My Heart Laid Bare (59 page)

“They do not love themselves,” Elihu says scornfully, “—how, then, can they love their neighbor?”

No: the goal for Negroes cannot be integration with their enemies, still less with a race as debased as the Caucasian; it can only be the establishment of a colony-state on this continent, prior to a mass emigration to the continent of their origin, Africa. Begging former slave-holders for crumbs (stable wages, decent working conditions, a federal lynching law) is unworthy of a noble race; it is
demands
that must be made—for a sizable portion of land, fronting on the ocean, within the territorial United States; or restitution of $5 billion as indemnity for past abuses. (“Though it is ten billion that is deserved,” as Elihu has said.) To dwell amid a degenerate race, particularly one that in its mental derangement imagines itself superior, is intolerable for all Negroes. Thus the aims of existing Negro “betterment” organizations are null and void from this time hence.

Little wonder then that Prince Elihu has accumulated countless
enemies among his neighbors; and that bookmakers both Negro and Caucasian began as early as 1925 to make book on how long he might live.

The earnest, well-spoken, proudly Christian and educated gentlemen of the NAACP, for instance, find it intolerable that a transparent charlatan like “Prince” Elihu (avatar of an African king, indeed) has been able to draw the enthusiastic, even ecstatic, support of large masses of Negroes to whom they have made little appeal—
they
, who are so reasonable, and pious, and patriotic, they might be white men but accidentally trapped in black skin! The much-publicized goal of this organization is equality for the colored in all phases of American life; and where possible
integration
of the races—the very ideal treated with such contempt by Prince Elihu.

Then again, the Socialist Party is scandalized by Elihu's repeated assertions that race, not class, determines destiny; that the Negro worker has very little in common with the white worker, save being the object of his especial hatred, should an economic recession occur. The Socialist publication in Harlem,
The Emancipator
, stresses the ideal of world unification of all workers against the imperialist class, but Elihu insists that all whites without exception, including Marx and Lenin, constitute an imperialist class—“For it is the very soul of the Caucasian that is degenerate, not merely his rung on the ladder of society,” Elihu says with withering scorn. Those Socialists, Communists and Anarchists who preach a natural brotherhood of man, regardless of skin color, are as deluded as their imperialist adversaries who believe the dark races marked by their Christian God as inferior, and fit solely to be enslaved.

Also, says Elihu contemptuously, “There can be no
classless society
—not even in the grave.”

It's no surprise that the Christian ministers of Harlem are allied in righteous opposition to Prince Elihu, who ridicules their churches for being childish versions of the white cannibal-devil's church, and their theology for aping the white cannibal-devil's theology; and who speaks lightly of the Savior, Jesus Christ (“
If
he was crucified,
then
he is bound to have been
black—but where are the black Christs?”). The Christian God is never evoked by Elihu in his speeches, though he makes a glancing reference now and then to Allah; his emphasis is primarily upon History, Destiny, Fate; yet the “free volition” of the Negro race to alter its present condition.

For Heaven, should it exist, is
African
;
Africa itself.

Black businessmen who want only to make as much money as possible in the interstices of the racist society, and who fear and loathe the poorer Negroes among them, are frightened of Elihu's aim of a separate state or African colony; those businessmen whose specific trade turns upon Negro self-hatred (their products being skin bleaches, greasy pomades, hot combs, etc.) are frightened that Elihu's preaching of race pride will injure their sales. (For the Negro race
is
the origin of mankind, Elihu insists, and the white man is but a fallen, diseased, and doomed specimen: thus it surely follows that white features—skin of a certain pigment, hair of a certain texture, etc.—are hardly to be emulated.)

Naturally black politicians hate Prince Elihu, in whom they see a dangerous rival for the fickle love of the masses; black “numbers” bosses and bootleggers hate him, for his pose of self-righteous purity, and his frequent admonitions to the people that they give to the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union the money usually wasted on gambling, whiskey and other dissipations. Elihu has also warned that when he and his followers come into power, all Negroes who emulate Caucasians in preying upon their own kind will be “severely punished.”

