“They’re gone,” he says.
“Not for nothing are you a detective,” I say, and he laughs.
“Maybe they’re on shift work. Who do you think’s going to cover the graveyard shift? So to speak.”
He seems to be returning to his cheeky ways. Good. Resilience is good. Luz sees us looking at each other and does not like it.
“I’m hungry,” she declares, pouting. “I’m starving to death!”
“Luz, honey, it’s twelve midnight,” I say. “Have a banana and you can go into the hammock.”
“I don’t want a banana. I want dinner.”
“You had dinner, dear. At Eleanor’s. Remember?”
“No I didn’t. Eleanor had a yucky dinner, and I didn’t eat it.”
Oh, Christ. And of course, Dawn was too frazzled to inform me. Luz is getting ready to wail, when, remarkably, Detective Paz kneels down next to her. “You know, I’m starving to death, too. What do you say we go out to a restaurant? I bet you have a pretty dress you can put on. And your mom can put on a pretty dress, and we’ll go out to a fancy restaurant. It has tropical fish tanks and a cage full of parrots.”
“A restaurant?” says The Mom doubtfully. “It’s past midnight.”
“I mean a Cuban restaurant,” he says. “Cuban restaurants are just getting in gear at midnight.”
I look at him and at Luz. They’re both grinning at me, white teeth against brown. This is interesting. The world as we know it may end fairly soon, and here we are getting ready for a date. But what else should we do? Call in air strikes? Run around like chickens with their heads off? This seems right, and as I think this, suddenly my appetite comes back in a rush. I am starving. I find I am ridiculously pleased that, whatever happens afterward, at least I’ll get one decent meal.
I say, “Okay, but I have to get dolled up. You could skim through that while I’m doing it.”
He stops smiling and sits down at the table. He opens the journal.
TWENTY-NINE
Day 40, Danolo
Fortieth day in the whale’s belly, although I feel more as if for the first time I am on the outside of the whale. I am not talking to rocks yet, but it is quite something to feel at least some intimations of what original participation is like. I got up this morning, for example, and was well into the day before I “came to myself” as they say. What a great deal we have traded for our power over nature! This is what happened to M., I imagine, this total unity with the environment and the culture. I never understood that, I was too young.
But this isn’t Shangri-la, the worm in the apple is sorcery, the same thing that protects us here. These are the healthiest people I have ever seen in Africa?virtually free of the usual tropical maladies amp; they are well fed. But there are not many of them, and there are fewer kids than you would expect. Everyone in Africa believes that sorcery is the major cause of death and misfortune. Here, it may even be true. There is a kind of cloud over everyone’s psyche, and I occasionally catch on people’s faces the expression one sees in shots from the Depression or war zones?helplessness, fear. But the rule is a remarkable cheerfulness and calm, especially among the ordinary townspeople, who are kind and generous.
There is the horrible business with the dontzeh children, although in balance, I have also never seen children treated better (certainly not in traditional Africa) once they have formed that mystical sefune bond with an adult.
Reality of the spirits. Of course I don’t believe in them … but they’re there: not so amusing here, dear M.! In Danolo, one feels unaccountable chills, breezes that touch the cheek but don’t stir the leaves, that sense, familiar in public places in the West, too, that one is being observed, things seen in the peripheral vision that don’t come into focus when you try to see them plain. Again, maybe it is the drugs.
Another unaccountable event. U. demonstrated faila’olo today, disappearing from my sight and reappearing behind me as I sat at the door to my bon. Of course, he doesn’t actually disappear. He throws a brief trance on the subject, walks around her, and wakes her out of it when in the right position. I got some monofilament from my bag and tied a cat’s cradle barrier across the door, but that didn’t slow him down at all. He thought it was very funny. Would it work with an objective observer? Is there such a thing? Clearly, there must be some lost time involved and, in my increasingly infrequent fits of science, I wish for automatic timers, infrared beams, movie cameras, and all the other objectifying impedimenta of my culture.
After the demo, we mixed up kadoul, sorcerous compounds, a very Julia Child sort of afternoon. U. is very strict about spells. The word makes the power?the kadoul is worthless without it, so says my master. I have to memorize them; it ruins the spell if it’s written down. It has to be burned into the soul, says U. I can’t do it, I screw up the chinte, in both substance and word. U. is patient and forgiving, although some of the stuff is rare and valuable. Little steps, Jeanne, little steps, he says. I always say, Yes, Owadeb. It means good father, an honorific.
Training in attention, staring at a pebble for hours. Essential. The worst thing you can do, apparently, is lose attention. You might pick the wrong mouse or frog to be your magical ally, for example, and that would never do.
Day 42, Danolo
A ceremony tonight, dancing and drums. As a good anthropologist I should be taking notes but can’t seem to generate the distance. Inside it too deep, a danger as M. said. U. says the ceremony is asking the orishas for forgiveness, some kind of anniversary of their exile from Ife. Asked, forgiveness for what? Wouldn’t say. Talking in riddles again. At height of craziness, dancing myself (and I can’t dance), W. appeared, smiling, face shining with sweat. Said to call him Mebembe, now. Little helper? Asked him what it meant, but he just shrugged. Brief conversation before Tourma pulled me away. She seemed upset but wouldn’t tell me why. Was he really there, or yet another Olo weirdness? If real, he seems happier than he’s been in a while. Writing is going well, he says.
Day 46, Malinou
I see I have been neglecting this journal.
We have been making house calls, U. and I. We paddled his pirogue downriver and visited a string of villages on the borders of the park, where U. did oracles and a little witch-doctoring. He is famous here and greatly feared. The people are totally whacked out by his performance, although the issues they bring to him are mainly just the petty decisions of agricultural life. Sell the cow? Plant another field of yams? There’s occasionally a heavier one?am I being hexed? Should the second son marry that girl? I haven’t seen a customer go off unsatisfied. There’s also private consultation with the witch-afflicted, but I don’t get to see that, not yet. I asked him if I could do an oracle and he said yes, when I am ready, but I must be perfect in my verses.
Watched U. take grel out of a man. It was quite dramatic and New Testament. He put it into a chicken, which was then killed and thrown into a fire. Stench! An interesting ritual, I took careful notes. The patient seemed totally exhausted, but a lot better off than the chicken. Or the grel, according to U. He says you can extract a grel into yourself and then spit it out and burn it, but it is disgusting and fairly dangerous. A chicken is better.
U. withdrawn and short-tempered tonight. He snarled at the woman who brought us our evening meal, which I’ve never seen him do before. I thought she was going to piss herself with terror. I asked him what was wrong. Ignored the question, told me some kind of parable. Suppose a leopard is attacking your goats. Then you get all the strong men of the village together, with spears, and you wait for the leopard to come to the goat pen and you kill it. That’s easy. But suppose you hear that a leopard is attacking the goats of your cousin far away in another village. In that village all the men are weak and their spears are broken. What then, Jeanne? Should you help your cousin? How should you do this? I don’t know, Owadeb. You could tell your cousin to set a trap. You could tie a goat over a pit and then the leopard might attack the goat and fall in. This answer seemed to please him a great deal, and his mood improved. He called for beer and we both got a little buzzed. A good answer, Jeanne, he said. But it would have to be a brave goat, the one who stays at the pit. Yes, I said, a brave goat and maybe a stupid leopard. He laughed his head off. I wish I knew what the hell he was talking about half the time.