Marie Laveau

by Francine Prose

  Marie Laveau

  by Francine Prose

  Marie Laveau She knew all their secrets. Judges, servants, city fathers, elegant courtesans and society belles.

  Marie Laveau Rich young planters begged for dances, pleaded for kisses, and fought duels in her name.

  Marie Laveau She could win back your lover, turn your grey curls to gold, help you win the jackpot, or put the death fix on you. She cast her wild spell on men and women, spirits and conjurors, until the entire city of New Orleans lay at her dancing feet. You've never met anyone like her — except in your most fantastic dreams.

  Copyright © 1977, by Francine Prose

  All rights reserved

  Published by arrangement with the author’s agent

  All rights reserved which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever. For information address

  Berkley Publishing Corporation

  200 Madison Avenue

  New York, New York 10016

  SBN 425-03727-4

  BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOKS are published by

  Berkley Publishing Corporation

  200 Madison A venue

  New York, N. Y. 10016

  BERKLEY MEDALLION BOOK ® TM 757,375

  Printed in the United States of America

  Berkley Edition, May, 1978

  With special thanks

  To Fred for the charm against demons,

  To Geri for the enthusiasm and encouragement,

  To Marshall for the pet cobra,

  And to my friends for their love, their magic and their power

  This book was partially funded by a public service grant from the New York State Council on the Arts.

  CHAPTER I

  MARIE LAEAU IS dancing with a cobra in Congo Square. In the warm full moonlight the cobra’s scales gleam bright green like the phosphorescent fish in the warm Gulf waters, like the emerald dragons on the magic lanterns which the merchants are just now importing from China. The serpent is ten feet long. Its back is set with diamonds and tiny bells which jingle as it moves. On its pale belly are painted pentacles, crosses, hearts pierced with daggers. Embedded in the center of its forehead is a giant ruby the blood color of Mars, of the setting sun.

  As the voodoo queen begins to dance, the snake writhes around her neck, then pulls back, ready to strike, its tongue flicking in the air. Suddenly its body grows slack. It weaves toward her, rubbing its hood against her cheek. Then it hisses its secrets in Marie Laveau’s ear.

  A thousand people are gathered on the dusty grass but the square is silent. Quadroon ladies in madras kerchiefs, slaves in threadbare brocade, Creole whites in heavy veils for protection from the poisonous night vapors—all lean forward, straining to hear what the cobra is telling Marie.

  But at that moment the queen turns her head so that the snake disappears deep in her hair. The cobra is forgotten as the crowd stares at Marie’s famous hair—thick, coal-black, shining with a reddish glow. Waist-length, it covers her back like a cape. As she shakes her hair in the moonlight, it seems to catch fire—each strand a thin black candle crowned with flame.

  Tonight the queen’s wearing three scarlet satin skirts trimmed with golden bells, a tight purple bodice cut low over her breasts. She’s wrapped in her magic shawl—a gift from the emperor of China—embroidered with blue peacocks, winged leopards, the rising sun. Around her neck hang ropes of pearls, turquoise, green malachite, carnelians, chunks of rough amber, corals the size of oranges.

  Tall, broad-hipped, she carries her shoulders high. Her skin is gold as warm syrup. Her cheeks are dusted with the freckles which the white ladies fear more than yellow fever, which Marie calls the love-bites of God. Her black eyes are red-rimmed and wild—the sign of the double-sighted, the conjurer.

  Marie extends her arms and turns a slow circle—the same full turn the slaves have done on the auction blocks, the same graceful turn the quadroon ladies have done to the music of reels. But Marie’s turn is different from the steps of the auction and the dance. Stately and dignified, she takes her time.

  At last she claps her hands above her head. “Let’s have some light,” she says in a deep quiet voice audible throughout the square. “How’s the spirit going to find us in the pitch-black?”

  Hundreds of torches flare up. Children dart back and forth waving Good Luck Candles in circles, spirals, figured patterns of light.

