The Book of the Living Dead

by John Richard Stephens

  Lafcadio Hearn

  He knew no rest; for all his dreams were haunted by her; and when he sought love, she came as the dead come between the living. So that, weary of his life, he passed away at last in the fevered summer of a tropical city; dying with her name upon his lips. And his face was no more seen in the palm-shadowed streets; but the sun rose and sank as before.

  And that vague phantom life, which sometimes lives and thinks in the tomb where the body molders, lingered and thought within the narrow marble bed where they laid him with the pious hope—que en paz descansa!

  Yet so weary of his life had the wanderer been that he could not even find the repose of the dead. And while the body sank into dust the phantom man found no rest in the darkness, and thought to himself, “I am even too weary to rest!”

  There was a fissure in the wall of the tomb. And through it, and through the meshes of the web that a spider had spun across it, the dead looked, and saw the summer sky blazing like amethyst; the palms swaying in the breezes from the sea; the flowers in the shadows of the sepulchers; the opal fires of the horizon; the birds that sang; and the river that rolled its whispering waves between tall palms and vast-leaved plants to the heaving emerald of the Spanish Main. The voices of women and sounds of argentine laughter and of footsteps and of music, and of merriment, also came through the fissure in the wall of the tomb— sometimes also the noise of the swift feet of horses, and afar off the drowsy murmur made by the toiling heart of the city. So that the dead wished to live again; seeing that there was no rest in the tomb.

  And the gold-born days died in golden fire—and the moon whitened nightly the face of the earth; and the perfume of the summer passed away like a breath of incense; but the dead in the sepulcher could not wholly die. The voices of life entered his resting-place; the murmur of the world spoke to him in the darkness; the winds of the sea called to him through the crannies of the tomb. So that he could not rest. And yet for the dead there is no consolation of tears!

  The stars in their silent courses looked down through the crannies of the tomb and passed on; the birds sang above him and flew to other lands; the lizards ran noiselessly above his bed of stone and as noiselessly departed; the spider at last ceased to renew her web of magical silk; the years came and went as before, but for the dead there was no rest!

  And it came to pass that after many tropical moons had waxed and waned, and the summer was come, with a presence sweet as a fair woman’s—making the drowsy air odorous about her—that she whose name was uttered by his lips when the Shadow of Death fell upon him, came to that city of palms, and to the ancient place of burial, and even to the tomb that was nameless.

  And he knew the whisper of her robes; and from the heart of the dead man a flower sprang and passed through the fissure in the wall of the tomb and blossomed before her and breathed out its soul in passionate sweetness.

  But she, knowing it not, passed by; and the sound of her footsteps died away forever!

  SALT IS NOT FOR SLAVES

  G. W. Hutter

  Not all zombies want to eat your brains. Sometimes it’s the zombies who are the victims.

  Several times before I had noticed the old woman. She always squatted on her low stool as far as possible from the servants, as if her age did not separate her enough from the young, rollicking workers. Her years were impossible to reckon. She seemed as old as the island; and a definite, tangible part of it. Hayti’s mountains and valleys appeared impressed on her face; and the darkness and mystery of history mirrored in her eyes; eyes which were startling in their strength and intensity; eyes which suggested timelessness more than anything I had ever seen—animate or inanimate. They were incredible in her stooped, bent old body.

  She sat immovable save for the quick motions of her long fingers as she sliced pineapples or plucked doves and guineas for the hotel dinner. Her hands worked automatically—she did not need her eyes, which were staring ceaselessly up to the heights of the dark green mountains in the distance.

  As I gazed out of my glassless window, waiting for the tropic sun to drop low enough to permit the evening plunge in the concrete “basin” in the rear garden, I heard a commotion and a violent outburst of Creole. ’ Tit Jean, terror-stricken, was scrambling away from the old woman as fast as his little legs could carry him. On the ground by the old woman’s stool lay several empty salt cellars, their contents strewn over the grass.

