Ishmael Reed - Reckless Eyeballing

“Man, is that all you’re going to drink? You don’t touch your food. I’m on an expense account. What’s the matter with you?”

“I’m not hungry,” Ball said.

“Black people are strongest when they emulate the Jews. How do you think they got through slavery? Those old biblical metaphors, that’s how. They used them. They identified with the children of Israel. That’s how they survived their suffering. Through the gospel they were able to define their situation. These intellectuals who denounce the Jews are making the same mistake that Hitler made.”

“I don’t understand.”

“If Hitler had listened to the Jews, he would have won the war.”

“How’s that?”

“The V-1 rocket designed at Peenemünde was the ancestor of the modern missile. It would have enabled Hitler to strike England and the U.S. with A-bombs. He rejected the A-bomb. Called the theory behind it ‘Jewish physics.’ His wrongheaded bigotry finally did him in.”

“Tremonisha says that Hitler was Jewish and that the reason he hated the Jews was because he actually hated himself, or wanted the approval of white people.”

“She got it all wrong. It was the German nation that tried to become white. You ask a Swede, a Norwegian or a Dane, or an Icelander whether the Germans are Nordic, as Hitler claimed, and he will laugh in your face. I mean, this Nibelungen thing that Hitler was raving about — it doesn’t even belong to the Germans. It’s under lock and key in a museum in Reykjavik. It’s the sacred work of the Nordic people. Written on cowhide, and in different colors of ink. The Germans have too much Tartar blood to be Nordic. The Khans left onion-shaped domes all over Germany, and that is not all they left. Hitler probably had more Mongol blood than anything else; most of those people come out of central Asia. There’s still no hard evidence that Hitler was Jewish, regardless of what Tremonisha says. It was the German nation that went crazy trying to be white; they tried everything, they tried to claim the Greeks, they tried to claim the Egyptians. Nothing worked, and so Hitler came along and said you’re white so often that they believed it, and so for as long as Hitler was in power, every German person stood in front of his mirror and didn’t see himself, but saw a blond, blue-eyed Aryan. Talking about schizophrenia. He had them mesmerized.

“As for Tre, they don’t even understand her plays. But as long as she takes swipes at the brothers, Becky will keep her.” He leaned over. Whispering. “Between you and me, I think it’s because of some affair Becky had when she was in the South organizing during the sixties. Some black dude. Fucked over her. Stole her credit cards, and forged her checks, and now she’s using Tremonisha to get even with all black men. Kind of like a circus act where the ringmaster shoots a dummy out of a cannon. She dared not tamper with your play because of Jim Minsk. I’m surprised that they even gave you a workshop, now that he’s dead.”

“Brashford says that the Jews are using blacks to keep the goyim off their case. All this stuff about pathology — welfare, crime and dope, single parent households — he says that the conservative Jews keep those issues on the front burner so’s the goyim will be so angry with blacks that they will ignore the Jews and leave them alone. He says that the black criminals might mug somebody or relieve them of a gold chain, but they never built no empire of crime like Murder Incorporated like the Jews did.”

“Ninety-five percent of the audience for his stuff is Jewish. The blacks don’t like him, nor his work. Listen, you’re going to have to wean yourself away from Brashford. Hasn’t he gotten you enough grants and fellowships? I mean, it must be embarrassing.”

Ball didn’t say anything. The waiter came and handed Shoboater the check. He pulled out his American Express and signed for it.

“I got to hand it to you, Ball. You’re the original malevolent rabbit. You couldn’t care less about what happened to Brashford. As soon as you stop using him, you’ll use somebody else. Your mother was like that. Wasn’t she arrested?” Ball leaned over and grabbed the sucker by the collar. The diners looked at the pair, but Ball didn’t care. He let him go. Shoboater was trembling.

“Hey man. Calm down. Here, have some coffee, it’s like the kind they have down home. None of this weak northern stuff.” He poured Ball some coffee from the silver pot the waiter had left.

“I’m sorry, Paul. But when somebody puts my mother down, I just go crazy.” Besides, he wanted Shoboater to write a good review of Reckless Eyeballing .

“So Randy Shank is a doorman uptown,” Shoboater said, changing the subject, smiling profusely and straightening his clothes.

“He’s an important playwright. He paved the way for us all. Now that he’s down on his luck, you guys are pouncing on him like buzzards, lingering over his bones.”

Shoboater looked at his watch. “Hey, I’m late. I have to go uptown for the interview with—” He mentioned the name of another black feminist writer who had finished a book.

She wrote in a style that Brashford sarcastically called “finishing school lumpen.” Brashford accused the woman of having maimed the speech of ghetto women for the benefit of white women who didn’t know any better.

He rose and hurried out of the restaurant. The tailor-made suit had his butt sticking out. That amused Ball.

“Anything else, monsieur?” the waiter asked.

“Yeah. Give me another Pabst,” Ball said. The waiter turned up his nose.

That night he dreamed that all of those giant Amazon women that Shoboater had said were on the walls of museums on the domed ceilings of churches, and on public buildings in Europe had escaped and were chasing him and the fellas through the streets. These giant women didn’t seem to have much difficulty in catching them, despite the heavy clothing they were wearing. None of them tripped over her skirt. They were “monstropolous,” as Zora Neale Hurston would say.

O’Reedy was getting nowhere with his search for the Flower Phantom. The bastard’s somewhere right now, probably laughing at me, he thought as he entered his house in Queens. He hung up his coat and hat in the hall.

“Where’s dinner?” he said gruffly. He heard low voices talking in the living room. He couldn’t make out what they were saying.

He sees things. I think that he needs a rest, and the other day he didn’t know that I was in the house, and he was in the bedroom with that thing .

What thing?

That gun. He had it next to him .

Maybe he was keeping it under the pillow .

No, he had it next to his cheek. He had a smile on his face .

I’ll try to talk Dad into taking a vacation .

He calls the gun Nancy. I mean, Sean, I wouldn’t…I mean I’ve been a good wife, and, well, if it was another woman, I’d understand, and even another man, I mean, I try to keep up with the times, but Sean, competing with a gun— He stood in the doorway. He cleared his throat.

“Oh, dear, we didn’t hear you come in, Sean is here.”

“Yeah, I see him with my own eyes. So what were you two gabbing about?” He folded his arms and leaned against one side of the threshold.

“We, ah, we—” his wife began. “Oh, I’d better see about dinner.” She went into the kitchen, leaving Sean to his father. His son looked more like O’Reedy’s father, Captain Timothy O’Reedy, who was known as a great risk taker, and finally made captain after a controversial career and many unnecessary homicides, which he claimed took place in the line of duty. Freckled face, red hair, but unlike his grandfather Sean O’Reedy was a wimp, in the eyes of his dad. He was thirty-five years old and still in school.