Mumbo Jumbo (22 page)

While they await the entrance, a man at the side of the room taunts the elegant tails-wearing red-cravated patent-leather-shoe-wearing musician.

Hey man, tickle out a few hot licks!

I beg your pardon but I only deal with the Classics. Chopin, Liszt, and their imitators are my forte.

Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusssssssssss eeeeeeeee me! the man mimics the pianist, arching his nose in imitation.

The glistening party enters the room. Hinckle, the Hostess and the Talking Android face the people now in the straight-back chairs that have been assembled in the living room.

Ladies and gentlemen, we have the pleasure of introducing tonight Mr. Hinckle Von Vampton, editor of a very thrilling delightful and inspiring magazine, the
Bombay Master…

Hinckle whispers into the woman’s ear. She continues in a singsong voice.

…O, I stand corrected. The
Benign Monster
magazine, you know, which was recently banned in Boston and has a colored man writing for it. Mr. Von Vampton has brought with him a man he considers 1 of the most exciting young poets to come on the scene, a man who is the dominant figure in Negro letters today, a man who like no 1 else captures the complexity of Negro Thought…Mr. Hubert “Safecracker” Gould!!!

The Hostess and Von Vampton take their seats as Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, white gloves, blackface, black tuxedo, walks to the back of the stand and begins to read his epic “Harlem Tom Toms.”

HARLEM TOM TOMS

FOR BJF

I

O Harlem, great Negro sea of unrest

Allow me to dip my feet into thy Black

Waters where chippies swim like sad-

Eyed fish

Engulf me, Harlem. Submerge me in thy watery

Cabaret until one hand surfaces only

Yass! Yass!

O Harlem, if you are a sea, why… why

Dat makes Lenox Ave. one of your many

Swift currents, grappling me as I

Beckon to big Black bucks—lifeguards

On de sho. Up on de sho O Harlem

Where jazz is a bather writhing in de

Sand and claw-snapping crabs do dey

Duty. Where dippermouthed trumpets

Summon de tides

Root-t-toot! Root-t-toot! Root-t-toot!

And de tom toms play in sea shells

Da-bloom, Da-bloom, Da-bloom-a-loom

II

Yonder. What is dat yonder?

What is dat I see ova dare?

Could dat be some sort of white

Liner invading thy sea O Harlem?

Polluting thy waves, dirtying thy crests

O Harlem?

Let us torpedo de mother, O Harlem

Let us get rid of de bitch!
(expressions of shock from the audience)

Befo she collides with us

De steamship of de White whore

Dreadful mistress who has ruined

Many a sea

Chumping some of dem. Streaming

Dem making dem into

Rivulets

O Harlem, let me drag you for

Her drowned victims

Capsizing in thy many streets

A demon-headed marlin Harlem

I is. Yass yass I is. I is

A zoot-suited shark avoiding

De narks, harpoon sharp

I tear into thy whale of a mouth

Like a catfish my whiskers bristle

As I drink from

De dark caves at thy bottom

Your octopi wrap thine

Many tentacles about my heart

O Harlem, and do you know what?

Dere’s more. Plenty more O

Harlem inspiration of my pen

I be a minnow, a

Measly, minnow in

Comparison to thy…

But before he can continue the guests are interrupted by an argument emanating from the vestibule. The Hostess’ countenance smiling through the recital becomes a frown as she rushes out to see her servants arguing with PaPa LaBas, Black Herman, T Malice and 6 tall Python men accompanying them.

Why…why get out of here you men you gate-crashers I don’t want no conjure mens’ detectives in this house you ain’t society you ain’t money you ain’t no artist you don’t have no degree.

Move out of the way lady, Black Herman says.

When some of the male guests come to the Hostess’ assistance PaPa LaBas reveals his pearl-handled .22 and the woman faints dead away. LaBas and Herman walk into the room where the poetry reading is taking place and before the startled guests Black Herman announces:

Hinckle Von Vampton and Hubert “Safecracker” Gould? Come quietly.

Some other people rise from their chairs.

What is the meaning of this intrusion? or something on that order, they ask.

Especially pushy, Hank Rollings the Guianese art critic, an authority on Vermeer, especially resents this embarrassment of Hinckle Von Vampton; why, the man looked as if he had connections and might be able to get him a show; after all, there were so few Blacks who were as ready as he was.

Yes…LaBas, Herman, explain your actions.

This is the meaning, LaBas replies, walking over to Hubert “Safecracker” Gould and grazing a quick finger across his face, leaving a white streak. He then displays the black paint on his finger to the audience.

The people are shocked. The room buzzes.

We have come to arrest this man and his sponsor Hinckle Von Vampton.

Von Vampton begins to ease away from the room but is stopped by Buddy Jackson and some of his men.

That’s not enough of an explanation, says the Guianese art critic whose reviews were phony, completely devoid of feeling; some kind of dry uninteresting geometry, intellectual calisthenics for stale Atonists, his way of convincing them that he was “human too.” We won’t yield these gentlemen until you explain rationally and soberly what they are guilty of. This is no kangaroo courtroom, this is a free country.

Hinckle and Gould nod their heads in agreement. Yes…that’s correct, you will have to explain what charges you have against us before we will go anywhere, Hinckle says, emboldened by the Guianese’s support.

Black Herman looks to PaPa LaBas.

Well if you must know, it all began 1000s of years ago in Egypt, according to a high up member in the Haitian aristocracy.

