The Matlock Paper (11 page)

The blacks had done well, even extremely well, with what they had to work with. The decrepit old house had been totally refurbished inside and out. All past associations with its former owners were obliterated wherever possible. The scores of faded photographs of venerated alumni were replaced with wildly theatrical portraits of the new revolutionaries—African, Latin American, Black Panther. Throughout the ancient halls were the new commands, screeched in posters and psychedelic art:
Death to the Pigs! Up Whitey! Malcolm Lives! Lumumba the Black Christ!

Between these screams for recognition were replicas of primitive African artifacts—fertility masks, spears,
shields, animal skins dipped in red paint, shrunken heads suspended by hair with complexions unmistakably white.

Lumumba Hall wasn’t trying to fool anyone. It reflected anger. It reflected fury.

Matlock didn’t have to use the brass knocker set beside the grotesque iron mask at the edge of the doorframe. The large door opened as he approached it, and a student greeted him with a bright smile.

“I was hoping you’d make it! It’s gonna be a groove!”

“Thanks, Johnny. Wouldn’t miss it.” Matlock walked in, struck by the proliferation of lighted candles throughout the hallway and adjoining rooms. “Looks like a wake. Where’s the casket?”

“That’s later. Wait’ll you see!”

A black Matlock recognized as one of the campus extremists walked up to them. Adam Williams’ hair was long—African style and clipped in a perfect semicircle above his head. His features were sharp; Matlock had the feeling that if they met in the veldt, Williams would be assumed to be a tribal chief.

“Good evening,” Williams said with an infectious grin. “Welcome to the seat of revolution.”

“Thanks very much.” They shook hands. “You don’t look so revolutionary as you do funereal. I was asking Johnny where the casket was.”

Williams laughed. His eyes were intelligent, his smile genuine, without guile or arrogance. In close quarters, the black radical had little of the firebrand quality he displayed on the podium in front of cheering supporters. Matlock wasn’t surprised. Those of the faculty who had Williams in their courses often remarked on his subdued, good-humored approach. So different from the image he projected in campus—rapidly
becoming national—politics.

“Oh, Lord! We’re lousing up the picture then! This is a happy occasion. A little gruesome, I suppose, but essentially joyful.”

“I’m not sure I understand,” Matlock smiled.

“A youngster from the tribe reaches the age of manhood, the brink of an active, responsible life. A jungle Bar Mitzvah. It’s a time for rejoicing. No caskets, no weeping shrouds.”

“That’s right! That’s right, Adam!” said the boy named Johnny enthusiastically.

“Why don’t you get Mr. Matlock a drink, brother.” And then he turned to Matlock. “It’s all the same drink until after the ceremony—it’s called Swahili punch. Is that O.K.?”

“Of course.”

“Right.” Johnny disappeared into the crowd toward the dining room and the punch bowl. Adam smiled as he spoke.

“It’s a light rum drink with lemonade and cranberry juice. Not bad, really.… Thank you for coming. I mean that.”

“I was surprised to be invited. I thought this was a very ‘in’ thing. Restricted to the tribe.… That didn’t come out the way I meant it.”

Williams laughed. “No offense. I used the word. It’s good to think in terms of tribes. Good for the brothers.”

“Yes, I imagine it is.…”

“The collective, protective social group. Possessing an identity of its own.”

“If that’s the purpose—the constructive purpose—I endorse it.”

“Oh, it is. Tribes in the bush don’t always make war on each other, you know. It’s not all stealing, looting,
carrying away women. That’s a Robert Ruark hangup. They trade, share hunting and farming lands together, coexist in the main probably better than nations or even political subdivisions.”

It was Matlock’s turn to laugh. “All right, professor. I’ll make notes
after
the lecture.”

“Sorry. Avocational hazard.”

“Avocational or occupational?”

“Time will tell, won’t it?… One thing I should make clear, however. We don’t need your endorsement.”

Johnny returned with Matlock’s cup of Swahili punch. “Hey, you know what? Brother Davis, that’s Bill Davis, says you told him you were going to flunk him, then at midterm you gave him a High Pass!”

