Moonbath Read online

  The first time, I didn’t want it to be with Uncle Yvnel, but with a man who would arrive in a car to take me away from this village of peasants and take me away. Very far. A man like Jimmy…With his whole body, beautiful as a distant land, stretched out like a tall flame!

  But let’s return to these men and to these women who won’t fail to surround me. To this hurricane in the night. To my sharp curiosity for this man like never before.

  The mist is slow to lift. I am again in the fog of this fable. The cries of the stranger have moved away but they still disturb me.

  Something still had to happen in the twilight of the first day of the hurricane to explain my presence here, a grimace fixed on the cold sand. Waiting for the arrival of a whole village that will soon ask the same questions as me.

  I ache, and I am exhausted.

  The dawn slowly dissolves the heavy clouds, somber as mourning, that flooded the sky for almost three days. A very soft light finally veils the world. Rays of pink mother-of-pearl, almost orange in places, which graze my lacerated skin, my open wounds, and sink into me to the bone.

  13.

  Orvil would not have stood any new trace of Bonal, nor one of the visits so particular to the franginen forefather, let alone a fourth warning from Agwé. And then he had to chase away all the visions that assailed him, those dark messengers. No longer any question of postponing it under the pretext that the earth didn’t give anymore. That the sea hesitated to feed them, or even that the tax collectors at the Baudelet market or the choukèt larouzé* harassed them. The decision surrounding a service in honor of the gods weighed on Orvil. Especially since he had to take advantage of this time between the two hurricanes. He put himself to work for days. We did, too.

  Ermancia soon let go of the pinch in her chest that she felt when Orvil decided to sell the fatter of the two pigs. A week before the appointed date, Orvil left Léosthène and Fénelon to go to sea alone, and, in advance of Olmène, Ermancia, and Cilianise his niece, the daughter of Ilménèse, he took the road to the Baudelet market where he sold the pig and procured white fabric to refashion his hounsis robes.* Orvil invested a lot, a whole lot. Put in almost everything. Like us. And, like us, he did it without remorse. No thought holding him back. No worry about withholding something that had its rightful place with the Invisibles, the Spirits of the family. Despite the image of the rider that didn’t let up, Olmène helped Orvil, Ermancia, and Cilianise buy enough to nourish the divinities and honor them all. Those who required wet concoctions—orgeat syrup, rum, broth—also those who had a preference for the dry—corn, cassava flour, bananas and pork griot.* And, of course, Agwé, the guest of honor’s, favorite dishes.

  We pulled the weeds from all around the démembré,* swept and cleaned the badji.* And Nélius with his saw, his hammer and nails, built Agwé’s boat. Orvil hardly spoke that whole week, slept on the ground, ear against the chest of the battered earth as if to listen to the whispering of its heart. He kept himself from touching Ermancia and, three days before the date, began fasting. As though this abstinence and this retreat from the world would open a safer path to the gods, to the Ancestors and the divinities. Before all the grand services to the Ancestors, he thought again of Ilménèse, during the period of persecutions, helping her to bury all the objects of worship, asson, Ogou’s sacred machete, the paquets wanga*, Agwé’s blue handkerchief, and the drums. At night, they honored the lwas, the Invisibles, and the Mysteries in discrete, secret rituals. Hallucinated dancers risking the edicts of the diocese together to pass to the other side of the world. He thought of the crucifix that he had planted above the only door of his hut. The Breton priests, helped by the chief of police and the judge, distributed them whenever and wherever in all the lakous. Orvil had established his grand aura of a danti from having passed through these trials without flinching. Without falling, without giving up…