  “All right now, children.” Smiling, Marie licks her pointed cat’s teeth. “I know what’s on your mind. I know what’s troubling you. I know why you’ve come. I know you’ve come here to forget your troubles. I know you’ve come here to dance. Now you tell me: What’s going to be first now? The bamboula? The calinda? The nago? The Congo? The banda? The juba?”

  “Calinda!” cries the crowd.

  “I thought so,” says Marie. “I can see you know my thoughts like I know yours.”

  The queen is joking. No one can read Marie Laveau’s thoughts. Everyone smiles, even the white women, tight-lipped behind their veils. Everyone knew it would be the calinda they’ve done every Sunday for years, their favorite, the dance they do in their dreams.

  “Come on, then,” says Marie.

  Thirteen musicians rush into the center of the square—seven slaves, six free men of color. They wear red madras bandannas across their foreheads, green silk scarves around their wrists, gold hoops in their ears. Marie smiles at them and they smile back. Marie has told them that the Lord made drums and rhythm before any other creations, that the earth and sky were divided to the conga beat. So the three drummers always begin.

  Grouped together, they lean over huge hollowed tree trunks covered with goatskin. Slapping the skin with wooden sticks, they set a steady rhythm. After a while bamboo flutes join in with light bursts of melody. An old woman plucks a snakeskin banjo. There are ropes of cowbells, tambourines, bone castanets, basses made from fat orange gourds.

  Twelve musicians are playing. But they’ve only just begun.

  Shifting her weight from hip to hip, Marie reaches out to the audience, stretching her arms longingly like a woman calling her lover back to bed. The white ladies sneak hasty glances at their escorts. A few gentlemen shut their eyes. The rest are gazing at the voodoo queen.

  “Come on, now,” says Marie. “Let’s dance.”

  The crowd roars. Slaves and free men run forward, brandishing rum bottles like spears. Pushing toward the center, they’re laughing, jostling the tense elbows of the ladies’ escorts.

  Backed against a sycamore, a withered Creole dowager clutches her ebony cane. “I do believe this beats the Santo Domingo slave revolt!” she shrieks. Then her fear disappears. Everything’s in order. The voodoo dance has started.

  Arms around each other’s waists, the women form a line and sway to the slow drumbeat, sliding to the right, the left. They lean forward, backward, swinging their shoulders in wide circles.

  The men strip off their shirts and somersault into the circle. Without touching, they form their own line and step toward the women. They crouch down, then jump up, shaking their chests, clapping their hands to the beat. Pretending to ignore the men, the women hold their heads high, but every so often a young girl smiles to herself as if remembering some sweet secret.

  Marie Laveau dances alone between the two rows, hands clasped behind her, writhing and coiling in the famous snake dance. She faces the men, then the women, urging them on.

  “Come on, now,” she shouts above the music. “Let’s do this one right for Papa Damballah. Jump a little higher for John the Baptist, for the loas, maybe St. Anthony will open that door. Let me see you calinda now for Baron Cemetery, Miss Rita, St. Joseph, High John the Conqueror and Marie Laveau.”

  The bamboo flutes squeal like terrified
animals. The iron bars ring against the steady jangling of cowbells and tambourines.

  Then a chilling rattle. The thirteenth musician has finally joined in. He is running a steel comb over the teeth of a mule’s jawbone, playing that unearthly instrument, the sword of Samson.

  The women step double-time. The men jump four feet off the ground, over each other’s shoulders, turning in mid-air, never missing a beat. They pass the rum bottles, gulping hard but careful not to spit it in each other’s faces as they do after midnight on St. John’s Eve.

  The whole crowd watches the dance grow wilder. Proper Creole girls peer from beneath lowered eyelids. Taking their husbands’ arms, women from the American colony lean against their men. Well-dressed lawyers puff on fat cigars and crane their necks for a better look. An Irishman sits his boy up on his shoulders. A Northern journalist stops taking notes and puts away his pad. No one can stop rocking to the music, staring at the entranced musicians, the ecstatic dancers, the rays of light shining from the voodoo queen’s eyes. All Congo Square sways to the drumbeat. . . .

  Then everything stops. Marie raises her clenched fist. The music ends. The dancers freeze. The echo of the drums dies out until Congo Square is still but for the gentle Gulf breezes stirring the sycamores.

