by Robert Stone
Then suddenly, in one violent moment it was all different. But it was not death, it was light, it was air. He saw the dim cabin lights of the dive boat and the huddled shadows of the men aboard it. Unawares, he inflated the swelling BC and ripped the regulator away from his drowned face.
When he breathed there was nothing. No relief, no air. How was it possible? He was on the surface. He had broached, it seemed to him, like a Polaris missile. His addled consciousness bore a moment of memory in which he looked down on the dive boat from the cruising altitude of a hot-air balloon, the killer balloon he had ridden to the surface. He took another famished lungful. Nada, rien. A heart attack, he thought. Or some drowner's dream. On the third try he knew he was breathing, the old plant back in motion. But he had come up too fast.
So he waited next for the agony, the bends, an embolism. It turned out he was fine, more or less. He floated, holding his two recovered packages like rescued babes. Roger was shouting at him over the sound of the water against the hull, shouts that were hoarse whispers. Hippolyte was beside him in the dark. He knew perfectly well who they were. He raised his mask to his forehead and breathed to his heart's content. Eventually he was able to speak.
"I'm not going down there again," he told them.
17
THERE WAS SOME unpleasantness over the lost case but eventually they headed back to the landing of the Purcell house.
"It goes down to eight miles, Roger. It's gone."
When they were halfway back Michael asked him what was in the cases.
"Objets d'art. Artifacts for sale. In fact," Roger said, "they were already purchased, which is why I'm upset."
"I really am sorry, Roger. It's a miracle I was able to get the two of them."
"Our customers are not pious. They may not be grateful."
Michael wondered briefly how their ingratitude affected him, but he did not ask any more questions. Nor did he ask any questions about Lara. He had followed her to the ranks of death; that was where his encounter with the late pilot had placed him. On that ocean, he thought, in that darkness he had no friends.
Finally Hippolyte took Michael back to the dive shop. Roger had debarked at the Purcell house landing. Hippolyte, young and inexperienced at docking, made something of a commotion at the dive pier. The two small children he had left in the shop were still there, asleep. Hippolyte stayed long enough to help Michael out of his wetsuit and check the compressors. Then he took his toddlers by the hand and disappeared into the night.
Michael walked the distance to the hotel in a kind of despair. More than anything he wanted to be with Lara. At the same time he felt that he had lost her. She had betrayed him into a different world than the one they were meant to share.
Coming up the back stairs he ran into Liz McKie, the journalist.
"Where were you, Michael? Were you out on the reef?"
"Are you kidding?"
"I heard a boat." She put a presuming hand beside his ear. "You look wet."
He moved his head away. "I ... was in the water. Just on an impulse."
"You don't say."
"I've been hearing drums all night," Michael said.
"We've had a lot of drums for sure. It's the retirer for John-Paul Purcell. They're marking that at the lodge. Didn't Lara tell you that?"
"She did say something about it."
"Did she tell you about the lodge?"
"I don't know anything about the lodge. I've never been there."
She stared at him, eager and confused. Her eyes were wide with excitement and fear. "Hey, Michael, tell me. What's going on, buddy?"
"I don't know. Really."
He wanted very much to ask her whether she was afraid of the story she was trying to write and the people she was trying to write about. He let it go.
She smiled as though she were sorry for him and went away. There were soldiers milling around the patio of the hotel when he got there. No one was in attendance at the desk. A couple of the soldiers were passing a bottle of four-star rum, making a halfhearted effort to sneak it.
Having no one to provide him a destination, he went into his room without turning on the light and lay down on the bed. The rhythm of the drums had changed but there still seemed to be four, pursuing one another's beat, never stopping. The ocean he could see through the window gave no promise of morning.
18
THE TEMPLE, the hounfor where Lara danced, was constructed of leaves and branches, leaning against the Masonic lodge. In its center, running from the earth floor to the roof, was the twisting, snake-shaped pole, the poto mitan. Around it Lara and about twenty serviteurs connected with the Purcell family were dancing the ceremony of reclamation for Lara's brother.
