Green Eyes

Chapter 12

One night after patients had begun to arrive in numbers, Donnell and Jocundra were lying on their bed in the back room surrounded by open textbooks and pieces of paper. The bed, an antique with a mahogany headboard, and all the furniture - bureau, night table, chairs - had been the gifts of patients, as were the flowers which sprouted from vases on the windowsills. Sometimes, resting between sessions, Donnell would crack the door and listen to the patients talking in the front room, associating their voices with the different flowers. They never discussed their ailments, merely gossiped or exchanged recipes.

‘Now how much lemon juice you addin’ to the meal,’ Mrs Dubray (irises) would ask; and old Mrs Alidore (a bouquet of Queen Anne’s lace and roses) would hem and haw and finally answer, ‘Seem lak my forget-list gets longer ever’ week.’

Their conversations, their gifts and their acceptance of him gave Donnell a comforting sense of being part of a tradition, for there had always been healers in the bayou country and the people were accustomed to minor miracles.

‘I think I’m right,’ said Jocundra.

‘About what?’ Donnell added a flourish to the sketch he had been making. It was a rendering of one of the gold flashes of light he saw from time to time, similar to those Magnusson had drawn in the margins of his ledger; but this one was more complex, a resolution of several fragments he had seen previously into a single figure:

‘About you being a better focusing agent for the fields than any device.’ Jocundra smacked him on the arm with her legal pad. ‘You aren’t listening.’

‘Yeah I am,’ he said, preoccupied by the sketch. ‘Go ahead.’

‘I’ll start over.’ She settled herself higher on the pillows. ‘Okay. If you transmit an electrical charge through a magnetic field, you’re going to get feedback. The charge will experience a force in some direction, and that would explain the changes in light intensity you see. But you’re not just affecting the fields. To cure someone as hopeless as Mr Robichaux, you have to be affecting the cells, probably on an ionic level. You aren’t listening! What are you doing?’

‘Doodling.’ Dissatisfied, Donnell closed his notebook. It did not feel complete. He could not attach the least importance to the gold flashes, yet they kept appearing and it bothered him not to understand them. ‘I’m listening,’ he said.

‘All right.’ Jocundra was miffed by his lack of enthusiasm for her explanation. ‘Now one basic difference between a cancer cell and a normal cell is that the cancer cell produces certain compounds in excess of normal. So, going by Magnusson’s notes, one likelihood is that you’re reducing the permeability of the nuclear membranes for certain ions, preventing the efflux of the compounds in question.’

Donnell rested his head on the pillow beside her. ‘How’s that relate to my being the focusing agent?’

‘NMR.’ She smoothed down his hair. ‘Magnusson’s stuff on it is pretty fragmentary, but he appears to be suggesting that your effect on the cameras was caused by your realigning the atomic magnetic nuclei of the camera’s field and transmitting a force which altered the electrical capacitance of the film. I think you’re doing more or less the same thing to the patients.’ She chewed on her pencil. ‘The fact that you can intuit the movements of the geomagnetic field, and that you’re able to do the right things to the patients without any knowledge of the body, it seems to me if you had enough metal to generate a sufficiently powerful field, two or three tons, then you’d be able to orchestrate the movements of the bacteria with finer discretion than any mechanical device.’

Donnell had an image of himself standing atop a mountain and hurling lightning bolts. ‘Just climb upon a chunk of iron and zap myself?’ ‘Copper,’ she said. ‘Better conductivity.’ ‘It sounds like magic,’ he said. ‘What about the wind?’ ‘There’s nothing magical about that,’ she said. ‘The air becomes ionized under the influence of your field, and the ions are induced to move in the direction imposed on the field. The air moves, more air moves in to replace it.’ She shrugged. ‘Wind. But understanding all this and being able to use it are two different things.’ ‘You’re saying I should go back to the project?’ ‘Unless you know how we can buy three tons of copper with a Visa card.’ She smiled, trying to make light of it.

Something was incomplete about her explanation, just as there had been about his sketch, and he did not believe either would come to completion at Shadows. ‘Maybe as a last resort,’ he said. ‘But not yet.’

The majority of the patients were local people, working men and housewives and widows, as faded and worn as the battered sofas they sat upon (Mr Brisbeau had tossed out the junk and scavenged them from somewhere); though as the weeks passed and word spread, more prosperous-looking people arrived from faraway places like Baton Rouge and Shreveport. Most of their complaints were minor, and there was little to be learned from treating them. But from the difficult cases, in particular that of Herve Robichaux, a middle-aged carpenter afflicted with terminal lung cancer, Jocundra put together her explanation of the healing process.

