Dennis Wheatley: The White Witch of the South Seas

Both of them had been in Rio for some days and to begin with they had compared their impressions of the city. She thought the main streets and shops unworthy of such a great metropolis, but the scenery superb. They had both been up the Corcovado, a rocky peak two thousand three hundred feet high dominating the whole area, from the top of which rises a one hundred foot high statue of Christ, and agreed that the view from it must be one of the finest in the world. He found the obvious poverty of the masses depressing and spoke of the appalling shanty towns on the slopes of the mountains adjacent to the city, where tens of thousands of people lived without sanitation. But she shrugged that off, remarking that such a state of things was not unusual in countries as poor as Brazil, and that at least the people had ample food and appeared happy.

`I'll grant you that,' he said. `And, anyway, Brazil can take credit for being one of the few countries in the world that have solved the colour problem. There really is equality here between white, Negroes, native Indians and the people with an infinite variety of mixed blood.'

She then asked him what form he thought the ceremony they were to see that night would take.

`I have only a vague idea,' he replied, `but I expect they will all smoke marijuana and dance until they have worked themselves up into a frenzy. Then some of them will have what appear to be epileptic fits, froth at the mouth, throw themselves on the ground, squirm about and prophesy.'

Manon nodded. `When they behave like that they believe themselves to be possessed by one of their gods, don't they? But we won't be able to understand what they say, so if there is no more to it than that it doesn't promise to be very exciting.'

`You never know.' Gregory gave her a slow smile. `I've heard that at times these shows end up in a general orgy.'

She raised one eyebrow, then said quite calmly. That would be fun and I'm all for it providing Iam not expected to participate.'

His smile widened to a grin. `I'll see to it that you don't have to provided, of course, there is some hope of your rewarding me afterwards.'

As she laughed, she showed two rows of even white teeth. 'I'll make no promises, but, to echo your own words just now, “You never know”.'

Their attention was momentarily distracted by raised voices behind them. Turning, they saw that Captain Sousa was insisting that the Senhora da Fonseca should leave her jewels in the Wellesleys ' apartment. Still protesting, she took them off. Manon followed suit with her more modest jewellery and Hugo collected the valuable pile of trinkets to lock up in his safe.

Captain Sousa then talked to them for a while about Macumba. He said that throughout the whole of Central and South America very similar cults had grown up from a blending of the religion of the native Indians, the superstitions brought over by the Negro slaves from Africa and the imposing on both of the Roman Catholic faith. The vast majority of the people in these countries would tell you that they were Christians, and they regularly attended the ceremonies of the Church; but they also continued to believe in the potency of the old gods and worshipped them during midnight meetings held deep in the jungle. How widespread the belief in Macumba was could be judged from Copacabana Beach on New Year's Eve, when the sea was white for a quarter of a mile out with the tens of thousands of lilies thrown into it by Macumba votaries to propitiate Yemanja, the goddess of the ocean.

These meetings were conducted by both men and women, who were known either as `Godfathers' or `Godmothers'. They said the prayers, invoked the spirits and, with a trident, stirred a cauldron from which rose lurid flames. Meanwhile, initiates of both sexes, already under the influence of drugs, performed a dance which continued for several hours. From time to time a spirit would enter into one of the dancers. He or she would then break from the ring, gyrate wildly and become the voice of the spirit, calling out messages from the gods. Then, exhausted, the possessed would fall writhing and jerking to the ground.

With one exception everyone wore white, as the symbol of good. The exception a concession to the doctrines of the

Christian Church was a representative of the Devil, who was painted red and wore red clothes.

Finally, Sousa told his listeners that they must make no comments, because the ceremony they were about to witness was normally attended only by believers and, should they be suspected of ridiculing it, there would be serious trouble. But provided they remained quiet all should be well. Recently quite a number of socialites in Rio had become converts to Macumba, so the good clothes worn by the members of the party would not alone give them away as non believers.

After a last drink they all went down in the lift to two large, waiting cars. In addition to police drivers, a detective was in one and a police woman in the other. Introduction’s were made, everyone shook hands, then the party of eleven squeezed into the cars and they set off.

They left the city by one of the tunnels and continued for several miles up into the mountains. It was now almost pitch dark, but on either side of the road they could make out dense jungle. After some twenty minutes they came upon a long line of parked cars. A few hundred yards further on, their cars pulled up and the party got out, to be led by Captain Sousa up a long flight of some sixty steps cut out of the bare earth, which was kept in place only by rough pieces of wood. On the steps they passed several chickens which had been decapitated, and, as they mounted, the rhythmic beat of many drums grew ever louder.

At the top of this flight they emerged on to a small plateau that had been made into a primitive auditorium. In the centre there was an oblong, open space about the size of a tennis court, surrounded by a waist high wall. A line of tumbledown huts faced one side of the open space; on the side opposite there were benches for the congregation and, at the far end, where the ground sloped up, more benches. These latter faced the other narrow end of the `court', the whole length of which was occupied by an altar. It consisted of long, white, draped tables, above which there were shelves to the height of about ten feet. Every inch of space was occupied with an extraordinary collection of objects, crammed higgledy piggledy together offerings of all kinds including melons, bottles of rum and beer, sugar cakes, crude paintings, jam jars holding wilting flowers, a number of quite large figures, including those of the Virgin Mary, St. George and the Devil the whole being lit by chain’s of fairy lamps.

Except for the open space the whole area was swarming with people, and Gregory had already noticed that the women of the congregation were separated from the men: the former occupying the benches to one side of the `court' and the men those on the slope at its far end. When they reached the slope the police woman led the other women of the party off, while Captain Sousa found places halfway up the slope for the men. As they squeezed through to them they were given some rather ugly looks and there were angry mutterings about 'Americanos'. But both Sousa and da Fonseca spoke to the Macumba votaries in Portuguese, the surly muttering was replaced by smiles and the party settled down without incident on a bench.

It was now getting on for midnight and the whole auditorium was packed. The majority of the people were apparently of pure Negro blood, but there were complexions of every shade, through coffee up to white tinged only faintly with yellow; quite a number had hooked noses and a few even had blue eyes and straight, golden hair.

Here and there among them were people wearing quite expensive clothes, but most of the congregation were poorly clad; many were barefooted and in rags. It was very hot. The atmosphere was most oppressive and unpleasantly acrid with the smell of stale sweat. Few jackets were to be seen; thee rows of black faces stood out sharply against open necked white shirts, and the native women appeared to have on only a single garment.