Black Champagne

by George B Mair

  She paused as though to marshall her thoughts. ‘You know that Baron Samedi is the greatest of the Guédé family of Gods. Well, don’t forget that the Guédé are also the killers who matter in the whole pantheon of voodoo Gods. So jes’ think what the Baron got up ’is sleeve waitin’ for yo’.’

  The Asiatic’s voice was husky and Grant saw with astonishment that his hands were trembling as he tried to pull himself together. One part of him probably wanted to kill them and get it over with, but the dark deep part which harked back to the old Gods was frightened. And it was a fantastic experience to see a top international cosmopolite reduced to gibbering fear by a cross painted on the hands of a young girl. ‘You need more than that, miss. What about consecrating it?’

  She smiled. ‘Why do you t’hink ah asked fo’ food? They gave me rum an’ there was biscuits. An’ you sho’ly ain’t fo’gotten dat rum is one ob de consecrating foods. An’ ah kept some biscuit crumbs to rub on de cross at the fust crossroads we came to, ’cos ah knew de Baron wouldn’t go lettin’ his mambo down and that we was jes’ certain to find crossroads befo’ we came to de lake. It was written in de book.’

  She laughed again and pointed to Jo Go-Go. ‘You see dat li’l fellow dere. He a pti-cay-yo. When ah called ’im ober maybe you wondered why. Dat boy jes’ couldn’t help hisself. When the priestess call, de pti-cay-yo gotta move an’ do ’xactly what de great mambo says.’

  The man tried to sneer. ‘You’re no mambo. Maybe you know a little, but at best you’re a phoney hanger-on. And this isn’t a temple, a humfo.’

  Krystelle raised her eyebrows and, suddenly, her accent again changed. ‘Maybe you like it better if I speak B.B.C. English or Pentagon Americanese. You forget some things, sir. You can’t keep a lot of nigger children or southern states brats anywhere in numbers without two or three of them using the old rites, because don’t forget that most people who practise voodoo may also be Christians or Muslims. You’re a Buddhist, yet you don’t find anything unusual in going to a New York humfo or playing about with bat’s blood and all the rest of it. So this is a humfo and the Gods are waiting to possess you.’ She smiled malevolently. ‘Have you forgotten that you’ve just killed a man? You sacrificed Ferguson to the waters. Had you really forgotten all that means?’

  She turned towards the lake. ‘Think what we’ve got right here beside us. The ocean—or part of it—which is the home of all the sea Gods. And down there is all that remains of Ferguson’s skeleton sacrificed deliberately to the fish, which can be the sea Gods in disguise. But one way or another the sacrifice was made to the waters or whatever they might hold and the sea Gods accepted it because I waved the vèvè as Ferguson died. It let him know that his murderer would follow, and that next time they came to this earth they would ride his murderer and all the fiendish little boys who follow him.’

  The Asiatic was now quivering with fear, and Grant remembered all that he had read of voodoo, how when the Gods appear during a service they actually possess the bodies of all believers, or ‘ride them’ as the voodouns say, until they ultimately waken up after orgiastic outbursts which are never remembered afterwards, but which are supposed to be the behaviours of the Gods acting as they please, naturally and without inhibitions. While if the provocative female God Ezili is around to control the performance heights of obscenity can be reached which have given rise to awesome stories of black magic in the Haitian humfos. ‘You are trying to say that you are Ezili?’

  And when Krystelle stood in her splendid nakedness to raise her hands as though in blessing Grant himself almost found it easy as his own hand was drawn up to believe that she was indeed that fabulous goddess, the most beautiful and flirtatious of all, whose favourite clothes are red and blue, and for whom a sanctuary is kept in every second Haitian house. She raised her voice and spoke with a resonant authority which was terrifying. ‘I am Ezili. But I am also Ezilicœur noir because I am death and Baron Samedi is keeper of my cemetery. The Ocean Gods are my slaves and the time is ripe for another sacrifice, so now the Gods will rise and ride you.’

  She paused and her hands seemed to flow in front of her in a series of delicate motions which caught the light and flashed it from the crimson lines of her cross. ‘See Mr. U.N.O.-man. My vèvè. See the crumbs still sticking to its limbs. See proof of the consecration. Remember your sacrifice. Know that the Gods are coming. Soon they will enter you and then you will dance your last dance until I send you back to the Ocean Gods to rejoin your friend Ferguson.’

