Rufus had no rejoinder. Banga continued.
“No, if the Americans are suddenly opening up their country to us—even in a limited way—you can rest assured self-interest lies at the heart of it.”
“Oh, come now. What could a powerful country like the United States want from us?”
Banga regarded Rufus incredulously. “Professor, you truly are living in the past. You hark back to the era of the Great Return, when the United States sat at the top of the heap and Africa was an undeveloped morass of poverty and sickness. I must inform you now the tables are turned. The Americans are desperate for our help.”
“Ridiculous! I could see if they had been devastated by the Hitlerian war as Europe and Russia were. There, Pan-Africa was indeed able to extend a helping hand to clean up the aftermath and rebuild. Even Lenin, proud as he was, took our aid in the end, though he had to execute argumentative comrades like Stalin first. But America never suffered such depredations. Even the loss of their own colonies, Hawaii and the Philippines, during the Japanese Expansion, was not enough to lure them out of their secure shell. No, our old homeland has gone from strength to strength, I’m sure.”
“Now you’re talking through your hat. How can you know anything about the current state of America, given the Old Glory Curtain?”
“How can you?”
Banga narrowed his eyes. “I have my sources. A trickle of information slips out. Industrial spies, who also report on cultural matters. My government contacts back home also pass on certain information.”
Rufus dismissed the assertion. “I can’t give credence to such a wild tale.”
“What an Uncle Sam you are, professor!”
Rufus stood, radiating dignity. “I know you intend that epithet as an insult, but I take it as a compliment. I shall always honor the country of our diaspora, however shabbily they once treated us.”
Banga stood also. “Are you an African, professor, or not?”
Airily waving the question aside, Rufus responded, “Who among us is a true African these days, Mr. Johnson? Extensive interbreeding over three generations—which you should know all about—has diluted all the pure bloodlines of antiquity. As for attitude and culture, look around you. We’re all as much American as African these days.”
Banga nodded wisely. “You have me there, professor. I can only add that perhaps we are more American than the Americans, if that word still means what it used to.”
With this cryptic remark, Banga bowed and made his exit, leopard tail dragging on the parquet floor.
Rufus sat and finished his meal, trying to convince himself he had triumphed.
But, leaving the dining room, he found himself still pondering Banga’s closing sally.
Was Pan-Africa the true heir to the ideals and freedoms of old, pre-Exclusionary America?
Born in a revolution nearly identical to that of 1776, the Dark Continent’s constitution and government were modeled exclusively on the that of the U.S. system. Her borders were open to immigrants and refugees of all stripes: Europeans who fled the Hitlerian conflagration of 1939-1948; Chinese and Indochinese and Malaysians on the run from Japanese; even some nervous Australians (true, the complexion of the vast land was 90 percent black, but so had early America been overwhelmingly white, and the blacks were just as heterogeneous as had been America’s assorted ethnic whites). Pan-Africa’s booming economy was relentlessly capitalistic and individualistic, and English had emerged as the lingua franca. Religious freedom embraced animists, Muslims, and Christians alike.
Professor Sexwale had always viewed Pan-Africa as America’s little brother, a child constantly striving to emulate its elder. Suddenly to imagine the relationship reversed was highly disorienting.
With a deliberate shrug, Rufus dismissed the notion and returned to his cabin to pack.
After his bags and typewriter were dealt with, Rufus succumbed to a short nap to make up for his uneasy night. He wanted to be fresh and alert for the historic moment of their arrival.
Dreams of Banga Johnson fornicating with a lively, willing, and suitably proportioned Statue of Liberty troubled the professor’s sleep until the moment they were mercifully shattered by a mighty blast of the Chicago Bluesman’s whistle.
Hastily donning his jacket and dress sandals and leaving his bags for the liner’s stewards to attend to, Rufus hurried outside.
The vessel was well into the Narrows of Upper New York Bay, almost at the northern point of Staten Island. Buildings reared on the Jersey and Brooklyn shores (surprisingly, they were rather unassuming, decrepit, and ugly buildings; Rufus supposed most post- Exclusionary construction had been concentrated on Manhattan). Excited passengers continued to rush toward the prow like a river of ink, as if to gain an extra foot or two in their inevitable progress to the soil of their ancestors, and they blocked Rufus’s forward view.
“Professor! Up here!”
Turning toward the source of the hail, Rufus saw Captain Owole de Klerk.
Owole was a three quarters Hottentot. In his elaborate formal uniform (First President Garvey had been inordinately fond of ornate regalia for himself and his lieutenants), he stood approximately four foot seven. Despite his short stature, he was a vibrant man who inspired confidence and admiration.
