Marie Laveau

by Francine Prose

  He taught her tricks: Tricks to improve the memory. Card tricks. Optical illusions done with mirrors. Police tricks. Prison escape tricks. Resurrection tricks. Levitation and ventriloquism tricks. The tricks of mind-reading: Glance. Gesture. Memory. Conjecture. Blinking. Blushing. Hands. The shape of the face, the pattern of moles and wrinkles.

  He taught her about the power of numbers and colors: Two for peace, three for balance, four for unions and new beginnings. Red the blood color, the color of Mars. Purple for pain. Green for life. White for death. Yellow for thought. Black for magic. And he taught her about the power of names.

  “Your secret name is the brand on your soul,” he said. “It’s the heart of your fire and your destiny. That’s why you turned out like you did, that’s why you’re here now—’cause your mama named you after Black Mary the Egyptian, the holy whore, the lady who knew how to get where she wanted to go. That’s why she wrote it on that little scrap of gray paper in that blue velvet bag.”

  “I’ve looked on that paper,” said Marie. “There’s nothing there.”

  “There is,” said Doctor John. “When you really need it you’ll see it plain as day.”

  He taught her about the power of healing: pulling the force from your own body, up through the legs to the thighs to the heart, out through the arms to the fingertips, sending the power out to heal the pain. And the power of secrets: “Hairdressers and priests and doctors and Jesus Christ Himself are all the same,” he said. “They all hear the secrets and get the power. They’re blackmailers—every damn one.”

  He taught her about the power of knowledge. “Knowledge is power,” he said. “That’s lesson number one.”

  Midnight. Marie left Doctor John staring fixedly at the stars above his house and took dark back streets to Father Antoine’s cottage. She’d begun visiting the priest twice a week, seeing more of him than she had since her first week at school—for though her life was relatively calm, she felt more need of him than ever.

  She needed his consolation. He was the only one to whom she could still talk about Jacques, about her loneliness, about the white nights when daggers reopened old wounds. Father Antoine never ridiculed her like Doctor John, but actually encouraged her mourning in the belief that gloom and chastity were the perfect clothes for a deserted wife to wear.

  More than consolation, she needed his faith. Her Catholic upbringing had left its mark. “If anyone’s going to hell,” she often thought, “it’s Doctor John and his service.”

  “Keep one altar for God and one for the devil and say the same prayers to both, just in case,” was Doctor John’s policy. But Marie suspected him of saying extra prayers at the devil’s altar. So she visited Father Antoine to make sure that she was giving equal time to God.

  At last Father Antoine was doing just what he thought he’d done in Marie’s childhood. He was saving her soul. But now Father Antoine couldn’t have cared less.

  At the age of sixty-six, he’d finally conceded his private race to save more souls than the Blessed Lord Jesus. Old age had mellowed him like the special wine reserved for Easter morning. The young fanatic who’d built torture chambers under the cathedral had been buried beneath a lifetime of experience. He’d outgrown his zeal and his hunger for worldly power. He’d run the Spanish Privy Council, the Louisiana government and several cloak-and-dagger missions to the Mexican territories. He’d left his stamp on the American Catholic church and on the meddling American bishops who’d tried to interfere.

  Having come to regard himself as something of a holy man, Father Antoine did just what a holy man was supposed to do—he retired to his cottage to read the Bible and think holy thoughts. That was where Marie found him late at night. And that was where their old friendship was resurrected.

  Not only resurrected—but revived. Father Antoine was pleased by the way Marie had transcended her bad blood, touched by the intensity with which she kept her husband’s memory alive, full of admiration for her thriving hairdressing business. Of course he made her say three Hail Marys for the sin of having stolen Sister Delilah’s business but later admitted that even Jesus had taught His disciples to recognize a golden opportunity. For the first time their exchanges progressed beyond sermons and confessions. Marie had the eerie feeling that hairdressing had given her a confessor’s perspective, so that they could finally communicate like members of the same order.

