In Darkness (17 page)

The old man, he was obviously a houngan. Dread Wilmè’s houngan, I guess. He had a bone rattle and a gourd, an ason and a clochette; he was shaking them. He called out:

— I need Baron Samedi!

He called out:

— I need la Sirene!

A couple of volunteers stepped forward to be ridden by the lwa. I recognized them: they were soldiers for Dread Wilmè. The houngan nodded and made a motion with his hands for the people around the pickup truck to back away. Then he and the two men lifted the coffin and put it onto a little boat. The houngan took a canister and poured what was in it all over the boat, all over the coffin.

A stillness came on the crowd then, a hush. They knew that was petrol the houngan was pouring; they knew what was going to come.

Then the houngan picked up his cane and he began to draw in the sand. I couldn’t see everything, but I guessed he was drawing veves to bring the lwa down. People stepped forward and put offerings on the ground – cakes and sweet things for la Sirene, rum and cigars for Baron Samedi, who loves anything that reeks of death. There was a bucket of water, too, for la Sirene, cos she can’t be out of the water for too long, else she dies.

The houngan arranged the offerings, then he raised a hand. Everything went quiet. He began to sing, first the song to Papa Legba, to open up the gates.

Vodou, yeah: it’s complicated. Some of the lwa we brought from Africa, some we found on this island, took them from the Indians. And some of them – we call them the Gede family – are the spirits of our dead ancestors.

You die on Haiti, you become a god. Me, I try to tell myself that, as I lie here in the darkness. I tell myself, if Manman is still alive and I die, I can still talk to her – all she got to do is visit her houngan.

These lwa can come down and possess a living person, ride them like a horse. For an hour, or whatever, that person
is
the god, speaks the god’s words. But it’s not easy. First, you got to open up the gate between our world and the world of the lwa, and for that you need Papa Legba, the lwa of the crossroad. He’s, like, the phone line between humans and the lwa.

So, first thing you do when you have a ceremony is you invoke Papa Legba. Then you can call on other lwa: Baron Samedi, maybe – he’s the one who takes you to the land under the sea when you die; or la Sirene – she’s the one who looks after you there; or Ogou Badagry – he’s the lwa of war, but you don’t want him unless you’re crazy; no moun wants to be ridden by him. See, a person is like a horse and a lwa is like a rider. Ogou Badagry, he’s a rider who uses a whip. A heavy whip.

So, yeah, the houngan, he called on Papa Legba, and I guess the gates got opened, cos suddenly it was raining, in the middle of summer, and then the houngan was stomping in the wet sand and singing again, this time to Baron Samedi. The guy who was holding me on his shoulders, he tightened his hands on my legs, and I knew he was tense about this part. Baron Samedi, he may not be Ogou, he may not be that badass, but he’s still some dark vodou. You got to be afraid of the lwa of war, but if you’re not a cretin, you’re afraid of the lwa of death, too.

— Papa Gede, nou moun nou cè

Nou moun nou cè, c’est rond ago yè!

Papa Gede, nou moun nou cè

Nou moun nou cè, c’est rond ago yè!

The houngan sang, and he was shaking the snake tail bones in his ason, and dancing, dancing.

Suddenly one of the men who volunteered – he was kind of skinny and short – went stiff, then he laughed, big and loud, like a boom box. He didn’t seem so skinny and short anymore.

He turned to the houngan, and he sang back at him. His voice was deep and dark and sounded like something echoing in a grave.

— Sonnin cloche là, Papa, moin Gede!

M’apè vini tout en noir joind houngan!

Ti wa we Gede vini tout en noir joind houngan!

Ti wa we!

Ring the bell there, Papa, I am Gede
, he sang, cos Baron Samedi is also father of the Gede lwa, the lwa of the dead, so he is Baron Samedi, but he is Papa Gede, too.

I am coming all in black to meet the houngan
, he sang in his deep voice.
Little ones, you will see Gede coming all in black to meet the houngan. Little ones, you shall see.

— We see! said one of the children there.

— We see! said another.

— We see you, Papa Gede, Baron Samedi!

