Emperor of Gondwanaland (39 page)

Now the
Chicago Bluesman
was entirely under the guidance of the tugs, which drew her gradually toward the appointed dock.

Excitement filled Rufus’s breast as he contemplated the legendary towers of Manhattan. Oddly, the skyline looked much as it had in pre-Exclusionary photos. Where were all the new skyscrapers, the effusions of America’s famous vitality—?

“Gee, Mom,” said an adolescent standing near Rufus, “I’ve seen bigger buildings in Accra.”

“Hush, dear. Remember your manners.”

From the ship’s position of approximately a hundred yards out, the crowd on shore began to assume rough details. Standing on tiptoe, Rufus scanned the largest mass of white faces he had ever seen, outside of the time he and Mudiwa and the children had attended the quaint Boer Trek Festival held by that rapidly dwindling reservation-sheltered minority.

What struck Rufus first was the uniform grayness of the crowd’s dress. There was not a spot or scrap of colored adornment amidst the acres of dingy, fustian fabric except for the small Pan-African flags being waved desultorily, as if by command.

As the ship drew nearer its allotted berth at one of the Midtown docks (she could have chosen from any number of empty slots, since no other vessel of her magnitude was present), individual faces among the front ranks came into focus, causing Rufus to gasp.

These were not the keen-eyed, tanned, semi-Caucasian visages he was used to seeing here and there on the streets of Lusaka, belonging to highly regarded Pan-African “citizens of no color.” Nor did the American faces exhibit the paler but still handsome features of visiting European faculty members or, say, League of Nations officials.

The pasty faces collected to welcome the Africans were frighteningly and uniformly slack-jawed and chinless, dull-eyed, sparse-haired, and clogged-pored. It looked to Rufus like a sea of drooling imbeciles and half-wits.

From behind Rufus came the familiar droll voice of Banga Johnson.

“Three generations of inbreeding as contrasted to Africa’s three of exogamy, professor. What do you think?”

Rufus turned to confront the beskirted, bare-chested auto magnate. “Surely three generations is too short a time to produce the wrecks we see here.”

“It depends on the stock you begin with. In the Northeast, I understand Jukes and Kallikaks are preferred. Granted, these are undoubtedly extra tractable specimens massed with an eye toward good behavior and crowd control. And most assuredly there are many wild Americans who resemble your revered pioneers of yore. But I assure you, Professor Sexwale, the mass of urban Americans today are precisely as you see them now.”

“But how?”

“Have you never heard of the American Eugenics Society, Professor Sexwale, and its notorious founder, Davenport? At the turn of the century, its ostensible program was to ‘improve’ and ‘perfect’ Caucasian bloodlines. After the Exclusion, it became an arm of the government, with quite a different covert program including mass sterilizations of all remaining Asians, Mediterraneans, Catholics, Jews, homosexuals, and other minorities. As for the startling degenerative effects you now witness—well, the only science in which the United States outstrips us is a kind of narrow-minded, twisted biology. Mutagenic agents, both chemical and radionic, along with manipulation of the embryo with hormones, enzymes, and other subtle factors— Well, as a layman myself, I don’t pretend to understand all the details, but my government contacts were quite explicit. I still have nightmares about some of the photos I saw.”

At this long-dreamed-of moment, the most exciting opportunity of his professional career, when he had expected to feel only a sense of exultance and intellectual challenge, tinged perhaps with ancestral nostalgia, Rufus experienced quite a different set of feelings: primarily heartsickness and disgust. Quite a bit of this latter was directed at Banga Johnson, who Rufus now realized had been highly disingenuous in their earlier conversation.

“If you and others knew this,” challenged the professor, “why was this trip even sanctioned?”

Banga stroked his mustache with a forefinger. “I told you, my dear Rufus, that self-interest makes the world go round. America is still a rich land, if only in terms of her natural resources. Oil, timber, minerals, what have you—they’ve hardly been touched in the past sixty years of delusion and decay. You know the population of the United States in the year of the Exclusion, I assume?”

