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“I have the right to talk about it, hell and damnation!” he shoots back. “I’ve had my fair share of beatings and getting slapped around, just like you. No point blubbering. They won’t come looking for us where we are. And anyway, were we arrested for a political reason? We weren’t, were we? So then? We’re not doing anything wrong. We are locking ourselves up to get drunk and that can’t bother anyone, not even the devils you pretend you’ve seen … Oh! Oh! Oh! You bunch of pranksters! …”

“Don’t laugh at them,” I say to him.

“Gosh! You’re looking dangerous there. Thin as a rail but standing on his spurs like a fighting cock. Say, old friend, you’re not going to beat up a poor drunk white guy, are you, your poor drunk white buddy?”

“Don’t talk about them or you’ll draw them out.”

“About whom must I no longer speak?”

“The devils.”

“But I wasn’t talking about them,” he protests. “I don’t believe in them, I tell you.”

“You get everything mixed up and you don’t understand a thing,” André tells him. “Take René’s advice. In reality, you’re just a white man and our country’s mysteries are beyond you. Take René’s advice. He’s the boss.”

“The boss of what?”

“The boss!” André adds without any further explanation.

“Shit then,” Simon exclaims. “Me, I can’t keep up with you anymore.”

“That’s because you are just a white man,” André answers.

“Oh! Really now,” he protests. “Fuck off with your white man bullshit. Aren’t the four of us brothers who go way back, yes or no?”

“Yes,” I reply, “but there are things in our country you will never understand.”

“What, for example? That I’m forbidden to drink your syrup even if I am croaking of hunger, because you’ve supposedly already offered it to your loas? Hold on! Watch this! I am going to swallow your syrup, you watch me …”

“No!” André shouts.

“I am a white man,” Simon yells, “and I’m hungry.”

He leans over the trunk and grabs the dishes.

“Double dishes of baked clay!” he says with admiration. “Joined like Siamese twins! Bugger me! They’re full of syrup! I could never swallow that much! Nothing can make a man as sick as sugar after alcohol. I’m going to barf and I don’t like barfing … Him, why is he sleeping like that? Hey, Jacques! Wake up, sonny. He’s still as a dead man. Anyway, here’s your syrup. Looking at it makes me nauseous. Dear loas, I return to you what’s yours. Ah! Ah! Ah! Bugger me! I like clairin better. Why is he sleeping like that? Hey! Wake up …”

I see him suddenly put the dishes down on the trunk and lean over Jacques. He finds his heart and puts his ear to it. He looks so funny in that posture that I burst out laughing.

“He’s dead,” he tells us and gets up staggering, goes toward André and puts an arm around his neck.

“He’s dead,” he says again.

“You’re mad,” André says coldly.

“He’s dead, I tell you!” he yells.

And he begins sobbing noisily, like a big child, fists in his eyes.

Pain suddenly hit me, sinking into my skull like a knife and swelling in my brain. A thousand red-hot needles pierced my right temple and a gong resounded in the distance, mournful and deafening.

“The signal,” I cried out.

“What signal?” Simon asked.

I threw myself on the wall, trembling, barely able to stand on my legs. The gong resounded a second time, then a third. I saw a multitude of devils coming out of the ground. They were naked this time and all black with red horns and tails. They were moving in rhythm as if to the beat of some strange, stylized voodoo dance. I saw one of them climb a beam up to Cécile’s balcony with the agility of a monkey. He broke open the door to the living room and came out carrying her under his arm like a small package. He jumped over the balcony and let himself slide to the ground, where he put her down. He tore off her clothes, leaving her naked. I seized my weapons. I shoved five bottles into my pockets, struck a match and lit the sixth.

“What are you doing?” I heard Simon say as in a dream.

I looked at him calmly. At the approach of danger I was swept with confused happiness, almost incomprehensibly so. I removed