While I dressed I made plans. Today I would go down to the Palais, press the government clerks, finish my business with Les Domaines and the squatters’ claims. After seeing my father safely settled, I would return to Virginia, a rational civilization. I would not see Aurore again.
Two days went by, two days spent cooling my heels in the outer offices of the Palais and various stuffy magistral waiting rooms. Yes, I was told, there is an entitlement by a certain Christophe Leger to thirty acres at Les Domaines des Étoiles. Perfectly legal. And the others? “Mmm, we’ll see.”
Torg had to go to Las Cayes on business. It would be a matter of a week or more. In the meantime, he was expecting a friend from Jamaica, Honoré Montagne. Would I make him welcome in his absence?
Honoré came the day after Torg left, a slightly built, dapper little man, a noir, whose intelligent eyes behind steel-rimmed spectacles beamed at me.
“So you are the young Page Morse about whom Torg has written.”
“I’m flattered to hear that I was mentioned,” I said, returning his warm smile.
Honoré was educated, literate, a teacher in a Jamaican school for Negroes. “I always come to Haiti for my vacations. I was born here, you know.”
On the second evening, the talk got around to Voodoo. “Is it true they practice cannibalism?” I asked.
“There are many such allegations,” he answered after a little thought. “I myself have never seen or heard of anything like that. Blood sacrifice, yes—cocks, goats, pigs—but then sacrificial blood has been a part of religion since time began. You have only to read the Old Testament to see what I mean.”
We were sitting on the verandah with tall glasses, his of rum, mine of gin, looking out to the sea, where the last rays of a dying sun had lit up the water and sky in flaming oranges, purples, and reds. The pyrotechnics lasted half a minute, and then night swiftly closed down, as if a dark velvet curtain had been pulled across the heavens.
“There is much about the Voodoo religion I would like explained,” I ventured.
“I’m glad you call it a religion,” he said. Apparently I had gained his confidence, for he went on, “It is not a culte grossier either. The gods are very real to us.”
The “us” surprised me. This professorial little man was the last person I’d suspect of being a Voodooist, no matter that he and I had called it a religion.
“And the drums?” I asked.
“They are an integral part of the cérémonie. They speak of many things, have many uses. You have been in the interior and seen the deep gorges that divide the villages? The drums there are a means of communication.”
Honoré struck a match and lighted his cigar, the flame glinting off his eyeglasses.
“Do you think I might be able to witness one of their ceremonies?” I asked.
“Impossible,” he answered without hesitation. “You are not black.”
And then he began to speak of the high incidence of illiteracy in Haiti, as if to say, No more questions please.
But now my curiosity was aroused. I had an intuition he was planning to attend a cérémonie and so I watched him. One night I was awakened by the faint, distant sound of drums. I saw a line of light under my door and the next instant I heard the knob turn slowly. I closed my eyes and pretended to sleep.
The door opened. A board squeaked as soft feet trod across the floor. A flickering light on my eyelids and the strong odor of a cigar told me that Honoré was bending over to see if I really slept. Apparently satisfied, he retreated, quietly closing the door behind him.
I was up instantly and into my trousers, shirt, and shoes, and I caught his shadow just as he slipped out the door. Fortunately, he went on foot, for I could not have followed him had he gone on horseback.
It was a long, circuitous walk. Once or twice I thought I had lost him, and several times he stopped abruptly, turning his head to look over his shoulder while I cowered behind a tree. There was no moon, but the stars shone so brightly that they cast a luminous glow on the landscape, etching black shadows under the trees. The drums had been silent, but now they began again, distant, very faint though still with the same tom-te-tom, boom! boom! I had heard that first night in the Duvals’ summerhouse. We had walked only a short distance when the drumbeats grew louder, then they receded, louder again, waning at last to a soft, whispered thrum. It was impossible to tell if we were getting closer.
