by Ishmael Reed
*Modern Dancing—Mr. and Mrs. Vernon Castle.
*This Fabulous Century: 1920-1930, Vol. 3—Time-Life Books.
25
IT IS 2:00 A.M. Rain has fallen and created many water puddles in the streets of Harlem. Moving on an invisible cord, H.V.V. climbs the steps, a spider swollen on snake venom, of the building where Abdul’s office is located. All wormy and creepy-like, H. “Safecracker” Gould follows behind. The strange pair reach the top of the landing and are confronted with the glass door of Abdul’s office. It has the name of his magazine on it. They knock. Abdul comes to the door; he is putting his magazine together.
What do you want?
I would like to talk to you, Mr. Abdul. I am the publisher of the magazine the Benign Monster.
Hey man, what was the idea of you putting my picture there last week without my permission. Those weren’t my views and you know it. And I didn’t like the lewd photos that accompanied the article.
O we were merely trying to give you a friendly overture, perhaps boost the circulation of your magazine. According to our ratings we’ve climbed to 10,000 circulation. We plan to double that within a short time. We thought we could run some of the anthology you have…
What anthology are you referring to? Abdul says, eying the pair suspiciously.
Why the 1 you have. Woodrow Wilson Jefferson said so…
O him. Well I don’t have it…
What do you mean, you don’t have it?
I mean just that the words were unprintable.
But the tune was irresistible…
I don’t think so. I don’t like the lyricism. That kind at least. No, I don’t have it.
“Safecracker” whispers to Hinckle Von Vampton. Let me talk to him, I know the jargon.
Look man, let’s us cop the anthology; we may lay something on you.
Who is the corny guy you brought with you? Abdul asks, raising his head from the desk where he had been assembling the mag. Look, I don’t have it.
We can have you arrested. The building code. I saw 14 violations downstairs myself. We can close down the magazine and your office. We have friends downtown.
“Safecracker” Gould reveals a pistol.
Move over, let’s look into that safe. No use reasoning with this hothead, H.
Gould points to a safe located behind Abdul.
Gould struggles with Abdul in an effort to reach the safe.
Hey man, what are you doing? Abdul swings Gould around but cries out in pain as the dagger pierces his back. After he falls to the floor mortally wounded, Hinckle Von Vampton removes the dagger from his back.
What’s the procedure now, H.?
Open the safe.
“Safecracker” Gould puts his nimble fingers to work and soon the safe swings open.
Empty!!
Well it’s not here.
Let’s leave, Hubert S. Gould nervously remarks.
No wait, I have to cover my tracks. Take care of this, he says, pointing to Abdul’s corpse.
The phone rings in Biff Musclewhite’s office. Musclewhite talks after the person on the other end has identified himself and spoken.
O I thought you’d never call…I’ve been wanting to meet you but of course realizing you would be busy with phase 2…A corpse you say to remove? Of course I will remove it at once, Grand Master. It will be done at once.
26
TAPPING HIS OBEAH STICK, PaPa LaBas climbs out of his Locomobile. He walks into Abdul Hamid’s headquarters. His name appears on the glass door.
In the outer office is a desk, upon which lie magazines and newspapers including the newly published Fire. Its editor is Wallace Thurman; Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston are associates. Countee Cullen, Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Bennett have contributed poetry. Woodrow Wilson Jefferson has written a review in which he said that the magazine was pretty good but the contributors would have to go a long way to catch up because “their work didn’t make you feel like you wanted to go out and pineapple a necktie store.” The review has been clipped and filed.