  Marie wades into the crowd. She stops before a handsome Italian with a lavish moustache, his dumpy wife and finally their daughter—a thin, pale teen-aged girl whose fingers keep fluttering to the tight bun at the nape of her neck.

  Marie peers into the girl’s eyes, then begins to walk backwards, away from her. “Follow me,” she says, still moving backwards. “Come on and follow me.”

  The girl’s parents are too stunned to respond. But the girl obeys. As she steps toward Marie, the audience gasps. She’s limping. Her body lurches forward. Her right leg buckles beneath her weight.

  Her father reaches out to protect her. But Marie fixes him with a hard look.

  “I’ve been expecting you,” she tells the girl, who’s hiding her face in her hands. “I know why you’ve come. That’s why I wore red tonight. It’s the color of the ram, of women born in April. It’s the blood color, the color of the heart, of the red curtain over your eyes when your heart’s aching and you can’t sleep. And I know your heart’s been aching.

  “But I want to tell you: your pain will go away. You’ll be dreaming of sweet things like pink gardenias, cream pastries, that handsome boy who’s going to come along someday.

  “Everything will be all right.” Marie chants it like a prayer. “Everything will be all right. Everything will be all right.”

  Clapping three times, Marie falls silent. The cobra crawls out of her hair and slithers down between her breasts, jumps from her hip to the ground. Hissing, it slowly wraps itself around the girl’s right leg.

  Her mother shrieks. Her father rushes off toward the two policemen stationed at the edge of Congo Square. Squirming with disgust, the girl shakes her leg, kicking at the cobra.

  The snake won’t let go. It grips her tighter until its whole body is coiled around her thin calf. Only then does it loosen its hold and drop to the earth.

  No one notices the snake slide back into Marie’s hair. They are watching the girl. Still trembling, she shakes her leg once more, then puts down her foot.

  She steps forward. Her leg stays straight. It bears her weight. She hesitates, staring at Marie.

  “That’s right,” says Marie Laveau. “You got it fine. Now come dance with me.”

  The girl laughs a high, strained giggle and executes a clumsy two-step. She stumbles. But it’s clear that her leg is cured. She’s been healed.

  The crowd cheers. The girl’s father returns, too overjoyed to regret the fact that he’s missed the miracle. He hugs his wife, who’s dabbing her eyes with a handkerchief. As she turns to receive her neighbors’ kisses and congratulations, the husband approaches Marie.

  “You’re a saint of God,” he says, bowing and touching his forehead.

  “I’m no saint,” she says. “I’ve just got the knowledge and the power.”

  “And I am grateful. Now please: How can I repay? What can I give?”

  “That’ll be five hundred dollars,” says Marie Laveau. “I don’t do my magic for free.”

  The Italian’s hands twitch. “I’m a poor waiter,” he pleads. “You know me. I’ve served you coffee at Mama Rose’s cafe. I work for tips—where could I find five hundred dollars?” Digging into his pockets, he pulls out two frayed bills. “Here,” he says. “Please. Twenty dollars. All I have. Take it. My wife will build you a beautiful altar on St. Joseph’s Day. We’ll say a thousand prayers in your name.”

  Marie glares at him, her mouth set hard. Finally she opens her hand. “Give me the twenty. And tell your wife to put some nice hot cinammon buns on that altar ’cause that’s what St. Joseph likes to eat.”

  “Thank you,” says the Italian. “You are a saint of God.”

  Marie takes his money and turns to face the crowd. “Now you’ve seen me work,” she says. “You know what my power can do. And I know something about you. I know your heart’s aching. Maybe you’re afraid. Maybe you’re in pain. Maybe you’re afflicted like this little girl here.

  “That’s why you better come to Marie Laveau. Marie Laveau will make everything all right. You know that my knowledge can do anything, and you know where to find me. I’ll be at my house on Royal and St. Ann. I’ll be waiting there ’cause I know who you are and I’m expecting you.”

