Wade Davis - The Serpent and the Rainbow

Narcisse explained that he had been sold to a bokor named Josef Jean who held him captive at a plantation near Ravine-Trompette, a small village in the north close to Pilate, not far from Cap Haitien. Together with many other zombis, he had toiled as a field hand from sunrise to sunset, pausing only for the one meal they received each day. The food was normal peasant fare, with the one restriction that salt was strictly prohibited. He remembered being aware of his predicament, of missing his family and friends and his land, of wanting to return. But his life had the quality of a strange dream, with events, objects, and perceptions interacting in slow motion, and with everything completely out of his control. In fact, there was no control at all. Decision had no meaning, and conscious action was an impossibility.

His freedom had come about quite by chance. One of the captives had refused to eat for several days and was beaten repeatedly for insubordination. In the midst of one such beating, the zombi got hold of a hoe and in a fit of rage killed the bokor. With the death of the master, the zombis dispersed, some eventually returning to their villages scattered across the northern plain. Only two of them were from the middle of the country—Narcisse and one other, who curiously enough came from Ennery. After being set free, Narcisse remained in the north for several years, until moving south to Saint Michel de l’Attalaye, where he settled for eight years. Although fear of his brother kept him from returning to his village, he did attempt to establish contact with his family. His many letters, however, went unanswered. Finally, when he heard that the brother responsible for his ordeal had died, he returned to l’Estère. His arrival, not surprisingly, had shocked the community. In truth, he confessed, he had not been well received. The villagers had taunted him, and such was the commotion that the government authorities deemed his life in danger and placed him in jail for his own protection. It was at that point that he had come under the care of Dr. Lamarque Douyon. To this day, he returns to l’Estère only for brief visits. His time is spent either at Douyon’s private clinic in the capital or in the refuge of the Baptist mission.

“They called my name three times,” Narcisse told us later that afternoon as he sat in the cemetery at Benetier. Upon our approaching the cemetery, it had taken Narcisse several minutes by the side of the road to become oriented. Then with little hesitation he had woven his way through the crowded tombs of cracked concrete until he reached his own. Scarcely visible, etched into the surface of the cement, was an epitaph written some twenty years before: “Ici Repose Clairvius Narcisse.”

“Even as they cast the dirt on my coffin, I was not there. My flesh was there,” he said, pointing to the ground, “but I floated here, moving wherever. I could hear everything that happened. Then they came. They had my soul, they called me, casting it into the ground.” Narcisse looked up from the ground. At the edge of the cemetery a pair of thin gravediggers stood as still and attentive as gazelles. Narcisse felt the weight of their recognition.

“Are they afraid of you?” Rachel asked.

“No,” he replied, “only if I was creating problems, then I’d have problems myself.” He didn’t say anything more for several minutes. The late afternoon light illuminated his face but left a conspicuous dark spot over the deep scar in his right cheek. It was there, he had mentioned earlier, that the nail of the coffin had pierced his flesh.

“They thought I was a bourreau [an executioner], so after they passed the bottle, they bound my arms to my sides.”

“Did you have the force to resist?”

As if he hadn’t heard me, Narcisse went on, “Then I was taken for eight days of judgment.”

“By whom?” Rachel asked excitedly, “where did it take place?”

Again Narcisse ignored the question, and began to make his way out of the graveyard. He paused momentarily by a large erect tomb, and then continued to the road. As we reached the jeep, he turned to us both and said very quietly. “They are the masters of the country, and they do as they please.”

“The only tribunal that my brother knew was the cemetery.” Angelina Narcisse sat back in her chair, her legs wide apart. The morning sun had conquered the clouds and driven us into the shadows of the thatch shelter. Between the thin rafters ran long strings displaying dozens of photographs of President Jean-Claude Duvalier and his wife. Michelle Duvalier’s face stood out, polished and quite lovely. Between the photographs were small Haitian flags, red and black, the same colors as Angelina’s long dress. All around us the houses of the lakou stood as one, fused like stones encased in dry clay. In one corner iron rods had been set into the earth, at their base a pile of black coals. Once while out with Beauvoir I saw a possessed man implant such a rod in the ground, his bare hands wrapped around the iron, its tip red-hot, his face indifferent.

“Unless, of course, it was a tribunal at night, in which case nobody should know of it. So we don’t know of it.”

In a harsh voice, Angelina laid out her version of her brother’s case. Long before the death of their parents, Clairvius had been involved in innumerable disputes with his various brothers. Land was often an issue, but there were others. Clairvius had done well financially, but showed no willingness to spread his earnings through his family. Once, for example, his brother Magrim sought a twenty-dollar loan, which Clairvius refused categorically. An intense argument had followed, which had culminated in Magrim striking Clairvius in the leg with a log, while Clairvius responded by hurling stones. Both of them had ended up in jail.

Apparently Clairvius had antagonized not only his family. He had compromised innumerable women, scattering children to all corners of the Artibonite Valley. None of these he accepted responsibility for, nor had he built houses for the various mothers. As a result he had approached middle age with few financial burdens, which freed him to advance further than his more responsible peers. He placed a tin roof on his house, for example, before anyone else in the lakou. Clairvius had profited at the expense of the community, and in all likelihood, suggested Angelina, it was one of the aggrieved members, probably a mistress, that had sold him to a bokor.

“But we know nothing of poisons in our family,” she concluded. “My brother was sick for a year. It was not a disease from God, and there was no poison, or he would still be in the ground.”

Whatever the cause of her brother’s demise, the family lost no time taking over his fields, which Angelina and another sister still work today. Although Clairvius has made a claim in the national courts for his land, his sisters have absolutely no intention of releasing anything to him. As far as they are concerned Clairvius remains a dead man, a spirit that should never have returned to the village. In fact, the first member of the family to recognize him when he appeared in the l’Estère market in 1980 had sent for Angelina, and then told Clairvius to go away. Another sister arrived from the lakou and offered Clairvius money, but also ordered him to leave the village. By then a great crowd had gathered, and the police arrived to take Clairvius Narcisse to the protection of the government jail.

Death in a family should be like a stone cast into a lake; it makes a brief hole, but the waves of sorrow reach to the edge of the bloodline. In the case of Clairvius Narcisse, however, the stone slipped into the water without leaving a trace. Not long after leaving the family lakou, we discovered why. In the searing midday sun, we pulled off the road to offer a ride to a solitary peasant burdened by a ponderous load. Quite by chance he was a cousin of Clairvius, and with little difficulty Rachel persuaded him that we knew more than we did.