  They talked about God, Jesus and the Holy Ghost, angels and devils, saints and martyrs, sin, salvation and damnation. Now when they talked about Adam and Eve, Father Antoine wasn’t telling Bible stories and Marie wasn’t countering with Marie Saloppe’s esoteric legends. Now they talked destiny and free will.

  “What I still don’t understand,” said Marie, “is why God sent the snake if He knew Adam and Eve would fall.”

  “Maybe He didn’t really believe it would happen,” said Father Antoine, surprised to hear himself sounding like a full-blown heretic. “Or maybe He knew it must.”

  “Poor Mother Therese,” said Marie one night, crossing herself for the nun who’d been called to Jesus in the last hours of the ’ 19 epidemic. “I remember her telling us that the fourth circle of hell was a giant cesspool brimming with excrement. I used to go home and stare down the privy hole looking for souls in torment.”

  “When I was in the seminary,” said Father Antoine, “they taught us that the demons of the fourth circle spent eternity pounding one spike through each sinner’s head. That’s why I arrived in New Orleans with trunks full of thumbscrews—I was determinted to save the Louisiana heathens from an eternity of those slow spikes. Thank God the Good Lord knew better; thank God the governor wanted no part of my little Inquisition; thank God those soldiers came and shipped me off to Spain ...”

  “What did you do those five years in Spain?” asked Marie.

  “You know,” said Father Antoine, “there was a time when the ladies in this city believed I was an angel. Their men called me an ape. But I wasn’t an angel or an ape. Just a man—an ordinary man.”

  “That doesn’t answer my question,” said Marie.

  “Some questions don’t have answers,” said Father Antoine.

  “Is it true about Doctor John?” asked Father Antoine one night. “Can he really read your mind and tell you what you did two weeks ago Saturday night?” “He can’t read minds,” said Marie.

  “He’s just got inside information.”

  “Then you know him?”

  Marie kept her mouth shut. She couldn’t explain. She herself didn’t understand the attraction which drew her to Lepers’ Row to soak up Doctor John’s knowledge; nor the fear that he knew more than he wanted to teach—secret ways of making things happen, of making her do things; nor her respect for his knowledge and his ability to get what he wanted; nor even her contemptuous suspicion that she was smarter than Doctor John and would someday know much more. “No,” she said finally. “I don’t know him. Why?”

  “People talk. Catholics confess. And what they say is horrifying—the man’s an agent of the devil luring good Christian people away from the mother church. If I were forty years younger, I’d go after him with some tight thumbscrews and an iron rack. Keep away from men like that, Marie. They’re deadlier than cobras. They’ll drag you down. They’ll drown your spirit like a flood.”

  “I don’t need to worry, Father,” said Marie. “You’re my ark.” And she remembered Mother Therese’s favorite lesson—an image of Jesus in a boat, extending his beautiful hands to pull drowning sinners from the boiling excremental sea.

  CHAPTER XVII

  THE FIRST PART of the story belonged to the old man who was cured of forgetfulness.

  One Sunday afternoon Doctor John walked into Congo Square, which was empty except for some children playing in the dirt, two young couples with baby-strollers parked beneath the sycamores, and an ancient ex-slave whose feeble old brain couldn’t remember his own name from one minute to the next, so that his master had freed him for being more expense than he was
worth.

  As the seven-foot black hoodoo man strolled toward them, the children—whose mothers had warned them Doctor John would come get them if they played in the dirt one more time—shrieked and ran. Then he began to whistle—no ordinary noodling whistle, but an earsplit-ting melody with a sly lilting rhythm.

  The young couples fired off a volley of icy looks. Finally one of the men went over and complained. But Doctor John kept whistling. The outraged father strode back, gathered his wife and friends, and wheeled his stroller out of the square.

  It was then, according to the old man, that everything started. Five black men appeared out of nowhere, slapping conga drums in time to Doctor John’s tune. Some flute players took up the melody. A woman shook two tambourines. Gradually the dancers assembled—hundreds of black and yellow folks in white church clothes, moving like sleepwalkers in the afternoon sun. All this agitated the old man so badly that he recovered an image lost in childhood—ants swarming on a glob of honey at a sunlit plantation garden party. By the time the image faded back behind the misty veil, Congo Square was so crowded he couldn’t leave.