They faced a leaf-and-branch wall all inset with niches where bottles were stored. The painted bottles were decorated with glitter and worked with spines of tin. These govi contained souls, some those of the living, others souls of the dead. The bright, thick-fleshed leaves reflected the firelight.
The drums beat without stopping for John-Paul, each one enclosing its own spirit: ogan of iron and brass, and maman, petite, rouler, seconde. Four fires burned around the poto mitan, which enclosed the celestial serpent, Dambala. The songs called on Papa Legba, the loa of the crossroads, and on Baron Samedi, the loa of the dead. The drums played all night and Lara had been dancing most of the night with them.
From time to time, the mambo offered her more rum and brought the sacramental cloth, adorned with a vever of the god. The wall of painted glass where she danced was heaped with blossoms—different flowers for different forces, thorned bougainvillea and sour apple for the forces of bizango that John-Paul had served. Then frangipani, poinciana, loblolly pitch apple and myrtle. Different blossoms stood for rada, others for petro. For Marinette, flowering geiger. Above all, Lara was hoping and dreading that Marinette would come.
"John-Paul," she prayed, "if you are back from the sea, if you are safe from Guinee, make Marinette give back my soul."
From inside the lodge building someone shouted at her. It was a woman called Hilda, who was waiting inside with two Colombian milicianos. Lara walked out of the firelight into the half-darkness around the lodge. Hilda took Lara by the shoulders.
"You look stoned, little girl," the woman said.
Lara looked away. The woman pursued her, trying to keep and hold her eye.
"It was good, eh? I hope El Trip told you what happens to you if you try and cheat us. See if your spooks can help you."
One of the milicianos said something in Spanish. Until then he had been repeating "Hay que matarlos," urging no quarter.
"Trip has a soft spot for you," Hilda said to Lara. "He thinks you went to bed with El Caballo." She meant Castro. "Is it true? Did he give you an emerald? Did you fuck that son of a whore?"
"Everything happened so fast," Lara said.
She went back; no one stopped her. The drums kept their beat, the fires were burning down. She began to dance again as the first light broke over the Morne. As she danced, she saw Roger Hyde walking on the edge of the airstrip with one of his servant boys. The boy was carrying two cases, one in each hand. One was a rectangular steel trunk, the other was the metal cylinder into which she had put the family's island art collection.
On his way to the lodge, Roger called to her.
She shook her head, and he spoke to the people with her in Creole, asking them if she was in a trance, mounted. They answered excitedly, all speaking at once. Not yet. Not yet, they all said, but it would come soon.
The mambo gave her a slug of raw rum and took one herself and pressed the inlaid banner cloth of Erzule against Lara's sweating forehead. Then she covered Lara's face with it, half suffocating her in rum and perfume that was as raw as the rum. A god, Ghede, told a comic story about stealing the perfume with bizango guile. Everyone clapped for the god, who tipped his tall hat. Everyone was laughing. It was a woman using the voice of an old man. He or she pretended to describe Guinee. Baron Samedi. Baron Kri
minel.
Lara kept dancing although she was not under the god's power. She was looking for her brother's spirit in the drum and for her own. The mambo followed her dancing moves like a midwife. Another old woman danced the parody, the mimicry of a midwife. She laughed. "Doupkla," she said to Roger. "Marassa. Twins!"
"Merde," Roger said angrily, which made the mambo laugh heartily.
Some Colombian milicianos came out with lights. More and more the Colombians had been using their own people for security, preferring not to rely on the locals. The milicianos ordered Lara and Roger inside the lodge. Lara tried to keep dancing but Roger took her hard by the hand and led her in.
"It's all right, kid," he said. He released her and took a swallow from a bottle of Barbancourt that stood on a table.
"Why is it all right?" Hilda asked. "I see two cases there. I want three."
