Ancient of Days

by Michael Bishop

  “Crumble sleeping tablets into their feed,” I said. “Do that methodically enough and maybe you’ll get research funding from the National Institutes of Health. You could call your paper ‘On the Tendency of Barnyard Fowls to Fall Asleep When Administered Mickeys.’ ”

  This time Caroline and RuthClaire laughed with me, rather than at me, and I had the pleasure of seeing Brian’s annoyed look. But, hat in hand, he argued that he would be foolish to reveal what he knew and that RuthClaire and Caroline would be better off with him along than tooling down the coastal road unaccompanied. He’d help them load their purchases—he’d haggle for every item on their list. He was an expert at open-air bargaining, a skill he’d picked up in the Dominican Republic.

  “We’ll keep an eye on him,” RuthClaire told Adam. “He’ll report to his bosses at Austin-Antilles, and that’s it. No side trips. No private phone calls. Et cetera.”

  “Okay by me,” Brian said. He had won. He showed me a raised eyebrow of ironic triumph. Because RuthClaire and Caroline wanted showers and a good night’s rest before going into Rutherford’s Port, they hiked down to the beach that same afternoon and spent the night in the cottage on Caicos Bay. Brian Nollinger drove them. He made a pallet for himself on the porch, and, the next morning, he wrestled the rented Jeep along the coastal road into the city so that the women could do their vaudun shopping. This summary of events, of course, I report secondhand, trusting that it does not deviate too much from what actually happened. I slept very little that night, though.

  At sunrise, the coolest part of the day, Dégrasse brought breakfast: mild Haitian coffee with rapadou and a spoonful of powdered milk, a stew of plantains, and a piece of odd-looking but tasty fish. The stew and the coffee were hot, but the fish seemed to have been forked out of lukewarm brine. Although groggy from lack of sleep, I ate ravenously. In the lee of the houngfor, Toussaint and Dégrasse ate with me, neither paying me the slightest heed. Then Adam appeared, in walking shorts and a pair of Adidas sneakers. He handed me the camera equipment and led me uphill through the fortification of sablier trees to Hector’s secret entrance to the caves.

  We spent all day exploring them. I took so many pictures that my forefinger began to throb. Hector led us through the main rotunda and the most accessible galleries, but Adam, more nimble, took me places that I hadn’t already visited: chatières, rock chimneys, lofty crawlways. I saw ritual statuary, painted symbols, and weird faces cut out of the dead ends of labyrinthine tunnels. On at least six occasions, through different corridors of stone, we emerged to rest our eyes and clear our minds. Then we plunged back into darkness, to wriggle our way to deeper grottoes and worse bouts of vertigo. It was a daylong dream, this activity: a nightmare at tropical noon.

  By the time Brian Nollinger and the two women returned, I was long since exhausted. Stars had begun to wink through the twilight sky over Prix-des-Yeux, and all I wanted to do was sleep. Adam wouldn’t let me. So I was standing bruised and bone-weary beside the houngfor when the marketing party came into camp with their duffles and baskets and trussed chickens, laughing ruefully through their own weariness, happy to have completed their journey.

  Toussaint and Dégrasse fed the marketgoers, and Adam urged them to finish eating so that—in his self-appointed role as Lord Saturday—he could initiate the service that would allow Caroline and me to experience the full mystery and power of the vaudun gods. Only then, after all, would we be able to go back to Atlanta with a real appreciation of the spiritual forces that had sustained Les Gens in their Caribbean exile.

  It was totally dark when Caroline, Brian, and I entered the sacred peristyle of the habilines. In his top hat and tails, Adam led us in. RuthClaire awaited us in the palm-thatched tonnelle with Erzulie, Toussaint, Dégrasse, and Alberoi. Even Hector was there, sitting cross-legged in a corner next to a series of stylized cornmeal designs that Alberoi had laid during the day. The three younger habilines occupied the low platform on which the vaudun drums rested, while RuthClaire and Erzulie walked about sprinkling water on the ground from flip-top metal pitchers like the creamers you might see in a roadside cafe in Alabama or Georgia: an odd, improvisatory touch.

