The Love Potion Murders in the Museum of Man_ A Norman De Ratour Mystery - Alfred Alcorn [53]
Ferdie pans back, showing a group of the natives coming over to kneel in front of Corny. They make placatory, almost devotional sounds. A figure in mask and loincloth shakes ashes over Corny’s head. “This is the purification ceremony. Those are the ashes, Bricklesby tells us, of the last celebrant as they call the victim. Notice that there is no animosity here. They consider it a great honor. I am about to become a part of the tribe. The Yomama word for ‘initiation’ is very close to the one used for this ceremony. Ferdie! Ferdie! It’s about to start …”
A figure in an elaborate headdress dances to the pounding log drum and appears in front of Corny, who is spread naked like the universal human figure by Leonardo. “Ferdie, keep the camera on the shaman in the cockade of red macaw feathers. Oh, God, I think he’s doing the cleansing dance right now.”
The camera keeps to the man in the brilliant headdress and painted, near-naked torso dancing around and bending over an object on the ground. As Corny again comes into view a harsh, familiar sound is heard off camera. Corny gasps. “Oh, God. That’s a chain saw. Bricklesby said nothing about that. It’s not in the tradition. Oh, God. Or am I hallucinating?”
Poor Corny is not hallucinating. The shaman figure comes into view holding what looks like an old chain saw. It’s sputtering and emitting great clouds of blue smoke as the figure approaches Corny.
At which point I pressed the OFF button. I simply could not watch any more of it.
Am I a coward? Perhaps. But as ambivalent as I may feel about Corny sometimes, he is still a member of the museum community. He is still one of us. And I dread, absolutely dread, having to watch him being sacrificed on the altar of anthropological research. More than that, I dread having to go to Jocelyn and explain to her what has happened to her husband.
18
No, I have not yet viewed the rest of the Corny Chard tape. I have dreamed about it. I obsess about it during my waking hours. The very drawer in which I have placed the tape seems haunted. Several times now I have taken it in hand, gone down to the Twitchell Room, and, at the last minute, pavid and pale, lost my nerve.
Of course I have my excuses. I have been spending a good deal of time at home with Elsbeth. She has finally agreed to have an oxygen apparatus available to use when she has trouble breathing. I think she did it to relieve the anxiety Diantha and I experience when she starts gasping for breath like a fish out of water.
Perhaps, at some unconscious level, I have conflated what awaits me on the tape and what awaits Elsbeth. Both are unimaginable and yet as real as the ground and the sky. I wonder if we find death a mockery because life, after all, is all we’ve got.
To more mundane matters. I have received at long last the curriculum vitae of Ms. Celeste Tangent. Indeed, I have received two copies, one from a young man in Human Resources with a note apologizing for the delay, and one from Lieutenant Tracy. The woman appears to have had, if I do say so, a rather checkered career to have ended up as a laboratory assistant in a genetics lab.
Born twenty-seven years ago in Norman, Oklahoma, Ms. Tangent claims a degree in business administration from a correspondence school associated with Oral Roberts University. She next lists herself as an assistant supervisor at the Caucasian Escort Service, Brooklyn, New York. In that capacity, she “recruited, trained, and directed young women in the etiquette of an upmarket escorting service patronized by a distinguished and discreet clientele.”
After several years of