The guards reacted like mechanical soldiers. They jammed their magazines forward, looked over their shoulders, spun around their leveled weapons.
"Hay que matarlos!" one said. He disliked negros and fancy blanquitas.
"What is this, Rogerdodger?" Hilda asked. "Que fuckerando?"
"We had her friend make the dive. That we recovered anything at all was"—he stopped for a word and smiled very slightly—"a miracle."
Lara watched the pretty little woman stalk Roger. Her fine Botoxed countenance was suddenly transformed, reduced to a face that was simian and rabid with greed. Or with an imitation of it, a pretend greed more frightening than the real thing. Roger, very frightened, kept his cool. Lara moved to stand beside him.
Roger put the cases on a mahogany table in the meeting room, took out his keys and opened them.
Hilda settled down, went to her briefcase and removed what looked like an order pad.
The first case was divided into drawers, and the drawers contained emeralds. Some of the sections had cut emeralds backed with lined index cards that listed each stone's weight and variety. Some drawers contained loose stones, apparently uncut.
The second, cylindrical case was jammed with matted, soaked sheets, jelled into a single mass by the seawater that had penetrated the tube.
"So," Hilda asked Roger, "que pasa?"
"It was hers," Roger told Hilda, shaking water from the tube. "Mostly watercolors." He reached in and took the sodden cylinder partway out of the case. "And a few canvases. Island work."
"It was mine," Lara said. "And John-Paul's."
Hilda looked at her without speaking.
"Well," she said finally, "that's nice, huh? Art. I like that."
Outside, the brass and iron ogan pulled the rada drums behind it. The rhythm of it was irresistible. A man screamed in a woman's voice. Lara tried to part the edges of her drawings, half listening now for her brother's voice.
"Well, guys," Hilda said, "the one you say you lost is the one we needed to move. This is a tragedy."
"I take the responsibility," Roger said.
Hilda observed him.
"You fuckin' straight about that. No offense."
"I figured I had to get it out of here before the Americans and their friends took over," Roger said. "They already run the capital. It was a risk."
Hilda wiggled as though she were shaking off his arguments.
"Hilda, Lara's friend Michael almost lost his life retrieving this."
"That's great, Roger. But you, me and him"—she put a hand on one of the milicianos—"we are responsible also. You know what I'm saying?"
"I'll make it up," Roger said. "We'll make it up between us."
"What if the shit turns up in Miami?"
It seemed to Lara that Roger was getting his confidence back.
"It isn't going to turn up anywhere, Hilda. It's well and truly deep-sixed. I was right over him."
"What if the guy moved it? Maybe he's down getting it now."
"They'll be combing the bottom, Hilda. Raising the plane. Any hour."
Everyone fell silent. One of the dancers came to the sanctuary window and held up a placard for them to see. It was a red heart with a black star at its center. He moved it to the rhythm of the drums.
"Where is this diver? Who is he anyway, this Michael?" Hilda said. "Why didn't he come here?"
"He didn't come, Hilda, because he's just a friend of Lara's. He's a professor, her boyfriend. He knows nothing about us. He doesn't want to. And the less he knows, the better."
"He's scared to come," Hilda said.
"Wouldn't you be?" Lara asked her.
The man with the starred heart kept moving the placard in front of them as if it were a signal, a sign of something about to happen. But the drums only beat on.
"Let him come here," Hilda said. "Let him tell me about it."
"Hilda," Roger said, "if we were stealing from you, do you think we'd go to all this trouble to deceive you? The plane is down. If we'd left it there, you'd be out everything."
The man with the star and heart began to tap on the window to get their attention.
"Who the fuck is he?" Hilda screamed. A miliciano waved him away.
"He's Ghede," Lara said. "He's the god."
After a moment Hilda said, "Tell him to come. This Michael. Tell him come here and look at me and say he lost my property."
Roger looked at Lara and then said, "He won't. Would you?" He looked down at his watch. "Look, you have to leave. The Americans, their police, will be coming out here."