“Brother Davis got off his fat ass and did a little work.” Matlock looked at Adam Williams. “You don’t object to that kind of endorsement, do you?”

Williams smiled broadly and placed his hand on Matlock’s arm. “No, sir, bwana.… In that area you run King Solomon’s Mines. Brother Davis is here to work as hard as he can and go as far as his potential will let him. No argument there. Bear down on the brother.”

“You’re positively frightening.” Matlock spoke with a lightness he did not feel.

“Not at all. Just pragmatic.… I’ve got some last-minute preparations to look after. See you later.” Williams hailed a passing student and walked through the crowd toward the staircase.

“Come on, Mr. Matlock. I’ll show you the new alterations.” Johnny led Matlock into what used to be Alpha Delt’s common room.

In the sea of dark faces, Matlock saw a minimum of
guarded, hostile looks. There were, perhaps, less overt greetings than he might expect outside on the campus, but by and large, his presence was accepted. He thought for a moment that if the brothers knew why he had come, the inhabitants of Lumumba Hall might turn on him angrily. He was the only white person there.

The alterations in the common room were drastic. Gone were the wide moldings of dark wood, the thick oak window seats beneath the huge cathedral windows, the solid, heavy furniture with the dark red leather. Instead, the room was transformed into something else entirely. The arched windows were no longer. They were now squared at the top, bordered by jet-black dowels an inch or two in diameter, which looked like long, rectangular slits. Spreading out from the windows into the walls was a textured pattern of tiny wooden bamboo strips shellacked to a high polish. This same wall covering was duplicated on the ceiling, thousands of highly glossed reeds converging towards the center. In the middle of the ceiling was a large circle, perhaps three feet in width, in which there was placed a thick pane of rippled glass. Beyond the glass shone a bright yellowish white light, its flood diffused in ripples over the room. What furniture he could see through the mass of bodies was not really furniture at all. There were various low-cut slabs of thick wood in differing shapes on short legs—these Matlock assumed were tables. Instead of chairs, there were dozens of pillows in vibrant colors scattered about the edge of the walls.

It didn’t take Matlock long to realize the effect.

Alpha Delta Phi’s common room had been transformed brilliantly into the replica of a large thatched
African hut. Even to the point of the blazing equatorial sun streaming through the enclosure’s vent to the skies.

“This is remarkable! Really remarkable. It must have taken months.”

“Almost a year and a half,” Johnny said. “It’s very comfortable, very relaxing. Did you know that lots of top designers are going in for this sort of thing now? I mean the back-to-nature look. It’s very functional and easy to maintain.”

“That sounds dangerously like an apology. You don’t have to apologize. It’s terrific.”

“Oh, I’m
not
apologizing.” Johnny retreated from his explanation. “Adam says there’s a certain majesty in the primitive. A very proud heritage.”

“Adam’s right. Only he’s not the first person to make that observation.”

“Please don’t put us down, Mr. Matlock.…”

Matlock looked at Johnny over the rim of his cup of Swahili punch. Oh, Christ, he thought, the more things change, the more they remain the same.

The high-ceilinged chapter room of Alpha Delta Phi had been carved out of the cellars at the farthest end of the fraternity house. It had been built shortly after the turn of the century when impressive alumni had poured impressive sums into such hobbies as secret societies and debutante cotillions. Such activities promulgated and propagandized a way of life, yet assuredly kept it selective.

Thousands of starched young men had been initiated in this chapel-like enclosure, whispering the secret pledges, exchanging the unfamiliar handshakes explained to them by stern-faced older children, vowing
till death to keep the selected faith. And afterward, getting drunk and vomiting in corners.

Matlock thought these thoughts as he watched the Mau Mau ritual unfold before him. It was no less childish, no less absurd than the preceding scenes in this room, he considered. Perhaps the physical aspects—the simulated physical aspects—were more brutal in what they conveyed, but then the roots of the ceremony were not based in the delicate steps of a cotillion’s pavanne but, instead, in harsh, animal-like pleas to primitive gods. Pleas for strength and survival. Not supplications for continued exclusivity.

