Rabary opens his mouth to speak, but the young scholar raises her hand and continues. “Yes, I know what you’re going to say, that choosing an identity from some faraway place makes it easier to carry off their fraud. No one is going to check out the woman’s story.” We all lean forward to catch every word. “So, I decided to do it myself. There was a woman in the village, named Lalao, a woman no longer young, who had become one of the possessed, a tromba. She left her husband and children and abandoned her village for a little lean-to she made near the creek. She claimed her name was Rina now and that she came from a village far away. Rina, she said, had died before she was ready and so had come to live in her body for a while.”
As the rain patters on the roof, Tonja leans forward, her face only inches from the candle, its dancing flame chasing light and shadow across her face. “I decided I would research this phenomenon of the tromba woman objectively, as I would any other. I should add that when the villagers realized I was there to study them, to understand who they were and what they believed, the initial welcome they gave me faded. I was regarded with increasing suspicion. It’s as if they feared that if I came to understand who they were, their beliefs would lose their potency, as if they lived within a dream from which I might wake them, leaving them with nothing. Over time, as they got used to me, I entered into the life of the village, established my own role, and their guardedness eased. But I’m a scholar, a servant of the truth. I knew I would have to follow this idea of tromba wherever it led.” She gave a us a crooked smile. “And it might lead straight into trouble.”
She took a drink of wine and continued. “What I did one morning was to walk a couple of miles to the nearest road and catch a bush taxi to the village Lalao-Rina had named, which was more than forty kilometers away.” The young American laughs shyly, aware that everyone around the table, even Rabary, is hanging on her every word. “I was quite the sensation when I arrived in this other village—just as I had been when I first came to my own village. I’d thought that being black would help me to blend in, be accepted, but it didn’t. It gave me a special status, perhaps, but I was still a vazaha, a stranger. I was a little disappointed. But I reminded myself that the people here aren’t African, they’re not exactly Asian. They are the Malagasy, and there is no one like them.
“Anyway, the villagers surrounded me as if I were a rock star. People wanted to touch me. They asked me where I was from. When I told them I was an American they were amazed. It was quite a while before I could work things around to asking them if they knew a woman by the name of Rina.” Tonja raises her eyebrows. “That was a conversation stopper. Everyone fell silent and stared at me. Finally, an old man, a village elder, told me that, yes, there had been a woman by that name, but she had died a couple of weeks earlier. Now it was my turn to be amazed, because that was about the time Lalao had broken from the village and taken on her new identity. Despite their initial shock, the villagers didn’t seem surprised that a woman in a faraway village was claiming to be the repository of another woman’s wandering soul. This was common, they said. They couldn’t understand why I was so curious about it.
It was getting late and they wanted me to stay the night. But I told them I had to return to my village. It was way past midnight before I got back. When I finally came stumbling in, the couple I was staying with got up and asked me where I’d been. They told me they’d been worried. I told them where I’d gone and what I’d learned. They seemed very upset. They had been telling me for weeks that I shouldn’t be asking about things like this, about these tromba, and they were offended that I had ignored their advice.
“I just wanted to go to bed, but the couple insisted on making dinner for me. I figured it was their way of showing me that everything was still okay between us. I was exhausted and only ate a little bit. They encouraged me to take more, but I said I couldn’t and went to bed. By morning I was sick. Vomited all day. I began to suspect they had poisoned me. All that day they made me more food. But I wouldn’t eat it.”
Tonja looks at us one by one, fearing judgment. “I know this sounds crazy, or paranoid, or whatever you want to call it. Now that I’m here, away from the village, it sounds crazy to me too. But things look different in a village. Life follows a different set of rules.
“So, I waited until the couple left the house late that afternoon. Then I managed to get up and grab my notebooks and a few of my things. Sick as I was, I somehow made it to the road and flagged down a bush taxi that took me to Mahajanga. For a few days I holed up in a cheap hotel, until I felt strong enough to head for Antananarivo.” She shrugs and smiles her shy smile. “And here I am.”
