Marie Laveau

by Francine Prose

  “You learn fast,” said Bastile, always flattered by Marie’s rapt attention. “Right now you could pick up a sword for the first time and win a duel with any man in New Orleans.”

  “I don’t need a sword,” said Marie—who, after six months, was realizing that Bastile had been right from the start. He didn’t have much to teach her—nothing, in fact, which she couldn’t learn from the snake.

  Marie asked the snake to be her second. Late at night, while she stayed home trying to summon the spirits’ power, the snake was in her kitchen, practicing its own tricks.

  A week after Doctor John’s challenge, the snake requested a change in its menu.

  “What’s the trouble?” Marie laughed for the first time that week. “You sick of chicken and champagne? I wouldn’t mind somebody serving that up for me.”

  “Mice,” hissed the snake. “Live mice.”

  “There’s plenty of mice in this house. Help yourself.”

  So the snake began tracking mice—cornering them, staring them down, intimidating, feigning, thrusting and parrying until at last it stung its paralyzed prey, covered it with slime and sucked the meat from its bones. Marie knew the snake was preparing for the duel. At the same time it was teaching her. She watched, horrified and fascinated, and learned as much as she learned from Bastile Croquere.

  Marie and the snake grew closer, spent evenings deep in conversation. The cobra delivered long speeches full of encouragement and good advice.

  “Doctor John isassshowman,” it hissed. “Get your own show. Tricks. Magic. Surprise him with something he’s never seen.”

  “Where do I learn that?”

  “Magician,” whispered the snake.

  That year a new magician joined Serior Caetano’s Traveling Menagerie—a soft-spoken little man with a moustache as thick as his accent who billed himself as “The Astounding Avila.”

  For twenty years the Astounding Avila had worked carnivals and fairs throughout America. He never stayed with one show very long because he was always being fired.

  He knew hundreds of wonderful tricks. As a young man, he’d been apprenticed to the greatest magician in Lisbon, who’d taught him the Hands from Nowhere Trick, the Bonfire Trick, the Secret Messages in the Sky Trick, the Lightning-Struck Tower Trick—and of course a whole repertoire of card tricks, coin tricks, rabbit and hat tricks. So he’d come to America where no one had ever seen his master’s tricks, expecting an instant invitation to Broadway.

  But he couldn’t find a Georgia flea circus to hire him for more than one season.

  The trouble was the he acted like a man with no faith in his own tricks. He did them well, with quick graceful gestures. They always worked. Yet the audience’s attention inevitably wandered from his hands to his face, which bore the defeated look of a man who didn’t expect his tricks to work and didn’t care.

  Even children sensed his lack of faith. They sat still throughout his act, quiet and hostile as if at church. Afterwards they never tried to blackmail their parents into staying for another show, but jumped up and ran to the sword-swallower’s tent.

  So the Astounding Avila was happy to teach Marie his tricks, especially when she offered him three hundred dollars. “What do you desire to learn?” he asked. “Home entertainment? Card tricks?”

  “The fanciest tricks you’ve got,” said Marie. “But it’s got to be fast.”

  “I could teach you all my best tricks in two weeks,” said the magician with a resigned sigh. “Is that fast enough?”

  Every night for the next two weeks Marie visited the fair grounds after closing time. Carnival neighbors heard unearthly voices and saw multicolored flashes coming from the magician’s tent. But Avila’s reputation was so bad that no one ever bothered disrupting the lessons.

  Finally the magician took Marie’s money and shook her hand. “None of it will work,” he said, “unless you believe it’s magic. I myself know better—which is why I’m a failure.”

  “But why?” asked Marie. “These weeks I saw you do the most incredible tricks. I’ve never seen anyone—”

  “They’re not magic,” said the Astounding Avila. “They’re tricks. If I were really doing the things I pretend—now that would be magic!”

  The snake was more specific. “Don’t worry,” it told Marie. “He can’t hurt you even if he brings a gun. Just peel off a couple of my scales and chew them. No bullet can enter your body—you can feel them bounce off. Ask Makandal.”

