Cion (2 page)

“Ladies and gentlemen,” the mandrill-girl announces, “Mr. Dick Cheney and the Halliburtons!”

The crowd cheers and applauds as he takes three bows; each time the mirror swings and hits his knees. His white suit is rather tight for his bulk.

The Halliburtons are three little people in green suits and white fedoras. Glowing smokeless cigars hang carelessly on their lips. They carry violin cases like old-style movie gangsters. They follow Mr. Cheney closely and will not let anybody touch him. My eyes follow this gang until it disappears in the crowd.

You don’t stand still in the parade of creatures. You walk from one end of the street to the other, sometimes elbowing your way through yet thicker crowds. Where Court Street crosses West Union a band is playing on a makeshift stage. But the creatures don’t dance. They just stand in front of the stage, eyes agog. Others soon get bored and start drifting to the concession stands on West Union. The pagans must be fed: they purchase gyros and French fries from food vendors whose vehicles are lining the street. A patriotic entrepreneur has crossed out the word
French
on the French fries sign and has replaced it with
Liberty
. A demonstrator stands across from the patriot’s trailer with a sign that reads:
We need an enemy. Even if it’s the French. We won’t survive without an enemy. Otherwise we’ll start eating each other.

Another enterprising creature is selling kisses instead of food. He walks inside his mobile kissing booth inviting female prospective customers to swing by and sample his wares. There are no takers even though his price has gone down tremendously: the sign above his booth shows that he started at ten dollars, then crossed it out and went down to five, then to two, and now the kisses are free. Only queer creatures in drag are prepared to take the offer, but he tries to ward them off as they attack with pursed lips and purring sounds. They are persistent and he turns his tail and runs for dear life. The queer creatures laugh at him as he disappears in the crowds, and then they go their way.

I buy a slice of pizza and a can of soda from a bloody girl at the window of a trailer and walk back to Court Street to watch and be watched.

And there is the sciolist strutting about in a brown hooded robe. He looks like a friar. If it were not for his complexion, which is decidedly brown like the earth, he could easily pass for one of the Durham saints. His belly hangs out like an apron. Like the belly of a saint. He resembles the holy men who gloried in rich food cooked by aging cloistered virgins and in the good wine that the monks produced from their own vineyards.

At this point I am not keen to have anything to do with the sciolist, so I stand against the wall next to the door of a noisy bar until he has melted into the crowds. I may be avoiding him now, but I know that one of these days I will need him. Sooner or later I’ll be grappling with the problems of shaping my life in a meaningful way in this strange culture. He brought me here; he will have to provide the answers.

I do not have the time to think about the sciolist for long since my eyes are drawn to a number of devils with red tails, red horns and red forks. The rest of their bodies are of different colors, all of which are glowing as if fires of hell are raging in the fiends’ bowels. They are nevertheless not menacing at all. They manage to maintain the cuteness of Hot Stuff, the Harvey Comics lovable devil, though they obviously are not patterned on him. I follow them back to Court Street, negotiating my way among nurses in white miniskirts, fishnet stockings and heels; yodeling cowboys galloping alongside “Indian” chiefs with feather headdresses; a giant SpongeBob SquarePants looming above superheroes Superman, Spiderman, Batman and Robin; more devils and witches; more Supermen and Spidermen; penitentiary inmates in orange coveralls or in black and white horizontal stripes; a number of bleached Paris Hiltons (if you are reading this five years from now you may not know who I am talking about here, but at this moment she is America’s intriguing cultural icon) in all shapes and sizes; sizzling Playboy Bunnies and fairies with purple hair; a doctor and a patient in a bloody nightshirt; Hasidic Jews in black suits and black hats and hair braided into long ropes that hang on each side of the face; more glowing ghouls and ghosts; and another Dick Cheney with an oversize plastic face—a creation of a vengeful god. This one wears a gray suit. His heart is hanging out of his chest and is furiously pumping green fluorescent blood. Unlike the first Mr. Cheney, this one cuts a lonely figure without an entourage.

