To reach the waterfall, Max and Chantale had to walk along the banks of a wide stream that cut through a forest of densely packed trees, overflowing foliage, thick, dangling vines, and riots of sweet-scented, brightly colored flowers. They weren't alone. As they'd drawn closer to their destination, more and more people had joined them on the roadmost on foot, but some riding donkeys and tired-looking horsesall of them pilgrims heading for a cure. Once they'd reached the stream, they'd waded into the water and walked solemnly and humbly toward the hundred-foot-tall cascade. Despite the great roar of the crashing torrent up ahead, there was a deep quiet within the forest, as if the essence of silence itself was locked into the soil and the bountiful vegetation. The people seemed to sense this, because none of them spoke, nor made much noise in the water.
Max saw that some of the trees along the way were studded with candles and covered with photographs of people, Christian saints, cars, houses, postcardsmost of them of Miami and New Yorkas well as pictures cut or torn out of magazines and newspapers. These trees, with their enormous thick trunks and thin, spindly branches, some heavy with cucumber-shaped fruit, Chantale explained, were called mapou in Haiti. They were sacred in voodoo, trees whose roots were said to be a conduit for the loasthe godsfrom this world into the next, and whose presence was meant to signify the nearness of flowing water. The tree was inextricably linked to Haiti's history: the slave rebellion that brought Haiti independence was rumored to have started under a mapou tree in the town of Gonaives, when a stolen white child was sacrificed to the devil in exchange for his help in defeating the French armies. Haitian independence was declared under the very same tree in 1804.
When they reached the waterfalls, they stopped at the bank, near a mapou. Max put down the hamper he'd been carrying. Chantale opened it and took out a small drawstring bag of purple velvet. She removed four metal candleholders, which she stuck into the tree in four equidistant points, like those of the compass. Moving counterclockwise, she spiked four candles into the holdersone white, one gray, one red, and one lavender. Then she took a picture out of her wallet, kissed it with her eyes closed, and tacked it in the middle of the candle arrangement. She sprinkled water on her hands from a small, clear, glass bottle, and then rubbed what smelled like sandalwood lotion into her hands and arms. Whispering quietly, she lit each candle with a match and then, tilting her head back, she looked up into the sky and stretched out her arms, palms up.
Max moved a little away, out of her immediate range, to give her some privacy. He looked at the waterfall. Off to the left there was a break in the trees, where the sun streamed through and made a gigantic rainbow in the mist rolling off the torrent. People were standing on the rocks directly under the falls, water pounding on their bodies. Others stood apart, off to the sides, where the cascade was not as forceful. They chanted and held their hands up to the sky, in much the same way Chantale was doing; some shook instruments like maracas, others clapped their hands and danced. They were all naked. Once they got close to the rocks near the falls, they shed their clothes in the stream and let them float off with the current. In the stream itself, the pilgrims stood waist-deep, washing themselves with herbs and bars of yellow soap they bought from boys selling baskets of the things on the banks. Max noticed several of them were in trances, standing stock-still in crucifixion poses; others were possessed, bodies shaking, heads snapping back and forth, eyes wide and rolling, tongues darting in and out of perpetually moving mouths.
Chantale walked over to him and rested her hand on his shoulder.
"That was for my mother," she explained. "It's a thing we do for the sick."
"How come they get rid of their clothes?" Max asked, nodding at the worshippers.
"It's part of the ritual. First they shed the burden of their past bad lucksymbolized by the clothesthen they wash themselves clean in the waterfall. Like a kind of baptism. Only they're making a great sacrifice getting rid of their clothes, because all of these people you see here have very little."
Chantale started walking down the bank toward the water, an empty bottle in her hand.
"You going in?" Max asked incredulously.
"Aren't you?" she replied, smiling, her eyes full of suggestion.
Max was tempted as hell, but he held back.
"Maybe next time," he said.
She bought a bar of soap and a handful of leaves from the boys with the baskets and then she waded in and began to cross the stream toward the dark rocks and the brilliant white deluge pummeling them.
Before she reached the falls, she took off her shirt and dropped it in the water. She soaped her face and her bare torso and then pulled herself up on the rocks. She stripped down to a black thong and tossed away her jeans after her shoes.
Max couldn't take his eyes off her. She looked completely different from the way he'd imagined her without her clothes on. He'd assumed she'd have a typical white-collar body, going to pieces with inattention and a sedentary life, no time or energy to look after herself; hips running away at the sides, ass and thighs mottled with cellulite, middle going soft. But Chantale had a firm, athletic build. Her legs were long and strong, her shoulders and arms toned, her breasts small and firm: a sprinter's body. Maybe she'd run track in college. She looked like she still worked out.
She saw him looking at her and she smiled and waved. He waved back, automatically, inanely, suddenly back down to earth, embarrassed that she'd caught him looking at her.
Chantale stepped back and forced herself into the middle of the torrent, right under the innermost edge of the rainbow, where the water fell hardest and heaviest. Max lost sight of her completely, confusing her again and again with a variety of other bathers and their shadows, outlines blurred or invented by mist and motion. At times there seemed to be many people there with her, cleansing themselves, and then, suddenly, the waterfalls would appear completely empty, as if the pilgrims had been dissolved like so much dirt and washed into the stream with the banks of discarded clothes.
As he was looking for Chantale, he felt his attention being pulled away from his search and off to his left, where he sensed someone observing him. He wasn't being watched out of curiosity or wonder, the way some of the people on their way to the stream had looked at him; he was being assessed and evaluated by a trained eye. He knew the feeling, because he'd been taught to recognize it as a cop. Most criminals were paranoid as hell and had a naturally heightened sense of suspicion, same as the blind with their better-developed senses of smell and sound. They'd know if they were being watched; they'd actually feel the person's presence, dogging their every breath, tracking their every thought. This was why cops were taught the "Sun Rule of Observation": never look directly at a target but focus on the space five degrees to its left or right, keeping the main attraction well within sight.