Ornamenting the desk are amusing lampoons carved in wood, ivory, and cast in bronze by African sculptors. They depict Whites who went into Africa seeking skins, ivory, spices, feathers and furs. The subjects are represented giving bribes, drinking gin, leading manacled slaves, wearing curious, outlandish hats and holding umbrellas. Their chalk-faces appear silly, ridiculous. Outstanding in the collection is the figure of a monkey-like Portuguese explorer, carved by an Angolan. He is obviously juiced and is sitting on a barrel. What side-splitting, bellyaching, satirical ways these ancient craftsmen brought to their art! The African race had quite a sense of humor. In North America, under Christianity, many of them had been reduced to glumness, depression, surliness, cynicism, malice without artfulness, and their intellectuals, in America, only appreciated heavy, serious works. (’Tis the cause, Desdemona.) They’d really fallen in love with tragedy. Their plays were about bitter, raging members of the “nuclear family,” and their counterpart in art was exemplified by the contorted, grimacing, painful social-realist face. Somebody, head in hands, sitting on a stoop. “Lawd, I’z so re-gusted.” Bert Williams had captured the Afro-American mask with Northrop Frye’s inverted U lips. But the figures on the desk, these grotesque, laughable wooden ivory and bronze cartoons represent the genius of Afro satire. They had been removed to Europe by the slavers, traders and sailors who had taken gunpowder and uniforms to Africa. They did not realize that the joke was on them. After all, how could “primitive” people possess wit. LaBas could understand the certain North American Indian tribe reputed to have punished a man for lacking a sense of humor. For LaBas, anyone who couldn’t titter a bit was not Afro but most likely a Christian connoting blood, death, and impaled emaciated Jew in excruciation. Nowhere is there an account or portrait of Christ laughing. Like the Marxists who secularized his doctrine, he is always stern, serious and as gloomy as a prison guard. Never does 1 see him laughing until tears appear in his eyes like the roly-poly squint-eyed Buddha guffawing with arms upraised, or certain African loas, Orishas.
LaBas believed that when this impostor, this burdensome archetype which afflicted the Afro-American soul, was lifted, a great sigh of relief would go up throughout the land as if the soul was like feet resting in mineral waters after miles of hiking through nails, pebbles, hot coals and prickly things. The young poet Nathan Brown, LaBas felt, was serious about his Black Christ, however absurd that may sound, for Christ is so unlike African loas and Orishas, in so many essential ways, that this alien becomes a dangerous intruder in the Afro-American mind, an unwelcome gatecrasher into Ifé, home of the spirits. Yes, Brown was serious, but the rest were hucksters who had invented this Black Christ, this fraud, simply in order to avoid an honest day’s sweat.
Papa LaBas looks over the figures again. He grins widely. Also on the table lies a book, Bronze Casting In Benin. Abdul had announced to the Race press his intention to teach a course on African sculpture to the neighborhood children. He was a hard worker. Some said he could learn a language in a week. In his own land, the land from which his ancestors had been captured during Africa’s decline, Abdul would have been royalty. A prince. Here he was ridiculed and considered eccentric, even a dangerous character. No wonder he was so bitter. Who wouldn’t be?
It was when PaPa LaBas walked into the room that he saw Abdul lying head down on his desk.
There is a letter on the desk. A pink rejection slip.
Dear Abdul:
We have read with interest the manuscript entitled “The Book of Tot,” the sacred anthology. We have decided, however, things being what they are, that we cannot publish this book. It does have that certain panache, that picaresque characterization and zestful dialogue. I was also attracted to the strange almost mystical writing. But the market is overwrought with this kind of book. The “Negro Awakening” fad seems to have reached its peak and once more people are returning to serious writing, Mark Twain and Stephen Crane. A Negro edi
tor here said it lacked “soul” and wasn’t “Nation” enough. He suggested you read Claude McKay’s If We Must Die and perhaps pick up some pointers. Whatever, thanks for permitting us to take a peek. Later Daddy
S.S.
PaPa LaBas notices a piece of paper in Abdul’s fist. He removes it. “Epigram on American-Egyptian Cotton”
Stringy lumpy; Bales dancing
Beneath this center
Lies the Bird.
PaPa LaBas picks up the phone and calls the police. Just as he hears the 1st ring on the other end a man bopadoped into the room. It is one of the local fences. LaBas places the phone in its receiver. The man is stunned when he sees Abdul’s corpse.
Hey what’s wrong with Abdul?
He’s been murdered.
The fence’s eyes pop.
Murdered? I was just talking to him this morning and he said he had some boxes he wanted me to look at. Said the boxes were covered with jade, emeralds, jeweled bugs, birds and snakes. That Abdul…strange dude. Who do you think did it?
I don’t know, PaPa LaBas says, dialing the phone once again.