Papa Gede, Baron Samedi, whatever you want to call him, picked up a cigar from the ground, and he put it in his mouth. He lit it with a flame that just appeared in his hand – that’s what it looked like from where I was watching. Then he took the kleren, which is like a moonshine kind of whiskey, and he bit off the top and tipped the bottle upside down and drained it. He turned, and saw a pretty girl in the crowd. He walked up to her, picked her up in his arms, like she was a doll, and kissed her, long and deep. Baron Samedi loves girls, man.

Then he let her drop.

— Nen zam pou mwa? he asked.

A guy, one of Dread’s soldiers, handed him a gun. Baron Samedi, he pressed the release and the clip fell out. He caught it smooth with his other hand. He popped out a bullet, put it in his mouth, and swallowed it.

— Ah! he said.

Gunpowder is one of the symbols of Baron Samedi, one of his objects – you want his protection, you carry it with you always. Don’t say I don’t tell you anything useful.

The houngan walked up to him.

— Will you take him? he said. Will you take Dread Wilmè into death?

Baron Samedi looked at Dread, lying still, those massive dreadlocks fallen around his chest like a great black octopus. Then he threw the empty kleren bottle into the coffin.

— Dread Wilmè is a hero of this country, a soldier. I never took him before, the times he got shot. Now the whites have killed him so bad I have no choice. I will take him.

The crowd fucking erupted; they were cheering and jumping. I nearly fell off the shoulders of the guy who was holding me, he was so happy.

Then the houngan was singing again, and dancing. He sang:

— La Sirene, la Balene, chapo m tombe nan la mer,

La Sirene, la Balene, chapo m tombe nan la mer,

Map fou kares pou la Balene (chapo m tombe nan la mer),

Map fou kares pou la Balene (chapo m tombe nan la mer).

That’s a song to la Sirene. It calls to her and tells her our hat has fallen in the sea – I don’t know why. It calls to her and says that we caress her, that we caress the mermaid, that we caress the whale. She’s a mermaid and a whale, too, this lwa; she’s the embodiment of the sea.

The other volunteer, he was in the circle with the houngan and Baron Samedi, and he went stiff; it was like there was a wire running down through his head and his spine, and someone had taken hold of it at both ends and pulled it taut. He gasped, finding it hard to breathe, and he stumbled. The houngan caught him under his arms, held him up. La Sirene, she has the tail of a fish and she lives underwater, so when she rides someone, it isn’t easy for them to stand. This guy, he was big, strong, with a beard and a big chain around his neck, but suddenly he looked smaller, weaker. He turned to Baron Samedi.

— Ah, handsome Baron, he said – and his voice was high and like music.

— La Sirene, said Baron, la Balene, you are beautiful as always.

The men stepped forward, the houngan supporting la Sirene, and embraced with a passionate kiss. The weird thing was that no moun thought of it as weird, cos it was Baron Samedi and la Sirene, not two of Dread’s soldiers, kissing like movie stars. I turned to look at Manman – she was staring at this scene with, like, rapt attention, as if it was beautiful. Me, I thought it was a charade, the whole thing. I didn’t doubt that the men had been paid to do this, or had agreed to do this, cos it was a good send-off for Dread.

There was no such thing as a lwa, that was what I thought then.

Now I know better.

Anyway, then la Sirene broke away and turned to the houngan who was holding him or her, and said:

— Water.

The voice had gone all dry and croaky.

The houngan gestured to one of the men standing outside the circle, who picked up the bucket of sea water and tipped it over la Sirene. She made this
ah
sound that was a bit like when Baron Samedi ate the bullet, only more grateful, more relieved.

— La Sirene, said the houngan, will you take Dread Wilmè into your land under the sea and look after him there?

She made a movement with her hands, graceful, like a dolphin.

— Dread Wilmè is loved by all the lwa, she said.

Her voice was still a woman’s, and you could almost imagine you heard the water in it, the echo of the deep, the whale song.

Almost.

— Of course I will take him, she said. He is a hero. He is Haiti.

