The Man Who Cried I Am (45 page)

“There's got to be a deeper reason.”

“Why? This one's deep enough, but not so deep that it doesn't stink.”

Zutkin looked down into his glass. “Can you imagine being upstaged by a twenty-one-year-old kid?” He did not expect Max to answer, and he continued, “What did the President have to say?”

Max shrugged. “I tried to see him for two days, then gave up. I don't think he wanted to see me after my conversation with Carrigan and Bonnard. Look, I'm sorry it didn't work out. I thought it would, I honestly believed it would go well. But, they never used me, Bernard. Four months there and I helped to write not one speech. The extent of the President's civil rights activity was to send a telegram to the Civil Rights Commission; he refused to endorse a package of bills and now this MacKendrick thing. I think he believes that by having Negroes on his staff, and filling Washington with them—in government posts, not as residents—he's improving the picture. He's right, the picture has lots of colored folks in it, but that isn't getting it at all.”

“I suppose I knew the man had this in him all the time,” Zutkin said. “He's a
politician
, and it's a politician's habit to manufacture his own best image. Yes, there were signs along the way. But I hoped. Berg hoped, and I know you hoped. Everybody did. He came into power and you have to work with people who are in power.”

“I know all that, Bernard. We
survived
by knowing exactly where power seemed to be every second of the day. If you're black you know that every white man thinks he has power over you and, ergo, he has, until you kick his tail for him.”

“Dangerous,” Zutkin was saying, as though he hadn't heard. “Say a man does have good intentions, but bides his time; is evil ever inactive? No. Say then that the danger might be not in waiting to express your good intentions, but not having any anyway, beneath the surface, running deeply. Then you can't use Nietzsche any more; you've got to go to the old master, Niccolò, and appear to be just what the time demands, while you actively but quietly pursue what you think you ought to be, which might not be to the liking of the people, or great numbers of people.”

“Well, I'm out of it, Bernard.”

“Nobody's ever out of it, especially not thinking people, and besides that, we still need each other. Perhaps even more than before.”

“They're grinning at us and setting us up,” Max said.

“Maybe so. But one always hopes. Maybe the showers are really showers, you tell yourself, after seeing a thousand people go into them and never come out. You've
got
to believe they're real.”

“What do you mean ‘got' to believe when they've already proved how wrong you are. Never mind
that;
the solution is, you fight when the time is right.”

“And get slaughtered, is that it?”

“Where's the choice, Bernard? Look at the Indian. He fought
past
the right time; he was half believing in the white man. Look where he is now.”

Zutkin said, “The right time and the right place. Who picks such a time?”

“Haven't we been trying to pick it, but for a more genteel kind of fight, and haven't we learned that there exists no substitute for a fight but a fight?”

They sipped the last of their drinks in silence. Then Max said, “Bernard, do you know we really can tear up this country? I mean it, and
now!
”

Dryly, Zutkin said, “And then what?”

Max grinned. “Beyond that, whew!”

Zutkin sprang up. “Exactly! All they want is the excuse, then they'll get it over with, those Emma Lazarus poor, sprung from the vomit of steerage and who, still unable to speak English, believe in white supremacy.” Zutkin shook his head. “And then there won't be any more race problems, because there won't be any Negroes. And when they finish with you, the chances are quite good that they'll start on us. Bloodlust is like a natural disaster; it has to run its course. I have seen their faces; they are faces out of nightmares—most ordinary—so ordinary that you can't believe the brains behind them capable of genocide.”

“Maybe we'll be dead by then,” Max said.

“I've never known you to be an optimist, Max.”

A few days later, after he had seen Julian Berg, he readied himself to return to
Pace
, Margrit (something inside him insisted), and Africa.

25

LEIDEN—LAGOS

Max took up Harry's letter once again, but his mind stayed briefly in the past. It had been a kind of nutty life; a lot of highs and lows; a lot of people, and a helluva lot of water under the bridge. Nineteen fifty-four had certainly started a great many things for him. And Granville Bryant had placed him in the way of all those things, and hadn't so much as asked for a little suck. Bryant to thank! Now Max bent once again to the letter:

The disclosure of America's membership in Alliance Blanc would have touched off a racial cataclysm—but America went far, far beyond the evils the Alliance was perpetuating, but more of this later. For the moment, let me consider the Alliance.

