by Cave, Hugh
"This is a strange thing," the old man said in English.
"Why is it?"
"In all the time I have been here, this man has never asked a favor of me. Yet before you are here an hour he is forced to ask one of you. It must be an omen. It could be an act of God." He pushed himself to his feet. "While you're unpacking your medicines, I'll get you some water in a thermos. If they offer you anything to eat or drink, don't take it."
4
AS HE STEPPED OUT OF THE HOUSE with his medical bag and the thermos bottle of water, Barry felt the full impact of the sun and wondered what madness had caused little Mr. Mitchell to build the church and rectory in such an unlikely spot. He resolved to do something about it quickly. Then he had other things to think about.
He had to walk fast, for the long legs of Catus Laroche devoured the ground in gulps. It apparently made no difference to Catus that the path began to climb as soon as it left the red-earth clearing. A lifetime on Ile du Vent had hardened him to climbing. It mattered to Barry, though.
Struggling to keep pace, he found it next to impossible to see anything of the terrain he trudged through. Only scattered impressions. On both sides of the path were gardens and thatch-roofed cailles behind crooked fences. A man mending a fence stopped work to look at him. Children playing in the yards fell silent. A woman sorting coffee beans in a hut doorway looked up to watch him pass.
He spoke to them, just as he had always spoken to his parishioners at Fond Marie. Here, though, a nod was the friendliest answer he received. No one waved, smiled, or spoke. The children actually seemed frightened, as though afraid to be caught showing any interest in him.
In the village in which he presently found himself it was the same. The place was called Terre Rouge. It was small, no more than a widening of the footpath between rows of close-packed houses, but there were people. Quite a few people for this time of day. They certainly were aware of him as he hurried past in Laroche's wake. But none gave him an honest greeting.
He tried not to let it upset him. One thing at a time, he told himself, forcing his thoughts to focus on the injured child and what he could do for her.
At the end of the village street Laroche halted, eyeing him without compassion as he caught up. "You are tired, Father?"
"Don't ask silly questions. Of course I'm tired."
"Perhaps I walk too fast for you."
"You'll see the day when I can keep up with you. Get along now."
Catus shrugged as he turned away, but did shorten his prodigious stride a bit and looked back more often. Beyond the village he paused again to let Barry catch him. This time he glanced at the thermos bottle. "You must be thirsty."
Barry unscrewed the top, poured water into it, and held it out to him. Catus seemed not to understand.
"Go on, drink it."
The houngan scowled at him. "After you, mon Père."
"As you wish, then." Barry emptied the cup and refilled it. This time Catus drank.
Now why did he do that, the houngan wondered. Is he trying to make me believe that color means nothing to him, that whites and blacks are all the same? Does he feel that way? Or was it a trick to make me sympathique?
THE JOURNEY ENDED just beyond the village when Laroche turned from the path and passed through a gap in a cactus hedge. A neat wooden gate hung in the gap and the hedge was five feet high, a solid mass of thorns. Catus didn't like intruders, Barry told himself. They entered a small swept-earth yard, prettily shaded by a large mapou with great spreading roots.
The hut was the usual thing but larger than most and a good deal cleaner. There were two rooms with a curtain between, just as in Mr. Mitchell's house, but the curtain here was of woven sisal, not an old Christmas tablecloth. The little girl lay naked on a sleeping mat in the front room. A number of adults, at whom Barry scarcely glanced before kneeling to make his examination, stood about in the semigloom.
"A light, please." Why in heaven's name did they always build their huts with such miserably small windows, shutting out both air and light as if those God-given elements were poisonous? Why didn't they dispense with walls altogether in this climate, at least up here on the mountain where mosquitoes were not a problem?
Someone handed him a kerosene lamp made of a condensed-milk can. He placed it on the mat where the child could not accidentally knock it over. His examination finished, he allowed himself a sigh of relief.
He had been terribly afraid that he would not know what to do for the child. At Fond Marie there had always been Peter to turn to for advice. But the child was not dying. Catus had exaggerated.
They always did exaggerate, these people. Having no doctors, they lived in constant terror of sickness, for when it struck them down their only hope lay in their so-called leaf doctors, or in vodun. He remembered that Catus was a vodun priest. Good. This should be proof to them, then, that the powers of a houngan were mostly in his imagination. Or in theirs.
He glanced up, caught the houngan's eye and motioned him to come closer. Now that he was certain he could help the girl, it would be criminally foolish not to make the most of the situation.
"What have you done for the child?" The implied accusation in his tone was deliberate.
Catus met his gaze without flinching. With, in fact, unmistakable defiance. "Everything I knew how to. No one could have done more without medicine."
"I see." All that Barry really saw was that it was going to be difficult to get the best of the fellow. "Well, you were right about the wound. It's badly infected. The poison has spread and she has a high fever." He took his penicillin supplies from the bag on the floor beside him. "I don't promise to cure her. I can only do my best."
Catus said nothing. The others moved closer, watching him as he assembled the hypodermic. When he plunged the point into the little girl's round black bottom and she voiced a bleat of surprise and pain, there was a noisy sucking of breath behind him, then a murmuring.
