Mumbo Jumbo (9 page)

The Far Eastern Museum of Cologne has discovered several items from its Chinese collection missing. To add to this, the war launched by the Order against the Haitian nation has been exposed by a well-planted headline in the New York
Sun.
More books concerning Haiti have been checked out of American libraries in a week than in the previous history of the library system. To add to that, people walk all over New York speaking Creole and wearing tropical clothes; the women long white dresses, the men linen suits. As the war drags on it arrives upon American shores. The Wallflower Order launched the war against Haiti in hopes of allaying Jes Grew symptoms by attacking their miasmatic source. But little Haiti resists. It becomes a world-wide symbol for religious and aesthetic freedom. When an artist happens upon a new form he shouts “I Have Reached My Haiti!”

Dance manias inundate the land. J. A. Rogers writes, “It is just the epidemic contagiousness of jazz that makes it, like measles, sweep the block.”
*
People do the Charleston the Texas Tommy and other anonymously created symptoms of Jes Grew. The Wallflower Order remembers the 10th-Century
tarantism
which nearly threatened the survival of the Church. Even Paracelsus, a “radical” who startled the academicians by lecturing in the vernacular, termed these manias “a disease.”

The Wallflower Order is well aware of what Jes Grew wants and what Jes Grew needs. In case they’re wrong they have other techniques. Their diagnosis is the same as PaPa LaBas’, a “so-called” astrodetective they have under surveillance.

You must capture its Celebration and then it will dissolve. It’s a new age. 1920. Sword fighting only interests the kids who attend the matinees. Douglas Fairbanks can sell Liberty Bonds and act but he is of no aid to you. The Teutonic Order is of no use. You must use something up-to-date to curb Jes Grew. To knock it dock it co-opt it swing it or bop it. If Jes Grew slips into the radiolas and Dictaphones all is lost. Luckily your scientists are working on microorganisms; minuscule replicas of yourself capable of surviving the atmosphere of any planet. Your inventors are preparing a Spaceship that will transport these microorganisms to 3 planets you’ve had your eye on. You wish all of your subjects were like them. Loyal, passive, “just doing our jobs.”

You must get your hands on Jes Grew’s hunger. That text. Last reported in the hands of a surviving member of the Knights Templar, that discredited order which once held the fate of Western Civilization in its hands until the scandal.

When Hinckle Von Vampton is shoved into the round revolving room he interrupts the Hierophant’s speculations.

This round room’s ceiling is a dome of glass through which the Hierophant can keep track of the Heavens. The 1st thing Hinckle sees is a man suffering from a condition know as kyphosis angularis standing on a ladder marking a huge map. It is his species count; the name and number of life near extinction. Dots of a dead white color are placed in Birds Reptiles Amphibians and Fish. The phone rings. The man climbs down and answers. The man grins, resumes his position, then places a dot in the watercress darter.

A huge magic snake of electric bloodless dots, and potentially deadly or benevolent depending upon how you look at it, clusters from New Orleans to Chicago on a map of the United States. Rashes are reported in Europe as well. Jes Grew begins to become pandemic, leaping across the ocean but generally forming a movement which points from Chicago to the East. On another wall are the symbols of the Atonist Order: the Flaming Disc, the $1 and the creed—

Look at them! Just look at them! throwing their hips this way, that way while I, my muscles, stone, the marrow of my spine, plaster, my back supported by decorated paper, stand here as goofy as a Dumb Dora. Lord, if I can’t dance, No one shall.

Hinckle Von Vampton, arms held by the interrogators of New Orleans’ late mayor, stands before the Hierophant 1.

Why have you removed me from the City?

Jes Grew has gripped the vitals of America, the Hierophant replies to his prisoner. You placed that headline in the New York
Sun,
our Atonist organ. We traced it to you. You knew what the script was. What we were doing in Haiti; we’ve all been through this before. And you have the nourishment of Jes Grew without which it will soon wane. Hand it over.

O I see, Hinckle replies, freeing his arms from the assistants who begin to struggle with the captive.

Leave him alone, the Hierophant orders.

I see, Hinckle says with obvious relish. Now that the Teutonics have fumbled the latest crusade you want me, a Templar, to bail you out.

The Hierophant bows his head. You know we’re in trouble, don’t you? You’ve seen the young men wearing slave bracelets, sitting in the cafés quoting nigger poetry. The young women smoking Luckies, wearing short skirts and staying out until 3:00 in the morning. If you know that we are desperate then you must know that we will go to any extreme to stop it. Therefore if you don’t yield the Text we will rub you out.

Rub me out…Hinckle smiles and begins to strut about the room. Rub me out. Gone is the rhetoric, the convoluted sentences 300 words long with many parenthetical elements and modifying clauses separated from their objects, the logic and reason you were always so pleased with. Anxious about this Jes Grew epidemic, you speak like the common bootleg merchant or heist artist.

I…I don’t want to be difficult with you, Hierophant 1 says pressing the button so that 3 weird-looking dudes in 3rd Man Theme trenches enter through doors leading to the round room. One carries the ritual dagger on a pillow…

This development doesn’t deter Hinckle.

You have a body of Thugs now who kidnap innocent people at noon time and “rub them out.” Enforcers. Torpedoes. Hoods. No longer do you quote Plato or the other obscurantists…

That’s true, the Hierophant concurs. We leave all of that to New York intellectuals with Black maids. You have 5 seconds to tell us where you put that Text or it will be your last 5 seconds.

