Mr. Clarinet

Outside, the doors of the temple had been opened and people were starting to make their way into it, casually drifting in, as if compelled by curiosity and a need for a fresh experience.

The drums had started up too, a slow beat that Max felt passing into his ankles, reverberating in the bone, filling his feet with the urge to move, to dance, to walk, to run.

* * *

Inside, the temple was far larger than he'd anticipated—big enough to accommodate two separate ceremonies, their hundred or more participants and observers, and, seated on four-tiered benches almost covering the entire circumference of the wall, an orchestra of drummers.

From the sight of them, he was expecting to hear pure chaos—the rhythms of downtown Port-au-Prince transcribed in tribal beats. Their instruments were all homemade—crudely fashioned hollow wood or modified oil drum, stretched animal hide fixed with nails, tacks, string, and rubber bands—but he recognized suggestions of tom-toms, snares, bongos, bass, and kettledrums there. The musicians were randomly placed—wherever there was room—and there was no one conducting or directing or shouting out cues; they watched the proceedings, listened in, and played along with their hands, keeping to the same beat, steady as a metronome, and making a sound no louder or quieter than distant thunder.

Max sensed this was just the prelude.

It was steam-room hot, thanks to the many bodies, the lack of ventilation, and the burning torches shedding amber light from their brackets on the wall. The air was so still and thick it was virtually painted on. Clouds of incense were wafting up toward the roof and then coming back down as light smog.

When Max breathed in deep to get more oxygen into his blood, he experienced a heady, near-narcotic rush, both sedative and amphetamine, a cool, soothing sensation in his back followed by a rush of blood to his eyes and a quickening of the heartbeat. He picked up a cocktail of natural smells—camphor, rosemary, lavender, gardenias, mint, cinnamon, fresh sweat, and old blood.

In the middle of the temple, people were dancing and chanting around a thick, twisted column of black rock, sculpted in the shape of an enormous mapou trunk, rising up from the ground and passing through a large, round hole in the roof, where it was topped by the cross they'd seen from the street. As with the real tree, there were dozens of lit candles stuck to the sculpture. Worshippers were walking around it, sticking their pictures, scraps of paper, ribbons, and candles on the rock, and then stepping into the mobile encirclement of bodies, falling into step, joining in the dance of swaying hips and nodding heads, adding their voices to the chants. Max tried to pick out what they were saying, find part of a word or phrase he could hold on to, but there was nothing discernible coming out of those mouths, only deep notes, held, extended, played with, and transformed.

The floor was bare earth, trampled flat by motion and baked hard by the heat. There were three large vévés, drawn in maize, two of snakes—one with its body wrapped around a pole and its tongue pointing out toward the temple entrance, the other swallowing its tail—and, in between them, a horizontal coffin, split into four sections, each containing a crucifix and an eye, both drawn in sand.

"Loa Guede," Chantale said over the drums and the chanting, pointing to the vévé of the coffin. "God of death."

"I thought that was the good Baron," Max said.

"He's god of the dead," she said, meeting his eyes, almost leering at him. She was a little giddy, unsteady, like she was on her third drink of the night and starting to feel the booze kicking away her restraints. "You know what goes with death, Max? Sex."

"He the god of that too?"

"Oh yeah." She smiled and laughed her lusty laugh. "There's going to be a banda."

"A what?"

She didn't answer. She didn't explain. She'd started to dance, shimmying from the calves up, her body undulating in smooth, slow waves, feet to head, head back to legs. He felt the drums in his thighs and hips now, inspiring him to dance with her.

Chantale took his hand and they started moving toward the mapou sculpture. He was dancing, despite himself, imitating those before him, the drums helping his legs and feet keep time, practically transforming him into a natural.

He sensed someone watching them but it was too dark and there were too many people looking their way to pick out the individual.

To the far right of the column, Max saw a group of people standing around a pond of bubbling gray water. Two half-naked boys were standing in it waist-deep, beckoning to the bystanders, some of whom were tossing coins into the pool. Then a woman in a light blue robe walked in. The boys grabbed her by the arms and plunged her under the water, holding her down hard, like they were trying to drown her, then letting go and staggering back out. The woman slowly reemerged, naked now except for her underwear and the thick, gray muck she was completely caked in. She got back onto solid ground, took a few steps forward, and then threw herself on the earth, writhing on her front and back, slapping the ground hard with her open hands, then throwing dirt all over her body and stuffing it into her mouth. Then she ran at the crowd of people gathered watching the worshippers dancing around the column, grabbed one of them—a man—by his shirt and spat a jet of purple fluid at his face. The man staggered backwards, crying, furiously rubbing at his face and eyes. The woman took hold of his wrist, pulled him over to the pond, and pushed him in. The two boys dunked him and kept him under until he'd stopped thrashing around. When they let go, the man slowly rose from the water. He too was the color of ash and milk—and stark naked. He crouched down on the ground and watched the dancers.

Chantale stepped up to the sculpture and stuck to it a picture of a woman sitting up in a bed. Then she lit a candle and fixed it to a groove in the rock. She mumbled a few words in Kreyol and then began to chant as those around her were doing. They joined in the circle of people moving around them.

The drums beat a little faster, the bass dominated, vibrating in Max's thighs.

They danced. Max followed Chantale and all the others, shuffling, dipping his hips from side to side, touching the ground with his left hand, then his right, bringing them both together and separating them, as if miming an explosion. He could barely feel himself doing it. The stuff they were burning in the air had first loosened him up and now he was beginning to feel himself being separated from his body, his being floating around his cage of bone and sinew. His brain had powered down to all but its basic functions. His senses had been wrapped in cotton wool, stuffed in a tube, and dumped in a deep, warm river, where they were floating slowly away from him, getting beyond reach. He was watching them go and he didn't care. This was bliss.

He heard the drums picking up the beat, he moved his feet a little faster. He heard himself joining in with the chanting, somehow finding a common note and sending it out from the bottom of his stomach. He wasn't a singer. He'd never sung in church when he was a kid. Too embarrassed. First, he'd sounded like a girl, then his balls dropped and he sounded like he was belching. His dad had tried to teach him music, just the two of them at the upright piano one night, when he was five. No use. His dad had told him he was tone-deaf. Not anymore he wasn't, not in here.