Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo

Several aides have brought Dictaphones.

The men start to rise but Benoit Battraville signals them to keep their seats. He sits down and begins smoking a cigar; the men are served some white rum.

Gentlemen, thank you for your cooperation. Our request may sound a bit eccentric to you but my friend Nathan Brown tells me that you will cooperate. When Nathan Brown visited our Island last summer we got in contact with him to inform him of a strange plan the Wallflower Order had devised for putting an end to what has become known here as the Jes Grew epidemic. They were to dispatch a man here to groom a Talking Android who would work within the Negro to purge it…I enlisted the cooperation of Nathan to tell all of you to be on the lookout for such a man. He is a candidate for a plan we have. He has failed in his plan so I don’t see how he would object to aiding the completion of ours.

The men laugh.

I am in a buoyant mood. My Ghede is getting the best of me tonight because I am happy to say we have success. PaPa LaBas called me a short time ago to tell me he had evidence to link a gentleman named Hinckle Von Vampton to the plot and he will arrest him and his assistants tonight at a gala affair at Irvington-on-Hudson. He will then deliver the gentlemen to our little ship and then we shall return to our Island. There is 1 other man who is associated with this pair, too, but our elder statesman Houngan Ti Bouton wants to handle this 1 himself. So if you would just cooperate, all of the men who were approached by Hinckle Von Vampton are welcome to remain in here and the others may depart. I thank you for your cooperation.

About 9 men finish their drinks and leave. Those remaining wait for further instructions from Benoit Battraville.

Now, as 1 of your theoreticians has already said, no 1 knows how a new loa is formed. But we know that when 1 comes about it must be fed, similar to the way you feed your Ragtime and Jazz by supporting the artists and making it easier for those who are possessed by those forms. Buying records and patronizing those places which are not in the hands of Atonists. You know that if you don’t do this, Ragtime and Jazz will turn upon you or unfed they will perish. Similarly we have a Radio Loa who just came about during this war. It loves to hear the static concerning its victims’ crimes before it “eats” them. I know this is a strange request but if you will just 1 by 1 approach the Dictaphone, tell just how Hinckle Von Vampton propositioned you, the circumstances and the proposals he made to you, we will record this and then feed it to our loa. This particular loa has a Yellow Back to symbolize its electric circuitry. We are always careful not to come too close to it. It’s a very mean high-powered loa.

There is no further persuasion needed for these sensible hardworking artists. As the others drink rum and eat mangoes Major Young approaches the recording.

I walked into the cabaret 1 night. I was in the company of a mixed gathering and no sooner had I sat at my table than Hubert “Safecracker” Gould approached me and said that he wanted to introduce me to Hinckle Von Vampton. I joined this man who was wearing a black patch over his eye…a…

Excellent! Excellent! Benoit Battraville said as 1 of his attendants began to play it back. Soon the voice came on again

I walked into the cabaret one night…The voice comes across loud and clear. Major Young tells his story. He is followed by Nathan Brown. It goes on until the 10 or so men who had been approached by Hinckle Von Vampton have completed their narratives. It is close to 9:00 P.M. when they finish. They start to leave the ship, each of them being given an honorary houngan license. Nathan Brown pauses at the door leading from the stateroom.

Benoit?

Yes, Nathan.

You said you were going to teach me how to catch it.

Catch what, Nathan?

Jes Grew.

O…I think you ought to ask PaPa LaBas or Black Herman. You see the Americans do not know the names of the long and tedious list of deities and rites as we know them. Shorthand is what they know so well. They know this process for they have synthesized the HooDoo of VooDoo. Its bleeblop essence; they’ve isolated the unknown factor which gives the loas their rise. Ragtime. Jazz. Blues. The new thang. That talk you drum from your lips. Your style. What you have here is an experimental art form that all of us believe bears watching. So don’t ask me how to catch Jes Grew. Ask Louis Armstrong, Bessie Smith, your poets, your painters, your musicians, ask them how to catch it. Ask those people who be shaking their tambourines impervious of the ridicule they receive from Black and White Atonists, Europe the ghost rattling its chains down the deserted halls of their brains. Ask those little colored urchins who “make up” those new dance steps and the loa of the Black cook who wrote the last lines of the “Ballad of Jesse James.” Ask the man who, deprived of an electronic guitar, picked up a washboard and started to play it. The Rhyming Fool who sits in Rē’-mōte Mississippi and talks “crazy” for hours. The dazzling parodying punning mischievous pre-Joycean style-play of your Cakewalking your Calinda your Minstrelsy give-and-take of the ultra-absurd. Ask the people who put wax paper over combs and breathe through them. In other words, Nathan, I am saying Open-Up-To-Right-Here and then you will have something coming from your experience that the whole world will admire and need. But your musicians are dying your novelists are exiled for telling the truth your poets are pawning their coats for 10 dollars your people are talking of the New Negro movement but they can’t discuss more than 2 writers or a single painter or when they talk about Scott Joplin the Apostle of Ragtime I see shame in their eyes. Look, Nathan, our nation did not heed the prophecies of its artists and it paid dearly. We will never make that mistake again.

Nathan walks toward Benoit and embraces him. Nathan turns and walks toward the cabin door.

Nathan?

He turns around.

Now I know why they rub you J.G.C.s on their heads up here for good luck. You are walking fetishes. You are indeed beautiful.

Nathan waves goodbye to his friend and walks out the door. He’s got that strange sensation at the nape of his neck. He has finally Caught-On.

After the stock market crash, some New York editors suggested that hearings be held; what had really caused the Depression? They were held in Washington. In retrospect, they make the finest comic reading. The leading industrialists and bankers testified. They hadn’t the foggiest notion what had gone bad. (My italics — I.R.)

Carey McWilliams,

from Hard Times (1970) by

Studs Terkel

HIEROPHANT 1 OF THE Wallflower Order has been in the dumps since Jes Grew came within 60 miles of New York. Things look hopeless. It has been an interesting 2,000 years but this is the end of the road. 2,000 years of probing classifying attempting to make an “orderly” world so that when company came they would know the household’s nature and would be careful about dropping ashes on the rug. 2,000 years of patrolling the plants. He would miss the daily species count. The Ethiopian Leopard was just about due, would be no more and would become a job order for the taxidermist. Several other species he wanted to rub out including the Hawaiian Hoary Bat the Morro Bay Kangaroo the Vahontan Cutthroat Trout the California Clapper Rail. Regretfully he would have to take a rain check. He wouldn’t live to see their extermination. Jes Grew was rising to shrieks of Hit me! Hit me!

The Hierophant is about to lift the famous cup containing the not-so-famous poison to his lips when the telephone rings. The red button on the Jes Grew board is lighting up. What is this? What is happening? 30 % fewer cases in Ithaca, Schenectady cured, Syracuse rallying, Troy calm, normal. Glory, could it be, Lord? Lord Lord Lord, could it be? The Maiden snatched from the Dragon’s jaws and all that jazz. Who could it be on the phone?