‘Have you seen Jocundra?’ asked Donnell.
‘Jocundra?’ The woman did not look up, packing down the dirt around the fern. ‘Hasn’t she left?’
‘She’s left?’ Donnell refused to accept it. ‘When’s she coming back?’
‘No, now wait. I saw her on the grounds after supper. Maybe she hasn’t gone yet.’
‘Laura!’ A querulous voice leaked out the open door; the woman wiggled all five fingers in a wave, a smile nicked the corners of her mouth, and she closed the door behind her.
It had been easy to tell Jocundra to leave when he had not believed it possible, but now he was adrift in the possibility, all solid ground melted away. He skidded down the ramp into the parking lot. The lanterns above the stone benches were lit, bubbles of yellow light picking out the blackness, and fireflies swarmed under the oaks. Toads ratcheted, crickets sizzled. She would be - if she hadn’t left - at the bench near the gate. The flagstones jolted the wheels, his chest labored, his arms ached, a sheen of sweat covered his face. Something flew into his eye, batted its wings, clung for a second and fluttered off. A moth. He crested a rise and spotted Jocundra on the bench. She wasn’t wearing makeup, or was wearing very little, and she looked hardly more than a girl. He had always assigned her the characteristic of sophistication, albeit of a callow sort, and so her youthfulness surprised him. Her melancholy expression did not change when she saw him.
‘I don’t want you to leave,’ he said, scraping to a halt a couple of feet away.
She laughed palely. ‘I’ve already left, I just went into New Orleans for the day.’ She regarded him with mild approval. ‘You made it out here by yourself. That’s pretty good.’
‘I thought you’d gone,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, not wanting to appear too relieved. ‘I didn’t much like the idea.’
‘Oh?’ She raised an eyebrow.
‘Listen.’ He balked at apology, but gave in to the need for it. ‘I’m sorry. I know I’ve been an asshole.’
‘You’ve had good reason to be upset.’ She smoothed her skirt down over her knees, then smiled. ‘But you have been an asshole.’
‘Could it be my nature,’ he said, rankled.
‘No, you’re not like that,’ she said thoughtfully. She slung her bag over her shoulder. ‘Let’s go on in.’
As she wheeled him toward the house, Donnell felt strangely satisfied, as if some plaguing question had been put to rest. The fireflies pricking the dark, the scrape of Jocundra’s shoes, the insect noises, everything formed an intricate complement to his thoughts, a relationship he could not grasp but wanted to make graspable, to write down. Near the house another moth fluttered into his face, and he wondered - his wonder tinged with revulsion - if they were being attracted by the flickers in his eyes. He pinched its wings together and held it up for Jocundra’s inspection.
‘It’s a luna moth,’ she said. ‘There was this old man back home, a real Cajun looney. He’s blind now, or partially blind, but he used to keep thousands of luna moths in his back room and study their wing patterns. He claimed they revealed the natural truth.’ She shook her head, regretful, and added in a less enthusiastic voice, ‘Clarence Brisbeau.’
‘What’s wrong?’ Donnell loosed the moth and it skittered off, vanishing against the coal-black crowns of the oaks.
‘I was just remembering. He scared me once. He got drunk and tried to kiss me. I was only thirteen, and he must have been almost sixty.’ She stared after the moth as if she could still see it. ‘It was spooky. Stripes of light were shining between the boards of the cabin, dead moths on the floor, thousands clinging to the walls. Every time he gestured they fluttered off his arms. I remember him walking toward me, dripping moths, talking.’ She adopted an accent, like French, but with harsher rhythms. ‘“I’m tellin’ you, me,” he said. “This worl’ she’s full of supernatural creatures whose magic we deny.”’
Chapter 5
March 25 - April 17, 1987
‘Now don’t laugh, but I’ve been thinking about our patients in terms of spirit possession.’ Dr Edman folded his hands across his stomach and leaned back; the leather chair wheezed.
Jocundra was sitting across a mahogany desk from Edman in his office: a curious round room whose roof was the glass dome. Shafts of the declining sun struck through the faceted panes, and dust motes swirled idly like the thoughts of a crystal-skulled giant. Recessed bookshelves ringed the room - you entered by means of a stair leading up through a trapdoor - and the volumes were mired in shadow; though now and then the light brightened, crept lower on the walls, and the odd gilt word melted up from the dimness: Witchcraft, Psychologica, Pathology. A chart of the brain was tacked up over a portion of the shelves, and Edman had scribbled crabbed notes along arrows pointing to various of the fissures. The shelf behind his head held an array of dusty, yellowed human crania, suggesting to Jocundra that he was the latest in a succession of psychologist-kings, and that his own brain case would someday join those of his predecessors.
‘During a voodoo ritual,’ Edman continued, ‘the celebrants experience tremors, convulsions, and begin to exhibit a different class of behaviors than previously. They may, for example, show a fondness for gazing into mirrors or eating a particular food, and the houngan then identifies these behaviors as aspects belonging to one of the gods.’
‘There is a rough analogue…’ Jocundra began.
‘Bear with me a moment!’ Edman waggled a finger, summoning a thought. ‘I prefer to regard this so-called spirit possession as the emergence of the deep consciousness. A rather imprecise term, easily confused with Jung-ian terminology, but generally indicative of what I’m after: the raw force of the identity to which all the socialized and otherwise learned behaviors adhere, barna-cling it with fears and logical process and so forth, gradually masking it from the light and relegating it to a murky existence in the…’ He smacked his head, as if to dislodge an idea. ‘Ah! In the abyss of forethought.’ He scribbled on his notepad, beaming at Jocundra. ‘That ought to wake up the back rows at the next convention.’ He leaned back again. ‘My thesis is that we’re stimulating spirit possession by microbiological means rather than hypnogogic ones, elevating the deep consciousness to fill the void created by the dissipation of learned behaviors. But instead of allowing this new and unfocused identity to wander about at will for a few hours, we educate and guide it. And instead of a houngan or a mama loi to simply proclaim the manifestation, we utilize trained personnel to maximize their potential, to influence their growth. Of course if we had a mama loi on the staff, she’d say we had conjured up a god.’ He chuckled. ‘See what I’m after?’
‘It’s hardly a scholarly viewpoint.’ Jocundra found the idea of playing voodoo priestess to Donnell’s elemental spirit appealing in the manner of a comic book illustration.
‘Not as such! Still, a case might be made for it. And wouldn’t it be a surprise package if we learned there were exact correlations between personality types and the voodoo pantheon!’ Edman pursed his lips and tapped them with his forefinger. ‘You must be familiar with anthropological studies in this area… Any input?’
‘Well,’ said Jocundra, unhappy at having to supply grist for Edman’s mill, ‘the voodoo concept of the soul has some resonance with your thesis. According to doctrine all human beings have two souls. The ti bon ange, which is more or less the conscience, the socialized part of the mind, and the gros bon ange, which is the undying part, the immortal twin. It’s been described as the image of a man reflected by a dark mirror. You might want to read Deren or Metraux.’