  Marie shivered as the snake’s words revived the memory of her father’s duel. “Dueling’s a crazy man’s game,” she thought. “It never decides anything. Maybe I should give in, concede to Doctor John, give up my clients and leave town ...”

  Yet she kept on preparing for the duel, returning to Bastile Croquere, praying to the saints and loas, practicing her tricks. Because for the first time she understood what her parents and even the boys at the quadroon balls had somehow known:

  Duelers fight only when there’s no other choice.

  That year Marie Laveau became the voodoo queen of New Orleans.

  Some said her magic was never again so strong as when she first gave up hairdressing and sent her customers back to Sister Delilah, so she could devote all her time to voodoo.

  That was the year she got her style: peacock-feather capes, satins dyed like the rainbow’s spread, pearl-embroidered velvet, ropes of rough-cut gems. No one knew where she got her clothes, but they knew that anyone who could afford them was doing all right.

  That was the year she stopped wearing a kerchief and let her hair hang loose, the year she stopped whitening her eyelids with powder and began accentuating the redness with rouge. That was the year she grew five inches and became six feet tall.

  That year she led the voodoo dance in Congo Square every Sunday, introducing her famous snake dance, telling her clients that the snake whispered secrets in her ear. That year she fastened silver bells to its back to ring in time to the drums.

  Some said the dancing was never so fine as it was when Marie first learned to direct the musicians, to work the dancers up into a frenzy. It was then she learned to shout without raising her voice, to call the saints and loas by name.

  That year she performed a spectacular healing each week—cured the simpleminded Creole boy, the consumptive Irishman, the skinny Italian girl with the paralyzed leg. The healings became an indispensable part of the Sunday dances. People asked, “Whom did she cure this week?” just as they might have inquired about the stock market or the price of sugar.

  Some said Marie’s doctoring was never again so conscientious, that she never spent so much time with every client, listening to their cases as if each were the clue to some great mystery. Some said her power was never again so strong as it was that year she took the power from Doctor John, when she was working extra hard, still proving her worth.

  But the ones who said such things were generally ignored, dismissed as the kind who believe that everything used to be better in some other year.

  CHAPTER XXIV

  TONIGHT MOSES MEETS the pharoah’s magicians—an army of yellow weatherbeaten men with hooked noses, black Nubians dressed like princes—and Moses just a Hebrew shepherd with nothing but a wooden staff. The magicians throw their staffs to the floor where they turn into a nest of hissing vipers. And Moses, thanking God for making them choose that trick, taps Jethro’s staff on the indigo tiles and his old friend the snake appears with a hungry look in its eye.

  Tonight the Chinese sorcerers interrogate the old philosopher, who turns himself into a purple dragonfly which buzzes in their heads for eternity. Tonight judges pronounce sentence on a saint, and a beam of white light dazzles the courtroom, forcing the jury to its knees.

  Tonight the moon’s face is flushed with her own blood. Heat lightning flashes overhead. They say the red moon is a warning: Keep away from dark places. Evil spirits stalk the face of the earth. They say the heat lightning is a sign: John the Baptist is drinking, but he can’t get drunk and h
e’s madder than hell.

  Tonight there are no scientific explanations.

  Tonight is the night of storms and omens. The night before the flood. The eve of the Crucifixion. The night of the holy man’s birth. Tonight the devil quotes Scripture. “For lo,” he whispers, “envy is the evil eye.” Tonight the evil eye is everywhere.

  Tonight a great Siberian wolf escapes from Senor Caetano’s Traveling Menagerie, limps through the city like a big, tired dog all the way to Lake Ponchartrain, where it drowns in the cool water, dreaming of home on the frozen steppes.

  Tonight Marie Laveau fights a duel of magic with Doctor John.

  A thick hot mist hung over the bayou, sparkling in the moonlight like a curtain of red beads. Marie leaned against the wooden shack where a blind man named Franklin Midnight had lived until he'd died or vanished, the shack Jacques showed her years before on that day she was trying to remember now to calm herself. But her mind was fixed in the present by the fever-ache dampness in her shoulders, the fear in her stomach, the humid red air seeping beneath her eyelids.

