Master of the Crossroads - Madison Smartt Bell [357]
Inside the case, Fontelle’s voice was faintly audible, and the answer of one of the girls. Presently Paulette came out of the house, a clay vessel smoothly riding on top of her head, going to fetch water from the stream. She glanced at them once and then away.
“Meanwhile,” Claudine said, “we must live our days. Where there is sin there must be atonement. I am given to tell you that they suffer worse who are not permitted to atone. Your father gave me a penance, but this penance has become my joy. I cannot bring a child from my own body, but now I have many children here.”
Moustique’s face slipped and shifted in the glaze of tears that covered her eyes. She blinked them free.
“You yourself are father to a child,” she told him. “A son, who has now four years.”
Moustique colored and looked away. His blush was the rose shade of a white person’s, she noticed. His lashes were long and delicate, like his sisters’.
“A priest is not meant to father children,” Moustique muttered.
“That may be so,” Claudine said, “but if all priests were faithful in that rule, you would not exist yourself.”
Moustique set aside the gourd cup and stood up, dusting himself and looking about as if he could not choose a direction.
“Sit down,” Claudine said. “From your own experience, you must know you would be wrong to leave your child without a father.”
Moustique remained on his feet, arms folded over his chest.
“Return the articles which were stolen and accept these in their place—they are freely given,” Claudine said. “Then you may claim your child, and the mother.”
“You have been speaking to l’Abbé Delahaye, have you not?”
“I have seen him,” Claudine said. “If you do as I suggest, he will not harm or prevent you.”
“He will believe I am sold to the devil,” Moustique muttered.
“Because you also serve the spirits?” Claudine raised her eyebrows. “But you should believe what you yourself teach: that one may serve Bon Dieu and the mysteries of Guinée together, without contradiction.”
She stood up and shook out her long skirt. “Also,” she said, “this is no scheme of l’Abbé Delahaye, but the motion of the Holy Spirit, which came through your father to me and which now moves through me to you.”
Moustique gaped. She curtsied to him, smiled, and walked away.
That night the three women prepared the meal together as before, but when they had cleared away the dishes, all three of them disappeared, leaving their men with their rum on the dirt-floored porch. Arnaud and the doctor sat in silence, for a time, on three-legged stools against the wall. When the drums began, it felt to the doctor as if he had been hearing them all the while in the beat of his blood.
Below, the women entered the compound from the foot of the trail that led down through the stand of bamboo from the house. Cléo, Fontelle and Claudine, all dressed in white and wearing white headcloths. They walked together in a leftward loop around the rear of the church and joined a column of other white-clad women which was snaking its way up the far slope into the jungle.
Arnaud sat speechless, with a fixed regard, balancing his twisted cane on its point and letting it fall from one hand to the other. Now and then he tasted his rum. The doctor, who could think of no word to say to him, was silent also. When the first cry of the possessed rang down from the hill, Arnaud trembled as if he had himself received the shock. The doctor got up then, and laid a hand on his shoulder. Arnaud glanced up at him as if he might speak, but did not. After a moment he shifted just enough to break the contact. The doctor thanked him for his hospitality and went indoors to sleep.
At dawn the next morning they were summoned to the church by someone clanging on a pot lid. Claudine sat on the front bench, to Cléo’s left, surrounded by the children she instructed. Arnaud took his seat beside her; the doctor settled across the aisle. Most of last night’s celebrants were also present, still wearing their white garments. Claudine