Continental Drift

This is surely, truly, he, Brav Ghede, Baron Cimetière. This is the loa himself, with his awesome, intricate powers over death that can bring Vanise back to the world of the living. No other loa is at once so powerful and so tricky, so strong and so scheming, so kind and so cruel. And it’s a very good Ghede, too. Convincing. Émile stares up at the loa, and his breath goes away, and he is afraid that he will fall. Ghede is just as Émile hoped — taller than a man, made even taller by the battered top hat on his head, and cadaverous, with a head and face like a skull, his eyes hidden behind black, wire-rimmed glasses, his teeth large and glittering with gold. He’s wearing a mourning coat with no shirt beneath it, and his bony brown chest is slick with sweat. His striped gray trousers are held up by a thickly braided gold rope knotted over his crotch, and on his feet he wears white shoes with pointed toes. He’s a magnificent figure — awesome, frightening and delightful.

As if she’s turned magically into a light, airy bush, Vanise no longer feels heavy to Emile, and he turns to see if she has taken her own weight onto herself, but she still leans all her weight against him, her head still hanging loosely down, eyes closed, mouth open, as if drugged. Ghede, Vanise! Émile whispers. It’s Ghede!

Ghede smiles and pokes Vanise in the belly with his stick. In his high, whining, nasal voice, he says, Mine? Oh, monsieur, how thoughtful of you!

No, no Brav! Émile says. I want …

I want, I want, I want! Everyone wants, wants, wants!

Forgive me, Ghede. She’s just come from Haiti, my sister, and the boat sank, and we found her like this, only she grows worse, and she’s called for you….

No!

No?

No, no, no! Not true. Her mait’-tête is Agwé, or she’d be en bas de l’eau this moment, with all the others. Several people from the group who have gathered behind the Baron nod sagely as he speaks.

Oh, Émile says. Agwé.

Ghede scratches his chin and leans close to Vanise and studies her face a moment. He points at her nose, her chin, her forehead, with a long, extended forefinger, then reaches into her mouth and draws out her tongue and examines it with thumb and forefinger, rubbing it lightly, before putting it back into her mouth. Lifting up one eyelid at a time, he examines her yellow eyes. The pupils have rolled up and she looks all but dead to Emile.

Agwé is gone now. Gone far away. Took her from the waters, then left her, the Baron says. He seems puzzled and begins mumbling in no language Émile can understand, not Creole, not French, certainly not English. Kala, kala, diman kon, lé ké dja, lé ké dja…. His mumble becomes a chant, Kala, kala, diman kon, and he starts shuffling his feet side to side and turning in a slow circle, counterclockwise. Behind him, a wizened old man with a stringy beard picks up the rhythm of Ghede’s dance with the tiny, high-pitched drum, and several people in the knot surrounding the drummer join in the chant and commence shuffling their feet in the same odd, crablike, side-to-side step. Ghede’s face has turned to black stone, obsidian, shiny and opaque, and he dances faster and faster, over and back, from side to side, like a pendulum increasing its velocity with each new arc, and then, suddenly, he wrenches Vanise out of Emile’s arms, lurches across the room with her and tosses her onto the grave. Freed of his sister’s weight, Emile, without thinking it, has joined the dance, as if grabbed at the arms from behind by a pair of les Invisibles and thrust forward toward the other dancers and then shoved back and forth in time to their movements, until he has caught the movement on his own — then a blur, whirling motion, light creeping forward from the back of his skull, until he has been mounted, taken over, displaced by Agwé, who is immediately confronted by Ghede to learn the truth:

Ghede: Agwé Ge-Rouge, you’ve gone off with this woman’s soul, this nice young African woman here, and she’s sad, Agwé, sad and empty, a shell, Papa. A shell.

Agwé [in a dark, low, bubbling voice, as if from under water]: Not I, Brav. [Looks down at Vanise, examines her face carefully.] But she’s gone, all right. Too bad.

Ghede [angry]: You’re the woman’s mait’-téte! If she’s gone, you’re gone too!

Agwé: No.

Ghede: No?

Agwé: It’s her infant son, unbaptized, who’s gone off with her soul. The child’s en bas de l’eau, that’s where, and I’m with him now, Papa. Not her. It happens that way, Ghede. This one, the mother, she’s yours, if you want her, if you want to install yourself in her head.

Ghede: Her son’s dead, eh? And how do you account for that?

Agwé: Lots more dead, too.

Ghede: True? [Smacks his lips, leers.]