by Otto Penzler
“Now then,” she said firmly in conclusion, “you do the talking, please. Explain that grave to me.”
“Tina became ill and died,” said Metellus.
“What made her ill?”
“We don’t know. We asked her if she had eaten anything the rest of us had not. Only a mango, she said. A boy named Luc Etienne gave her two of them when she was passing his yard on her way home from a friend’s house. One was for her, one for the twins. But nobody was at home when she got here, so she ate hers and when we returned an hour or so later, she was not well.”
“How do you mean, not well?”
“Her stomach hurt and she had la fièv. A really high fever. I went at once for the houngan. He is a good man. He came and did things. Brewed a tea for her and used his hands on her—things like that. He stayed the whole night trying to make her well. But in the morning she died.”
“Who said she was dead? This houngan?”
“All of us.” Metellus returned her gaze without flinching. “It is not in dispute that she was dead when we buried her. When someone dies, the people we call in may not be as learned as your doctors at the hospital, but they know how to determine if life has ended. Tina was dead.”
“And you think this mango that was given her by—by whom?—”
“Luc Etienne.”
“—might have caused her death? Poisoned her, you mean?”
“Something made her ill. She had not been sick before.”
“There were two mangoes, you said.”
“Yes.”
“Did anyone eat the other?”
He shook his head.
“What became of it?”
“After the funeral we opened it up, I and some others, to see if it had been tampered with. It seemed to be all right, but, of course, you can’t always be sure. Some people are wickedly clever with poisons. Anyway, we buried it.”
“Did you talk to this Luc Etienne?”
“Yes, M’selle.”
“What did he say?”
“Only that the mangoes were from a tree in his yard, perfectly innocent, and he gave them to Tina for herself and the twins because he was fond of children. Especially of them.”
Speaking for the first time, Tina’s mother said, “Our children liked him. He was a nice young man.”
“What do you mean, was?”
“He is not here now.”
“Oh? When did he leave?”
“Soon after the funeral, didn’t he, Metellus?”
Metellus nodded.
“Where did he go?” Kay asked.
Metellus shrugged. “We heard to Cap Haïtien, where he makes a lot of money betting on cockfights.”
Feeling she had sat long enough, Kay rose stiffly and walked to the door. It was open, but would soon have to be closed because the yard was turning dark. There were still people at the fence. Turning back into the room, she frowned at Tina’s father. “And there is no doubt in your mind that Tina was in the coffin when you buried it?”
“None at all. No.”
“Are you saying, then, that the child I’ve brought back to you is not your daughter but someone else?”
He looked at his woman and she at him. Turning to meet Kay’s demanding gaze again, he shrugged. “M’selle, what can we say?”
With her fists against her hips for perhaps the fourth time that day, Kay faced them in a resurgence of anger. “You can admit there’s been a mistake, that’s what you can say! Because, look. When the name Bois Sauvage was read to this child by a doctor reading a map, she clapped her hands and cried out, “That’s where I live!” And then she remembered her name—her full name, just as you’ve got it inscribed on that grave out there. Tina Louise Christine Anglade. And she remembered your names and her sister’s and the twins’. So if she isn’t your Tina, who in the world do you think she is?”
The woman whispered something.
“What?” Kay said.
“She is a zombie.”
“What did you say?”
“Li sé zombie,” the woman stubbornly repeated, then rose and turned away, muttering that she had to begin preparing supper.
ONLY BECAUSE KAY insisted did the woman allow her “zombie” daughter to sit at the supper table with her other children. After the meal, Kay stubbornly tried again to break down her resistance, and again failed.
She probably could have convinced Metellus had the child’s mother been less afraid, she told herself. The father was strong and intelligent but unwilling, obviously, to make trouble for himself by challenging this woman he slept with. It was a tragic situation, with no solution in sight.
Go to bed, Gilbert. Maybe during the night Metellus will find himself some guts.
She lay with her right arm around Tina, the child’s head on her breast. A lamp burned low on a chest of drawers made mostly of woven sisal.
“Miss Kay?” Tina whispered.
“What, baby?”
“They think I’m dead. Did I die, Miss Kay?”
“Of course not.”
“Why do they say I did, then? Even Rosemarie and the twins.”
“Because they . . .” Oh, Christ, baby, I don’t know why! I’m way out of my depth here and don’t know what to do about it.
She was so tired, so very tired. All day long on a mule, most of the time scared because Joseph had left her alone with the child in an unknown wilderness. Her knees ached, her thighs burned, her arches must be permanently warped from the stupid stirrups, even her fingers were cramped from holding the reins. And now this impasse with the child’s mother.
She listened to Tina’s breathing and it calmed her a little. After a while she dozed off.
THERE WAS A tapping sound at the room’s only window. The window had no glass in it, and she had decided not to close the shutters lest the smell of the kerosene lamp give her more of a headache than she already had. The tapping was on one of the open shutters, and she sat up in bed and turned her head in that direction, still half asleep. The voice of Metellus Anglade whispered to her from the opening.