There are other politicians too. There is the Jimmy Carter of old with a self-satisfied Plains, Georgia, peanut farmer grin. He holds a placard that reads:
Without an independent electoral commission elections wouldn’t pass as free and fair anywhere else in the world.
No one pays much attention to him though. The board he is holding is not easy to read since it is not big enough and the letters are all crowded together. And there is President Bush’s Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld. Bloody plastic dolls of different sizes hang all over his body in all sorts of grotesque positions, so that only his oversize black boots can be seen. Some of the dolls are limbless while others are without heads. He is flanked by two men in Hawaiian shirts and hula skirts holding a banner with bold letters in front:
Stuff Happens,
and at the back:
Collateral Damage
. Mr. Rumsfeld walks lifelessly under the banner despite the many admirers who crowd around him with breathless exclamations of “Ooooh!” and “Aaaah!”

One can’t see every creature in this parade, and I have tried very hard to look for President George W. Bush, to no avail. Even John Kerry and his running mate, John Edwards, don’t seem to be here and I wonder why. After all, it is October 30, 2004, only three days before the presidential election. One would have expected the three gentlemen to be all over the place canvasing for votes or just playing the fool as presidential candidates are wont to do. Instead, Mr. Bush has sent his surrogates in the form of the two Cheneys and one Rumsfeld, and Mr. Kerry is seen only on the
Kerry/Edwards: A Stronger America
buttons that some of the pagans are wearing. Not even Bill Clinton, an immediate past president, can be seen. Has he lost currency so soon?

The respectable citizens of Athens do not show any signs of missing these politicians. A few of them are sitting on the courthouse steps watching the creatures and their performances on the street below and on the sidewalks. They are stone-faced and do not seem to enjoy the spectacle, which makes me wonder why they came here in the first place. They do not seem amused even when a group of heavily bejeweled women wearing fur coats and elaborate hats stand in front of them and, inviting them to participate by looking directly into their eyes, chant in unison: “Stimulate the economy, start a new war! Stimulate the economy, bomb a third world country!” Those respectable citizens who are with their young children reach for them, giving them reassuring hugs. The children are all eyes agog, obviously envying the freedom of the creatures and hoping that one day when they are able to make decisions about their own lives they will initiate themselves into this cult and will prance about in all sorts of glorious identities.

I notice that the woman who leads the chants wears a sash with
Billionaires for Bush
embroidered on it. The respectable citizens are obviously scandalized by this group and look quite relieved when it moves on to torment other innocent souls. It leaves a stench in its wake, perhaps from a stink bomb. It smells like death.

I find it quite fascinating that death hangs so heavily in the air. Remember that as a professional mourner I am an angel of death—or at least that’s what I have been called by others. But I must admit I have never seen death glorified to the heights that I see here. This is definitely a celebration of a culture of death among the young: those who must die so that old men and women should live. Yet one does not see women celebrate the belligerent culture in this parade of creatures. Yes, some of them—quite a small number of them compared to the male of the species—are bloody, but none of these display any militaristic arrogance in their attire, performance and demeanor. They limp, one may surmise, from car accidents rather than from acts of war.

Even I who exult in death find the abundance of blood and bloody situations overwhelming. A bloody Yoko Ono passionately kissing a bloody John Lennon under mistletoe gingerly held by a bloody kaftan-robed Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The only throwback to another era that I have seen this evening. Well, besides Mr. Carter—although one can’t really call Mr. Carter a character of the past since his placard carries a contemporary message. A bloody marine in camouflage dragging with a rope around his neck a bloody boxer in the Rocky boxing shorts of stars and stripes. His boxing gloves are huge and heavy and on his head he wears an Arafatesque kaffiyeh. At the back of his off-white silk robe
Enemy Combatant
is printed in bold red letters.

Blood once more. This time it flows from the wounds of Jesus Christ of Nazareth. A group of men and women who are obviously in their own everyday identities are crowding around a tall thin wooden cross and singing hymns. A bulky preacherman—wearing a T-shirt with the words
Live your life so that the Preacher won’t have to lie at your funeral
—holds the cross with one hand and waves a Bible with the other. He is hollering something about the fires of hell that are waiting for those who observe pagan rites. His assistants are handing out business-card-size cards to passers-by. I reach for one.
There is power in the blood,
it declares in bold red letters. And then in tiny blue letters:
In whom we have redemption through his blood, even the forgiveness of sins. Colossians 1:14
. Some of the creatures boo the preacherman and mock him and his group, which responds with a loud hymn. The preacherman says, “They mocked Jesus Christ too. They went further than that and crucified him.”

