Russell Banks - Continental Drift

South of the road beyond Elizabeth Town and behind the thicket of small, thorny trees and bushes, the land slopes down to the sea, and set in sandy soil among the thatch palms, invisible from the road and accessible only by means of winding, overgrown trails, are crowded settlements of shacks and shanties built of driftwood and cast-off iron and plastic from the villages and towns nearby. Pigs, chickens and goats wander the sandy pathways, skinny yellow dogs sleep in the shade and naked children play in doorways or in the yards, while idle, hungry men and women lean on the sills of open windows and stare out at the sea.

Usually, no more than one person in a large family, as often a woman as a man, a child as an adult, has been able to find work in the hotels, and this person with his few dollars a week supports the rest and bears their envy and their constant, malicious attempts to rob and cheat him. Often, if the person is a man, he drinks too much clairin, that cheap, clear, hundred-fifty-proof rum sold in bottles without labels in the village shops and kitchens, and he smokes too much marijuana, and he broods day and night on his fate, contemplating the hopelessness of his situation, until, finding himself provoked by a trivial affront, he either cuts someone with a knife or machete or is himself cut and ends up in the hospital and then in jail or ends up dead. Or else he turns to voudon and the loas, les Invisibles and les Morts , the universal spirit world from which he can draw solace and the strength of powerful allies and the sense to continue with his life.

If the person is a woman, she may not drink as much rum or smoke as much marijuana, but she, too, will brood fatalistically day and night on the difficulties of her life, its stunted, thwarted shape, and she, too, will often fall helplessly into an explosive kind of depression that can be detonated into crazed violence by an idle, careless spark, by gossip, petty thievery, a misbehaving child, a wayward man. And so she, too, in order to save herself, turns to voudon, spends her nights at the hounfor in prayer and song, gives herself over to the guidance of ritual and the superior, trained knowledge of a mambo or houngan , feeds the loas and lets herself be mounted by Papa Legba, Agwé, Ogoun and Erzulie, dances the congo dance and the yanvalon dos-bas and connects her sad, suffering moment on earth to universal time, ties the stingy ground she stands on to the huge, fecund continent of Africa, makes an impoverished, illiterate black woman’s troubles the pressing concerns of the gods.

Even before they left the road for the rocky pathway that led into the Barrens, Claude and Vanise, with Charles on her hip, heard the drums, a rapid, high-pitched, rattling sound undercut by the throb of the assator, the huge bass drum with the righteous voice of an ancient father. It was dark, very late now, and Claude, brushing back low branches and thorny macca bushes with his machete, led his aunt by the hand over the limestone outcropping and roots that crossed the path.

The sound of the drums excited and comforted them, and they quickened their pace uphill through the brush to the pinewoods, where the sound traveled more easily and where they could make out the clang of the metal ogan and then the high, chanting voice of a houngenikon , the woman who leads the singing. A moon was on their left, full and snow white, the velvety, deep blue sky splashed with stars, and they could see their shadows on the ground, small, hunched-over companions running alongside them toward the sound of the drums and the singing, as urgent and thrilled and deeply lonely as they. When they rounded the top of the low, scrubby hill where the land fell away to a dark, brush-filled gorge below, they heard the hoot of a conch shell, long, trembling calls as old as the human species’ desire to signal its presence to itself, as old as solitude and fear, and their chests filled with light.

Claude hurried on, scrambling down toward the darkness of the gorge; Vanise halted for a second a ways behind him. Listen, she said, and Claude stood still. The conch cried out, stopped, fluttered and cried again, a musical instrument making private speech public. It’s a service for Agwé, Vanise whispered.

Your mait’-tête , Claude said.

Yes. How far now?

Not far. In the trees there, he said, pointing toward the dark end of the gorge, where two moonlit ridges came together as if clasping hands above the leafless, yellow-blossomed branches of a tall wildcotton tree surrounded by darker, denser, lower trees, almond and mahogany, that hid the ground from view. The hounfor is there, for the société , he said.

It’s all right, then?

Yes. We are all from Haiti. And we have money for the mambo to make a service .

You know them, Claude?

A few … some. I work for the Chinaman, who knows them all. But I have not been here to the hounfor before. The old man told me it was here. François, who works for the Chinaman also, he said. He turned away and resumed descending to the gorge.

Vanise shifted her child to her other hip and followed.

There was a broad footpath at the bottom that snaked in darkness through the dense brush, and the drums and singing and the steady, warbling cries of the conch shell grew louder and sharper as they made their way over roots and stones, drawing them forward and out of themselves, until soon they were walking faster, almost running, and then suddenly they were free of the darkness and stood at the edge of a large crowd of people in a clearing, men and women and a few children, most of them dressed in white, their black faces large and open and sweating cheerfully as they chatted, danced, watched and argued and sometimes moved in and out of the dense center of the crowd, where the woodpole-and-thatch peristyle itself, the temple for Agwé, could be seen.

Several Coleman lanterns glowed phosphorus white beneath the roof of the peristyle, casting long shadows over the crowd, while the mambo, in a scarlet satin dress, and her assistants, young women wearing simple white dresses, passed back and forth with baskets and bowls of flowers, cakes, pigeons, bananas, yams, oranges, rice, many kinds of food and bottles of liquor, which they placed gently before the center altar, a long, canopied table covered with white cloth. Off to one side, three lean men, like athletes, worked their drums, while the houngenikon, a gaunt, tall, aged woman, sang and chanted, and the crowd around her picked up the songs and chants and enlarged, elaborated and amplified them, as more and more men and women emerged from the darkness and underbrush that surrounded the peristyle and joined in.

Between the centerpost of the peristyle and the altar table, a large straw mat had been laid out on the ground, and clean, white, embroidered sheets and pillows had been placed so as to make a wide bed for Agwé and his mistress Erzulie, with roses at the foot, perfume near the pillows and a pink, curling conch shell at the center. Tied to the centerpost stood a ram goat, its long, silky hair dyed indigo blue, its yellow eyes gently tranquil. At the right, beyond the altar table, where the mambo and her assistants brought forth the offerings to Agwé, was a large, square, boxlike structure with flat, wide-railed sides, Agwé’s barque, a raft the size of a small room, made of wood and painted bright blue with elaborate floral decorations and vevers covering the sides and rails — the mermaid that signified the presence of Erzulie la Sirène, the snakes and stars for Damballah, Ogoun’s crossed banners, the scarlet heart of la Maitresse, the crab for Agassou, the fish for St. Ulrique. Set among these designs, in holes in the rail, were vases filled with cut flowers, liquors and perfumes. And arranged carefully around the edge of the barque itself were eight men standing two to a side, as if waiting for a signal from the mambo , who ignored them, passing them by as she and the young houncis bustled back and forth with their loaded baskets, pots and bowls.