“Interesting,” says the journalist, “but not particularly unique.”
“He has another gift. He can draw the future.”
“How’s that again?” I ask.
Jacques Gabriel smiles. The fish has taken his bait.
“One day he comes home from school. His mother is making dinner. He refuses to touch the food. He takes out his pocketknife and draws a headless man lying on a large mahogany table. His mother is amazed. ‘It’s my father,’ he says simply. An hour later a messenger arrives with the news that his father is dead. ‘How did he die?’ the mother asks. She’s told that there was a violent argument with another worker in a canefield at San Pedro de Macorís, and that the other man cut off the father’s head with a single swipe of his machete. A week later, the boy draws a house in flames. That same night a fire completely destroys the house next door. Another time he draws his cousin with a single leg. The cousin lived in Saint-Raphaël. The next day his leg gets caught in a piece of mill machinery and has to be cut off to prevent the rest of the body from being pulled in. The mother refuses to allow the boy to do any more drawings. Then one morning, before going to the Ranquitte market to sell her vegetables, the mother says to him, ‘Why don’t you draw any more pictures?’ To which the boy replies, ‘But Mama, you told me I couldn’t!’ ‘Ah, yes, I forgot! Make me a drawing now.’ So the boy goes into the house and makes the drawing. When he comes back out, she has already left for the market. The drawing shows a woman lying in a coffin. After her death, the villagers in Dondon start calling him the Prophet. He’s travelled pretty much all over the country, but eventually settled here in Croix-des-Bouquets. He serves his gods, lives with these women, indifferent to fame. His art is celebrated the world over. So that’s the Prophet, the only completely free man I know.”
“Why is that?” Carl-Henri asks, almost timidly.
“Well! Every time he takes up a paintbrush he knows that he might be about to paint his own death scene, and yet his hand never trembles.”
The young man comes out with a large bowl balanced on his head. Behind him come the girls, in single file, with the large woman bringing up the rear. He sets the bowl down among us. It is filled with food — goat stew, peeled bananas, white rice, yams, breadfruit, carrots, beets, eggplant and cream sauce.
“No utensils!” Jacques Gabriel cries delightedly. “We eat with our fingers, our good old fingers. .”
Brief silence.
“Won’t it be too hot?” asks the journalist.
“It’ll be fine!” says Gabriel, plunging his hand into the middle of the bowl.
That’s the signal. We are all, it seems, famished.
I don’t know if it’s all these happenings, or the strange atmosphere (the starless night, the light breeze, the distant beating of a drum), the tender flesh of the goat (was it an animal or something else entirely?), or the subtle aroma of the yams, the taste for breadfruit that I definitiely thought I’d lost. . Or maybe it’s the combination of all of it that makes me think this is the best meal I have ever had in my life. I once saw on television (the usual scene) a family of lions devouring a young antelope. When they were finished there was nothing left but white bones, without a trace of flesh left on them.
We can see the bottom of the bowl before we know it. At the same moment, a song splits the air. I can see the young man’s throat swelling and deflating, like a lizard’s. A formless emotion grips my heart. I feel as though I’m in another world. Somewhere far from Pétionville and its mundane concerns. The young man is leaning against a post and singing about a woman from Artibonite whose husband (Solé or Soleil or something) is gravely ill. A choir of young voices accompanies the woman in her distress. The man hovers between life and death, between night and day. But the woman is brave, she fights to save her man. Then the young man goes on to sing several folk songs that tell about the misery of peasants’ lives.
Suddenly there is a sacred song: “Papa Legba ouvri baryé pou mwen. .” I sense a new energy flowing from the choir. The girls’ voices climb higher and higher, as though announcing the arrival of an eminent personage. In fact it’s the Prophet, who has just appeared at the door (as the Prophet, or Legba) wearing ceremonial robes. His face is even graver than it was at our arrival. The voices reach their highest pitch and then descend slowly into silence.
“The painting is finished,” the Prophet says laconically, making a sign to the young man to bring it out.
The fat woman begins to dance, although there is no music. We hear only the heavy sound of her bare heels on the ground. Suddenly she breaks into a sacred chant. A warrior’s chant, although I can’t make out the words. Most of them seem to be of African origin. Her flesh ripples. She scowls menacingly. The Prophet follows her with his eyes, looking vaguely disturbed. A terrible god is knocking at the door. He cannot break into our circle. Suddenly the woman slumps down in a corner, exhausted. She looks like an unstrung marionette. The audience breathes. Ogou, the terrible god of fire, couldn’t spoil the party. The young man comes out carrying the Prophet’s painting. It is covered with a mauve cloth. One of the young girls comes over and removes the cloth, and the magnificent but terrifying painting is revealed to us. All in mauve. The Prophet’s colour. The figures and their surroundings are all mauve. All of us are in the painting. The young man, the girls in their white robes, the fat woman in mauve, the little prostitute, Carl-Henri and me. There are three figures at the centre: the Prophet in the middle, Jacques Gabriel on his left and the journalist, wearing a white wedding gown, on his right. The girl who uncovered the painting goes over to the journalist and drapes the mauve cloth over her head. All the blood has drained out of the Parisian journalist’s face.
“You are witnesses to the mystical marriage of the Prophet Pierre, living and domiciled in Croix-des-Bouquets,” says Jacques Gabriel in a serious and authoritative voice, “and of M.R., living and domiciled in Paris. This marriage is performed by the will of the gods, some of whom are here present.”
Hysterical howling from the young girls.
SOME TIME LATER.
“No one asked me what I thought!” says the journalist, still in a state of shock.
“Voodoo gods aren’t democratic,” Jacques Gabriel replies, not missing a beat.
“Nevertheless, I find it scandalous.”
“But if you don’t believe in voodoo, it’s just an amusing spectacle.”
“Of course I don’t believe in voodoo, whatever you. .”
“Listen,” says Gabriel, cutting her off. “You are going to return to Paris and forget what happened tonight.”
“I want to go back to my hotel.”
And she goes and sits in the car.
“Was it just an amusing spectacle?” I ask Carl-Henri, already half-knowing what he’ll say.
“It was real. More real than anything that takes place in a church. Wherever she goes, she’ll have the gods with her. She belongs to us now.”
“Still,” I risk, “it’s a bit scary.”
“On the contrary, Fanfan. Now nothing can touch her. No one can ever come up to her with the intention of hurting her. From now on she is protected. She’s the wife of a very powerful member of the voodoo pantheon.”
“What?” I say, astonished. “You mean it wasn’t the Prophet she married?”
“No.” This time it’s Jacques Gabriel who answers. He is heading towards the car. “It wasn’t the Prophet, it was Legba, the god who guards the border between the visible and invisible worlds.”
M.R. DIDN’T SAY a word the whole way back. Neither did the little prostitute.