Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo

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.”

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.

What’s troubling you, Peter?

Well Charlotte, in order to understand you must realize that before I joined your act I had a past. Before becoming a familiar adhesive to you, your insurance, the electric blanket which covers the long winter nights of your act, my sperm really got around.

Get to the point Peter, the heart of the matter.

Charlotte, it’s not that I don’t think we’re a good team. With my struts, grinds, and shuffles and your torch and palmistry we are going a long way. I received the Craw Tickler of the Year award from the Drama critics; and millionaires call on you for you to teach them dilute dances of The Work. Why, all the Fat Cats, Swells, and S.O.B.s out on Manhattan’s Milky Way catch our act. I am the best Pick on the T.O.B.A., better than Sophie Tucker’s Picks, or Gussie Francis’ Picks. Why, the other Picks call me a Pick’s Pick, thus my name Doctor Peter Pick…

Peter please, what’s the matter? Charlotte asks, seeing tears well in the little fellow’s light-brown eyes.