  Madame appeared just as the old woman was overtaking the cause of her fury. “Marie!” she shouted imperatively. The old woman turned, slunk back to her stool, picked it up and resumed her work at the end of the garden.

  ’Tit Jean was sobbing at the foot of the stairs when I descended in my bathrobe. I asked him the trouble. “Marie, pas bonne,” he declared.

  When I asked him why Marie was no good, he told me in Creole, broken by sobs, that when he accidentally tripped in passing her stool, she had tried to kill him because a little salt had fallen on her. Yes, that was everything he had done. Her rage was as inexplicable to me as it had been to him, and I gave him the only comfort I knew—a five centime piece. This seemed to make his world rosy once more.

  He smiled, motioned me to come behind the door and then, in a voice so low that I was forced to bend my head to his level, he whispered, “ Voodoo!”

  He nodded his head meaningly towards the garden. When I laughed, terror leaped into his round eyes. I had heard many stories of voodoo in Hayti, but I could not connect the trivial incident of a small boy accidentally spilling a bit of table salt with any of them. ’ Tit Jean, however, was silent. He would say no more. Voodoo was too real and serious a matter with him to be discussed laughingly with a foreigner.

  I walked past the old woman. She looked through me as if I did not exist.

  I entered the small boarded enclosure of the “ basin,” stripped off the bathrobe; and the heat of the day was soon forgotten in the invigorating buoyancy of clear mountain water.

  As I walked, dripping wet, by the uplifted eyes, I said, “Bon soir.”

  “Bon soir, Monsieur,” she replied. Even though she hardly glanced at me as she spoke and there was little cordiality in her voice, I felt encouraged. At least she was approachable and I might draw her into conversation.

  I was still thinking of her after I had dressed and was seated at dinner. ’ Tit Jean was not himself as he served me. He could hardly wait for me to empty the spoon of guava jelly on my guinea; he was in such a hurry to leave the single table I occupied in the corner of the porch. The whites of his eyes showed plainly as I smiled at his uneasiness to be away from me and serve the other guests—they would not ask cynical questions about voodoo.

  As I sipped my after-dinner coffee, I glanced up at the black mountains. I imagined I heard the beat of a tom-tom and I remembered old Marie’s gaze directed up to these mountains—seeing all and seeing nothing. ’ Tit Jean saw me as I looked at the distant hills, and remained in a corner until I had left the table.

  A squawk of a loudspeaker drew me into the large park spreading out before the hotel. A radio concert was being given from the local station and the town had assembled before an enormous receiving set placed in the bandstand. The chatter of Creole was completely stilled by the strains of “Bye, Bye, Blackbird,” and the native favorite, “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby.”

  Standing in a group, their faces beaming with delight, were the servants from the hotel. They were all there, I noticed, except old Marie. Now was a good chance to see the old woman, I thought. Obviously the servants’ work was done for the night and I could catch her alone in the garden. I left the spellbound crowd in the park and paused on my way back to the hotel in a cafe to buy a large bag of tobacco.

  Marie was sitting on her stool as I had hoped. Casually I strolled around the garden and stopped beside her.

  “Would you care for some tobacco?” I asked in French. She reached her bony hand for the bag. “Oui, Monsieur. You are very kind.”

  She began to fill the large calaba
sh pipe which had stuck from her apron pocket. I continued my stroll for a few minutes and then sat down on the outside rim of the “ basin” a few yards from her stool.

  She was again staring straight ahead at the mountains.

  I lit a cigarette and we both smoked silently. A second cigarette—still another, but not a word from her. She remained motionless—staring.

  “You like to look at the hills, Marie?” I began awkwardly. Without turning she said, “No, Monsieur.”

  “Then why do you stare at them?” I was determined to get some returns from my tobacco.

  She took three long puffs before she replied very slowly, “It is because I cannot help but stare at my life. That large mountain is my life. It began at the topmost point and it ends at the bottom. From this seat I can see everything by casting my eyes to the top; and today, Monsieur , I have not raised them very high.”

  “You were born on the mountain?” I prodded her.

