Strange Conflict

by Dennis Wheatley

  The relief of the four castaways at their rescue was almost surpassed by their intense joy at being able to get out of the blistering sun, and as they sat down on the comfortable settees in the cabin they began tenderly to examine their burnt and blistered limbs.

  Doctor Saturday looked at them gravely and said in his excellent French: ‘You’ve had a terrible gruelling in this hot Haitian sun of ours, and I’m afraid your burns will pain you for some days to come, but I can at least ease them for you.’

  As he spoke he went to a cupboard and produced some cotton-wool and a large bottle of milky-looking liquid which, when they dabbed it on the sore places, instantly relieved the pain.

  ‘And next,’ added the hospitable Doctor, ‘I expect you would like a drink.’

  A chorus of approval met this suggestion so he opened a small ice-chest and produced whisky, rum, lemonade, lime-juice and some bottles of home made soda-water, then got glasses for them. The iced drinks tasted perfectly heavenly and they were at last able to relax after their terrible ordeal.

  ‘Where were you making for in your aeroplane?’ asked the Doctor. ‘Porto Rico or Guadeloup?’

  ‘Neither,’ replied Rex. ‘We ran right into some electrical disturbance when we were no more than twenty minutes’ flying-time from our destination—we were heading for Port-au-Prince.’

  ‘Indeed!’ Doctor Saturday raised the white eyebrows which stood out in such contrast to his yellow skin. ‘You surprise me. We have few European visitors to Haiti. Do you know the island at all?’

  De Richleau replied swiftly so that he could get in his own version of the reason for their visit before the others spoke. ‘No. But I am a scientist whose subject is the study of native customs, and it has long been my wish to pay a short visit to Haiti to see what sort of a country the country peoples have made for themselves under a government of their own choosing.’

  Doctor Saturday shook his head sadly. ‘I fear you will be disappointed in us. I do not believe that the Negroes are naturally an idle race, because they work well in cooler climates such as that of the northern United States and of South Africa. But it has been their misfortune that they have lived mainly in countries where the heat is not conducive to hard work and where life may be sustained very easily from swiftly-growing crops and an abundance of fruit which has only to be gathered from the trees. The people here are incurably lazy—perhaps as a result of their environment. In any case, far from advancing in culture and prosperity, they have tended to slip backwards during the hundred-and-forty-odd years since the slaves revolted and became their own masters. Port-au-Prince is a poor sort of capital to have to show visitors.’

  ‘Do you live there, Doctor?’ Marie Lou inquired.

  ‘Yes, Madame; so at least I shall have the good fortune of being able to convey you to your destination. I told my boatman to head back there with all speed directly I picked you up, but it will be some hours before we get in. Your plane crashed a good sixty miles from Port-au-Prince.’

  ‘That’s a long way for you to have come on a fishing expedition,’ remarked the Duke.

  Doctor Saturday shrugged his high shoulders. ‘The fishing is much better out here. The fruit of the sea in its abundance is another blessing which God gave to our islanders; great numbers of them in the coast-towns live almost entirely on fish, so some of the better kinds no longer frequent coastal waters.’

  ‘Can you recommend a decent hotel in Port-au-Prince?’ Richard asked, after a moment’s silence.

  ‘There is only one,’ Doctor Saturday showed his white teeth in another friendly grin, ‘and I would not like to be responsible for recommending it to people of quality like yourselves. The bar is quite good, and it forms an important social centre. Many of our leading politicians spend most of their time there, but the food in the restaurant is indifferent, and as its windows are on a level with the street some hungry fellow may, if you are not very careful, stretch his hand in and grab the food off your plate. That has often happened.’

  ‘Dear me,’ said the Duke. ‘In that case I think we’d better take a house for ourselves.’

  ‘I was hoping,’ said the Doctor, ‘that you would honour me by being my guests during your stay. Cultured visitors are very rare in Haiti, and it would be a real pleasure to have you in my house; which is large, and even you, I think, would find it quite comfortable.’

  That is most kind,’ said the Duke with a little bow. I’m sure we should be delighted to accept for a night or two while we make some arrangements for ourselves, but we would not dream of burdening you any longer.’

