by Ishmael Reed
Here we pick up lapis lazuli, turquoise, carmelian, the blue fäience hippopotamus, and some jewelry. 2 teams will relay scarabs, gold sandals, headdresses, brooches, pendants, and don’t forget the bronze coffin and the mummified cat.
“Sabu say, ‘Those who defile the tombs of Egypt must die.’”
Berbelang quickly glances at Fuentes, the source of the remark, a wide grin on his Mayan face.
Quit clowning, Fuentes. There are only a few weeks before our performance and we must have everything perfect. This is our most ambitious haul.
Berbelang moves the pointer to the Center of Art Detention’s North Wing corner.
Here you will find a set of alabaster canopic jars belonging to a Princess Sithathroyunet. That ends the small stuff. We will need some big men to take out the tombs of Peryneb, a Lord Chamberlain of the 5th Dynasty, and his wife Mitry, and some other heavy items belonging to Meketre, a noble of the 11th Dynasty. We must also retrieve the diorite sphinx statue of King Senwosret 3 from the 12th Dynasty and a sphinx of Queen Hatshepsut. The most important item will be handled by the 3 of us, a pottery vessel decorated with antelopes.
Berbelang moves the pointer down the hall to another room. Here is the Peruvian collection where you will lift many items of Mochica art from the North Coast and on the other side Paracas from the South.
How do you plan to gain entrance to the museum, Berbelang? Thor asks.
That will keep until later, Thor!
We wouldn’t tell you anyway, gringo. You just joined the group and how do we know that you won’t tell. Your father is on the board of several museums, you might squeal on us, Fuentes threatens the white boy.
Knock it off, fellas. We have to get this done, time is running out!
Berbelang moves the pointer farther down the Center of Art Detention’s hall.
Here is the ancient Near East stuff. A number of strong men will have to get those 2 glazed brick lions.
They ain’t doing Nebuchadnezzar no good.
Berbelang, Thor and Yellow Jack smile at Fuente’s remark.
Be sure to get the pottery ceramics, the painted antelopes, and a small gypsum statue from the Tell Asmar square temple here. Now Yellow Jack will take over.
The man with the mandarin mustache takes the pointer.
Here are the Chinese, Korean and Japanese galleries. The principal items are the seated Buddha and the scroll paintings. They’ve 30,000 items. I have been going up there for 3 weeks and on the night of the heist I will have a list of the most important smaller items.
Berbelang picks up the pointer again.
Lastly, we come to the Islamic Art collection. It’s a long gallery adjoining the Chinese sculpture hall. We take the incense burners and a small casket dated the 12th century which you will recognize by the drawings of mythological animals. What we especially want is the page of a manuscript dated 1600: The Concourse of the Birds.
The real Concourse of the Birds is there? Thor remarks, surprise showing in his blue eyes.
Yeah, gringo. The real 1 your swine Robber Baron of a father and his fellow Copper King rats lifted as they sailed the world on their pirate ships.
Obviously stunned, the White boy’s face flushes.
A slight smile appears on Yellow Jack’s face.
Look, if you don’t trust me now, you never will, Fuentes. I’ve tried to prove myself. Make sacrifices.
Sacrifices, huh? Liar like Cortez, Pizarro, Balboa and the rest of your “virile” Conquistadors who raped our motherlands.
But what have Cortes and Pizarro or the others to do with me?
You carry them in your blood as I carry the blood of Montezuma; expeditions of them are harbored by your heart and your mind carries their supply trains. You’ve changed your helmet for a frontier hat while I have changed my robes for overalls and a black leather jacket. The costumes may have changed but the blood is still the same, gringo. If it wasn’t for Berbelang you wouldn’t be here.
Leave him alone, Fuentes. He’s done his work well since he’s been here. He’s the only 1 among us who’s able to enter a museum without arousing suspicion, says Berbelang.
You know, sometimes I think that an African friend of mine was right, Berbelang.
Right about what, Yellow Jack? Berbelang asks, now fixing a stare on him, his brows coming together.
Well the White man came into China, exploited our lands, raped our women, plundered our art but then came the Boxer Rebellion and we fought back. They went into South America but then came Bolivar who struck a blow for Indian autonomy. But they’ve done everything to you: raped your women castrated you burned your homes massacred you and yet…
And yet what? Berbelang asks as the people around the other tables begin to take notice of the argument.