African colonies were still becoming independent. Federations were formed only to collapse a few weeks later, like the Guinea-Ghana combine. Good men and bad were assassinated indiscriminately; coups were a dime a dozen. Nkrumah in West Africa vied with Selassie in East Africa for leadership of the continent. The work of the Alliance agents—setting region against region and tribe against tribe, just as the colonial masters had done—was made easy by the rush to power on the part of a few African strongmen. Thus, the panic mentality that had been the catalyst for the formation of the Alliance seemed to have been tranquilized. There was diplomacy as usual, independence as usual. What, after all, did Europeans have to fear after that first flash of black unity? The Alliance became more leisurely, less belligerent, more sure that it had time, and above all, positive now that Africa was not a threat to anyone but itself. Alliance agents flowed leisurely through Africa now, and Western money poured in behind them.

From a belligerent posture, the Alliance went to one based on economics. Consider that 15 percent of Nigeria's federal budget comes from offshore oil brought in by Dutch, British, Italian, French and American oil companies; consider that the 72 percent of the world's cocoa which Africa produces would rot if the West did not import it. Palm oil, groundnuts, minerals, all for the West. Can you imagine, man, what good things could happen to Africans, if they learned to consume what they produce? It did not take the Europeans long to discover that their stake in Africa as “friends” rather than masters was more enormous than they could have imagined. Only naked desperation demanded that Spain and Portugal stay in Africa; the Iberian Peninsula hasn't been the same since the Moors and Jews left it in the 15th century. Time? It was the Alliance's most formidable ally.

In South Africa, the spark of revolt flickered, sputtered and now is dead. The Treason Trials killed it; oppression keeps murdering it, and those who say the spark is still alive, those successive schools of nattily tailored South African nationalists, who plunge through Paris, London and New York raising money for impossible rebellions, lie. The paradox, Max, is that, denied freedom, the black man lives better in South Africa than anywhere else on the continent; the average African. The bigshots—with their big houses and long cars, their emulation of the colonial masters—do all right. My friend Genet said it all in
Les Noirs
.

The Alliance worked. God, how it worked! And Africans themselves, dazzled by this new contraption the white man was giving them, independence, helped. Lumumba, disgracefully educated by the Belgians, was a victim of the Alliance; Olympio, dreaming dreams of federation, was another. Nkrumah and Touré have lasted for so long because their trust in the white man never was, and their trust in their own fellows only a bit deeper seated.

The Congo mess served as a valuable aid to the Alliance: it could test the world's reaction to black people in crisis. The Alliance was pleased to observe that the feeling in the West was, “Oh, well, they're only niggers, anyhow.”

I could have foreseen that reaction; you could have foreseen it; any black man could have anticipated it. But, then, “niggers” are embattled everywhere, ain't they, baby? Asian “niggers,” South American “niggers” … But let a revolt occur in East Germany and watch the newsprint fly! Let another Hungarian revolution take place and see the white nations of the world open their doors to take in refugees—Freedom Fighters, yeah! Who takes in blacks, Pakistanis, Vietnamese, Koreans, Chinese, who?

But the picture began to change. It was quite clear that the Europeans had Africa well under control—and that was all they cared about. America, sitting on a bubbling black cauldron, felt that it had to map its own contingency plans for handling 22 million black Americans in case they became unruly; in case they wanted everything Hungarian Freedom Fighters got just by stepping off the boat. So, America prepared King Alfred and submitted it to the Alliance, just as the Alliance European members had submitted their plans for operations in Africa to the Americans. The details of King Alfred are in the case, and it is truly hot stuff. All this Alliance business is pretty pallid shit compared to what the Americans have come up with.

I should tell you that it was an African who discovered the Alliance and in the process came upon King Alfred. Who? Jaja Enzkwu, that cockhound, that's who. He stumbled on the Alliance the second year of its existence, while he was in Spain, which as you know has turned out to be a very hospitable place for ex-heads of African countries on the lam. Enzkwu didn't know what was going on; he simply sensed something, seeing a gathering of British, American, Brazilian, Portuguese and South Africans at San Sebastiàn in winter. This was where the Alliance held its second meeting. I'll tell you about Jaja. Any halfway good-looking white woman can make a fool of him (which was what was happening, for him to be at a summer resort in winter), but he doesn't trust a gathering of more than a single white man. About the white man, Enzkwu has a nose for trouble. But you know Jaja.

