Читать книгу Lydia Bailey - Kenneth Roberts - Страница 18

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We set off for the Humfort or Voodoo temple preceded by two black boys with torches; and in the wavering light of those torches King Dick’s eyes glistened and rolled whitely as he told me about Voodoo. It was a religion, he said, practised in Dahomey and various other parts of Guinea—and by Guinea he seemed to mean all of Africa. The religion had been brought to Haiti from Africa by slaves who had been Hungans, Mambus, and Gangans in the Old Country—a Hungan being a Voodoo priest, a Mambu a Voodoo priestess, and a Gangan an extra special Hungan, extremely high-priced, and almost invariably successful in the making of drogues, gardes, and arrêtes.

Personally, he insisted, he found Voodoo useful but distasteful. For one thing, the chief god of the Voodoo people was Damballa, who was always represented by a serpent, and if Damballa had any snake in him, it stood to reason he couldn’t be much good, for experience had taught King Dick there never was a snake worth worshiping—or worth eating, for that matter. Some people liked them, he said; but for him they tasted too snaky. Aside from his own experience, too, the Bible blamed all the troubles of the world on snakes and women, which was probably right, but no high recommendation for either.

For another thing, King Dick said, Voodoo Hungans and Mambus pretended to be able to foretell the future, once they were possessed by certain gods known in Voodoo circles as Loa, by examining the insides of dead roosters; but roosters’ insides, in his opinion, contained little of value; and roosters’ insides, he was positive, were no different from the insides of turkeys, or ducks, or even crows.

He objected to Voodoo worship, too, because those who practised it couldn’t seem to do so without drinking rum and dancing all night; and he, as a Général de Place in charge of a plantation, objected to all-night drinking and all-night dancing, whether done in the name of religion or in the name of pleasure, since the dancers and drinkers were invariably unable to work efficiently the next day.

He also had minor objections to Voodoo.

According to him, the predictions of Voodoo priests in military matters could be painfully inaccurate, and he instanced black generals in the last war who had based the strategy of their battles on the advice of Hungans and Gangans who had been possessed by Ogun Badagri, one of several Voodoo gods of war. The results forced Toussaint to shoot both generals and Hungans, if they could be found.

Voodoo physicians, too, left much to be desired; for although they professed to be able to cure anybody of almost anything, from love to a broken neck, King Dick said he had never known one to cure a single case of the yaws, which was the most popular of Haiti’s many diseases, especially among men who associated promiscuously with females of slight virtue. He added, with dark laughter, that they were unable even to cure their own splitting headaches after dancing and drinking all night.

“Now you’ve confused me,” I said. “You told me in the beginning that there’s something to Voodoo, and you expect some sort of help from it tonight; but from what you tell me now, a man’s a fool to trust Voodoo. Where’s the sense to it—if there is any?”

King Dick’s tone was philosophical. “You and me, we think like Americans, but nigras think like nigras. They believe everything. They not anything they not believe. If nigra hear he die next Tuesday, three o’clock afternoon, he do it. If sick nigra hear he not sick, first thing you know, he not sick. Now then, suppose nigra wish to go Cap François. Right away he pay a call on Hungan and ask him what day look best. Hungan kill a white rooster for Papa God; then he and nigra eat what Papa God leave, drink rum, dance all night, and Hungan tell him Papa God say go Cap François Monday. If somebody don’t tell nigra Monday be good, nigra afraid go any day. See?”

I said I didn’t.

“Now look,” King Dick said. “In Haiti we got Azeto. Azeto very malice. Howl in trees after dark and maybe suck blood of night travelers. Hungans and Mambus, they construct gardes carrefour against Azeto. If you have garde carrefour in your pocket, you not afraid of Azeto. So you start at midnight for Port-au-Prince: not wait for dawn, because Azeto helpless against gardes carrefour.”

I laughed.