  ‘I shall hope that you will reconsider that when you have been under my roof for those few days,’ smiled the Doctor. ‘Also, you must let me arrange a few sight-seeing tours for you. Although our towns are poor places our scenery is very beautiful.’

  ‘I wonder whether it would be possible for us to witness some Voodoo ceremonies?’ remarked the Duke, with the idea that by leading the conversation in this direction he might learn the names of the principal practitioners of Voodoo in the island, one of whom was unquestionably the enemy that he had travelled all these thousands of miles to destroy.

  The Doctor raised his white eyebrows. ‘So you are interested in Voodoo, eh? But naturally, of course, since you are a student of native customs. Most educated people in Haiti would tell you that Voodoo is not practised here any more. Of the practice of Voodoo they are heartily ashamed, because they know that Europeans regard the cult as a barbarous one, so they would flatly deny that the sacrifice of chickens and goats to the old African gods still takes place. But as I myself am something of a scientist I realise the stupidity of denying anything which actually exists, and the truth is that Haiti is positively riddled with Voodoo to this very day.’

  ‘Do tell us about it, Doctor,’ urged Marie Lou.

  As the boat sped on in the bright afternoon sunshine, the Doctor poured them a further round of drinks, passed them cigarettes and lit a long black cigar for himself.

  ‘Voodoo,’ he said, ‘was brought over from Africa by the Mondongo natives when they were first imported here as slaves, nearly four hundred years ago. It is a form of serpent-worship, but in Voodoo there are two pantheons of Loa—as the gods are called—the Rada and the Petro.

  ‘When I say two pantheons I should explain that the Voodoo Loa are almost as numerous as the pebbles on the beaches. Apart from the big gods, every village in Haiti has a dozen or more local deities of its own who reside in the rocks, waterfalls, rivers and great trees. But, of the big gods whom all Voodoo-worshippers acknowledge, the Rada family, which came from Dahomey, are the good gods, and the Petro family, which came from the Congo, are the evil gods. The head of the Rada gods is Dambala, the God of Gods, and wherever there is an altar to him you will find a green serpent, which is his symbol. His principal supporters are Papa Legba, who is the God of the Gate and must always be propitiated before Dambala can be approached, and Papa Loco, the God of Wisdom and Medicine. The chief of the Petro gods is the dreaded Baron Cimeterre.’

  ‘The Lord of the Cemetery?’ de Richleau hazarded.

  The Doctor nodded and went on: ‘Many of the rites by which he is honoured are in connection with the dead, and his priests often interfere with the newly-made graves in the cemeteries to secure certain things which they use in their horrible rituals. There is, however, nothing evil in the worship of the Rada gods; they represent the oldest mystery of all: that of the source of life as represented by sex.

  ‘To Europeans some of the ceremonies—such as the Dance of the Six Veils, which is analogous to the nuptial flight of the Queen Bee and in which the Mambo, or Priestess, exposes her sexual organs for the adoration of the worshippers—are crude; but regarded honestly and without false hypocrisy these rituals only express the joy of healthy passion.’

  That, after all,’ conceded the Duke, ‘is the one thing that the Creator of Life has given without discrimination to every race, from the Tropics to the Arctic snows, and to everyone a
like, however poor, ignorant or humble they may be; so it’s hardly surprising that a people whose worldly possessions can, generally speaking, be tied up in a single blanket should regard as on object for worship this one pleasure which is within the reach of them all.’

  ‘Exactly.’ Their new friend bowed, evidently much gratified by de Richleau’s sympathetic understanding. ‘The Rada gods, as the deities of Health, Fertility and Sexual Virility, are therefore offered by their devotees such little luxuries as can be spared from their own meagre stores: perfumes, cornmeal, eggs, fruit, flowers, sweet liquors, cakes and olive-oil. To Dambala every offering must be made upon a white plate, and the sacrifice to him consists of a pair of white chickens—a hen and a cock.