We began to climb. The path got narrower, steeper, the trees overhead forming a dark, enclosing tunnel. Creatures scuttled by, brushing against my trouser legs, and glow worms blinked on and off like lighted ships passing in the night. Now the drums seemed to be upon us, just around the next bend. But no, the tom-te-tom ebbed to no more than a dreamy echo of sound. Ah! There, again! Elusive, tantalizing, pulsating, the rhythm with its fuguelike counterpoint drew us on.
Then abruptly we were there, Honoré ahead of me, emerging into a wide clearing amid a deafening crash of drums. I hung back, taking refuge behind a tree. There must have been about a hundred Negroes and Negresses squatting on the ground, row upon row, as if seated in pews in a church. Before them a square space of hard-packed earth had been canopied over, and beyond that stood a hut I recognized as a houmfort. Torches lit up the scene, casting an eerie flickering light on the black faces of the congregation. They swayed as they chanted in a language I could not understand.
Three drummers stood off to one side, the central man wielding a stick on a huge conical instrument. Flanking him were two small drums, their players gliding, striking, tapping palms and knuckles over the stretched goatskin heads, their virtuosity punctuated by the booming of the main drum.
As I watched, the door of the houmfort opened and an old man wearing a white robe and red headdress emerged. He was followed by two chanting women holding crossed flags embossed with strange symbols. Next came a solitary woman and I heard the whisper “Mamloi!” go around. Her figure was enveloped in a scarlet robe and on her head sat a plumed headdress of the same blood-red hue. As she passed from shadow into torchlight I gripped the tree trunk, my nails digging into the bark.
It was Aurore!
I must have made a sound, gasped perhaps, even called her name. Her chin lifted and she looked straight into my eyes. The next instant a huge Negro sprang up from the circle and came after me.
I didn’t try to run.
Even now I cannot say why. Perhaps I felt that my spying was ignoble, and that to run like a Peeping Tom in fright would make my actions doubly so. Or perhaps by then I was too enthralled—the drums, the torches, the singing touching some deep, dark, primeval instinct in me—and I could not have fled had I wanted to.
I was dragged before the old man—the Papaloi. He said something in Creole and the young man—whom I now recognized as the Negro who had come up to Aurore in the market square—made a menacing gesture with a machete. But Aurore’s intervention in rapid Creole must have dissuaded him from his murderous intent. Instead, he tied my arms and legs with a liana rope and shoved me down among the chanters. I saw Honoré sitting in front, but he did not turn his head to look at me.
During the disturbance caused by my presence, the drummers never stopped, never missed a beat. Their entranced black faces ran with perspiration as their arms and hands moved like automatons. Tom-te-tom boom-boom! The chanting recommenced at a higher pitch. Four more white-clad figures came out of the houmfort, two men and two women, spacing themselves to the left and right of Aurore and the old man.
Aurore began to whirl, her robe belling about her quick, nimble feet as she moved among her assistants. Faster and faster she spun to the bass urging of the big drum, the short staccato undertones of the smaller ones. Faster and faster. Now the chanters paused while a woman in the crowd rose and began a wailing incantation, the catches and sobs in her sing-song voice expressing misery and sorrow. When she sat down, the chanting and swaying became more intense.
Aurore, still spinning, whirled her way through the crowd, arms outstretched, her fa
ce under the headdress rigid, impossible to read. As I watched and listened, a dark fear twisted my heart, for it seemed to me the chorus had reached a pitch where it was no longer singing but a wild, elemental howling. Yet mingled with my fear was a strange fascination; I could not shut my eyes or turn away. My gaze remained on the spinning Aurore.
Suddenly she stopped, threw out her arms, her body trembling with an uncontrollable emotion. Someone handed her a black cock squawking and flapping its wings. She grasped it by the legs and began to whirl again, faster, faster, faster, the drums thundering madly as she swung the cock above her head, its wings wide, its pinions beating. With a sudden quick twist she tore the head off and the blood spurted out. Someone ran forward with a cup to catch the red stream. Then another cock was brought forward and Aurore performed the same whirling dance, decapitating it also to the steady, throbbing rhythm of the drums.
Suddenly the drums exploded and then fell silent.
