Back to Wando Passo

by David Payne

  “Harlan’s mother…”

  “Harlan’s mother, yes, Melissa…We were living at La Mella then. Villa-Urrutia had made Paloma available to her as a lady’s maid. Paloma was nineteen or twenty then, and striking, but there was no impropriety between us. You understand. When the fever struck Melissa, she tried to help. Once I overheard her praying to San Luis Beltrán and found a cross of woven basil leaves in a water glass beside the bed. I thought little of these things. I took them for harmless folk remedies, at worst, popish superstitions. At Wando Passo there was a woman, Maum Binah—she only died last year—who practiced midwifery in the quarters and was said to conjure. My father scoffed at such notions, but the slaves all went to her, and my mother…I clearly remember, as a boy, accompanying her to Binah’s cabin, on what errand I know not. But I’m certain she believed. And so, you understand, when Paloma told me there were others at La Mella who might help Melissa, the image in my mind was that of some old woman, queer and temperamental, living in isolation somewhere on the fringe of Villa-Urrutia’s estates. It was not like that at all. The door, when it finally opened, opened on a church, a great invisible cathedral, Addie, hidden in plain sight not only in the barracoon of La Mella and plantations like La Mella, but in the cabildos of Havana. And its priesthood—they’re not like my friend Hilliard in Powatan. These men don’t dip their thumbs in the oils of extreme unction, sign the cross upon the forehead of the dying—men like me—and then consign them to their fate. No, they intervene. They are shamans and magicians.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means they bring the dead to life. No, let me strive to be exact with you. There is no death, Addie. Those whom we call ‘the dead’—they’re known as ‘muertos’ there—don’t die at all. They shed their bodies, yes, but their souls, their ‘almas,’ pass on to new life in a different realm from ours. These teachings, in their principles, are not so different from ours. The difference is, these priests of whom I speak—those who possess the secret, ‘el secreto’—have the power to summon them, to call the dead back down into the human realm again to work with us, the living, to cure, protect, and save, and sometimes also to destroy. Do you grasp what I’m saying?”

  “This can’t be true, though, is it?”

  “It can and is. I’m an Episcopalian, Addie. I believe in God the Father Almighty, Maker of Heaven and Earth, and in Jesus Christ his only Son our Lord…. I believe in the Holy Ghost, the holy Catholic Church, the Communion of Saints, the Forgiveness of Sins, the Resurrection of the body, and the Life Everlasting. Before I went to Cuba, how many Sundays had I, like you, perhaps, sat patiently in church and said those words? How many Sundays did I kneel and pray and rise and sing and sit again on cue? I thought that was the human lot, Addie, to sit patiently in the family pew Sunday after Sunday, waiting, hoping against hope and praying that the death of the body didn’t mean ‘cessation,’ as you put it yesterday, did not entail the soul’s extinction. I’d never dreamed that it was possible to know. To know, Addie.”

  “But you do?” she asks. “You know this now?”

  “I’ve seen it, Addie. Seen with these two eyes. Not once. A hundred times.”

  “But how did you…How did this happen?”

  “The religion is called Palo Mayombe, Addie. It’s practiced mainly among the Congo slaves. Paloma introduced me to her godfather, her padrino, an old Congo named Demetrio. Through him, I eventually found my way to Andrés Petit, a free mulatto, one of the most impressive men I’ve ever met. It’s hardly too much to say he is a kind of Cuban Luther or John Calvin. He founded a line of Palo called Kimbisa, La Regla Kimbisa del Santo Cristo del Buen Viaje, the Kimbisa Order of the Holy Christ of the Good Journey. The first time I approached him—in Guanabacoa—he rebuffed me, yet he did so with great warmth and suavity. I tried three or four more times before Petit became convinced of my sincerity. I was among the first whites to be allowed to glimpse the mysteries, and there were those who thought none of la raza blanca, much less a slaveowner like myself, should be allowed into the templo. To this day, some consider Petit a Judas, who sold the secret ‘por ochenta onzas,’ for eighty pieces of silver. And it was true, he charged me, but money—that was not the reason.”

  “Why did he admit you?”

