that Marxist rhetoric to the Jazz prose we want.

Once inside Hinckle Von Vampton pornographic publisher begins to relax, drink champagne and savor the high-yellow chorus as they go through some dandy routines. They end their review with the internationally famous Cakewalk which already the French are calling “poetry-in-motion.”

There is a hubbub at the door. A party of people, Brown, Yellow and White enter. They are directing their attention at a Brown man in the middle of all of this. Vampton recognizes him as Major Young, a young man who is gaining a wide audience. The interracial revelers are having a good time. Langston Hughes, writing of this period, said: “We liked people of any race who smoked incessantly, drank liberally, wore complexion and morality with loose garments, made fun of those who didn’t do likewise…After fish we went to two or three in the morning and drank until five.” Abdul had accused them of “womanizing” and said they were merely trying to “show out” and should cultivate discipline by perhaps fasting sometimes: living off carrots and grasshoppers or even lying upon a bed of nails.

Hinckle Von Vampton, recognizing Major Young, ambles Hubert over to his table where Hubert places a note under his glass.

Major Young rises, excuses himself and walks over to Hinckle’s table. He shakes hands with Hinckle, who rises slightly. “Safecracker” Gould “the only man of his generation who didn’t go to jail” is too busy, writing down the “nigger mumbo jumbo words” he is hearing from the surrounding tables.

Safecracker! Hinckle says and the startled “Safecracker” turns to him.

We have a guest, say hello to Major Young.

They all sit down and Hinckle orders some more champagne and a Black, trucking waiter comes to his table.

I have read your poetry, my friend, and I must say that I am immensely impressed. Why it soars and it plumbs and it delights and saddens, it sounds like that great American poet Walt Whitman.

Major Young looks at him suspiciously. Walt Whitman never wrote about Harlem.

Well…let’s just say it is polished as Whitman’s attempts are.

Polished? I don’t understand. Is writing glassware?

Insolent coon on my hands,
Hinckle thinks. Well, let’s just say that I enjoyed your work, my friend. The poems were quite raw and earthy; Harlem through and through.

Young smiles wryly.

I happen to run a little risqué sheet called the
Benign Monster.
It’s to get White Americans a little loose. I’ve read Freud very much and my little sheet brings it all out into the open. Allows it to all hang out. We need a contribution from someone like yourself Mr…er…Mr…something in dialect with lots of razzledazzle in it.

Yes I’ve heard of your magazine, it employs that W. W. Jefferson, he’s really dopey and glib. And why does he use that jargon so?

O don’t worry about him. We just keep him around as a Go-Get.

As a Go-Get? I don’t understand.

Well Go-Get cigarettes and coffee; if you wish we can easily dismiss him.

No, that won’t be necessary because I haven’t decided to submit anything. I didn’t like those drawings you put on somebody’s poems in the 1st issue. They were racist and insulting.

O you mean those. O they were just to perk up interest. Whatever you decide, we’ll publish it. It will be an excellent welcome relief from that Nathan Brown. He’s so arid and stuffy with his material that Phi Beta Kappa key must have gone to his head. Does he know what those references mean? Or is that just half-digested knowledge. He seems to pretend a good deal.

Nathan Brown happens to be a very accomplished poet and a friend of mine. Is it necessary for us to write the same way? I am not Wallace Thurman, Thurman is not Fauset and Fauset is not Claude McKay, McKay isn’t Home. We all have our unique styles; and if you’ll excuse me I think I will join my friends.

Well here let me give you my card. Keep in touch.

If I was in my own territory Perry Street in Greenwich Village I’d give that nigger the caning he’d never forget. Who is he to tell me things like that?
Hinckle thinks.

Gould lifts his head as Hinckle raises his voice.

Did you see that, “Safecracker”?

What do you expect from these New Negroes or whatever they call themselves. Uppity. Arrogant. If they were real Black men they would be out shooting officials or loitering on Lenox Ave. or panhandling tear-jerking pitiful autobiographies on the radio, wringing them for every cheap emotion they can solicit. They would be massacred in the street like heroes and then…why I could snap pictures of the corpses and make a pile of dough. That’s why they should do this if they were real Black men.

Did you get what you wanted, “Safecracker”? The evening is not entirely lost?

Yes, the dances were difficult to write down though. Eccentric and individual. But soon I will have stolen enough to have my own Broadway musical. I think I’ll call it
Harlem Tom-Toms.

Hinckle laughs as he leaves the quarter. You know, “Safecracker,” what we used to call you in the Templars. What…O yes…the “Caucasian blackamoor.”

C
HARLOTTE HAS STRUCK IT
wealthy with her Plantation House routine. She possesses a richly endowed apartment as a result of her ability to Stop the Show. The bathroom features a dresser, the color of ivory, with gold trimmings; a sunken marble tub which has steps leading down into it. Doctor Peter Pick, her “Lucky Piece,” has phoned that morning. He desires to “call on you” for the purpose of discussing changes in the routine. Charlotte lounges on her green-velvet American Empire sofa. On a table are the liquors Charlotte enjoys. Cream-colored ones made with banana, vanilla beans, and her favorite liquor Crème de Rose. There are many types of roses located in vases throughout her apartment.