He dressed the foot, and then looked at his patient more closely in the light of the lamp. She had a cherub's face with enormous, shining eyes that gazed back at him in terror. Her snub nose looked for all the world like a tiny twitching mouse. Her skin was smooth and soft, her hair like a cloud of smoke. He could not help noticing how clean she was. They weren't, most of them. Yet the people on the boat had been clean enough. Perhaps they bathed more often here on Ile du Vent, where they had the sea all around them and a number of handy fresh-water streams.
"What's your name, ti-fi?" he asked her with a smile.
She turned away from him like a playful seal.
"Her name is Fifine, Father. For Josephine." The voice was familiar. He stood up and found himself gazing into the face of the girl from the boat, Catus Laroche's sister.
"We thank you for coming," she said, holding her gaze on his face. "I speak for all of us. This is my sister Dame Cesar, the child's mother, and her husband Louis Cesar." She motioned the others forward with the barest movement of her hand, as though she were used to giving orders in that house. Only then did she stop looking at Barry and step aside.
Barry felt strange. More than strange. He felt as though she had embraced him. He felt that she had flung her golden arms around his neck and pressed her body hard against his own. It was a very real feeling, more real than his certainty that nothing of the sort had really happened. Her arms were golden in the lamplight. Her face, too. She still wore the butterfly dress, and the green stone gleamed in the cleavage between her bold young breasts.
He scarcely heard the expressions of thanks murmured by the child's mother. Scarcely looked at her, except to notice that she was attractive, as indeed all these Laroches seemed to be, and was also well along in pregnancy. He felt dizzy. There was an odd prickling sensation on the backs of his hands. Not until the husband stepped forward was he in full control of himself again.
He shook the man's hand, receiving a second shock. The hand was enormous. It wrapped itself about his own as though he were a mere child. He had to l
ook up into the man's face, and he, Barry Clinton, was six feet tall. The average native of St. Joseph would think that very tall indeed. Louis Cesar was the largest individual he had seen since coming to St. Joseph three years before: six feet five or six and easily weighing two-hundred-fifty pounds. A giant. The man's mouth was working. His whole great ugly face was working. Barry strained to catch what he was saying.
Impossible. There was something amiss with the fellow's speech, just as there was something wrong with his right ear, the upper half of which was only a knob of gristle or hard flesh. Probably the result of an old fight or accident. Chopped with a machete, more than likely. Lord, he was ugly. A mountain of ugliness. Skin dead black, not a glimmer of life in it; features splashed on as though flung from a bucket. Or had they been squashed into that grotesque shape by the same accident that mangled the ear? Awful. Yet the struggling voice was surprisingly soft and pleasant, almost a crooning.
Barry murmured, "Yes, yes, it's quite all right," and extracted his hand from the other's grip before it could be crushed. "Well, I'd better be going." He glanced at the child again. "Let her rest. I'll give you some pills for her, to stop the pain, but let her sleep all she can. Don't move her. Give her food if she wants it, but don't force it on her. I'll come tomorrow."
Micheline stood before him again. "Will you not stay for coffee, Father?"
"Coffee? No. No, thank you—"
Perhaps his expression gave him away. After old Mitchell's warning, the offer had put him immediately on the defensive. At any rate her brother, Catus, was smiling at him.
"You're not afraid, Father?"
"Afraid of what?"
"That you might be poisoned."
"No, no. It's just that—"
"Père Mitchell was not poisoned, Father. He thinks he was, but it isn't so. His sickness is his own fault."
"How do you mean, his own fault?"
"He drinks too much. He has been drinking too much for weeks. Rum is all right in small amounts, but not as a substitute for water. There is no danger of your being poisoned, Father. If you think so, you do me a dishonor. I am a houngan, a respected member of my community, not a bocor, a witch doctor. It is the bocor who poisons people."
Barry returned the man's gaze. Strange. He had been on Ile du Vent only a few hours, yet already he felt more inclined to believe Laroche, supposedly his worst enemy, than the man whose place he was taking. Was he being naive? Was this knack of winning a stranger's confidence a secret weapon that Laroche planned to use against him?
"I believe I would like some coffee," he said. The fact was, he was not at all eager to return to the rectory and listen to more of old Mitchell's rambling talk. He preferred to sit here, getting to know these people better. There was so much they could tell him if they would. As he spoke, he glanced at Micheline and smiled.
Micheline made the coffee outside somewhere and brought it into the caille on a mahogany tray with tiny cups and saucers. She poured it from a blue enameled pot that must have come from one of the houseware shops in the capital. Barry waited in vain for a sugar bowl to be produced, then sipped.
He frowned at the girl. "This has an odd taste."
"You find it different?" She seemed concerned as she leaned toward him. "Perhaps this is the first time you have tasted coffee made with cane juice instead of water."
He sipped again. It was really very good. No need for sugar. Very good indeed. He smiled at her and let her refill his cup, and when she bent toward him her thigh touched his knee and he felt her give a little start. He, too, had reacted involuntarily to the contact by almost dropping his cup and saucer. To cover his embarrassment he asked how many persons lived in the cactus-enclosed clearing.
