• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 518 0

gleefully farting as they went for the officers. Many of Syto’s fellow passengers were possessed at once, lurching about until they were caught by their neighbors, then coming to with saucered eyes and sucking cheeks to exchange ritual greetings with their fellow Gédés, vigorously shaking both hands and twirling around, blowing mists of pepper-rum in one another’s face. Soon the road was filled with leering, chanting Gédés, most of them strutting about in fashions from the nineteenth century. They wore tattered frock coats with thickly padded shoulders, top hats, wing collars, a stray spat or two; several men sported veils and full-length evening dresses. They stole the officers’ hats first thing, then demanded food and money and tried to pick the cops’ pockets. A group of six or seven Gédés was roughly hustling Michelet—so changed was Lulu by the crisis of possession that Syto barely recognized his brother, an especially eloquent Gédé who was praising the formidable pungency of Madame Michelet’s coco, the savory little stinger that was her langèt.

“Get out of here!” Michelet screamed. “This is a police matter!” The Gédés immediately tossed off pompous salutes, then marched around with their canes thrown over their shoulders, spouting idiotic orders as they circled Michelet. Several others ran off and pretended to bully the crowd, which inspired shrieks of laughter up and down the line. Michelet weakly raised his gun, but how could he kill the god of death? His deputies were gagging and clutching their throats, having inhaled the mists of pimento-steeped rum—more noxious than the mace they carried on their belts—which the Gédés were swilling and blowing at each other. The chef’ s hat was gone, his shirt blotched with rum and spittle; he took a faltering step toward Syto, then clenched and spun about with a retching sound, eyes goggling as he fought the god in his head. The last Syto saw of Michelet, the chef was bellowing at his harried deputies for rum as they bundled him toward the refuge of their truck.

“Come with us!” Lulu shouted to the crowd. “We’re going to the palace to see the president!” The passengers cheered and gathered up their parcels, and soon the convoy was barreling through the countryside, the Gédés hanging out the windows and singing dirty songs, roiling villages from the mountains to the capital. Syto had the address in Port-au-Prince where they were supposed to go, but neither Lulu nor the delighted driver would hear of it until they’d driven up the Champ de Mars and stopped in front of the palace. The park was full of late-night revelers, the nucleus of a riot of collective joy that erupted when the Gédés poured off the buses. The startled guards refused to open the gates, but the crowd chanted so robustly that the president was flushed at last from the palace. Flanked by bodyguards, laughing and mugging like it was all a big joke, he made a short, dull speech about the manifest uniqueness of the Haitian people, then passed five-gourde notes through the fence to each Gédé.

So even presidents must acknowledge the primacy of death. Once they had their homage the Gédés left willingly enough, Syto coaxing them onto the buses and directing the lead driver to the house in Bellevue, where Nixon and his gang herded everyone inside. As the god departed each man’s head a somewhat dazed Trois Pins fisherman took his place; once he’d recovered, his jacket and pants were removed and turned inside-out, revealing a system of compartments sewn into the lining. After a lifetime of mending battered nets and sails, the women of Trois Pins were expert seamstresses. Each niche was rolled and tufted so that the lining was smooth, not the slightest bulge visible from the outside. Every man had smuggled eight to ten kilos in his clothes; Gédé’s extravagant costume had carried the weight, and while possession had not been part of the plan, the men were elated to learn that the god had been in their heads. In short order a celebration commenced, a fiery bamboche with singing and dancing and gallons of rum. Nixon kept standing