  The night of the service, at dusk, the Lafleur descendants who didn’t live in the village came down the rocky path that winds from the tops of the hills to Anse Bleue, each carrying an offering. Érilien preceded them. The dark hat of the sacristan contrasted with the white dresses of the women who surrounded him. A hat of black felt that dust and time had discolored concealed half of his face. The drums hadn’t yet started to sound, but suddenly the visitors sped up their pace, eager to find us in the démembré of the Lafleurs. They came to help us, lighten the load of our debts toward the gods, to ward off their own misfortunes. God being too far away and too busy, it was an affair between the Invisibles and us. When they arrived, Orvil interrupted the story of an extraordinary cock fight at the gaguère* in Roseaux to greet them. Cilianise took off her shoes and spanked the legs and buttocks of her little boy, who had just knocked over the bucket of water between her legs. Her newborn had finished breastfeeding and rolled his sleeping head on her shoulder. A mango between her teeth, she quickly closed up her blouse and devoured the fruit. Olmène took the opportunity to ask Léosthène whether he really had problems with Dorcélien, the local constable, who had cheated in the gaguère. Somebody had reported him. For some months, we had all observed Léosthène stomping around like a young colt. He looked at his father. He signaled for to him to be quiet and held the bottle of trempé out to him. Olmène leaned toward Yvnel, whom Orvil had cared for some days before, and touched his hair. A baby bawled in his swaddling clothes and the women passed him from hand to hand. Conversations were born and died amid the clamor of the drummers who beat on the tender skins and pulled on the chords to adjust them to the desired tone. We were all there. All the branches of the great Lafleur tree. And we were happy. Happy to remove ourselves from the hardness of the days, to dance with the gods in the dust and night.

  The whiteness of the robes drew out the ebony of our skin, the wise, ancient joy of these faces, like from the depths of the night. And we were already waiting for that darkness from outside, that dark mass of trees leaning against the darkness that would soon join the silences asleep deep within us. And everything would be awakened, our pain, our joys, our hungers, our angers.

  At the heart of Anse Bleue, in the bareness of a village, an altar was built. Above it, a white cloth. Lamps trembled in the four corners of the colonnade, throwing shadows over the small crowd assembled there to ask the gods to cast misfortune far away, to petrify it, and to come closer to them, to inhabit them. The hounsis kept coming and going, laden with baskets and bowls of flowers, cakes, candies, bananas, sweet potatoes, oranges, and rice, all sorts of food and bottles of alcohol, anis, trempé, and orgeat syrup that they, the women, placed before the central altar next to the wooden box—the barge of Agwé—that Nélius had built.

  Orvil finished tracing a vèvè* at the foot of the poto-mitan* and, without making any sign, sat on the chair at the foot of the altar for Agwé. Érilien started the Catholic prayers by pouring holy water, stolen from right under the nose of Father Bonin, into the dust, for the gods. He rang the bell all throughout priyé deyò.*

  The angel of the Lord tells Mary

  That she will conceive a Jesus Christ

  After Érilien, we in turn chanted the words Lord, Mary, Holy Spirit, in the aigus and the graves of our French accents, in the sacred sounds of a Christian litany. Orvil didn’t understand all the words, nor did we. But this mattered little to a God so far and inaccessible to chrétiens-vivants. After all, He and his saints had made us fail on this earth, and we only wanted that they open the way for us to Guinée.*

  Olmène didn’t let go of her father’s gaze, feeling in him the will, that night, to brave the world and, with the help of the gods, to take her destiny into his own hands. Orvil turned around and saw his daughter’s eyes fixed on him. He shouted at her with purpose. A matter of demanding obedience. To establish his authority: “Sing the couplets better. You should know them by now.” Olmène turned her gaze to the other side of the room and went on, with all of the strength of her lungs.

  Saint Philomena, virgin martyr

  Have mercy on
us

  Érilien rang the bell again, as though to call forth the nasaly aigus and the graves of our Creole. As other men and women joined in the song, Orvil’s voice slowly transformed. It was getting muffled at times, as though pulled from the back of the throat by the others.

  Three Our Fathers, three Hail Marys

  I believe in God

  Napé lapriyè pou Sin yo

  Napé lapriyè pou lwa yo

  We pray for the saints

  We pray for the lwas

  Orvil had seized the asson and shook it, quieting the sacristan’s bell and starting the guttural, nasal sounds of the Creole. He sang, and so did we, until the voices passed from the shadows into the light, from the body into the spirit. Until the night herself bent to give way to the African gods, who soon appeared.