  ‘The Petro gods, on the other hand, are propitiated mainly through fear or because a person wishes to do some evil to his neighbour. The Houngan, or priest, is a figure of dread in each village and he blackmails the whole community. There is, perhaps, a quarrel, and one party will go to the priest to have a ceremony performed which will cause his enemy to become sick and die. When without apparent cause the second party becomes ill his relatives know what has happened, so they go to the priest and offer a sum for another ceremony to be performed which will remove the curse. The first party is informed of this and offers a larger sum for the curse to be continued; and so it goes on, with the evil priest taking bribes from both sides until one finally outbids the other and the poor wretch who has been afflicted either recovers or dies.’

  ‘Have they really the power just to wish death on a man?’ Richard asked.

  ‘Oh, yes. There is not the least doubt about that; but they also have a great knowledge of poisonous herbs, and often use these to bring about their fell design if the afflicted person seeks the protection of a rival Houngan.’

  ‘The people are nominally Catholics, aren’t they?’ de Richleau said. ‘So how do the Catholic priests view all this?’

  Doctor Saturday spread out his long, slender hands. ‘In Haiti it is impossible for the uninitiated to say where Roman Catholicism ends and Voodoo begins.’

  ‘That’s a pretty strong statement against the Roman Catholic Church,’ remarked Rex.

  ‘No, no,’ protested the Doctor; ‘I do not mean it that way. The good Fathers naturally abominate these practices and have been fighting them for centuries; but when you visit our towns and villages you will gain the impression that the whole population—even in the remotest hamlets— are most devout Catholics; whereas, in fact, this is not so at all.’

  Marie Lou frowned. ‘I’m afraid I don’t quite understand.’

  ‘It is this way. The Haitians are still very primitive; comparatively few of them as yet can even read or write. They have no written literature at all: only the oft-repeated folktales and ancient jests which they tell around their firesides; and they have no artists. In consequence, they have never yet produced anyone capable of drawing original pictures of the Voodoo gods which could be accepted as standard types, and long ago they devised the expedient of utilising pictures of Catholic saints as the representation of Voodoo Loa. For Dambala they adopted Saint Patrick, simply because there is always a snake in any picture of him. For Papa Legba they use a picture of John the Baptist, for Papa Loco a picture of Saint Joseph; and so on. The result is that all over the island you will see altars apparently devoted to the worship of the Catholic saints but actually used for a very different purpose.’

  ‘Do they have only gods in Voodoo or are there goddesses as well?’ Marie Lou inquired.

  ‘I fear, Madame, that women still occupy a very low status among most Negro races,’ replied the Doctor apologetically. ‘They are the chattels of men, who consider their purposes in life are to be possessed at will when young and to be used as beasts of burden when old, so it would be unnatural in the Haitians to prostrate themselves before female deities. Yet all the gods have their women as a natural attribute of prosperity and power, and to these, who are little more than handmaidens to the Loa, there is one extraordinary exception. This is a lady called Erzulie Frieda, who is a goddess in her own right, and she probably has more power to affect the destiny of men than any female deity who is worshipped throughout the world today.’

  ‘How terribly interesting,’ murmured Marie Lou, and the Doctor went on:

  ‘She is often represented by the picture of the Virgin Mary, but she has nothing whatever in common with the Mother of Jesus Christ. To explain her best, I must ask you to imagine a living Venus who has the power to turn herself into a mortal woman and enter the beds of thousands of her worshippers every Thursday and Saturday night. She is always described by her lovers as a supremely beautiful young Mulatto, scrupulously clean, intoxicatingly perfumed, with a slim yet ripe body breathing insatiable desire, to which is coupled the accumulated knowledge and expertness in the arts of love of all the women who have ever lived.’

  The Doctor paused to draw their attention to a shoal of flying-fish which were skimming from wave-crest to wave-crest within twenty feet of the windows of the launch’s cabin, then when the shoal had passed he continued:

  ‘The cult of Erzulie is, I think, the most remarkable thing connected with Voodoo, because it is no question of an occasional ceremony or a devotion which can be taken up and dropped again at will. Every year thousands of young men in Haiti receive her call and they must answer it whether they will or no. At first they do not realise what has happened to them but fall sick and have troubled dreams. A youth glimpses rich female garments and smells lovely scents in his sleep, but there is nothing tangible that he can identify. Then either the Goddess appears more openly and excites his lust or he consults a priest, describing the symptoms of his illness, and the priest tells him that Erzulie has done him the honour to choose him as her lover.

