Wade Davis - The Serpent and the Rainbow

The power of the moment was dreamlike. The sacred coffin rested on the red-and-black flag, caressed by flowers. The Shanpwel blew out the burning candles they had clasped to their chests and laid them in one of two velvet hats placed at the foot of the coffin. The majestic woman in the glittering robe moved at ease through the huddled members of her procession, nodding to each one. Whistles and conch shells echoed as a great shout arose.

“Twenty-one shots of the cannon in honor of the executive president!” As the whip outside began to crack, the woman, her head and great hat tilting slightly like the axis of a globe, turned slowly back toward the base of the poteau mitan. She was the empress, I now realized, and we were all gathered to celebrate the founding of her society. A man acting as a herald stepped forthrightly to her side.

“Silence! In a moment we …” he began, but the raucous excitement kept him from being heard. “Silence! People, you are not in your houses! Be quiet!” The empress raised an arm and the room fell silent.

“In a moment,” the man continued, “we shall have the honor of presenting you with the attending presidents.” Then one by one as their names were called five Bizango leaders including Jean Baptiste stepped forward. The empress, lifting her face to the light to reveal the finest of features—thin bones and skin drawn beautifully across high cheekbones—formally opened the ceremony.

“Circonstantier, thirty-one March nineteen eighty-four, Séance Ordinaire. By the entire power of the great God Jehovah, Master of the Earth!”

A short man moved forward to assume the center of attention. As his dazed eyes scanned the room, silence followed easily.

“My dear friends,” he began. “Often on a day such as this you have seen me stand before you, and for me it is a joyous occasion, for it allows a chance to welcome you and to share through my words a number of ideas and themes that mean so much to us all. Sadly, tonight my thoughts have escaped, my imagination has escaped, and this prevents me from yielding to my strongest desires. Still, I wish to thank all the guests for responding to the invitation of this morning.”

With this introduction he fell quiet for some time. It was as if for him, with his oral tradition, the spoken words were alive and each had to be savored.

“Brothers and sisters!” he continued. “It is today that we come together in a brotherly communion of thoughts and feelings. Feelings that are crystallized into the force of our brotherhood, the force that gives meaning to our feast of this night.

“Yes, we are talking about our Bizango institution, in the popular language Bizango or Bissago. Bizango is the culture of the people, a culture attached to our past, just as letters and science have their place in the civilization of the elite. Just as all peoples and all races have a history, Bizango has an image of the past, an image taken from an epoch that came before. It is the aspect of our national soul.”

Nobody made a sound as he paused again, and when he resumed, his words spread over the cushion of moist hot bodies, mingling with the heat of the lanterns until the air was vibrant with the ebb and flow of a timeless idea.

“The Bizango brings joy, it brings peace. To the Haitian people Bizango is a religion for the masses because it throws away our regrets, our worries, problems, and difficulties.

“Another meaning of the Bizango is the meaning of the great ceremony at Bwa Caiman. They fall within the same empire of thoughts. Our history, such moments, the history of Macandal, of Romaine La Prophétesse, of Boukman, of Pedro. Those people bore many sacrifices in their breasts. They were alive and they believed! We may also speak of a certain Hyacinthe who as the cannon fired upon him showed no fear, proving to his people that the cannon were water. And what of Macandal! The one who was tied to the execution pole with the bullets ready to smash him but found a way to escape because of the sacrifice he did. Again we see …”

Suddenly a harsh voice from across the room interrupted the speech, directing the gaze of all present at Rachel and me. I recognized the rotund man as one of the presidents who had been introduced earlier.

“By your grace, my friends. Dessalines used to tell us things. I am a man. I am not in my house, but I can talk. Why is it that a blanc is here to listen to our words?” A shiver of confrontation ran through the people around us. With the permission of Jean Baptiste I had been recording parts of the ceremony openly, and now my tape became the center of concern.

“Are our words meant to pass beyond the walls of this room?” In the stiff silence I could hear raindrops hissing as they dropped into a small flame by my ear.

“Give me the tape, quickly,” Rachel said. I did so, and stepping before the assembly she offered the cassette to the offended party and begged his forgiveness. “The blanc is here as my guest, and I am here because I am a child of Guinée.” The tape was accepted with equal grace, and the crisis seemed to have passed when Jean Baptiste stepped forward, face to face with the other president.

“The tape is mine. The blanc is my guest also. My house is his, and the girl is the child of my friend.” Thus, after a moment’s hesitation, the tape came back to me. An uneasy calm returned to the room, and the intense man standing by the poteau mitan resumed his speech from the beginning, closing with a pointed reference to the Haitian revolution.

“We say again that there was a moment in eighteen-oh-four, a moment that bore fruits, that the year eighteen-oh-four bore the children of today. Thank you.”

In a prudent attempt to reestablish the rhythm of the celebration, the empress called immediately for the offerings to the sacred coffin. She led a prayer and then sang the opening verses of the adoration hymn, as one by one each person in the room came forward to place a small sum before the society.

“You certainly won’t go through this if you visit my society.” A short, elfin woman had nestled up beside me, and was speaking softly. “This is crazy. It’s a public ceremony. Everyone should be welcome.” Before we knew it the woman was standing between Rachel and me gently holding each of us by the hand. Her name was Josephine, and her society met every second Wednesday. We were more than welcome to attend, she assured us. A nattering, affectionate conversation ensued between her and Rachel, until interrupted by an aggressive, threatening voice coming from the other side of the room.

“Brothers and sisters! Wait a minute! The ceremony at Bwa Caiman was a purely African affair. There should be no blanc assisting with this ceremony of ours tonight! No blanc should see what we do in the night.” The entire room erupted with angry, disembodied voices. The members split into two camps, a vocal minority who condemned my presence, and the majority who claimed that the feast was a public event, a party open to anyone. Jean Baptiste lunged across the peristyle in our defense, and a semicircle of our supporters formed a cordon around us. My hands reached impulsively behind my back, tentatively gauging the strength of the thatch-and-mud wall. Beside me Rachel trembled.

“Don’t worry,” Josephine whispered, “there are no imbeciles here. It is a public ceremony. If it were private, you wouldn’t be here. But this is only a party.”

Suddenly the electric lights went off and on. Josephine looked concerned. Flames leaping from a fire at the base of the poteau mitan chased the shadows of the dancers across the walls of the temple, distorting them over the cracks in the thatch. A spasm of heavy breathing was broken by cries of intense effort, earth-pounding rhythms as the shoulders of the dancers moved like pistons, whiplash movements that pressed upon us.