Stone That the Builder Refused - Madison Smartt Bell [50]
The tone of the drumming went harsh and dry, as the tempo picked up speed; the doctor seemed to feel it fluttering in his throat. His attention was drawn to a tall man who stood behind the drums, clashing two pieces of iron together with a fierce, piercing sound. A rusted rivet, and yes, a curved piece of a broken manacle, which he tossed in his hand to make it ring. The sound of the irons was like the crack at the end of a whip’s uncoiling. The people pressed in, knotting more tightly around the drums and dancers, singing now:
Kalfou, sé Kalfou ou yé
Maît Kalfou, sé lwa . . .
Sé Kalfou ki vini nou
Kalfou k’ap pase baryè-a . . .
And with those verses a small figure burst into the circle with arms stretched wide. The upper part of his face was hidden by a fringe of hanging leaves bound to his forehead by the edge of the blood-red headcloth he wore. His movement drove the other dancers backward, like magnets repelling yet at the same time attracted. A small, knotty figure, dancing and turning with slightly bowed legs, arms rigidly outstretched, like wings of a gliding hawk. The arms were trembling, they were held so taut. The doctor watched, fascinated. Under the leaf-mask the jaw was heavy and underslung, the mouth a grinning rictus, the head overall too large for the body. The arms trembled with their tension as the dancer turned his back—the doctor could see the small muscles along his shoulders twitching.
Kalfou, it’s Kalfou you are
The Master of the Crossroads is a god . . .
It’s Kalfou who comes among us
The Master of the Crossroads is passing through the gate . . .
The old black dame in the striped skirt passed by the doctor, a sweep of her hem inviting him into her movement. Ou vlé viré? she said as she twirled again toward the drums, Do you want to dance? But the doctor only took another step back, raising his eyes away from her. Kalfou was standing stock still now, his back to the doctor, the knot of his headcloth tight as a bloodclot to the base of his skull, his arms pressed hard against some invisible containment like the arms of Samson brought to bear on the pillars of the temple. The clash of the irons at the end of each drum phrase was like a slap in the doctor’s face. On the opposite side of the circle, one of the men in uniform was positioned so as to see Kalfou’s face, and there seemed to be something there he recognized, though with an expression of disbelief. That onlooker wore an officer’s epaulettes, and all at once the doctor realized it was Colonel Sans-Souci.
Next morning he woke just before dawn, despite the restless night he’d passed. The sight of Sans-Souci in the Place Clugny had freed him to go home at a relatively reasonable hour (for even if Elise had not yet returned, at least he knew she was not in assignation with the black colonel). In the event, Elise and Tocquet were closeted in their boudoir by the time the doctor climbed the stairs, and when he went to his own room in the back of the house he could still hear the querulous tones of their voices, jerking along with the same uneasy rhythm as those drums.
Zabeth, who knew his habits well, had brewed coffee. He stirred in sugar and drained his cup in a couple of gulps, put on his broad-brimmed straw hat, and went out. Elise was still abed, no doubt, and where Tocquet might be was anybody’s guess. At this hour the doctor was alone on the street but for soot-stained charcoal burners down from the hills, their donkeys loaded with their product, drifting ghost-like from one kitchen to the next.
There was no crisis at the hospital today, nor had there been one since Captain Howarth had put to sea with the Merry Bell just a few days before. The yellow fever, by the grace of God, had not spread beyond the victims in Howarth’s crew. All the same, the doctor had yielded to Elise’s importuning and released Zabeth from hospital duty.