Edwidge Danticat - Haiti Noir

“I wouldn’t run this up my nose.” Charlie caught Oliver’s eye. “It’s lime, I think.”

“What, quick lime?”

“No, no! They’re not trying to hurt you. It’s like chalk, basically. They use it for whitewash.” Charlie closed the envelope and flicked it across the table like a paper football. “What did you pay for it?”

“Twenty U.S. ”

“Right,” said Charlie. “Kind of suspiciously cheap, don’t you think?” He looked out the ring of local light toward the fires on the barricades. “I dunno, though, in ’97 I could have bought an assault rifle for that in the capital. Twenty dollars.”

“Ever wish you had?” Doctor Oliver managed to ask, from the depths of the chill now locked around his heart.

“Sometimes, yeah,” Charlie said. “But you know, if you’ve got one of those things, the odds go up somebody will get killed with it.” He turned his head back into the circle of lamplight. “Don’t feel so bad-you can try again tomorrow.”

“Why not?” Doctor Oliver said. “Why not feel bad?”

“What I love about this country is that magical thinking actually does work here. But it’s got to have a little something to work with, you see? Like Magloire-in better circumstances he’d be a completely honest person. As it is, he has to cut a corner sometimes.”

The drums had grown louder and there was chanting now too. Charlie Chapo turned his head into the wind that came constantly off the bay, flipped up his red bandanna, and knotted it tight to the nape of his neck. He’s going to leave me, Doctor Oliver thought. Charlie leaned toward him across the table.

“Understand, Magloire wanted you to have what you wanted. His desire is for you to have what you need. And for him to have what he needs and… so somebody has to spin straw into gold. If the charm had worked like he wanted it to, you’d come out with the coin instead of the dried leaf. As it is…” Standing, Charlie clapped Doctor Oliver on the shoulder. “Thanks for dinner. And the shower. And what the hell, it’s only twenty bucks.”

After his delivery to Doctor Oliver, Magloire returned to the street where his mother lived with Anise and his son. Anise sat on a low stool holding the child on her knee and stirring an iron pot which released a rich smell of diri kole ak pwa. Beyond, in the darkness, his mother roasted coffee; a rim of red coal outlined the bottom curve of her cauldron. His mouth watered at the smell of the rice and beans, but although Anise was using provisions he had provided, he did not mean to share the meal. By the grace of Doctor Oliver he had already eaten quite well once today and that was better than he often managed. Also, it was easy enough to unlock the cabinet and slip away with the second bag while Anise was busy over the food.

With the neck of the loose cloth bag in his hand, he stood on the Boulevard de la Mer and watched the bone-white moon rising from the sea. His thoughts scattered, to the point he was not completely in one of his minds or another. Some men along the breakwater were fishing, each with a hook and a line rolled around a chip of wood, and a couple of students had clustered under the electric lamps to study their homework. Behind and above him, beyond the lights of Doctor Oliver’s hotel perched on its eminence, the drumming tightened, intensified, and there was a lone voice singing.

Magloire turned from the waterfront and climbed an ascending street. This little pocket of the old colonial town compressed a number of disparate things together as if in the heel of a sock: a middle-sized hilltop church was quite near the onfò where the ceremony was, and not far from that was the fancy hotel for blan, and not far from that was the very modest quarter where Magloire’s mother lived with Anise and the grandchild. A ravine and the steepness of the mountain beyond it had forestalled any further construction to the north from colonial times until quite recently, but now Magloire was picking his way across the ravine toward the shantytown that had mushroomed on the other side.

He had built the little clay house for Douslina with his own hands and it was stronger than most others, made properly with raclage under the clay, a real tin roof, and a concrete floor. True, Douslina had demanded it when she reported herself pregnant by Magloire a second time, yet he was proud to have accomplished the house, and her children were healthier than the son Anise had given him. The sweetness of Lina was that dous he’d woven to her name, and now when she saw what he had brought and came to him, surrendering all her warm weight against his body, Magloire felt stronger and more intelligent and capable than before, and he felt that all the paradoxes of his life had for a moment integrated: the constant puckering sourness of Anise completing a sphere with this sweetness now.

One of Douslina’s hands explored the bag and another was interested in Magloire’s other possibilities (the children were asleep, she said), but he pulled a little away from her, muttering Fòk mwen ale as he turned his face toward the drumming, the choruses that answered the lead singer now- it was well to remain pure, or at least somewhat pure, until he had thanked the lwas for their generosity; furthermore, it would not be practical for Douslina to have another child, or anyone else Magloire was responsible to feed.

He kissed and left her somewhat regretfully, but that feeling faded as he grew nearer to the drums, merging with threads of other people going there. The moon was so bright it was easy enough to see his way, and in the ring of the onfò there was electric light now, along with a sound system that projected the voices out over the church and across the bay. The pathways to the central area were labyrinthine, twisting among houses pinned to the steep flank of the mountain, but Magloire’s movement became automatic with the drumming. He greeted his acquaintances without seeing them. On the periphery women sold fried food, soft drinks, raw cane rum, and even cold beer, but Magloire had no money left and did not care. Bleachers had been built around the oval floor of the onfò, which by day was sometimes used for cockfighting. Magloire slipped through and moved toward the altar, a crazy tall structure in tiers like a wedding cake and with many real layer cakes offered upon it, along with holy cards and novenas and Vodou passports and candles and padlocks and mouchwa tèt and grubby illegible bills of money and the less valuable hexagonal yellowish coins. Ven dola. In his comings and goings all day, Magloire had encountered various creditors who’d heard of his spending money in the market, whom he could only tell Demen, demen , tomorrow and tomorrow, as his last centime had been spent on the red candle he affixed now to the corner of the altar and the looped black string he set beside it: at once a gesture of gratitude for the ven dola he had received today and a sort of fox trap he hoped might snare him another ven dola tomorrow.

He could give way now. The whole walk to the onfò he had been feeling a pulse rising between the cords at the back of his neck, responding to the drumbeat, the red magic rising from the back of his brain toward the front so that soon the Maji Wouj would submerge him completely: this was good. As he moved toward the concentration of dancers under the drums, Magloire caught a glimpse of Charlie Chapo on the periphery-Charlie had in fact discarded his chapo and wore only his red mouchwa tèt, to show the spirits he courted the red magic too. He stood at the edge of the dancing, turning his torso lightly at the waist and letting his slack arms sway like cooked spaghetti. In the glance they exchanged, Magloire understood that Charlie Chapo desired what possessed Magloire and that he would not get it. Magloire went altogether under the drums.