William Kennedy - Chango's Beads and Two-Tone Shoes

“Eating goes with grief,” Max said. “You always have lunch after a funeral, then think of the Last Supper.”

Renata smiled a very small and silent thank you but no, and stood up.

“I’ll call you tomorrow,” Max said.

“I may go away,” she said.

“I’m here whenever you need me.”

In the car she said, “My friend said to stay away from the necrocomio. ”

“Good. You should,” Quinn said.

“And he says I shouldn’t go to Diego’s funeral. Diego had two children. He never mentioned them. My friend doesn’t want me connected to anybody in the attack. He thinks I should go away until things calm down. I want to go to a babalawo . Do you know about the babalawo ?”

“No.”

“A wise man who reads the language of the soul. Narciso Figueroa. He’s over ninety. He will know how my soul is damaged and will help me.”

“You believe this?”

“The babalawo has visions. Do you ever have visions?”

“Not since grammar school when I saw myself playing the banjo in heaven. When I got older I gave up on heaven, also the banjo. I don’t trust religion anymore.”

“Then you don’t trust me.”

“You’re a mysterious being.”

“I’m a simple woman. The world is complex and Narciso is brilliant. He talks with the dead and with the gods. He has saved people.”

“You really think he talks to the gods?”

“I do.”

“I’d like to see him do that.”

“Come with me.”

“Where is this Narciso?”

“El Rincón, a very poor place. We will go in the morning.”

“The morning? Where are you going to spend the night?”

“At your apartment. Is that all right?”

“Let me think about it.”

“Yes, you should.”

“I’ll lend you a shirt to wear to bed.”

“That will add to your laundry bill.”

“Some laundry is more important than other laundry.”

“I will sleep with you but we will not do anything together.”

“Of course not. Not on the first date in bed.”

“Do you love me?”

“More than I love guns.”

“Sex is not love.”

“It’s something like love. Having sex is often called making love. Will you wear my shirt?”

“Yes. But we will only sleep. I must think of Diego.”

“Who?”

“And I should get my beads at my house.”

“Tonight?”

“In the morning.”

“What if the police are there?”

“I will go in the back way.”

“The police sometimes know about back doors. If they arrest you I’ll lose you for a string of beads. What beads are you talking about?”

“My Changó and my Oshun beads.”

“Changó. Right. The guy whose wife had no food so she fed him her ear for dinner and he killed her for it.”

“Changó is a warrior who helps people in trouble. I am in trouble.”

“His wife was in trouble with only one ear.”

“I am in more trouble than that.”

“I suppose you are. I think I am too.”

“You will be in trouble as long as you are with me.”

“Then that’s that. I’ll always be in trouble.”

In her family’s eyes Renata still lived as she had been raised, a strict Catholic who went to mass and communion. But in childhood she was introduced to Santeria by Olguita, a mulata who was first the housemaid, later Renata’s nana and, through enduring closeness, her spiritual godmother. Renata listened when Olguita talked about Santeria. She gave the child Renata holy artifacts which Renata the young woman added to in abundance — statues, flowers, herbs, amulets that fended off maleficent forces, paintings of the Orishas, necklaces and bracelets with the colored beads of each Orisha — so many objects that they filled a dresser drawer and covered two walls of her bedroom.

When she began studying art she filled another wall with her own paintings of the Orishas, and came to prefer their mystical lives and miracles to Jesus and the assorted Holy Ghosts, and those ascetic virgins who keep finding the Blessed Mother in a French meadow. The Catholic saints and their divinely nebulous arguments toward redemption offered some mystery, but they bored her. The Orishas’ mysteries arose from jealousy, disgust, pride, womanizing, love, hatred, inability to keep a secret, their powers were earthly and practical, and their miracles embraced life.

Renata called a close friend and asked her to tell Renata’s mother in person that she was well but wouldn’t be home tonight, that she would stay at a friend’s house and they would talk tomorrow. Then Renata, clad only in pantaletas and Quinn’s short-sleeved blue shirt, which she left unbuttoned, it was hot, came to Quinn’s bed and let herself be held in his uninvasive embrace. She sobbed openly over Diego, retelling herself that he truly was dead and she would never again feel his arms around her as she now felt a stranger’s arms, offering comfort and perhaps love. She closed her eyes against this uninvited truth and as she burrowed toward sleep she was invaded by a vision of the violent struggle between Changó’s women: Obba, his wife, who cut off her ear because Oshun told her this would win Changó’s heart, and Oshun, the duplicitous Venus who controls love, money, and the river.

Renata saw them dueling with thunderbolts and herself as both wife and mistress, traitor and betrayed — very fickle of you to admit this, Renata — but she sensed, perhaps for the first time, that this was the true way of the world. She understood it better in the morning when she awoke without tears, Quinn’s head on the pillow, his eyes on her, his arm comfortably under her shoulder blades. His fingers were curled lightly on her upper arm and she thought, he is protecting me from my dreams. “It’s a comfort the way you hold me,” she said. “You know how to hold a woman. Have you had many loves?”

“Not when it was really love. Half a dozen? Make that two. Three. One felt like love but it was only narcissism. Serious love did arrive, but it went away.”

“Where is she now?”

“We don’t stay in touch.”

“What happened?”

“She belongs to my cousin. He’s a lunatic, but that’s no excuse.”

“You are guilty.”

“Is that out of fashion?”

“Love is the fashion. Nothing else matters.”

“Very reckless. You will do damage.”

“Love damaged me. I never feel guilty. I believe love will save us. I learned that through San Lázaro. We will see him today.”

They were half an hour out of Havana, Quinn driving, en route to the home of Narciso Figueroa. They had gone through Santiago de Las Vegas and were on a ragged road that Quinn feared would snag the Buick’s low-slung undercarriage. He moved slowly past scattered clusters of wooden shacks and small concrete slab houses that seemed built in a swamp.

“I came here when I was fifteen,” she said. “It was in December, tens of thousands of pilgrims walking to the church of San Lázaro. Olguita said San Lázaro will get rid of your trouble. I told her I didn’t have any trouble. ‘You will,’ she said.”

“You certainly learned how to acquire it.”

San Lázaro, Renata said, the Catholic saint resurrected from his tomb by Jesus, is also the Orisha called Babalu Aye, brother of Changó. Babalu Aye was young and handsome and trying to make love to every woman in the world. Olodumare, the owner of Heaven, told him to slow down, but he kept it up, so Olodumare turned him into a leprous beggar with leg sores that put him on crutches. Two dogs followed him, licking his sores clean as they all walked the world.