“Nothing to laugh about,” King Dick said. “Maybe you think no such thing as Azeto. Guinea people know better. They know from boyhood days that the world full of Azeto; also full of Bakuba Baka. They all sorts of Bakas, but Bakuba Baka is biggest Baka.”

“What in God’s name is a Baka?” I asked.

“Very bad thing,” King Dick said. “Move around in night: push people down mountains, drop rocks on ’em, freeze ’em to death with cold wind. If you see a gray pig in nighttime, be careful if on foot or horseback. Gray pigs contain Bakuba Bakas.”

“Aren’t all pigs gray at night?”

“Yes,” King Dick said, “but Hungans can give you instruction so you don’t fear Bakas—not even Bakuba Baka.”

“What would the instruction be?”

“Ride a mule,” King Dick said. “A mule know a Baka a mile away, and tell the rider. Any mule, she’s revulted by a Baka.”

“Nonsense,” I said. “A mule’s sure-footed, that’s all! He’s safer and wiser than a horse. There isn’t a man strong enough to drag a mule across a weak bridge.”

“That what I telling you,” King Dick said. “Voodoo makes you do what you might not do unless you believe in Voodoo. Best Voodoo remedy against any kind of accident is a drogue. You know what a drogue is?”

I said I didn’t.

“A drogue,” King Dick said, “is something made by big, big Hungan. If you have a drogue, you never be frightened in war, because you can’t be killed. That a helpful feeling for a soldier, especially if he have to lead troops into heavy gunfire. Best general we had, last war, for riding into enemy guns was Hyacinthe. His drogue was a ox-tail from a litto ox. He carry it in his left hand and never let it go.”

“Never?” I asked.

“Very near never,” King Dick said. “Anyway, he never get killed. He just die.”

“I see,” I said. “What sort of drogue got you safely through the war?”

“I had two,” King Dick said. “Still have ’em. Very useful. One a six-barrel pistol I borrow from General Wilkinson. The other my cocomacaque with knob on end—biggest cocomacaque on this island. I got an ox-tail, too. When I go somewhere, I tie her on behind me, where tail belongs, so feels natural to ox-tail, so she likes me, keeps me safe.”

I began to have a vague understanding of the benefits of Voodoo.

“Some ways,” King Dick went on placidly, “Voodoo helpful to me. That why I learn how to make things disappear, like those beans. When I make things disappear, everybody know I big Hungan. That why I walk on fire sometimes. Only very big Hungan able to walk on fire.”

“Do you mean it?” I asked. “Are you really able to walk on fire?”

“My goo’ness me my, yes!” he said. “That important! I also pick up hot coals in fingers. When I do that, black people afraid of me. If I can walk on fire, I can do anything. That what black people say.”

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” I said.

“I merely explaining why I like Voodoo and still don’t like it,” King Dick said. “Walking on fire not hard to do when you know how. Nothing hard when you know how. You get four-five things from chemist—quicksilver, hamitalis, camphire, storax—paint it on feet. Then you walk on fire. Wash on hands and you can pick up coals.”

“I see,” I said.

“Yarse,” King Dick said. “Anyone who walks on fire is big Gangan—big, big Gangan! He can call for drums and find out anything anybody knows. That one thing very nice about Voodoo.”

We had moved through dark groves of coffee trees to the sound of rumbling, throbbing drums—a sound so penetrating and all-pervasive that it seemed to be pounding inside my head, like the roaring that comes with fever.

The plantation changed to jungle: the path narrowed, so that the light from the torches flickered through snake-like lianas and gigantic leaves—and suddenly the Humfort stood before us in a clearing, a low building like a New England hen-house.

Only in height did the Humfort resemble a hen-house, for against its glowing red interior a throng of Negroes swayed, leaped, whirled; and the whole place throbbed with drummings and howling.

At the entrance stood two Negroes, almost as tall as King Dick. They saluted us respectfully and we went into a close-packed mob of howling black men and women.