“One hundred five million, seven hundred ten thousand, six hundred and twenty,” replied Rufus with a stunned pedantic automatism.

“It’s half that now. The Americans are having a hard time even maintaining their current infrastructure. That’s why they’ve let us in. With a little luck, Pan-Africa will own this continent in a few years.”

“Why haven’t they turned to Europe or the Canadians for help?”

“Pride. Paradoxically, it’s harder for them to beg from their fellow white folks. With us, they can delude themselves that they are still the masters and we, the slaves.”

During their disturbing talk, the ship had come to rest. A broad canopied gangway was let down. In a few moments, the first of the passengers disembarked.

Meekly, in a daze, Rufus let himself be swept up in the flow.

The feebly cheering crowd, held back behind temporary barriers by mounted police, gawked and gaped as the Africans marched proudly along, following the Pan-African diplomatic delegation, which had been first off the ship. Arrayed at the foot of Broadway were dozens of horse-drawn wooden buckboards.

Into these piled the visitors for a ceremonial procession up the Great White Way.

Rufus thought initially that the antique mode of transportation was an anachronistic flourish. Then doubt assailed him.

“No autos?” inquired the professor of Banga.

“Reserved for the privileged. And most of them are vintage models held together with baling wire. Hardly comparable, say, to the Gazelle ISO that you drive.”

The first wagons set off. Down the shallow canyon they trundled at barely more than a walking pace. From those windows not boarded up leaned more Americans, emitting weak, unconvincing huzzahs and tossing shredded-newspaper confetti.

Rufus removed some of the debris from atop his head. The print was big and smeary, the few words he could discern only one syllable long. The ink stained his fingers a darker black.

After an interminable journey, they reached City Hall. In front of the building stood a stage covered with red, white, and blue bunting.

The wagons stopped to discharge the passengers, and Rufus found himself standing in the front row of the Africans at the foot of the stage.

Atop the platform was a row of folding chairs and a lectern without any visible electronics. A collection of fairly intelligent-looking dignitaries sat in the chairs. Naturally, they were all white; more remarkably, they were all males of a certain age (Rufus thought briefly of how young their current vice president, Ayobunmi Carter, would look, were she magically placed alongside these politicians). Each of the men had longish white hair and drooping planter-style mustachios. Dressed in sparkling whites, they looked to Rufus as if they’d only recently doffed their conical face-concealing hoods.

Repressing such a baseless reaction as bigoted, Rufus sought to calm himself, to appreciate the moment at hand and the days to come. Although his initial shock at the conditions here had been highly disconcerting, he was determined to make the most of this visit to this glorious country his great-grandparents had been forced to abandon.

One of the Americans approached the podium, and the murmuring Africans fell quiet.

The man spoke in the legendary New York accent (still recalled by elderly survivors of the Great Return), but larded with Southernisms. His countenance displayed unease barely masked by professional civility. Sweat dotted his brow.

“Ahem, I—that is, all of us here extend a big welcome to our visitin’ nig—free negroes. As mayor of Noo Yawk, the greatest city in the world, I’m downright proud to play host to this delegation from the upstandin’ country of Pan-Africa, which has come so far from such humble beginnins. I’m sure y’all gonna have a helluva time here. We’ve got some great activities lined up for y’all—”

“Harlem!” yelled a black voice. “We want to see Harlem!”

A chant went up among the Africans. “Harlem! Harlem! Harlem!”

The mayor’s air of nervousness visibly increased. He held up his hands for silence and was eventually rewarded, whereupon he resumed his set speech without acknowledging the interruption.

“But before then, I just wanna innerduce a little ol’ down-home boy who has a few words to say. Ladies and gentiemen and Negroes, the leader of these here United States, President Coughlin!”

The Africans applauded politely as the eldest figure on stage creakily stood and shuffled to the lectern, clutching a handful of papers. When he spoke, his age-stricken voice hinted at what must have once been a remarkably resonant instrument.

