Mumbo Jumbo (13 page)

Why would you give me such responsibility? I’m just 1 man. Not Faust nor the Kaiser nor the Ku Klux Klan. I am an individual, not a whole tribe or nation.

That’s what I’m counting on. But if there is such a thing as a racial soul, a piece of Faust the mountebank residing in a corner of the White man’s mind, then we are doomed. It always seems that we talk to the many and then the few and then we are down to 1 man and just as the war between the races is about to begin that 1 man becomes a few and then the many until the next time around and we turn our back on 1 another before the whole procedure begins again. Perhaps 1 day it will be the many and stay there.

Berbelang rises from the counter under the scrutiny of the counterman’s wet crocodile eye. The eye which peered above hot primal mud.

Where are you off to, Berbelang?

I have to get back to the basement. I have some more thinking and planning to do. Maybe in a few days I can get back home. I haven’t seen Earline since the day before yesterday.

Berbelang leaves Thor sitting at the table; as he leaves, the counterman spits on the floor.

Thor hasn’t seen Earline since the night of the Rent Party. He can’t understand why Berbelang never permitted Earline in the
Mu’tafikah
plans.
Why did he wish to protect her?

The counterman turns to Thor.

1 thing I can’t understand is guys like you mixing with the likes of these niggers.

My father owns the chain.

What?

My father owns the restaurant chain. He’s your employer.

The man’s lips begin to twitch as rapidly as butterfly wings flutter. The wet toothpick drops to the floor.

There is silence as Thor watches Berbelang walk down the street toward the basement hideout. Long gliding strides as if he were wafting toward the basement door.

…The counterman walks over to the table. Cleans it off.

There’s a little more coffee in the pot, sir, would you like some?

Thor deep in thought looks up.

O yes…Right, I’d like some more.

Nevertheless necromancy persisted, and on occasion…it no longer lurked in dark corners and obscene hiding-holes but flaunted its foul abomination unabashed in the courts of the Palace and at noon before the eyes of the superstitious capital.

Montague Summers

The History of Witchcraft and Demonology

A
FTER MEETING WITH TOP
aides, Attorney General Harry M. Daugherty faces the newsreel cameras and microphones. He reads recommendations in a bill to be sent to Kongress. A way of allaying the Jes Grew crisis which threatens our National Security, survival and just about everything else you can think of. He adopts a plan based upon the ideas of Irene Castle, the woman who in 1915 inspired a generation of young women to cast aside their corsets and petticoats. He delivers the Plague edict. Pelvis and Feets Kontrols.

Do not wriggle the shoulders.

Do not shake the hips.

Do not twist the body.

Do not flounce the elbows.

Do not pump the arms.

Do not hop—glide instead.

Drop the Turkey Trot, the Grizzly Bear, the Bunny Hug, etc. These dances are ugly, ungraceful, and out of fashion.
*

From the bedroom of the White House, where he sits sipping whiskey, Warren Harding glares down at his Attorney General. A mere Mason, he is helpless to prevent what is about to take place. Raids on Washington Speaks go on until dawn.
NO DANCING!
signs of huge black letters and exclamation points are posted throughout the city. Anybody caught Doing it! Doing it! Doing it! is a federal crime.

It has been a busy day for reporters following Jes Grew. The morning began with Dr. Lee De Forest, inventor of the 3-element vacuum tube which helped make big-time radio possible, collapsing before a crowded press room after he pleaded concerning his invention, now in the grips of Jes Grew.

“What have you done to my child? You have sent him out on the street in rags of ragtime to collect money from all and sundry.

“You have made him a laughing stock of intelligence, surely a stench in the nostrils of the gods of the ionosphere.”
*

*
Modern Dancing—
Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle.

*
This Fabulous Century: 1920-1930,
Vol. 3—Time-Life Books.

I
T IS 2:00 A.M.
Rain has fallen and created many water puddles in the streets of Harlem. Moving on an invisible cord, H.V.V. climbs the steps, a spider swollen on snake venom, of the building where Abdul’s office is located. All wormy and creepy-like, H. “Safecracker” Gould follows behind. The strange pair reach the top of the landing and are confronted with the glass door of Abdul’s office. It has the name of his magazine on it. They knock. Abdul comes to the door; he is putting his magazine together.