“M’selle . . . M’selle . . . I have to show you something!”
She looked at the watch on her wrist. Why, on this crazy pilgrimage, was she always trying to find out the time in the middle of the night?
Three-ten. Well, at least she’d been asleep for a while and would be rested tomorrow for whatever might happen.
“What do you want?”
“Come out here, please. Be careful not to wake anyone!”
“All right. Just give me a minute.”
She had worn pyjamas to bed and was damned if she would get dressed at this idiot hour just to go into the yard to see what the man wanted. Pulling on her sneaks, she left the bedroom, walked silently across the dim front room with its clutter of chairs, stepped outside, and found him waiting.
“Come!” he whispered, taking her by the arm.
He led her across the yard, through moonlight bright enough to paint the ground with dark shadows of house, fence, trees, and graves. He walked her to the graves. Next to the one with Tina’s name on it was a hole now, with a spade thrust upright in the excavated dirt piled at its edge.
“Look, M’selle!”
Peering into the hole, she saw what he had done. Unable to move the concrete slab that covered the grave, he had dug down beside it, then tunnelled under. Far enough under, at least, to find out what he wanted to know.
“You see? The coffin is gone!”
She nodded. There was nothing to argue about. He hadn’t dug enough dirt out to risk having the slab sag into the excavation, but had certainly proved there was no wooden box under it. She stood there hearing all the usual night sounds in the silence.
“How could anyone have stolen it without moving the slab?” she asked, but knew the answer before finishing the question. Let him say it anyway.
“M’selle, we don’t do the tombing right away. Not until the earth has settled. In this case, more than six weeks passed before I could go to
Trou for the cement.”
Which you brought back on a mule, she thought, walking the whole way back yourself so the mule could carry it. And then you built this elaborate concrete thing over the grave to show your love for a daughter whose body had already been stolen.
“Metellus, I don’t understand.” Let him explain the whole thing, though she guessed how he would do that, too.
“There can be only one answer, M’selle. I know I put my daughter into a coffin and buried her here. The coffin is not here now. So . . . she was stolen and made into a zombie.”
“Meaning she was not really dead.”
“Well, there are two kinds of zombies, as perhaps you know. Those who truly die and are restored to life by sorcery; that is one kind. Others are poisoned in various ways so they only seem to die, then are taken from their graves and restored.”
“You think Tina was poisoned?”
“Now I do. Yes.”
“With the mango you told me about?”
He reached for the spade and, holding it in both hands, turned to frown at her. “Luc Etienne gave her two mangoes, one for herself and one for the twins to share. Do you know what I think? I think that on the way home she got them mixed up, and when she found no one at home and ate her mango, the one she ate was the one she had been told to give to the twins.”
“I don’t know what you mean.” This time she really did not.
“Twins are different from ordinary people,” Metellus said. “He wanted them for some special purpose.”
“Who? This fellow Etienne?”
“No, not Etienne.” With a glance toward the house, he began quietly putting the earth back into the hole. “At least, not for himself. Luc was friendly with a much more important person at that time. With a bocor named Margal, who lives in Legrun. There are people here who say Luc Etienne was Margal’s pupil.”
“The one who can’t walk,” Kay said.
He stopped the spade in mid stroke. “You know of him?”
“I think he tried to stop me from coming here.”
“Very likely. Because do you know what I believe happened after he stole the coffin from this grave? I think he brought Tina back to life the way they do—with leaves or herbs or whatever—and then sold her to someone in some distant place where she would not be known. He had hoped for the twins, but even Tina was worth something as a servant.”
“And she wandered away from whoever bought her.”
“Yes. And the priest found her.”
“How could Margal have known I was bringing her back here?”
“Who can say, M’selle? But he probably knows we are standing here this very minute, discussing him.” Metellus plied the spade faster now, obviously anxious to get the job finished. But again he stopped and faced her. “M’selle, Tina must not stay here. Margal will surely kill her!”
“You think so?”
“Yes, yes! To protect himself. To save his reputation!”
She thought about it, and nodded.
The hole refilled at last, he turned to her. “M’selle, I love my daughter. You must know that by now.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“Fifine, too, loves her. But things can never be the same here now.”
Kay gazed at him in silence.
Thoughtfully he said, “I have a brother in Port-au-Prince, M’selle, who is two years younger than I and has only one child. He would give Tina a good home, even send her to school there. She must not stay here. Everyone here in Bois Sauvage knows she died and was buried in this yard and must now be a zombie. Even if Margal did not destroy her, she would forever be shunned.”
“You want me to take her to your brother? Is that what you’re saying?”
“Will you? I will ride out with you to where your jeep is.”
Kay thought about it while he stood before her, desperately awaiting her reply. A white owl flew across the yard from the road to the field of kaffir corn. Time passed.
“I will do it on one condition,” Kay said at last.
On the verge of tears, he seemed to hold his breath. “And—that is?
“That before we leave here you take me to Legrun, to visit this bocor who can’t walk, this Margal. Will you do that?”
