Lawrence Block - Enough Rope

“Casual,” Donnelly said, approvingly.

They took two cars and parked side by side at the entrance to Atuele’s compound. Inside, rows of benches were set up to accommodate perhaps three dozen Africans, ranging from very young to very old. Children were free to run around and play in the dirt, although most of them sat attentively beside their parents. Most of the Africans wore traditional garb, and all but a few were barefoot.

To the side of the benches ranged half a dozen mismatched armchairs with cushioned bottoms. Two of these were occupied by a pair of sharp-featured angular ladies who could have been sisters. They spoke to each other in what sounded a little like German and a little like Dutch. Hilliard guessed that they were Belgian, and that the language was Flemish. A third chair held a fat red-faced Australian whose name was Farquahar. Hilliard and Donnelly each took a chair. The sixth chair remained vacant.

At the front, off to one side, six drummers had already begun playing. The rhythm they laid down was quite complicated, and unvarying. Hilliard watched them for a while, then looked over at Atuele, who was sitting in an armchair and chatting with a black woman in a white robe. He was smoking a cigarette.

“For a spiritual guy,” Hilliard said, “he sure smokes a lot.”

“He has a taste for good scotch, too,” Farquahar said. “Puts a lot of it away, though you won’t see him drink tonight. Says alcohol and tobacco help keep him grounded.”

“You’ve been here before?”

“Oh, I’m an old hand,” Farquahar said. “I’m here every month or so. Don’t always have a personal ceremony, but I come just the same. He’s one of a kind, is our Atuele.”

“Really.”

“How old do you think he is?”

Hilliard hadn’t really thought about it. It was hard to tell with Africans. “I don’t know,” he said. “Twenty-eight?”

“You’d say that, wouldn’t you? He’s my age exactly and I’m forty-two. And he drinks like a fish and smokes like a chimney. Makes you think, doesn’t it?”

One of thegirls who’d assisted at the old man’s ceremony collected money from Hilliard and Donnelly and the Belgian ladies. Then Atuele came over and gave each of the four a dose of an herbal preparation. Farquahar, who was not having a ceremony this evening, did not get an herb to eat. Hilliard’s portion was a lump the size of a pigeon’s egg, and it did taste much as Donnelly had described it. Lawn clippings left in a pile for a few days, with an aftertaste of something else. Dirt, say.

He sat with it on his tongue like a communion wafer, wondering if he was supposed to chew it. Tasty, he thought, and he considered voicing the thought to either Donnelly or Farquahar, but something told him not to say anything to anyone from this point on but to be silent and let this happen, whatever it was. He chewed the stuff and swallowed it, and if anything the taste got worse the more you chewed it, but he had no trouble getting it down.

He waited for it to hit him.

Nothing happened. Meanwhile, though, the drumming was beginning to have an effect on a couple of the women in the crowd. Several of them had risen from the benches and were standing near the drummers, shuffling their feet to the intricate beat.

Then one of them went into an altered state. It happened quite suddenly. Her movements became jerky, almost spastic, and her eyes rolled up into her head, and she danced with great authority, her whole body taken over by the dance. She made her way throughout the assembly, pausing now and then in front of someone. The person approached would extend a hand, palm up, and she would slap palms forcefully before dancing on.

The people whose palms were slapped mostly stayed where they were and went on as before, but periodically the slappee would be immediately taken over by whatever was in possession of the dancer. Then he or she — it was mostly women, but not exclusively so — he or she would rise and go through the same sort of fitful gyrations as the original dancer, and would soon be approaching others and slapping their palms.

Like vampires making new vampires, Hilliard thought.

One woman, eyes rolling, brow dripping sweat, danced over to the row of armchairs. Hilliard at once hoped and feared he’d get his palm slapped. Instead it was Donnelly she approached, Donnelly whose palm received her slap. Hilliard fancied that electricity flowed from the woman into the man beside him, but Donnelly did not react. He went on sitting there.

Meanwhile, Atuele had taken one of the Belgian women over to the drummers. He had her holding a white metal basin on top of her head. A group of Africans were dancing around her, dancing at her, it seemed to Hilliard. The woman just stood there balancing the dishpan on her head and looking uncomfortable about it.

Her companion, Hilliard saw, was dancing by herself, shuffling her feet.

Another dancer approached. She went down the row, a dynamo of whatever energy the dance generated, and she slapped palms with Donnelly, with Hilliard, with Farquahar. Donnelly received the slap as he’d received the first. Hilliard felt something, felt energy leap from the dancer into his hand and up his arm. It was like getting an electrical shock, and yet it wasn’t.

Donnelly was on his feet now. He was not dancing like the Africans, he was sort of stomping in a rhythm all his own, and Hilliard looked at him and thought how irremediably white the man was.

What, he wondered, was he doing here? What were any of them doing here? Besides having a grand cross-cultural experience, something to wow them with next time he got Stateside, what in God’s name was he doing here?

Farquahar was up, dancing. Bouncing around like a man possessed, or at least like a man determined to appear possessed. The bastard hadn’t even paid for a private ceremony and here he was caught up in something, or at any rate uninhibited enough to pretend to be, while Hilliard himself was sitting here, unaffected by the gloppy lawn clippings, unaffected by the slapped palm, unaffected by the goddamned drums, unaffected by any damn thing, and four hundred dollars poorer for it.

Wasn’t he supposed to have a private ceremony, a ritual all his own? Wasn’t something supposed to happen? Maybe Atuele had forgotten him. Or maybe, because he had come here without a goal, he was not supposed to get anything. Maybe it was a great joke.

He got up and looked around for Atuele. A man danced over, behaving just as weirdly as the women, and slapped Hilliard’s palm, then held out his own palm. Hilliard slapped him back. The man danced away.

Hilliard, feeling foolish, began to shuffle his feet.

A little aftermidnight Hilliard had the thought that it was time to go home. He had danced for a while — he had no idea how long — and then he had returned to his chair. He had been sitting there lost in thought ever since. He could not recall what he had been thinking about, any more than he could remember a dream once he’d fully awakened from it.

He looked around. The drummers were still at it. They had been playing without interruption for five hours. A few people were dancing, but none were twitching as if possessed. The ones who had done that had not seemed to remain in trance for very long. They would go around slapping palms and spreading energy for ten frenzied minutes or so; then someone would lead them away, and later they’d return, dressed in clean white robes and much subdued.

The Belgian women were nowhere to be seen. Donnelly, too, was missing. Farquahar was up front chatting with Atuele. Both men were smoking, and drinking what Hilliard assumed was whiskey.

Time to go.

He got to his feet, swayed, before catching his balance. What was protocol? Did you shake hands with your host, thank your hostess? He took a last look around, then walked off toward where they’d left the cars.