by Wade Davis
The messenger led us out the back of the temple into a courtyard vibrating with several hundred people. There was a festive air, and all the crowded tables together with the lingering odor of grilled meat and sweet potatoes reminded me at first of a community picnic. But the atmosphere was also charged with tension, somehow accentuated by the loud hissing of dozens of Coleman lanterns set around the periphery of the courtyard. They cast a harsh, almost blinding light that kept my eyes to the ground as Rachel, Isnard, and I wove past a number of tables until we reached the one at the back headed by Jean Baptiste. We were welcomed and invited to sit by his side, but there were no introductions, and when Rachel finished apologizing for our delay and exhausted a few easy phrases of greeting, a disconcerting stillness gripped us. Across the table a half-dozen men sat as still as stones. The light from behind them completely obscured their faces in shadow and reduced their enormous bodies to a single ominous silhouette. I started any number of stories that had always worked in the past but now drew no response. Isnard was equally uncomfortable, yet our presence challenged his pride to display his knowledge of the Bizango, and in a foolish gesture he pulled a demijohn of clairin from his hip pocket and stood up to propose a toast. To make matters worse, the bottle was empty.
“Friends of the night,” he said with inappropriate melodrama, “we are all brothers.”
A flat voice responded from across the table. “What do you mean all brothers?”
“Well,” Isnard stumbled, “we are Haitians, we are all Haitians.” He had intended, of course, to imply that he too was a member of the Bizango.
“Yes, it is so. We are Nég Guinée, the people of Africa,” the shadow agreed. “Some of us.”
Fortunately, before Isnard could go any further, the tables around us began to buzz with the rumor of the returning procession, and within moments the entire courtyard was filled with anticipation. Jean led us quickly into the peristyle, which, already crowded when we arrived, was by now bulging with members of the Bizango. In the distance, seen through the gaps in the bamboo wall, the procession like an articulated serpent crawled over the hills—proceeding, halting, then moving again, slowly emerging out of the nether darkness of the night. Lanterns on either flank floodlit great swirls of chalky dust. You could hear the distant voices, the whistles, and the short barking commands driving the members into line. The crack of sisal whips kept time with the ponderous cadence of the march as the leaders paused to allow the coffin to sway like a pendulum hanging from the shoulders of the escort. To this fusion of red and black, the droning voices lent a certain uniformity binding everyone present to the rhythms of the music.
We come from the cemetery,
We went to get our mother,
Hello, mother the Virgin
We are your children
We come to ask your help
You should give us courage.
As the procession poured into the temple, clusters of lanterns at the entryway outlined the stern faces of the magnificently robed acolytes. First inside was the sentinelle, who leapt around the poteau mitan in a mock display of suspicious concern. Behind him walked a lone man carrying a rope, followed closely by the sacred coffin and its circle of retainers. As the bulk of the society squeezed into the room, the guests pulled back into an adjoining chamber until the enclosure swelled with red-and-black robes. Slowly the procession circled the poteau mitan, but there were so many that the members didn’t walk so much as lean into each other, flesh to flesh, sending a single wave surging around the post. A tall, dazzling woman wearing a satin and spangled Edwardian dress and a buccaneer’s hat complete with ostrich plumes took the center of the room. With slow sweeping gestures she orchestrated the entire movement while her face, half hidden beneath her hat, radiated perfect serenity, a look both world-weary and utterly calm.
The power of the moment was dreamlike. The sacred coffin rested on the red-and-black flag, caressed by flowers. The Shanpwel blew out the burning candles they had clasped to their chests and laid them in one of two velvet hats placed at the foot of the coffin. The majestic woman in the glittering robe moved at ease through the huddled members of her procession, nodding to each one. Whistles and conch shells echoed as a great shout arose.
