by Ishmael Reed
Nathan walks toward Benoit and embraces him. Nathan turns and walks toward the cabin door.
Nathan?
He turns around.
Now I know why they rub you J.G.C.s on their heads up here for good luck. You are walking fetishes. You are indeed beautiful.
Nathan waves goodbye to his friend and walks out the door. He’s got that strange sensation at the nape of his neck. He has finally Caught-On.
After the stock market crash, some New York editors suggested that hearings be held; what had really caused the Depression? They were held in Washington. In retrospect, they make the finest comic reading. The leading industrialists and bankers testified. They hadn’t the foggiest notion what had gone bad. (My italics—I.R.)
Carey McWilliams,
from Hard Times (1970) by
Studs Terkel
50
HIEROPHANT 1 OF THE Wallflower Order has been in the dumps since Jes Grew came within 60 miles of New York. Things look hopeless. It has been an interesting 2,000 years but this is the end of the road. 2,000 years of probing classifying attempting to make an “orderly” world so that when company came they would know the household’s nature and would be careful about dropping ashes on the rug. 2,000 years of patrolling the plants. He would miss the daily species count. The Ethiopian Leopard was just about due, would be no more and would become a job order for the taxidermist. Several other species he wanted to rub out including the Hawaiian Hoary Bat the Morro Bay Kangaroo the Vahontan Cutthroat Trout the California Clapper Rail. Regretfully he would have to take a rain check. He wouldn’t live to see their extermination. Jes Grew was rising to shrieks of Hit me! Hit me!
The Hierophant is about to lift the famous cup containing the not-so-famous poison to his lips when the telephone rings. The red button on the Jes Grew board is lighting up. What is this? What is happening? 30% fewer cases in Ithaca, Schenectady cured, Syracuse rallying, Troy calm, normal. Glory, could it be, Lord? Lord Lord Lord, could it be? The Maiden snatched from the Dragon’s jaws and all that jazz. Who could it be on the phone?
Looks like you made it, says the voice on the other end.
It is the only man in that bloody mid-Atlantic mess with some sense, Walter Mellon, “the Sphinx,” a cool tycoon who knows the score. He is a practical man. A man who could be trusted. A Pragmatist! A man who isn’t devoted to graphs and theory like a tweedy economics professor but someone who speaks freely of “jawboning,” “bulls” and “bears.” From his “throne-like swivel chair” Walter Mellon the Sphinx conducts the Order of the Wallflower in America. He is aloof and correct. He dresses in black, grey and constantly puffs on an indigo colored cigarette.
Mr. Walter Mellon, thank you, we’ve come through once again.
May I make a suggestion?
Of course. Your counsel is very valuable to us, Mr. Mellon.
This is the way I look at it. Jes Grew tied up the tubes causing Dr. Lee De Forest to cop a plea at the press conference.
That is correct, Mr. Walter Mellon.
At the rate of radio sales, 600,000,000 dollars’ worth will be sold by 1929, correct?
That is true, Mr. Walter Mellon.
Suppose people don’t have the money to buy radios. It will be an interesting precaution against this Jes Grew thing, isn’t that so?
I don’t get what you’re driving at, Mr. Mellon.
The liquidity of Jes Grew has resulted in a hyperinflated situation, all you hear is more, more, increase growth…Suppose we shut down a few temples…I mean banks, take money out of circulation, how would people be able to support the appendages of Jes Grew, the cabarets the jook joints and the speaks. Suppose we put a tax on the dance floors and get out of circulation J.G.C.s like musicians, dancers, its doers, its irrepressible fancy. Suppose we take musicians out of circulation, arrest them on trumped-up drug charges and give them unusually long and severe prison sentences. Suppose we subsidize the 100s of symphony orchestras across the country, have government-sponsored Waltz-boosting campaigns, disperse the art from the Art Detention Center so that if the Mu’tafikah strike again all of the pillage won’t be in 1 place.