Well I guess the bulls are going to be here. I’d better leave.
The man exits.
It must have been something to do with the anthology. Disgruntled contributor or something, LaBas thinks.
The authorities answer.
Would you please send an ambulance to Abdul Sufi Hamid’s office on 125th St. and Lenox Ave.
We’ve already sent an ambulance to that place, buddy, answers the voice on the other end.
Strange, LaBas thinks, perhaps someone has already discovered the corpse and phoned. In fact he could hear the attendants carrying stretchers climbing the steps.
Monotonously, PaPa LaBas answers some routine questions. His mind is on other things.
a handbill for the play Harlem by Wallace Thurman
27
HINCKLE VON VAMPTON READS of PaPa LaBas’ grim discovery on the front page of the New York Sun:
HATE MONGERER MEETSWELL DESERVED END
HINT WAR BETWEEN BLACK FACTIONS
NO SUSPECTS IN MURDER OF CULTIST
MU’TAFIKAH QUESTIONED
Later Hinckle Von Vampton’s car pulls to the front of Buddy Jackson’s cabaret. It is 1 of the more famous 1s in New York City along with Percy Brown’s Gold Grabbers, Edmund’s, Leroy’s and Connie’s. The basement is an Indonesian soul food restaurant featuring such exotic numbers as:
CHICKEN IN COCONUT MILK
BAR-BE-CUED FISH
BREGEDEL DJAGUNG
FRIED PINEAPPLE.
On the 2nd floor is a theater where all the young Black actors come to recite Shakespeare, dreaming of becoming a 2nd Ira Aldridge, the famed Negro thespian.
W.W., Hubert “Safecracker” Gould and Von Vampton alight from the car and head toward the entrance of the cabaret where the review is in progress. The mulatto doorman halts their progress.
What’s wrong? queries Hinckle Von Vampton.
That man, sir, he’s a mite too dark.
Too dark? an astonished Hinckle Von Vampton replies, but isn’t this Harlem where the darkies cavort?
They cavorts, sir, but on stage; we cater to Brown Yellow and White.
That’s ridiculous, Hubert “Safecracker” Gould remarks. I’ve seen Buddy Jackson in this place and he is as black as anthracite as black as ebony as black as the abyss, an Ethiopian if there ever was.
That’s different, sir.
What do you mean different? Hinckle Von Vampton asks.
He’s the owner.
I see, Hinckle Von Vampton says, turning to W.W. You will have to wait outside in the car. Here is 3 cents, go and buy yourself an August Ham.
An August Ham, Hink? What’s that?
Dammit, W.W.! An August Ham is watermelon. Don’t you know your own people’s argot? Get with it, Jackson, maybe it will enliven your articles a bit. You still haven’t made a transition from that Marxist rhetoric to the Jazz prose we want.
Once inside Hinckle Von Vampton pornographic publisher begins to relax, drink champagne and savor the high-yellow chorus as they go through some dandy routines. They end their review with the internationally famous Cakewalk which already the French are calling “poetry-in-motion.”
There is a hubbub at the door. A party of people, Brown, Yellow and White enter. They are directing their attention at a Brown man in the middle of all of this. Vampton recognizes him as Major Young, a young man who is gaining a wide audience. The interracial revelers are having a good time. Langston Hughes, writing of this period, said: “We liked people of any race who smoked incessantly, drank liberally, wore complexion and morality with loose garments, made fun of those who didn’t do likewise…After fish we went to two or three in the morning and drank until five.” Abdul had accused them of “womanizing” and said they were merely trying to “show out” and should cultivate discipline by perhaps fasting sometimes: living off carrots and grasshoppers or even lying upon a bed of nails.
Hinckle Von Vampton, recognizing Major Young, ambles Hubert over to his table where Hubert places a note under his glass.
Major Young rises, excuses himself and walks over to Hinckle’s table. He shakes hands with Hinckle, who rises slightly. “Safecracker” Gould “the only man of his generation who didn’t go to jail” is too busy, writing down the “nigger mumbo jumbo words” he is hearing from the surrounding tables.
Safecracker! Hinckle says and the startled “Safecracker” turns to him.
We have a guest, say hello to Major Young.