What do you want?

I would like to talk to you, Mr. Abdul. I am the publisher of the magazine the
Benign Monster.

Hey man, what was the idea of you putting my picture there last week without my permission. Those weren’t my views and you know it. And I didn’t like the lewd photos that accompanied the article.

O we were merely trying to give you a friendly overture, perhaps boost the circulation of your magazine. According to our ratings we’ve climbed to 10,000 circulation. We plan to double that within a short time. We thought we could run some of the anthology you have…

What anthology are you referring to? Abdul says, eying the pair suspiciously.

Why the 1 you have. Woodrow Wilson Jefferson said so…

O him. Well I don’t have it…

What do you mean, you don’t have it?

I mean just that the words were unprintable.

But the tune was irresistible…

I don’t think so. I don’t like the lyricism. That kind at least. No, I don’t have it.

“Safecracker” whispers to Hinckle Von Vampton. Let me talk to him, I know the jargon.

Look man, let’s us cop the anthology; we may lay something on you.

Who is the corny guy you brought with you? Abdul asks, raising his head from the desk where he had been assembling the mag. Look, I don’t have it.

We can have you arrested. The building code. I saw 14 violations downstairs myself. We can close down the magazine and your office. We have friends downtown.

“Safecracker” Gould reveals a pistol.

Move over, let’s look into that safe. No use reasoning with this hothead, H.

Gould points to a safe located behind Abdul.

Gould struggles with Abdul in an effort to reach the safe.

Hey man, what are you doing? Abdul swings Gould around but cries out in pain as the dagger pierces his back. After he falls to the floor mortally wounded, Hinckle Von Vampton removes the dagger from his back.

What’s the procedure now, H.?

Open the safe.

“Safecracker” Gould puts his nimble fingers to work and soon the safe swings open.

Empty!!

Well it’s not here.

Let’s leave, Hubert S. Gould nervously remarks.

No wait, I have to cover my tracks. Take care of this, he says, pointing to Abdul’s corpse.

The phone rings in Biff Musclewhite’s office. Musclewhite talks after the person on the other end has identified himself and spoken.

O I thought you’d never call…I’ve been wanting to meet you but of course realizing you would be busy with phase 2…A corpse you say to remove? Of course I will remove it at once, Grand Master. It will be done at once.

T
APPING HIS OBEAH STICK
, PaPa LaBas climbs out of his Locomobile. He walks into Abdul Hamid’s headquarters. His name appears on the glass door.

In the outer office is a desk, upon which lie magazines and newspapers including the newly published
Fire.
Its editor is Wallace Thurman; Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston are associates. Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett have contributed poetry. Woodrow Wilson Jefferson has written a review in which he said that the magazine was pretty good but the contributors would have to go a long way to catch up because “their work didn’t make you feel like you wanted to go out and pineapple a necktie store.” The review has been clipped and filed.

Ornamenting the desk are amusing lampoons carved in wood, ivory, and cast in bronze by African sculptors. They depict Whites who went into Africa seeking skins, ivory, spices, feathers and furs. The subjects are represented giving bribes, drinking gin, leading manacled slaves, wearing curious, outlandish hats and holding umbrellas. Their chalk-faces appear silly, ridiculous. Outstanding in the collection is the figure of a monkey-like Portuguese explorer, carved by an Angolan. He is obviously juiced and is sitting on a barrel. What side-splitting, bellyaching, satirical ways these ancient craftsmen brought to their art! The African race had quite a sense of humor. In North America, under Christianity, many of them had been reduced to glumness, depression, surliness, cynicism, malice without artfulness, and their intellectuals, in America, only appreciated heavy, serious works. (’Tis the cause, Desdemona.) They’d really fallen in love with tragedy. Their plays were about bitter, raging members of the “nuclear family,” and their counterpart in art was exemplified by the contorted, grimacing, painful social-realist face. Somebody, head in hands, sitting on a stoop. “Lawd, I’z so re-gusted.” Bert Williams had captured the Afro-American mask with Northrop Frye’s inverted
U
lips. But the figures on the desk, these grotesque, laughable wooden ivory and bronze cartoons represent the genius of Afro satire. They had been removed to Europe by the slavers, traders and sailors who had taken gunpowder and uniforms to Africa. They did not realize that the joke was on them. After all, how could “primitive” people possess wit. LaBas could understand the certain North American Indian tribe reputed to have punished a man for lacking a sense of humor. For LaBas, anyone who couldn’t titter a bit was not Afro but most likely a Christian connoting blood, death, and impaled emaciated Jew in excruciation. Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing. Like the Marxists who secularized his doctrine, he is always stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard. Never does 1 see him laughing until tears appear in his eyes like the roly-poly squint-eyed Buddha guffawing with arms upraised, or certain African loas, Orishas.