When medical bills had cost him his home, with the last of his strength Robichaux had built two shacks on a weed-choked piece of land near the Gulf left him by his father, one for his wife and him, the other for his five children. The first time Donnell and Jocundra visited him, driven by Mr Brisbeau in his new pickup, the children - uniformly filthy and shoeless - ran away and hid among the weeds and whispered. Their whispers blended with the drone of flies and the shifting of wind through the surrounding scrub pine into a sound of peevish agitation. In the center of the weeds was a cleared circle of dirt, and here stood the shacks. The raw color of the unpainted boards, the listless collie mix curled by the steps, the scraps of cellophane blowing across the dirt, everything testified to an exacerbated hopelessness, and the interior of the main shack was the most desolate place of Donnell’s experience. A battery-operated TV sat on an orange crate at the foot of the sick man’s pallet, its pale picture of gray figures in ghostly rooms flickering soundlessly. Black veins of creosote beaded between the ceiling boards, their acrid odor amplifying rather than dominating the fecal stink of illness. Flies crusted a jelly glass half-full of a pink liquid, another fly buzzed loudly in a web spanning a corner of the window, and hexagrams of mouse turds captioned the floors. Stapled on the door was a poster showing the enormous, misty figure of Jesus gazing sadly down at the UN building.

‘Herve,’ said Mrs Robichaux in a voice like ashes. ‘That Mr Harrison’s here from Bayou Teche.’ She stepped aside to let them pass, a gaunt woman enveloped in a gaily flowered housecoat.

Mr Robichaux was naked beneath the sheet, bald from chemotherapy. A plastic curtain overhung the window, and the wan light penetrating it pointed up his bleached and shrunken appearance. His mouth and nose were so fleshless they seemed stylized approximations of features, and his face communicated nothing of his personality to Donnell. He looked ageless, a proto-creature of grayish-white material around which the human form was meant to wrap.

‘Believe,’ he whispered. He fingers crawled over Donnell’s wrist, delicate as insects’ legs. ‘I believe.’

Donnell drew back his hand, both revolted and pitying. A chair scraped behind him: Jocundra settling herself to take notes.

The area of the magnetic field around Robichaux’s chest was a chaos of white flashes; the remainder of the field had arranged itself into four thick, bright arcs bowing from his head to his feet. Donnell had never seen anything like it. To experiment he placed his hands over the chest. The attraction was so powerful it locked onto his hands, and the skin of his fingers - as well as the skin of Robichaux’s chest - dimpled and bulged, pulled in every direction. He had to wrench his hands loose. They disengaged with a loud static pop, and a tremor passed through the sick man’s body.

Donnell described the event to Jocundra, and she suggested he try it again, this time for a longer period. After several minutes he detected a change in the field. The pulls were turning into pushes; it was as if he had thrust his hands into a school of tiny electric fish and they were swimming between his fingers, nudging them. After several minutes more, he found that he could wiggle the top joints of his fingers, and he felt elements of the field cohere and flow in the direction of his wiggle. A half hour went by. The four bright arcs encaging Robichaux began to unravel, sending wispy white streamers inward, and the pyrotechnic display above his chest diminished to a barely perceptible vapor.

Sweat poured off Robichaux, his neck arched and his hands clawed the sheet. Whimpers escaped between his clenched teeth. A spray of broken capillaries appeared on his chest, a webbing of fine purplish lines melting up into view. He rocked his head back and forth, and the whimpers swelled to outright cries. At this, Donnell withdrew his hands and noticed the wind had kicked up outside; the room had grown chilly. Jocundra was shivering, and Mrs Robichaux knelt by the door. ‘Holy Jesus please, Holy Jesus please,’ she babbled.

‘What happened?’ Jocundra’s eyes were fixed upon the sick man, who lay gasping.

Donnell turned back to Robichaux; the field was reverting to its previous state. ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘Let me try again.’

The cure took three days and two nights. Donnell had to work the field an hour at a time to prevent its reversion; then he would break for an hour, trembling and spent. Her husband’s torment frightened Mrs Robichaux, and she fled to the second cabin and would not return. Occasionally the eldest boy - a hollow-cheeked eleven-year-old - poked his head in the window to check on his father, running off the instant Donnell paid him the slightest attention. Mr Brisbeau brought them food and water, and waited in the pickup, drinking. Donnell could hear him singing along with the radio far into the night.

