Summary
Chapter 25
Hinckle Von Vampton and H. “Safecracker” Gould visit Abdul late one rainy night. They knock on his door and Hinckle introduces himself as the publisher of the Benign Monster. He requests some of the anthology Abdul has, but Abdul says he does not have it and it was unprintable. When Gould points to the safe behind Abdul, Abdul objects and Gould fatally stabs him.
The safe is empty. Annoyed, Hinckle tells Gould to get rid of the body.
*
The phone rings in Biff Musclewhite’s office, and Biff tells him he is excited to meet “him,” and yes, he will take care of the corpse.
Chapter 26
PaPa LaBas heads into Abdul’s headquarters. The outer office has a desk with the magazine Fire. On the desk are lampoons of ivory and bronze; they are of Whites who went into Africa to pillage it, and their faces are ridiculous. The Africans had a tremendous sense of humor, which Christians stamped out and reduced them to “glumness, depression, surliness, cynicism, malice without artfulness, and their intellectuals, in America, only appreciated heavy, serious works” (96).
LaBas hopes that when the imposter, the burden laid on the Afro-American soul, is lifted, there will be a sigh of relief in the land. He has no issue with the Black Christ, but most of the preachers are hucksters. On the desk LaBas sees a rejection slip addressed to Abdul, saying the publisher cannot publish the book because the market is overwrought with this sort of thing and the “Negro Awakening” has reached its peak.
LaBas then notices the body. In Abdul’s hand is a crushed piece of paper that reads “Stringy lumpy; Bales dancing / Beneath this center / Lies the Bird” (98). He calls the police but they tell him someone else has already phoned it in, which is odd.
Chapter 27
On the way to Buddy Jackson’s cabaret, Hinckle Von Hampton reads the headline of the “hate mongerer” Abdul’s “well-deserved end” in the Sun. He and Gould alit, bringing Woodrow Wilson Jefferson with them. The doorman tells them Jefferson is too dark and they cater to “Brown Yellow and White” (100). Hinckle sighs and sends Jefferson to get food while they go inside.
There is a crowd around a young man whom Hinckle recognizes as Major Young, a poet gaining popularity. From his table, Hinckle sends Hubert to summon Young, who joins them. A Black man serves them champagne. Hinckle tells Young he enjoys his poetry, which soars like Whitman’s. Young is suspicious, telling him Whitman did not write about Harlem. When Hinckle says his verse is polished, Young replies that it is not glass. Hinckle is annoyed with this brazen man, but tells him that he would like him to contribute to his magazine. Young tells him he has heard of it and wonders why he employs W.W. Jefferson, and that the drawings on the poems of a prior issue were racist and insulting. Hinckle waves this away, saying they were just for attention and they need Young’s verse to balance the arid and boring Nathan Brown. Young raises his eyebrows and says Brown is accomplished and a friend of his, and not all Black people need to write the same way. He excuses himself.
Hinckle is miffed at this “Uppity” and “Arrogant” (102) behavior, but is pleased when Gould reports favorably that he has been able to steal enough dances and songs to publish his own Broadway musical.
Chapter 28
Charlotte’s Plantation House routine has made her very rich. She is lounging about her well-appointed apartment with Doctor Peter Pick shows up, dressed in a Moorish outfit. He has a disconcerted look on his face and haltingly tells her he thinks they need to make changes to the act. She pleasantly agrees and gives him a copy of PaPa LaBas’ Blue Back: A Speller, which might help make their new act more convincing. He is very grateful.
*
Jes Grew is spreading abroad thanks to European painters, and is now a pandemic as the Wallflower Order feared. The Mu’tafikah continues to loot art and encourage Jes Grew. Saxophones rally on Wall Street while violins are down. The effects permeate the natural world; “Even the sap in the maple trees moves nasty” (106).
Chapter 29
A Black man of about 45 knocks on the door of the Mu’tafikah headquarters. He is accompanied by two others like him. Once inside, he observes all of the hustle and bustle around him. The man tells Berbelang that he is expected at the ship that is docked at sea.
Chapter 30
Biff Musclewhite is relaxing with his head in Charlotte’s lap. He is drowsily recalling his exploits in WWI. Charlotte is bored but entertains his hubris.
There is a knock on the door, and Charlotte rises to go to the other room and open it. Biff calls out, asking if she expected company. Berbelang, Thor, Yellow Jack, and Jose Fuentes enter and announce that they’re taking Biff for a spin. Biff is about to resist but sees Berbelang’s long razor.
Once with his captors, Biff wonders how they knew he was here. He supposes the Mu’tafikah has good intelligence and they must take care in the future to put their Dictaphones to work to stay safe.
*
The museum guards are surprised to see a party of Biff Musclewhite and others approach the museum, and say there is no opening tonight. Musclewhite insists that there is, feeling the razor at his back, and the guards oblige and let them in.