The tribal rite itself was a series of unintelligible chants, each one growing in intensity, over the body of a black student—obviously the youngest brother in Lumumba Hall—stretched out on the concrete floor, naked except for a red loincloth strapped around his waist and legs, covering his genitals. At the finish of each chant, signifying the end of one canto and the commencement of the succeeding song, the boy’s body was raised above the crowd by four extremely tall students, themselves naked to the waist, wearing jet-black dance belts, their legs encased in spirals of rawhide strips. The room was lighted by dozens of thick candles mounted on stands, causing shadows to dance across the upper walls and the ceiling. Adding to this theatrical effect was the fact that the five active participants in the ritual had their skins covered with oil, their faces streaked in diabolical patterns. As the singing grew wilder, the young boy’s rigid body was thrown higher and higher until it left the hands of its four supporters, returning split seconds later into the outstretched arms. Each time the black body with the red loincloth was flung into the air, the crowd responded
with growing volumes of guttural shouts.

And then Matlock, who had been watching with a degree of detachment, suddenly found himself frightened. Frightened for the small Negro whose stiff, oiled body was being flung into air with such abandon. For two additional blacks, dressed like the others, had joined the four in the center of the floor. However, instead of helping toss the now soaring figure, the two blacks crouched between the rectangular foursome—beneath the body—and withdrew long-bladed knives, one in each hand. Once in their squatting positions, they stretched out their arms so that the blades were held upright, as rigid, as stiff as the body above them. Each time the small Negro descended, the four blades inched closer to the falling flesh. One slip, one oily miscalculation on the part of just one of the four blacks, and the ritual would end in death for the small student. In murder.

Matlock, feeling that the ritual had gone as far as he could allow, began scanning the crowd for Adam Williams. He saw him in front, on the edge of the circle, and started pushing his way toward him. He was stopped—quietly but firmly—by the blacks around him. He looked angrily at a Negro who held his arm. The black didn’t acknowledge his stare; he was hypnotized by the action now taking place in the center of the room.

Matlock saw why instantly. For the body of the small boy was now being
spun
, alternately face up and face down with each elevation. The danger of error was increased tenfold. Matlock grabbed the hand on his arm, twisted it inward, and flung it off him. He looked once more in the direction of Adam Williams.

He wasn’t there. He was nowhere in sight! Matlock stood still, undecided. If he raised his voice between
the crowd’s roaring crescendos, it was entirely possible that he might cause a break in the concentration of those handling the body. He couldn’t risk that, and yet he couldn’t allow the dangerous absurdity to continue.

Suddenly Matlock felt another hand, this one on his shoulder. He turned and saw the face of Adam Williams behind him. It startled him. Had some primitive tribal signal been transmitted to Williams? The black radical gestured with his head for Matlock to follow him through the shouting crowd to the outer edge of the circle. Williams spoke between the roars.

“You look worried. Don’t be.”

“Look! This crap’s gone far enough! That kid could be killed!”

“No chance. The brothers have rehearsed for months.… It’s really the most simplistic of the Mau Mau rites. The symbolism is fundamental.… See? The child’s eyes remain open. First to the sky, then facing the blades. He is constantly aware—every second—that his life is in the hands of his brother warriors. He cannot, he
must
not show fear. To do so would betray his peers. Betray the confidence he must place in their hands—as they will someday place their lives in
his
hands.”

“It’s childish,
dangerous stupidity
, and you
know
it!” cut in Matlock. “Now, I’m telling you, Williams, you put a stop to it or
I
will!”

“Of course,” continued the black radical, as if Matlock had not spoken, “there are anthropologists who insist that the ceremony is essentially one of fertility. The unsheathed knives representing erections, the four protectors guarding the child through its formative years. Frankly, I think that’s reaching. Also, it strikes me as contradictory even for the primitive mind.…”

“Goddamn you!” Matlock grabbed Williams by the front of his shirt. Immediately other blacks closed in on him.

Suddenly there was total silence in the eerily lit room. The silence lasted only a moment. It was followed by a series of mind-shattering screams from the mouths of the four Negroes in the center of the crowd in whose hands the life of the young student depended. Matlock whipped around and saw the shining black body descending downward from an incredible height above the outstretched hands.

It couldn’t be true! It wasn’t happening! Yet it was!