  She opened her eyes to see an enormously tall man in a top hat and tails loping slowly toward her through the red mist. She recalled the red plum-globes on Doctor John’s chandelier. “He did it,” she thought. “Dyed the moon red with one of his spells.”

  Doctor John walked up and shook Marie’s hand. He was wearing his dark glasses. Their faces were blank. “Your second?” he asked.

  Marie pointed to the green glow beneath Franklin Midnight’s shack where the snake was watching and waiting. “Yours?”

  Doctor John took off his cloak and hung it over a branch. He lifted a thick strap from his shoulder and held up a huge leather pouch. Reaching into the pouch, he pulled out the largest parrot Marie had ever seen—bright orange with a green and yellow banded neck and a turquoise head. Doctor John set the parrot on his shoulder where it perched quietly, fixing Marie with its red eyes.

  “An old family friend,” said Doctor John. “The only kind of second worth having. Didn’t Bastile Croquere teach you that?”

  Marie swallowed nervously, unable to take her eyes off the parrot. “You’re just trying to scare me,” she said. “It couldn’t be the same one. Makandal’s parrot wouldn’t fight on your side.”

  “This ain’t no birdwatching trip,” snapped Doctor John. “We’re here to fight a duel and this bird’s my second. You ready to start?” Marie nodded.

  “Let’s take a minute for prayer.” Doctor John removed his hat and paused while the parrot flew down into the bushes behind him. “Especially since I don’t see no Spanish priest around to say it for us,” he added, smiling when Marie winced.

  Marie squeezed her eyes shut just as she’d done as a little girl convinced that the success of her prayer depended on the tightness of her eyes. “God help me,” she prayed. “Stand by me Jesus, Mary, Freda-Erzili, John the Baptist, Damballah, St. Joseph, St. Rita, St Anthony, Papa Legba, St. Peter, Baron Cemetery ...” Looking up, she saw Doctor John waiting for her to finish. She wondered whom he’d prayed to.

  “Let’s go,” he said. “You first. Let’s see what kind of weapon you’ve got.”

  Marie moved slowly, pacing herself, thankful now for the time she’d spent on her arsenal. At last, waving her arm with the confident flourish that the Astounding Avila had never mastered, she produced her weapon and her trophy: A bundle of golden hair, tied in the middle like a sheaf of bright wheat.

  Even in the red moonlight, Doctor John recognized the hair. “How did you get it?” he asked, stepping backward.

  “I guess you couldn’t read Sweet Medicine’s mind. I guess you didn’t know. Two weeks ago she came asking me to fix you so she could leave without a fight. She said she was sick of the lepers and those filthy cards and stones and magic garbage. She was bored with doing nothing, with the opium and the alcohol—she wanted to go home to Norway, live clean and work hard. I said I might be able to do it, but I needed her hair for the fix. Tonight, just before I left, she brought it. She said to tell you that you broke your promise to build her a nice house, but she still wishes you well. She said to tell you your business failing had nothing to do with her leaving. She said to say good-bye.”

  The life drained from Doctor John’s face. “That bitch,” he muttered. “I knew she’d fix me someday.” His shoulders slumped.

  “Now, now.” Exulting in his misery, Marie wondered if she’d already won. “This ain’t no lonely hearts’ club.”

  Immediately she realized she shouldn’t have said it. She’d made Doctor John so mad he straightened up, quivering with renewed energy. He stared at something over her shoulder.

  “Good trick,” he said, still gazing into the distance. “Now it’s time for me to show my weapon. Turn around. My big gun’s right behind you.”

  Marie turned and saw Jacques Paris standing in the clearing, smiling, holding a chunk of amber, a golden fish and a wooden plank, looking just as he had on that sunny day he’d brought her to Franklin Midnight’s shack. Tears rose into her throat. She approached him gingerly, stalking like a hunter. Closer, she saw he wasn’t an illusion—his body was solid and real.