The man with the dagger, as if prompted by some military impulse, marches to the center and snaps to attention before the Hierophant.

I don’t have it.

You what?

I can be of no assistance to you. You should have thought of the Text the dark day October 13, 1307, your King Philip 4 and the pope, Clement, he hired to do his “Dirty Work,” brought the charges against my Order, rounded up our leaders and executed them. After all we did to defend your wretched tails.

The guards exchange surprised glances. Never before have they heard Hierophant 1 addressed in such a manner.

You are still the Grand Master of the surviving Knights Templar. Arrogant, proud. We had no choice but to bring you to trial. Your Order became so powerful that it threatened ours. We are not in a position to share power. I am merely the curator, the chief janitor, the custodian of a hierarchy which extends to the very top. I was given my orders and I had the pope and my king execute them. The charges they brought against you were all proven, even “worshiping the devil in the form of a cat,” “spitting, stamping, urinating on crucifixes” as well as participating in acts in which Arabs’ pharmacopoeia was used. You were accused of sodomy and kissing the tail of the black god Baphomet…you had to be dealt with for the sake of Christendom.

Christendom? Without our Order there would have been no Christendom. We wanted to expand and we were acquiring African powers as a result of our contact with the Arabs. You should have known when your King Philip the 4th was eaten by a boar on November 29, 1314, the month after our executed leader Jacques de Molay cursed him, and when Pope Clement the 5th died on April 20, 1314, after yelling, “I’m burning up, I’m burning up,” that we learned more from the Saracens than to play chess or smoke hashish. Your Christendom was for serfs, for underlings and the peasants. You, the pope and the king, were allowed to practice ceremonies which “deviated” from the rules of us as your flunkies. “Flatfoots,” you used to call us behind our backs…You arrested us but some of us escaped. I came to America where I have been able to hold our little band together now scattered all over the globe waiting for this day…this day when you would be forced to remit your errors. And now it has arrived.

The guards exchange glances again. They can’t believe what is occurring before them. The Hierophant knows the value of maintaining mystery between him and his guards.

Please leave. We want to be alone, he says as the guards salute by bringing their fists against their chests and leave the room.

What did you do with the Text, Hinckle?

O the Text. You want the Text. You fool. Did you think that the rivals of Atonism would be quelled by giving them fellowships and grants-in-aid? Didn’t you realize that the “pagans” would refuse to be Milled and Humed at your Universities, would return to the tribes, don the Robes of the Leopard Skin Priests and purge the Atonist from their minds, girding themselves to do battle against your thing?

Hinckle, we can make a deal. The Text. Please, think of the Cross, the Virgin.

Think of the Virgin, he says. We fought and died for the Virgin the Cross and the Cup and what kind of reward did we receive? Our lands burned, our property confiscated and a humiliating trial.

We need the Text, Hinckle, I implore you, the Hierophant remonstrates, his eyes brimming with tears.

If you really must know, it’s in the hands of 14 J.G.C. individuals scattered throughout Harlem for now. Only I can call it in and anthologize it. Janitors, Pullman porters, shoeshine boys, dropouts from Harvard, musicians, jazz musicians. Its carbons are in New York, Kansas City, Oakland, California, Chattanooga Tennessee, Detroit, Mobile, Raleigh. It’s dispersed. Untogether. I sent it out as a chain book.

So that’s why my men weren’t able to find it when they ransacked your apartment?

Yes. If J.G. is indeed seeking its Text I will be able to help you out. If it’s not I will also be able to aid you; but on 1 condition.

What is the condition?

Put my Order in charge of the 2nd phase as well as the 1st. Give us a chance to redeem our good name before the world.

Out of the question, the Hierophant answers. Higher-ups will never permit such an arrangement.

Very well then. Jes Grew is inclined toward New York, because it senses that the key to its Book is there. All it needs is the list of 14. It merely will have to be told what to do and then…

All right! All right! You win. The Knights Templar will be in charge of the anti-Jes Grew serum. I have no choice. The Black Tide of Mud will engulf us all. What do you need… ?

Now you have come to your senses. 1, I will collect the Text and it will be burned. 2, I will create the Talking Android so that New York resistance will be firm if J.G. decides to make a foray into the city. A few tricks I learned at the New York
Sun
will come in handy. You see, the J.G.C.s have no control over who speaks for them. It’s in the hands of the press and radio. What we will do is begin a magazine that will attract its followers, featuring the kind of milieu it surrounds itself with. Jazz reviewers, cabarets, pornography, social issues, anti-Prohibition, placed between acres of flappers’ tits. Here we will feature the Talking Android who will tell the J.G.C.s that Jes Grew is not ready and owes a large debt to Irish Theatre. This Talking Android will Wipe That Grin Off Its Face. He will tell it that it is derivative. He will accuse it of verbal gymnastics, of pandering to White readers. He will even suggest it abandon the typewriter completely and create a Black Tammany Hall. He will describe it as a massive hemorrhage of malaprops; illiterate and given to rhetoric. And if the Talking Android is female she will shout before the Caucasian club, “They just can’t write, they just can’t write,” but then when pressed she might break into her monologue—you know the one—“My no good nigger husband who left me with these kids.” So that won’t do.

I will accomplish this within 6 months or…or…

Or what?

I will imbibe the sacred poison.

Fair enough. It sounds like an excellent plan, Hinckle. A precaution in case the Text isn’t what the plague needs and a Talking Android who will Knock-It Bop-It or Sock-It.