It takes only a few hours for the group to efficiently finish the job. On the way out, Berbelang pauses and considers slashing a Goya painting that features a child as “the Goat-without-horns; the famous sacrificial White child of the Red Sect rites” (110), but Yellow Jack gently tells him to remember their vow of not picking up the West’s habits of razing people’s art. Berbelang thanks him, and the party exits.
*
Thor is in charge of guarding Biff Musclewhite, who asks for a smoke. Thor gives him one. Biff smiles and says he reminds him of himself at that age, and Thor becomes angry. Biff is sanguine and says he knows that people like Thor look down on people at him. Even though they are white, his people were basically dominated by other whites. But here in America there is no real royalty, only money. The elite of America would be looked down upon if they were back in Europe but here they are kings. Thor scoffs at Biff’s words, but Biff continues and says that they’re really trying to save his elite, as they are all they had against the “Legendary Army of Marching Niggers against the Yellow Peril against the Red Man” (112). Thor tries to interrupt but Biff presses on, making his case that they want to protect them, to imitate them, and they are making it so hard.
Thor is confused by Biff’s words and says those with him are his friends. Biff tells him no, they are loafers and n’er-do-wells. They’re closing in on the West’s mysteries and will shut them all down. Biff begins to cry, to Thor’s disconcertion, and says he’s seen them all in Africa and China and they’re not like them. They are backward and they must become civilized. He knows he is making a dent in Thor, who also begins to softly weep.
Biff encourages Thor to let him go, which he quietly does.
Chapter 31
Nathan Brown, the “poet whose work commingles Death and Nature in haunting ways” (116) is walking in Harlem. An elegantly dressed older white man with a cane and top hat approaches him and tells him he is a fan of his work and asks for an autograph.
Nathan obliges and keeps walking. Hinckle calls out that he is the publisher of the Benign Monster and would love for him to contribute. With his knowledge of Black Christ and his consciousness of his Black heritage that is not encumbered by mysticism, he would be very helpful. As Hinckle talks, Nathan mutters that he wants all Black people to be alike. He tells Hinckle that all Black people do not experience the world the same way.
Now becoming desperate, Hinckle berates him and says people are sick of Jes Grew hanging over them like a cloud. Nathan looks at him sourly and replies that many of them are trying to get it, not avoid it. He walks away.
Hinckle is distressed and angry, knowing time is running out to make the Android and he might need to drink the potion.
Chapter 32
A huge black freighter is docked in the Hudson River, and elegant Black people are getting on and off.
A Black trolley driver is almost done with his route and is getting ready to go home to his wife and some wine. He has one passenger left and she seems to be giving him the eye, though she does not seem to be a harlot.
Chapter 33
Berbelang is on his way to the basement to relieve Thor. He feels like something is off but he does not know what. Biff and his men open fire and Berbelang is killed.
Chapter 34
The trolley driver tells the woman (Earline, we learn) that she has to get off. She gets up and saunters toward him. He does not know what has come over him but he asks her if she would have a drink with him. Music pours from the ship—music that is heavy, ancient, smoky.
Chapter 35
Thor is distressed and sobbing, not thinking Biff was going to kill Berbelang.
Chapter 36
Earline awakes next to the trolley driver. She has a mischievous smile on her face.
*
Biff is planning on phoning Charlotte. One of his men drops Berbelang's things on his desk and he rifles through them. He is surprised to see a photo of the members of the Kathedral. He calls the sleepy and discombobulated Charlotte and tells her he will come over.
Chapter 37
Charlotte picks up her newspaper and screams when she reads of Berbelang's death at Biff Musclewhite’s hand. Biff is presented as a hero and Berbelang a depraved, dangerous, and dope-smoking man. When Charlotte answers the knock at her door, she trembles to see Biff. Biff sneers that she is disloyal and irresponsible. He takes a cord from the lamp and strangles her.
Chapter 38
A rookie cop arrives and Biff Musclewhite is sitting casually and drinking bootleg whiskey. He tells the cop he had to bust her because of the illegal drink, but a “muscular Black, a huge stud” (125) killed her and escaped through the window. Hesitant, the cop says there is no fire escape. Biff becomes angry and asks if the man is calling him a liar, and the rookie says no and retreats.
Chapter 39
Earline is drinking coffee when PaPa LaBas and T Malice arrive. Suddenly she faints, and LaBas calls Herman. He tells him he thinks Earline picked one up—the Yemanja one. Herman tells him he will be right down with sisters and food.
Chapter 40
Earline’s eyelids flutter and LaBas is worried the loa will be active again soon. LaBas tells the trolley driver to leave quickly and reassures him that no one could have resisted her.
The sisters and Herman arrive. The sisters are wearing white uniforms and gather around Earline’s bed. The shades are drawn and they mix up a compound. One draws a tub with basil leaves. Herman is preparing a special dish in the kitchen.
