Aunt Oris instructed St. Cloud on matters of cunning and survival which surprised even Justo, who brought him to her seeking protection against an evil operating by ancient rules and perverted ritual. St. Cloud did not leave Aunt Oris a true believer, but with a recipe to entrap his personal Erzulie in the most improbable manner imaginable. He was determined to unlock the door into Lila’s good graces, insinuate himself by any means into her youthful heart. Aunt Oris did not give him the key to Lila’s door, she gave him the key to a sea of green banana chutney and sweet yam meringue. When a woman asks a man if he loves her, she is not expecting an answer, she is seeking reassurance. When a man cooks for a woman, he is not providing a meal for her belly, he is denuding the soul of his male mystery. If there is one thing common to most women it is, given time to discover, they will always choose a man of substance over mystery. A clever man divests himself of mystery, knowing that when it comes to matters of cohabiting with the opposite sex, the predictable bread of daily sustenance prevails over a salad of promised tomorrows. Thus St. Cloud’s new credo, his secret weapon in the duel for Lila. It was not a mere cook he became, nor a chef of exemplary culinary audacity, on that score Lila herself was not to be undone; instead he stirred up a storm of possessive passion, utilizing herb extracts and root powders to win his cause. Verbena oil was employed to lure his love, rosemary to encourage devotion once love was lured to bed, a smattering of ground coral powder to ensure time with love in bed was harmonious and sustained, passion flower, so love leavened passionately, mustard seed to elicit beautiful children, black snake root to make love’s heart soft, basil to keep her body supple, orange blossoms so love’s secrets would be left beneath her bed pillow each morning. These elements were tossed into the nightly parade of dishes St. Cloud prepared for Lila, an exotic, ever changing fare with origins in the Caribbean and West Indies, all the way back to Africa, straight from Aunt Oris’ lips to St. Cloud’s ears. He haunted the local Cuban botànica shops for hard to procure substances of both natural and suspicious origins. He presented himself each morning at the open stalls of the two greengrocers on the island, stalking between mounds of tangerines, tangelos and tamarinds. Afternoons he haunted the charter boat anchorage, in hopes some unsuspecting angler from the Midwest had reeled from the depths an ugly fish rife with prickly scales and ripe with gluey eggs, which could be panfried in guinea cornmeal and jellied shark fins, the odoriferous result free to swim into Lila’s soul. When they dined in his small house at the end of Catholic Lane next to the cemetery, a charm lamp always burned between them. The lamp was a half coconut shell filled with crystallized maple syrup and blackstrap molasses; beneath the goo was a black magnet, above it was stuck a lone beeswax candle, just like the one glowing atop the bureau of drawers through the long night when Aunt Oris tutored St. Cloud on the ways and wiles of Erzulie, instructing how a mere mortal man could protect himself when setting sail across the Queen’s perilous sea.
Lila didn’t know what accounted for St. Cloud’s sudden domestic turn and storm of delectable delights. He cooked all day in the kitchen of a tiny house which felt like the interior of an oversize cigar box, its century-old cypress wood walls veined with termite channels, reeking of damp earth and stewing vegetables. Something about St. Cloud’s newly acquired mantle of unabashed lunacy worked away on her. His antics seemed even more playful than those of her eager pug puppy, which chased its stubby tail round and round in St. Cloud’s kitchen as he tossed God knows what into steaming black kettles atop the stove. Lila asked why jasmine-scented candles burned in every corner of his hot humidor of a house? He laughed, saying it was because he put a love hex on her, if she didn’t watch out he would put one on her dog too. She inquired why he never removed the chicken wishbone necklace around his neck? The tips of the brittle bone were broken off, the charm resembled nothing more than a calcified stump, yet he even wore it in the shower. He answered deadpan, that if he took off the charm his fairy Godmother would fly away. She asked why he kept a split moonstone under his bed? He explained it was because a snake cannot be caught with perfume alone. Gradually Lila began to realize how far St. Cloud had traveled to take her away from herself. That was what intrigued her, his willingness to give himself over to something bigger than what he knew. Such was his strangeness. She asked him a question which never before occurred to her, a question she never put to any man. As soon as she asked, she didn’t know why she had.