Transfigured with horror, I watched Aurore drink from the wooden cup. By no stretch of the imagination could I picture this high priestess as the same girl who had modeled her new bonnet for me and her father at the Maritime Club. The young woman in a pearl-buttoned day dress sipping tea, smiling beneath the brim of a fashionable chapeau was a century—a world—away from the spiraling, scarlet-robed Mamloi drinking the blood of a cock.
Fresh cocks appeared and were slaughtered by the Papaloi with a machete. The congregation now surged forward to be sprinkled with the sacred, cleansing blood, screaming, shouting, pushing, and struggling to have their turn at being anointed.
After every worshipper had been satisfied, the drums rolled, then took on another, different beat, as if to announce: The solemnity is over. Let us celebrate! Barrels of taffia, the native rum, were rolled in from the sides, cups and dippers produced, and the laughing congregation helped itself to the fiery liquor. A cup was playfully put to my lips and I drank. But no one untied me.
“Eh! Eh! Bomba! Bomba! Hen! Hen!” the crowd chanted, falling back, squatting on their haunches in a semicircle. I saw that Aurore had divested herself of her robe and headdress. Stark naked, a figure in bronze, she stood with her outstretched arms high above her head, turning, turning slowly so the onlookers could admire the perfection of her full, rounded breasts, tight belly, and sleek thighs.
She began to dance, undulating shoulders, hips, and stomach, while the crowd clapped in time. “Bomba! Bomba!” Twisting and writhing seductively, she moved among them, pausing while a ripple of sheer ecstasy quivered through her, vibrating out from toes and fingers.
“Bomba! Bomba!”
The drums grew wilder, Aurore’s taut breasts, nipples now engorged, shook to the thunderous chant. She came on, paused before me, and someone pushed me to my liana-tied feet. Close, only inches away, she tantalized with her hips, her stomach, her loins, her breasts. Her rank sexuality sent desire racing through my blood like a flame. I wanted her with every fiber of my aroused flesh. I struggled to break my bonds, but they held. She laughed, the white teeth gleaming in the torchlight. Then she turned, shaking her tight, appled buttocks, gliding to the left, tapping the woolly head of the large Negro. He sprang to his feet and they began to dance, a lascivious pas de deux, not touching at first, but circling one another, each quivering and shaking, their bodies rippling in erotic, serpentine motion, the hips thrusting to and fro as if in the sexual act itself. Then they were rubbing up against one another, the gros negre swollen and ready.
I couldn’t bear it. I found myself shouting too. All the trappings of civilization deserted me. Only one thing remained— a consuming, raging jealousy. At the moment when he grasped her hips and was about to enter her, she pushed him away.
This seemed to be the signal for the spectators to join the dance. They rose as one and formed an irregular ring, leaping, singing, and chanting, a circle of naked black sweating bodies, their faces alight with the fire of the torches. Drunk with taffia, maddened by the orgiastic rhythm of the drums, they stamped and shook, bobbed and swayed, while sexually excited couples broke off to flee into the forest. Someone—I could not see who—cut my bonds. I stumbled forward.
“Aurore! AURORE!”
And she was there, taking my hand, leading me into the shadows. I brought her to the ground beneath a maupou and ravished her, a fierce, savage assault, to the frenzied beat of the drums.
Chapter 25
I lost all track of time. I ate, slept, breathed, lived for Aurore. If my enthrallment was a spell, it was one I welcomed, embraced.
I forgot Page Morse, his aristocratic Virginia forebears, forgot San Francisco, Wildoak, Invernean, Harry Page, forgot— God help me—Sabrina, as if those people and those places had never existed. The man I knew now had been born that night on the hill, baptized with Voodoo blood and fire.
I don’t know what happened to Honoré. I never saw him again. Torg I could not face. I could never explain my feelings to him—or to anyone else. They were a riddle even to me. Aurore’s irresistible attraction was more than sexual. She represented the elemental, the forbidden, the dark mysteries that lured, challenged, and defied. She was Jezebel, Salome, Sheba, temptress, siren, and nymph. And each day she conquered me anew.