But wouldn’t these steps result in a depression?
Maybe, but it will put an end to Jes Grew’s resiliency and if a panic occurs it will be a controlled panic. It will be our Panic.
Being a holy man, these matters confuse me. You know what is best. If you think it will work, by all means activate your plan.
Good! I am glad you see it that way.
The phone rings again and Hinckle’s pet zombie Lester answers.
It’s the Teutonics, sir.
What do they want?
They say they didn’t want to say I told you so about the Knights Templar but with the Templars failure to come through on phase 2 of the campaign you will of course consider another 1 of their candidates for a go at the Grail? Bearing the ancient grudge, arising from the time they were driven by their rivals from the seaport town of Acre, they are eager to show these “daisies” up.
Who is the candidate?
They say they have a housepainter in the balcony.
O.K. Bring him downstairs to front row center. Give him a crack at it. What will be the rouse this time, territorial claims, national honor, for Him, a maiden, or that and more?
A grab bag with a few novelties tossed in. He’s an original.
51
THE GATHERING IS HELD in a villa located at Irvington-on-Hudson, so named Villa Lewaro, an anagram upon the Hostess’ name, by famed tenor Enrico Caruso. The purchasing price was $250,000 for this place which rests upon a hill overlooking a lake filled with swans and ducks swimming among water lilies.
The hill’s slope rolls down into a mile of lawn. Inside the home, in 1 room, can be heard someone playing an étude by Chopin upon a 24-karat-gold-decorated white piano. The furniture is Hepplewhite and upon the walls hang paintings by Renaissance masters. The whole scene is dominated by a $60,000 pipe organ whose pipes are as tall as the 1s atop the Bethlehem Steel Co. in Lackawanna New York. Mingling among the guests, maids carry trays supporting succulent tidbits in blankets, anti-pasto, gherkins stuffed with nutmeats, marinated oysters in pastry, braised celery and shrimp puffs, cucumbers filled with crab meat. Champagne flows.
Princes of Europe rub elbows with Harlem poets, tycoons from Tin Pan Alley have brought their stables, playwrights, painters, publishers, producers, sports figures, Negro delineators, middle-aged Byron-Shelley-quoting Negro professors thrilled by their newly found Negroness and who remember when this particular revelation occurred, the time the day and what they were doing. Rudolph Valentino is asking a Black poet the pronunciation of the last word of the title of a film he is doing which allegorizes war death famine and pestilence. Race leaders, doctors, dentists and other professionals are also in attendance. Taking his threat seriously, many are wearing Cab Calloway for President buttons.
The majordomo announces the entrance of a woman Countee Cullen called “the Queen of Ubangi”; she is short, stocky and wears white gloves which reach her elbows and an evening gown and white fur cape. On one side of her is Hinckle Von Vampton and on the other…the Talking Android!!
The people, strolling upon Thug-sewn Persian rugs, politely applaud Vampton and his Find as they majestically escort the woman down the winding marble staircase. This is a signal that the cultural program is about to begin and people take their seats in the library where a stand has been set up near the man who is still playing Chopin.
While they await the entrance, a man at the side of the room taunts the elegant tails-wearing red-cravated patent-leather-shoe-wearing musician.
Hey man, tickle out a few hot licks!
I beg your pardon but I only deal with the Classics. Chopin, Liszt, and their imitators are my forte.
Well excuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuusssssssssss eeeeeeeee me! the man mimics the pianist, arching his nose in imitation.
The glistening party enters the room. Hinckle, the Hostess and the Talking An
droid face the people now in the straight-back chairs that have been assembled in the living room.
Ladies and gentlemen, we have the pleasure of introducing tonight Mr. Hinckle Von Vampton, editor of a very thrilling delightful and inspiring magazine, the Bombay Master…
Hinckle whispers into the woman’s ear. She continues in a singsong voice.
