William Vollmann - The Atlas

In fact the weather was rather grise— viz.; dull and gray. It chilled him but he would make no covenant with his loathsome body, no matter how much it shivered.

A sick woman saw in dreams a man dressed in black like Père Brébeuf, whom they called Echon . In the dream it was Echon who touched her with fire, at which her fever became much worse. When Tehorenhaennion was called, everyone in that long-house greeted him most respectfully.

The dogs must not howl, he said. I make my cures only in silence.

A girl took the dogs out, and also a bear-cub in its cage, which had begun grunting.

It is my rule to require the sick one to be carried into the woods, to see the Sky, said Tehorenhaennion after a pause. But today there are clouds. This cure will be difficult.

He bent over her and began to blow upon her and suck at her body where she was most swollen. Very soon he had found five hairball charms which Echon or some other witch had sent into her.

The case was most serious, and he had little hope that she would live. However, he turned to her relatives who were there and showed them the witch-charms before he burned them in the fire, concealing his doubts, for sometimes belief alone would assist a patient to recover. Now he gave her a potion to drink which would open the way to her navel — the seat of her disease — and said to her: Have courage! and she smiled most gratefully and replied: Even now I feel eased. . and her lodgemates began to be very happy, although for fear of him they did not show it, but then the potion mounted to her ears, which began to swell, and so she died.

You tricked us, a man said to him. Why did you fail?

Tehorenhaennion regarded him calmly. — You did not give me all the presents which I asked you for, he said. Where is my pipe of red stone? Where is my tobacco pouch?

The truth was that Echon had used magic which he did not know. Echon was the most Powerful and malignant witch whom he had ever fought. He would make no covenant with him.

Corn hung yellow and bright. The pigs wanted it. They were grunting pigs with huge pink ears and dirty faces and there were flies on them. The flies wanted pigsweat and blood. Not far away, udders hung. The brown calves wanted them. And the mooing black cows with swollen brown udders, they wanted to be milked or sucked. They had great glistening eyes; they lowed loudly in the hay.

The furnace eye was uneasy. The flames curled back.

Priests stared from the open casements, knowing the furnace eye, wondering when their covenant would be burned. They watched the aqueduct drain down to the South Compound. The water continued through the narrow canal, just a canoe's width; it exited the lock all gray, narrow, a little waterfall through the square arch; and then it left the tables, candles and beds to become again the river it had been, deep and black, streaming with white reflections of palisade-poles like bones. Across the river the Iroquois crouched in hiding. They wanted everything they saw. They wanted to make everything scream and burn.

The flies came and came; they got everything. Then some corn dropped down to the pigs at last, and the pigs got it. Milk jetted from udders into pink mouths, the mouths of calves. Now practically all that's left of those days is Québec's Chapelle des Ursulines with its rose window and rose-windowed arch; but if one looks into space as one reads or rather recites from one's Bible (the eldest daughter looking up at one, the other children eyeing each other silently), it's possible to see how the furnace eye blinked and widened. But the priests never succumbed, never made any covenant, even when they canoed fleeing from their burning Mission. Yes, the fire came, and the Iroquois also gained their own desire, singing: Hé é é é é. .

While the roaring gray rain cooled down Madagascar for a minute, she greased her hands, then combed her hair back again, combing the grease in until it shone, leaning forward naked on the bed to watch her progress in the cracked plastic mirror (one of the few items of baggage she'd brought from home). She made a greasy twist down the back of her head, the center one. Then she began to form the others. Leaving the comb in her hair for safekeeping, she inserted the rollers, holding each in with a forefinger until it was securely pinned. So steadily she assembled a long spine of those cylinders along the center ridge of her head like a sort of mo-hawk as the rain slackened and thunder sounded close but not loud, and she commenced combing and twisting around her temples. She was making art as surely as the barefoot craftsman who hammers wood with a wooden mallet, squatting on fresh sawdust. Her fresh head slid forward and back as she peeked in the mirror. She sang. A loud clap of thunder made her laugh. Her gold ring shone dully in the dim light of the hotel room as she pinned the last comb in the back, the whites of her eyes large with concentration in her chocolate face. Now she could embellish herself with the new earrings he'd bought her, she nodding, talking fast, rows of twisted locks curving back around the side of her head. Now she was ready to dance with him at the Discotheque Kali where white shirts and blouses glowed blue in the fluorescent lights just as the tonic water did;, and a man stood behind a pillar, his face the color of blood, his necktie like the blue tongue of a black snake, and he was watching, grinning with hard eyes. Perhaps the man liked her hair. (She was always doing her hair. Sitting on a bed in the Hotel Roger with a towel around her middle, she put her hair up with the same sweet concentration as when she squatted to piss on the sidewalk.) In the Hotel Anjary she did her hair, but did she do it for him who loved her or for the man whose face was the color of blood? She loved to dance but she feared the discos because the robbers owned them; why was it that she must do her hair for robbers? Maybe if she did not make herself more beautiful the blood-faced watcher would not watch her. But he never said anything about the blood-faced watcher to her because she feared the robbers already and he did not want to make her more afraid. In the corner, behind another row of black pillars, beer bottles shone full and empty; behind them, a line of white shirts spanned the wall like skulls. The faces above the shirts were entirely gone in shadow. These were the gangsters who ran the Kali, and the darkness they hid in was the same essence which they manufactured outside, extruding it past their bouncer at the door, past the beggar-boys in carnival masks who waited just outside, past the men who sold brochettes in the street (cautiously wise, she visited only the brochette stand owned by the patron), past the taxis waiting to take her one block for two thousand francs because it was cheaper to pay two thousand* than to go beyond the taxis, where it became dark and lifeless and men stood playing cards on the hood of a parked car, and after them it became truly dark, even darker than in bed when the blackly humid night pressed its hands down on his lungs, because this other darkness was moist with the breathings of robbers.

It was moist; it was raining again. She needed to do her hair.

Dawn found the two of them a green and rolling rainscape, green gestures of vegetation in fog, the dark fingers, beseeching hands and benediction-laden palms of it, looming through the mist in a rattle of insects, trees drinking moisture like green cotton balls, ferns bowing politely, then building green walls inset with stars of darkness. She did her hair. Because she had a toothache, she could eat only soft things, so she gobbled ice cream and cream-filled pastries as the raindrops rushed innumerable as ants in the hole of a dead snake.