Russell Banks - Continental Drift

At last they had made a huge heap of offerings before the altar, and they stopped, as if to catch their breath before commencing the next stage of the rite, while the drums kept up the steady, deep pounding and the singing went on independently, rising in pitch, tempo and volume like a tide, slowly, almost imperceptibly and quite as if it could go on rising forever, until the entire earth were covered by the sea.

The mambo , a full-breasted woman with high cheekbones and deep-set eyes, an attractive but fierce-looking middle-aged woman, shook her calabash rattle, the asson , and suddenly she was rushing about the peristyle, darting in and out of the crowd, giving orders, ringing a tiny brass bell in people’s faces, moving them, organizing them, shaping the mixed, affable, passive crowd of men and women into a coherent torce. The eight men by the barque , as one, lifted the raft from the ground to their shoulders. A number of women hefted the baskets and bowls at the foot of the altar, passed them back until they had all been taken away, and a slender, attractive woman in white untied the blue ram and led him away from the centerpole. The drummers rose, and still beating on their large instruments, began to leave the peristyle, followed by the houngenikon , who sang now with great joy.

The crowd parted, and the procession began, with people joining in as it passed, until the crowd had become the procession, a river of people singing and dancing, waving banners, carrying baskets of food and flowers, and the huge, brightly decorated barque as if it were a raft floating downstream toward the sea. Vanise and Charles and the boy Claude merged with the crowd and floated with it, as the people made their way along the pathway through the trees, down the length of the gorge between the ridges to where the ground leveled.

Soon they had departed from the Barrens, had crossed the road and were passing through a village of huts on the other side, where still more people came out and joined them. The sky had grayed slightly in the east, and a breeze off the sea drifted toward them. As the sky lightened, the palm trees went from black silhouettes against it to gray to green, when finally the crowd rounded a turn in the broad, sandy trail beyond the village and came to the sea, silvery and smooth in the dawn light. The waves lapped placidly at the spit of sand that ran out from the point, and fifty yards beyond the spit, anchored in shallow water, was the boat, a low turtler, broad-beamed, with a short, dark red, single sail.

The people sang and danced as they marched, clanging on the steel ogan , blowing the conch shell, the L: lambi , as if it were Gabriel’s horn, beating the assator and the tambour drums with joyous fury, and when they reached the water, as if it were not there, as if there were no firmament between the firmaments, they strode on, moving directly into the sea, a black river foaming and churning down from a mountaintop to the shore and merging with the sea. Soon they were wading in chest-high water, the offerings, drums, goat, asson and barque held high as they neared the boat, and when they reached the boat, the men carrying the barque of Agwé steadied themselves a second and then slid it up and over the rail into the boat and clambered aboard, with the rest following helter-skelter, grabbing at rails on all sides, clinging and swinging themselves up and over, scrambling into the boat, even climbing the masts, until it seemed the boat would capsize from the load. And still there were stragglers trying to come aboard, among them Claude and Vanise and Charles. Vanise held her baby up above her head, as if he were an offering to Agwé, and a man took him from her. She reached out her hand, and another man grabbed it and hauled her aboard. Claude grabbed at the gunwale, and at that moment, someone on the other side hauled up the anchor and the boat shifted to starboard, and Claude lost his hold and fell back into the sea. Gasping, his mouth filling with salty water, flailing wildly, Claude cried out in terror, Vanise! Oh, Vanise, moin la! Moin la ! for he could not swim, and he knew that he was supposed to drown now, because of Grabow. It was Grabow himself pulling him down and shoving the crowded boat away from his grasp, Grabow’s blood-soaked hands yanking at Claude’s legs, Grabow and all the Petro loas in dark concert working this poor, frightened boy down, when suddenly his hand felt human fingers, and he tightened his hand around another and looked up into the bland, calm face of the mambo, a sweetly organized, mother’s face.

The woman pulled, and Claude came free of Grabow’s grasp and scrambled over the rail of the boat and fell into a mass of arms, legs, bowls of food, drums, goat, flowers, the huge, awkward barque. He ended in a crouched position facing the woman who had pulled him aboard, the mambo in the scarlet dress. She shook her asson at him and demanded in a fierce voice to know who he was, where did he come from, who was his family. I do not know you, she said coldly.

Claude Dorsinville, he said. I am Claude Dorsinville. His breath came in harsh patches and grabs, and he stammered that he had come in search of her, the mambo , had come with his aunt and her infant. He nodded in their direction, and the woman glanced over, quickly returning her gaze to the dripping, frightened boy before her.

You want a service , she said, you got to pay me, boy. Mézi lagen ou, mezi wanga ou . Your money is your charm.

I … I have money, Claude said, and he looked across at Vanise, who had retrieved her child and sat comfortably on the broad rail of the boat, which dipped and caught the morning wind, despite its great load, and was headed smartly across the spreading bay toward the open sea. The starboard rail, where Vanise sat with a dozen others, flashed along near the surface of the sea, sending a silvery spray into the air, blue-green jewels in the new sunlight.

Vanise! the boy called. Talk to her, and he nodded at the mambo. Tell her what you want! he pleaded.

Vanise looked at him as if she did not know him.

He understood. He possessed the money for the service, and he had promised it to her, and she was holding him to his promise. Grabow’s money, the fat roll of dollars that had come from his corpse, had come from the loas. It was blood money. The money he had earned from the Chinaman, the dozen wet dollars in his pocket, was to be given back to the loas. An even exchange. It was only fair.

He reached into his pocket and drew out the crumpled, sopped bills and passed them into the woman’s outstretched hand. She took the money, shoved it swiftly into her clothing, so fast he could not say where it had gone, it had simply disappeared, and she said to him, The Lord of the Sea will protect you.

No, her, he said, pointing at Vanise.

Her, then, the mambo said, and she moved away from Claude toward Vanise and began there to shake her asson over Vanise’s bowed head and to pray for her. Moin la avec asson. Asson c’est Bon Dieu qui bailie li avec la foi….

The boat was now a half mile or more from land. Down in its broad-beamed belly, the bounds were busily loading the barque with offerings, arranging the food, flowers, liquors and perfumes with respectful precision, sweating under the morning sun, which had risen into a cloudless sky. The houngenikon sang as loudly as ever, with the energy of someone discovering her voice anew, and the drummers beat on as if they had found lost drums only a moment before, and the mambo, apparently finished with Vanise, stood at the mast and waved about her head a pair of white chickens held by their feet and chanted and prayed to Agwé and his mistress Erzulie la Sirène. The passengers, awash with sweat from the heat, their bodies stilled by it, nevertheless sang along with the houngenikon , keeping up the joyous pilgrimage despite the heat, the work and discomfort, the long hours it was taking.