Look, let’s go on with the plan, Thor says.
Shut up gringo, Fuentes says, moving in Thor’s direction.
Finish it, Yellow Jack. And yet what? Berbelang insists.
You just don’t seem to be militant like Marcus Garvey and Abdul Hamid and some of the others from the West Indies… I mean this African said that the reason you North American Blacks were docile was that the strong ones were left behind in South America…
Why you! Berbelang springs toward Yellow Jack and grabs him by the collar. Yellow Jack grins.
Forget it, Berbelang says, returning to the pointer. Let’s continue with this. We’ll argue later… We finish the Islamic collection by lifting the Mihrab and a fäience mosaic.
Berbelang rises.
Yellow Jack, wearing his black silk jacket with the velvet buttons reaching to the top of his neck and matching black pants, has put on his flat black hat. He walks over to Berbelang who is standing in the corner.
Look, Berbelang, I know about Posser Turner and Walker, I was just trying to get your goat. It’s him, Berbelang, Yellow Jack says, pointing to Thor who looks down to his feet knowing that he is being discussed. They can’t be trusted. You know.
Give him a chance, Yellow Jack; at least we are talking to 1. A great deal of our success depends upon at least a few like him. You remember in that Art History class at City College. The pact that we made that day…that we would return the plundered art to Africa, South America and China, the ritual accessories which had been stolen so that we could see the gods return and the spirits aroused. How we wanted to conjure a spiritual hurricane which would lift the debris of 2,000 years from its roots and fling it about. Well, we are succeeding with these raids into the museums, for what good is someone’s amulet or pendant if it’s in a Western museum. But ultimately we need to recruit him or this will mean nothing.
Well, it’s your 3 months to lead but as soon as my turn comes up, out he goes, Yellow Jack said. You know in China we used to call them devils.
You used to call us devils too.
Yellow Jack is surprised by this remark.
Berbelang smiles at him, walks over to the Pre-Cortesian table where the invasion of the museum is being planned.
Figured out how to get the Olmec head yet?
The man responds in the negative.
Keep trying.
Berbelang lights a Chesterfield, wrings his right hand until the match is out and puts his raincoat on. He leaves the basement. He wants to call his former colleague Charlotte and request a favor.
Berbelang?
Someone is calling. Berbelang turns around and sees Thor following, his unkempt blond hair blowing. He seems a bit tanner than Berbelang had remembered him. Perhaps it was the recent trip around the Gulf of Mexico on his father’s yacht.
Look, Berbelang, if I am going to cause trouble maybe I’d better leave, he says walking alongside Berbelang.
O so it’s getting a little rough for you? Not like that cushy job on that radio station. How many did you have? 500 subscribers? The elite of the city but O yes, committed. Went up to Harlem once in a while to see what the new steps were. “Frolicing among the darkies,” as slavemasters used to say. After all, European artists are flocking to it
, Stravinsky writing Ragtime pieces…Picasso painting like an African. Theodore Dreiser stealing one of Paul Lawrence Dunbar’s plots.
Look, I was sincere when I volunteered for this, B. I wasn’t just another 1. Up there slumming. I just don’t think that I am of much help…if it’s going to cause this much dissension. I mean Yellow Jack and Fuentes. I feel out of place, the remarks about my father. I’m not my father, can’t they understand?
Look, Yellow Jack’s father himself is a rich silk importer and Fuentes’ has a degree in medicine. It’s when we met at the University at the Art History class that we decided to do this. We vowed. We began to see that the Art instructor was speaking as if he didn’t know we were in the room. We felt as if we were in church, stupid dull sculpture being blown up to be religious objects. Have you ever seen people line up outside a Van Gogh exhibit? When they get inside there are so many they can’t even see the paintings, they just pass by like sheep or like mourners passing the tomb of a fallen hero, a bier, with the same solemnity. And the extent of their knowledge concerning Van Gogh is that he “cut off his ear.” Man, it’s religion they make it into. We decided that we would be their desecraters, that we would send their loot back to where it was stolen and await the rise of Shango, Shiva, and Quetzalcoatl, no longer a label on a cheap bottle of wine but strutting across the sacred cities near the mysterious lakes of huge snakes like a cock. A proud cock.
