The whole scene was macabre and livid, as if El Greco had done a painting by moonlight of an exhumed graveyard in a burning town.
It was not a large room, perhaps sixty foot square. There were about fifty tables and the customers were packed in like black olives in a jar. It was hot and the air was thick with smoke and the sweet, feral smell of two hundred negro bodies. The noise was terrific – an undertone of the jabber of negroes enjoying themselves without restraint, punctuated by sharp bursts of noise, shouts and high giggles, as loud voices called to each other across the room.
‘Sweet Jeessus, look who’s hyar…’
‘Where you been keepin yoself, baby…’
‘Gawd’s troof. It’s Pinkus… Hi Pinkus…’
‘Cmon over…’
‘Lemme be… Lemme be, Fse telling ya…’ (The noise of a slap.)
‘Where’s G-G. Cmon G-G. Strut yo stuff…’
From time to time a man or girl would erupt on to the dance-floor and start a wild solo jive. Friends would clap the rhythm. There would be a burst of catcalls and whistles. If it was a girl, there would be cries of ‘Strip, strip, strip,’ ‘Get hot, baby!’ ‘Shake it, shake it,’ and the MC would come out and clear the floor amidst groans and shouts of derision.
The sweat began to bead on Bond’s forehead. Leiter leant over and cupped his hands. ‘Three exits. Front. Service behind us. Behind the band.’ Bond nodded. At that moment he felt it didn’t matter. This was nothing new to Leiter, but for Bond it was a close-up of the raw material on which The Big Man worked, the clay in his hands. The evening was gradually putting flesh on the dossiers he had read in London and New York. If the evening ended now, without any closer sight of Mr. Big himself, Bond still felt his education in the case would be almost complete. He took a deep draught of his whisky. There was a burst of applause. The MC had come out on to the dance-floor, a tall negro in immaculate tails with a red carnation in his button hole. He stood, holding up his hands. A single white spotlight caught him. The rest of the room went dark.
There was silence.
‘Folks,’ announced the MG with a broad flash of gold and white teeth. ‘This is it.’
There was excited clapping.
He turned to the left of the floor, directly across from Leiter and Bond.
He flung out his right hand. Another spot came on.
‘Mistah Jungles Japhet ‘n his drums.’
A crash of applause, catcalls, whistles.
Four grinning negroes in flame-coloured shirts and peg-top white trousers were revealed, squatting astride four tapering barrels with rawhide membranes. The drums were of different sizes. The negroes were all gaunt and stringy. The one sitting astride the bass drum rose briefly and shook clasped hands at the spectators.
‘Voodoo drummers from Haiti,’ whispered Leiter.
There was silence. With the tips of their fingers the drummers began a slow, broken beat, a soft rumba shuffle.
‘And now, friends,’ announced the MC, still turned towards the drums, ‘G-G…’ he paused, ‘SUMATRA.’
The last word was a yell. He began to clap. There was pandemonium in the room, a frenzy of applause. The door behind the drums burst open and two huge negroes, naked except for gold loincloths, ran out on to the floor carrying between them, her arms round their necks, a tiny figure, swathed completely in black ostrich feathers, a black domino across her eyes.
They put her down in the middle of the floor. They bowed down on either side of her until their foreheads met the ground. She took two paces forward. With the spotlight off them, the two negroes melted away into the shadows and through the door.
The MC had disappeared. There was absolute silence save for the soft thud of the drums.
The girl put her hand up to her throat and the cloak of black feathers came away from the front of her body and spread out into a five-foot black fan. She swirled it slowly behind her until it stood up like a peacock’s tail. She was naked except for a brief vee of black lace and a black sequin star in the centre of each breast and the thin black domino across her eyes. Her body was small, hard, bronze, beautiful. It was slightly oiled and glinted in the white light.