The silence that has fallen over the table deepens as she finishes her tale. As the only foreigner in Tonja’s audience, I know it’s up to me to ask. “So, what do you think? About tromba women and all that.”
After a pause, Tonja starts to speak slowly, as if she knows she’s on the verge of making herself sound credulous, naive. But her voice builds as she goes, increasingly sure about what she’s saying. “I decided that in most of these cases the tromba women, much as Monsieur Rabary suggests, take on an assumed identity to give themselves a chance to break free. For a few of them, I believe it’s a conscious decision, a ruse allowing them to gain a new status and take a sort of psychic vacation. For others, it might be a form of temporary psychosis, a mental breakdown aggravated by personal problems and the suggestion laid down by previous examples. I think these latter women believe in the roles they have taken on. Eventually, as they recover, they say that the spirit has left them and they go back to their old identities.”
I look at her through the candle flame, her image flickering and glowing, as if she herself were only half real. “You say this explains the majority of these cases. What about the others?”
She takes a moment, lowers her head, working herself up to say what she needs to say. When she’s ready she raises her head. “I see myself as a scientist. I form my conclusions based on an objective analysis of the evidence.” She purses her lips. This is difficult for her, and I admire her willingness to risk our dismissal of what she says. “I would never have imagined a year ago I would be saying this, but now I can only explain what I’ve seen by insisting that in a few cases these women have truly been possessed by the spirits of others.”
I feel the hair on my neck stand up.
Rabary blows out a breath. “Miss Adams, I have heard these stories since I was a little boy and have never known any of them to be true.”
Before Tonja can reply, Dr. Adrianansoa, the Malagasy professor, pushes himself back from the table. “Yes, it all seems too fantastic, literally unbelievable, especially for those of us who have enjoyed the privilege of a European education and become fully civ-il-ized.” He draws out each syllable for maximum irony and his smile takes an impish turn. “As her adviser, I have asked Mademoiselle Adams, as I have asked others in the past, to observe what is in front of her and to analyze clearly what she has seen. But after something like this we may feel highly unsettled by what we’ve seen. We try to escape from our inescapable conclusions.” Dr. Adrianansoa folds his hands over his stomach. “Now it is my turn to tell you a story. In the northern mountains, deep in the rain forest, there is a legend of a village, a village that countless people claim to have actually seen, situated on the crest of a steep hill, almost hidden by the forest. In certain lights, particularly after a rain, some say they have, from a distance, witnessed people walking its paths, men plowing its nearby fields. But when anyone goes into the forest to find it, they become lost and climb up the wrong hill. Through a gap in the trees they find that the village they seek is actually on a neighboring hill. So they plunge back into the rainforest. But—ah!—when they climb to the top of the next hill they find they are again mistaken. And so they continue thrashing around in the jungle, from one hilltop to another.”
“You’re saying no one ever gets there, to this phantom village?” I ask.
Dr. Adrianansoa
waggles his head ambivalently, a skilled storyteller enjoying himself. “Oh, it is said that a very few have actually found their way into the village—and never come back.” Here, he thrusts out his lower lip and shrugs. “Now, do I believe this story? I wish to assure you that I do not.” He smiles slyly. “Yes, that is what I wish to assure you. But can I do so honestly? I’m not so sure. Could it be that here in Madagascar—a place so distant from the rational shores known to Descartes and Voltaire—that there exists a last primordial portal to the fantastic, to that bygone epoch when the shape of the world was still in flux, before mind and spirit had taken their separate paths? Is it possible that things can still occur here that are no longer possible in the modern world—a world made not in the image of God but of Europeans?” He tips his wine glass in my direction and addresses me genially. “The problem might lie less in our urge to let go of superstition and magic than with the inadequacy of our imagination. We lack the courage to believe differently from what others have taught us to believe, to see what they tell us is not there.” The professor waves his hands gracefully. “It is said of many places that ‘anything can happen here.’ In Madagascar we must take that a step further. Not only can truly anything happen here, it must. We must stipulate that here, in our beloved island-world, the implausible is not only possible, it is mandatory.” He pauses for effect, lets his words sink in. “I suggest that we should remain willing to accept the possibility that some forms of the supernatural are in fact perfectly natural, but lie beyond the range of our understanding.”