  Jacques held his arms out until she was a few feet away. Then he laughed out loud and disappeared—evaporated in the damp air. Wheeling around, Marie saw Doctor John clapping his hands and congratulating himself. “Bad choice of weapons,” he said. “Looks like I picked a better one. Don’t you know the things we still want have more power than the things we’ve lost?”

  “Round one,” said Doctor John, flipping his hat on and squatting on his haunches to rest.

  The red moon rose higher.

  “Round two.” Refreshed, Doctor John stood up. “Let’s go. Let’s see some tricks. I want to be entertained.”

  “Tricks?”

  “Tricks. Let’s see what that third-rate magician taught you.”

  “All right.” Marie gave him Bastile Croquere’s most intimidating look. “I’ll show you. And you won’t be able to match it.” She sighed gratefully, the same sigh Moses uttered when he saw the Egyptian magicians throwing down their staffs. She was still shaking from that sight of Jacques. But she knew the tricks so well she could do them blindfolded and stall for enough time to recoup her strength. “All right,” she said. “I’ll show you something.”

  Two huge disembodied hands floated in midair. Spread from the wrists like wings, the hands circled the clearing, then fluttered to the ground where they set to work gathering branches. The left hand snapped its fingers. A bright spark lit the darkness.

  A bonfire blazed up past the treetops, flames burning in every rainbow color—purple, blue, green, yellow, orange, red to match the moon. The fire was full of voices and music, faces and figures, moving scenes like a magic lantern. Up in the sky, a pillar of flame spelled a message in fiery letters: GIVE UP NOW.

  Doctor John laughed. Then he turned his back, extended his arms before him, bowed his head and stood motionless for several minutes.

  Raindrops began to fall. First a light spattering, then bigger splashes, falling faster. A curtain of cold rain smashed against Marie’s face. The wind began to howl. Heat lightning cracked the sky directly overhead. Thunder shook the bayou.

  The storm was a cylindrical column, as neat and self-contained as Marie’s bonfire. The driving rain drenched Marie and extinguished the fire. But Doctor John—safe in the calm outside the storm-circle—stayed dry. “Good duel,” he said, smiling appreciatively. “Fire and water. The real thing.”

  Soaked and shivering, Marie cursed him. The storm washed her curses back into her own face. “All right,” she repeated, gritting her teeth. “I’ll show you.”

  On the spot where the fire had burned, a brick tower rose thirty feet into the rain. Doctor John looked up at the turreted structure; his mouth dropped open.

  The tower drew the lightning to itself—all the sky’s force gathered in one bolt. The tower split in the middle, bricks separating in slow motion. As the top half buckle
d and toppled, two figures fell from the windows. A man and woman floated down, their robes billowing in the wind like flower petals while bricks showered around them.

  Doctor John jumped back to avoid the falling debris. But the bricks, like the man and woman, never hit the ground. They vanished in midair, turning to puffs of colored smoke quickly dissolved by the rain. Doctor John raised his arm. The storm subsided as suddenly as it had begun. The red moon returned. Then he began to applaud.

  Happy despite her wet clothes, Marie thanked God and the Astounding Avila for the tricks he’d never had the heart to perform. “Round one,” she said.

  “Not so fast. Those wereTyour tricks. That Storm was just my audience participation. Now it’s my turn.”

  Once again he focused on the spot over Marie’s shoulder where he’d made Jacques appear. Afraid to look, Marie watched Doctor John until he pointed, forcing her around ...

  The clearing disappeared.

  “My God,” she thought. “He’s killed me and I’ve gone to heaven.”

  She floated through the air, no clouds sun nor moon, iust a clear expanse of blue ether. The fields below her were brighter than the gray-green bayou, iridescent like the snake, the color of spring grass, lush as a jungle. Flying lower, she found herself in a vast meadow surrounded by orange and pear trees in fruit and flower at once.

  The field was crowded with angels—radiant presences with golden wings. At one corner a band of angels played beautiful music—harps and psalteries, flutes, maracas, conga drums, trumpets, and trombones. Hovering angels formed a pyramid in the air. At the apex was a doorway covered by a thin gray veil.