Ishmael Reed - Mumbo Jumbo

Well, Abdul says, looking at his watch, I have to get back to the office. I have an anthology that’s really going to shake them up when I get done translating it.

What language is it in? LaBas asks.

Hieroglyphics. Abdul starts to shake hands with Herman and LaBas but seeing a couple arriving at the doorway his friendly face becomes a scowl and he withdraws his hand.

He wags his finger in their face. And if I ever see you characters hanging around my mosque I will have my men take care of you, Abdul says, his back turned to the 2 people. He winks at LaBas and Herman and then nearly knocks over the 2 people on the way out of the room; standing in the doorway are a high-yellow woman and her bespectacled light-skinned unsteady harassed-looking male escort.

Watch out with your old short Black ugly self, she scornfully shouts as Abdul flies by the 2 and out the door.

Julius? Why don’t you do something, Julius? When these niggers manhandle me like that?

Yes dear my lovely Nubian queen, the man says meekly as he and the woman turn about and head for the other rooms. (Julius was a well-known Black doorman for a quality Gentlemen’s club, hired to bounce the literary bad niggers who might become rowdy. He was W. E. B. Du Bois’ Boswell, but Du Bois was always in conference to him.)

PaPa LaBas and Black Herman move from the room and down the hall of the Townhouse now filled with people.

You know, maybe he’s got something, Herman.

Maybe so but I don’t think that he should experiment in public this way. He’s doing a lot of damage, building his structure on his feet like this. That bigoted edge of it resembles fascism. An actor…We’ll see.

PaPa LaBas reflects. Do you think we’re out of date as he said?

I know that the politicians of this era will be remembered more than me but I would like to believe that we work for principles and not for self. “We serve the loas,” as they say. Charismatic leaders will become as outdated as the solo because people will realize that when the Headman dies the movement dies instead of becoming a permanent entity, perispirit, a protective covering for its essence. Yes, Abdul will become surrounded by people who will yield inches of their lives to him at a time; become the satellites rotating about the body which gives them light; but that’s ephemeral, the fading clipping from the newspaper in comparison to a Ju / Ju Mask a 1000 years old. No, LaBas, the New York police will wipe out VooDoo just as they did in New Orleans, but it will find a home in a band on the Apollo stage, in the storefronts; and there will always be those who will risk the uninformed amusement of their contemporaries by resurrecting what we stood for.

The 2 men, PaPa LaBas and his guide Black Herman, walk into the 1920s parlor of the Townhouse. People are standing about a light-skinned-appearing man.

Well I’ll be damned, Black Herman says. It’s the President Elect, Warren Harding.

They move into the center of the room where Harding stands beneath some white chandeliers. He is on the tail end of some remarks he is making to the gathering. The Hostess stands off to the side, next to a society interviewer from the Race press. Her party is made: an unannounced visit of the next President.

As you know, Mr. James Weldon Johnson visited me in Muncie and gave me information concerning the nasty war taking place in Haiti the administration was attempting to conceal.

The guests move in as Harding reaches into his hip pocket and removes a plug of tobacco.

I think we made a good shot with the Haitian material and the administration was put on the defensive. They were hard pressed to explain why a horrid war with Marines committing so many atrocities was allowed to continue. I promised Mr. Johnson that on the way to Washington I would drop by and see him and it was he who suggested that if I attended your little party I could hear some of that good music. The sounds Mr. Daugherty my Attorney General and Florence my wife keep hidden from me. So if you don’t mind a gate crasher I think I’ll just go and dip my fork into some of those chitterlings and pigs’ feet I know you’re cooking down in the basement kitchen.

The President Elect followed by 2 of his aides walks down the steps leading to the basement as titters fly through the room.

Well I have to go, LaBas says to Herman.

Wait, I’ll walk you down the stairs.

Herman puts on his black top formal hat and black cape. They walk down the Townhouse steps. Black Herman and LaBas shake hands when they reach the sidewalk.

Keep in touch, PaPa; there are some people in the harbor who want to meet you.

Good. Call me. LaBas walks toward his car. T Malice has the night off. He turns to Black Herman, the other man approaching the end of the block.

Herman, can I give you a ride?

The man turns around. No that’s O.K. I’ll walk.

Herman?

Yes?

These young kids these days know how to give a party, don’t they?

You can say that again, Herman agrees before vanishing around the corner.

Biff Musclewhite has reduced his status from Police Commissioner to Consultant to the Metropolitan Police in the precinct in Yorktown in order to take a job as Curator of the Center of Art Detention. (More pay.) He is sitting with 1 of his old colleagues, Schlitz “the Sarge of Yorktown,” nicknamed affectionately by the police station he so often visited over the years.

They are sitting at the table of the Plantation House located in the Milky Way of Manhattan, the area of theaters and night clubs. The Southern Belle chorus line is promenading on the stage (the background of which is a riverboat) in their multipetticoated skirts, carrying parasols and wearing bonnets. Banjos strumming. Black waiters stand against the wall dressed as if they were in some 18th-century French court. White powdered wigs, frilled cuffs and shirts. The deep, blue lighting fills the club.

Gonna miss ya, Biff, remember the bags I use to bring to ya, ya got real rich outta that; the only guy retiring at $3000 per as a millionaire. I’ll bet you have 1,000,000s in stocks and bonds inside your shoeboxes.

Yes, I’ve come a long way, hobnobbing with the rich out on Long Island…Curator of a museum…a long way from that punk kid you use to cover, down in the Tenderloin. Musclewhite laughs.

Yeah, remember when you went off to war and the whole gang turned out to say goodbye and sing “Over There.” You really gave it to them Huns, Biff. We were proud of you.

…You know, Sarge, some would think that this was a plot for a Cagney movie. You and I brothers, you become a gangster and I become a cop…

Only you didn’t go straight. I was always dumb but you were smart, taking more money from us than I would ever make in policy or bootlegging liquor, and now Curator of the Center of Art Detention which is kind of Big Cheese for us crooks. There you are taking bigger than me and getting away clean; how did you swing it?

Some of my friends over at the Plutocrat Club said there was an opening. I asked them how I could get the job if my only experience was as police commissioner. They said I had to learn the art of making a simple oil portrait resemble a window dressing in heaven. They said it was the gab that was the art. How you promoted it…So I’ve been learning these art terms from reading the New York Sun. And you know, I’m getting good at it.

Similar to my business. That’s what I mean, Biff, you’ve always had a head on your shoulders. Your silver hair, the expensive clothing, hanging out with all the swanks. A good cover. You got it made, pal. The pressures I have…Buddy Jackson is muscling in on my operation in Harlem; we tried to get him the other day but the nigger seems to have 9 lives. My man hurled a bomb at him and a dame.