Cross on the Drum

by Cave, Hugh

  Louis fingered his ugly-gentle face. "What other things has he done?"

  "Certain people in the village remember talking to him the day you and the Father took young Toto Anestor to the mainland. It could be Pradon who spread the lie that Toto was dead and you were paid by the Father to keep still about it."

  "If you know that for a fact," Louis said, his voice thickening, "I'll kill him!"

  "Wait. Pradon may be the Father's enemy, but the Father has a greater one. My spies tell me that Pradon goes nearly every night to the plantation to talk to M'sieu Lemke."

  Micheline said with an exaggerated shrug, "Why shouldn't he go there? He works for Couronne, doesn't he?"

  "On this island he is supposed to be working for the Father, not for Lemke. But it would seem he is working for Lemke against the Father. In other words, Lemke is the Father's real enemy."

  "You can't be sure of that," Micheline retorted.

  "My dear sister," Catus said patiently, "the only one on this island who would report Père Clinton's interest in vodun to the Bishop is the same enemy who has been trying to harm him in other ways. I have given this a lot of thought. Père Clinton didn't ask the Bishop to preach that sermon. He was shocked when he heard the Bishop's words. Now consider. The Bishop spoke out against vodun because he knew Père Clinton had not taken a stand against it. But where and when did he get that information? Not here on the island. He was not here long enough. He knew before he came here. He knew because the Father's enemy informed him. Not Pradon Beliard—Pradon would never write a letter to a Bishop—but Lemke."

  "And how," Micheline demanded, "will you prevent Lemke from writing to him again if he has something to report?"

  "There are ways."

  She gasped. "You would kill M'sieu Lemke?"

  "I said there are ways. But of course I haven't yet made up my mind what ought to be done. I thought you three might advise me."

  Big Louis stood up. "This is a big matter, Catus. You must decide it for yourself or ask the loa for guidance. Perhaps it might be best to hold a service. The mystères will tell you what to do."

  Will they, Catus wondered as he opened the door and watched them depart. Or if the drums are beaten and the veves are drawn and the gods come to the service, will I only think they are advising me? For that matter, will I even be able to convince myself they are gods?

  He had not solved his problem, he realized. As a matter of fact he had only added another one, for now he was puzzled by Micheline's behavior. Knowing how she felt about Père Clinton, he had expected her to speak up for him. Instead, she had attacked him. Now why was that?

  FOR TWO MORE DAYS Catus thought it over. He knew what his silence was doing to the Father but he had to be sure he was right before making a move. No permanent harm would result from a few days' delay in the work on the rectory, or the fact that the clinic was out of bounds to a few people with ailments. On the other hand, the damage caused by a wrong decision on his part might be irreparable.

  Sunday evening he made up his mind and set out for the mission. It was good to have reached a decision. A weight had dropped from his back. His step was brisk.

  As he passed the house of Yolande Desinor, the death of whose child he had almost forgotten with all these new problems, Yolande saw him from her doorway. She rushed into the yard and flung out her hand, pointing at him.

  "My child should not have died!" she shrieked. "You killed her!" Catus came to a dead stop.

  "You killed her! You killed her!" she accused in a voice that could be heard through half the village. Then her father, who had been Zaca at the planting ceremony, ran from the house and clapped a hand over her mouth, dragging her back inside.

  Catus walked into the yard. He waited while the two old people furiously berated the woman for what she had done, and then when the noise from the caille subsided he stepped to the door.

  "Come outside," he ordered.

  The old grandmother wrung her hands. "My daughter did not mean it, Catus! She is out of her mind! She has been possessed by some evil loa!"

  "Never mind her. I wish to speak to you and your husband." Catus turned away, walked to the edge of the yard and waited.

  Timidly they approached him. Inside the caille the mother of the dead child was sobbing. Catus folded his arms on his chest. "Who told your daughter I killed her child?"

  They looked at each other. Both were believers in vodun, and in the presence of an enraged houngan they were terrified. "We don't know," the woman babbled. "She heard it in the village this afternoon. The whole village is discussing it, she says. She has talked about nothing else since she came home!"

  "What, exactly, did she hear? What am I accused of?"

  "Of—of letting the child die when Père Clinton could have saved her," the woman said fearfully.

  "I see." Catus walked out of the yard, looked down the path toward the mission and turned in the other direction. In the village he entered yard after yard and spoke to their occupants. They shrank from him in fear, most of them. They could tell by his face, if not by his voice, that he was dangerously angry.

  Yes, they told him, it was true. People everywhere were whispering a fantastic story that Père Clinton could have saved Yolande's child if he had been sent for sooner. Of course they did not believe it, certainly not, but people were saying it.

  "Has Père Clinton himself been here telling this story?" Catus demanded.

  Père Clinton? Here in the village? No, they had not seen him. But of course the story must have started with him. Who else would tell such an awful lie?

  Catus went home. A little later he stepped out of his house and went into the hounfor, closing the door behind him. He did not see his sister, Micheline, come across the compound into the deserted tonnelle.