  “Because he looked into my eyes and saw that I was grieving for my wife, he saw that I was in despair and thirsting for the truth. He admitted me because I was persistent and sincere and willing to humble myself to him, and because, in the end, he was able to see me not simply as a blanco, a white man, but as a human being, ‘un profano que anda errante y desea pertenecer,’ one wandering lost and wanting to belong. And he pitied me and took me in. My old religion, the faith in which my parents raised me—this came to seem a child’s toy, a wooden sword, but Palo, Addie, Palo was a blade of mighty power that cut to heal.

  “I was initiated in Havana, in la calle Ancha del Norte, número 115. I made juramento. I took the fourteen vows and sealed them with my blood. For two years, I attended fechas in Havana with Petit, but most of what I learned was at La Mella, from Demetrio, who took me as his godson, too. By day, I worked in the boiler house, by night I danced and sweated side by side with the same men who fed bagasse, cane waste, into the boiler’s fires. By day, I gave them orders; by night, I made obeisance to them as my elders in the faith. We looked into each other’s eyes and shared the secret silently. I’d lived with Negroes all my life, but, strange to say, I’d never looked into their eyes and seen their characters as men. I learned to do that there, to see them as Petit saw me. Paloma and I fell in love. I fell terribly and utterly. Looking back, those two years were the best of my whole life. And the strange thing was, it was as if I, not they, had been enslaved, and for that time my chains were loosened. There among the least were truths and answers that we, the so-called great and privileged, had forgotten if we ever knew. It was as though I’d stumbled on the thing that all men spend their lives seeking in vain—the certainty that there is life after death, that those we’ve loved and lost continue to live on, that the soul persists, that it’s immortal and imperishable. More than this, Addie, I learned that there are beings more elevated than the dead, our ancestors. They’re sometimes called ‘santos,’ though ‘saints,’ the Catholic term, is only a blind and barely hints at what they are. Their true name is ‘nkisi’; they are spirits of great power and antiquity, who reside in stars and wind, in lightning and the sea. They, too, concern themselves with human fate, and these men—men like Demetrio and Andrés Petit—can summon them to intervene.”

  “And you see them?” Addie asks, feeling cast adrift. “You actually see these spirits?”

  “Not see, Addie. The nkisi are invisible, but I’ve heard them speak as clearly as you hear me speaking to you now.”

  “How?”

  “They come down, Addie, bajan…. They enter one of the faithful and speak por su boca, through his mouth. They give instruction and direct trabajos, works of various sorts. They heal and exorcise bad spirits. They do what all the poets in all the books I read, all the books you see upon these shelves, could never do for me: they tell us how to live. And, in the end, they tell us how to die. And they lay obligations on us, too. They make demands. Once upon a time, such a demand was made of me. That is where this tale is wending, Addie. I was told to free Paloma. It was at la fecha del Santo Cristo in Havana on September fifth, the month before we sailed for home. Petit himself was the ‘caballo,’ the medium or ‘horse,’ mounted by San Luis Beltrán. He didn’t order me to free all my slaves, to ruin my family and myself financially. No, he told me only to do what, in my heart, I already knew I had to do, and I knelt down on the floor in front of him, I touched my forehead to the bricks, I wept and swore I would, and then…” Percival looks away now toward the window.

  “And then?”

  “And then, I brought Paloma home with me to South Carolina. She bore my son, and forty years went by, and somehow I never could.”

  “Why not?”
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  “Is it so hard to guess?”

  She doesn’t care to try.

  “I was afraid that if I freed her, she might leave.”

  Outside, in a cedar tree, a cardinal sets forth a strangely cheerful trill, and they both turn their heads.

  I was afraid that if I freed her, she might leave. The words set off an echo in her head, and as Addie listens to the bird, they seem among the most terrible she’s ever heard a human being speak.

  “The thought of life without her—and, eventually, without Jarry—was unbearable to me. I decided I could free them at my death and keep the letter of my vow. I told myself this lie. That’s what I meant, Addie. When I said I am the head and root and that this all goes back to me—that’s why.”

  The cardinal takes wing and flies away. Watching, she is thoughtful. “I can understand how this must weigh on you. But what has it to do with Harlan, or with me?”

