Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [86]
“Curious character,” I remarked. “Obviously our friend Aglife is playing at impersonating him. A gentleman getting on in years, a bit dotty, with money to spend, free time for travel, and an interest in the supernatural.”
“A consistent reactionary, with the courage to be decadent,” Amparo said. “Actually, I prefer him to bourgeois democrats.”
“Sisterhood is powerful, but let a man kiss your hand and you’re ecstatic.”
“That’s how you’ve trained us, for centuries. Let us free ourselves gradually. I didn’t say I wanted to marry him.”
“That’s good.”
The following week Aglie telephoned me. That evening, he said, we would be allowed to visit a terreiro de candomble. We wouldn’t be admitted to the actual rite, because the ialorixa was suspicious of tourists, but she would welcome us herself and would show us around before it started.
He picked us up by car and drove through the favelas beyond the hill. The building where we stopped had a humble look, like a big garage, but on the threshold an old black man met us and purified us with a fumigant. Up ahead was a bare little garden with an immense corbeil of palm fronds, on which some tribal delicacies, the comidas de santo, were laid out.
Inside, we found a large hall, the walls covered with paintings, especially ex-votos, and African masks. Aglie explained the arrangement of furniture: the benches in the rear were for the uninitiated, the little dais for the instruments, and the chairs for the Oga. “They are people of some standing, not necessarily believers, but respectful of the cult. Here in Bahia the great Jorge Amado is an Oga in one terreiro. He was selected by lansa, mistress of war and winds...”
“But where do these divinities come from?” I asked.
“It’s complicated. First of all, there’s a Sudanese branch, dominant here in the north from the early days of slavery. The candomble of the orixas—in other words, the African divinities—come from this branch. In the southern states you find the influence of the Bantu groups, and this is where all the intermingling starts. The northern cults remain faithful to the original African religions, but in the south the primitive macumba develops toward the umbanda, which is influenced by Catholicism, Kardecism, and European occultism...”
“So no Templars tonight?”
“That was meant to be a metaphor, but no, no Templars tonight. Syncretism, however, is a very subtle process. Did you notice, outside, near the comidas de santo, a little iron statue, a sort of devil with a pitchfork, and with votive offerings at his feet? That’s Exu, very powerful in the umbanda, but not in the candomble. Still, the candombte also honors him as a kind of degenerate Mercury. In the umbanda, they are possessed by Exu, but not here. However, he’s treated affectionately. But you never can tell. You see that wall over there?” He was pointing at the polychrome statues of a naked Indio and an old black slave, seated, dressed in white, and smoking a pipe. “They are a ca-boclo and a preto velho, spirits of the departed. Very important in umbanda rites. What are they doing here? Receiving homage. They are not used, because the candombl£ entertains relations only with the African orixas, but they are not cast out on that account.”
“What do all these churches have in common, then?”
“Well, during the rite in all Afro-Brazilian cults the initiates go into a trance and are possessed by higher beings. In the candomble these beings are the orixas; in the umbanda they are spirits of the departed.”
“I forgot my own country and my own race,” Amparp