  ‘Sometimes the young man is intensely distressed, as he may be in love with a mortal woman or happily married; but there is no escape for him if Erzulie has cast the eye of desire upon him. All sorts of ills befall him until he surrenders; but in most cases he does so quite willingly. For the reception of the Goddess he sets aside in his house a room with a spotless white bed, offerings of sweets and wine and flowers, and, under the pain of unbelievably horrible penalties no other woman is allowed to enter that room. He then goes through a special ceremony in which he devotes himself to the Goddess and becomes her servitor for the rest of his life.’

  ‘If he has a wife, that’s very hard on her,’ remarked Marie Lou.

  ‘It is, indeed, Madame,’ the Doctor agreed; ‘since Erzulie is the enemy of all women and is capable of inflicting the most grievous misfortunes—even death—upon any person who seeks to draw one of her lovers away from her. The jealousy of Erzulie Frieda is a terrible thing, and not a woman in Haiti, however strongly she might resent the loss of her own lover or husband, would dare to cross the Goddess.’

  For a long time they talked on about the strange customs and beliefs of the superstitious, Voodoo-ridden Haitians, then of many other things as the sun gradually sank in the western sky and the launch raced on towards Port-au-Prince. Doctor Saturday proved a positive mine of information about the island; its people, flora, fauna and even fish. His large and extraordinarily white teeth flashed into a smile with great frequency and he was obviously most anxious to please. Richard did not like the way that the native crew cringed at the Doctor’s every order, yet leapt to obey without uttering a word, but assumed that probably even the nicest Mulattoes treated their Negro servants little better than slaves. Marie Lou wished that their new friend would not make quite such frequent use of the spittoon just outside the cabin door. But they all considered themselves extremely fortunate in having been picked up by a man of his qualities and decided that if he was a fair sample of the upper-classHaitians the people had been much maligned.

  Dusk was falling when the launch at last entered port and nosed its way in among a ramshackle collection of shipping. The great heat of the day was now long past, but the cool of the evening did little to
alleviate the pain in the limbs of the Duke and his friends. Frequent applications of the Doctor’s liniment had taken the worst sting out of their burns during the three-and-a-half-hour trip in the motor-boat, but they now felt as though they were being slowly grilled in front of a red-hot fire.

  As all of them had been sunburnt on one occasion or other before, they knew the tortures that awaited them that night, and perhaps, in view of the seriousness of their burns, for several days to come, so they endeavoured to regard their pain philosophically and take comfort from the fact that they were alive at all. But it was difficult for them to keep their minds off the burning glow which now suffused their scorched skin.

  On the wharfside the Doctor summoned a rickety Ford to follow his own car, which was waiting for him. Piling into the two vehicles, they drove past the few pretentious brick buildings in the centre of the town, out through the marshy suburbs which surround it, where the only buildings were tumbledown shacks and squalid mud hovels, then for a couple of miles up into the hills until they reached a long, low house before the whole front of which ran a broad verandah. With an apology for preceding them Doctor Saturday led the way in and bade them welcome; while his black houseboys ran out to collect the fish which he had caught earlier in the day.

  In the centre of the building there was one huge, lofty room which was open at both ends so that a current of air could move unimpeded right through it during the great midday heats. It was well but rather incongruously furnished in the ornate French style of the 1890’s, but the books and radio-gramophone, together with its spotless tidiness, showed that the Doctor lived the life of a cultured European.

  Pausing only to remove his panama, which revealed a fine head of curly, snow-white hair, he led them out, along the verandah, to a series of bedrooms; all of which were sparsely but neatly furnished, were equipped with Venetian blinds, and had fine-mesh wire frames over the windows to keep out the mosquitoes. He also showed them a shower-bath at the back of the house and a fitted basin with a geyser. Taking a pile of clean towels from a cupboard he said that he felt sure they would like to tidy themselves while he told his staff that he had guests who would be staying for some time and had extra places laid for dinner.