I feel a shiver down my back, a frisson of unease at the possibility that the spirits I had been reflecting on earlier that evening might somehow prove real.
Dr. Adrianansoa appears to sense my discomfort. His eyes sparkle with amusement. “I speak of course as a scientist.” He throws back his head and laughs.
Rabary twitches his prodigious nose. “I remain skeptical.” He looks at me. “And I think our host agrees, though he is too polite to say so.”
Dr. Adrianansoa cocks his head to one side. “And yet, Monsieur Rabary, I am sure that, despite your expressions of skepticism, even you follow our traditions in ways you are reluctant to acknowledge. Do you not, every few years—what is it for your Merina tribe, every seven years?—disinter your dead, speak to them, tell them jokes, scold them a little for the troubles they have given you recently and then wrap them in new shrouds and return them with honor to the family tomb?”
Rabary snorts. “We all feel compelled to observe these customs, no matter how little credence we give to the beliefs behind them.”
“Of course we do,” the professor allows. “I’m sure you spend lavishly for the burials and the reburials of your most revered ancestors, yes? Do you not, at the very least, find the means to buy a couple of zebu to be killed in order to mark this ceremony and provide a great feast for all who come?”
The Malagasy diplomat works his mouth, ending up somewhere between frowning and smiling. “You know how our families would regard us if we did not. Even the most civ-il-ized among us find it more convenient to acquiesce.”
Gracious in victory, the professor spreads his arms wide. “Yes, you’re right, Monsieur Rabary. I, too, do what is expected. I honor the old customs, take part in the disinterments, spend money I can’t really afford for the reburials of my parents and grandparents. I speak to their bones and tell them jokes.” He leans back, closes his eyes and sighs a deep sigh of contentment. “And afterwards I feel clean and good inside. I have done what is required of me. What greater freedom is there?”
As he says this, Jeanne comes in with coffee, breaking the mood set by Tonja’s story, steering the conversation toward the safe trivialities of the rain and the condition of the roads. I watch Tonja and see that she, too, appears relieved at the change in topic. I wonder if, after she has returned to the clear skies and mountain air of Colorado, she will dare say in her scholarly paper the same things she has said to us this evening. Once back at the university she will likely be inclined to dismiss her own ideas as she would a too-vivid dream, one that seems so real in the moment before awakening.
That’s what I’d do.
When we have exhausted the limited and comfortable scope of our chit-chat, have thoroughly broken the spell woven by Tonja Adams and Dr. Adrianansoa, my guests begin to leave.
Rabary says goodnight and departs with the others. But I see that he has left his umbrella behind and I know he will contrive to return and fetch it.
After everyone else has left, he knocks on the door.
I pick up a candle and let him in.
Rabary ambles into the living room.
“I’m off to Tamatave tomorrow,” I tell him.
Rabary emits a signifying “hmmmmm.”
We both know why I’m going, and Rabary understands there’s little point in trying to persuade me to stay home.
“I’ll make the usual calls,” I tell him, trying to make it all sound routine. “The mayor, a few others. I’m told I should visit the head of the police down there. A guy named Andriamana.” Rabary’s eyes widen, and I can’t help but smile. “Funny, everyone looks at me like that when I mention him. Horses must whinny every time his name is spoken.”
Rabary betrays nothing but a faint smile.
I wave him into an armchair. “I won’t ask how you know him. Operators like you always know each other.” Rabary still says nothing. I picture him as a cat, slowly twitching his tail while his eyes never move from my face. I take a seat on the sofa. “I’m told he’s ambitious. Maybe he wants to be head of the national police?”