  “That I do not know—but many years I spent there as a girl. My master’s villa was the only one there. That, also, was many years ago.

  “My master was rich and powerful and had many slaves. They say he chose the site for his villa because it was the highest point in all Hayti, and from the door of his home he could look down on his lands extending from Port-au-Prince up to the Cape. His lands were so many that he needed hundreds of slaves to till them and gather in the crops. In some years his coffee alone required a fleet of ships to carry it to France. But he had no mercy for his slaves. He drove them hard, and when they could endure it no more they dropped from exhaustion. Then he sent them up to the slave quarters at the villa just like broken-down horses to be patched up for work again.

  “I was always there. I was a house servant. When I grew old enough I loved Tresaint. Tresaint was a big, strong, young man, whom his master trusted. He, like me, was there always, and the master made him the overseer of the other slaves. When business called the master away, Tresaint was left in charge of everything. The key to the salt even was left with him.”

  “The salt?” I asked wonderingly.

  “Yes, the salt. Years before—almost the first thing I remember—the master called us before him, the six men and me, and gave his command about the salt. ‘Slaves,’ he said, ‘you are to be under my roof always. There is one order you must not disobey. You shall eat no salt. You will grow strong. You will suffer no sickness; but let one grain of salt pass your lips and you die.’ He looked very stern and grim as he said it, and we knew that it was true.

  “We did not ask why. The master was to be obeyed, not questioned. We also knew his powers—powers not in slaves and lands—but other and more mysterious ones he had at his command. That is why we put even the thought of salt from our minds, and grew strong and healthy. Sometimes the quarters were filled with a hundred slaves stricken with the fever of the low rice fields, or with their legs swollen the size of large burros, and all around us were dying like flies; but none of us was sick a day.

  “Yes,” Marie went on, “all of the men were strong, but Tresaint was the strongest of the six. When he held me in his arms I felt as if he would break every bone in my body, but I loved him for it.

  “No slave in the country was as well-off as Tresaint, but he was not happy. Always the misery of the worn-out slaves oppressed him. The harsh words and treatment he dealt out to them seemed to hurt him as well. He must treat them severely when the master was around, but when he was away on one of his trips the others would know at once through Tresaint’s kindly manner.

  “Strange rumors came to our ears, brought by incoming slaves. They said there was a man in the north of the island around the Cape who was preaching freedom. He taught that the slaves should rise up and throw off the yoke of the French. That they were human beings—not animals—and that they themselves should rule their country. This man was a slave himself. His name was Christophe.”

  I gasped. Surely that couldn’t have been true! Christophe became Emperor Henry of Hayti in 1804. This would make the old woman almost a hundred and fifty years old. It was impossible. Then I looked in Marie’s face—a rock in the moonlight. She seemed centuries older than anything I had ever seen before. She spoke so surely, seemed so certain of what she was saying. I was confused and undecided.

  A creaking of shoes at the garden entrance, a babble of Creole and laughter, and the servants were back from the concert. When they saw Marie and me, their talking and laughter stopped. They went quietly to their rooms strewn back of the kitchen along the edge of garden.

  The lights in the hotel were flicked out. Everything was quiet. Marie was puffing rhythmically at her pipe.

  “And Tresaint—” I urged her on. “ Was he interested in these tales of Christophe?”

  “Yes, he was interested. He was too interested. That was the cause of everything.” Marie spoke earnestly. “Christophe, he said, was the savior of Hayti. France, herself, had thrown off the yoke of her kings and now Hayti should throw off the yoke of France. The slave should rule his own country. All of this Tresaint would tell me until I became worried for fear that the master would learn of his trusted overseer’s burning thoughts.

  “Finally there came a time when the master himself was aroused. Christophe had persuaded scores of slaves on the master’s lands near the Cape to leave their fields of bondage and flee to him. This news sent the master into a mighty rage. He left the villa at once to sail to the Cape.