Two hundred Negroes were crowded into the Humfort, and the place had a rank odor, like an uncleaned rabbit hutch. At the far end was a sort of altar, covered with a checkered cloth. The wall behind it was decorated with crude paintings of a snake standing on its tail. Fastened to the front of the altar were religious prints in glaring colors, such as I used to see in French kitchens in New Brunswick.

On the altar were loaves of bread, platters of cake, dishes of roasted meat, bottles of every shape and size, battered drinking-vessels. On the earth floor in front of the altar blazed a fire whose smoke partly escaped through a hole in the roof. On one side of the fire sat three wizened black men with drums clutched between their knees—drums which they kneaded and bumped with the heels of their hands, and with such earnestness that their faces dripped perspiration.

When we came in, the motions and howlings seemed as meaningless as the yowling of black cats fighting in a barrel; then I saw there was more to it than that.

There was rhythm in the drum beats; rhythm in the wailing song that the dancers sang as they hopped jerkily in a slow-moving circle. It made me think of dropped stitches, of speech broken by hiccups, of a stutterer hurriedly gasping the phrase on which his tongue is caught. A bar of the song would start smoothly enough, then without warning break into hurried repetitions, unexpected hesitancies. This breathless rhythm seemed to enter into the legs of the dancers, into their stomachs, arms, heads, backs. Their stomach-muscles twitched, their buttocks wagged, their arms flapped, their heads rolled on their shoulders as if on swivels.

I could make nothing of their singing, at first; but after a time I caught the name “Papa Legba” endlessly repeated. I gathered they were urging Papa Legba to open a gateway for them so they could pass through. It was Papa Legba, they sang, who sits on the gate. Oh yes, he sits on the gate on the gate and gives us the right to pass.

From a door behind the altar came an old Negro in a sort of white nightgown. His hair was a crinkly white halo that ran from ear to ear around the back of his head, and on his wrinkled face was an expression of helpless worry. There were two little black boys with him, each similarly dressed in a white nightgown. One carried a white rooster in his arms; the other led a black goat dressed in a blue calico petticoat. When the goat rose on his hind legs to nibble at a loaf of bread on the altar, the old Negro reached inside his nightgown, whisked out a two-foot knife, and slapped the goat with the blade.

King Dick nudged me. “Uncle Bogay,” he whispered. “Best Gangan north of the mountains.”

It seemed to me Uncle Bogay’s appearance was against him, but he had produced the knife from under his nightgown with surprising celerity. And for such a helpless-looking old man he was effective; for when he held out his hands toward the dancers, the howling stopped and the only sounds inside the Humfort were the dry rustling of the dancers’ feet on the hard earth floor, the throbbing of the drums, the crackling of the fire.

There was something about the dancers, about the tawdry furnishings of the Humfort, that depressed me, and I wondered whether they weren’t a painful caricature of man’s trumpery efforts to achieve great things with hopelessly inadequate tools and trappings. The old bottles and battered cups on the altar, the fly-specked prints, the gobbets of food for the nourishment of strange black gods, the glazed eyes of the dancers, the shuffle of their bare feet on the dirt floor, the red handkerchiefs tied around the heads of these self-appointed priests and priestesses—what were all these things but a burlesque of greater Gangans in lands that posed as civilized—greater, paler Gangans who led their followers in dances no more profitable!

The greatest Gangan north of the mountains rolled up his eyes. “I call Papa Legba,” he bawled, and thanks to my weeks of study in Philadelphia I was able to understand him. “I call Papa Damballa! Meat is sweet and awaits you, Papa Legba, Papa Damballa! What is life without meat without meat without meat? I call Papa Gede, I call Papa Agasu, I call Ogun Badagri, I call Ogun Ferraille, I call Erzilie Freda! Meat is sweet. Oh meat is sweet, sweet, sweet, is sweet! Gods and men must live by meat, sweet meat, sweet meat. I call Damballa Wedo, I call Aida Wedo! I call Papa Legba——”

Out from the circle of dancers staggered a corpulent Negro, barefooted, naked above the waist, a fillet of red handkerchiefs around his head, and a similar girdle for a belt. He lurched to the fire before the altar, stepped into the bed of glowing coals, and did a shuffling dance upon the red embers. With each scuff of his feet the coals were momentarily blackened, only to glow again when his feet moved forward. On each foot the great toe stuck out sideways at a right angle to his other toes, and as his feet pressed down upon that fiery surface, the coals, forced upward by those prehensile great toes, sent up little tongues of flame as they rolled upon the upper part of his feet. The dancers ecstatically chanted, “Papa Legba! Papa Legba!”

