Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo

He bends over, holding her there and kissing her. She begins to struggle but suddenly kisses him back, passionately hanging on to him as he holds her from the waist up, her bottom half suspended there like a mermaid in water.

Black Herman signals for the sisters and PaPa LaBas to leave the room. They quietly leave, turning the lights down to a dark red glow, the music a quiet piano moving through the room. Herman takes over where LaBas has failed.

Before LaBas exits he hears Black Herman whisper to Earline.

Softly, a husky whisper. Now you know you want to leave this girl now, don’t you?

She cries passionately almost inaudibly Yes! Yes! You know I will; but first… please… please feed me! Then I will leave her…

The door closes shut.

ABOUT AN HOUR LATER Black Herman emerges from the room. LaBas and the sisters are seated about the kitchen table drinking tea.

How is she? T Malice asks.

She’ll be all right. When she wakes I want you to give her the magic bath; she will be herself again. But don’t tell her about Berbelang, she won’t remember anything from the last 24 hours or so. Just stay with her until she comes out of it and don’t mention who visited her. 1 of the sisters nods.

LaBas sits a minute; Black Herman joins the rest at the table. How did you succeed where I failed, Herman?

Well it’s like this, PaPa. You always go around speaking as if you were a charlatan and putting yourself down when you are 1 of the most technical dudes with The Work. Abdul was right that night…I didn’t want to say. You ought to relax. That’s our genius here in America. We were dumped here on our own without the Book to tell us who the loas are, what we call spirits were. We made up our own. The theories of Julia Jackson. I think we’ve done all right. The Blues, Ragtime, The Work that we do is just as good. I’ll bet later on in the 50s and 60s and 70s we will have some artists and creators who will teach Africa and South America some new twists. It’s already happening. What it boils down to, LaBas, is intent. If your heart’s there, man, that’s ½ the thing about The Work. Even the European Occultists say that. Doing The Work is not like taking inventory. Improvise some. Open up, PaPa. Stretch on out with It.

Maybe I’m a bit too rigid. 1 of Berbelang’s friends, Jose Fuentes, called me a repressed Negro.

There was silence for a moment.

Don’t you think we ought to check with Earline to see if the other 1 has completely left.

O pop, I don’t believe that a little Etzulie ever did anybody any harm.

The sisters smile. T Malice smiles too.

THE NEXT MORNING LABAS receives a call from Black Herman, indicating that “visitors in the harbor” are anxious to meet with him. He also indicates that Earline is in good hands and that she is “coming out of it.”

About a ½-hour later Herman’s President straight 8 pulls up to Mumbo Jumbo Kathedral and LaBas enters.

Who are we to meet?

I am not at liberty to say — it’s secret, but the people want very much for you to meet with them. Did you hear of Abdul Hamid’s murder? Herman asks.

Yes, I forgot to say I discovered the body. Was there anything to indicate how he got his?

I found something I didn’t show to the police, but as you will recall he mentioned something about an anthology, the archives of an ancient people. I found a crumpled piece of paper, an epigram in his fist concerning Egyptian-American cotton. I can’t connect it to anything but I have a nagging suspicion that it has something to do with the missing anthology. I can’t put it out of my mind.

Strange, very strange, Black Herman said, steering the car toward the Hudson River pier. You know the night before he died I had a vision of him attired in something which resembled a night club floor, he was whirling about the center like a dervish, in the center, he wouldn’t move away from that center…

LaBas hasn’t paid attention to the last remark. He had picked up a copy of the New York Sun. It was folded to the society page and a red pencil had circled the picture of a distinguished looking grey-haired man above the caption “Patron-of-the-Arts.” It was Hinckle Von Vampton, publisher of the Benign Monster. He wore a black patch over his eye but what was even stranger was the pendant he wore about his neck. The pendant depicted 2 Knights riding upon 1 horse.

A very interesting pendant; do you have it encircled for any particular reason, Herman?

I just want to keep my eye on him.

Once at the pier they approach the freighter The Black Plume. The ship’s searchlight swings in their direction. It blinks on and off 3 times. 2 of the Host’s assistants — Python men — both over 6 feet tall emerge from a room and lower the ramp. Black Herman and PaPa LaBas board. The men escort them into a stateroom where they are invited to sit upon some chairs. Outside the ship may be tugboat-shabby but the interior is beautiful. On the floor are loa signatures drawn with cornmeal and water. Rada Drums hang from the ceiling. The colors of the room are black and red, the walls are red, the floor is black. A flag hangs from the ceiling upon which has been sewn the words Vin ’ Bain Ding, “Blood, Pain, Excrement.” On a table are handbells, descendants of instruments Egyptians called (ancient) sistrums found in their Temples of Osiris and Isis. The central post is red. Incense composed of hot iron is burning.

On the walls are oil portraits of Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Jean Jacques Dessalines, heroes who had expelled Napoleon’s troops from Haiti and brought about the Independence of 1803. Next to these are portraits of Henri Christophe and Boukman, the Papa Loi, who rallied the Haitian countryside to the banner of VooDoo, and the mulatto general André Riguad.

A tall Black man enters the room. He is wearing a red robe and a long necklace made of beads and snake bones. On his finger is a ring upon which a Dark Tower is ensconced.

B. Battraville invites the others to sit. He sits, crosses his legs and lights a cigarette.

I must give you the background, gentlemen. As you well know we surrounded the Marines at Port-au-Prince but the action wasn’t entirely successful because they had been tipped off by the mulatto secretary.

The New York Times called you bandits.

Benoit Battraville smiles as a tall Python man serves them rum.

Charlemagne Peralte was hardly a bandit. Our leader was a member of the Haitian elite. He did not invite the American Marines to land in our country on July 28, 1915. The U.S.S. Washington landed uninvited. They came on their ships without an Act of your Kongress or consent of the American people.

We didn’t learn about it until recently and that was when you surrounded the Marines…

We were lucky to hear even then, Black Herman, Battraville replies. It was made as a signal to someone. It was a telegram, a message by headline from 1 man to a secret society located in a “neutral country.”

PaPa LaBas is startled…You mean?

Yes you were correct in your book The Forest Within. People thought it was merely a far-out work but we read what you were saying…At the foundation of the aesthetic order which pervades this country is a secret society — an ancient society known as the Atonist Path which is protected by its military arm the Wallflower Order, those to whom no 1 ever asked, “May I have this 1?”

Herman chuckled.

Why I’ll be damned. I figured something like this was at the bottom because everyone is wondering why we were down there. Economics didn’t make sense, although, in his excellent Nation articles James Weldon Johnson did speak of the influence of the National City Bank.