  Micheline stood under the thatched roof, in the gloom of the deserted dancing place, gazing at the door behind which her brother had disappeared. Presently she heard the rhythmic rattle of his asson and the sound of his voice as he conversed with the spirits in the govis.

  She tightened her lips in triumph as she strolled out of the tonnelle and seated herself under the big mapou in the yard. Her brother had been quite right about Pradon Beliard. He was the Father's enemy. Moreover, that boy from the plantation was far from being a fool. It hadn't taken him long to use the information she had whispered to him. The whole village was buzzing this evening.

  Well, now let her misguided brother talk about being the Father's friend. Or was he at this very moment, with the help of the mystères, planning some awful revenge?

  She shivered, though the night was unusually warm and no whisper of a breeze could be felt in the compound. She would not like to be standing in Père Clinton's footprints now, she told herself. If she were Père Clinton she would be burning candles behind a locked door and packing a suitcase for the earliest possible flight to the mainland.

  It served him right.

  BARRY HAD BEEN COUNTING THE DAYS with growing uneasiness, wondering why Catus did not come to see him. After their long talk in which he and the houngan had so thoroughly explored their differences, he had been sure Catus would at least agree to a truce. But nothing had happened.

  The waiting had brought one thing home to him quite clearly. He knew now that he and Edith could never make a go of things.

  She had been talking to him by the hour. With the clinic deserted and the work on the ridge at a standstill, there had been endless opportunities for him to be with her. She came alone to the mission now. With no patients to look after, Alma did not bother. Arriving in the morning, Edith usually stayed the best part of the day and went back to the Lemkes' about four.

  She had talked and talked about the Bishop's sermon. The Bishop was right, she insisted. There could be no possible compromise with vodun in a place like this. She implied that Barry's failure on the island was his own fault, a direct result of his having tried to compromise.

  She seemed to have decided that it was her duty to save him from hi
mself. "Darling," she argued, "I can't see why you think it important to have that Laroche man on your side. Why is it? If you do strike some sort of bargain with him, how will you ever keep it without betraying your trust? You'll never convert him. There might even be some danger of his converting you."

  "I don't think I'd be very convincing, prancing around a painted post and singing chants in Creole."

  "Darling, I'm not joking. He's a very strong-minded person. And you don't have the firm convictions you ought to have; you know you don't. I can't see why you want him for a friend. Your job here is to teach Christianity. If they won't listen to you, is that your fault? In time some of them will begin to listen, won't they? Then little by little you'll win them over."

  "The flaw in that argument is that I don't expect to live more than the usual number of years."

  "Well, I still can't see why all this upsets you so."

  She understood nothing, of course, of what he was trying to do. In her eyes all that mattered was the picture he presented to the world, a picture she now found tragically shabby and one she was determined to do over. What she wanted, he supposed, was a dashing young missionary who would stand up in church every Sunday and thunder God's word to the heathen, knowing she stood there at his side to comfort him when the heathen stupidly refused to listen. "My poor, poor boy," she would murmur then, holding him ever so tenderly in her arms. "You mustn't blame yourself. No man could do more than you do."

  She was simply incapable of seeing that a man must do more or be nothing.

  He had walked with her one morning to the ridge, where the half-finished rectory now stood like a historic ruin and the empty church cried out for the sound of voices. Even there she had somehow managed to say exactly the wrong thing.

  "You'll never get it finished this way," she scolded. "They won't help you unless Catus gives his permission, and he has no intention of giving it. I don't see why you can't bring some workers over from the mainland."

  He tried not to be angry, or at least not to show it. "There are three reasons, Edith. First, I have nowhere to put them up. Second, the islanders would make things too unpleasant for them. Third, if the mission here is to be for the people of Ile du Vent, they ought to be the ones to build it." And he reminded her of the village in the mainland mountains that people for miles around insisted had been built by zombies, those mysterious living-dead of the island's mythology, simply because strange workmen from outside had been brought in to create it.

  There on the ridge that morning she had had one of her rare moments of tenderness. Putting her head against his shoulder she had said with a sob, "Barry, Barry darling, I did so look forward to your living up here. Aren't you ever going to be able to?"

  He found himself peculiarly unable to respond. "I wonder if anyone will ever live here," he answered from his weariness.

  "It would be heaven. If only you'd think of yourself just once, instead of them and what they want."

  Meaning what, he wondered. If only he would think of her and what she wanted? He held her close, feeling somehow guilty, yet knowing he had never really encouraged her. At least he had never attempted to deceive her about himself. Even at Fond Marie she must have known what he believed in and the kind of life he was likely to have.

  "I'll find a solution somehow," he had said, trying very hard to be responsive when she lifted her head to kiss him.

  On the Sunday following the Bishop's sermon only four persons came to church. He felt himself preaching less to them than to the ghostly congregation that had marched out after Catus Laroche the week before. The four who listened were Edith and Alma, St. Juste and Lucy. Lucy wept openly all through the service.

  The next morning Lucy went to Terre Rouge to buy vegetables. On hearing what was being said in the village, she hurried back with her basket still empty.

  She found Barry in the office, writing a letter to Peter Ambrose. Edith had not yet arrived.