The Gangan came out from behind the altar, took the dancer by the arm and led him back to his original place, where he went on dancing and howling as if nothing had happened to his feet—and, so far as I could see, nothing had.

Uncle Bogay’s two little black attendants came to him, one carrying the white rooster, the other a bowl. Uncle Bogay picked up the rooster, clutching both wings in one claw-like hand, and swung it back and forth over the head of the man who had danced upon the coals. The little boy with the bowl held it before Uncle Bogay, who flicked his long knife at the rooster’s outstretched head. The head fell to the floor; the rooster’s body flopped in the Gangan’s grasp; a jet of blood poured into the bowl as from a pump.

A Negress, her hair gathered into crinkly black points fastened with string, howled and leaped upward to grasp one of the poles that held up the roof of the Humfort, and clung there like a black baboon. She had, I gathered, been possessed by Papa Damballa.

The Gangan pulled at her until she fell to the floor. The little black boy stepped forward with a fresh rooster. The Gangan’s knife flicked again, and again a jet of blood poured into the bowl.

With increasing rapidity the dancers were possessed, some falling to the floor in convulsions, others leaping like jumping-jacks, still others climbing into the rafters and hanging there, bat-like. The Gangan pulled them from the rafters, quieted leapers, somehow restrained those who writhed upon the floor. Each of the possessed ones had a rooster slaughtered for him, and was then dragged from the Humfort and laid out on the ground, his feet to a common center, so that all of them together looked like the spokes of a giant wheel.

The Gangan led the goat out from behind the altar, took it by the muzzle, pulled up its head, slit its throat and held it motionless until the blood stopped draining into the bowl already half-full of chicken blood. The three drums throbbed and rumbled; the diminished circle of dancers chanted a song in which I could catch the words, “With the help of the blood I look in the bowl and see.”

King Dick gave me the merest faint hint of a wink as he murmured, “If we find out anything, we find out now.”

The Gangan was surrounded by women, who already were picking the roosters, tossing the feathers into the fire, skinning the goat. There was something ludicrously professional about him: he had the air of a grotesque tavern-keeper out of a bad dream, supervising the preparation of a devil’s banquet in a nightmare kitchen; his air of proprietorship was almost insufferable when he turned from the women and signaled to the rest of us to go out into the night. With wrinkled black neck protruding buzzard-like from his white nightgown, pipestem black legs sticking out beneath voluminous shirt tails, he herded drummers, dancers, attendants, and spectators from the Humfort.

Hunkering in the center of the ring of prostrate bodies, he held the bowl of blood to the lips of each in turn. Then he drank himself, wiped his lips on the back of a black hand, and wiped the hand on his leg. There was no sound from the circle of bodies; none from any of the rest of us who stood looking down at the old Gangan with his bowl of blood; none from the three drummers squatting against the side of the Humfort, their drums between their knees.

Far away other drums thudded and thudded, slow, fast, slow again. They put me in mind of the drumming of partridges in the spring of the year, that strange and unexplainable drumming that seems miles away when it may be only a stone’s throw, and that makes itself heard far, far off, even against a wind that drowns a shout at twenty paces.

The prostrate bodies were like dead men. The Gangan stared into his bowl of blood; the distant drums throbbed and rumbled. The fat Negro with the red handkerchief girdle—the one who had been possessed by Papa Legba—got to his knees, crawled to the bowl of blood and peered into it. The others did the same. All of them, kneeling in a circle around Uncle Bogay and his bowl, had the look of black crows around a piece of broken mirror.