LaBas begins to speak to the spirit in Earline, ignoring when she claws his hand. He soothingly tells her he knows who she is and she must leave Earline alone, as the girl has enough troubles. When the spirit sees what Herman is bringing in, LaBas tells her she cannot have it until she leaves Earline’s body. The spirit is interested in the blues music that they’ve put on, but she tries to resist Black Herman when he nears her, mocking him as an American.
Black Herman, the “international heartbreaker” (128), the “first American to give a Crisis de loa to a loa” (129), elevates Earline’s body. She twists in anger and he holds her and kisses her. She kisses back. The others leave, turning down the lights and music. Black Herman asks if she wants to leave Earline now, and she cries out her reply that she does but she must have food.
Chapter 41
Black Herman comes out an hour later, telling them to give her the magic bath when she wakes but not to tell her about Berbelang yet.
LaBas is distressed that he failed but Black Herman succeeded. Black Herman sits down with him and explains that he is a great practitioner of the Work but is too strict. He ought to relax and be like the Americans, for “We were dumped here on our own without the Book to tell us who the loa are, what we call spirits were. We made up our own” (130). He urges PaPa to improvise, to open up. PaPa understands what he is saying, and agrees.
Chapter 42
Black Herman calls PaPa in the morning and tells him the visitors in the harbor ship are anxious to meet him. Herman then visits PaPa at the Kathedral and the two speak of Abdul Hamid’s murder. PaPa tells Herman about the crumpled paper he found and says he thinks is it about the missing anthology.
The two drive over to the ship. On the way, PaPa looks at the Sun. Herman has circled an image of Hinckle Von Vampton in the society pages. Hinckle has a pendant with two knights riding one horse on it. When asked, Herman says he wants to keep an eye on that man.
At the Black Plume, two of the Host’s assistants, “Python men” (131) over six feet tall, escort LaBas and Herman to the stateroom. It is decorated in red and black. The table has handbells and burning incense upon it.
A tall Black man wearing a red robe and a long necklace of snake bones and beads, Benoit Battraville, enters and greets them. He speaks of how they surrounded the Marines at Port-au-Prince but were not entirely successful because Harding’s mulatto secretary tipped the Marines off.
He then turns to the secret society that runs the Atonist path, and its arm the Wallflower Order. Herman chuckles, seeing how the Haiti incident makes sense now, as mere economics did not seem to be enough of a justification. Battraville nods that it factored into it but that it is just another resurgence of the Holy War that has been conducted for centuries. And the only reason why anyone knows about it is that someone for the Sun wrote of it in order to intimidate the Order; this is the man they are after.
Battraville speaks of his history, of how the Atonists try to intimidate their intellectuals and stamp out the Work with persecution. They practiced Catholicism publicly but Voodoo privately.
In Haiti, the Marines who came were Southern Marines, the descendants of convicts from Europe. They were coarse and unsophisticated and cruel. They raped Haitian women and put crackers in charge of the educational system. But now, he adds, something is after them—destiny, progress, they call it, but he sees it as “haints,” the “Haints of their victims rising from the soil of Africa, South America, Asia” (135).
They began fighting a guerilla war against the modern American forces and rallied people throughout the country. The NAACP sent help, but no one else did. They were seen as a threat to the cause of Western Civilization, and Atonists of all types did not want to harm the sacredness of that Civilization.
Battraville and his followers traveled to have Ogoun possess them to know their course. They visited a man of immense power named Ti Bouton. Bouton did not like the mulatto man Charlemagne brought with him because he was divisive toward the mysteries and saw them as “mumbo jumbo.” Bouton urged them not to attack Port au prince, as they would need a Great White Host, a “star” of the Western occult, in order to force the Marines to withdraw, but Charlemagne did not agree.
Indeed, Bouton’s warnings came to pass. They were routed and Charlemagne was killed. Battraville returned to Ti Bouton to ask about the White Host. Bouton told him it was a Knights Templar who is working to find a Talking Android to quell Jes Grew.
Battraville asks his guests if they know this man. Herman replies that they know of him but not his name. Battraville asks for their help, saying he will offer the man to the loa and have it do with him what it desires. PaPa LaBas and Black Herman are happy to do what they can.
*
The three talk all night of the Atonists, the Templars, the Order, the Work, and the differences in rites across the world.
When LaBas and Black Herman prepare to leave, LaBas marvels at how erudite Benoit Battraville is in both his own history and the world’s. Battraville nods and says he allowed Agwe, God of the Sea, to take over him and explain things; it is his ship, after all.
On the way back into Manhattan, PaPa wonders if he has indeed been too insular in his conception of the Work.