  Only Brian, Caroline, and I would be “couched” tonight, “put down on the floor” as potential communicants with the Yagaza gods. This service was expressly for us. We wore white baptismal gowns similar to the cambric robes in which the habilines had first introduced themselves. RuthClaire and Caroline had bought our garments in Rutherford’s Port, and they were spotless when we donned them, as immaculate as new wedding gowns. Candles in globelike pots burned at various places about the temple, reminding me again of the tacky accoutrements at a cheap stateside restaurant. Brian kept saying he wished just to observe, not to participate, but Adam forcibly rejoined that no one who came to Prix-des-Yeux could do so as an observer, that participation in its life and rituals was a requisite for staying.

  Erzulie lit two tall red tapers in cast-iron holders at either end of the drum platform. Then she centered herself in front of the platform and nodded at Adam. Behind her, Toussaint began to tap out a light beat on the tallest of the drums; he was seated on a rickety stool that permitted him to lean forward over their taut skins. Alberoi picked up this beat on the set known as mama, largest of the ceremonial drums, and Dégrasse began to counterpoint these rhythms on the drums called boula, smallest of the three kinds. Although their beat was hypnotic, the drummers played with a curious delicacy, as if fearful of waking the birds. The faintness of the rhythms, even in the houngfor, mocked their purpose, that is, to induce a trance in us communicants. And then I realized that, to keep from revealing their presence and whereabouts to any hostiles on the mountain, the habilines must always conduct their vaudun service so.

  “Lie down by the poteau mitan,” Adam said, “like so many nesting spoons.”

  Spoons don’t nest, I thought. Spoonbills maybe, but not spoons.

  Nollinger and my wife were not so literal in their thinking. They knelt by the center post, then assumed clumsy fetal curls facing it. Nollinger was first, with Caroline cupping her body into his and touching her chin to his shoulder blade. I lay down behind her in the same posture, grateful that Brian hadn’t tried to come between us in this matter. I pressed my groin into Caroline’s buttocks. Our robes were no longer immaculate, our first contact with the ground having soiled them.

  Hector and the habiline drummers began to chant—faintly, in a guttural singsong that counterpointed or mimicked the rhythms of the Arada-Dahomey drums. The sound reminded me of Adam’s singing before he’d learned to speak, but rougher and more ritualized. Caroline shuddered. I shuddered with her. My place on the floor kept me from seeing much, but the tonnelle ceiling and the upper portions of the wall were visible to me, and down one of the peristyle posts came gliding the couleuvre that had linked Adam and Erzulie on our first evening in camp. I wanted to stand. A paralysis of fear or fatigue had gripped me, though, and I could merely watch. The guttural chanting of the habiline choir veered into spooky falsetto registers.

  Like a spry gnome, Erzulie danced, her bare feet slapping the floor near the center post. The python kept flowing down its own post behind the drum platform, its bronze and garnet body shimmering in the candlelight. A chicken began to cluck: two chickens. Erzulie’s hand came into my view, swinging a chicken by its bound legs. Adam, who appeared above us near the poteau mitan, took this flapping fowl from her and bit off its head. He spat the head out, along with a mouthful of feathers, and gouts leapt from the decapitated bird’s neck, fountaining in a gaudy, queasy-making rain. Our white cambric gowns were spattered, and the stench of hot blood filled our nostrils, as did the fainter scent of flowing serpent.

  “O great loa,” Adam chanted, “your horses await your mounting. They invite you to ride.” He dropped the headless chicken, which beat the ground with impotent, reflexive wing flaps. “O loa, come!”

  The second chicken, which Erzulie thrust aloft, cackled hysterically. It, too, sm
elt blood, sensing that a like fate lay in store for it. And Erzulie beheaded it as quickly and surely as Adam had executed the other. Blood parachuted away from her like streamers from a crimson Roman candle. I shut my eyes and covered my mouth and nose with my palm. Caroline leaned against me as tense as a vibrating metal pole. When I pushed my groin against her again—to reassure us both—my cock was now a shriveled nub. What, exactly, was mystical about this ceremony? So far, it was an abomination and a horror, and I wanted out.

  Drumbeats, chanting, dancing.

  Opening my eyes and peering down the length of Caroline’s body, I saw that the couleuvre had reached the ground. Only an arm’s length from Caroline’s feet, it lay loosely coiled at the base of the wall. Having unhinged its lower jaw, it was methodically swallowing—with terrible, wavelike gulps—a headless chicken that, a moment past, had lain next to the center post. That damn serpent, I thought, is gagging down its dinner feathers and all. I shut my eyes again.

