Within the room the physician stopped, looking about in surprise. The chamber was almost entirely in darkness. The walls appeared to be hung from ceiling to floor with black velvet drapes. Even the ceiling was covered, the heavy folds of cloth converging from the four corners to gather at a central point above, from which dropped a chain suspending the single strange source of light, a device which hung low over a chair behind a large desk-like table, yet left these things and indeed most of the room unlighted.
This passage occurs very early in the book, shortly after the murder of the conjure man which is the crime being investigated. But before the detection can begin, the physician must illuminate on the circumstances. Darkness is the prevailing shade of difference in this story. Darkness lurks everywhere; the pigmentation of the skin of the characters, the place in which the suspects/witnesses are interrogated and the neighborhood of Harlem itself. One version or another of the dark/darkness pops up close to ninety times throughout the text.
Spider Webb, an alert mouse-faced gentleman, perhaps thirty-five years old, was of dusky yellow complexion, rather sharp yet negroid features, and self-assured bearing. He was decidedly annoyed at the circumstances which had thus involved him, and his deep-set green-grey eyes glowed with a malicious impatience as he sat facing the well-nigh invisible detective.
If nothing else can be said about Rudolph Fisher—and a heck of a lot more can be said about this great writer (not great African-American writer, but great American writer)—it is that he has a way with character description. And, yes, he also has a way with names. In addition to Spider Webb, the story also features characters named Bubber Brown, Jinx Jenkins and the unforgettably christened Aramintha Snead. Most of these characters and the others get at least one passage of imagery-laden physical description. This may seem like a less than essential quality in a writer, but one thing is for sure: after reading the descriptions, nobody is going to mistake Spider Webb for Perry Dart.
For a moment he meditated the irreconcilable points in Jinx’s story—the immobility of Frimbo’s figure, from which nevertheless the turban had fallen, the absence of any sound of an attack, yet a sudden change in Frimbo’s speech and manner just before he was discovered dead…
Frimbo—the conjure man—manages to become one of the most memorable characters in the novel despite the obvious difficulties of being found dead in the opening pages. The story is structured like a flashback—a series of flashbacks—as each suspect/witness tells a story during interrogation. This is the vehicle which allows the author to present a portrait of Harlem at the time that expands upon and broadens the texture of the mystery. And then, of course, it would perhaps not be fair to simply gloss over the fact that all is not quite what it seems at the beginning. And so the mystery of who killed the conjure man transforms into something other than what it appears to be.
“All I can tell you is that they’s only one way to kill a conjure-man—you got to outconjure him. You got to put a back-conjure on him, and it’s got to be stronger ’n the one he put on the other feller. ’Cose you can’t do it alone. Got to have help.”
Why kill a conjure man? Lots of reasons, turns out, but the wanting and the doing turns out to be less than easy. Of course, Doty Hicks is “a little wizened black fellow” who is also referred to as “bozo” with who possesses a stare not dissimilar to that of people fresh out of surgery before the gas has completely worn off. Can Doty be trusted? Is his story of how to kill a conjure-man to be believed or he is just trying his best to spread the darkness around and make it a little thicker and harder to see? That’s to be discovered, but keep in mind this is a mystery that does not come right out and put all the clues on the table in order. Things are dark here and they only get darker until the solution is finally revealed.