“Thank you, Mayor Duke. Good afternoon, my fellow Amero-Africans, if I may be so bold as to claim kinship with such a splendid collection of bucks and hoochie-coochie girls as I see here before me. Considering the centuries when we lived side by side, there’s probably a tiny touch of the tar brush in all of us here on this stage.”

The president paused, obviously expecting his own chuckle to be echoed. Receiving only stony silence, he squinted with a touch of irritation, at the same time shuffling his speech as if to skip over a large part.

“Well, I realize that after the rigors of your long journey you’re all eager to rest up a tad, so I won’t protract this occasion, however pleasant it might be. Let me just conclude by saying I hope America and Pan-Africa can put the past behind us and resume a fruitful relationship of long standing after an unfortunate interregnum. And now, with your permission, I’ll ask Reverend Billy to lead us in a short prayer.”

Another indistinguishable old man changed places with the president and was greeted with polite applause.

“Thank you. Let us please bow our heads. Holy Father, grant us victory over our enemies, Papist, furrin, heathen, or otherwise, and let us see them crushed into the dust and relegated to the outermost blackness of your ass-smitin’ disdain.”

Rufus withdrew a fetish of Unkulunkulu hanging from a leather cord beneath his shirt. Gazing at his compatriots, he saw many of them doing likewise, with their own particular deities.

Praying along in his own way with Reverend Billy, Rufus felt he and his countrymen could use all the celestial help they could get.

After Ambassador Jimiyu Hendricks received a golden key to the city from Mayor Duke, the Africans were reloaded onto the buckboards and transported crosstown to their lodgings at the Waldorf-Astoria.

Soon, Rufus found himself alone in what he had to admit was a luxurious and spacious room. If it had had running water, it would have been perfect.

Gazing out his window at Park Avenue, where sheep grazed on the median, Rufus fell into a reverie that was interrupted by a knock on his door.

“Come in,” said the professor, half expecting Banga Johnson.

But the visitor was an American.

The sight of him, framed in the open doorway, riveted Rufus to the spot.

Barefoot, shirtless, wearing a straw hat with attached artificial cornrow braids, dressed in patched bib overalls with one suspender strap dangling, a red bandanna hanging from a back pocket, the young man was smeared with burnt cork or some similar substance all over his exposed skin.

“Dey calls me Virgil,” said the apparition. “Virgil Cane. I’se gwine ter be yer guide.”

Rufus found his outraged voice somewhere deep down in his socks.

“What in the name of all that’s sacred are you rigged out like that for?”

Virgil looked down at himself wonderingly. “Why, Lawdy, we done figgered dis way ob dressin’ would put y’all at ease, make y’all feel at home.”

“Well, it doesn’t. Anyone in Lusaka dressed like you would be hauled off for a mental exam.”

“Lawdy, how was we’all to know—”

“And quit speaking that abhorrent patois!”

Virgil scrunched up his features. “You mean I can talk normal?”

“That’s precisely what I mean. Now, why don’t you use that pitcher and basin over there and wash that insulting makeup off?”

Fear took up residence on Virgil’s face. “Oh, no, I couldn’t do that. I was ordered to— I mean, if I ever dared—-”

Rufus sighed. “You may as well just go. I don’t need a guide anyway.”

Virgil’s terror jumped an order of magnitude. “No, please, you have to use me. They won’t let you out on the streets alone, and if I fail, then—”

The boy—he was hardly more than that—began to sob, and Rufus walked over to comfort him.

As he endeavored to assure the lad he could remain as guide, Banga Johnson emerged from the room across the hall. With him was a woman. Also in blackface, she wore a gingham outfit and headrag. Voluminous padding endowed her with an enormous rear end.

“Ah, professor, I see you’ve met your guide. Mine was identical, but I pulled a few strings and exchanged him for his female equivalent. May I introduce you to the beautiful Pearl—”

The woman tittered. “Lawdy, you gwine ter make a gal go all ober shibbers.”