The doorbell rings. Her Irish maid Suzie Mae answers. It is Doctor Peter Pick dressed in his Moorish outfit, featuring baggy pants and a fez. He kisses Charlotte’s hand and then takes a seat in a chair facing her. The maid serves him a drink of whiskey Charlotte’s stashed out of sight of the feds. The little fellow seems troubled. There is a “disconcerting expression on his countenance,” as they say. He’s a Pick but even Picks have emotions.

What’s troubling you, Peter?

Well Charlotte, in order to understand you must realize that before I joined your act I had a past. Before becoming a familiar adhesive to you, your insurance, the electric blanket which covers the long winter nights of your act, my sperm really got around.

Get to the point Peter, the heart of the matter.

Charlotte, it’s not that I don’t think we’re a good team. With my struts, grinds, and shuffles and your torch and palmistry we are going a long way. I received the Craw Tickler of the Year award from the Drama critics; and millionaires call on you for you to teach them dilute dances of The Work. Why, all the Fat Cats, Swells, and S.O.B.s out on Manhattan’s Milky Way catch our act. I am the best Pick on the T.O.B.A., better than Sophie Tucker’s Picks, or Gussie Francis’ Picks. Why, the other Picks call me a Pick’s Pick, thus my name Doctor Peter Pick…

Peter please, what’s the matter? Charlotte asks, seeing tears well in the little fellow’s light-brown eyes.

Charlotte, I have been all kinds of Picks to you. I’ve been your Sore Pick your Happy Pick your Vicious Pick. I have made stage love to you as well as made denigrating remarks regarding your morals and your anatomy in the presence of bankers with diamond stickpins on their chests, Rotarians, and visiting knights. Why, we leave them in the aisles, Charlotte. But Charlotte, I think that we ought to turn the act around. Stand it on its head. Upside-down the Plantation.

How’s that, Peter?

Why don’t you conjure me and go through the motions of putting me down. The Angel will pass and he will be of no assistance. The demon will also pass and he too will be of no help. Then you whisper into my ear, I read the words and then you disappear. And for those who missed the first act we can have a summary of the preceding show done in the beginning, as they do on the serials…

You certainly keep up, Peter. Why, I think that’s a wonderful idea.

You mean you like it?

Of course Peter, we will begin tonight.

O thank you Charlotte…

And wait here. Charlotte goes into the bedroom and returns with a tattered little blue-covered book.

This is PaPa LaBas’
Blue Back: A Speller,
required reading at Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral. Perhaps there’s something that you can use when sending me back to make it appear more convincing.

O thank you Charlotte! You know I always wanted to be a choreographer but with Jes Grew about no one would heed my labanotations. Maybe Stagecraft will be a new career for me. Perhaps it is easier to switch the conflicts about than educate the masses to a new melody.

Peter, you do have a gift.

Let’s drink to our new act, Charlotte.

Upon Charlotte’s call the maid enters the room.

O there you are, Suzie Mae. Would you please serve Doctor Peter Pick another drink.

The Irish maid, who ain’t been in the country long enough to learn good English, replies in her semiliterate manner. Why natural, Miss Charlotte. Natural.

S.R.: UPON HEARING ETHEL WATERS SING “THAT DA-DA-STRAIN” AND A JAZZ BAND PLAY “PAPA DE-DA-DA” EUROPEAN PAINTERS TAKE JES GREW ABROAD. IT HAS BECOME WHAT THE WALLFLOWER ORDER FEARED: PANDEMIC. AT HOME, YOUNG PEOPLE CHEER THE BAYERDOFFER DEVILS WHO’VE CHALLENGED GRAND OPERA TO A DUEL AT THE METROPOLITAN THEATER IN LOS ANGELES… THOUSANDS BOO VERDI’S TRIUMPH AS A HOMETOWN DECISION… THE LOOTING CONTINUES UNTIL DAWN… WORLD-WIDE M
U’TAFIK
AH GIVE JES GREW ENCOURAGEMENT BY PUTTING IT UP TAKING IT IN AND HIDING IT OUT… ON WALL STREET SAXOPHONES MAKE A STRONG RALLY WHILE VIOLINS ARE DOWN. THE BALLET LINGERS ON DEATH ROW AND…
THIS JUST
IN! OUTBREAKS OF JES GREW 60 MILES FROM NEW YORK CITY. 30,000 CASES REPORTED INCLUDING COWS, CHICKENS, SHEEP AND HORSES, DISPROVING SPECULATIONS THAT ITS EFFECTS ARE CONFINED TO THE HUMAN SPECIES. EVEN THE SAP IN THE MAPLE TREES MOVES NASTY. LOCAL CHURCHES SCHEDULE LAST-MINUTE MIDNIGHT SERVICES TO INDULGE IN PRAYERFUL ANTIDOTES AGAINST THE PLAGUE.
Mary Lou William
s
composed a “Roman Catholic Jazz Mass” while outside in the rain, on the night of the performance, J.G.C.s chant
e
d, “Mary Lou, Mary Lou, what’s wrong with you?”
—I.R.)

T
HERE IS A KNOCK
at the
Mu’tafìkah
basement door. A husky Black man of about 45 with folds in a hanging jaw accompanied by 2 others of similar physical mold enters the basement headquarters. He wears a camelhair overcoat; black kid gloves and light-colored snap brim hat with a creased top and narrow black pointed-toe shoes covered with arabesque pattern.

His eyes wander about the ceiling. He then stares straight ahead at the people working at the tables. Packing masks, wood sculpture and other amulets.