  “You’ll understand that story more in time, I fear.”

  “If you won’t tell me where he went, then tell me what to do,” she says.

  “Pose the question to your husband,” he replies. “If you’re to have a marriage, that’s the sole recourse I can see.”

  “I don’t think we can have a marriage now.”

  “That’s wholly up to you, my dear. Before you leave him, though, don’t you owe it to yourself, and him, to find out what he’s done?”

  “I’m too afraid I know.”

  “You’re too afraid you know. That is only a suspicion.”

  She holds his gaze, then looks away distractedly. “You’re right, it is.”

  “There’s something I must ask you, Addie.”

  She looks back at him, and Percival reaches into his shirt. On a string around his neck, there is a key. “In that drawer,” he tells her, pointing to the partners desk, “you’ll find my will, with the provisions for Jarry’s and Paloma’s manumission. I would be grateful if you’d put it someplace for safekeeping. I can’t trust Harlan to honor my wishes in this matter. That I can’t is as much my fault as his. What Jarry said last night was true. I’ve always loved him more. I didn’t choose it so. No father does. But even when I denied it to myself, Harlan knew. There was some crucial aspect of myself that I could never give him, however hard I tried, which I shared with Jarry out of simple joy. And it’s curious, then, isn’t it, that Harlan will have Wando Passo, all this, while Jarry will leave here with nothing but the clothes on his back? Yet my promise to him will be kept. Had I held dearest those I’ve cherished most, I should have freed him and Paloma both long since. Now death is my last chance to set it right, and what I fear, Addie, is not cessation, but what the coming life may be for me if I do not. May I count on you in this?”

  She takes the will. “I think it is the right decision.”

  “Now, kiss me,” the old man says, “and go and have your interview.”

  Harlan, however, doesn’t rise till almost suppertime. She comes back from a walk to find him waiting, tense, on the piazza, a bouquet of Jarry’s wilting roses in his hand. “My dear!” he says, leaping to his feet. “I was afraid you’d left me! Addie, I’m appalled at my behavior! I have no excuse!” He mops his brow and reaches into his coat for a cigar.

  “Where did you go?”

  “Where? They were celebrating in the quarters, Addie. They wanted me to jump the broom—it’s a custom here. We drank toasts. I had too much rum, the better part of a cask, judging by the way I feel. Blessedly, I have few memories beyond that point.”

  “Few memories…”

  “Practically none, my dear, yet if it’s any consolation to you, Addie, I am suffering. If someone put the Purdey to my temple and pulled the triggers now, I’d consider him a friend. Not to put too fine a point on it, my behavior was piggish. And, in short, I am a pig.”

  “Where did you wake up?” she asks.

  Now he stops. Now the look of mortal suffering, of spiritual beauty, reappears. “In the dirt,” he says, “beside the blackened fire. My horse, old Runcipole, was nuzzling me. I thought—nay, hoped—it was the loving kiss of my dear wife.”

  Addie studies his face closely. “I wish I could believe you, Harlan.”

  “But you must, dear!” he cries. “You must try! There are things, Addie. Things…”

  “What things?”

  “Things you don’t yet understand…”

  “Explain them to me then.”

  “I can’t!”

  “Why can’t you?”

  “Because you won’t believe them, Addie. You’ll think me not in my right mind, and frankly, dear, sometimes I fear…But no, no. You must try, though, Addie, please try to believe that my intentions toward you are honorable. I’ll make it right to you. I’ll make it right, whatever it costs. I will fight for you, my dear. Fight for me. Please fight for me!”

  And Addie, afraid to wholly trust him, but even more afraid to wholly disbelieve and risk a final breach, allows herself to be coaxed upstairs, where she submits and, in a grim, brief episode, becomes his wife in fact.

  NINETEEN

  I repeat: that pot was in the bathtub when I left.”

  “Ransom…”

  “Don’t say it,” he said. “I already know what you’re going to say, so do us both a favor, just say no.”

  Claire turned a frustrated glance at Marcel, who looked like a man caught in the wrong place at the wrong time but honor-bound to stay.

