Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [261]
Though Quamba was a nearer friend to Guiaou than to Riau, sometimes he came when Riau was there with Merbillay. He would eat whatever there was and sit playing his bone flute in the darkness, and some of the children might sing and dance. But this time Quamba waited for Riau to come to him.
The hûnfor was on the point of a hill above Thibodet, and one could see a long way from it, even as far as Sancey, which was still smoking because the blanc soldiers had burned it for revenge against Toussaint. I stood beside the kay mystè, shading my eyes to look. I knew from Caco that the blancs had not burned Descahaux, which was another one of Toussaint’s places further up the gorge, but I could not quite see Descahaux from where I stood.
It was cool still, because the sun had not long risen from the mountains, and the breeze still came across the hilltop, hard enough to snap the red flag on the long cane pole above the kay mystè. When I turned from looking at the smoke above Sancey, Quamba was waiting by the cross of Baron, with both his arms folded across his chest.
“I have come to make the service that we spoke of,” I said to him.
Quamba did not move. “You don’t give yourself much time,” he said.
“No,” I said. “But now the spirit will not let me rest.”
Then Quamba opened his arms and smiled. “Ba’m main’ou,” he said. Give me your hand.
I took the hand that he held out and held it lightly as he held mine.
“Well,” Quamba said, as he let it go. “We can begin.”
Before Riau was stolen out of Guinée, I served the spirits of my family there, but I was only a small boy then, and afterward I remembered almost nothing of that service. At Bréda we were all made to follow the cross of Jesus, and even Toussaint—Toussaint most of all—pretended to serve Jesus only. After I ran away from Bréda, in those first days of my marronage, it was Achille, the hûngan among our band, who taught Riau to serve the lwa. In the years between that time and this one, I had gained some konesans, a knowledge of the sacred things. Since Merbillay had lived here at Thibodet, I had learned many things from Quamba, and the spirits gave me much through Quamba’s hands. Quamba tore the leaves of Ayizan to hide my face and made the bath to clean my body and made the bed of mombin leaves for me to lie on. Quamba saw my gros bon ange go into the govi, and saw that govi touched by fire. From all this Riau rose up hûnsi-canzo, with Ogûn Ferraille the master of his head. But to take the asson there was more.
Again I lay on a bed of leaves, in the shadow of the kay mystè, till I no longer knew the rising or the setting of the sun. How many days it was I did not know for certain, but maybe it was less than all the nine, because with the blancs bringing war all over the country there were not so many days to spend. What happened through those days I will not tell. When it was finished, Quamba put the asson in my hand. I closed my fingers on its neck, and heard the bead strings clashing on the body of the gourd, but it was not my hand or Quamba’s that moved so. It was the lwa that moved through me.
Then I would have gone back to Merbillay’s case, to rest a little while beside her living flesh. But by the time Quamba raised me up, Guiaou had come, and Toussaint himself was not far off. Toussaint had returned to Ennery, and chased away the few blanc soldiers who had stayed there, and now he waited on the hill of Descahaux.
Now there was really not much time. We did not make a great assembly. Quamba and Riau prepared alone. There were no drummers and no dancing, but at dusk, after he had stretched a cloth from the door of the kay mystè toward the cross of Baron, Quamba sounded the drum himself, lightly, steadily, till Papa Loco came to him. With the lwa there came also some people in their bodies, Merbillay, Caco, Jean-Pic, Zabeth, Michau, and Guiaou himself.