  She raised her voice and shouted till the echoes bounced from every corner of the vast chamber. ‘Come here, all of you. Nigger boys down here.’ And then she looked at Jo Go-Go. ‘You, little boy. Shoot anyone who starts anything. Now they all die. All of them except you, Jo Go-Go. Remember that Ezili orders you. Go round and take their guns. Take their knives. Collect every one. Ring the bells. Call our people. Make them come. And you, man,’ she turned again to the Asiatic. ‘You feel the Gods beginning to ride you. You feel the great Gods gettin’ inside yo’. You’ feel de Gods going inta yo’ limbs.’ And as she broke again into dialect Grant knew that even she was moved to excitement by the fantastic atmosphere which had now built up.

  Fifteen or twenty of the teenagers were now dancing barefoot to a weird throbbing of drum music beaten from the rocks by a half demented youth who threshed a stalactite with his knuckles until they bled, but continued until even the bone was showing through lacerations of the skin.

  And then as Krystelle swayed on the platform others joined in a swaying congo around the sand, backwards and forwards near the edge of the waters until their naked feet were almost wet and the piranha were flashing madly on the surface only a yard or two away. ‘You see,’ shrieked Krystelle, ‘the Gods are welcoming yo’. Go on, boy. Mo’ music. Get de Gods ridin’ fast. Get ’em swinging.’

  Grant had been studying the politician with almost detached impassivity. He had never before seen a cultivated person systematically throw off the mask, and it was a bizarre experience to see the effect Krystelle was having upon a man who was one of the world’s top ten personalities. Fear had now been replaced by a strange self revelation as the man slowly unhooked his bow tie and then with a shriek of laughter stripped himself naked. His skinny little frame contrasted badly with the powerful bodies around him. Each of Ferguson’s commandos had also stripped and the huge cavern seemed dressed for a carnival. Crimson polo necks daubed the rocks with colour while white shorts lay in plies at the bases of fluted stalagmites and young men sweated to the age-old rhythm of the drums.

  Two boys were now playing against sheets of thin rock and Grant watched five more join after testing a few long columns until they had hit on ones with the correct pitch and formed themselves into a sort of steel band, only using rocks instead of dustbins. The notes were unusually mellow, but above them all throbbed the steady insistent rhythm of the bush drum.

  Grant knew as well as most that drummers are supremely important during any voodoo ceremony and that it is upon their rhythm and fervour that the dancers will depend for continued sense of possession and concentration, but there, in the underground limestone cavern with its vast organ-like pipes some trick of acoustics performed miracles with the music. Echoes throbbed in every corner just as sparks of light flashed against the crimson jerseys and made them more than usually three dimensional against the twinkling crystal deposits from the carbonate rocks, most of which were covered with a thin film of water. And Grant also remembered that Ferguson had found the humidity high. Already, with almost two hundred people added to the place, humidity must have been in the eighties and a trickle of sweat was running down behind his own ears, along his nose, and into the creases of his groins. He wondered how the dancers felt. Or for that part Krystelle, and marvelled again at how she had suddenly dominated the whole scene by her knowledge of African magic.

  What he knew was elementary and basic. Voodoo had come from Togo and Dahomey. The word was a corruption of the word vodu which meant,
quite simply, ‘spirits’. Most Voodoo stories had been grossly exaggerated, but facts were facts and the facts were simple. Voodoo was a religion followed by Christians and others alike which had spread over most of the West Indies and much of Central America together with Brazil and the Guianas. Originally it had sprung from efforts by the slaves, imported from Africa, to keep their own religions and folklore alive. In fact they had brought with them their own language, their Gods, their rituals, their dances and their drums, while priests, either captured or having travelled from Africa as missionaries, taught them how to use them. And so had been perpetuated the names of the Gods, the sacrifices they required and the ritual of approach to the All Highest. But the slaves had also come under the influence of that peculiar form of ‘magic’ which had flourished in France during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and the result had been an incredible marriage of East and West. Not forgetting the trigamous or bigamous marriages which followed when voodoo was also married to one or both, either Christianity or Islam.