  Anonsé zanj nan dlo

  La dosou miwa, law’é, law’é

  Announce that the angels are under the water

  Beneath the mirror, you will see, you will see

  Orélien and Fleurinor, Philogène’s sons, started to beat the tambour assòtòr,* without stopping. The music soon ran under our skin, awakening each tendon, each muscle. The songs, louder and louder, deeper and deeper, begged the Gods. Pardon us. Understand us. Love us. Punish us, too. But at least be there. From the bottle we passed mouth to mouth, there flowed a brownish liquid with the salty effluvia of seaweed, the acrid taste of the earth, the taste of the strength of women, and the sweat of men. It flowed in our veins in trembles, in breaths, in bursts, in brilliant lights. A force rose from the depths of our bodies to let us cross, bare soul and bare feet, the wall of the Mysteries.

  When he felt we were ready for the journey, Orvil took an enameled mug and bowed in the four directions that direct the world. To the East, À Table; to the West, D’abord; to the North, Olande; and to the South, Adonai. Ermancia, a candle in her right hand and a bottle in her left hand, also bowed four times, on her knees. Then Orvil asked Legba to open all the roads to the Invisibles.

  Onè la mézon é

  Onè la mézon é

  Papa Legba louvri baryè a antré

  Honor the house

  Honor the house

  Papa Legba open the gate and enter

  With the arrival of Legba, who straddled Ilménèse, we knew that the shadows had been tamed and that the night had fallen to its knees to welcome us. It seemed to us that, all around the clearing, hundreds of drums echoed. Split the air to open the passage to our lwas, our Mysteries, our angels, our saints. Our Invisibles were going to burn down the doors, cut down the walls, open up the windows, and, day and night, enter with all the colors of the rainbow, the moon and the sun, the punishments and the pardons, reason and madness.

  All of them, one after the other, answered our call. Loko took Léosthène by surprise and blew through his mouth. Strong. Stronger and stronger. Eyes bulging, rolling from right to left, Léosthène experienced his departure on a sailboat pulled by Loko Dewazé, Agazon Loko, and Boloko. All the Lokos nègres-vents straddled him with a brutality to match the violence of the rage that lived within him. To water down the impatience that was coiled in his eyes. While Loko prevailed over the waters, Léosthène wanted to drink the night and soak himself in stars. He noticed the smile of a woman from afar and advanced, magnetized by the firmament, pushed by a powerful breath. Loko possessed her like one possesses a lost soul and straddled her firmly for this ride in the great plains of the sky. The drums and the chants intoxicated him, pushed him each time stronger, further. He saw the wild images of unknown lands. There where the sun sparkled and chose him, Léosthène. There where he could tell life that he loved it.

  Orvil staggered as he tried to hold Léosthène in his arms to calm the storm. Ermancia wanted to entrust her serious and taciturn son to the sky. But, that night, Léosthène had the strength of a giant. He seemed to have the world at his fingertips. Still straddled by the nègres-vents, he sat on a straw chair in the middle of the colonnade and demanded to be fed. Fed well. He ate till he was full. We did, too. Then, slowly, Loko let go of Léosthène’s gaze and released his blood from the fire that burned him.

  Olmène, sleeping nearby, couldn’t keep herself from thinking that, in a house in the middle of a vast habitation behind the Morne Lavandou, a man was craving her. A man for whom she was wracked with curiosity. Wracked with a desire that sometimes cracked open the earth and pulled out flurries of flames.

  Then, after Zaka and Erzuli Dantò* straddled Érilien and Ermancia, it was Olmène, all of her, who was caught up in the great swell of the spirits who have always spoken of the madness of men and the bite of women. With the half-closed eyes of a courtesan, Erzuli Fréda Dahomey murmured, through the mouth of Olmène, words so sweet they smelled like basil, syllables ralé min nin vini,* vowels dowsed with perfumed water. Fréda pushed out little half-stifled cries, crafted from beauty, and started to moan out loud, loud like a woman in love. So strongly that she tripped over a large basin of water at the entrance of the colonnade, advancing with her swaying gait, her proud round hips. Erzuli Fréda, the queen, rose undisturbed, her dress sticking to her skin like seaweed. Orvil approached her, hitting the asson right before her face. Olmène then saw the colored, sparkling circles coming out one by one from the mouth, eyes, ears of her father. And, behind Orvil’s rainbow, stood the the man of the grand habitation, the man whom Olmène alone saw…The man of fortune, the man of pleasure, the man of power.