I agree with all you say…
No you don’t, Berbelang says, turning to him as they reach the corner. Come on in here and have a cup of coffee.
They enter a diner near Houston Street. Sam’s Eats. They sit down. A beefy man, tattoos spelling M.O.M. on his arms, stubbled face and in a dirty apron, walks over to the table. He giver Berbelang an evil stare.
Whatta yooz want? he asks in the voice of a 33 rpm record player at 16 speed.
2 coffees, Berbelang says. The man spits the toothpick out of the side of his mouth.
How familiar are you with the Faust legend?
O as familiar as most…he sold his soul to the devil.
Yes that’s true enough, he sold his soul to the devil for pleasure, prestige and position. Did you ever think about it?
No, I never gave it much thought. About as much as any intelligent person. The waiter walks over to the table. He slams down the coffee. Some of it spills.
That will be 3 cents.
Berbelang glances at Thor. He knows that the coffee should be 1 cent a cup. Berbelang removes a nickel from his pocket and calmly places it on the table. The waiter picks it up, examines it and then walks away from the table.
…Faust was an actual person. Somewhere between 1510 and 1540 this “wandering conjurer and medical quack” made his travels about the southwest German Empire, telling people his knowledge of “secret things.” I always puzzled over why such a legend was so basic to the Western mind; but I’ve thought about it and now I think I know the answer. Can’t you imagine this man traveling about with his bad herbs, love philters, physicks and potions, charms, overcharging the peasants but dazzling them with his badly constructed Greek and sometimes labeling his “wonder cures” with gibberish titles like “Polyunsaturated 99½% pure.” Hocus-pocus. He makes a living and can always get a free night’s lodging at an inn with his ability to prescribe cures and tell fortunes, that is, predict the future. You see he travels about the Empire and is able to serve as a kind of national radio for people in the locales. Well 1 day while he is leeching people, cutting hair or raising the dead who only have diseases which give the manifestations of death, something really works. He knows that he’s a bokor adept at card tricks, but something really works. He tries it again and it works. He continues to repeat this performance and each time it works. The peasants begin to look upon him as a supernatural being and he encourages the tales about him, that he heals the sick and performs marvels. He becomes wealthy with his ability to do The Work. Royalty visits him. He is a counselor to the king. He lives in a castle. Peasants whisper, a Black man, a very bearded devil himself visits him. That strange coach they saw, the 1 with the eyes as decorations drawn to his castle by wild-looking black horses. They say that he has made a pact with the devil because he invites the Africans who work in various cities throughout the Empire to his castle. There were 1000s in Europe at the time: blackamoors who worked as butlers, coachmen, footmen, pint-sized page boys; and conjurors whom only the depraved consulted. The villagers hear “Arabian” music, drums coming from the place but as soon as the series of meetings begin it all comes to a halt. Rumors circulate that Faust is dead. The village whispers that the Black men have collected. That is the nagging notion of Western man. China had rocketry, Africa iron furnaces, but he didn’t know when to stop with his newly found Work. That’s the basic wound. He will create fancy systems 13 letters long to convince himself he doesn’t have this wound. What is the wound? Someone will even call it guilt. But guilt implies a conscience. Is Faust capable of charity? No it isn’t guilt but the knowledge in his heart that he is a bokor. A charlatan who has sent 1000000s to the churchyard with his charlatan panaceas. Western man doesn’t know the difference between a houngan and a bokor. He once knew this difference but the knowledge was lost when the Atonists crushed the opposition. When they converted a Roman emperor and began rampaging and book-burning. His sorcery, white magic, his bokorism will improve. Soon he will be able to annihilate 1000000s by pushing a button. I do not believe that a Yellow or Black hand will push this button but a robot-like descendant of Faust the quack will. The dreaded bokor, a humbug who doesn’t know when to stop. We must purge the bokor from you. We must teach you the difference between a healer, a holy man, and a duppy who returns from the grave and causes mischief. We must infuse you with the mysteries that Jes Grew implies. Thor stirs his coffee. The waiter’s huge veined eyes stare at them both contemptuously; above his head, on the wall behind the counter, is a naked woman with some filthy caption. He looks at the stale cakes in the case, the 3-week-old piece of pie, flies swarming about a puddle on the counter.
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
24
AFTER 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.” *