  And the whole set-up had originally been to give the worshippers comfort. But later the left hand path had been used to kill oppressors, and from then on both black and white magic had been practised in the voodoo humfos or temples—one of which was still functioning in mid twentieth-century New York.

  Then again, voodoo had become increasingly concerned with the soul and with the invisible world beyond the grave. So graves and death had become important, but of all the pantheon of Gods, the keeper of the dead, Baron Samedi, or Maître Carrefour, was the one most to be feared. He and the glorious Ezili, that lovely Goddess whom all men desired but could never touch. And Grant knew that in spite of Krystelle’s lascivious movements no man present would go near her. Word must have spread that she was Ezili. And for them, deep down in the subconscious Ezili spelt the unattainable.

  Then she turned to her target. ‘You riding well, sir? The Gods must like you. Get moving now. Show a good idea to all the world. Jump into the waters and join your old enemy. Baron Samedi orders.’ Her voice rose to a shrill pitch. ‘Do as I say, man. Baron Samedi sends you to the waters for purification. You are going to be a God man. Purify yourself. Jump in. By the vèvè I’m holding you’ll jump to paradise.’ She turned to Jo Go-Go. ‘Heigh, Jo boy! Make a vèvè on the ground there and move fast. Use sugar. Plenty in that jar on the table. Mr. U.N.O. wants a vèvè to help him to Heaven.’

  The man stared at the ground with almost bulging eyes while Jo marked out the cross. And then Krystelle once more waved her hands. ‘You people,’ she shouted. ‘Come see big vèvè at de edge ob Hebben.’ The Asiatic was now dancing with three of his bodyguard. Guns had been left on the ground and as Krystelle shouted instructions to the drummers the beating notes rapped out louder and more clearly than ever. The rhythm seemed impromptu, but the dancers were now all ‘possessed’ and singing a shango which made Grant almost want to laugh.

  Krystelle urged them to the platform with supreme conviction. And then as the first couple mounted the last step she turned to the doomed man. ‘This is it. Jump off and see the Gods. They’re waiting down there. Jump, man, jump.’

  She was clapping her hands in insistent rhythm, but with each beat she flashed the red cross in front of the man’s face. He was sweating like a pig and his spectacles had dropped to the ground. Another man had stamped them to pieces and she, herself, began to shuffle while she shrieked out her last instructions. ‘Now we all go to join the Gods. Ezili has ordered. March, man. March to Paradise. March to Heaven.’

  There was a slight lull in the music and then the incredible happened as an entire procession of teenagers and older men marched arm in arm up the staircase to follow the Asiatic politician over the cliff in a jump to death. The succession of splashes was blood-curdling. Even more than the screams of over two hundred men or boys dying under the jaws of thousands of piranha. The water of the lake was stained crimson and the stench of blood mixed with excreta was worse than that of any autopsy Gran had ever known.

  And then it was over. Krystelle paused and shouted to the drummers, to the boys striking thin sheets of webbed crystal. ‘Ezili calls, boys. Either line up against that wall or go to the Gods like the others.’

  She leaned down for a second and held her Sten gun at hip level. There was a silence, and Grant cautiously nursed his own until it sat comfortably between his crutch and the bend of his left elbow. The handcuffs had suddenly become a nuisance.

  The last scream had died away and the drums were stopped, with only quivering echoes above their heads, when, abruptly two boys fell on the ground. Six remained, yet somehow they were now different as they realised truth. There was a flash of light and Grant tried to jump. But as he moved the knife ripped past his right side to bury itself to the hilt in Krystelle’s lovely body. He felt her stiffen and then there was a systematic burst of fire. He fired himself in the same instant and watched impassively as the figures below crumbled and fell. ‘You, Jo,’ he said at last. ‘Help Ezili.’

  The boy stared at him blankly and Grant saw that he, too, had passed into the unconscious coma which often follows a voodoo orgy. ‘I think this is it.’ Krystelle’s voice sounded very faint, but her eyes were clear. ‘Don’t laugh at white magic again, David. It told us that something would bury in my side.’

