Your mait’-tête, Claude said.
Yes. How far now?
Not far. In the trees there, he said, pointing toward the dark end of the gorge, where two moonlit ridges came together as if clasping hands above the leafless, yellow-blossomed branches of a tall wildcotton tree surrounded by darker, denser, lower trees, almond and mahogany, that hid the ground from view. The hounfor is there, for the société, he said.
It’s all right, then?
Yes. We are all from Haiti. And we have money for the mambo to make a service.
You know them, Claude?
A few … some. I work for the Chinaman, who knows them all. But I have not been here to the hounfor before. The old man told me it was here. François, who works for the Chinaman also, he said. He turned away and resumed descending to the gorge.
Vanise shifted her child to her other hip and followed.
There was a broad footpath at the bottom that snaked in darkness through the dense brush, and the drums and singing and the steady, warbling cries of the conch shell grew louder and sharper as they made their way over roots and stones, drawing them forward and out of themselves, until soon they were walking faster, almost running, and then suddenly they were free of the darkness and stood at the edge of a large crowd of people in a clearing, men and women and a few children, most of them dressed in white, their black faces large and open and sweating cheerfully as they chatted, danced, watched and argued and sometimes moved in and out of the dense center of the crowd, where the woodpole-and-thatch peristyle itself, the temple for Agwé, could be seen.
Several Coleman lanterns glowed phosphorus white beneath the roof of the peristyle, casting long shadows over the crowd, while the mambo, in a scarlet satin dress, and her assistants, young women wearing simple white dresses, passed back and forth with baskets and bowls of flowers, cakes, pigeons, bananas, yams, oranges, rice, many kinds of food and bottles of liquor, which they placed gently before the center altar, a long, canopied table covered with white cloth. Off to one side, three lean men, like athletes, worked their drums, while the houngenikon, a gaunt, tall, aged woman, sang and chanted, and the crowd around her picked up the songs and chants and enlarged, elaborated and amplified them, as more and more men and women emerged from the darkness and underbrush that surrounded the peristyle and joined in.
Between the centerpost of the peristyle and the altar table, a large straw mat had been laid out on the ground, and clean, white, embroidered sheets and pillows had been placed so as to make a wide bed for Agwé and his mistress Erzulie, with roses at the foot, perfume near the pillows and a pink, curling conch shell at the center. Tied to the centerpost stood a ram goat, its long, silky hair dyed indigo blue, its yellow eyes gently tranquil. At the right, beyond the altar table, where the mambo and her assistants brought forth the offerings to Agwé, was a large, square, boxlike structure with flat, wide-railed sides, Agwé’s barque, a raft the size of a small room, made of wood and painted bright blue with elaborate floral decorations and vevers covering the sides and rails — the mermaid that signified the presence of Erzulie la Sirène, the snakes and stars for Damballah, Ogoun’s crossed banners, the scarlet heart of la Maitresse, the crab for Agassou, the fish for St. Ulrique. Set among these designs, in holes in the rail, were vases filled with cut flowers, liquors and perfumes. And arranged carefully around the edge of the barque itself were eight men standing two to a side, as if waiting for a signal from the mambo, who ignored them, passing them by as she and the young houncis bustled back and forth with their loaded baskets, pots and bowls.
At last they had made a huge heap of offerings before the altar, and they stopped, as if to catch their breath before commencing the next stage of the rite, while the drums kept up the steady, deep pounding and the singing went on independently, rising in pitch, tempo and volume like a tide, slowly, almost imperceptibly and quite as if it could go on rising forever, until the entire earth were covered by the sea.
The mambo, a full-breasted woman with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, an attractive but fierce-looking middle-aged woman, shook her calabash rattle, the asson, and suddenly she was rushing about the peristyle, darting in and out of the crowd, giving orders, ringing a tiny brass bell in people’s faces, moving them, organizing them, shaping the mixed, affable, passive crowd of men and women into a coherent torce. The eight men by the barque, as one, lifted the raft from the ground to their shoulders. A number of women hefted the baskets and bowls at the foot of the altar, passed them back until they had all been taken away, and a slender, attractive woman in white untied the blue ram and led him away from the centerpole. The drummers rose, and still beating on their large instruments, began to leave the peristyle, followed by the houngenikon, who sang now with great joy.
The crowd parted, and the procession began, with people joining in as it passed, until the crowd had become the procession, a river of people singing and dancing, waving banners, carrying baskets of food and flowers, and the huge, brightly decorated barque as if it were a raft floating downstream toward the sea. Vanise and Charles and the boy Claude merged with the crowd and floated with it, as the people made their way along the pathway through the trees, down the length of the gorge between the ridges to where the ground leveled.
Soon they had departed from the Barrens, had crossed the road and were passing through a village of huts on the other side, where still more people came out and joined them. The sky had grayed slightly in the east, and a breeze off the sea drifted toward them. As the sky lightened, the palm trees went from black silhouettes against it to gray to green, when finally the crowd rounded a turn in the broad, sandy trail beyond the village and came to the sea, silvery and smooth in the dawn light. The waves lapped placidly at the spit of sand that ran out from the point, and fifty yards beyond the spit, anchored in shallow water, was the boat, a low turtler, broad-beamed, with a short, dark red, single sail.
The people sang and danced as they marched, clanging on the steel ogan, blowing the conch shell, the L: lambi, as if it were Gabriel’s horn, beating the assator and the tambour drums with joyous fury, and when they reached the water, as if it were not there, as if there were no firmament between the firmaments, they strode on, moving directly into the sea, a black river foaming and churning down from a mountaintop to the shore and merging with the sea. Soon they were wading in chest-high water, the offerings, drums, goat, asson and barque held high as they neared the boat, and when they reached the boat, the men carrying the barque of Agwé steadied themselves a second and then slid it up and over the rail into the boat and clambered aboard, with the rest following helter-skelter, grabbing at rails on all sides, clinging and swinging themselves up and over, scrambling into the boat, even climbing the masts, until it seemed the boat would capsize from the load. And still there were stragglers trying to come aboard, among them Claude and Vanise and Charles. Vanise held her baby up above her head, as if he were an offering to Agwé, and a man took him from her. She reached out her hand, and another man grabbed it and hauled her aboard. Claude grabbed at the gunwale, and at that moment, someone on the other side hauled up the anchor and the boat shifted to starboard, and Claude lost his hold and fell back into the sea. Gasping, his mouth filling with salty water, flailing wildly, Claude cried out in terror, Vanise! Oh, Vanise, moin la! Moin la! for he could not swim, and he knew that he was supposed to drown now, because of Grabow. It was Grabow himself pulling him down and shoving the crowded boat away from his grasp, Grabow’s blood-soaked hands yanking at Claude’s legs, Grabow and all the Petro loas in dark concert working this poor, frightened boy down, when suddenly his hand felt human fingers, and he tightened his hand around another and looked up into the bland, calm face of the mambo, a sweetly organized, mother’s face.