“Twenty-one shots of the cannon in honor of the executive president!” As the whip outside began to crack, the woman, her head and great hat tilting slightly like the axis of a globe, turned slowly back toward the base of the poteau mitan. She was the empress, I now realized, and we were all gathered to celebrate the founding of her society. A man acting as a herald stepped forthrightly to her side.
“Silence! In a moment we …” he began, but the raucous excitement kept him from being heard. “Silence! People, you are not in your houses! Be quiet!” The empress raised an arm and the room fell silent.
“In a moment,” the man continued, “we shall have the honor of presenting you with the attending presidents.” Then one by one as their names were called five Bizango leaders including Jean Baptiste stepped forward. The empress, lifting her face to the light to reveal the finest of features—thin bones and skin drawn beautifully across high cheekbones—formally opened the ceremony.
“Circonstantier, thirty-one March nineteen eighty-four, Séance Ordinaire. By the entire power of the great God Jehovah, Master of the Earth!”
A short man moved forward to assume the center of attention. As his dazed eyes scanned the room, silence followed easily.
“My dear friends,” he began. “Often on a day such as this you have seen me stand before you, and for me it is a joyous occasion, for it allows a chance to welcome you and to share through my words a number of ideas and themes that mean so much to us all. Sadly, tonight my thoughts have escaped, my imagination has escaped, and this prevents me from yielding to my strongest desires. Still, I wish to thank all the guests for responding to the invitation of this morning.”
With this introduction he fell quiet for some time. It was as if for him, with his oral tradition, the spoken words were alive and each had to be savored.
“Brothers and sisters!” he continued. “It is today that we come together in a brotherly communion of thoughts and feelings. Feelings that are crystallized into the force of our brotherhood, the force that gives meaning to our feast of this night.
“Yes, we are talking about our Bizango institution, in the popular language Bizango or Bissago. Bizango is the culture of the people, a culture attached to our past, just as letters and science have their place in the civilization of the elite. Just as all peoples and all races have a history, Bizango has an image of the past, an image taken from an epoch that came before. It is the aspect of our national soul.”
Nobody made a sound as he paused again, and when he resumed, his words spread over the cushion of moist hot bodies, mingling with the heat of the lanterns until the air was vibrant with the ebb and flow of a timeless idea.
“The Bizango brings joy, it brings peace. To the Haitian people Bizango is a religion for the masses because it throws away our regrets, our worries, problems, and difficulties.
“Another meaning of the Bizango is the meaning of the great ceremony at Bwa Caiman. They fall within the same empire of thoughts. Our history, such moments, the history of Macandal, of Romaine La Prophétesse, of Boukman, of Pedro. Those people bore many sacrifices in their breasts. They were alive and they believed! We may also speak of a certain Hyacinthe who as the cannon fired upon him showed no fear, proving to his people that the cannon were water. And what of Macandal! The one who was tied to the execution pole with the bullets ready to smash him but found a way to escape because of the sacrifice he did. Again we see …”
Suddenly a harsh voice from across the room interrupted the speech, directing the gaze of all present at Rachel and me. I recognized the rotund man as one of the presidents who had been introduced earlier.
“By your grace, my friends. Dessalines used to tell us things. I am a man. I am not in my house, but I can talk. Why is it that a b
lanc is here to listen to our words?” A shiver of confrontation ran through the people around us. With the permission of Jean Baptiste I had been recording parts of the ceremony openly, and now my tape became the center of concern.
“Are our words meant to pass beyond the walls of this room?” In the stiff silence I could hear raindrops hissing as they dropped into a small flame by my ear.
“Give me the tape, quickly,” Rachel said. I did so, and stepping before the assembly she offered the cassette to the offended party and begged his forgiveness. “The blanc is here as my guest, and I am here because I am a child of Guinée.” The tape was accepted with equal grace, and the crisis seemed to have passed when Jean Baptiste stepped forward, face to face with the other president.
“The tape is mine. The blanc is my guest also. My house is his, and the girl is the child of my friend.” Thus, after a moment’s hesitation, the tape came back to me. An uneasy calm returned to the room, and the intense man standing by the poteau mitan resumed his speech from the beginning, closing with a pointed reference to the Haitian revolution.