The first night was eerie.

They left the oil lamp unlit so Donnell could better see the field, and the darkness isolated them in a ritual circumstance: the healer performing his magical passes; the sick man netted in white fire, feverish and groaning; Jocundra cowled with a blanket against the cold, the sacred witness, the scribe. Crickets sustained a frenzied sawing, the dog whined. Debris rustled along the outside walls, driven by the wind; it kicked up whenever Donnell was working, swirling slowly about the shack as if a large animal were patrolling in tight circles, its coarse hide rubbing the boards. Moonlight transformed the plastic curtain into a smeared, glowing barrier behind which the shadows of the pines held steady; the wind was localized about the cabin, growing stronger with each treatment. Though he was too weak to voice his complaints, Robichaux glared at them, and to avoid his poisonous looks they took breaks on the steps of the shack. The dog slunk away every time they came out, and as if it were Robichaux’s proxy, stared at them from the weeds, chips of moonlight reflected in its eyes.

During their last break before dawn, Jocundra sheltered under Donnell’s arm and said happily, ‘It’s going to work.’

‘You mean the cure?’

‘Not just that,’ she said. ‘Everything. I’ve got a feeling.’ And then, worriedly, she asked, ‘Don’t you think so?’

‘Yeah,’ he said, wanting to keep her spirits high. But as he said it, he had a burst of conviction, and wondered if like Robichaux’s belief, his own belief could make it so.

The second day. Muggy heat in the morning, the slow wind lifting garbage from the weeds. Weary and aching, Donnell was on the verge of collapse. Like the rectangle of yellow light lengthening across the floor, a film was sliding across his own rough-grained, foul-smelling surface. But to his amazement he felt stronger as the day wore on, and he realized he had been moving around without his cane. During the treatments the sick man’s body arched until only his heels and the back of his head were touching the pallet. Two of the man’s teeth shattered in the midst of one convulsion, and they spent most of a rest period picking fragments out of his mouth. The fly in the web had died and was a motionless black speck suspended in midair, a bullet-hole shot through the sundrenched backdrop of pines. The spider, too, had died and was shriveled on the windowsill. In fact, all the insects in the cabin - palmetto bugs, flying ants, gnats, beetles - had gone belly up and were not even twitching. Around now the eldest boy knocked and asked could he borrow the TV ‘so’s the babies won’t cry.’ He would not enter the cabin, said that his mama wouldn’t let him, and stood mute and sullen watching the heaving of his father’s chest.

On the second night, having asked Mr Brisbeau to keep watch, they walked down to the Gulf, found a spit of solid ground extending from the salt grass, and spread a blanket. Now and again as they made love, Jocundra’s eyes blinked open and fastened on Donnell, capturing an image of him to steer by; when she closed them, slits of white remained visible beneath the lids. Passion seemed to have carved her face more finely, planed it down to its ideal form. Lying there afterward, Donnell wondered how his face looked to her, how it displayed passion. Everything about the bond between them intrigued him, but he had long since given up trying to understand it. Love was a shadow that vanished whenever you turned to catch a glimpse of it. The only thing certain was that without it life would be as bereft of flesh as Robichaux’s face had been of life: an empty power.

Jocundra rolled onto her stomach and gazed out to sea. An oil fire gleamed red off along the coast; the faint chugging of machinery carried across the water. Wavelets slapped the shore. Sea and sky were the same unshining black, and the moonlit crests of the waves looked as distant as the burning well and the stars, sharing with them a perspective of great depth, as if the spit of land were extending into interstellar space. Donnell ran his hand down her back and gently pushed a finger between her legs, sheathing it in the moist fold. She kissed the knuckles of his other hand, pressed her cheek to it, and snuggled closer. The movement caused his finger to slip partway inside her, and she drew in a sharp breath. She lifted her face to be kissed, and kissing her, he pulled her atop him. Her hair swung witchily in silhouette against the sky, a glint of the oil fire bloomed on her throat, and it seemed to him that the stars winking behind her were chattering with cricket’s tongues.