A
CERTAIN YOUNG PRINCE
who was allergic to thrones attended a university in Nysa, a town in Arabia Felix (now Yemen). It was a land of dates coffee goats sheep wheat barley corn and livestock. Across the Red Sea were Ethiopia and the Sudan where the young man would commute bringing his knowledge of agriculture and comparing notes with the agriculturalists of these lands. There were agricultural celebrations; dancing and singing, and in Egypt this rhythm was known as the Black Mud Sound. At this time in history those who influenced the growth of crops and coaxed the cocks into procreation were seen as sorcerers. The theater accompanying these rites, these agriculturalists’ rites, was a theater of fecundation generation and proliferation, a theater that Victorian Sir James Frazer of
The Golden Bough
calls “lewd and profligate.” The processes of blooming were acted out by men and women dancers who imitated the process of fertilization. They would play upon instruments, reeded stringed and percussive, as they acted out the process; open their valves, and allow nature to pour through its libation. Osiris was so adept at the mysteries of agriculture that people began to circulate stories that his mother was the sky Nut and the earth his father Geb.

As Osiris danced he would experiment, but the dances were not esoteric, they in fact were quite basic and they caught-on. In the Sudan and Ethiopia he became known as “the man who did dances that caught-on,” infected other people. Well, Osiris lived many years studying under the elders at Nysa until he returned to Egypt. (Some say he was driven out of Ethiopia, where his dances were banned.) In Egypt a dark cloud lay over the land. Cannibalism was still practiced.

Osiris was regarded by his brother Set as a dilletante, a recipient of a far-out education and one who would not know how to deal firmly with the enemies of the Egyptian people. That was Set, the stick crook and flail man. Dealing firmly with enemies, holding them by the hair and chopping off their heads. Set wanted to use the death of their father as an excuse for invading foreign countries. Set hated agriculture and nature which he saw as soiled dirty grimy etc. He was arrogant jealous egotistical and when Osiris issued a ban on men eating men, introducing the techniques he learned from the long-bearded Black men in the university at Nysa, Set began to plot his brother’s downfall. He was also jealous that Osiris was to marry their sister Isis. Fine as she could be. Firm breasts, eloquence, all of those qualities that are later to show up in her spiritual descendant Erzulie (love of mirrors, plumes, combs, an elaborate toilet) whom we in the United States call the girl with the red dress on. (Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker are 2 aspects of Erzulie.) People hated Set. He went down as the 1st man to shut nature out of himself. He called it discipline. He is also the deity of the modern clerk, always tabulating, and perhaps invented taxes.

The eating of barley wheat and corn spread through Egypt like a prairie fire and the people began to do the Black Mud sound, to do alchemical theater (theater of the “Black country”), and that got Set even more annoyed. The people would plant during the day and at night would celebrate dancing singing shaking sistrums and carrying on so that Set couldn’t get sleep and was tired when he went out on the field and drilled marched and gave commands to others. 1 day Osiris performed a miracle. He danced so well that the vines began to imitate a particular slow sinuous movement and from that day to this we have the creeping vine. Osiris was called the Bull by the Egyptians who loved him and greeted him as he toured Egypt with his musicians and their sets of decoration having to do with procreation.

Set couldn’t stand it. He would stand off to the side mad, balling his fists and spouting invective. He considered the music “loud” and “boisterous.” Sometimes the dances were performed by pigmies Osiris imported from the South because they were able to execute the “dance of the Gods.” 1 night Set went downstairs and told everybody to “cut out that racket.” He was greeted only by catcalls and boos and when a young woman tried to persuade him to dance with her he hurried from the room to the general amusement of the court. And when later a guard came upon him trying out these dances himself in secret, the gossip leaked all over Egypt and he became the laughing stock of the country. Set can’t dance became the cry. Even Hully Gullying children on the street would point out Set as the man who can’t shake it ’til he breaks it. The freak from Matovani. That did it. Set would show them. Happy all the time. Enjoying themselves when there was hard work to be done, countries to invade, populations to subjugate. Egypt was prospering under Osiris and there was peace.

People were eating good, the crops were abundant, things were going smoothly and Osiris and Isis were happily married. Their sister Nephthys and her husband, their brother Set, didn’t make out so well. He spent most of his time “out with the boys”; legislators, an unpopular group of poets who went about Egypt telling Egyptians that they could do better that they weren’t ready and that they ought to try to make something out of themselves. Make ready for what? 1 man asked at one of their whistle stops. Ready for progress? Invading foreign countries and killing? The people didn’t go for it and sarcastically called them The First Poets because in Egypt at the time of Osiris every man was an artist and every artist a priest; it wasn’t until later that Art became attached to the State to do with it what it pleased.

Then something strange happened. People began to do the dance of Osiris and it would interrupt their tilling of the soil. It would hit them at all times of the day and some of them would wander through the streets talking out of their heads and making strange signs. Set circulated a rumor that this was because Osiris didn’t really know the alchemical arts and had brought a curse upon Egypt. Osiris was worried and the people were grumbling. Well, there was a certain artist down near the harbor who painted arks. He was a man who had once made-out with Osiris’ mother and had a big reputation for his decorative work. He called on Osiris 1 day and argued his theory that the outbreaks occurred because the mysteries had no text to turn to. No litany to feed the spirits that were seizing the people, and that if Osiris would execute these dance steps for Thoth he would illustrate them and then Osirian priests could determine what god or spirit possessed them as well as learn how to make these gods and spirits depart.