The huge jet, sparkling silver-white in the sun, lowered itself gingerly out of the sky and touched down at Ikeja. Max looked out of his window at the taut green of the landscape, green coated with light red dust, hard, scarlet patches of earth. The airport building was unchanged. It was low and ugly and shabby. Upon its faded white side
LAGOS
was painted in large, elongated letters.

Max had spent three exhilarating and yet in some way disturbing days with Margrit in Amsterdam. Disturbing because he could no longer see around her; her image, voice and postures filled every corner of his imagination. And for the first time he had truly examined, even while racing away from them, the prospects of marrying a woman who was white.

He had also spent one day with Harry in Paris. Harry had been tired, bitter and querulous; almost boring. Now, here was Max back in Africa, thousands of miles away from the plush jobs he had been offered finally by the whiskey and beer companies. Those offers always came for Negroes if they'd been anywhere near the White House. Such a Negro would lend prestige to the matter-of-fact exploitation of the Negro market.

On line before the desk of the inspecting health officer, Max noticed a flurry of expensive agbadas and an escort of soldiers. He saw His Excellency, First Minister to the Premier, Jaja Enzkwu, at the center of all this attention, walking as solemnly as an emir from the North. Enzkwu deigned to look at the line of incoming people and saw Max. Quickly, he dispatched a soldier and an aide to talk to the health officer and fetch Max to him. Max walked over and extended his hand, but found himself in a perfumed abrazo, fighting his way through the folds of fine cloth of the agbada. “How good it is to see you, brother, Max,” Enzkwu said. To his circle, he said sternly, “It is our Afro-American brother, Max Reddick, who is an aide to the President—” Enzkwu raised a finger and everyone's attention went to it—“the President of the United States.”

“Ahhhh-haaaa,” the murmur went up. Enzkwu smiled as if to assure all that he knew only the most influential people.

“There was no one from your Embassy to meet you? Strange. And are you on a mission for your President?”

“Oh, no. I'm no longer with the President. I'm back with
Pace.
”

“Oh! A journalist once more, is it?” Enzkwu's eyes flashed disappointment, but he stumbled on. “Ah, yes!
Pace!
That is a very important magazine. Some of your ambassadors here in Africa have been journalists.”

“Yes, that is true,” Max said, but thinking, Only the guys from
Look
.

“This officer will see you directly through customs,” Enzkwu said. He leaned close. “I am on my way to Paris at the moment. Naturally. You have seen Harry and he is well?”

“Yes, Jaja—Your Excellency, and thank you.”

“Don't mention it. When I return next week, I will ring you up at the Federal Palace, of course, yes?”

“For the time being.”

“Then we will have a very good time. Goodbye. Welcome to Nigeria once more.” Enzkwu winked, then, with his entourage, moved toward the exit.

Outside, Max bargained with a Yoruba taxi driver who had tribal markings on his face and wore a striped, soiled agbada. Two pounds. They pulled away from the airport and raced down the left side of the road, for Nigeria was superbly British, through Ikeja, Ebute Metta, where the traffic began to converge heavily, and through Yaba. Small stands hugged the dusty, narrow roads, and women, mostly, sat beside them, waiting with smiling patience for the passerby who wished to purchase one or two cigarettes, a stick of chewing gum, a penny candle or a piece of copra. Other women swung down the road, their infants tucked into their skirts behind them. The mammy wagons, always overloaded with shouting, gesticulating people, spurted by; roadside drinking places played loud High-Life music. Entering the Lagos traffic, they crept past the Bristol Hotel on St. Martin's Street, down past Kingsway with its display windows filled with brown mannequins, past which surged the mobs of shoppers, waiting houseboys and drivers, beggars, and sellers of gold watches and postcards and women for later in the evening. They turned onto the Marina. The harbor was filled with ships riding at anchor. There was a slight haze because of the humidity. Max sat back smoking and watching the street scenes. Now they cruised past the Shell-B-P Building, Barclays Bank, the new Posts & Telegraph Building, the powerful statue of Shango, Yoruba god of iron, with his short sword thrust toward sky and sea. Finally, they curved off the main road onto the spacious grounds of the Federal Palace Hotel. This would be home for a few days. Max climbed out of the taxi and three young bellhops raced to take his bags.