I move on, weaving my way in the crowd, drawn by music at the corner of Court and Washington Streets. Another band is playing a very upbeat bluegrass tune. Three blonde bees are hovering about in black miniskirts with yellow horizontal stripes, black fishnet stockings and stilettos, flapping their silvery wings to the rhythm of the music. The band here seems to be more popular than the one I saw earlier on West Union.

It is beginning to be too crowded here so I elbow my way across the street, past a man who is holding a life-size inflated rubber doll upside down and is giving it a blow job between its legs; and a few Arabs in white robes and black kaffiyehs being hustled at gunpoint by marines in camouflage.

“Great costume,” says a voice behind me, while a hand taps me on the shoulder. I turn to face a tall young man, perhaps in his late twenties or early thirties, with a dusky complexion and long black hair tied in a ponytail. He would have been classified a colored in my country. He is barefoot and is wearing a bloody tattered shirt and knee-length pants that are also bloody and frayed. He has red weals on his bare arms, face and legs, some of which have caked blood. He is inspecting me closely from toe to head and then back to toe. I do the same to him.

“Who’re you supposed to be?” he asks.

“I am Toloki the Professional Mourner,” I say, mustering as much dignity as I can and placing the necessary solemnity on the job title.

“A professional mourner? Never heard of that. From what story?”

“Ways of Dying.”

“A manual on how to die?”

“No. The story of my life.”

“Can’t say I know it. Can you guess who I am?”

“You are from a story too?”

“Ain’t we all from stories?”

“We are indeed all from stories. Every one of us. All humanity.”

“Guess?”

“I have no idea. I have never seen anyone like you before.”

“I’m a fugitive…from the slave breeding farms of Virginia. My name is Nicodemus. I escaped on the Underground Railroad to freedom. That’s who I’m; Nicodemus.”

“Nicodemus…Underground Railroad?”

“I was beaten to death. I was murdered.”

“You do look like death. Well, not you…you are a fine young man, I’m sure…your clothes, I mean.”

“You ain’t from these parts then? You got one heck of an accent.”

“I am from South Africa.”

“They have this sort of thing in Africa, or did you learn it here?”

“In South Africa, you mean? Africa is not a country. It is not a village. It is a continent with many countries and hundreds of cities and villages and cultures.”

“They have this kind of thing?” he insists.

“What kind of thing?”

“This…,” he says, sweeping his arm at the multitudes.

“No, they don’t have it. I see it for the first time here. And I find it quite amazing.”

“Then how come you’re all dressed up for it?”

“I am dressed like this every time I mourn the dead.”

“You a minister or something?”

I tell him of my life in South Africa, of how I invented the profession of mourning, or thought I had until I learned of its existence in other cultures, both ancient and living. I tell him about Noria, how she taught me to take an active interest in the affairs of the living so as to mourn their deaths more effectively…with greater passion. That is part of the reason I am at this ritual, which actually turns out to be a celebration of death. I add that my aim is to travel the world in search of mourning. This is only the first leg of a long journey. Or the second leg if you count Durham.

“There’s mourning everywhere,” he says. “You don’t have to search for it. Ain’t you satisfied with all the mourning you can still do where you came from?”

He has a point. No mourner can finish all the mourning that can be done at any one place. However I do not want to bore him with a long story about my disillusionment. Instead I tell him of my feeling that the deaths I will mourn here are different kinds of deaths from the deaths I used to mourn back home. Variety will add another dimension to my routine. But most importantly I am keen to discover new ways of mourning. He is enthralled by all this, and says he wants to learn more about it. His own people, he adds, may find some of my “powers” useful. He sees a shaman in me, even though I assure him that I do not have any powers nor am I a priest of any kind. He says his people would love to meet me, and he invites me to his home. I gently turn the invitation down because I do not want to impose. He insists until I finally agree. He is so excited that he wants us to leave right away. After all, he says, nothing of great interest will be happening here tonight.