Robert Stone - Bay of Souls

Michael nodded.

"All I can tell you," she said, "is my granny was never asked to leave a Pullman car in the southern United States." He looked at her solemnly. "Damn, Michael," she said, "John-Paul used to get a laugh with that."

She told him that she expected no trouble but that she would be carrying valuables home, and the political situation there was extremely volatile. Everyone who read the papers knew that.

"Also, my brother and his partner were in business with some people in South America and I don't know how hard they want to contest the final count. I'm not expecting violence or anything. I don't want to be unaccompanied."

He thought back to the tropical gargoyle guarding her on the Internet.

"We'll be arriving separately," she told him. "So there are a few things you have to remember."

That they were arriving separately was news to Michael.

"Why separately?"

"Oh, it fell out that way. They had a seat on the American flight to Rodney, so I put you on it. I think I may have a seat to All Saints Bay by way of Vieques." She took his hand. "Don't look so abandoned, poor baby. We'll fly back together. The thing is, I have to get there for my brother's rites."

"Funeral rites."

"No, the Catholic ceremonies are over. These are local. Masonic, sort of."

"Presumably I'll see something of you on the island."

She closed her eyes and did the anticipation of bliss.

"From Rodney you have a bus ride," she told him. "People are very poor. You're beyond their sympathy. Watch your bag every minute."

"I could rent a car."

"I wouldn't. Alone."

"Even in daytime?"

"A rogue will get you at the first pothole. A laid-off soldier with an expensive weapon. Take the bus or even an omni. It's not Haiti, but these days it provides a few bad moments. But we know that, eh?"

"Yes, we know that. I hope it's a pretty ride. Rainforest."

"A pretty ride," she repeated. "Yes."

"Of course I understand that the road might pass through a lot of local trouble this week…"

He realized that she was cutting him off.

"Let me tell you something, Michael. The Masonic rituals are island things. Local practices. They're not like anything you've ever experienced."

She lowered her voice and looked into his eyes.

"Let me tell you what people believe. They believe that the souls of people who died the year before are taken to a place under the sea called Guinee. After a year or so the souls are brought back from the sea. That's what our ceremony is for."

"All right," Michael said. The traditional nature of it all comforted him.

"My brother was a volatile, restless man. People believed he had special powers and that he could do wicked things."

"Did he? Do wicked things?"

"People believe that he gave my soul away. That he gave it away to an old woman called La Marinette."

"Your godmother."

"She lived centuries ago," Lara said. "I belong she. I belong to her." He was looking into her eyes as she spoke. "La Marinette," she repeated in a whisper. "She began the killing. She drew the first French blood."

"And you want your soul back."

"I have to ask John-Paul to give it back when we take his ti bon ange, his soul, from Guinee."

"Lara," he said slowly, "I think you have a perfectly good soul, quite intact."

"No," she said, "you're mistaken. You've never seen me. In a way."

"That can't be," Michael said. "Then everything between us would be illusion." When he said it, neither of them moved. He considered what he had said. At the base of it was a simple thought he did not dare to complete.

She held his eyes and covered his mouth with her fingers. "I am free to love. To love more. I love you beyond death, I swear."

"Beyond death isn't necessary."

"Maybe it is," she said.

"I got to believe you," Michael said, mocking them.

"That's something people say."

"Yes. I say it. Here I am."

"Truly?"

"Yes, truly."

"Look," she said, "that's all I can explain. Tell me you won't leave me now."

"You know," Michael said, "we were supposed to go diving down here. That was the original intent."

"Oh, yes," she said. "We will go diving the best. We'll dive the most beautiful reefs time has ever seen."

He thought it a strange way of putting it. But then, perhaps to illustrate time, he put her hand against his body, had it descend the wall of his belly.

Just then in the hotel room, the soft lights of the Old City visible in the window behind her, she seemed frail and anxious as he had never seen her. He felt a distant stirring of madness somewhere. Not Lara's necessarily. Nor his own. Not anyone's madness, maybe just a different arrangement of things over some horizon.

"All right," he said. "As long as we get to go diving."

"Oh yes."

Their telephone rang and after a moment's hesitation Lara answered it. She spoke to a woman in excited Spanish. With the woman still on the line she put her hand on Michael's knee.

"Michael, I can get a flight by way of Vieques if I leave this minute. It's one seat but I have to be there for the reclamation. You know why. I mustn't miss anything. Will you forgive me if I take it? Please?"

"Of course," he said. "Go ahead."

Back on the phone, she cheerfully disposed of Michael's future and hung up.

"And you're confirmed on the flight tomorrow to Rodney. Don't miss it."

"I haven't missed a plane or a bus or a train since I was eleven."

"Well, don't miss your bus in Rodney." She brushed his hair to one side. "It's going to be a shock after the Caribe Hilton. Don't forget to watch your bag."

"My bag would be a disappointment to marauders."

"Don't joke, my dear, because it is dangerous. Stay by the bus — there'll be a security guard there. Everything in Rodney is rent-a-cops. Don't try to be a sophisticated traveler, you'll be killed. When you get off — get off at the market in Chastenet. Go to a shop run by a man called the Factor. He's not a real official, but he can tell you where to find the Bay of Saints Hotel. Most people are sweet. When you get to the hotel, stay there."

"All right," he said. "I guess I've got it."

"No," she said, "you haven't understood what I've told you. I can see that you haven't."

"Do you mean about the bus? You were clear enough."

"I don't mean about the bus. I mean the other things. You don't understand a word I'm telling you."

"It's not my world, Lara."

"And it would be easy for you to go home. To leave me here and go back to… everything. But you must come with me."

He tried to consider everything. Everything seemed lost, traded for something rich and bright, a deeper darkness, alien light, dangerously insubstantial.

"Yes, I'll come." He felt as though he were lying; at the same time he knew he would follow her. "Of course I will."

FROM THE VERANDA, Lara could see across the high walls studded with spikes of many-colored glass that enclosed her family's house. The view was one she remembered from childhood: the sky, the blue shades of the bay, the mountains beyond. That morning she was up at daybreak. The early-morning fragrances lingered until the sun had cleared the Morne and lit the green peaks and the brazen geometry of the mountains.

The night before, after the flight, she had been listening to drums from the ruinous Masonic lodge in the nearby hills. They had sounded through most of the night.

It seemed to her that when she was small there had been more birds and that they had more agreeable calls. Now there were hordes of crows, along with the vultures she remembered, clustering in the high palms. On the landward side of the house, smoke from charcoal fires almost obscured the overhanging peak. The top of the mountain was a ridge of bare rock.