“We say again that there was a moment in eighteen-oh-four, a moment that bore fruits, that the year eighteen-oh-four bore the children of today. Thank you.”
In a prudent attempt to reestablish the rhythm of the celebration, the empress called immediately for the offerings to the sacred coffin. She led a prayer and then sang the opening verses of the adoration hymn, as one by one each person in the room came forward to place a small sum before the society.
“You certainly won’t go through this if you visit my society.” A short, elfin woman had nestled up beside me, and was speaking softly. “This is crazy. It’s a public ceremony. Everyone should be welcome.” Before we knew it the woman was standing between Rachel and me gently holding each of us by the hand. Her name was Josephine, and her society met every second Wednesday. We were more than welcome to attend, she assured us. A nattering, affectionate conversation ensued between her and Rachel, until interrupted by an aggressive, threatening voice coming from the other side of the room.
“Brothers and sisters! Wait a minute! The ceremony at Bwa Caiman was a purely African affair. There should be no blanc assisting with this ceremony of ours tonight! No blanc should see what we do in the night.” The entire room erupted with angry, disembodied voices. The members split into two camps, a vocal minority who condemned my presence, and the majority who claimed that the feast was a public event, a party open to anyone. Jean Baptiste lunged across the peristyle in our defense, and a semicircle of our supporters formed a cordon around us. My hands reached impulsively behind my back, tentatively gauging the strength of the thatch-and-mud wall. Beside me Rachel trembled.
“Don’t worry,” Josephine whispered, “there are no imbeciles here. It is a public ceremony. If it were private, you wouldn’t be here. But this is only a party.”
Suddenly the electric lights went off and on. Josephine looked concerned. Flames leaping from a fire at the base of the poteau mitan chased the shadows of the dancers across the walls of the temple, distorting them over the cracks in the thatch. A spasm of heavy breathing was broken by cries of intense effort, earth-pounding rhythms as the shoulders of the dancers moved like pistons, whiplash movements that pressed upon us.
“What is this stupidity?” Josephine yelled, even as she pulled us closer to her side. “Shanpwel! Open your asses!” The lights went out again, and the cordon around us tightened.
“Watch out!” Isnard screamed at us. “Breathe through your shirt!” For a single terrifying moment we waited, watching the dust suspended in the amber light. This was the time, Isnard believed, that the powder would come. I grabbed Rachel. All I could sense was past and future flowing over us like an uneddying river.
But nothing happened. Amid shrieks of excitement the lights came back on, and as the tension subsided Rachel’s anxiety gave way to indignation.
“Listen,” she said, “if they don’t want us around here we should leave.”
“No, my darling, you are not walking one step!” Josephine was adamant.
“But this is ridiculous!”
“Don’t worry, child, it is past their time.” And she was right. Whatever anger there had been but moments before and given way to laughter and public displays of welcome. The rotund president who had first objected to my presence now took the floor with a gesture of appeasement.
“Brothers and sisters,” he began after the drums had stopped. “I’ll explain something to you.”
“Silence!” someone shouted.
“The question of a man being more a man or less a man, a man being white or a man being black, never changes whether he is right or wrong.” He was interrupted by resounding applause.
“Myself,” he went on, “I know that to want is to be able. I speak publicly now so that my motives will be understood. I took that cassette for a reason. President Jean Baptiste said it was his, and I gave it back to the blanc. But I am no fool. If the blanc comes to my place, he is welcome to record the vodoun part, and he may learn the songs of the Cannibal, but the words must remain ours. The songs are public, but the words are private. That is all. Excuse me, mademoiselle,” he said looking toward Rachel, “I tell you this as a favor.” Rachel thanked him and promised to take him up on his invitation to attend his ceremony, but her words were faint and lost in the growing pressure of impatient drummers and people anxious to dance.