  Drumbeats, chanting, dancing. Adam danced barefoot with the barefoot Erzulie. The drummers on the platform—or, at least, Dégrasse and Alberoi—undulated behind their instruments like revelers in a stalled conga line. Even Hector had got to his feet. He bounced up and down behind us, stutter-stepping between the vevés that Alberoi had designed. I could feel him moving, just as I did everyone. The drumbeats, the chanting, and the dancing pulsed in my temples like angry blood. Brian groaned, and Caroline’s head popped back so quickly that she split my bottom lip.

  “O Legba,” Adam cried, no longer dancing, “let the loa descend into this temple and mount their horses. We call for Agarou, god of ancestors, and Aïda Ovedo, virgin wife of Damballa, and for Damballa himself, whose serpent we have propitiated. Let them descend and ride their horses. Let their horses run with them like thoroughbreds!”

  Someone yanked my head back. Erzulie, I think. Over my split lip, she poured orgeat, a syrupy drink with a tang of almonds. This, Adam said, was another offering to Damballa and his wife, consumed by us prostrate horses so that the loa could enjoy it once they’d mounted us and brought us to our feet. If nothing else, the taste of the orgeat routed the sickening odors of couleuvre and slaughtered chicken. Then I could smell rum. A habiline drummer splashed it about, renewing the baptism of the already baptized ceremonial drums, being prodigal with the native clairin simply because Les Gens had it to be prodigal with.

  “Come, Agarou! Mount your horse!”

  The center post shook. Brian reached out to steady it. The electricity coursing through the poteau mitan galvanized him, and Caroline, and battered me like a thousand tiny tidal waves working to erode my identity. One moment, I was Paul Loyd; the next, I was obedient meat for the loa possessing me. In short, I was a horse.

  Agarou, the vaudun god of ancestors, leapt down the lightning rod of the poteau mitan to convulse the robed body of the human being gripping its base. From this person, the god passed into Caroline Hanna, who kicked out, and on through her into the terrified consciousness of her husband. Agarou mounted Loyd. Racked by the god’s spiritual horsemanship, Loyd thrashed, as a mustang ridden by a determined cowboy will buck for its pride’s sake, foreknowing itself tamed. In just that way, Loyd thrashed. He threw himself far from Caroline. He writhed so violently on the hard-packed floor that his gown erased or smeared portions of the vevés drawn there.

  Where stars had earlier shone, storm clouds massed in bands above the mountain. Still putting up a token fight for his body, Loyd heard thunder cannonading across the sky as if from the ramparts of the Citadelle Laferrière, south of Cap-Haïtien on Haiti itself. And with each new roll of thunder, the mounted man convulsed. Even as they continued to drum or dance, the habilines watched Loyd. Hector, the blind one, had moved into a corner to escape being knocked down by the flailings of his arms and legs. Erzulie, however, had taken his predicament as a challenge to her skill as a dancer. Above him, she leapt from foot to foot, guessing well where to place her feet without stepping on him. Adam, meanwhile, had renewed his plea for Aïda Ovedo and her husband Damballa to come down the center post into the temple.

  The thunder above the mountain boomed louder, and the hidden kernel of Paul Loyd’s consciousness realized that the storm noise would completely drown that of the vaudun service—no more hope for rescue by sympathetic islanders. Agarou had him.

  “Up, Agarou!” Adam urged the loa. “Ride your horse to revelation! Show your horse the god who showed himself to our ancestors!”

  Loyd felt himself giving in to the inevitable. His movements became less violent. He bridged his loa-possessed body so that his heels and the back of his head held him off the ground. He searched the trinket-hung pavilion for sympathy. Where was RuthClaire? At last, he saw her—in the corner opposite Hector’s, regarding him with a grimace of appalled compassion. How must he look to her? He could scarcely hold his eyeballs still enough to focus her image. Maybe she’d never seen a possession like this one. She was frightened as well as appalled.

  “Adam!” she cried, to be heard over the drumming and the thunder. “Adam, stop it! I think it’s killing him!”

  Killing me, thought Loyd dispassionately. This is killing me.

  The habiline in top hat and tails turned to his wife. “Oh, no, it is bringing him to life, to a knowledge that he could not otherwise so vividly acquire.”