…O, I stand corrected. The Benign Monster magazine, you know, which was recently banned in Boston and has a colored man writing for it. Mr. Von Vampton has brought with him a man he considers 1 of the most exciting young poets to come on the scene, a man who is the dominant figure in Negro letters today, a man who like no 1 else captures the complexity of Negro Thought…Mr. Hubert “Safecracker” Gould!!!
The Hostess and Von Vampton take their seats as Hubert “Safecracker” Gould, white gloves, blackface, black tuxedo, walks to the back of the stand and begins to read his epic “Harlem Tom Toms.”
HARLEM TOM TOMS
FOR BJF
I
O Harlem, great Negro sea of unrest
Allow me to dip my feet into thy Black
Waters where chippies swim like sad-
Eyed fish
Engulf me, Harlem. Submerge me in thy watery
Cabaret until one hand surfaces only
Yass! Yass!
O Harlem, if you are a sea, why… why
Dat makes Lenox Ave. one of your many
Swift currents, grappling me as I
Beckon to big Black bucks—lifeguards
On de sho. Up on de sho O Harlem
Where jazz is a bather writhing in de
Sand and claw-snapping crabs do dey
Duty. Where dippermouthed trumpets
Summon de tides
Root-t-toot! Root-t-toot! Root-t-toot!
And de tom toms play in sea shells
Da-bloom, Da-bloom, Da-bloom-a-loom
II
Yonder. What is dat yonder?
What is dat I see ova dare?
Could dat be some sort of white
Liner invading thy sea O Harlem?
Polluting thy waves, dirtying thy crests
O Harlem?
Let us torpedo de mother, O Harlem
Let us get rid of de bitch! (expressions of shock from the audience)
Befo she collides with us
De steamship of de White whore
Dreadful mistress who has ruined
Many a sea
Chumping some of dem. Streaming
Dem making dem into
Rivulets
O Harlem, let me drag you for
Her drowned victims
Capsizing in thy many streets
A demon-headed marlin Harlem
I is. Yass yass I is. I is
A zoot-suited shark avoiding
De narks, harpoon sharp
I tear into thy whale of a mouth
Like a catfish my whiskers bristle
As I drink from
De dark caves at thy bottom
Your octopi wrap thine
Many tentacles about my heart
O Harlem, and do you know what?
Dere’s more. Plenty more O
Harlem inspiration of my pen
I be a minnow, a
Measly, minnow in
Comparison to thy…
But before he can continue the guests are interrupted by an argument emanating from the vestibule. The Hostess’ countenance smiling through the recital becomes a frown as she rushes out to see her servants arguing with PaPa LaBas, Black Herman, T Malice and 6 tall Python men accompanying them.
Why…why get out of here you men you gate-crashers I don’t want no conjure mens’ detectives in this house you ain’t society you ain’t money you ain’t no artist you don’t have no degree.
Move out of the way lady, Black Herman says.
When some of the male guests come to the Hostess’ assistance PaPa LaBas reveals his pearl-handled .22 and the woman faints dead away. LaBas and Herman walk into the room where the poetry reading is taking place and before the startled guests Black Herman announces:
Hinckle Von Vampton and Hubert “Safecracker” Gould? Come quietly.
Some other people rise from their chairs.
What is the meaning of this intrusion? or something on that order, they ask.
Especially pushy, Hank Rollings the Guianese art critic, an authority on Vermeer, especially resents this embarrassment of Hinckle Von Vampton; why, the man looked as if he had connections and might be able to get him a show; after all, there were so few Blacks who were as ready as he was.
Yes…LaBas, Herman, explain your actions.
This is the meaning, LaBas replies, walking over to Hubert “Safecracker” Gould and grazing a quick finger across his face, leaving a white streak. He then displays the black paint on his finger to the audience.
The people are shocked. The room buzzes.
We have come to arrest this man and his sponsor Hinckle Von Vampton.
Von Vampton begins to ease away from the room but is stopped by Buddy Jackson and some of his men.