Lila asked St. Cloud if he loved her. He was silent and turned to the kitchen screen door leading into his garden planted with Senegalese calabash, Mexican jicama, Bermuda onions, and Jamaican honeysuckle vines slithering up the trunk of a papaya tree. A chameleon clung to the outer surface of the door, claws anchored in the screen, tail swishing across wire mesh. A red bubble of flesh pulsed in the lizard’s throat as its green body bobbed to a slow heartbeat. “I’ll give you a piece of my heart,” Lila heard herself say to no one in particular in the steamy kitchen. “It’s not your heart I want, it’s your soul,” St. Cloud answered, stirring a bowl of cold strawberry soup with a wooden spoon. “I want all the way into you, to what you’re hiding from yourself. I want to dive down and get it.” This was the strangeness Lila felt confused by, “Why me?” St. Cloud sipped a taste of cold strawberry from the wooden ladle, “Because I know what your soul is going to look like.” “What?” “The quiet surface of the mangrove flats on a bright afternoon. Through the quiet your soul will come bursting, the spinning arc of a silver tarpon flashing in pure oxygen, twisting free from the depths. I want that silver flash.” Lila moved toward the offered wooden spoon and sucked fruit soup, with strawberry seeds on her lips she challenged him, “All you want is to catch and devour me.” St. Cloud put his arms around her, pulling her body to him, a heavy breath of strawberries on both their lips. “No, I’m not after that tarpon to fry it and eat it. I want to stroke its silver body with my tongue, feel its wet purpose.” The chameleon released itself from wire mesh, leaping over backwards into the garden after a flitting bug. The pug puppy whined at Lila’s bare feet, it wanted whatever she was eating. St. Cloud held tight to Lila’s supple waist, if she was going to come crashing up through the bright surface he wanted to be with her. She moaned softly, not with desire nor frustration, “You’re so strange.” The puppy moaned with greedy hunger. A muffled thump of drums drifted into the kitchen on hot wind from the cemetery a block away, announcing the funeral procession of a prosperous black citizen from the far side of Duval Street. St. Cloud placed a hand beneath Lila’s chin, turning her face to his, “Come … up out … of yourself, to where I am. You won’t be sorry. Trust … me.” Lila’s eyes gleamed jade green, leopard eyes moving over melting iceflow, no footprints left behind on dazzling crystals, only animal magnetism pulling with irresistible force. “My my,” St. Cloud sighed. “Green light.” The strawberry blossoming of lips touched the tip of his heart. “Are you there? Come closer.” She undressed, giving full decoration to who she was, each garment discarded revealing a design of flesh made manifest, a silver shadow moving across a tight white sheet, a silken invention of such purity the velocity of its intention assumed uncontrollable force. His hands traveled her naked back, fingers spreading across a cool moon. Still, he did not have her. He had yet to make her trust, bring up an ice-breaking laugh from her depths, settle her at final ease. His lips went to her ear, whispering a Creole poem he hoped would turn passion’s tide, about a man grown fat from female worship, a man who couldn’t get enough, kept coming back for more:
“Black bird of my heart, whose breasts are oranges,
more savory than eggplant stuffed with crab,
you please my taste better than tripe in the pepper pot;
Dumpling in peas and aromatic tea
are not more hot.
You are corned beef in my heart’s
customhouse;
The meal is syrup in my throat;
The grouse smoking on the platter,
stuffed with rice.
Crisper than sweet potatoes,
browner than fish fries,
My hunger follows you
whose buttocks are so rich
in food!”