"You hope," Hilda said. "No, man. Send for him. I want him to tell me how it was."
Everyone looked at Lara.
"All right," Lara said. She took a roulette table chip out of her pocket and gave it to Roger. "He'll come for this."
"You see how it goes, Roger," Hilda said. "The more we talk, the more we get back from this dead airplane. Now I want to meet your diver."
Roger looked at the chip. "Hilda, we'd give you the pilot if we could. The plane too. Unfortunately that's not possible."
"Do the best you can," Hilda said.
At the window outside, Ghede danced for them.
19
MICHAEL MANAGED to get to bed before dawn. He was almost asleep when morning lit the slats of his room, a breeze stirred the netting around his bed. The birds of day were chattering, a rattle of bad pennies that gathered force in the space where the drums had been. When he listened closely enough he found the drums still there, faded into sounds of dawn but relentless. Out on the ocean, a great mass of cloud was approaching, armored and crenelated, triumphally white. Before its fortress front, if you looked with the right eyes, with Lara's eyes, it was possible to see the powers of the island withdraw into dark green groves, into their own reflection under the surface of Guinee below.
He had waited for morning; now he was jittery in the light of day, the barred half-light of his room. While he sat naked on the bed with his head in his hands, a knock came. Certainly expected, he thought. He put on his pants and opened the door to a tall, bony boy in white jeans, Dolphins cap reversed. The boy handed him a table chip, number 00, two ovals of leaf green, the action chip from the Caribe Hilton ... the night before? The night before that? Before that? What have I won?
With the island sense of drama the boy waited, not so much for a reward, Michael thought, as to watch his reaction. In any case, his errand was not over.
"Lady says come on back."
"What have I won?" Michael asked.
"Says you be comin' on back. Come on back. Everybody says. They be angry wit you."
The 36 chip was in his trousers pocket and it occurred to him to hand it to the boy to take to Lara. The holy number trumps. Emeralds out of luck.
He put the second chip in his pocket and asked the boy to wait for him and closed the door. When he finished dressing and went out he found the reporter McKie at his door. The boy Lara sent had moved off. There were strangers about. There were white men, and more government soldiers.
"You were diving last night," McKie said softly. As though she affected to admire him and as tho
ugh that were a trick.
He shook his head.
"Did you get the goods?"
"C'mon," he said as he might in grade school to a girl teasing him. This riled her. She looked around to see who heard. Michael wondered where the boy with the chip had gone.
"Let me tell you something, diver. This is Iran Contra Junior. This is senatorial aides, huge right-wing connections, the whole Argentina colonels' lobby, and it's linked to the death of Allende and it's linked to coke. And your girlfriend—she is your girlfriend, is she not?—your girlfriend's family's activities in this island? Got it?"
"My word!" Michael said mockingly. "Goodness me! Holy shit!"
"You're a fucking fool," she said. "Fucking fool you are. You're involved in contraband and conspiracy. You'll sit in an island jail—you want to talk blood on the walls? Want to see the ants eat it? And then you'll do federal time—if the milicianos don't feed you to their spider monkeys."
"Was there an accident?"
"My dear shithead! Pretty shithead! I have the story. I will set you the fuck free if you talk to me. I have the story and we will walk away together with it. The feds will not let you walk. The island will not let you walk. The milicianos will most certainly not let you walk."
Two white men, Americans, approached, one of them walking much more rapidly than was customary here, in the heat of the day.
"OK," said Miss McKie, "one is the Drug Enforcement dude from the capital. The other is the consul up here. You don't have to talk to the DEA guy if you talk to me."
"What about your boyfriend?" Michael asked.
"Who?" Shocked! "Who, Junot?"
The American consul acted scornful and grossly overqualified, a savant of many climes, wasted here. Too wasted even to put out a hand. His name was Scofield. He was waspish toward McKie and never addressed the DEA man, whose name was Wallace. Michael deduced that they had not met before the preceding few hours.