That’s not enough of an explanation, says the Guianese art critic whose reviews were phony, completely devoid of feeling; some kind of dry uninteresting geometry, intellectual calisthenics for stale Atonists, his way of convincing them that he was “human too.” We won’t yield these gentlemen until you explain rationally and soberly what they are guilty of. This is no kangaroo courtroom, this is a free country.
Hinckle and Gould nod their heads in agreement. Yes…that’s correct, you will have to explain what charges you have against us before we will go anywhere, Hinckle says, emboldened by the Guianese’s support.
Black Herman looks to PaPa LaBas.
Well if you must know, it all began 1000s of years ago in Egypt, according to a high up member in the Haitian aristocracy.
52
A CERTAIN YOUNG PRINCE who was allergic to thrones attended a university in Nysa, a town in Arabia Felix (now Yemen). It was a land of dates coffee goats sheep wheat barley corn and livestock. Across the Red Sea were Ethiopia and the Sudan where the young man would commute bringing his knowledge of agriculture and comparing notes with the agriculturalists of these lands. There were agricultural celebrations; dancing and singing, and in Egypt this rhythm was known as the Black Mud Sound. At this time in history those who influenced the growth of crops and coaxed the cocks into procreation were seen as sorcerers. The theater accompanying these rites, these agriculturalists’ rites, was a theater of fecundation generation and proliferation, a theater that Victorian Sir James Frazer of The Golden Bough calls “lewd and profligate.” The processes of blooming were acted out by men and women dancers who imitated the process of fertilization. They would play upon instruments, reeded stringed and percussive, as they acted out the process; open their valves, and allow nature to pour through its libation. Osiris was so adept at the mysteries of agriculture that people began to circulate stories that his mother was the sky Nut and the earth his father Geb.
As Osiris danced he would experiment, but the dances were not esoteric, they in fact were quite basic and they caught-on. In the Sudan and Ethiopia he became known as “the man who did dances that caught-on,” infected other people. Well, Osiris lived many years studying under the elders at Nysa until he returned to Egypt. (Some say he was driven out of Ethiopia, where his dances were banned.) In Egypt a dark cloud lay over the land. Cannibalism was still practiced.
Osiris was regarded by his brother Set as a dilletante, a recipient of a far-out education and one who would not know how to deal firmly with the enemies of the Egyptian people. That was Set, the stick crook and flail man. Dealing firmly with enemies, holding them by the hair and chopping off their heads. Set wanted to use the death of their father as an excuse for invading foreign countries. Set hated agriculture and nature which he saw as soiled dirty grimy etc. He was arrogant jealous egotistical and when Osiris issued a ban on men eating men, introducing the techniques he lea
rned from the long-bearded Black men in the university at Nysa, Set began to plot his brother’s downfall. He was also jealous that Osiris was to marry their sister Isis. Fine as she could be. Firm breasts, eloquence, all of those qualities that are later to show up in her spiritual descendant Erzulie (love of mirrors, plumes, combs, an elaborate toilet) whom we in the United States call the girl with the red dress on. (Bessie Smith and Josephine Baker are 2 aspects of Erzulie.) People hated Set. He went down as the 1st man to shut nature out of himself. He called it discipline. He is also the deity of the modern clerk, always tabulating, and perhaps invented taxes.
The eating of barley wheat and corn spread through Egypt like a prairie fire and the people began to do the Black Mud sound, to do alchemical theater (theater of the “Black country”), and that got Set even more annoyed. The people would plant during the day and at night would celebrate dancing singing shaking sistrums and carrying on so that Set couldn’t get sleep and was tired when he went out on the field and drilled marched and gave commands to others. 1 day Osiris performed a miracle. He danced so well that the vines began to imitate a particular slow sinuous movement and from that day to this we have the creeping vine. Osiris was called the Bull by the Egyptians who loved him and greeted him as he toured Egypt with his musicians and their sets of decoration having to do with procreation.
