Unsympathetic Magic - Laura Resnick [39]
“Who’s Damballah?” I asked, gingerly probing my scalp.
Catherine, who was about to answer, looked surprised when Max said, “Ah! He is perhaps the most powerful of the Vodou loa, and his origins are very ancient, going all the way back to the Great Serpent whose seven thousand coils brought forth Creation. Damballah is earthly and very wise. His wife is Ayida-Wedo, the Rainbow, a goddess of the sky. Like Damballah, she is also represented by a snake.” He smiled courteously at Mambo Celeste. “Is my summary correct?”
“Who are you?” she asked suspiciously.
“I beg your pardon!” He removed his straw hat. “In all the commotion, we skipped introductions, didn’t we?”
Jeff said to Catherine, “This is Dr. Max Zadok, a friend of Esther’s.”
I said to Max, “This is Dr. Catherine Livingston. My new boss, I guess.”
Max nodded to her. “My pleasure, Dr. Livingston.”
“What is your field, Dr. Zadok?”
“I studied science and theology at Oxford University,” he said, wisely omitting the awkward detail that he had graduated more than three hundred years ago. “And what is your field, doctor?”
“Cultural anthropology, religion, and folklore,” Catherine replied. Which perhaps explained her verbal incontinence over the old piece of cloth decorating her couch.
Looking at me with open distaste, Mambo Celeste said to Jeff, “And who is this . . . woman you have brought here?”
“Esther Diamond,” I said. “I’m a new workshop teacher here. Temporarily, anyhow. I hope we’ll be friends.”
Her expression suggested that she’d rather weave kente cloth with her toes than befriend me.
“Mambo Celeste—er, a mambo is a Vodou priestess,” Catherine said, addressing me, the ignorant one. “Mambo Celeste honors us here at the foundation by teaching Vodou practices and by leading rituals. I direct the foundation’s programs in traditional cultures and syncretic religions, which educate young African-Americans about their rich heritage. As with our programs in music, drama, literature, and art, we encourage our students—whether children, teens, or adults—to explore forms of self-expression beyond the commercialized contemporary pop culture that’s already familiar to them.”
I said, “What’s a syn . . . syncret . . .”
“A syncretic faith,” Catherine said, “is one that combines and adapts two or more existing religions into a single new one. Syncretic religions were the focus of my Ph.D. research—which is also how I originally got involved in the Livingston Foundation.”
“Is that how you met your husband?” I asked. “When you started working here?”
Catherine ignored the personal question in favor of lecturing me some more. “Examples of syncretic faiths in the New World include Santería, which emerged in Cuba; Candomblé, which is an Afro-Brazilian religion; Shango and Brujería, which respectively developed in—”
“And I guess voodoo is the best known of these?” I interrupted, sensing that I could be in for another lengthy monologue if I wasn’t careful.
“Vodou is the more proper traditional term,” she said. “It developed in Haiti, arising out of various traditional West African religions that came to the New World with captive slaves, combined with the Roman Catholicism of the slaves’ French masters.”
“The loa whom I mentioned,” Max said to me, “are Vodou spirits who correspond loosely to Catholic saints. And you will perhaps have observed that the mambo wears a Christian cross.”
“So you’re loosely Catholic?” I said to her.
Mambo Celeste looked at me as if my skirt were up around my waist again. Jeff looked heavenward, as if seeking forgiveness from his Maker for having brought me here.
Max cleared his throat. “We were admiring the beautiful drapeaux in the hallway. Did those come from Haiti?”
“No, they were made by members of Mambo Celeste’s spiritual community.” Glancing at the snake-draped woman with a smile that struck me as slightly patronizing, Catherine added, “The mambo serves a devoted group of followers.”
“What are they following?” I asked, watching Napoleon’s head rise and fall sinuously in front of Mambo Celeste’s face