When the kneeling figures stopped their mumbling, they got to their feet and just stood there, scratching themselves. The Gangan knelt beside his blood bowl and looked up at King Dick like a preoccupied ape.

“The Gods do not like,” he said in hoarse Creole. “Everywhere there is trouble,” he went on. “Where you going, you need protection from every God, especially Maît’ Carrefour and Ogun Badagri. You need protection from danger on the highroad, from war, from the loup-garou. I have counted; you will need fifteen gardes and wangas. This will be expensive—oh, very!”

“That’s too much!” King Dick said, and he, too, spoke in Creole.

“No,” the Gangan said. “You need fifteen wangas. We saw soldiers in the blood—many of them: marching and marching, all with guns.”

“That nothing,” King Dick said lightly. “For ten years this island been full of soldiers. Won’t hurt me.”

“The soldiers we saw in the blood are not that kind of soldier,” the Gangan said. “They are white soldiers, wearing white coats.”

“You see too much,” King Dick told him. “Nobody asked you to see white soldiers—only one white woman. Where soldiers coming from? Out of mapou trees like Ogun Badagri? And when they coming? In a hundred years? In a hundred years anything can happen!”

The old man scratched his armpit. “The blood said nothing about how they would get here, or when; but we could see them everywhere—on the plains, in the mountains, in the cities, and soon. They are as good as here already, or they wouldn’t be in the blood. You cannot travel without fifteen wangas. The price of the wangas, fifteen for you and fifteen for your friend, will be fifteen hundred and twelve gourdes. Also you must give each of us one meter of gold braid.”

“Do you think I’m made of money?” King Dick asked. “And what reason for fifteen hundred and twelve gourdes? Why not just fifteen hundred? Why twelve extra?”

The Gangan looked dignified. “Because that the price.”

“That no good reason,” King Dick said. “You add twelve to fifteen hundred gourdes because you know fifteen hundred gourdes too much to ask for anything. It not real—not sound real.”

The Gangan scratched his head.

“If you look carefully into bowl of blood,” King Dick said, “you see me refuse to pay fifteen hundred for thirty wangas. You see I give gold braid, but only pay twenty gourdes for each wanga. That six hundred gourdes. Hoy! Big price!”

“Not big as fifteen hundred and twelve,” the Gangan said. “But if you say we’d have seen six hundred gourdes in the blood, then we must accept it; for the blood always speaks truly.”

“We tell that better when we find her we seek,” King Dick said. “Where is she?”

The Gangan looked stubborn. “You must promise to pay before you go hunting for her.”

“That not necessary,” King Dick said. “You not afraid, perhaps, your wangas don’t protect us and lady not be where you say?”

“You have far to go,” the Gangan said, “and we make better wangas if paid beforehand.”

King Dick looked at him coldly. “We pay when wangas finished, but they must be finished within an hour. If we have far to go, we start tonight. Where is the place?”

The Gangan picked up a twig and made marks on the hard-packed earth beside him. “You cross high mountains at Dondon; then bear westward to Marmelade, five leagues along the lower slopes of the mountains, then come back the same distance to St. Miguel in Valley of Goave. From there the road goes straight south to Mirebalais, across Black Mountains. You pass through Mirebalais and continue onward, on the road to Croix des Bouquets and Port-au-Prince. One league outside of Mirebalais is a mapou tree, and under that mapou tree will be a Hungan from Mirebalais—a wise Hungan who knows all Gods of Cul de Sac. He take you to the one you seek.”

King Dick turned to me triumphantly. “I make him say it more slow. You write on paper where he tell us to go for that lady—then you understand how much good that white-lace Colonel Lear do you when he advise you to go to St. Marc. In St. Marc you find no lady at all—only Dessalines.”

I knew nothing about Dessalines, but I felt I had learned more than a little about Colonel Lear, none of it in any way pleasing to me.