"It's how it is here," she told him.
The hounfor, the temple where they would reclaim John-Paul Purcell, was pitched against one wall of the lodge building. It was constructed of leaves and branches. At its center, running from the earth floor to the thatched roof, was a wind-twisted snakelike pole called the poto mitan, representing the serpent of wisdom, Dambala, whose sinuous form connected earth and heaven.
The pilot gave her a knowing grin. She had no idea what the look conveyed. Some kind of grim complicity, taking no comfort and expecting none in return.
"Buena suerte," she said, smiling.
He was flying north this time. Roger had decided to send everything out before the island dissolved in chaos, with the Americans and their friends closing down airspace.
From the hounfor, Lara recognized the words of the rosary in Creole, sung against the iron meter of the ogan, a plow beaten into sounding shape. The opening of the prayers to the Virgin were chanted by the mambo, a market woman by day, priestess of the night now. As the crowd chanted the response, the beat of the seconde took up its place in the prayer.
From across the field, she watched the pilot toss his final cigarette and cross himself. She had seen the boarding gesture many times before in that part of the world, and she rather adored it — the operatic heroism of certain of the pilots, lean solitaries in the inimitable Spanish mode. Though they always seemed to toss the cigarette at the nearest fuel line, their blessing enclosed a small moment of humility before they mounted and went forth. The Yankee pilots did it differently: their heroic model was Chuck Yeager, their style was conventional — another day, another dollar.
The Cessna taxied out to rising drums, turned and headed for the dark horizon. Two burning barrels marked the end of his runway. He cleared them and disappeared.
Then the drums seemed to stop. She turned to the hounfor and saw the people as they turned toward her. The dancers had slowed to the iron beat of the ogan. The mambo called to her softly.
"Madame." Fires burned before the ascending serpent.
The ceremony for John-Paul was called in Creole wete mo danba dlo. She had never heard it referred to in English. In French it was retirer les morts d'en bas de l'eau. Its purpose was to call back the souls of the dead from Guinee, bring them back safely to a place of honor and to the aid of the living. One side of the temple consisted of rows of painted, inlaid jars in the brightest colors, the govi that would contain the ti bon ange of the reclaimed dead. Lara thought of it as her last chance to address her brother's restless spirit, and through him to regain her own soul.
"Madame Lara."
Lara went across the field to the hounfor, passed between the fires and stood by the poto mitan. The mambo fixed her with a steady stare as though willing her to understand more than could be said. She spoke in a Creole so accented that Lara could hardly make it out, a language different from that which she spoke every Tuesday and Thursday in the market. One of the servants from the hotel translated for her.
"Only the rosary tonight. Mr. John-Paul he is not coming. Not this night."
"Why?" Lara asked, addressing herself to the mambo.
"You will ask him tomorrow. He will come tomorrow night."
"Is there trouble?"
The mambo kept her in the beam of that unbroken stare for a moment and then took Lara's hand.
"No trouble," the old servant said, although the mambo had not spoken. "A good rosary tonight. Tomorrow a good passage."
Roger drove them back to the family house on the shore, a few kilometers south of the hotel grounds.
"It happens," Roger told her as they drove through the scrub. "You know John-Paul. Always the contrarian. You'll have to pay for another retirer les morts."
"Everything seemed right," Lara said.
Back at the house, Roger had a drink and Lara kept him company.
"Do you know more than you're telling me, Rog? If this was the date for it, why didn't they follow through?"
"Because it's dangerous."
"Why dangerous?"
"Dangerous to the ti bon ange. To John-Paul's soul." He seemed abstracted. He followed his rum with a second. "You know he has to be brought out of the sea. Out of Guinee. The soul is vulnerable in transit." He laughed and shook the ice in his drink.
"Why are you laughing, Roger?"
"I'm thinking of him there, Lara. I loved him. I'm not really laughing."
She watched him. He did seem to be laughing but she decided to take his word for it.
"The soul outside the body is always in danger," he told her. "Every religion says so. Now and at the hour of our death? The time of passage draws the enemies of the soul."
Lara thought of her own soul that must be out there as well, under the reef.
"Some Colombians are coming," Roger said. "I was really supposed to wait for their OK."
"I'm sure they'll approve."
Roger refilled his drink.
"They're sending down Hilda Bofil. A definite pain in the privates. Very contentious woman."
"Roger," Lara said, "I'm sorry we got in the way of all this. You understand why I had to come."
Roger looked at her for a long moment and finished his drink.
"Sure, baby." He stood up and kissed her and went outside to the car.
Out over the ocean, the first devil came with a change in the color of darkness. The swell of the mountains fell away and the phosphorescent glimmer of the inshore bay spread out beneath him. Ahead was the monochrome presentation of the sea, without forgiveness. A towering black cloud rose above the island, snake-shaped. When the engine began to cough, his instrument lights flickered. When they settled down, he saw the manifold gauge flat and dark.
A failure of information, Soto thought, unknown things. Beautiful machine, what troubles thee? The devil.
When he moved the throttle forward and felt the machine dying in his arms, he tried to put her in a turn. Proclaimed by the dead instruments, the plane was enfolded in ignorance, a random object awkwardly placed in the sky. And he was another random object, aloft and stripped of power, afloat in silence as in the old dream of flying. The bad one.
He thought: The water! If it had been left unguarded, contaminated! Water, such a simple thing. He closed his eyes and put his arm across his face.
Two shrimpers working between reefs saw him hit and go down fast. There had been the usual calm engine noise of an ascending plane, then silence, and out of the silent fall the crash, a great violence of sundered metal connections, hissing, steam, a series of whirlpools seeming to set each other off. Shrimp vanished. The fishermen would swear they felt the shear of the plane's wings.
After Roger left, she could not sleep. For one thing, the drums did not stop when the ceremony ended; the sound of the rosary in the distance shifted into Creole, singing honor to the gods.
Now that she had seen the temple at the lodge again, the govi jars in which spirits were conveyed, she could not get the pictures out of her mind. She thought of her own soul, larvalike, breathing to the undersea rhythms. To meet one's soul again, what would that be like? She imagined it as a judgment. I see myself in the mirror but my thoughts throw no reflection. My words cast no shadows, she thought. She imagined her present self as composed of two dimensions: an agent of influence, a professor of lies. Tomorrow she would be her former self, whoever that had been. Her eyes would change.