Robert Stone - Bay of Souls

"I'm not going down there again," he told them.

THERE WAS SOME unpleasantness over the lost case but eventually they headed back to the landing of the Purcell house.

"It goes down to eight miles, Roger. It's gone."

When they were halfway back Michael asked him what was in the cases.

" Objets d'art. Artifacts for sale. In fact," Roger said, "they were already purchased, which is why I'm upset."

"I really am sorry, Roger. It's a miracle I was able to get the two of them."

"Our customers are not pious. They may not be grateful."

Michael wondered briefly how their ingratitude affected him, but he did not ask any more questions. Nor did he ask any questions about Lara. He had followed her to the ranks of death; that was where his encounter with the late pilot had placed him. On that ocean, he thought, in that darkness he had no friends.

Finally Hippolyte took Michael back to the dive shop. Roger had debarked at the Purcell house landing. Hippolyte, young and inexperienced at docking, made something of a commotion at the dive pier. The two small children he had left in the shop were still there, asleep. Hippolyte stayed long enough to help Michael out of his wetsuit and check the compressors. Then he took his toddlers by the hand and disappeared into the night.

Michael walked the distance to the hotel in a kind of despair. More than anything he wanted to be with Lara. At the same time he felt that he had lost her. She had betrayed him into a different world than the one they were meant to share.

Coming up the back stairs he ran into Liz McKie, the journalist.

"Where were you, Michael? Were you out on the reef?"

"Are you kidding?"

"I heard a boat." She put a presuming hand beside his ear. "You look wet."

He moved his head away. "I… was in the water. Just on an impulse."

"You don't say."

"I've been hearing drums all night," Michael said.

"We've had a lot of drums for sure. It's the retirer for John-Paul Purcell. They're marking that at the lodge. Didn't Lara tell you that?"

"She did say something about it."

"Did she tell you about the lodge?"

"I don't know anything about the lodge. I've never been there."

She stared at him, eager and confused. Her eyes were wide with excitement and fear. "Hey, Michael, tell me. What's going on, buddy?"

"I don't know. Really."

He wanted very much to ask her whether she was afraid of the story she was trying to write and the people she was trying to write about. He let it go.

She smiled as though she were sorry for him and went away. There were soldiers milling around the patio of the hotel when he got there. No one was in attendance at the desk. A couple of the soldiers were passing a bottle of four-star rum, making a halfhearted effort to sneak it.

Having no one to provide him a destination, he went into his room without turning on the light and lay down on the bed. The rhythm of the drums had changed but there still seemed to be four, pursuing one another's beat, never stopping. The ocean he could see through the window gave no promise of morning.

THE TEMPLE, the hounfor where Lara danced, was constructed of leaves and branches, leaning against the Masonic lodge. In its center, running from the earth floor to the roof, was the twisting, snake-shaped pole, the poto mitan. Around it Lara and about twenty serviteurs connected with the Purcell family were dancing the ceremony of reclamation for Lara's brother.

They faced a leaf-and-branch wall all inset with niches where bottles were stored. The painted bottles were decorated with glitter and worked with spines of tin. These govi contained souls, some those of the living, others souls of the dead. The bright, thick-fleshed leaves reflected the firelight.

The drums beat without stopping for John-Paul, each one enclosing its own spirit: ogan of iron and brass, and maman, petite, rouler, seconde. Four fires burned around the poto mitan, which enclosed the celestial serpent, Dambala. The songs called on Papa Legba, the loa of the crossroads, and on Baron Samedi, the loa of the dead. The drums played all night and Lara had been dancing most of the night with them.

From time to time, the mambo offered her more rum and brought the sacramental cloth, adorned with a vever of the god. The wall of painted glass where she danced was heaped with blossoms — different flowers for different forces, thorned bougainvillea and sour apple for the forces of bizango that John-Paul had served. Then frangipani, poinciana, loblolly pitch apple and myrtle. Different blossoms stood for rada, others for petro. For Marinette, flowering geiger. Above all, Lara was hoping and dreading that Marinette would come.

"John-Paul," she prayed, "if you are back from the sea, if you are safe from Guinee, make Marinette give back my soul."

From inside the lodge building someone shouted at her. It was a woman called Hilda, who was waiting inside with two Colombian milicianos. Lara walked out of the firelight into the half-darkness around the lodge. Hilda took Lara by the shoulders.

"You look stoned, little girl," the woman said.

Lara looked away. The woman pursued her, trying to keep and hold her eye.

"It was good, eh? I hope El Trip told you what happens to you if you try and cheat us. See if your spooks can help you."

One of the milicianos said something in Spanish. Until then he had been repeating " Hay que matarlos, " urging no quarter.

"Trip has a soft spot for you," Hilda said to Lara. "He thinks you went to bed with El Caballo." She meant Castro. "Is it true? Did he give you an emerald? Did you fuck that son of a whore?"

"Everything happened so fast," Lara said.

She went back; no one stopped her. The drums kept their beat, the fires were burning down. She began to dance again as the first light broke over the Morne. As she danced, she saw Roger Hyde walking on the edge of the airstrip with one of his servant boys. The boy was carrying two cases, one in each hand. One was a rectangular steel trunk, the other was the metal cylinder into which she had put the family's island art collection.

On his way to the lodge, Roger called to her.

She shook her head, and he spoke to the people with her in Creole, asking them if she was in a trance, mounted. They answered excitedly, all speaking at once. Not yet. Not yet, they all said, but it would come soon.

The mambo gave her a slug of raw rum and took one herself and pressed the inlaid banner cloth of Erzule against Lara's sweating forehead. Then she covered Lara's face with it, half suffocating her in rum and perfume that was as raw as the rum. A god, Ghede, told a comic story about stealing the perfume with bizango guile. Everyone clapped for the god, who tipped his tall hat. Everyone was laughing. It was a woman using the voice of an old man. He or she pretended to describe Guinee. Baron Samedi. Baron Kriminel.

Lara kept dancing although she was not under the god's power. She was looking for her brother's spirit in the drum and for her own. The mambo followed her dancing moves like a midwife. Another old woman danced the parody, the mimicry of a midwife. She laughed. "Doupkla," she said to Roger. "Marassa. Twins!"

" Merde, " Roger said angrily, which made the mambo laugh heartily.

Some Colombian milicianos came out with lights. More and more the Colombians had been using their own people for security, preferring not to rely on the locals. The milicianos ordered Lara and Roger inside the lodge. Lara tried to keep dancing but Roger took her hard by the hand and led her in.