All reflections and recriminations were dashed by the sudden intensity of motion that turned the peristyle into a great circle of spinning light. In a place that minutes before had been packed shoulder to shoulder there was now room for everyone to move. A dance of dervishes, of arms flailing the air, gave way to one of convulsive movements, of feet pounding the ground and raising small clouds of dust that lingered at knee level across the entire floor. Rachel is as good a dancer as I am clumsy, but in the space of moments even I felt pulled by the rhythm. To the delight of all, we leapt into line, moving as one with the Shanpwel as they lunged across the ground. The staccato beat of the drums flung us into the air, or beat us back into line. You could actually feel its vibration striking at the base of your spine and rising like electricity to your skull. For hours it seemed the drums held us like that, sweat pouring from our skin, the smell of incense and dust, of cheap perfume and rum fusing with a mocking sensuality that brought our bodies so close before flinging them apart. My mind wove its way through the night, becoming lost in some vast region of the past, responding only to the steady rhythm, moving like a great strand of kelp floating in a wild current yet all the time anchored firmly to the earth.
I don’t know when it ended. I only remember waking to the cool wind outside the temple, and the dawn breaking through a pearl gray sky. I remember the stillness of the palm trees, and on the road back a few market women on their mules clip-clopping into town, and the lights of Marcel Pierre’s brothel, his clients leaning on the porch enjoying the aftertaste of a night in the darkness with those soft, pliant women I had almost forgotten.
It wasn’t until late the next afternoon that we were able to appreciate the full significance of the recording we had come so close to losing. Amid the flurry of song and dance ritual, two vital pieces of information stood out. First there was the speech. It was a clear public statement that in explicit terms traced the origins of the Bizango directly to the Haitian revolution and the prerevolutionary leaders of the Maroon bands, precisely in the way that the anthropologist Michel Laguerre had proposed. Secondly, and perhaps more immediately important, the tape provided the names of more than a half-dozen prominent leaders in the Saint Marc region alone. With the generous assistance of Rachel’s uncle Robert Erié, we were able in one day to establish contact with five Bizango founding presidents, or emperors. One of the most informative was also the most impressive, a crafty and powerful figure named Jean-Jacques Leophin.
Our first call on Leophin was purely social, and he received us formally. He was an old man, thin, slightly s
tooped, with a penchant for gold, which he displayed in wide bands on each finger and great loops of chains around his neck. A snap of his fingers brought forth a table and chairs, a tray of ice and whiskey. We drank in the middle of a blue-walled peristyle, surrounded by leaping images of the djab and the penetrating vision of the Black Virgin. In the yard outside, propped up on blocks like an icon, sat a broken-down Mercedes-Benz.
Beneath these and other frills—a black fedora and the habitual use of a cigarette holder—lay the soul, I would soon learn, of a man fully wed to the mystical. When he spoke his eyes sank deep into every listener, and from within his layered phrases came a resonance that lent his words great density. As we got to know him better he struck me as one of those rare people who have managed to forge a unique personal philosophy from a thousand disparate elements of the universe, and who then dedicate their lives to living up to the tenets of their belief. He spoke in parables, reciting myths and legends from Africa, mixing them liberally with citations from Le Petit Albert, a medieval text of sorcery once banned in Haiti, yet still the bible of choice of every conjurer and magician.
“Bizango is a word that comes from the Cannibal,” he explained. “You find this word in the Red Dragon or the books of the Wizard Emmanuel. Bizango is to prove that change is possible. That’s why we say ‘learn to change.’ We are in the world, and we can change in the world. Everyone says that the Shanpwel change people into pigs, but we say this only because it teaches that everything is relative. You may think that you and I are equals, are humans with the same skin, the same form, but another being looking at us from behind might say that we’re two ‘pigs,’ or ‘donkeys,’ or even ‘invisible.’ This is what is called the Bizango changing. That is what it means.
