Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [415]
“Sé Ezili Jé Rouj li yé.” Maman Maig’ ’s voice was calm, even detached. Moustique retreated, out of Elise’s line of sight. Erzulie Jé Rouj was turning, marching straight toward her where she lay. As she approached, her figure blocked the shadow of the cross.
“Ki moun ki rélé mwen?” she said, her voice tight with fury. Who called me?
Elise’s eyes fixed on the gleam of blood within the furrows of the nail cuts. She could not answer; it was as if a heavy chain lay across her tongue, but still she felt she was responsible—guilty, rather—for summoning the apparition.
“That was not your dream, white woman,” Erzulie Jé Rouj pronounced. “You dreamed the dream of the blanche, Claudine Arnaud—it was she who cut the child unborn from the mother’s belly, long ago and yesterday and always, and ever since the child has walked with her. Would you walk with them, white woman? Would you dream that dream, with them?”
I’d rather die, Elise was thinking, but still she could speak no word.
Ezili cocked her head toward the street below the lakou. The light of the candles around the doorway shimmered in the burning tears that filled her eyes. “Listen,” she said. “Can you hear them there?”
Elise strained her ears but could hear nothing. Even the drums were silent now.
“Toussaint has come to give his head to the blanc general,” Ezili said, and of a sudden she shrieked and tore at her hair, and tears spilled into the cuts along her cheek. “Do you know? We might all have saved each other. Toussaint carried that dream to the crossroads, but the blancs will not let it pass the gate. Now we have seen it die aborning. Now it must wait unborn four hundred years.” She threw away the fistfuls of hair she had torn from her head and scratched up dirt from the ground to pound into her face.
Though she choked with terror, Elise was also inspired with a terrible pity for the being before her, though she knew it was much stronger than herself. All its power was for self-destruction. And she, herself, could not reach or comfort it. From the soles of her feet to the roof of her mouth she was frozen. She could neither speak nor weep.
From the shadows near the entrance of the hûnfor, the doctor and Tocquet watched as the figure of Claudine Arnaud rose from beside Elise’s couch, turned, and swept toward them. It passed them blind, twin gashes shining red on its cheek, and went into the dark beyond the gateway. A rustle up the doctor’s spine moved in the direction of its movement, like iron dust following a magnet.
“What is it?” he said—to Moustique, who had followed Claudine in the direction of the gate and now was hesitating near them.
“You might do better to ask the spirit that touched you,” Moustique said. His gangling grasshopper’s silhouette was very still in the weak blend of light from the stars and the candles. Though his voice was not exactly unfriendly, his usual ingratiating manner had dropped away from him.
The doctor glanced at Tocquet, who looked unastonished by anything that had happened since they had left the feast of Toussaint’s surrender to come here. In truth, the doctor was not much astonished either. It all seemed strange but inevitable.
“That is Ezili Jé Rouj who has passed,” Moustique said. “She come for one reason or another. Sometimes she comes to send back children who are not wanted here.”
“And Madame Arnaud?” the doctor said.
“She is the spirit you have called out of your own need,” Moustique said, but the doctor thought he was not yet speaking of Claudine, or not entirely of her. “She sees what you don’t know you see, and says what you can’t say.” He paused, turning his large head in silhouette against the vague light of the harbor. “Madame Arnaud will return to herself,” he said. “Now I will go to her.” He lowered his head and went past them through the gate.
A wind came up and swirled around the hûnfor. The candles were all cunningly shielded with angled stones, so that their flames guttered