Analysis
Mumbo Jumbo continues to keep its readers on their toes, filling this section of chapters with the death of Abdul Hamid and the frustration of Hinckle’s efforts to procure the Text; Hinckle’s pursuit of a Talking Android; the exploits of the Mu’tafikah; Berbelang’s death; Earline’s possession by Erzulie and Black Herman’s successful casting out of the loa; Charlotte’s death at the hands of Biff; and PaPa LaBas and Black Herman’s visit to the magnetic Haitian Voodoo leader and guerilla fighter Benoit Battraville.
The first point we will consider is that of Earline and her possession by Erzulie, as it pertains to the larger question of gender in the text. Some of Reed’s later work is famously misogynist, so critics have also looked to Mumbo Jumbo to parse out any similar sentiment. Andrew Strombeck begins his article on the subject by noting that the novel, like Reed’s others, is about a male group of outsiders struggling against a hegemonic power. La Bas “exhibits a masculine mastery that leaves little room for dissent” and both LaBas and Black Herman struggle against not just the Atonists/Wallflower Order but “against feminine sexuality.” Earline “must be tamed because with her indiscriminate sexuality…she threatens the masculine authority maintained by LaBas and his associates.”
However, Kameelah Martin Samuel has a completely different take on the situation with Earline/Erzulie. She suggests that Neo-Hoodooism “deals with gender and femininity in a way that challenges the long-standing notion of Reed as a misogynist.” Erzulie-via-Earline is part of Reed’s Neo-Hoodoo arsenal; she is nuanced and a challenge to traditional representations of Africana womanhood. Reed does this by contrasting the Virgin Mary and Erzulie multiple times in the text, ultimately suggesting that “Mary…represents a single view of womanhood that has been imposed on various groups of women. For Reed she symbolizes yet another tool that Western civilization employs in maintaining cultural domination, especially over women. Those women who actively engage in their sexuality are vilified, stigmatized, and punished…” By contrast, Erzulie is full of powerful feminine energy and sexuality. She is not fixed in conception like Mary, but is “an ever evolving, fluid sign;” she is “the quintessential paradox. She is virgin and whore, male and female, life and death, creation and destruction all at once.” She “cannot be defined in terms of binaries, or dichotomies. She embodies the contradictions and balances of femininity and offers an alternate view of womanhood to the Western, patriarchal world. She disrupts the Christian idea of womanhood through nurturing the sacred, the profane, and everything that falls in between in one body…” Christianity is not totally absent from the text, of course, and aspects of the Christian tradition and belief system manifest themselves in a myriad of ways, but Reed’s use of Erzulie is just one way that he “privileges knowledge of African-based, syncretized religion” and to, as Reed himself said, “humble the Judeo-Christian tradition.” The novel, Samuel avers, “does not single-handedly resolve the issue of cultural supremacy and thinking outside of prescribed norms, but it does offer and acknowledge an alternative to literature and images that adhere only to Western ideologies. Mumbo Jumbo stresses the importance of implementing change in a monotonous tradition, which, in a so carefully constructed convention, may well be described as subversive, particularly for women of color.”
The encounter with Battraville is also worthy of our sustained attention. He is, critic Donald L. Hoffman writes, “the greatest of Reed’s shamans” and the “incarnate Black Revolution.” He is the “site of the union of Africa, Haiti, and Harlem, wedding history to myth.” Unlike Earline, who is invaded by Erzulie, Battraville lets Agwe inspire him and can speak fluently of history.
In order to further situate Battraville in the novel, Helen Lock provides a useful background to the basics of Voodoo and what it became in America: “Voodoo as the culture of the uneducated peasant is thus also the culture of the politically powerless. It is either frowned upon or actively suppressed by the Haitian ruling class, who forcibly imposed Catholicism, the state religion, onto the peasants. Since Voodoo devotees were in no position to challenge outright the dominant ideology, they made a virtue of necessity by developing an aesthetic capable of appropriating the forms of the Catholic tradition while transforming their meaning…This utilitarian religion subverts where it cannot defeat, appropriates from the dominant culture what it can use, and subtly transforms the meaning of these appropriations for the benefit of the initiated. When Voodoo arrived in the southern United States, it became HooDoo: Voodoo in a diluted form, still operating under a Catholic ‘front.’ In Ishmael Reed's hands it became Neo-HooDoo, a rediscovery of the fundamental Voodoo aesthetic translated into a specifically North American context. Neo-HooDoo retains the subversive function of Voodoo culture, but in literary rather than primarily visual terms; it retains the Euro-American literary forms while redefining their function; and it revitalizes the independence of the sign. Words themselves become instruments of power and control, and control over language becomes control over identity.” Reed is interested, therefore, in the African Diaspora and how people, ideas, religion, and culture crossed the seas, took root in new soils, and flowered into new or syncretic traditions. Mumbo Jumbo uses Battraville for that purpose, connecting the Americans of PaPa LaBas and Black Herman to a more ancient past and a still fraught present.
