“The same is true here. Perhaps it will help if I point to another example of tribal life that has survived (and even thrived) in your own culture: the circus. You might call the circus a business run on tribal lines, but of course no circus owner ever sat down and deliberately crafted the business that way. Rather, circuses came into being as tribes and would cease to be circuses if they ceased to be tribes. Their legendary tribal solidarity, so unlike the society through which they move, makes them an irresistible lure, and people of all ages ‘run off to join the circus’ to be part of that solidarity. They’re especially important as models for our revolution, because, unlike aboriginal tribes, they’re seldom exclusive along ethnic lines. The border around them is solid against the general public but will open to any circus person from anywhere. The tribe, the cult (and of course the circus) all operate on this principle: You give us your total support and we’ll give you our total support. Total—both ways. Without reservation—both ways. People have died for that, Julie. People will die for that—not because they’re crazy but because this is something that actually means something to them. They will not exchange this total support for nine-to-five jobs and Social Security checks in their old age.”
(Naturally, I’d remember this conversation three and a half years later when the mighty U.S. government found it necessary to obliterate a tiny sect of cultists outside Waco, Texas. It mattered not that the Branch Davidians had been convicted of no crime—and not even charged with a crime. They were deluded, and this meant they could be destroyed without a trial—evidently on the principle that our delusions are okay, but their delusions are inherently evil and must be expunged from the face of the earth, whatever they might actually turn out to be.)
I said, “It almost sounds like you’re urging me to start a cult.”
He sighed and shook his head. “You’re my message-bearer, Julie, and this is my message: Open the prison gates and people will pour out. Build things people want and they’ll flock to them. And don’t flinch from looking with wide-open eyes at the things people show you they want. Don’t look away from them just because Mother Culture has given them bad names. Instead, understand why she’s given them bad names.”
“I do understand. She?
?s given them bad names because she wants us to recoil from them in horror.”
“Of course.”
As if on cue, a good-looking, compact man sat down in the chair next to me—and I knew instantly that my course of studies with the ape was over.
The Man From Africa
Ishmael said, “Julie, this is Art Owens,” and I gave him a more careful look. Ishmael had said he was forty, but I would have thought he was younger—I’m not great at ages. He was a richer shade of black than I was used to seeing in African-Americans, probably (I later realized) because there were no white folks in his ancestry anywhere at all. He was beautifully dressed, in a fawn-colored suit, olive shirt, and paisley tie. We took some time to look each other over, so that’s why I’m giving you all this here.
He was built like a Tyson-style fighter, short and blunt and powerful, like a heavy wrench. I don’t know what to say about his face. He wasn’t handsome or hideous. He had a face that made you think again about what can be done with faces. It was a face that belonged to someone who, if he said it was going to rain for forty days and forty nights again, starting tomorrow, you’d remember you always sort of wanted to own a boat.
“Hello, Julie,” he said, in a rich, dark voice. “I’ve heard a lot about you.” From anyone else, I would have taken it as nothing more than the usual cliché. I told him I hadn’t heard word one about him, and he repaid me with a modest smile—not a big dazzler, just an acknowledgment. Then he looked at Ishmael, obviously expecting him to tell me what he wanted me to know.
“You have in fact heard word one about Art, Julie. I told you he has a vehicle and is going to help me make my getaway from this place.”
“Yeah,” I said. “Okay.”
“You offered to help—and now your help is needed.”
I looked at Art Owens, I suppose because I figured he must have slipped up somehow or promised something he couldn’t deliver. He too nodded. “Something fell through that we thought we had figured out.” Then he asked Ishmael how much he’d told me of the plan.
“Nothing at all,” Ishmael said.
“Ishmae;’s going back to Africa,” Art said. “There’s no support for him here, now that Rachel’s gone.”
“What’s in Africa?”
“A rain forest in the north of Zaire.”
“You’re joking,” I told him. Art frowned and looked at Ishmael.
“She thinks you mean a few thousand acres with a fence around it,” Ishmael explained.
“I’m talking about a virgin rain forest—thousands of square miles.”
“You both misunderstand me,” I said. “When I say you’re joking, I mean, are you telling me that Ishmael is going to go out and live like a gorilla?”
Briefly, they both looked like I’d reached out and socked them on the jaw. Art recovered first, saying, “Why shouldn’t he go out and live like a gorilla? He is a gorilla.”
“He’s not a gorilla, he’s a goddamned philosopher.”
They exchanged baffled glances.
Ishmael said, “Believe me, Julie, there are no chairs of philosophy open for me anywhere in the world, and there never will be.”
“That’s not the only choice.” Ishmael raised a brow at me, challenging me to name some others, but I said I didn’t see why he should expect me to come up with alternatives. I’d only been working on the problem for thirty seconds.
“I’ve been working on it for months, Julie, and you’ll just have to trust me when I say that this is the best that can be managed. I don’t regard it as a defeat or a last resort. This offers me a condition of freedom I can achieve in no other way.”