  “Before the master’s carriage had reached Port-au-Prince a great change had come over the villa. Shouts, singing and laughter filled the house. Tresaint, who had always been lenient when the master was away, now became the master himself and treated the slaves as if they were the master’s guests. He opened up the wine cellar and invited them in. He did not give them the tafia in the tin mugs which was kept for the slaves, but he rolled out a keg of the finest rum. Rum that was many years old; and he served it to them in the villa’s finest glasses. They skipped and danced about and dropped ashes from the master’s cigars on the marble floors.

  “I was frightened, but Tresaint would not listen to me. He was encouraging them into complete lawlessness. He left the slaves in the main salon. Bare feet which before had known only the feel of rocks and sod plopped delightedly across smooth marble. Soon he appeared, his huge arms hugging bottles and bottles of champagne. With a blow from a sword snatched down from the wall, he cut off the necks—the wine popping and gurgling to the floor. When every slave had a bottle, Tresaint mounted the mahogany table in the hall.

  “‘Friends,’ he shouted, ‘drink to the health of your new masters—yourselves! We shall be slaves no longer. The day of freedom has come. Drink!’ He drained the upraised jagged bottle with one long draught and dashed it in a thousand pieces on the floor.

  “The glass cut my feet as I ran to him.

  “‘Tresaint! Tresaint! Listen to me,’ I begged. ‘The master will kill you surely when he returns. Stop this foolish wildness before it is too late.’

  “But the idea of freedom was as strong in his head as the fumes of the liquor. He laughed at my fears and pushed me aside.

  “‘Women are cowards,’ he announced to the cheering crowd, ‘ but I am a man. I am no longer afraid of anybody—not even the master. Lose all fear and you shall be free. The master put fear into us from the start. You five men who have been with me here know what this key means.’ He held out the smallest key that dangled on the chain around his neck.

  “I was terrified. I knew the key. It was to the chest that was filled with salt! What madness was he up to now?

  “He saw the terror on my face and called, ‘And you too, Marie! You were placed in the master’s power at the same time—all by his command about the salt. We shall eat no salt. Why? Because the master forbade it and we are not to question his command. Bah!’

  “He threw the key at my feet.

  “‘We will show the master’s power is gone. Marie, fetch some salt. We will eat it and be forever free.’

&n
bsp; “I picked up the key and stumbled out of the room, on past the closet that contained the forbidden chest. From the back gallery I dropped the key beside an orange-tree. I hoped this ruse would delay Tresaint in his madness. That in a little while he would come to his senses again when the rum and the wine wore off and would thank me for preventing him carrying out his rash deed.

  “I crouched in the corner of the gallery.

  “‘Marie! Marie!’ his voice thundered out from the house, but I did not answer.

  “In a few minutes he came out to where I was.

  “‘Where is the key?’ he asked.

  “I told him I did not know.

  “‘That doesn’t matter. The chest is not so strong that I cannot open it.’

  “He put his arm around me.

  “‘You are too timid,’ he said.

  “I returned his embrace with all my strength. I tried to draw him down on a bench while I pleaded and cajoled with him to stay with me. I pointed out the truth of the master’s curse on the salt. I showed him how we had been strong and healthy always just as the master had foretold and that to disobey him would cause our death. If the master’s predictions had worked one way they would work the other. But he would not hear me. I called on his love for me, but all to no avail. He left me stricken dumb with terror.

  “Sounds of blows on wood, a shout of triumph and Tresaint’s voice floated out: ‘Here, my friends, in one hand you have the salt, in the other the wine to wash the curse away.’

  “A moment of silence as I shivered in the heat of midday and then more shouts. They were dancing around in the marble salon, yelling exultantly.

  “How long I remained frozen to my seat I do not know, but gradually there beat into my ears a curious sound. The pattering of bare feet was all I heard; the shouts and singing had disappeared.

  “Fearfully I crept into the room. Along the sides of the wall were stretched out the slaves from the quarters, stupefied by drink. In the centre were Tresaint and the five others skipping around with waving arms without uttering a sound. The marble floor was covered with jagged pieces of bottles.