Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo

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.