Rabary doesn’t rise to the bait. He rests his chin in his hand, one finger curling up to tap at a tooth, as if my question has irritated a nerve residing in one of his incisors. Finally, he speaks. “This is a critical moment in the Captain’s career. Opportunities present themselves—for advancement or for ruin. He will want no distractions now.”
I swear I’m about ready to punch him, just to get an uncalculated reaction. “‘Opportunities present themselves.’ I’ve read fortune cookies clearer than that.”
Rabary looks amused. “Robert, you have managed to make your life here exceedingly difficult. You wander around like a blind man. At times you seem to yearn for your own destruction.”
“Fine. But this would go easier if you’d speak a language I understand.”
“Perhaps there is none,” Rabary says. “Just to talk with you, to communicate in French or English, we Malagasy must take on another way of thinking, must drop the subtlety, the depth of our own language and substitute for them Western bluntness. We stop being Malagasy in the very act of speaking to you.”
“Don’t lay this ‘Mysterious Island’ bullshit on me, Rabary. You’re not some rogue tromba, or whatever the male equivalent is. You’re whiter than I am.”
Rabary chuckles and shakes his head. “No, Robert. There you are wrong. Neither of us likes to acknowledge how Malagasy I am. But let me speak with the unseemly bluntness of a Westerner. If you go to Tamatave to see if there’s unrest, you will be looking for trouble—and you will find it. Things are connected in ways you don’t understand. Don’t look too far below the surface. You’ll regret it.”
“This is a warning?”
Rabary closes his eyes as if I’m a child trying his patience. “A caution, Robert. A caution you will want to heed.”
Rabary rises and I follow him to the door. The rain has stopped. We both look up at the glistening stars, their light distorted by the wind and the heavy rain-washed air.
“Good night, Robert.” Rabary walks toward his car.
“When I get to Tamatave, Roland, can I tell the Captain hello for you?”
The Malagasy stops and looks back at me. “No, I shouldn’t do that, Robert. I shouldn’t do that at all.”
8
The Chinese built the road to Tamatave years ago and, except for the bit of highway between the airport and the capital, it’s the best road in the country, which isn’t sayi
ng much. Narrow and bumpy, it twists like overcooked spaghetti as it rises into the hills east of Antananarivo, leading to the coast.
Sitting in the back seat of an embassy car, I look over my shoulder and draw an easier breath as the city disappears behind me. For the next couple of days I can escape the reach of Picard’s vague threats, Rabary’s vaguer warnings, Nirina’s wholly obscure designs, and Gloria’s clear-as-glass ambition. Among the thousand cuts of which I’m dying, the one that stings the most, though, is the thought of Walt Sackett still rotting in a Malagasy prison.
For the hundredth time, I remind myself that this trip represents my last best hope for redemption. A short, focused visit might reveal the discontent seething under the sunlit surface of Tamatave, show the storm building under its limpid skies. Gathering these tangled threads, I’ll weave a cloth of vivid patterns and stark outlines, drafting a cable that will make clear what the events in Tamatave presage for the people of the island nation and its beleaguered government. With this cogent, insightful essay, I’ll shake off the shackles that the Lilliputians of the goddamn State Department have twisted around me, rehabilitate my moribund career, and restore to me a decent sense of myself. My chest expands in contemplation of these happy prospects.
Unaccustomed to so much oxygen, I lapse into a coughing fit.
“Are you all right, sir?” Samuel asks.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”
We motor east through Moramanga, climb past Andasibe, drive deep into the warm and humid rain forest, alive with lemurs and lizards. We pass through thick canopies of palms and rosewood, past thick tangles of orchid and vanilla. From the forest’s shadows echo the cries of unseen birds and the roar of distant waterfalls. Occasionally I’m still moved by the wonders of the places I’ve been favored to live.
Madagascar Page 7