Foucault's pendulum - Umberto Eco [89]
“How dramatic!” Aglie said, taking his snuffbox from his pocket and stroking it with his fingers. “So you’ve recognized me. But it wasn’t the slaves who made heads roll in ‘89; it was the upstanding bourgeoisie, whom you should hate. Besides, the Comte de Saint-Germain has seen many a head roll in all his centuries, and many a head reattached. But wait, here comes the mae-de-santo, the ialorixa.”
Our meeting with the abbess of the terreiro was calm, cordial, civilized, and rich in folklore. She was a big black woman with a dazzling smile. At first you would have said she was a housewife, but when we began talking, I understood how women like this could rule the cultural life of Salvador.
“Are the orixas people or forces?” I asked her. The mae-de-santo answered that they were forces, obviously: water, wind, leaves, rainbows. But how did she prevent ordinary people from seeing them as warriors, women, saints of the Catholic Church? “Do you yourselves not also worship a cosmic force in the form of virgins?’’ she replied. The important thing is to venerate the force. The aspect of the force must fit each man’s ability to comprehend.
She invited us to visit the chapels in the garden before the rite began. In the garden were the houses of the orixas. A swarm of black girls in Bahian dress was cheerfully gathered there, making the final preparations.
The houses of the orixas were arranged around the garden like the chapels of a sacred mount. Outside each one was displayed the image of the corresponding saint. Inside, the garish colors of flowers clashed with those of the statues and the just-cooked foods offered to the gods. White for Oxala, blue and pink for Yemanja, red and white for Xang5, yellow and gold for Ogun...Initiates kneeled and kissed the threshold, touching themselves on the forehead and behind the ear.
“But is Yemanja Our Lady of the Conception or not?” I asked. “Is Xango Saint Jerome or not?”
“Don’t ask embarrassing questions,” Aglie advised. “It’s even more complicated in an umbanda. Saint Anthony and Saints Cosmas and Damian are part of the Oxala line. Sirens, water nymphs, caboclas of the sea and the rivers, sailors, and guiding stars are part of the Yemanja line. The line of the Orient includes Hindus, doctors, scientists, Arabs and Moroccans, Japanese, Chinese, Mongols, Egyptians, Aztecs, Incas, Caribs, and Romans. To the Oxossi line belong the sun, the moon, the caboclo of waterfalls, and the caboclo of the blacks. In the Ogun line we come upon Ogun Beira-Mar, Rompe-Mato, lara, Mege, Na-ruee...In other words, it all depends.”
“Jesus,” Amparo said again.
“Oxala, you mean,” I murmured to her, my lips brushing her ear. “Calm down. No pasaran.”
The ialorixa showed us a series of masks that some acolytes were bringing into the temple. These were big straw dominoes, or hoods, which the mediums would put on as they went into a trance, falling prey to the divinity. This was a form of modesty, she explained. In some terreiros the chosen danced with their faces bare, letting onlookers see their passion. But the initiates should be shielded, respected, removed from the curiosity of the profane or anyone who cannot understand the inner jubilation and grace. That was the custom in this terreiro, she said, and that was why outsiders were not readily admitted. Maybe someday, she remarked, who knows? We might well meet again.
But she didn’t want us to leave without sampling some of the comidas de santo—not from the corbeils, which had to remain intact until the end of the rite, but from her own kitchen. She took us to the back of the terreiro, where there was a multicolored banquet of manioc, pimento, coco, amendoim, gengibre, moqueca de siri-mole, vatapa, ef6, caruru, black beans with farofa, amid a languid odor of African spices, sweet and strong tropical flavors, which we tasted dutifully, knowing that we were sharing the food of the ancient Sudanese gods. And rightly so, the ialorixa told us, because each of us, whether he knew it or not, was the child of an orixa, and often it was possible