by Ishmael Reed
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 Talk
ing 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.
The Hierophant smiles. Now you’re catching on. You’re grooving with the jive, H.
The Hierophant rises to shake Hinckle Von Vampton’s hand.
Of course you will work with our people there. They will provide you with all of the assistance you need. Their names are in this little black book.
The Hierophant hands Hinckle the little black book and for a moment Hinckle thumbs through it.
Warren Harding?
Yes, we had problems trying to get him nominated. It took 10 ballots. Some of the delegates at the convention called him a “He-Harlot” and a “Black Babylonian.” They called the convention “boss controlled” and said that his nomination was the result of a “Senate Cabal.” H. L. Mencken, the writer, termed him “a series of wet sponges,” but we groomed him from the beginning by surrounding him with a man who is now his Attorney General. It took an advertising agency named Lord & Thomas to sell him to the American people. The charges of the convention had to be somehow dealt with. If they only knew. Hard-headed, these descendants of indentured servants and criminals. 30,000 felons, I understand, were sent to Georgia alone. Bloody paradoxical place, that country. The J.G.C.s shipped there to harvest cotton and rice surrounded by the descendants of 2-bit hoods, loan sharks, and Atonists of the most fundamental variety. Ostensibly pragmatic, the place’s characteristic fiction is “dark romance.”
Center of industrialism but at the same time the home of the Fox sisters, the founders of Spiritualism…well anyway Harding is just a Mason so you may use him as you wish; there is another man, the 1st entry in the book under M, who you may call upon in an emergency but be careful he isn’t revealed because he is the most sensible contact we have.
I don’t think that I will be needing any additional help. I will use my old friend Hubert “Safecracker” Gould…
“The only man of his generation who didn’t go to jail?”
Yes, I need him at my side for this… this Crusade.
I think it’s going to work out fine, Hinckle. Perhaps if we had called upon you earlier we could have regained the Holy Land before 1917. We will destroy the Knights Templar’ trial records, the 36 feet of long scrolls decorated with those strange symbols your Order was so fond of. They will be burned tonight at the Vatican…And Hinckle, …Hinckle if your Order is successful we will put you in charge of the next Crusade, World War 2 a bigger extravaganza than 1. Beyond the dreams of Lubitsch and De Mille, which is being choreographed at this very moment.
Hinckle’s eyes shine…
What are you going to call the magazine, Hinckle?
The Benign Monster. Give it the Freudian angle.
Hinckle carrying the little black book and his orders begins to leave the room for the transportation that will convey him to this mysterious country’s harbor where awaits the World War 1 submarine he will use for his journey to the Templars’ private, secluded estate on Long Island.
I have 1 more request, Hierophant 1.
Yes Hinckle, anything, anything. You name it.
Summon your men, I wish to say our old Templars’ chant.
Not here Hinckle, before my men; they won’t understand after all the vilification they’ve heard against your Order.
SUMMON YOUR MEN!!!
Hierophant 1 presses the buttons and here they come. Marching. Hut Hut Hut Hut Hut. Hut. Hut. Hut Hut Hut. Soon the men are all gathered about the famous horseshoe-like desk where the Hierophant stands. They raise their mugs and begin to shout Beascauh after the name of the Templars’ 1st piebald horse.
* The New Negro—Alain Locke, editor.
19
A TALENTED GRAVE-ROBBER AND 2nd-story man, Hinckle Von Vampton arrives for his assignment 1 moonlit night in an old rusty World War 1 surplus submarine, part of an arsenal the Wallflower Order keeps on hand in case its underlings kick up; mostly presidents the likes of the twangy New Englander Calvin Coolidge, kings with brain disease, 44-year-old Eagle Scouts with set jaws, maharajahs who have heart attacks while playing polo, unemployed actors who married the brain surgeon’s daughter, African presidents who are out of the country a great deal. So as Fats Waller once remarked, “One never knows, do one.”
