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.
At this point the parties at the apartments two or three stories above the street are beginning to rock. Revelers are looking down at the parades and the parades are looking up at the revelers. Revelers are sipping beer from their Styrofoam cups quite ostentatiously, driving the creatures down below — forbidden from drinking in the streets by open container laws — mad with envy. Nicodemus is salivating, not because of the beer, although he does express a desire for a few sips before we leave, but because of the girls who are lining the balconies, flashing and mooning the milling crowds on the street. He joins the rest of the spectators to cheer the inspiring sight.
“It’s the full moon,” he explains to me. “People go crazy.”
“What’s with the full moon?” I ask.
“There’s more stuff going on when there’s a full moon. Ask any nurse or cop or ER worker…more stabbings…more shootings…more car accidents…more DUIs…more arrests.”
“All the more reason we should leave,” I suggest. “I have had my fill of the parade of creatures.”
“Sure thing,” he says. “But let’s have a beer first. One for the road.”
“You can have a beer. I’ll wait.”
Before we can slip into a Court Street bar we are stopped by two cops. One is a local Athenian officer and the other is from Belpre. Athens often seeks assistance from the police departments of neighboring towns when there are such rituals. Between the officers is a frightened girl in a nightgown and slippers. She points at Nicodemus and says: “That’s him, officer.”
The cops pounce on Nicodemus. He is struggling and proclaiming his innocence as they handcuff him.
“Bail me out,” he says to me as they drag him away with the girl in tow.
I stand there for a few seconds, watching them disappear in the crowd. All the while he is screaming that he “didn’t do nothing” and that this is a matter of mistaken identity and that he is going to sue their pants off for wrongful arrest and that for centuries his people have suffered indignities. I rush in the direction they are taking. I do not know why I am following them, or what I can do to help poor Nicodemus. I lose them when I stop to give way to a giant mouse chasing a giant cat. The musophobic cat hits me very hard in the stomach in its frantic attempt to escape. I am reeling a little bit and the mouse apologizes very quickly on behalf of the cat and then resumes the chase.
The natives are gradually dispersing and I gather they are going to parties all over the town. But diehards are still out there when mounted police decide to clear the streets at about 2 A.M. Even the ambulances and emergency vehicles at the corner of Court and Washington Streets drive away.
I have to go somewhere too. I have no idea where. Damn that sciolist!