Part 35 (1/2)

BEYOND THESE BLACK enemies there lies of course, as Elihu makes no secret of declaring, the vast world of white privilege, white censure and white murderous rage: in short, the United States of America. For this cruel white nation, private citizens no less than government officials, is secretly dedicated to the eradication of the black race; and of Prince Elihu in particular.

So Elihu jokes, ”Those persons who don't wish Elihu dead are simply those who haven't yet heard his name.”

He draws his bone-handled stiletto out of its sheath and, gripping his opponent tight-a muscular forearm slung across the man's chest, arms pinned against his sides-he saws the razor-sharp blade rapidly back and forth across the naked throat.

And lo!-how the red blood flows.

And how, being red, is it white blood? And how being red as his does it differ from his, accursed as black?-this, Elihu's dying opponent won't be able to explain, having fallen, with a look of profound astonishment, at Elisha's booted feet.

(YET: WOULDN'T THE results be b.l.o.o.d.y? disgusting? For Prince Elihu is a king, a G.o.d, yet also a man of nervous and highly refined sensibility.) ELISHA CAN SUMMON back by way of his newly acquired powers that miraculous birth out of the raging flood (the Nautauga River, not the Wabash), but the years between are blurred and blinding as a cascade of water in brilliant suns.h.i.+ne.

Blurred, blinding, the long reign of the Devil Father, until Elisha's awakening in a Harlem street, when the true nature of the world was revealed.

ELIHU'S NAME: WHICH means The Lord is G.o.d.

Or: G.o.d is G.o.d.

Or: Elihu is G.o.d.

Elihu is of course the fully awakened one, the supreme consciousness, as potent in this age of the Devil Father as in the bygone age, where the blood of mortal black men mingled freely with the blood of G.o.ds. Elisha is the part-awakened one, aware of the long sleep of twenty years . . . when he was hypnotized as to his true nature, taught that his skin is nothing when of course it is all . . . yet susceptible at times (when alone, when ill, when drifting into sleep) to the old spell; the luminous chimeras of the marsh; that vast swamp in which he wandered lost, powerless to save himself.

True, he could not save himself. A child. Too young. Weak-witted, weak in body.

He could not save himself and so was saved by another; carried aloft, a triumph, a sickly prize, on the shoulder of his tall fair brother . . . whose name, in the name of Elihu the Awakened One, he has forgotten.

(But even this must be a lie. For the tall blond boy could not have been Elisha's true brother-except under the spell of the Devil Father.) CRIME? WHISPERS FATHER.

Then complicity.

Complicity?

Then no crime.

PRINCE ELIHU, BORN of the fiery flood, born of rubble and paving stone, born of his own spilled blood and mutilated flesh, brings not peace but a sword: the gift to his people (as he has said in his April 1916 Proclamation of Rights as Propounded by the World Negro Betterment & Liberation Union) of a margin of Promise and Hope: a way of seeing with the inner eye that is bound neither by the finite nor by the cannibal-devil's ”infinite.”

For they who have been slaves are in truth G.o.ds, cast low by the vicissitudes of History.

For they who have been scorned as ugly, and b.e.s.t.i.a.l, and accursed by G.o.d, are in fact blessed by their own G.o.d Allah: His sons and daughters, G.o.d-mortals, in whom His spirit breathes.

For the secret is, they cannot die. He will die in their place.

PRINCE ELIHU IS falsely accused by his many Harlem enemies (including any number of pious ”white men's black men”) of being swollen with pride; yet, as befits a true son of Ham, he is in fact humble in the face of his destiny. (Thus Elisha thinks a half dozen times a day, I am not I but another; that is, the bearer of another.) The envious among both Negroes and Caucasians stop their ears against the power of his speech, murmuring Fraud! Hypocrite! Charlatan! Con man! when the Prince addresses a vast crowd of followers; or when they see him being driven along Broadway in his splendid Rolls-Royce with dark-tinted windows, gleaming white, gleaming chrome, a uniformed Haitian chauffeur, two husky black lieutenants-at-arms on guard. The envious profess to scorn the Prince's fastidious attire-spotless white fine-spun linen in summer, exquisite white cashmere in winter; his white gloves and white kidskin boots; they dare to ridicule in such journals as The Crisis, The Guardian, The Emanc.i.p.ator, the eighteen-inch ostrich-plumed helmet and the ruby-studded gold sword he wears upon ceremonial occasions. As they can't conceive of Prince Elihu's miraculous birth out of the elements of fire and flood, they dare to mock his formal, studied, accentless diction, charging that he's nothing but an American-born Negro (if not a former field n.i.g.g.e.r!) like the rest of them: not a West Indian, and certainly not a native African. Having been at a loss to account for Elihu, and embarra.s.sed at the impoverishment of their files on him, the Bureau of Investigation lists Prince Elihu's official birthplace as Harlem, and the arbitrary date of his birth as 11 June 1889. This Negro is known to be subversive, seditious, unpredictable in his behavior and should be considered dangerous at all times.

The envious question Elihu's motives in spending a rumored $50,000 for the English Thoroughbred Ruby Blood, registered in the name of the Negro World Betterment & Liberation Union and boarded and trained at James Ben Ali Hagin Farms, Kentucky; just as, a few years before, the envious questioned his motives in purchasing the oceangoing s.h.i.+p Penelope (rechristened Black Jupiter) and the sport biplane Black Eagle. For, knowing but a low earthly pride, the pride of mere mortals, they can't conceive of the race pride of a son of Ham.

And the envious are at a loss to account for Elihu's courage, if the man is a fraud: for why would a fraud voluntarily return to the United States as Elihu did, in 1918, from Central America, to answer to sedition charges and be jailed; and why would he risk his life countless times as Elihu has, publicly declaring that no threat of physical injury can dissuade him from his mission?

The envious speak of seeing Elihu one day dead but very few are bold enough to speak of killing him.

Elihu and Destiny are one says the Prince in his formal, coolly ironic public voice; in which, if even the envious listen closely, they might discern a note of sorrow.

”ELISHA THAT WAS, and Elihu that is.”

So Prince Elihu sometimes murmurs to himself, in the midst of his newborn life.

So 'Lisha, the white man's puppet, has vanished entirely. The white girl's plaything. Little Moses, strangely, will emerge in weak moments, in solitude before a mirror- ”Weel about and turn about

And do jis so

Eb'ry time I weel about

I jump Jim Crow!”

-the Prince lurching, flailing long arms and legs, jumping with a ferocity of joy, making faces at himself in the mirror, wide white grins.

Yet perhaps 'Lisha does survive. As Elihu lies perspiring and insomniac between sheets of the most expensive linen in his narrow celibate's bed with the bra.s.s headboard; in his bedroom on the third, topmost floor of the stately brick residence on 138th Street, Harlem (of which the envious have much to say, for whose money has paid for this expensive, heavily guarded house?), listening to the noises of the night-time city that penetrate even the leafy calm of Strivers Row.

”They will not bring me to earth, here. I am safe, here.”

He rises early, at 4 A.M. to pray to Allah (in whom he can't believe) that he will be strong enough to endure Elihu's terrible spirit for another five or six years at least.

He prays that he won't shrink before Elihu's tragic destiny.