  So he stayed to watch Doctor John lead the two lines of dancers—the gracefully circling women, the high-jumping men. Eventually he forgot himself and started dancing in place, jigging to the drumbeat.

  He was stunned when the music and dancing suddenly stopped and Doctor John walked straight toward him through the crowd. Doctor John bent down and stared into his eyes. The old man smelled perfume and wondered where he’d seen that black tattooed face before.

  “I know who you are,” said Doctor John in a deep soothing voice. “I know why you’re here. I know what’s troubling you. I know what your pain is. I know you’re forgetful.”

  “That’s the truth,” nodded the old man. “If you know my name that’s one up on me.”

  “All that will change,” said Doctor John. “I’ll heal you with my magic. My power will cure you. Your pain will end. From this day on you’ll remember everything.”

  Doctor John laid one hand on the old man’s grizzled head, then turned and walked away. The dancing resumed and lasted till dawn.

  Doctor John was right. From that night on, the exslave—whose name was Jupiter Williams—remembered everything. He remembered what happened on the night after the voodoo dance: He and his ex-master recognized each other on the street. He remembered that his ex-master was so delighted by his recovery that he pressed him back into service with a hundred lashes for a hundred sins Jupiter couldn’t remember—which were lost to him forever in mists beyond the bright light of that Sunday afternoon.

  The second part of the story belonged to the people of New Orleans.

  On the morning of Monday, November 13, a certain John Bayou, a.k.a. “Doctor John,” was arrested at the end of an all-night “voodoo dance” in Congo Square and arraigned before city court on charges of disorderly conduct, disturbing the peace, breaking curfew, conspiracy and sedition.

  The defendant, who listed his occupation as “businessman,” pleaded innocent before Judge Franklin “Snake Eyes” Carter, famous for his strictness, for hanging gamblers nabbed in street-comer craps games and for his special blood thirst for former slaves and free men of color.

  Judge Carter found John Bayou guilty on all counts and ordered him to Parish Prison for sentencing the next day. The courtroom was packed with Doctor John’s followers—many burst into tears. When they returned for the sentencing to find the courthouse draped with funeral bunting, it took fifteen armed marshals to convince them that the mourning wasn’t for Doctor John.

  Judge Carter had died suddenly during the night. At the coroner’s inquest, the judge’s tearful widow described how her husband—a chronic victim of heart congestion—was taken in his own bed.

  After a short recess in memory of the deceased. Doctor John was brought before Chief Justice Henry Morton, who sentenced him to one month’s probation and granted him a license to continue the dances in Congo Square, provided that the slaves obeyed the nine o’clock curfew.

  That Sunday Congo Square was jammed with musicians, dancers and ten thousand white people come for a look at the nigger hoodoo man who’d fixed Judge Franklin “Snake Eyes” Carter.

  The third part of the story belonged to Marie Laveau and AnnaLouise Carter, the judge’s widow, who’d been Marie’s customer since her first weeks in the hairdressing business.

  At her wedding, everyone had said AnnaLouise was young enough to be the judge’s daughter. But ten years had passed since then. No one said a thirty-year-old woman was young enough to be anyone’s daughter—except for AnnaLouise herself, who was always telling the judge why she naturally preferred the company of boys her own age.

  On the morning of Doctor John’s trial, Marie was darkening AnnaLouise’s roots with black coffee paste and AnnaLouise was complaining about the usual. “I can’t stand it anymore,” she said. “His flaky skin, his flabby old man’s belly pressing into me. You’d think at his age, in his condition, he’d have the decency to stop. But he’s on me every night.”

  Marie laughed. “There’s only one cure for old men,” she whispered. “Give them what they want ... I’ll tell you what I’ll do. I’ll fix your hair so nice the judge won’t be able to resist. Tonight give him what he wants—give him all of it. That’ll keep him quiet... And forget I told you.”

  “I’ve forgotten already,” said AnnaLouise.