  Loyd placed his forearms on the floor parallel to his arched body. Pushing with them, he sprang off the ground like a limbo dancer who has just crept beneath the lowest level of the bar. Upright, his body swayed in the temple’s candlelit geometries. Caroline and the anthropologist lay beside the center post, entranced but not yet possessed, their blood-spattered gowns making them resemble murder victims: an interesting, but not too disturbing sight, for they weren’t dead, and once Aïda Ovedo and Damballa mounted them, he would have company in his spiritual slavery.

  “Aaaawwgh,” he said. Spit ran down his lip and chin.

  In his Baron Samedi costume, Adam made an ironic bow. “Welcome, Agarou. Welcome, Agarou. Welcome, Agarou.”

  Agarou did a scissoring dance step.

  “After such an entrance,” Adam said, “you must have great hunger.” He swept a headless chicken up, dug the nails of his hands into its breast, and broke it open with a wicked popping motion. From this bloody rent, he pulled entrails such as Loyd had never used in his cooking at the West Bank. Adam handed these items to Agarou, who, to Loyd’s consternation, began to eat them. Warm and slippery, they were hard to chew, but Agarou got them down almost as fast as the couleuvre had engorged the entire unplucked body of the other chicken.

  RuthClaire (Loyd noticed, stealing a look through the vaudun god’s eyes) had left the houngfor. Why? Once, not so long ago, she had tolerated the barbaric eating habits of her habiline husband. Rain sheeted down, rattling the palm-frond thatching of the tonnelle. It blew in through the open tops of the peristyle’s walls. It dripped from the eaves and from seams in the roof’s underside. No longer inhibited by the need to play softly, the drummers beat their instruments with abandon. The noise inside the swaying building crescendoed and crescendoed again. So did the noise outside. In Loyd’s benumbed body, Agarou turned his face up and opened his bloodied mouth to the life-giving waters of which his fellow loa Damballa was the presiding deity. He had led his horse to water, and had made him drink.

  Loyd drowned not only in this deluge, but also in the ancient personality of the loa astride him. Rain veiled his eyes. It penetrated the tonnelle’s roof and extinguished the candles in their plastic pots. The pots hissed their dismay. Or maybe it was the python hissing, swimming toward him in the downpour like a great ruby and golden eel. Of all the former inhabitants of the structure dissolving in the rain, the serpent was the only one that Loyd could see. He knelt—Agarou made him kneel—to embrace the creature, which lifted its head and kissed him on the lips with a double flicker of its tongue. Then the rain ceased, and the dripping echoes of its cessation thrummed, and Agarou found himself alone on the
flank of his Caribbean Olympus.

  “Giddyup, horse,” the loa said.

  Loyd began to walk uphill, as did Agarou. He felt himself two consciousnesses at once, and had the further conviction, as he strode away from Prix-des-Yeux (which had dissolved in the rain along with the vaudun temple), that he was climbing not one but two mountains. First was the mountain on the tip of Pointe d’Inagua here in Manzanillo Bay, but superimposed spiritually on that landscape were the lineaments of Mount Tharaka in the African nation of Zarakal. Each time Loyd stopped to look back down the mountain, he saw—by lightning flashes—first the ebony ripples of the Atlantic and then the vast antelope-dotted expanse of the Zarakali plains. They alternated, these features, and with them Loyd’s present and East Africa’s Pleistocene past likewise alternated—so that, ridden by Agarou, he was two different minds at two different places at two different times. How could such a thing occur? Well, the vaudun service had done its work: the drumming, the chanting, the dancing. And then the python had kissed him, both to acknowledge Agarou’s power over him and to link his fitful self-awareness to distant places and earlier times.

  Loyd-loa continued his hike uphill. The fragrance of coffee blossoms hovered over everything, wonderfully fresh after the rain. Where was Agarou going? If the loa riding him tried to take him very far, he—his body—would collapse. (You can’t ride a dead horse.) He had worn himself out crawling through the habiline caves, and a forced diet of chicken innards was not likely to counteract his body’s fatigue. Then Loyd heard himself laugh. Or was Agarou laughing through him, having found his ignorance of the mechanism of possession amusing? His body would do whatever Agarou demanded for as long as Agarou spurred and controlled it. (You can ride a dead horse—at least until its last vestiges of mind have decayed into insentient randomness.) Loyd resigned himself to a long hike, and an even longer captivity.