LaBas believed that when this impostor, this burdensome archetype which afflicted the Afro-American soul, was lifted, a great sigh of relief would go up throughout the land as if the soul was like feet resting in mineral waters after miles of hiking through nails, pebbles, hot coals and prickly things. The young poet Nathan Brown, LaBas felt, was serious about his Black Christ, however absurd that may sound, for Christ is so unlike African loas and Orishas, in so many essential ways, that this alien becomes a dangerous intruder in the Afro-American mind, an unwelcome gatecrasher into Ifé, home of the spirits. Yes, Brown was serious, but the rest were hucksters who had invented this Black Christ, this fraud, simply in order to avoid an honest day’s sweat.

Papa LaBas looks over the figures again. He grins widely. Also on the table lies a book,
Bronze Casting In Benin.
Abdul had announced to the Race press his intention to teach a course on African sculpture to the neighborhood children. He was a hard worker. Some said he could learn a language in a week. In his own land, the land from which his ancestors had been captured during Africa’s decline, Abdul would have been royalty. A prince. Here he was ridiculed and considered eccentric, even a dangerous character. No wonder he was so bitter. Who wouldn’t be?

It was when PaPa LaBas walked into the room that he saw Abdul lying head down on his desk.

There is a letter on the desk. A pink rejection slip.

Dear Abdul:

We have read with interest the manuscript entitled “The Book of Tot,” the sacred anthology. We have decided, however, things being what they are, that we cannot publish this book. It does have that certain panache, that picaresque characterization and zestful dialogue. I was also attracted to the strange almost mystical writing. But the market is overwrought with this kind of book. The “Negro Awakening” fad seems to have reached its peak and once more people are returning to serious writing, Mark Twain and Stephen Crane. A Negro editor here said it lacked “soul” and wasn’t “Nation” enough. He suggested you read Claude McKay’s
If We Must Die
and perhaps pick up some pointers. Whatever, thanks for permitting us to take a peek. Later Daddy

S.S.

PaPa LaBas notices a piece of paper in Abdul’s fist. He removes it. “Epigram on American-Egyptian Cotton”

Stringy lumpy; Bales dancing

Beneath this center

Lies the Bird.

PaPa LaBas picks up the phone and calls the police. Just as he hears the 1st ring on the other end a man bopadoped into the room. It is one of the local fences. LaBas places the phone in its receiver. The man is stunned when he sees Abdul’s corpse.

Hey what’s wrong with Abdul?

He’s been murdered.

The fence’s eyes pop.

Murdered? I was just talking to him this morning and he said he had some boxes he wanted me to look at. Said the boxes were covered with jade, emeralds, jeweled bugs, birds and snakes. That Abdul…strange dude. Who do you think did it?

I don’t know, PaPa LaBas says, dialing the phone once again.

Well I guess the bulls are going to be here. I’d better leave.

The man exits.

It must have been something to do with the anthology. Disgruntled contributor or something,
LaBas thinks.

The authorities answer.

Would you please send an ambulance to Abdul Sufi Hamid’s office on 125th St. and Lenox Ave.

We’ve already sent an ambulance to that place, buddy, answers the voice on the other end.

Strange,
LaBas thinks,
perhaps someone has already discovered the corpse and phoned.
In fact he could hear the attendants carrying stretchers climbing the steps.