Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [432]
“W’ap vini,” said Quamba. You have come. Now Placide remembered what Guiaou had said, on the road from Marmelade to Dondon, the day they rode to Le Cap to surrender. One day we will take you to the drums. Though the light was swiftly failing, he saw a tall drum leaning against the central post, hairy goatskin shrunken and straining around the pegs, but there were no drummers. The wind lifted and the flag whipped on its pole, and Placide felt a fluttering of the loose ends of cloth below the knot of his mouchwa.
Arms folded over his chest, Quamba stepped nearer, so he could look through Placide’s eyes to the very bottom of his head. He was near enough to inhale Placide’s breath. His own smelled faintly of cinnamon. Placide relaxed, as if salt water buoyed him.
“Well,” said Quamba. “I will make a service to help you to receive the spirit.”
He had not changed his posture or expression, but now there was a question in his eyes. Placide nodded. He had come for this, though without knowing that he knew it, and such a long, long way. The roll of the hilltop under his feet was like the swell of the waves under the ship that carried him from France.
Quamba unfolded his arms to discover a dry gourd strung with beads. When he moved it the seed inside and the beads outside combined in a sound like the rattle of a snake, and someone lit a candle and raised it to the four directions, and someone touched the head of the drum, though in no pattern: once, twice, three times the hollow note, and on the third beat the darkening air was shattered by a scream that rocked Placide to the bottom of his heels.
He stared: Bienvenu had fallen and was kicking and tearing at the dirt. Or he ripped his fingers into his scalp, weaving his head as if it had filled with a swarm of bees. The voice that came out of him was harsh and shrill and querulous, the voice of an angry woman. Guiaou and Merbillay and Guerrier had surrounded him—or her, for Bienvenu was only harboring this furious woman, Placide saw—they spoke to her in low, ingratiating voices, stroking her, soothing her. “No, no, Maîtresse,” Guiaou was murmuring, “you have come before the hour . . . let us go now.” He showed her something hidden in his palm, and Bienvenu’s hand grabbed for it but Guiaou backed away, and the being that inhabited Bienvenu followed the lure, supported by Merbillay and Guerrier. Finally they passed through the gate outside. Placide had not turned to watch. His hair stood stiff on the back of his neck. Outside the enclosure there were sounds of some scuffle and then the harsh female laughter declining. Guiaou and Guerrier and Merbillay came back inside, Guiaou quietly turning to close the gate behind them.
A blanket-like darkness covered the hûnfor, so thick the stars could not penetrate. Placide’s thoughts were scrambling up and down the inner wall of his skull like a pack of drunken monkeys bent on destruction. He did not know where to rest his eyes. But the candle was still lit, and in its aura he picked out the rainbow spiral on the central post where the drum had been propped, and that pattern closed with the rainbow he had seen that morning, restoring a wholeness. He calmed enough to understand Quamba’s words.
“Bay têt ou,” Quamba said. Give up your head.
Placide unfastened his mouchwa têt and stuffed it into a trouser pocket. Loosening the string at the throat of his shirt, he stepped forward and knelt before the wide wooden bowl that had appeared on the ground before him. Hands came through darkness to peel the shirt back from his shoulders—Guiaou’s and Merbillay’s. Placide noticed the cool strength of her fingers.
“Make the sign of the cross,” Quamba said, and Placide obeyed him. He lowered his head above the wooden gamelle, whose water released a pungent scent, colored with herbs and a trace of coffee beans. The monkeys scrabbled harder at the folds of his brain, so desperate to cling to that territory. Then Quamba raised a double scoop of water and began