  The drums echoed even louder. The minutes stretched out, infinite, but this mattered little because our dreams needed long and patient strides to cross us and inhabit us. The candles and the petroleum lamps cast unreal, biblical shadows. Shadows of the fables of deep forests. Shadows of the fables of great savannas.

  When Gédé attacked Nélius, we were only half surprised. Because it’s not unusual for Gédé to come out of nowhere. Without an invitation. And, lecherous, extravagant, shameless, to laugh of our misfortunes. As though to remind us that between life and death everything passes fast. Very fast. Pleasures faster than misfortunes, but everything passes. And that we need to take everything, pleasure and dread, suffering and bliss. The joys and the sorrows. All of it. Because life and death hold hands. Because death and pleasure are sisters. And Gédé, that’s his way, he laughs at God, at the Grand Maître. And we were to laugh with him.

  We handed a cane to Nélius who, transfigured by Gédé, became as old as death, walking with difficulty and jutting over the pointy knees of an old man, but he wriggled his grouillades* suggestively. Dry movements, playful, lascivious, sexual, indicating that Gédé was also in the thick of life. With every blow, the small crowd gathered around them sang out. É yan é yan. Gédé matched his movements to the drums that abruptly broke, and broke again, the rhythm. Gédé aksed for clairin, seven chili-peppers, three chili-birds soaked in bitter orange juice, and extracted grievance after grievance, evoking penises as hard as elmwood and flaming hot vaginas. Emboldened by our laughs, Gédé unleashed himself and then contained himself. Again and again. Olmène looked at him as never before. Her curiosity for the man of the habitation wouldn’t stop growing. And then, all of us, we chased away Gédé with grand gestures. And the trespasser left as he had come, leaving Nélius breathless.

  Orvil and the hounsis split up the crowd, giving orders, hitting the asson as it echoed near our faces. We were no longer men and women, separate and dispersed, but a single body that turned, turned, and turned again. As though the regular and unaltered beating of the of the tambour assòtòr had made one single heart of us all, and the other drums had mixed us into one single body. Emotion was at its peak. Orvil traced the circles faster and faster and we followed him, and we wrapped up the world with him. We wrapped up the world with all our interrogations, all our suffering, all our expectations. And then, by way of turning, it seemed to us that our feet no longer touched the earth. That the dust that they had kicked up was a blanket of light. That the gods woke up in this light and we were bathing with them.
/>   Agwè e ou siyin lo`d

  Jou m angajé

  Ma rélé Agwé o

  Agwé you made an promise

  When I am in danger

  It’s you I call

  It was Orvil’s voice that started a chant. And Agwé, the guest of honor whom we all awaited, soon straddled him. We dressed him in a white shirt and we tied his head with Agwé’s blue cloth. Through the mouth of Orvil, Agwé spoke to all of us. Through the mouth of Orvil, Agwé sent messages, consoled some, reprimanded others because of their negligence. Walked with some who hadn’t felt his much longed-for goodness. And, against all odds, Orvil, our path to Agwé, cried for a long time. And we let him.

  At the end of the night, we put finishing touches on the wooden box behind the colonnade. We had loaded it full of all the provisions for Agwé’s journey. Ten men lifted this vessel together, on their shoulders, while four others carried a goat by the hooves. A strange procession took shape, like those on the mysterious routes of Guinée, like those on the sandy banks of the Old Testament. The fragile vessel slipped away silently over the water, dancing on the shimmering sparkles under the moon. And then, before our eyes, sank suddenly as though Agwé, taking us by surprise, snatched it with a firm grip nan zilé anba dlo, from his island under the waters. Orvil lingered for moment looking at the horizon. On his face, we all saw Agwé’s mask. Powerful. Austere. The mask of one who knows a great deal, a lot, about departures…And then the mask slowly cleared at daybreak. Very slowly.

  Life robs us of what we give a hundredfold to the gods. Life takes you and holds her hands tight around your neck and, when she thinks of suffocating you, that’s when you breath harder and harder. That’s when you twist yourself out from under her hold, without her even noticing it, and you stick out your tongue at life. A magnificent little prank. A liberating joy. The joy of a savage child.