She found me a small bungalow at the far end of a jungle-tangled lane just off the Rue Turgeau. I moved there before Torg returned, leaving a note that simply told him I was going.
How did I spend the long tropical days in that house? My memory of certain details remains clouded, even now. If I read I cannot remember a single book, a single title. I wrote no letters; I had given up going to the registrar of deeds. And yet I did not suffer from ennui; time passed in a sweet dreamlike haze.
At six each morning the little girl servant I had hired brought in a tray set with a cup, a bowl of sugar, a carafe of hot water, and a small jug of coffee essence. Sometimes she shyly placed a wild rose on the tray, its petals fragrant and moist from morning dew. After I had mixed the brew to my taste, I would go out to the verandah and sit in the cool shade of a climbing passion-fruit vine, listening to the chatter of the forest birds. I made a pet of a lizard who lived under a loose board, and it would emerge at precisely the same minute each morning and slither across the floor, climbing my trouser leg to eat cassava-bread crumbs from my hand.
In the afternoons Aurore would arrive, a little breathless, flushed and smiling. (I don’t know what excuse she gave at home. I never asked.) To escape the worst of the heat we would go to a natural pool near the house. Fed by a small waterfall, it lay under the spreading branches of a large nutmeg tree, its leaves reflected in the shaded, crystal depths. Leaving our clothes on a rock, we would dive in, laughing, and swim from one end to the other, playfully pausing to splash one another. She would tease me, diving under my legs, and I would catch her, bringing her up, grasping her nakedness, lifting her so her silky legs wrapped themselves about my waist. I would flex my knees slightly and enter her, watching her face as it lay back on my shoulder, the ripples of pleasure, the “o” of her mouth as I thrust deep, deeper. She would open her eyes a moment before my own wracking, climatic shudder, and draw in her breath, then let it out in a shout of pure ecstasy.
If the nights sometimes haunted me or left me with a residue of unease, I quickly dismissed it. Those were intoxicating hours, heavy with the fragrance of jasmine and orange blossoms when Aurore, the she-cat, the lustful tigress, would bait me, driving me on and on to a savage sexual frenzy. She was like opium, cocaine, a drug, an addiction, one that I must have again and again to sustain me, to keep alive.
One night as we lay side by side, I asked, “How did you become a Mamloi?”
“It’s a long story, Page.”
“Tell me,” I urged, drawing her head to my shoulder.
She sighed. “I suppose it really started when I was a child. I had a noir nurse and it was she who realized I had special powers, notably the gift of quatre gé, the ability to see into the future. She told me about Voodoo, explained the gods, the rit
es. When I grew older she introduced me to Papa Louis, the old man you saw the other night. I became an initiate, a hounsi, and after several years I went through the final cérémonie of purification.”
“And what of your family?”
“God forbid! They know nothing. They are practicing Catholics. Most mulâtres are—or pretend to be.”
“But not you.”
“Not me.” She lifted her face to me. “Voodoo is my life, Page. As Mamloi ...” She paused. “How can I explain? As Mamloi I am not merely an upper-class, light-skinned mulâtre with a large dot or dowry, content to find a respectable husband of like caste. I am something else. Much, much more: Mamloi! It gives me a goddesslike majesty, a sense of thrilling power!”
She told me she had seen me in a dream long before I came to Haiti. The moment we met she’d recognized me as her promised lover, the fair-haired god of the sea.
“It is destined,” she would say. “There is nothing we can do.”
She spoke of marriage, but did not press me. “In time, in time,” she would whisper, snaking her golden arms about my neck, covering me with drowning kisses.
One morning at sunrise just after Aurore had slipped away, Torg appeared. I was alone, sitting on the edge of the bed, staring dully at the coffee tray with its jug and a blown yellow rose.
He called to me from the verandah. Drawing on a pair of trousers, I went out.
“What is it?” I asked.
He did not answer for a few moments but stared at me, and I was suddenly conscious of my unshaven chin, my rumpled hair, my reddened eyes—and my blunt greeting.
“I’m sorry, Torg—seeing you—so unexpectedly. Would you like coffee?”
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