More mysterious is the official action of the Republic of Liberia in declaring Prince Elihu persona non grata following his tour of the country in winter 1926, and barring the black revolutionary from returning. The Liberian ambassador to the United States has declared that Elihu, Prophet, Regent & Exchequer of the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union has tried to interfere with domestic Liberian affairs (daring to suggest economic and land “reforms” while a guest of the President himself); and his intention to make war against other sovereign African states by proclaim
ing that Black Africa has the “moral obligation” to free those Negro peoples enslaved by the colonial rule of the English, Dutch, Belgians, etc. For these reasons, Prince Elihu will not be permitted to cross the border into Liberia again
under pain of death.

“If I am the declared enemy of criminals and murderers, am I to be ashamed, or rather proud?”—so Prince Elihu has issued his sole public statement on the Liberian affair. He has told his associates at Union headquarters that, on his side, diplomatic ties are henceforth severed between his society and the black African states that have betrayed them. “And when millions of Negroes emigrate from North America to the continent of their origins, it will be to another sort of Africa, I promise—perhaps the southern tip which is said to be so beautiful, and so rich in natural resources—and not the treacherous West Coast.”

BEYOND THESE BLACK
enemies there lies of course, as Elihu makes no secret of declaring, the vast world of white privilege, white censure and white murderous rage: in short, the United States of America. For this cruel white nation, private citizens no less than government officials, is secretly dedicated to the eradication of the black race; and of Prince Elihu in particular.

So Elihu jokes, “Those persons who don't wish Elihu dead are simply those
who haven't yet heard his name.
”

He draws his bone-handled stiletto out of its sheath and, gripping his opponent tight—a muscular forearm slung across the man's chest, arms pinned against his sides—he saws the razor-sharp blade rapidly back and forth across the naked throat.

And lo!—how the red blood flows.

And how, being red, is it
white
blood? And how being red as his does
it differ from his, accursed as
black
?—this, Elihu's dying opponent won't be able to explain, having fallen, with a look of profound astonishment, at Elisha's booted feet.

(
YET: WOULDN'T THE
results be bloody? disgusting? For Prince Elihu is a king, a god, yet also a man of nervous and highly refined sensibility.)

ELISHA CAN SUMMON
back by way of his newly acquired powers that miraculous birth out of the raging flood (the Nautauga River,
not
the Wabash), but the years between are blurred and blinding as a cascade of water in brilliant sunshine.

Blurred, blinding, the long reign of the Devil Father, until Elisha's awakening in a Harlem street, when the true nature of the world was revealed.

ELIHU'S NAME: WHICH
means
The Lord is God.

Or:
God is God.

Or:
Elihu is God.

Elihu is of course the fully awakened one, the supreme consciousness, as potent in this age of the Devil Father as in the bygone age, where the blood of mortal black men mingled freely with the blood of gods. Elisha is the part-awakened one, aware of the long sleep of twenty years . . . when he was hypnotized as to his true nature, taught that his skin is nothing when of course it is
all
. . . yet susceptible at times (when alone, when ill, when drifting into sleep) to the old spell; the luminous chimeras of the marsh; that vast swamp in which he wandered lost, powerless to save himself.

True, he could not save himself. A child. Too young. Weak-witted, weak in body.

He
could not
save himself and so was saved by another; carried aloft, a triumph, a sickly prize, on the shoulder of his tall fair brother . . . whose name, in the name of Elihu the Awakened One, he has forgotten.

(But even this must be a lie. For the tall blond boy could not have been Elisha's true brother—except under the spell of the Devil Father.)

CRIME? WHISPERS FATHER
.

Then complicity.

Complicity?

Then no crime.

PRINCE ELIHU, BORN
of the fiery flood, born of rubble and paving stone, born of his own spilled blood and mutilated flesh, brings not peace but a sword: the gift to his people (as he has said in his April 1916
Proclamation of Rights as Propounded by the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union
) of a margin of Promise and Hope: a way of seeing with the inner eye that is bound neither by the finite nor by the cannibal-devil's “infinite.”