On the shore his new household awaits him as the craft surfaces from a large pool of oil slick. It resembles a posh ad for whiskey. A few of the maids, their black skirts and white aprons and their hair blowing in the breeze, hold cocktails on trays. Hinckle Von Vampton arises from the sub and is rowed onto the beach. He steps out of the boat. He inspects the cooks, chauffeurs and the maids and the gardeners and grooms.
That night he dines with his staff at the head of a long table beneath a ceiling which has a mural commemorating the ceremony of the Knights Templar’ immunity from excommunication (the Hierophant had it painted as a surprise). Hinckle lays down the rules of the house.
The next morning Hinckle Von Vampton calls his old comrade-in-arms Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, 1-time carpetbagger, now “radical education expert” who lives in a penthouse high above the streets of New York purchased from the proceeds he has received from the scribblings of little colored waifs and the income from a downtown cabaret on East 3rd Street—a sweatshop for Black musicians—of which he is silent partner.
Hubert?
Yes, who is it? The voice at the other end belongs to Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, standing holding his cigarette holder between his fingers.
O Hinckle, hi sport, I am told you successfully carried through the plan to embarrass the Wallflower Order. I saw the headline. Calls came in from our little band distributed all over the world.
That’s not all…I was interviewed by the Wallflower Order and we made a deal. We’re exonerated. The Order. They burned the evidence from the trial and we’re in charge of the epidemic.
How were you able to swing that?
Let me explain that later. I used the headline and the Book.
That worked?
Yes, of course it did.
If there’s a deal what are we to do?
They gave us a staff. Their North American contacts have been buzzed that the power has passed from the Teutonics to us again. Listen, here is the plan…
20
GUESS WHO’S OUTSIDE THE reporter cries excitedly, rushing into the city room of the Atonist sheet the New York Sun. Hinckle Von Vampton, dressed like a banker or tycoon with a chauffeur outside. All the brass is down there…and they’re coming this way…
Does the old man know?
No, he…
The 2 reporters resume their seats and return to clattering away at their typewriters as the managing editor returns from his 2-minute coffee break. A little less gabbin’ and a little more tabbin’, you guys, he says.
The door leading to the city room opens and the party starts through on their way to the executive offices of the New York Sun. Well when the managing editor sees Hinckle Von Vampton he nearly drops dead.
You! But before he can say anything the editor-in-chief and the chairman of the board of the Sun begin to pass by his desk
.
Of course, you know the managing editor, don’t you, the executive pauses, turning to Hinckle.
O yes of course I do, Mr. Elm. Please put him on the agenda of topics we will be discussing over sherry and cake upstairs.
The editor-in-chief extends his hand to Hinckle’s elbow, leading him through the city room and out. The managing editor sits down. He makes a gesture associated with the comic Leon Errol, gradually rubbing his open palm down over his red face. The reporters exchange grins.
That night the managing editor resigns. Apparently the decision occurred in a meeting at the top which Hinckle Von Vampton had held to “get acquainted” with his contacts.
21
DYPSOMANIACS, THOSE WHO TAKE it from behind by german shepherds, those delighted by pin pricks at the bottom of the feet, whippersnappers, vibrators, Free Love advocates, ex-I.W.W. intellectuals, an art director who likes Aubrey Beardsley, a flagpole sitter whose record is 10 days, 10 hours, 10 minutes, and 10 seconds, people whose feet fall asleep, 3 or 4 inside dopes, and muckrakers of Tammany Hall. The staff of the Benign Monster.
The cover is splendid. Some kind of head in the mush. No…A Fat Lady atop a Whooping Crane…No…A Cow? It’s very hard to make out the cover. It’s in the avant-garde style. Adolf Hitler has an article on the future of Germany. He’s the young lad who killed 14 at a Protestant Bible Study camp. His tousle-haired lawyer was seeking to free him by appealing to German Psychology. Wotanian seizure is the diagnosis underneath this “Christlike” looking young man. A nude flapper 1 page, deathwhite skin with black circles around her eyes. Another page carries a picture of a lynching. Bulging eyes. Entrails. Delighted sheriffs licking chocolate-covered ice cream sticks. There is a hot story about a woman who used to go down to meet the trains. “The Drawers of Wa-Wa.” They expect this feature to get the magazine across.
