Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [33]
As they finished eating they began to hear drumming higher up the hill and voices of women singing in the hûnfor. The talk among them stopped and for a time they listened, heads lowered and their faces turned away from one another. At last there was a general movement among them, with no word. Guiaou put the chain of the picture case around his neck, and he donned the red coat and walked with the three other men up a twisting path toward the sound of drums and voices. Within the torch-lit clearing the hûngan named Joaquim was now calling, Attibon Legba . . . vini nou . . . and the hounsis, swaying in a line before the drums, sang in response. Attibon Legba, come to us.
The hûngan Joaquim stood near a sword driven into the ground, shaking the asson to the beat of the deepest drum. With each snap of his wrist the bead chains rattled on the gourd, and Guiaou felt a shadow pass him, swooping, stooping like the small hawks of the mountains. The scream, wild and desperately inhuman, thrilled him with fear and anticipation. A pace away from Guiaou, Couachy had been struck by the god. Loa of the crossroads, Legba, had come, to open the way from the world of spirits and dead souls to the world of living people.
Legba kanpe nan baryè, the hounsis sang. Legba is standing in the gate . . .
With others, Guiaou moved to support Couachy, who had been staggered by the shock of the descent. His eyes rolled back; when they reopened, the irises were ringed clear round with white—the fixed and alien glare of the possessed. He took a limping step toward the rattling asson, turning around the vertex of its sound. He limped because his joints were wracked and twisted; Legba had made of the body of Couachy the figure of a stooping, grizzled old man, weighed down by a long straw sack that dragged from his shoulder almost to the ground. The singing voices surrounded him.
Attibon Legba
Ouvri baryè pou nou
Attibon Legba
Kité nou pasé . . .
Guiaou’s hands hummed from his contact with the loa, and he felt that the front parts of his mind were darkening. But it was Jacquot, who had also moved to support Couachy, who was taken now, he who shuddered and was transformed.
Attibon Legba
Open the gate for us
Attibon Legba
Let us pass through . . .
The gate was open. Maît’ Kalfou had risen from beneath the waters to stand in the body of Jacquot: Master of the Crossroads. Between Legba and Kalfou the crossroads stood open now, and now Guiaou could feel that opened pathway rushing up his spine—passage from the Island Below Sea inhabited by les Morts et les Mystères. His hips melted into the movement of the drums, and the tails of the red coat swirled around his legs like feathers of a bird. With the other dancers he closed the small, tight circle around Legba and Kalfou, who faced each other as in a mirror: the shining surface of the waters, which divides the living from the dead. Kalfou’s bare muscled arms had raised in the form of the cross, and his head was lowered like a bull’s before a charge. He danced as though he swung suspended from ropes fastened to the dark night sky. The drums quickened and the hounsis sang.
Kalfou sé Kalfou ou yé
Kalfou ouvri rout la
pou moin pasé . . .
Guiaou circulated among the dancers, losing his companions, until he stood before the dancing line of hounsis, watching the woman he had watched before, Merbillay, who had served him coffee. He could feel the nearness of his own spirit, the loa who was the master of his head. The front of his mind grew more and more dark, and a heavy wing seemed to