For they who have been slaves are in truth gods, cast low by the vicissitudes of History.

For they who have been scorned as ugly, and bestial, and accursed by God, are in fact blessed by their own God Allah: His sons and daughters, god-mortals, in whom His spirit breathes.

For the secret is, they cannot die. He will die in their place.

PRINCE ELIHU IS
falsely accused by his many Harlem enemies (including any number of pious “white men's black men”) of being swollen with pride; yet, as befits a true son of Ham, he is in fact humble in the face of his
destiny. (Thus Elisha thinks a half dozen times a day,
I am not I but another; that is, the bearer of another.
)

The envious among both Negroes and Caucasians stop their ears against the power of his speech, murmuring
Fraud! Hypocrite! Charlatan! Con man!
when the Prince addresses a vast crowd of followers; or when they see him being driven along Broadway in his splendid Rolls-Royce with dark-tinted windows, gleaming white, gleaming chrome, a uniformed Haitian chauffeur, two husky black lieutenants-at-arms on guard. The envious profess to scorn the Prince's fastidious attire—spotless white fine-spun linen in summer, exquisite white cashmere in winter; his white gloves and white kidskin boots; they dare to ridicule in such journals as
The Crisis, The Guardian, The Emancipator
, the eighteen-inch ostrich-plumed helmet and the ruby-studded gold sword he wears upon ceremonial occasions. As they can't conceive of Prince Elihu's miraculous birth out of the elements of fire and flood, they dare to mock his formal, studied, accentless diction, charging that he's nothing but an American-born Negro (if not a former field nigger!) like the rest of them: not a West Indian, and certainly not a native African. Having been at a loss to account for Elihu, and embarrassed at the impoverishment of their files on him, the Bureau of Investigation lists Prince Elihu's official birthplace as Harlem, and the arbitrary date of his birth as 11 June 1889.
This Negro is known to be subversive, seditious, unpredictable in his behavior and should be considered dangerous at all times.

The envious question Elihu's motives in spending a rumored $50,000 for the English Thoroughbred Ruby Blood, registered in the name of the Negro World Betterment & Liberation Union and boarded and trained at James Ben Ali Hagin Farms, Kentucky; just as, a few years before, the envious questioned his motives in purchasing the oceangoing ship
Penelope
(rechristened
Black Jupiter
) and the sport biplane
Black Eagle.
For, knowing but a low earthly pride, the pride of mere mortals, they can't conceive of the
race pride
of a son of Ham.

And the envious are at a loss to account for Elihu's courage, if the man
is
a fraud: for why would a fraud voluntarily return to the United States as Elihu did, in 1918, from Central America, to answer to sedition charges and be jailed; and why would he risk his life countless times as Elihu has, publicly declaring that no threat of physical injury can dissuade him from his mission?

The envious speak of seeing Elihu one day dead but very few are bold enough to speak of killing him.

Elihu and Destiny
are one says the Prince in his formal, coolly ironic public voice; in which, if even the envious listen closely, they might discern a note of sorrow.

“ELISHA THAT
WAS
, and Elihu that
is.
”

So Prince Elihu sometimes murmurs to himself, in the midst of his newborn life.

So 'Lisha, the white man's puppet, has vanished entirely. The white girl's plaything. Little Moses, strangely, will emerge in weak moments, in solitude before a mirror—

        
“Weel about and turn about
And do jis so
Eb'ry time I weel about
I jump Jim Crow!”

—the Prince lurching, flailing long arms and legs, jumping with a ferocity of joy, making faces at himself in the mirror, wide white grins.

Yet perhaps 'Lisha does survive. As Elihu lies perspiring and insomniac between sheets of the most expensive linen in his narrow celibate's bed with the brass headboard; in his bedroom on the third, topmost floor of the stately brick residence on 138th Street, Harlem (of which the envi
ous have much to say, for whose money has paid for this expensive, heavily guarded house?), listening to the noises of the night-time city that penetrate even the leafy calm of Strivers Row.