Accepting the captain’s invitation, Rufus ascended a steel staircase and soon found himself on the bridge, enjoying its excellent view.
Below, Rufus was grateful to note, his fellow passengers had abandoned their barbaric finery of the night before in favor of civilized garments.
There were four classes of passengers, each with a distinct style. Businessmen and traders such as Banga wore mainly various colorful skirts and soft hand-tooled leather vests, and carried the ceremonial fly-whisks currently in fashion. Rufus’s academic fellows were clothed in conservative trousers and jackets, mostly in various combinations of red, green, and yellow. The diplomats wore their incredibly elaborate Garvey-inspired uniforms, including plume-crested hats. Finally, the simple tourists—generally speaking, well-off middle-class families with an interest in discovering their Amero-African roots—wore whatever was fashionable in either Paris, London, Luanda, or Cairo.
All in all, an eclectic assemblage betokening a healthily diverse nation.
A sudden concerted gasp from the crowd caused Rufus to raise his eyes.
The Statue of Liberty had come into view.
Headless, spattered with faded paint, and garlanded with a noose made from a ship’s hawser, the Statue seemed to crouch in shame beneath the blue August skies. Her up-raised arm, jaggedly truncated and blackened by an apparent explosion, gaped like her neck, open to the elements. Her hand and torch, flame downward, lay below, embedded in the soil beyond the base’s perimeter.
As the condition of the monument sank into the souls of the crowd—Rufus had a momentary flash of horror picturing a similar fate somehow befalling the half-sized Negro-featured replica that stood offshore from Monrovia—an angry murmur began to rise.
“I had better give my little lecture now,” said Captain Owole calmly, picking up a microphone and depressing its button. His voice boomed out across the ship.
“Attention, people. This is your captain speaking. I want to offer some information and advice before we dock, and remind you of some salient facts.
“I folly comprehend the depth of your feelings at the sacrilege and devastation you currently witness.
“Although I myself have seen hitherto-classified photos of Miss Liberty, I too was unprepared for the actual sight. Please remember the destruction you are viewing is over fifty years old. The current United States government disavows the actions of its predecessors and has promised to repair the damage once their resources allow.
“This brings me to what we can expect from the current leaders and citizens of the United States. It is not generally known—and the details of what is known are hazy—but for many years the popularity and influence of the Klan has been fading.
“Without in
ternal enemies, they gradually became vitiated and relatively powerless. A recent purge—somewhat bloody, I’m afraid—has removed them from federal positions, although parts of the country remain firmly in their grip. Needless to say, we shall not be visiting these regions.
“In fact, our itinerary will be somewhat rigidly controlled by our hosts. Until relations are normalized and the sight of a Negro is once again no longer an oddity on these shores, we must be protected from unwanted attentions—harmful or benign.
“Finally, I wish to remind you that each and every one of us will be on constant display as we go about our business and pleasures. And each one of us will be regarded—fairly or unfairly—as a representative of our whole race and nation. It is up to each of us to do nothing that could discredit or dishonor our Negritude. We must show the Americans our best natures, and convince them we have put our differences behind us and are extending a hand of friendship.
“Please bear all this in mind, and thank you for listening.”
Replacing the mike, Captain de Klerk turned to Rufus.
“Well, what do you think, professor?”
Rufus’s head spun. He had just received more new information about his chosen field of study than in the past ten years. “‘Think’? About what?”
“You’re the expert on America. Will they reciprocate our friendly overtures? Or are they planning to take us for all we’re worth, then discard us, as they did our ancestors?”
“Right now, captain, I haven’t the slightest idea. For all I know, we could be heading straight into a cannibal’s pot.”
Laughing, Captain Owole clapped Rufus on the back as high as the short man could reach. “I hardly think a mythical metaphor casting our hosts as anthropophagists would be welcome, professor. Best to keep such flights of fancy to yourself. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got to bring us in.”
Leaving the bridge, Rufus joined the crowd on deck.
A pair of old tugboats, their smokestacks rusty, put out from the Battery. Slowly, slowly, the massive Black Star liner decreased her speed, allowing the tugs to match vectors and nudge her. Crewmen tossed lines down from the Pan-African ship. At the appearance down below of the first American white faces yet seen, a friendly roar of acclamation rose spontaneously from the assembled Africans. The white sailors appeared uneasy and embarrassed and, after securing the ropes, quickly disappeared back inside their cabins.
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 t
hought 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.
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