  With that, Marie pivots on her heel. Her satin skirts swirl around her, ringing with gold bells. She puts her hands on her hips and swaggers back to the center of the square. As she passes the musicians, she tousles her favorite drummer’s hair. “Lord,” she says. “I feel like I need to dance.”

  Immediately the drumming resumes—louder, faster than before. The sword of Samson rasps, tambourines rattle. Distant church bells ring in time to the drums.

  The calinda lines break apart—everyone’s dancing in a mass. Jumping and rocking to the beat, the dancers spread out across the boundary dividing them from the audience. But it’s not just that the dancers are spreading out. More people are joining the dance—riverboatmen, hairdressers, fashionable ladies, a famous politician, a judge, even a priest. There’s a seven-foot black giant in a tophat and tails, a purple-lipped woman in a pink-lace dress embroidered with daggers and hearts.

  They’re all pressing close around Marie, following her serpent dance. Eyes closed, they’re unaware of everything but the drumbeat and the presence of the spirits.

  Then suddenly there’s an explosion. A peal of thunder. The ground shakes. Congo Square lights up as if it were dawn. Yet no one’s afraid: It’s only the cannon announcing the nine o’clock curfew. Time for the slaves to go home, to be safe from the policemen who collect a nickle bonus for every slave they catch out after ten.

  The musicians put away their instruments. The dancers shake their heads as if awakening from a dream.

  “Nine hours,” says Marie. “Like the nine candles, the nine spells, the nine sons, the nine books of Moses.”

  The slaves don’t need reminding. Waving good-bye to Marie, they leave the dancing ground and walk out through the crowd. Everyone’s leaving. The crowd’s thinning. But the others aren’t filing out like the slaves. Instead they’re fading, growing paler, transparent, vanishing like ghosts. First the white laides, the gentlemen, lawyers, immigrants, tourists, the Northern journalist. Next the free men and women of color. The last to go are the priest, the black giant, and the purplelipped woman in the pink-lace dress. They all vanish. Marie Laveau is the only one left in Congo Square.

  The cobra emerges from her hair.

  “Ressssst,” it hisses. “Get some ressst. It’s a shame, your having to put on this show, Sssunday after Sssunday, just ’cause you’re Marie Laveau with a name to keep up. Now go lie down, Marie. You’re tired. Get some ressst.”

  Marie sighs, then turns and crosses Congo Square. Her form grows smaller, dimmer.
Her wide hips sway beneath her red skirts; her black hair gleams in the moonlight.

  Pressed against her cheek, the cobra stares back over her shoulder. And the ruby in the center of its hooded forehead shines like a beacon, like a blood-red star.

  CHAPTER II

  MARIE LAVEAU'S MOTHER found her at the end of a trail of blood. Bright red splashes led Delphine across the kitchen tiles to the courtyard, where she found her daughter kneeling by the pump, washing her injured thumb.

  Warm winter sunlight streamed through the green palms onto the sparkling water, Marie’s glossy black hair, the pinkish liquid running down her arm. Delphine shivered. “Let me fix that,” she cried, rushing forward. “I told you not to play with knives.”

  Startled, Marie turned on all fours, then stood, tall and dignified for her seven years. “I cut it on purpose,” she said calmly. “So I could look at my blood.”

  Delphine stopped short. “What for?”

  “To see the color.”

  “White blood from your papa,” Delphine laughed nervously. “And good yellow blood from your mama.”

  “Looks red to me,” said Marie.

  “It’s your eyes that are red,” snapped her mother. It was true: Marie’s eyelids were scarlet with the mysterious rash which had come and gone since the day she was born. Its recurrence always upset Delphine; Marie pretended not to care.

  Fresh blood welled up from Marie’s thumb. She worked the pump and stuck her hand in the water. “Mama,” she said, studying the cut finger, “was I baptized in church?”

  “Everyone was,” said Delphine.

  “Was I?”

  “Of course.”

  “Then why don’t I have godparents?”

  “Father Antoine’s your godfather. I told you. St. Rita watches over little girls. I didn’t want anybody else. Besides, nothing’s going to happen to me.” She knocked on a wooden tub.