They all sit down and Hinckle orders some more champagne and a Black, trucking waiter comes to his table.
I have read your poetry, my friend, and I must say that I am immensely impressed. Why it soars and it plumbs and it delights and saddens, it sounds like that great American poet Walt Whitman.
Major Young looks at him suspiciously. Walt Whitman never wrote about Harlem.
Well…let’s just say it is polished as Whitman’s attempts are.
Polished? I don’t understand. Is writing glassware?
Insolent coon on my hands, Hinckle thinks. Well, let’s just say that I enjoyed your work, my friend. The poems were quite raw and earthy; Harlem through and through.
Young smiles wryly.
I happen to run a little risqué sheet called the Benign Monster. It’s to get White Americans a little loose. I’ve read Freud very much and my little sheet brings it all out into the open. Allows it to all hang out. We need a contribution from someone like yourself Mr…er…Mr…something in dialect with lots of razzledazzle in it.
Yes I’ve heard of your magazine, it employs that W. W. Jefferson, he’s really dopey and glib. And why does he use that jargon so?
O don’t worry about him. We just keep him around as a Go-Get.
As a Go-Get? I don’t understand.
Well Go-Get cigarettes and coffee; if you wish we can easily dismiss him.
No, that won’t be necessary because I haven’t decided to submit anything. I didn’t like those drawings you put on somebody’s poems in the 1st issue. They were racist and insulting.
O you mean those. O they were just to perk up interest. Whatever you decide, we’ll publish it. It will be an excellent welcome relief from that Nathan Brown. He’s so arid and stuffy with his material that Phi Beta Kappa key must have gone to his head. Does he know what those references mean? Or is that just half-digested knowledge. He seems to pretend a good deal.
Nathan Brown happens to be a very accomplished poet and a friend of mine. Is it necessary for us to write the same way? I am not Wallace Thurman, Thurman is not Fauset and Fauset is not Claude McKay, McKay isn’t Home. We all have our unique styles; and if you’ll excuse me I think I will join my friends.
Well here let me give you my card. Keep in touch.
If I was in my own territory Perry Street in Greenwich Village I’d give that nigger the caning he’d never forget. Who is he to tell me things like that? Hinckle thinks.
Gould lifts his head as Hinckle raises his voice.
Did you see that, “Safecracker”?
What do you expect from these New Negroes or whatever they call themselves. Uppity. Arrogant. If they were real Black men they would be out shooting officials or loitering on Lenox Ave. or panhandling tear-jerking pitiful autobiographies on the radio, wringing them for every cheap emotion they can solicit. They would be massacred in the street like heroes and then…why I could snap pictures of the corpses and make a pile of dough. That’s why they should do this if they were real Black men.
Did you get what you wanted, “Safecracker”? The evening is not entirely lost?
Yes, the dances were difficult to write down though. Eccentric and individual. But soon I will have stolen enough to have my own Broadway musical. I think I’ll call it Harlem Tom-Toms.
Hinckle laughs as he leaves the quarter. You know, “Safecracker,” what we used to call you in the Templars. What…O yes…the “Caucasian blackamoor.”
28
CHARLOTTE HAS STRUCK IT wealthy with her Plantation House routine. She possesses a richly endowed apartment as a result of her ability to Stop the Show. The bathroom features a dresser, the color of ivory, with gold trimmings; a sunken marble tub which has steps leading down into it. Doctor Peter Pick, her “Lucky Piece,” has phoned that morning. He desires to “call on you” for the purpose of discussing changes in the routine. Charlotte lounges on her green-velvet American Empire sofa. On a table are the liquors Charlotte enjoys. Cream-colored ones made with banana, vanilla beans, and her favorite liquor Crème de Rose. There are many types of roses located in vases throughout her apartment.
The doorbell rings. Her Irish maid Suzie Mae answers. It is Doctor Peter Pick dressed in his Moorish outfit, featuring baggy pants and a fez. He kisses Charlotte’s hand and then takes a seat in a chair facing her. The maid serves him a drink of whiskey Charlotte’s stashed out of sight of the feds. The little fellow seems troubled. There is a “disconcerting expression on his countenance,” as they say. He’s a Pick but even Picks have emotions.
