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

“Where are they hiding?”

“I don’t know any of them,” and she screamed this.

He inched the rod into her left ear, touching her eardrum.

“Who financed the attack?”

“I know nothing.”

He shoved the rod through her eardrum, and she screamed herself voiceless. He moved to her right ear and inserted the rod. She screamed on but with fading sound.

“Who is left alive to lead the organization?”

She opened her mouth but could make only the smallest of sounds, and she shook her head. He pushed the iron through her right eardrum and she slumped in the grip of the guards, undone. She closed her eyes and wept her pain. The guards pulled her to her feet and Robles ripped her blouse off one shoulder, revealing the necklace Narciso had given her — Changó’s tools and weapons.

“What is your religion?”

“Catholic.” It was not even a whisper.

“Then why do you wear the necklace of Changó?”

“A gift.”

“It is Santeria. You said you were a Catholic.”

She was crawling toward Babalu Aye, half a cinder block tied to her ankle with rope, and she was pulling the block as she slid on her back toward the church. A shirt covered her but her back was already bleeding, and Babalu was very far away.

Blood was streaming from both her ears. Robles grabbed her skirt at the waist and swiveled, pulling her in a circle, steadily ripping the skirt as he hurled her against another wall. The side of her head hit the concrete and her pain was dizzying. She fell, her skirt around her ankles. One of the guards kicked her in the ribs, then stepped over her and kicked her ribs on the other side.

She flagellated herself with a switch as she moved toward the church of San Lázaro with the crowd. Her back, her thighs, her buttocks bled from the whipping. Babalu! Brother of Changó! Babalu!

Robles pulled her skirt off, grabbed her panties and tried to rip them but he could not. He pulled them off her legs. The guards lifted her to her feet and held her against the wall. Robles poured water from a pitcher into a glass and put it to her lips. She swallowed, freshening the blood in her mouth. She was naked now, her bra askew. Robles put his hand between her legs. She looked into his face, blood coming from her nose, her head, her ears, her arms, her knees, her buttocks. She will have scars, a marked woman — she will gain status. While lying on the floor she had seen, under Robles’ guayabera, his holstered pistol and a beaded belt of Ogun, brother and sometime enemy of Changó.

“Ogun,” she said to Robles in a scratched voice, softly, very softly out of a broken throat. “You look to Ogun.”

The words stopped him. He withdrew his fingers from her, his face inches from hers. She chanted through broken lips: “Ogun lord of iron, who lives in the knife,

Ogun god of war who slaughtered a village,

Ogun outcast butcher, who eats the dog.”

“You put Ogun’s iron into me,” she whispered to him. “You are killing me. But Changó will not let you do it. You will die before I do. My babalawo said when he gave me this necklace, show it to your enemy and if he hurts you, tell him Changó will plunge him into a long and thunderous death.”

Robles waved the guards off and backstepped away from her. Leaning against the wall she swayed her head, moving in a slow rhythm, the beginning of a dance. She wanted to dance as Floreal had danced at the wedding but the pain everywhere in her body would not allow it. This was her honeymoon, without Quinn, courted by the butcher in his stead. She swayed only her head, using Floreal’s cadence, and she chanted: “Changó, who breathes fire at his enemy,

Changó, who owns all music,

Whose thunderstones burn down forests.”

She could feel the oozing sores of Babalu Aye. She remembered Padre Pio channeling the stigmata into his body. Robles did not move, his arm hanging by his thigh, his pistol pointed at the floor. She saw the developing fear in his stare. He is a believer. She took a small step toward him, then another. Then, with strength in her right hand she did not know she had, she reached under his shirt and grabbed the belt of Ogun and jerked it. Robles backed off from her touch and the broken belt came away in her hand, its black and green beads rolling across the floor.

“Ogun is useless,” she said. “Ogun is on the floor.”

She dropped the belt and more beads rolled.

“Ogun has the iron sword but Changó has lightning. Can you fight lightning with a sword?”

“You have the diabolical in you,” Robles said. She read his lips. She could not hear him.

“You are recognizing yourself,” she said.

He had raped her as an unconsummated bride, but she had seduced him. He was killing her but she had prayed him into her vagina, where Changó often dwells, where he has been lying in wait since the wedding.

And in that place Changó’s lightning had scorched the invader’s will and silenced his soul.

“Robles,” she said, “you will kill me no more.”

The music was cool, solid when Quinn entered the ballroom, the crowd poppin’ and tappin’, keeping together in time. Quinn counted at least five hundred people, at twenty a head that’s ten thousand, fifty percent for the room, food, and wine, so five big ones for Cody, nice, a middle-aged bunch, maybe a third of them black, some in tuxes and dinner gowns to tone things up for Cody. Cody was wearing his tux, white lapel carnation, playing so fine, drum and bass backup, doing “Poor Butterfly” in up tempo, not wild, can’t do those double-time breaks anymore, they punish his lungs; but his beat is there and why hasn’t the rest of the world recognized the originality of this man’s style the way Albany has? It certainly wasn’t his fingers, you can get by with eight, he said, but ten is where it’s at, and he always had ten, and some nights twelve. So what did he do wrong? Missed the subway and didn’t show up in time for the recording session with John Hammond, the record producer, was that really it? A born loser? Can’t stand prosperity? Doesn’t believe he’ll ever jump over the moon? He’s humming, zum-zum-za-zum, those lungs not failing that part of him, and he looks all right, thinner, goes with the territory, all gray and almost militarily upright, as if he took West Point posture lessons, and there’s that same tight mustache, same chin whiskers, same frowning down at the music he’s making, always his own toughest critic.

Quinn saw Renata sitting between Max and Martin Daugherty, Vivian with Pop, Matt not here, or Gloria. Quinn inhaled like a pigeon, puffed up his chest, pissed-off husband. She has fucked Max, surely. She knows how to thank a guy. She looks so gorgeous, exquisite, can’t blame Max for all that yearning. Now she’ll tell Quinn it meant nothing. When he caught up with her in Miami after her disappearance from the Holtzes she apologized for fucking Max but what could she do? He’d saved her life. She and Quinn were still in the honeymoon stage then, two weeks after the marriage, which had never been consummated because Fidel intervened. “I loved our wedding, Daniel, and our dancing with Changó and Oshun, and then Changó saving me from Robles. I’m still your virgin bride and Max means nothing, he helped me, but I’ll never be close to him again.” Quinn was then fourth in line for her prize, after Changó, Robles, and Max. A new form of virginity: I can give it to you wholesale.

“Martin,” Quinn said when he sat at the table, “where have you been, what brings you to the violent city?”

“I got bored out there in the deathbed city,” Martin said. “It’s nice to be comforted into the grave, but I’m not ready.”