Trembling, he stared at her with bulging eyes. But at last he nodded.
IV
The grey mule carried no saddle-bags this time, but Kay had slung the brown leather bag over her shoulder before leaving the Anglade house in Bois Sauvage. As her animal plodded along after the one ridden by Tina’s father, she realized she would have had a difficult time attempting the trip by herself.
It was only four miles to Legrun, Metellus had said, but the road was difficult. That had been his word: difficult. Just beyond the Bois Sauvage marketplace, which was deserted because today was not the weekly market day, a path to the right had been marked by a cross to Baron Samedi. When asked why he had stopped and dismounted there for a moment, her guide had replied with a shrug, “It is sometimes well to ask the baron for protection, M’selle.”
“You think this Margal is into voodoo, then?”
“No, no, M’selle. He is an evil man, a bocor!”
Not the same thing at all, of course. Voodoo was a religion. A bocor was a sorcerer, a witch doctor, a loner. And the one they were about to confront was also a monster.
For an eternity the mules toiled up a ladder of boulders, with the high-mountain forest walling them in on both sides. At times even the sky was hidden by massed tree limbs. Then the path straggled over a rocky plateau painted gold by the sun, and plunged down through a trench.
The trench gradually widened into a grassy clearing dotted with thatch-roofed huts. Kay counted five of them. From a vertical cliff on the right tumbled a forty-foot waterfall that filled the vale with sound. Beyond the peasant huts stood a substantial, metal-roofed house painted bright red.
Margal’s, she supposed. And she was looking at the first painted house she had seen since leaving Vallière. Margal the Sorcerer apparently believed in being different, and was wealthy enough to indulge his whims.
Red houses were not common in Haiti. This one brought to mind a poem, or part of a poem, she had read in a volume of verse by a Haitian writer known to be deeply interested in the occult.
High in a mountain clearing
In a red, red house
In the wilds of Haiti,
Black candles burn
In a room of many colors.
Had the poet visited this place? If so, he must be a brave man to have dared write about it. But the book was in French, and Margal, being a peasant, could probably not read French. Or even any of the versions of written Creole.
In front of her, Metellus had reined his mule to a halt. As she caught up to him, he lifted an arm to point. “Margal lives there in the red house, M’selle,” he said without looking at her. “I will take the mules and wait for you by the waterfall.”
She drew in a breath to slow the beating of her heart. “You mean you’re not going to confront him with me?”
“M’selle, no.” He shook his head. “I do not have your courage.”
“Very well.” Disappointed but not angry, she dismounted and walked her mule the few steps to where Metellus could lean from the saddle and grasp its reins. Then, with her head high, she strode the last hundred yards alone.
On reaching the door, she lifted a hand to the brown leather bag to make sure it was still in place. Throughout the journey it had been a nuisance; now it was a comfort. She knocked. In a moment the door swung open. A boy about twelve years old, wearing only ragged khaki pants, stood gazing up at her.
She went through the usual peasant formalities. “Honneur, ti-moun.”
“Respect, M’selle.”
“I would like to speak with M’sieu Margal, if you please. I have come a long way to see him.”
Motioning her to enter, the boy silently stepped back from the doorway.
The room in which she found herself surprised her,
and not only for its large size. Its floor was of tavernon, the close-grained cabinet wood that was now even rarer and more expensive than Haitian mahogany. Tables and chairs, one of the latter strangely shaped, were of the same wood. Did it grow here? Probably, but Margal must have paid a small fortune to have the trees felled and cut up. The walls of the room were of clay, but each was a different colour—aquamarine, rose, black, green—and intricately decorated. The effect was startling.
“Please be seated,” the boy said. “I will ask my master if he wishes to see you. Not there!” he added quickly when Kay, out of curiosity, moved toward the oddly shaped chair. “That is my master’s!”
“Sorry.” She veered away, but not before noticing what a really remarkable chair it was. Its back was vertical, its extra-wide seat littered with varicoloured cushions. It had wide, flat, slotted arms. Fit a board across those arms, using the slots to anchor it, and the chair could be a desk, a work table, even a dining table.
She remained standing. The boy disappeared into a connecting room, leaving the door open.
In a moment the youth reappeared pushing a kind of wheeled platform on which was seated a man. Wearing a bright red nightshirt—if that was the word for it—the man weighed perhaps a hundred and fifty pounds, and would have been about five foot six had he been able to stand erect.
Apparently he could not do that. His legs, crossed in front of him, looked to Kay as though they had been broken and allowed to heal without benefit of medical attention.
The boy pushed the wheeled platform to the odd-shaped chair. Reaching behind him, the man placed both hands on the chair’s arms, hoisted himself up, and worked his crippled body backward into position. After squirming to make himself as comfortable as possible, he lifted his head. It was awrithe with a thick, stringy mass that resembled the dreadlocks of Jamaican Rastafarians.
His stare was totally innocent. “I bid you welcome, M’selle. My name is Margal. Please tell me who you are and why you have come here.”
