Mumbo Jumbo (5 page)

Strange, Herman says, for isn’t the Koran accused of lacking chronological order, and hasn’t your prophet Muhammed been accused of being prolix contradictory and unclear by critics? Accused of inaccuracy because he confuses Miriam, Moses’ sister, with Mary.

Besides, “crazy” is a strange description for a man to be using who cane-whipped those flappers outside the Cotton Club just because they wore their dresses short, LaBas accuses.

I didn’t do it, but they had it coming. This time a cunning smile sweeps Abdul’s face.

The girls pointed you out at the lineup, why do you deny it, Abdul?

Because I didn’t do it, but they still deserved what they got, wearing their dresses like that. Tricks. Sluts. Swinging their asses nasty.

Maybe they felt that they should decide themselves what was best for them to wear, Abdul. It wasn’t any of your business. And if you weren’t the person who meted out those beatings of the high-yellow chorus girls, why were you suspiciously loitering about the Cotton Club?

None of your business, gris-gris man, Abdul utters with contempt.

Sounds as if you’ve picked up the old Plymouth Rock bug and are calling it Mecca. In the ancient Egyptian religions the emblems used in ritual were so bold that foreign countries burned their temples of worship and accused the participants of “obscenity” and “pornography.”

Abdul sees that the doorway is empty. Deprived of an audience, he changes his demeanor. He suddenly becomes polite affable patient reasonable.