  After the trial, Doctor John was so busy he kept sending messages postponing Marie’s weekly visits. So though she saw him every Sunday at the Congo Square dances, two months passed before he could keep a regular Monday-night appointment.

  Sweet Medicine answered the door in a long caftan encrusted with gold brocade. Diamond earrings flashed beneath her nest of blonde hair. “Come on in,” she said, kissing Marie’s cheek with her pale cold lips. “The Doctor’s been waiting on you for weeks.”

  Marie noticed the changes right away. The white Good Luck Candles had been replaced by an enormous crystal chandelier with tinted red globes like ripe plums. The shadows were no longer so thick—she could see five black women in pink silk and orange taffeta, playing with their babies on a wine-colored Persian carpet which seemed to have been slipped neatly under the clutter of household goods and magic objects.

  Bursting from the back room, Doctor John put his arm around Marie’s shoulders. The lace frills on his new shirt cuff brushed her cloak. “Miss Marie!” he cried. “Where have you been? Come on in now and have a hit on this Texas whiskey!”

  As he hustled her into the still-dark back room, Marie noticed he wasn’t wearing his smoked glasses. His red-rimmed eyes were'bright and friendly. “Now I know for sure,” he said, hugging her like a proud uncle. “Now I know you were really born with the gift. You’re finally learning to use it. You know what you’ve done for me. There’s no need my saying you’re the star of my service, the only one with the talent, the only one I’m teaching—”

  “The only one who could get rid of ‘Snake Eyes’ Carter for you,” she said.

  “There’s no need thanking you.” He sat down without missing a beat. “But just the same, tonight I’m thanking you. Tonight I’m teaching you a special lesson. Tonight I’m teaching you about the power of snakes.

  “Snakes have magic power. They see everything. Their eyes stay open even when they sleep. They can see for miles and their minds stay clear.

  “Now you know about the snake in the Garden of Eden, that big granddaddy who really tried giving his knowledge to Adam and Eve if they hadn’t been too dumb to take it. You know about the viper on St. Paul’s hand, the five-headed serpent coming to John the Revelator out of the sky, the snake teaching King Solomon the language of snakes and all his fancy wisdom. You know about the magic staff Jethro the hoodoo man gave Moses and that duel of magic between Moses and the pharoah’s magician’s, when the magicians turned their staffs into snakes and Moses turned Jethro’s staff into a snake which gobbled up all the others in one mouthful.

&
nbsp; “Snakes have been running this world since the year one. They always were the smartest—so smart they keep it to themselves. Maybe you didn’t know Cleopatra’s blood sister was a pretty little snake with her own room at the palace. Whenever Cleopatra wanted good advice she’d ask her snake, ‘What should I do this time?’ Until one day it said, ‘Cleopatra, honey, this time you better die.’

  “Alexander the Great’s daddy was a snake—that’s how it got into the Egyptian line. Damballah’s the bearded snake that made the world. And right now in South America there’s a big mama snake named Anaconda ruling the Amazon jungle for a million miles around.

  “The snakes are our ancestors. They knew it all from the start. Watch the snakes and they’ll show you ...”

  Reaching behind him, Doctor John produced a wooden cane carved like a cobra, exactly like his own only thinner, with smaller diamonds down its back and a smaller ruby in its forehead. He lifted the cane up high and twirled it like a drum major in a widening series of figure eights. He tapped it on the table, stood it on end. Finally he dropped it on the ground.

  Slowly the wooden staff softened, thickened, lengthened, turned bright green . . . Writhing in the center of Doctor John’s back room was a ten-foot emerald-green cobra with a ruby in its forehead, a diamond spine and the symbols of the loas painted on its belly.

  “Miss Marie Laveau, I’d like you to meet Mojo Hand.” Doctor John pointed to the snake. “It’s yours. I’m giving it to you like Jethro gave it to Moses, like it’s been passed down from magician to magician for generations. I’m giving it to you as a token of my appreciation.

  “Listen to this snake. Listen to what it tells you. ’Cause Mojo Hand won’t ever tell you nothing but the real magic, the real power, the Lord’s own truth.”