Seven, they told him. There were three cailles. Louis and Daure Cesar lived in this one with their baby. Daure's father and mother, who of course were the parents of Catus and Micheline also, lived in the second but with Micheline. The third and largest was occupied by Catus himself.
"You live alone?" Barry asked, surprised.
"I am a houngan, mon Père. A houngan must have a hounfor, the place where the altar is kept. Also a tonnelle for the drumming and ceremonial dancing."
"You aren't married?"
"I am—no, I have never taken a wife."
Except the loa or whatever you call her whose ring you wear, Barry thought, recalling old Mitchell's explanation of the ring and the tale of the dancing girl in the capital. He did not press the subject.
They discussed the island and its problems. There were many problems, they told him. Sickness, for example. Catus, who knew much about herbs, leaves, and roots, as all houngans did, was able to cure some maladies. But if a man chopped himself with a machete or came down with a serious illness, the nearest medical help was hours away on the mainland. "But for you, Father, we should have been planning a funeral here in this very house tomorrow."
"Perhaps not. I certainly hope not."
There was a shortage of land suitable for raising food, they complained. "Our hillsides are steep and difficult. We do the best we can, but not all the soil is productive, and when the fishing is bad many of us go hungry. Yet the government has allowed the Plantation Couronne to come here and plant hundreds of carreaux of the best land to sisal, making our problems even more acute. Why? Everybody knows why. Because some politician saw a chance to fill his pockets with money. They care nothing for us, the politicians. Were every soul on this island to perish of starvation or disease tomorrow, the newspapers in the capital would probably not mention it."
Barry nodded. They exaggerated, of course. People with grievances always exaggerated; peasants especially. He recognized a core of truth, though, in what they said and encouraged them to tell him more. By the time he stood up to go, he had learned a great deal.
"Thank you for telling me these things."
"I will walk back with you, Father." The big fellow, Louis Cesar, touched his arm. So that misshapen mouth could make words, after all. He was relieved to know it. Evidently it was only a matter of getting used to the sound of them, just as one had to become accustomed to the fluid slurrings of Creole itself.
"That's kind of you, Louis. If you don't mind, though, I'd like to have Catus walk back with me." He turned to the houngan, smiling. "That's only fair, isn't it, Catus? You came and got me."
"Certainly, Father."
"Come along then. And this time I'll set the pace, if you don't mind."
THE PACE BARRY SET was deliberately slow. There were some things he wanted to discuss with his "enemy."
When they were clear of the house, he said, "You haven't got along well with Mr. Mitchell, have you, Catus?"
"It was impossible."
“Why?”
"For several reasons. He came here to teach us a new faith. Very well. I am a vodun houngan. I didn't ask him to come here. But if a man has something to say, I am willing to listen, provided we can meet and talk as friends. Your Pare Mitchell would not be friends. He went up and down the island calling us superstitious savages for believing in vodun. We were all fools, he said, believing in nonsense. But did he try to find out what we believe? Did he ever ask us, or let us show him? He did not."
"You make a hard case against him."
"That isn't all. We need help on this island. We are too often sick and hungry. But Pare Mitchell could not see what we needed. He had nothing to offer but sermons full of angry attacks on the faith of our ancestors. We don't need sermons. Certainly not that kind."
"Therefore you fought him."
"Did he expect us not to fight him?"
Probably not, Barry thought, if Mitchell's own teachings were a declaration of war. Why, why did so many of the older missionaries feel it was necessary to destroy everything before they could build? Why couldn't they see that a faith of any sort, no matter how primitive, was better than none at all and could be used for a foundation? But Catus was waiting for an answer.
"He hoped you might be reasonable, I'm sure."
"I suppose you mean," Barry said, "that your people have always had to fight to preserve your vodun. That it's been outlawed down through the years by everyone from plantation owners in slave days to recent heads of the republic. And that I'd be silly to expect to drive it out of existence with words. Is that what you mean?"
"I mean that if you try to destroy vodun on this island, I will do my best to destroy you."
"But Mr. Mitchell wasn't simply trying to take something away from you, Catus. He wanted to give you something better in return."
"Your faith, you mean? Who says it is better?"
"I do, for one."
"It would be interesting to hear your evidence."
They had reached the village, and Barry fell silent as they passed through it. He welcomed the silence, paying no attention now to the villagers who stared without offering a greeting. He had not been prepared for this sort of argument and had the feeling that to get in much deeper without adequate preparation might be unwise. Whatever else Catus Laroche might be, he was not a fool.
He fumbled at a shoelace to let Catus go ahead of him, then straightened and studied the man as he followed. A devil, had Mr. Mitchell said? It was far too soon, of course, to attempt any analysis of what went on inside that well-shaped head, but he felt the stirring of a powerful urge to be friends with the fellow. Not simply to avoid having him for an enemy, either.
He caught up as the village fell behind. "Let me ask you a question, Catus. Will you give me a chance to tell you what I believe in? I may be able to show you some good in it, you know."
"Have you asked me what I believe?"
"I intend to."
"In that case I will listen to you. But you won't find it easy to outtalk my ancestors, I warn you."