Lila was completely silent. St. Cloud thought once again he had gone too far, around the curve of no return, broken the mood in a gamble for something grander. The strange music, like a high whistle from a wheeling hawk, which he often heard as he rolled across the white sheet with Lila, came through the dusty windowpane above his bed. He held his breath, the strange whistling stopped. From the distant cemetery a different music sounded, over the heads of cement cherubs and marble-winged angels an uplifting blast of trumpets encouraged the mournful drums beating a man’s last time. Lila turned, her breasts brushing St. Cloud’s chest, words from her lips coming full in his mouth. “You are … so … strange.” Her words whirled away in a closed space of tongues striking fire. St. Cloud knew then he had her soul. It was too late to celebrate, Lila had stolen his entire sense of self. At dawn he wandered into the little backyard garden, sat among rowed cabbages, beneath the papaya tree with the honeysuckle vining up its trunk. He removed his torn T-shirt, exposing neck, chest and arms covered with round bluing bruises from the night before, when Lila’s softest kisses left the imprint of bullet holes on his skin. As morning sun sailed overhead, climbing to ever more brilliant heights, St. Cloud made a discovery. He was a marked victim of wounds visible only to himself. He pushed from the cabbages, unsteady on quaking legs, cocked a hand over his eyes to shield himself from the burning orb in the heavens, which only now revealed its true shape, a ship with sheeted sails fullblown in a clouded wind. The victim of invisible wounds saluted the Queen passing overhead. Sail on sailor in sea of Erzulie.
22
ST. CLOUD had alligator pears in his pockets. He had the stump of Aunt Oris’ wishbone securely anchored on the string around his neck. He had the beautiful Southern belle of the devil’s bewitching ball standing at his out-of-date tuxedoed side. He had everything, ready to take on whatever might come at him from the crushing crowd of Duval Street. He was better prepared than a Boy Scout dropped into a foreign forest. He had avocado meat to eat if Bonefish’s Mister Finito slipped into town on a tailspinning wind. Although the air remained still, empty of turtle rot, was perfumed with breath of night-blooming jasmine, he stood guard, his canteen filled with clarin. If a hex came wanging down Duval with his name written on it, he was ready. Rum and Aunt Oris’ wishbone charm fortified his more than normal queasy nature; if forced to choose quickly between the two, he wouldn’t hesitate first to drain the canteen of its secretive syrupy power. Not that he was a disbeliever in Aunt Oris’ signposts pointing to salvation in this world, and everlasting grace in the next, the problem was many of the revelations which came from her that night of their first encounter could have originated from an idle town gossip, as well as from an active spiritualist. Aunt Oris was blind and couldn’t read, but someone may have informed her about the local newspaper article reporting the discovery of a mutilated goat in the Sugarloaf bat tower. Few people knew of the yellow X painted on Renoir’s door, but many saw the X on the jailhouse wall after Voltaire was whisked north to the Everglades camp. Someone may have informed Aunt Oris about such mysterious events. It also wasn’t certain her knowledge of Zobop was prescient. St. Cloud himself had caused Zobop’s name to be chalked on the Wreck Room message board, hoping to expose the cryptic scribbler’s identity. Aunt Oris’ awareness of Zobop’s cemetery poem about Filor’s sly old mouse may have come from Justo. Since Aunt Oris was destined to be buried in the family plot, Justo may have felt compelled to call in some white magic to defend the sacred ground against otherworldly desecraters. St. Cloud was not a total disbeliever in Aunt Oris’ mystical powers because she was right about the most important thing. What she told him about the pain in his heart was true, and he had followed her cure of an aphrodisiacal menu to the hilt, wangling his way to happiness through prescribed potions and edible concoctions. If he had not gone to Aunt Oris there would be no way in tricky Erzulie’s great watery universe that Rhett Butler would be standing with his arm around Scarlett O’Hara on this Halloween night, marveling at masked men dressed in black tights and top hats, marching behind a truckload of Carmen Mirandas cavorting to rhumba music. Piercing the Latin beat blasting from the truck was a singular sound, like the squeal of a high-wheeling hawk. St. Cloud knew the sound well, it was the sound he had been hearing through his bedroom window whenever he was with Lila. The sound came from the marching men in jaunty black top hats, all were blowing tin whistles clenched in their teeth, creating an earsplitting chorus which scraped at the night sky. The whistle blowers passed, leaving one behind, who swung a white cane aloft, pointing to words painted on a cardboard sign he held: VOODOO SPACE INVADERS FROM FORT LAUDERDALE. The man’s head jerked rapidly from side to side, his face powdered pasty white; through eyeholes cut into his mask bloodshot eyes glared. St. Cloud felt a sharp stab in his back.
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