Again, the crowd completely lost their shit. I was kind of worried Manman might get pressed to death, but she was dancing with the others, clapping her hands and laughing.

After that, it was quick. The houngan spoke some words, and the two men who had been ridden fell to the ground, just lay there and didn’t get up. He turned to Dread’s other soldiers and gestured to the boat. It must have been planned, cos it happened without many words. The men picked up the boat and carried it to the sea, then they set it on the water and gave it a push so that it drifted out. The houngan lit a stick covered in rags. He didn’t say anything, only tossed it onto the boat, and
whoooosh
. The little boat went up in this ball of flame, bright like a setting sun on the water, hissing in the rain that was still falling lightly.

The boat was drifting out to sea even as it burned, crackling, hot even from the distance I was at, like, twenty meters, at least. It blazed, and it drew further from the beach, till it started to break apart and fall into the water. Soon there was nothing but a slick on the sea, and a smell everywhere of burned petrol.

Later, some of Dread Wilmè’s men swam out and dived for the pieces of his body that had not burned, and they brought them out of the sea for luck. One of the pieces ended up with Biggie’s houngan – that’s how come Biggie got Dread’s bone dust sprinkled on him, to make him indemne against bullets. But that was after, when everyone else had gone. I didn’t see it, so I don’t know if it was really Dread that Biggie had on him, or if Dread just stayed on the bottom of the sea, became the sand and dirt of the beach.

The man who had been holding me up grasped me under my shoulders and put me back on the ground beside Manman. She looked out, past the people, to the stain that was on the sea.

— Well, I guess he isn’t coming back now, she said.

And you know what I think now? I think she was wrong. I think everything comes back – that’s what’s so fucked up about the universe. Everything comes back, whether you want it to or not, all covered in dead earth and stumbling like a zombi, and you can’t say no to it, cos there’s always time, flowing in and out, and eventually time brings the wreckage of the past up on the beach for other people to find.

Toussaint came back and he was Dread Wilmè, and then he was me.

My sister came back and everything changed.

Everything comes back.

Everything.

Then

There had been no time to call upon the forces encamped at the mountain stronghold in Dondon, so Toussaint had only the hand-picked men who had accompanied him here to Cape Town. This included Jean-Christophe, whom Toussaint had sent ahead to gather the cavalry.

The commissioners had more men, true, but the truce that existed between them and the blacks was built, like much of Haiti, on shaky ground. Toussaint knew that he must needs use his knowledge and his cunning to bring the two forces together in order to repel the French and push them back into the sea from whence they came.

Hours before dawn, he rode into the town with Jean-Christophe back at his side, his other soldiers commanded to wait just outside the gates. The guards balked when they saw him, but he raised a calming hand.

— We are only two, he said. We need to speak with the commissioners. They will be grateful for the news we bring.

— You’re slaves, said one of the guards with a sneer.

— No, said Toussaint. Your masters declared us free. Would you go against their word?

The guards grumbled, but they let Toussaint and Jean-Christophe in, reserving their most aggravated looks for Toussaint, Jean-Christophe being blessed with a countenance that not only inspired trust, but that could move more easily than most between the two worlds of black and white. Toussaint envied him that. He was a handsome one, Jean-Christophe, a fine young gentleman. Toussaint himself was a very ugly man, he knew. Already the men of his army, like his lost wife before them, had taken to calling him the Ogre, as if he were a monster out of a fairy tale. And who knew? Maybe to the whites he was.

He didn’t envy Jean-Christophe his upbringing, though. His mother had been a mambo, a vodou priestess, his father a petit blanc who owned a small parcel of land in the north of the country. From his mother he had acquired a firm know ledge of vodou, and a passing acquaintance with most of the many African tongues spoken on the island. From his father he had inherited pale skin and light eyes, the only indications of his other heritage being a certain curl to his hair, a certain curve to his lip. In his eyes sparkled a lively and insubordinate intelligence – one of the characteristics Toussaint admired in him. The young man’s father had tried to beat this apparent devilry out of him many times; Toussaint had seen the scars.Evidently, it had not worked – Jean-Christophe was as clever as any devil.