  “Ransom, sweetie, look,” she said, and at that unexpected “sweetie,” he gentled like a colt. “Story. When you called me from the airport yesterday, I was in the laundry room. I had a load sorted on the floor, I was waiting for the powder to dissolve, the phone rings, I go to get it, we talk, I hang up. You know what I did then? I went upstairs to get the hamper, and I stood there in the hall a sec, completely blank, and then, away off in the house, I heard that noise from the machine, you know that croupy little groan it makes?”

  He frowned. “So what’s your point?”

  “I think you know what my point is. Everybody forgets little things like this.”

  “Everybody,” he repeated. “Not just drunks and crazy people.”

  “I didn’t say that. Is that what I said? No, I didn’t, and you’ve got to stop jumping from some A, like maybe you forgot, to the P or Q of me accusing you of being crazy. That’s irrational. And you had been drinking—you admitted it yourself.”

  Ran looked at Cell. “What did I tell you?”

  “And since you bring it up…”

  “Here comes the other shoe,” he said.

  Claire gave him her Concerned and Earnest look, the one that made Ran feel like a receding object at the wrong end of a telescope. “Cell’s been down this road with us before,” she went on, “so I’m not going to mince words—I do think it might be a good idea for you to get your levels checked. Ever since you got here, you’ve seemed overwrought.”

  Busted!

  “Marcel thinks so, too.”

  Ransom looked, and Marcel held his stare. Cell’s face was open; there was no trace of meanness, no gloating—of course not! When had there ever been? Yet Cell, too, seemed to be looking down on him from an eminence, like some god on Mt. Olympus regarding a poor mortal lost in the dark woods of middle life. And the worst part was, Ran knew that this very feeling—of their exaltation and his comparative debasement—was evidence that they were telling him the truth: he was in trouble, or flirting too close to the edge. Yet, guilty as he was, he still had to fight the impulse to regard them as his enemies and to tell them both to go to hell.

  “Fine,” he said. “You know what, Claire? If it’ll make you feel better, I’ll go in tomorrow. But I’m telling you right now, I can get my levels checked till kingdom come and join AA and get a frontal lobotomy while I’m at it”—he could not resist tossing in this helpful shot—“but it’s never going to get that pot from upstairs in the bathtub where I left it, down those stairs and up the hallway to this table. And what if, just for kicks, as a sort of tho
ught experiment, you considered the possibility that what I’m telling you is true, that the pot really was in the tub when I left, and here when we came back, and I didn’t move it?”

  “I think I have to stick with Sergeant Thomason and the simple-explanation theory.”

  “Cell?” Ran said.

  “Somebody moved it,” Marcel said. “If it wasn’t you, then there was someone in the house.”

  “Thank you!” said Ran. “Okay. And if there was, wouldn’t it stand to reason that that person, whoever he was, did both things: the chicken and the pot?”

  “Okay, Ran, fine,” said Claire, “but why?”

  “That’s exactly my question! With all the possible mischief you might make in an old house like this, what sort of burglar or vandal would choose to (a) mess up a plate of chicken and (b) move a black iron pot? I mean, on the burglar-vandal checklist, these have to qualify as pretty arcane choices.”

  “So what are you saying, Ran?” Cell asked.

  “Truthfully, man? I don’t know what I’m saying. I’m saying none of it makes sense. It doesn’t make sense that an animal moved it, because an animal couldn’t; it doesn’t make sense that a burglar moved it, because a burglar wouldn’t. And it doesn’t make sense that I moved it in some sort of drunken fugue state, because whatever you may think of me, I’ve never been that bent.”

  “So what’s left, Ran?” Claire asked. “That pot certainly didn’t walk downstairs on its three stubby little legs.”

  Ran’s brow gathered, and he didn’t answer.

  “Ransom?”

  “What?”

  “Please tell me you aren’t suggesting that.”

  “No,” he answered, in a somewhat grudging tone, “I’m not. Of course I’m not. But I will say this….” He turned to her with a reviving animation. “Since you already think I’m crazy, I may as well tell you that yesterday, and again this afternoon, when I touched that thing, I got a shock.”