O.K. LaBas, Herman. You got me. Johnny James Chicago South Side. Are you satisfied? I wasn’t born with a caul on my face, PaPa LaBas. Nor was my coming predicted by a soothsayer as yours was, Black Herman, the old woman who predicted that you would be “the marvel of your age.” I haven’t developed a Hoo Doo psychiatry as you have, PaPa LaBas, nor can I talk to animals or spend 1 dollar twice as you’ve done, Herman. You see, while you are cloistered protected by your followers and patrons and clients I’m out here on the street watching what was once a beautiful community become a slave hole. People are beginning to trickle in here from down home and I’ll bet that sooner or later there will be an exodus rivaling the 1 of the Good Book. Who is going to help them? Happy Dust is here now. What strange enslaving drugs will be here later? Where are these people going to work and who is going to feed them? Are they going to eat incense, candles? Maybe what you say is true about the nature of religions which occurred 1000s of years ago, but how are we going to survive if they have no discipline? Look. I spent 9 long years in prison for stabbing a man who wanted to evict my mother because she wouldn’t fuck him. I walked into the house 1 day and there he was, her clothes nearly off and his grubby fat fingers plying her flesh. 9 years I was in the clink and 2 of them in solitary confinement. It was then that I began to read omnivorously. I always wondered why the teachers just threw the knowledge at us when we were in school, why they didn’t care whether we learned or not. I found that the knowledge which they had made into a cabala, stripped of its terms and the private codes, its slang, you could learn in a few weeks. It didn’t take 4 years, and the 4 years of university were set up so that they could have a process by which they would remove the rebels and the dissidents. By their studies and the ritual of academics the Man has made sure that they are people who will serve him. Not 1 of them has equaled the monumental work of J. A. Rogers, a 1-time Pullman porter. Some of these people with degrees going around here shouting that they are New Negroes are really serving the Man who awarded them their degrees, who has initiated them into his slang and found them “qualified,” which means loyal. I applied myself. I went through biochemistry philosophy math, I learned languages, I even learned the transliteration and translation of hieroglyphics, a skill which has come in handy recently. I had no systematic way of learning but proceeded like a quilt maker, a patch of knowledge here a patch there but lovingly knitted. I would hungrily devour the intellectual scraps and leftovers of the learned. Every day I would learn a new character and learn how to mark it. It occurred to me that I was borrowing from all of these systems: Religion, Philosophy, Music, Science and even Painting, and building 1 of my own composed of their elements. It was like a Griffin. I had patched something together out of my own procedure and the way I taught myself became my style, my art, my process. Look, LaBas, Herman. I believe that you 2 have something. Something that is basic, something that has been tested and something that all of our people have, it lies submerged in their talk and in their music and you are trying to bring it back but you will fail. It’s the 1920s, not 8000
B.C.
These are modern times. These are the last days of your roots and your conjure and your gris-gris and your healing potions and love powder. I am building something that people will understand. This country is eclectic. The architecture the people the music the writing. The thing that works here will have a little bit of jive talk and a little bit of North Africa, a fez-wearing mulatto in a pinstriped suit. A man who can say give me some skin as well as Asalamilakum. Haven’t you heard? This is the country where something is successful in direct proportion to how it’s put over; how it’s gamed. Look at the Mormons. Did they recruit 1000s of whites to their cause by conjuring the Druids? No, they used material the people were familiar with and added their own. The most fundamental book of the Mormon Church, the Book of Mormon, is a fraud. If we Blacks came up with something as corny as the Angel of Moroni, something as trite and phony as their story that the book is the record of ancient Americans who came here in 600
B.C.
and perished by
A.D.
400, they would deride us with pejorative adjectival phrases like “so-called” and “would-be.” They would refuse to exempt our priests from the draft, a privilege extended to every White hayseed’s fruit stand which calls itself a Church. But regardless of the put-on, the hype, the Mormons got Utah, didn’t they? Perhaps I will come up with something that will have a building shaped like a mosque, the interior furnishings Victorian, the priests dressed in Catholic garb, and soul food as offerings. What of it as long as it has popular appeal? This is the reason for Garvey’s success with the people. O yes, he may look outlandish, loud to you, but the people respect him because they know that he is using his own head and is master of his own art. No, gentlemen, I don’t think I would be so smug if I were you. The authorities are already talking about outlawing VooDoo in Harlem. These are your last great days, Herman, packing them in for 60 nights as you do your prestidigitation. A new generation is coming on the scene. They will use terms like “nitty gritty,” “for real,” “where it’s at,” and use words like “basic” and “really” with telling emphasis. They will extend the letter and the meaning of the word “bad.” They won’t use your knowledge and they will call you “sick” and “way-out” and that will be a sad day, but we must prepare for it. For on that day they will have abandoned the other world they came here with and will have become mundanists pragmatists and concretists. They will shout loudly about soul because they will have lost it. And their protests will be a shriek. A panic sound. That’s just the way it goes, brothers. You will be just a couple of eccentric characters obsolete out-of-date unused as the appendix. Funny looking like the Australian zoo. But me and my Griffin politics, my chimerical art will survive. Maybe I won’t be around but someone is coming. I feel it stirring. He might even have the red hair of a conjure man but he won’t be 1. No, he will get it across. And he will be known as the man who “got it across.” And people like you will live in seclusion and your circle will be limited and the people who read you will pride themselves on their culture and their selectiveness and their identification with the avant garde.

Well, Abdul says, looking at his watch, I have to get back to the office. I have an anthology that’s really going to shake them up when I get done translating it.

What language is it in? LaBas asks.

Hieroglyphics. Abdul starts to shake hands with Herman and LaBas but seeing a couple arriving at the doorway his friendly face becomes a scowl and he withdraws his hand.

He wags his finger in their face. And if I ever see you characters hanging around my mosque I will have my men take care of you, Abdul says, his back turned to the 2 people. He winks at LaBas and Herman and then nearly knocks over the 2 people on the way out of the room; standing in the doorway are a high-yellow woman and her bespectacled light-skinned unsteady harassed-looking male escort.

Watch out with your old short Black ugly self, she scornfully shouts as Abdul flies by the 2 and out the door.

Julius? Why don’t you do something, Julius? When these niggers manhandle me like that?

Yes dear my lovely Nubian queen, the man says meekly as he and the woman turn about and head for the other rooms. (Julius was a well-known Black doorman for a quality Gentlemen’s club, hired to bounce the literary bad niggers who might become rowdy. He was W. E. B. Du Bois’ Boswell, but Du Bois was always in conference to him.)

PaPa LaBas and Black Herman move from the room and down the hall of the Townhouse now filled with people.

You know, maybe he’s got something, Herman.

