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“He’s a well known drummer in Candomblé,” she said. She told me that people at these gatherings tended to go into trance and that a drummer had to be not only incredibly good, knowing the rhythms of all the orixás and many others besides, but also a person who is not “taken” by an orixá, who can resist trance. “Agnaldo connects with the orixás in a different way,” she said.

On the night of the gathering, Ana guided us to a small house on a hillside—it seemed all of Salvador was either on a hillside or in a valley. As we approached, we encountered a man spinning in an almost dervish-like twirl outside on the grass. He suddenly vomited into a bucket. I paused and looked to Ana for direction. Ana said nothing and greeted the women standing beside the doorway. When they knew I was a friend of Agnaldo, they greeted us warmly. They invited us to join others who sat in folding chairs around the edges of the room, offering us plates of rice and beans. We sat for an hour while Agnaldo and some others played without a break or pause. Then people began to dance.

“These are the dances of the orixás,” Ana whispered. One dancer was “taken” by an orixá and began to spin and dance faster and faster. I couldn’t understand how she continued or how she moved so fast. Finally, the orixá let her go and she collapsed. Others picked her up and took her to the other room to care for her.

The music continued without pause, changing rhythms, undulating up and down, seeming to stretch fingers out to entwine us all. Dancers rose, became other beings, rode another current. Hours passed. The heat became insufferable. I felt short of breath. But I couldn’t leave; I knew leaving was not permissible. Ana had told me this before we’d arrived. But also an energy coming from the circle of people kept me in. The heat grew more intense. Agnaldo played and his notes seemed almost to travel inside me now. Time became heat.

I watched as the people sitting beside me went into trance. One by one, their eyes glazed over and their bodies took on a different tension.

I wondered if I could move my own limbs. Probably not. The music had entered my organs now, melting them, removing whatever solid substance they once had. Heat, sound, and substance became one. I knew I was moving toward trance. I did not want to go into trance. I wasn’t sure what I would do if an orixá took me, and I didn’t like the looks of what happened to others. I knew too little of the religion. Which orixá was entering me? Some of them did not sound like the nicest gods. Fear crawled from my bowels to my throat.

With what part of my mind that still functioned, I began an internal mantra, “I will not go into trance. I will not go into trance.” Chanting, chanting, on and on, keeping track only of those words and their repetition.

Only when I felt Ana helping me to my feet did I realize it was dawn. My legs wouldn’t move properly, whether from the orixá’s influence or from sitting for so many hours I didn’t know. We stumbled to the front of the house and to the lane below.

“The Mother has invited you to come back,” Ana said. “She’s surprised the orixás would choose a foreigner, but you’re open. She says she’ll teach you how not to be afraid.”

“I need a coffee,” I said.

“Of course,” Ana replied

I tasted the damp dawn air and let Ana lead the way home.

four

letting salvador inside

At capoeira practice one day, Rita asked me if I would like to come visit her at her home for Sunday lunch.

“You take the bus to the very end of the line. Don’t get off until it stops for good and everyone else leaves. I’ll meet you there at one.”

So, Sunday noon I boarded the bus marked with the name of Rita’s bairro and watched out the window as it passed neighborhood after neighborhood, uphill and down, along the seashore and inland again. I had no idea where I was and just trusted that, at some point, the bus would park at an obvious final stop and Rita would be waiting there. Finally, after about an hour, it did.