Ishmael Reed: Mumbo Jumbo

Irene Castle’s clients were tycoons and captains of industry — Harriman Astor Vanderbilt she taught for 100 dollars an hour to do a diluted version of Jes Grew, during the day they paid blue-nosed deference to the Atonist creeds. Somehow like the Haitian elite pays homage to Catholicism but keeps a houngan tucked away in the background.

At night they would wallow up to their bankbooks in the Charleston at Irene’s Caves. No ordinary gin mills but high hat joints where they danced to Jim Europe’s “Black Devils,” the first jazz band to play on 5th Ave.

With such powerful backing, PaPa LaBas had been able to stave off their attacks — the attacks of the Manhattan Atonists. Many of their “patients” were relatives of these tycoons and they couldn’t risk a dollar by irritating someone whose techniques had been endorsed by Irene Castle.

But recently she had moved to the right of Jes Grew and was consulting the Government on the Epidemic. The hostility had been renewed. PaPa LaBas knew the fate of those who threatened the Atonist Path. They would receive the wrath of its backbone: the Wallflower Order which attends to the Dirty Work.

Their writings were banished, added to the Index of Forbidden Books or sprinkled with typos as a way of undermining their credibility, and when they sent letters complaining of this whole lines were deleted without the points of ellipses. An establishment which had been in operation for 2,000 years had developed some pretty clever techniques. Their enemies, apostates and heretics were placed in dungeons, hanged or exiled or ostracized occasionally by their own people who, due to the domination of their senses by Atonism, were robbed of any concerns other than mundane ones. PaPa LaBas did not proselytize. Not even those who worked with him, Earline, Charlotte; all he requested was that they feed the loas. A debt be owed to their influence upon his experience. A precaution.

The clerk interrupted his thoughts by calling his case. He is summoned and asked to swear upon the only book the judge will allow in “his court.” PaPa LaBas won’t dare touch the accursed thing. He demands the right to his own idols and books. It reminds PaPa LaBas of the familiar epigram: “Orthodoxy is my Doxy, Heterodoxy is the other fellow’s Doxy.”

The late Teens and early 1920s are a bad time for civil liberties. In Bisbee Arizona, 1917, 1,100 members of the Industrial Workers of the World (Wobblies) are subjected to the tortures of a vigilante mob. January 23, 1920, 5,000 “Reds” are routed from their beds, imprisoned or deported. At the beginning of the Jazz Age, February 20th, 1919, in Hammond Indiana, after deliberating for 2 minutes a jury of his peers acquits Frank Petroni who had murdered in cold blood a man who yelled “To Hell with the United States.”

Fear stalks the land. (As usual; so what else is new?)

While PaPa LaBas has been haggling with the judge the prosecutor has been conferring with the bull. The prosecutor requests to approach the bench. After a short conference, the judge dismisses the case.

They really don’t want him in jail. They want to wear him down, pique him, enthrall him, tie him up by burdening him with petty court appearances so that he won’t have time for Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral.

Outside PaPa LaBas climbs into the back seat of his 1915, 2-passenger Town Coupe Locomobile. It is a car designed to accommodate the philosophy “small numbers make for distinction, quantity destroys” and its production is limited to 4 per day. He reaches into 1 of the wooden vanity cases and removes a sky blue colored cigarette. His own brand, Mumbos.

His driver T Malice, so-called as a result of his penchant for the practical joke, is a tall lanky youth pursuing a degree in librarian-ship at Lincoln University.

People are running in the direction of Wall Street.

What’s up? PaPa LaBas asks, picking up the tab to read.

Seems that the Sarge of Yorktown sent some of his Torpedoes to take Buddy Jackson but failed. Buddy and his woman weren’t touched. What happened with your case?

They dismissed it again. Another stalling action. We’ll probably find a fire inspector when we reach the Kathedral. Since Irene condemned The Work, the Department of Public Health has also been hassling us. The lies put out about the place by these men with degrees from the Atonist cause. Whenever sophistry and rhetoric fail they send in their poor White goons. They don’t have the guts of real gangsters. The letters after their names are their tommy guns and those universities where they pour over syllables in the many cubicles, their Big House.

Well, you know how these fagingy-fagades are, pop. Mr. Eddy’s very screwy these days.

Fagingy-fagade? What’s that?

White people, pop. Ofays.

PaPa LaBas, conscious of the contemporary since Berbelang’s attack, writes this into his black notebook. He asks T Malice to repeat it several times so that he can ascertain the correct spelling, having become a student of auditory phonetics. The big car moves from 10 °Center Street toward uptown. They detour to make room for ambulances arriving at the scene of the explosion.

The Locomobile with the 2 men and dog occupants moves toward the vicinity of the explosion. When they reach it they see people milling about. The fire trucks, police and cars are parked haphazardly about the street. PaPa LaBas notices an object that has been blown to the pavement. He emerges from the car after signaling T Malice to halt. It’s the brokers “ugly” fetish: a wood-carving of Ghede. Isn’t that strange, PaPa LaBas thinks. PaPa LaBas re-enters the auto. Desiring privacy as he examines the Ghede, he pulls down the backseat’s silk roller shades. It is an easy ride; the rear of the car contains 50-inch springs.

PaPa LaBas’ Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral is located at 119 West 136th St. The dog at his heels, PaPa LaBas climbs the steps of the Town house. He moves from room to room: the Dark Tower Room the Weary Blues Room the Groove Bang and Jive Around Room the Aswelay Room. In the Groove Bang and Jive Around Room people are rubberlegging for dear life; bending over backwards to admit their loa. In the Dark Tower Room, artists using cornmeal and water are drawing veves. Markings which were invitations to new loas for New Art. The room is decorated in black red and gold.

A piano recording plays Jelly Roll Morton’s “Pearls,” haunting, melancholy. In the Aswelay Room the drums sleep after they’ve been baptized. A guard attendant stands by so that they won’t get up and walk all over the place. PaPa LaBas opens his hollow obeah stick and gives the drums a drink of bootlegged whiskey. Stunned by Berbelang’s attack upon him as an “anachronism,” he has introduced some Yoga techniques. In 1 main room, people are doing the Cobra the Fish the Lion the Lotus the Tree the Voyeurs Pose the Adepts Pose the Wheel Pose the Crows Pose and many others. There is a room PaPa LaBas calls the Mango Room, so named to honor the great purifying plant. On a long maple table covered with splendid white linen cloth rest 21 trays filled with such delectable items as liqueurs, sweets, rum, baked chicken, and beef. The table is adorned with vases containing many types of roses. This room is the dining hall of the loas, and LaBas demands that the trays be refreshed after the Ka-food has been eaten. His assistants make sure that this is done. The room is illuminated by candles of many colors. On the tables sky-blue candles are burning. In the other main room attendants have been guided through exercises. Once in a while 1 is possessed by a loa. The loa is not a daimon in the Freudian sense, a hysteric; no, the loa is known by its signs and is fed, celebrated, drummed to until it deserts the horse and govi of its host and goes on about its business. The attendants are experienced and know the names, knowledge the West lost when the Atonists wiped out the Greek mysteries. The last thing these attendants would think of doing to a loa’s host is electrifying it lobotomizing it or removing its clitoris, which was a pre-Freudian technique for “curing” hysteria. No, they don’t wish it ill, they welcome it. When a client is handled by an especially vigorous loa the others stand around this person and give it encouragement. Smiling PaPa and T see that everything is really Jake.