Maybe so but I don’t think that he should experiment in public this way. He’s doing a lot of damage, building his structure on his feet like this. That bigoted edge of it resembles fascism. An actor…We’ll see.

PaPa LaBas reflects. Do you think we’re out of date as he said?

I know that the politicians of this era will be remembered more than me but I would like to believe that we work for principles and not for self. “We serve the loas,” as they say. Charismatic leaders will become as outdated as the solo because people will realize that when the Headman dies the movement dies instead of becoming a permanent entity, perispirit, a protective covering for its essence. Yes, Abdul will become surrounded by people who will yield inches of their lives to him at a time; become the satellites rotating about the body which gives them light; but that’s ephemeral, the fading clipping from the newspaper in comparison to a Ju / Ju Mask a 1000 years old. No, LaBas, the New York police will wipe out VooDoo just as they did in New Orleans, but it will find a home in a band on the Apollo stage, in the storefronts; and there will always be those who will risk the uninformed amusement of their contemporaries by resurrecting what we stood for.

The 2 men, PaPa LaBas and his guide Black Herman, walk into the 1920s parlor of the Townhouse. People are standing about a light-skinned-appearing man.

Well I’ll be damned, Black Herman says. It’s the President Elect, Warren Harding.

They move into the center of the room where Harding stands beneath some white chandeliers. He is on the tail end of some remarks he is making to the gathering. The Hostess stands off to the side, next to a society interviewer from the Race press. Her party is made: an unannounced visit of the next President.

As you know, Mr. James Weldon Johnson visited me in Muncie and gave me information concerning the nasty war taking place in Haiti the administration was attempting to conceal.

The guests move in as Harding reaches into his hip pocket and removes a plug of tobacco.

I think we made a good shot with the Haitian material and the administration was put on the defensive. They were hard pressed to explain why a horrid war with Marines committing so many atrocities was allowed to continue. I promised Mr. Johnson that on the way to Washington I would drop by and see him and it was he who suggested that if I attended your little party I could hear some of that good music. The sounds Mr. Daugherty my Attorney General and Florence my wife keep hidden from me. So if you don’t mind a gate crasher I think I’ll just go and dip my fork into some of those chitterlings and pigs’ feet I know you’re cooking down in the basement kitchen.

The President Elect followed by 2 of his aides walks down the steps leading to the basement as titters fly through the room.

Well I have to go, LaBas says to Herman.

Wait, I’ll walk you down the stairs.

Herman puts on his black top formal hat and black cape. They walk down the Townhouse steps. Black Herman and LaBas shake hands when they reach the sidewalk.

Keep in touch, PaPa; there are some people in the harbor who want to meet you.

Good. Call me. LaBas walks toward his car. T Malice has the night off. He turns to Black Herman, the other man approaching the end of the block.

Herman, can I give you a ride?

The man turns around. No that’s O.K. I’ll walk.

Herman?

Yes?

These young kids these days know how to give a party, don’t they?

You can say that again, Herman agrees before vanishing around the corner.

Biff Musclewhite has reduced his status from Police Commissioner to Consultant to the Metropolitan Police in the precinct in Yorktown in order to take a job as Curator of the Center of Art Detention. (More pay.) He is sitting with 1 of his old colleagues, Schlitz “the Sarge of Yorktown,” nicknamed affectionately by the police station he so often visited over the years.

They are sitting at the table of the Plantation House located in the Milky Way of Manhattan, the area of theaters and night clubs. The Southern Belle chorus line is promenading on the stage (the background of which is a riverboat) in their multipetticoated skirts, carrying parasols and wearing bonnets. Banjos strumming. Black waiters stand against the wall dressed as if they were in some 18th-century French court. White powdered wigs, frilled cuffs and shirts. The deep, blue lighting fills the club.

Gonna miss ya, Biff, remember the bags I use to bring to ya, ya got real rich outta that; the only guy retiring at $3000 per as a millionaire. I’ll bet you have 1,000,000s in stocks and bonds inside your shoeboxes.

Yes, I’ve come a long way, hobnobbing with the rich out on Long Island…Curator of a museum…a long way from that punk kid you use to cover, down in the Tenderloin. Musclewhite laughs.