Suddenly the drums stopped, the girls made an aisle leading to an altar door. It was so quiet one could almost identify the various species of serenading insects. R. asked for a cigarette, but I would not give it to him: who smokes in church? and Voodou after all is a real, very complex religion, one which is nevertheless frowned on by the Haitian bourgeoisie, who, when they are anything, are Catholics, and that is why, as a compromise you might think, so much Catholicism has seeped into Voodou: a picture of the Virgin Mary, for example, and an image of the Infant Jesus, who is represented sometimes by a homemade doll, will be found adorning the altar of almost any boungan.
And the primary functions of Voodou do not seem to me basically different from those of other religions: appeals to certain gods, symbols, appease the pressures of evil, man is weak but God protects him, there is magic abroad, the gods own it, they can provide a man’s wife with child or allow the sun to burn his crops, steal the breath from his body but reward him with a soul. In Voodou, however, there is no boundary between the countries of the living and the dead; the dead rise and walk among the living.
Now again the drums began, the voices of the girls spacing every slow, dramatic beat, and then the door to the altar opened: three boys came out, each carrying a plate filled with a different substance—ashes, cornmeal, black powder—and candles, like those for a birthday cake, burned in the center of these materials; balancing the plates on a rounded stone, the boys knelt facing the door.
The drums grew softer, there began a nervous rhythmical rattling, this made by a gourd encasing snake vertebrae, and swiftly, like a spirit that has unexpectedly solidified, the boungan glided airy as a bird through the column of girls and around the room, his feet, the ankles tinkling with silver bracelets, seeming not at all to touch the floor, and his loose silk scarlet robes rustling winglike. There was a caul of red velvet draped around his head, a pearl gleamed in his ear. Here and there he paused, like a hummingbird, and clasped the hands of a worshiper: he took mine, and I looked into his face, an amazing, androgynous face, beautiful, really, a troubling combination of blue-black skin and Caucasian features; he could not have been more than twenty, still, there was something about him unaccountably old, asleep, transfixed.
At last, taking a handful of cornmeal and ashes, he started drawing on the ground a verver; there are in Voodou hundreds of ververs, which are intricate, somewhat surrealist designs whose every detail has implications, and to execute them demands not only the sort of academic memory required of a pianist who would, say, play an entire program of Bach, but also unusually deft technique, artistry.
While the drums grew explosively fast he stooped about, deep in his art, like a red spider that, instead of silk, spills forth an ashy, ferocious web of crowns, crisscrosses, snakes, phallic shapes, eyes, fishtails. Then, the verver completed, he went back to the altar room, and reappeared wearing green, in his hands a great iron ball; as he stood there the ball caught fire, holy blue wrapping it like the atmospheres of earth; still carrying it, he fell to his knees, crawled, chants and shouts applauding him, and when the flames cooled he arose, stretching his unburned palms upward.
A tremor swept his body, as if an unknown wind passed through him, his eyes rolled into his skull, the spirit (god and demon) opened like a seed and flowered in his flesh: unsexed, unidentifiable, he gathered in his arms man and woman. Whoever his partner, they whirled over the snakes and eyes of the verver, mysteriously never quite disturbing them, and when he changed to another, the castoff partner flung himself, as it were, into infinity, tore his breast, screamed. And the young boungan, shining with sweat, his pearl earring loosened, ran smash into the farthest, unopened door: singing, crying, he beat his hands upon it until they left blood prints. It was as if he were a moth, the door the bright enormity of an electric bulb, for beyond this obstacle, immediately beyond it, there was magic: truth’s secret, pure peace. And if the door had opened, as it never will, would he have found it, this unobtainable? That he believed so is all that matters.
To EUROPE (1948)
Standing very still you could hear a harp. We climbed the wall, and there, among the burning rain-drenched flowers of the castle’s garden, sat four mysterious figures, a young man who thumbed a hand harp and three rusted old men who were dressed in patched-together black: how stark they were against the storm-green air. And they were eating figs, those Italian figs so fat the juice ran out of their mouths. At the garden’s edge lay the marble shore of Lago di Garda, its waters swarming in the wind, and I knew then I would be always afraid to swim there, for, like distortions beyond the beauty of ivy-glass, Gothic creatures must move in the depths of water so ominously clear. One of the old men tossed too far a fig peel, and a trio of swans, thus disturbed, rustled the reeds of the waterway.
D. jumped off the wall and gestured for me to join him; but I couldn’t, not quite then: because suddenly it was true and I wanted the trueness of it to last a moment longer—I could never feel it so absolutely again, even the movement of a leaf and it would be lost, precisely as a cough would forever ruin Tourel’s high note. And what was this truth? Only the truth of justification: a castle, swans and a boy with a harp, for all the world out of a childhood storybook—before the prince has entered or the witch has cast her spell.
It was right that I had gone to Europe, if only because I could look again with wonder. Past certain ages or certain wisdoms it is very difficult to look with wonder; it is best done when one is a child; after that, and if you are lucky, you will find a bridge of childhood and walk across it. Going to Europe was like that. It was a bridge of childhood, one that led over the seas and through the forests straight into my imagination’s earliest landscapes. One way or another I had gone to a good many places, from Mexico to Maine—and then to think I had to go all the way to Europe to go back to my hometown, my fire and room where stories and legends seemed always to live beyond the limits of our town. And that is where the legends were: in the harp, the castle, the rustling of the swans.
A rather mad bus ride that day had brought us from Venice to Sirmione, an enchanted, infinitesimal village on the tip of a peninsula jutting into Lago di Garda, bluest, saddest, most silent, most beautiful of Italian lakes. Had it not been for the gruesome circumstance of Lucia, I doubt that we should have left Venice. I was perfectly happy there, except of course that it is incredibly noisy: not ordinary city noise, but ceaseless argument of human voices, scudding oars, running feet. It was once suggested that Oscar Wilde retire there from the world. “And become a monument for tourists?” he asked.
It was an excellent advice, however, and others than Oscar have taken it: in the palazzos along the Grand Canal there are colonies of persons who haven’t shown themselves publicly in a number of decades. Most intriguing of these was a Swedish countess whose servants fetched fruit for her in a black gondola trimmed with silver bells; their tinkling made a music atmospheric but eerie. Still, Lucia so persecuted us we were forced to flee. A muscular girl, exceptionally tall for an Italian and smelling always of wretched condiment oils, she was the leader of a band of juvenile gangsters, displaced roaming youths who had flocked north for the Venetian season. They could be delightful, some of them, even though they sold cigarettes that contained more hay than tobacco, even though they would short-circuit you on a currency exchange. The business with Lucia began one day in the Piazza San Marco.
She came up and asked us for a cigarette; whereupon D., whose heart doesn’t know that we are off the gold standard, gave her a whole package of Chesterfields. Never were two people more completely adopted. Which at first was quite pleasant; Lucia shadowed us wherever we went, abundantly giving us the benefits of her wisdom and protection. But there were frequent embarrassments; for one thing, we were always being turned out of the more elegant shops because of her overwrought haggling with the proprietors; then, too, she was so excessively jealous that it was impossible for us to have any contact with anyone else whatever: we chanced once to meet in the piazza