  "Mon Père, mon Père!" Rushing in without waiting for a nod, a breach of routine that in itself told him something was seriously wrong, Lucy stumbled to the desk. "They are saying you have accused Catus of killing the Desinor child!"

  He put aside his pen, feeling the blood run out of his face. "Saying what?"

  "That Yolande Desinor's child need not have died!" she wailed. "That you have been telling people you could have saved her, and Catus let her die! Oh, mon Père, that man will do terrible things now! Did you say that about him?"

  "No. Of course not." He stood up. She was even more upset than he, and forcing her onto a chair he filled a glass of water from the pitcher on the desk and made her drink it. "Now tell me exactly what you've heard," he said. "Slowly, please. This is important."

  The whole market, she said, was talking about it. The whole village. Probably, by now, the whole island. Last night when Catus was walking through Terre Rouge, the mother of the dead child had screamed accusations at him. Catus had been so furious he could scarcely speak. He had gone from house to house questioning people, and then spent the night in his hounfor. He was still there. The whole village was waiting to see what he would do next.

  "Mon Père," Lucy sobbed, "you must go away! That man will surely kill you now!"

  22

  BARRY SAT ON HIS DESK, gazing at her. So the days of waiting had all been wasted, and he had been living in false hopes. He felt as though he were being squeezed in a vise. As though the sweat oozing from his pores were blood. His hands clenched and the knuckles began to ache.

  Who could have started this lie? The day of the little girl's death, he and Catus had gone straight to Catus' house and talked behind a closed door. No one could possibly have overheard what was said in that room. He felt bewitched, as though an invisible someone were standing behind him. He had an idiotic impulse to twist himself about in the hope of discovering who it was.

  No one could have known. The secret had been locked up behind the sealed lips of three persons, himself, Catus, and Alma Lemke. He dismissed Alma from his mind instantly. She would never do this to him. She had no reason. Had she told her husband? No, no, she knew all too well what use her husband would make of such a weapon. Who, then?

  Had he and Catus been alone in the caille that day? Perhaps someone else had been present. There were two rooms. He had not looked in the second room. Someone must have been there.

  What was he to do now?

  He remembered his vow to Catus, and the jaws of the vise closed tighter. "Nothing we have said in this room will be repeated outside," he had said. What must Catus be thinking now?

  He pushed himself off the desk. Lucy watched him with tears streaming down her homely face. "What will you do, mon Père?" she whispered.

  "I'm going to call on him."

  "No, no! He'll kill you! You don't know that man!"

  "We were friends before all these things happened. Perhaps I can make him understand. At any rate I've got to try."

  He went on horseback. He would have preferred to walk, to think the thing out as he walked, but knew it was dangerous. If he were on foot and one fanatical villager took a notion to throw a stone at him, an orgy of stone-throwing could follow. But he rode slowly.

  It was like his first day on the island. He followed the narrow, climbing footpath to the village, past the fenced-in yards and gardens, and people stopped what they were doing to stare at him. But they had been only curious then. Now they sensed the drama behind his journey and by the time he had passed through the village he had a following. They kept their distance but they were there, padding along behind on their bare feet, silent as phantoms. When he rode through the gate in the cactus hedge, into the Laroche compound with its tonnelle and three houses, they stopped outside to watch.

  He dismounted, aware that he was afraid. It was a strange feeling. He remembered a story Peter Ambrose had told him one night on the veranda at Fond Marie, about a missionary on the mainland who had been attacked and badly beaten for chopping down a mapou tree his parishioners held sacr
ed. The sun beat down on him and he realized he had forgotten his hat. He walked slowly toward the closed door of Catus' caille.

  Before he reached it, other doors opened. Louis and Daum stepped from theirs to stand in the shadow cast by the thatch above them. The little girl, Fifine, whose life he had saved, clung to Daure's hand. Micheline appeared in her doorway, silently watching, and he saw the shadowed forms of her parents close behind her. He felt himself in the vise again, with its jaws closing. The distance to Catus' house seemed ten times as long as it ever had before.

  He reached it at last and knocked. There was no response. He saw Micheline coming across the compound toward him and noticed she was wearing a black dress. Why black? Black was for mourning. She stopped a few feet from him and he saw on her lips a twisted smile that bewildered him, in her eyes a look of triumph that sent a chill through him.

  "My brother is in the hounfor," she said.

  He turned away from her and entered the tonnelle. It was a relief. The roof of thatch blocked off the stinging blaze of the sun and the shadows were a screen against the scores of eyes watching him. He lifted a hand and brought his knuckles against the hounfor door and said quietly, "Catus." Then after waiting a moment he knocked again.

  The door opened. Catus, hands on hips, wearing dark trousers and a bright red shirt, stood facing him. Their eyes met. The houngan's face, gaunt with fatigue, sunken-cheeked, was like a mask carved from a chunk of dark driftwood.

  "What do you want here?"

  "I want to talk to you," Barry said.

  "We have nothing to discuss."

  "Listen to me. I have only just heard what the people are saying. I came the moment I heard. It was not I who spread this story. I said nothing to anyone. Who did this I don't know. I can't even guess, unless there was someone else in your house the day we talked. But it was not I."