  He forced her to lie down, and then, working with a systematic fury he had never known he set about picking the lock of the cuffs. His only weapon was a hair grip plucked from Krystelle. That and weeks of training at the Big House in Scotland or at H.Q. in Paris. Training for just such an emergency.

  He figured that he had less than an hour to fix things. And he even forgot that he himself had been cut by the edge of a knife thrown by some half-mad youth who had suddenly known a moment of truth. It was Krystelle’s only failure. That apart she had made over two hundred men commit a shocking form of suicide using methods which Grant would never have believed could have worked. And it was no use saying that circumstances were exceptional, that she knew about voodoo or had somehow figured that voodoo had been practised in the cavern by Jo Go-Go and others. Nor was it enough to say that ‘anyone could have done it.’ She had the tools and she had finished the job. But she had done it with consummate expertise and playing off of man’s fears of the supernatural which was staggering. Probably never in history had the table been turned so neatly. And it had been one young woman against a horde of blood-hungry savages hell-bent on a Roman holiday.

  His thoughts, as he worried at the cuffs, were chaotic. There was a debt to pay, and by the living God he would pay it. Krystelle must not die.

  He could feel a steady trickle of blood oozing from her side and somehow it was vaguely reassuring, because at least the knife had missed any major artery and it was only venous blood which was seeping on to the rocks. But even so his fingers were nearer trembling than they had ever been in his life. This girl was fantastique! She deserved to live! He had never met anything to compare with her and almost felt that Maya’s day was over, because after this no woman would ever be able to hold a candle to Krystelle. She was fabulissimus, and if she died it would be his fault. But while he was working with his left hand at the lock one part of his mind was also nagging at loose ends which could still be important.

  Where was Winston?

  And what had happened to both Harry and Frank?

  While the drug cache had still to be unearthed and the doors in this place seemed to have been laid so flush with rocks that they were almost completely masked.

  Nor could he forget the list of personnel in embassies. The politician had said that probably not even Ferguson knew where it was filed, but something in his manner had made Grant feel that it would be in the grotto. And if so it would have to be found.

  He worried again at the lock of the cuff. The tumblers were beginning to ease, and then there was a spring. The bracelet fell open and he was free.

  ‘First stage over, honey. Stay put and I’ll be back in seconds.’

  ‘D
avid.’ Her eyes were anxious. ‘I don’t fancy staying here. Carry me somewhere and then do what you want. But let’s stick together.’

  He realised that she hadn’t noticed his own wound, but pulled out a pocket handkerchief and thrust it against the long cut which ran down his side, tucked the edge in under his trousers belt as he pulled on his pants and then eased a pair of slacks over Krystelle’s cold sweating body before lifting her cautiously over his shoulder. She had closed her eyes and he knew that she was conserving all her energies. She too, wanted to live!

  Jo Go-Go was now lying seemingly half asleep near his feet and he stirred him back to consciousness. ‘Doctor’s room, Jo. And move fast. Ambulance things. Savvy?’

  The boy opened his eyes and stared as though awakening from sleep. ‘Wheah Mistah Ferguson?’

  Grant held out a hand and pulled the boy to his feet. ‘He gone places. Now show Ezili the ambulance room. She want do big magic there.’ He pointed to the vèvè still detectable on the rocky floor. ‘Vèvè did magic short time ago and says Jo must show Ezili and myself the ambulance room.’

  The boy rolled his eyes helplessly, and Grant wondered if he were really a psycho. ‘Get movin’, boy. The ambulance room.’

  And then Jo began to slouch towards the staircase while Grant held Krystelle with one arm and guarded her with the gun dropped by Sebastian carried loosely in the other. The Negro boy wandered through a series of passages until Grant saw that the appearance of the place was changing. It had become more ‘contrived’ and the rocks were broken here or there by items of furniture. The place looked vaguely luxurious, the sort of area where top people might have their quarters, and his jaw tautened when he saw a small red cross painted on one door. They had arrived. ‘You first, Jo,’ he said lightly. ‘But stick around.’

  Krystelle’s voice was now faint as she stirred against Grant, and he saw that the boy was staring up towards her. ‘You go do what dis man says, boy. Or you go chop wit’ de oders. Sabby?’