On the afternoon of the third day, Donnell decided he had done all he should to Mr Robichaux. Though his field was not yet normal, it appeared to be repairing itself. His entire chest was laced with broken capillaries, but his color had improved and his breathing was deep and regular. Over the next two weeks they visited daily, and he continued to mend. The general aspect of the shacks and their environ improved equally, as if they had suffered the same illness and received the same cure. The dog wagged its tail and snuffled Donnell’s hand. The children played happily in the yard; the litter had been cleared away and the weeds cut back. Even Mrs Robichaux gave a friendly wave as she hung out the wash.

The last time they visited, while sitting on the steps and waiting for Mr-Robichaux to dress, the youngest girl - a grimy-faced toddler, her diaper at half-mast - waddled up to Donnell and offered him a bite of her jelly donut. It was stale, the jelly tasteless, but as he chewed it, Donnell felt content. The eldest boy stepped forward, the other children at his rear, giggling, and formally shook Donnell’s hand. ‘Wanna thank you,’ he muttered; he cast a defiant look at his brothers and sisters, as if something had been proved. The toddler leaned on Donnell’s knee and plucked off his sunglasses. ‘Ap,’ she said, pointing at his eyes, chortling. ‘Ap azoo.’

Robichaux was buttoning his shirt when Donnell entered. He frowned and looked away and once again thanked him. But this time his thanks were less fervent and had a contractual ring. ‘If I’m down to my last dollar,’ he said sternly, ‘that dollar she’s yours.’

Donnell shrugged; he squinted at Robichaux’s field. ‘Have you seen a doctor?’

‘Don’t need no doctor to tell me I’m cured,’ said Robichaux. He peered down inside his shirt. The web of broken capillaries rose to the base of this neck. ‘Don’t know why you had to do this mess. Worse than a goddamn tattoo.’

‘Trial and error,’ said Donnell without sympathy. It had come as a shock to him that he did not like Mr Robichaux; that - by gaining ten pounds and a measure of vigor - the characterless thing he had first treated had evolved into a contemptible human being, one capable of viciousness. He suspected the children might have been better off had their father’s disease been allowed to run its course.

‘It ain’t that I ain’t grateful, you understand,’ Robichaux said, fawning, somewhat afraid. ‘It’s just I don’t know if all this here’s right, you know. I mean you ain’t no man of God.’

Donnell wondered about that; he was, after all, full of holy purpose. For a while he had thought healing might satisfy his sense of duty unfulfilled, but he had only been distracted by the healing from a deeper preoccupation. He felt distaste for this cringing, devious creature he had saved.

‘No, I’m not,’ he said venomously. ‘But neither are you, Mr Robichaux. And that little devil’s web on your chest might just be an omen of worse to come.’

‘… Since the great looping branches never grew or varied, since the pale purple sun never fully rose or set, the shadow of Moselantja was a proven quantity upon the grassy plain below. Men and beasts lived in the shadow, as well as things which otherwise might not have lived at all, their dull energies supplied, some said, by the same lightless vibrations that had produced this enormous growth, sundered the mountain and sent it bursting forth. From the high turrets one could see the torchlit caravans moving inward along the dark avenues of its shadow toward the main stem, coming to enlist, or to try their luck at enlistment, for of the hundreds arriving each day, less than a handful would survive the rigors of induction…’

‘What do you think?’ asked Donnell.

Jocundra did not care for it, but saw no reason to tell him. ‘It’s strange,’ she said, giving a dramatic shudder and grinning. She emptied the vase water out the window, then skipped back across the room and burrowed under the covers with him. Her skin was goose-pimpled. It had been warm and dead-still the night before, but the air had cooled and dark, silver-edged clouds were piling up. Sure signs of a gale. A damp wind rattled the shutters.

‘It’s just background,’ said Donnell petulantly. ‘It has to be strange because the story’s very simple. Boy meets girl, they do what comes naturally, boy joins army, loses girl. Years later he finds her. She’s been in the army, too. Then they develop a powerful but rather cold relationship, like a hawk and a tiger.’

‘Read some more,’ she said, pleased that he was writing a love story, even if such an odd one.

‘War is the obsession of Moselantja, its sole concern, its commerce, its religion, its delight. War is generally held to be the purest natural expression of the soul, an ecological tool designed to cultivate the species, and the cadres of the Yoalo, who inhabit the turrets of Moselantja, are considered its prize bloom. Even among those they savage, they are revered, partially because they are no less hard on themselves than on those they subjugate. As their recruits progress upward toward the turrets, the tests and lessons become more difficult. Combat, ambush, the mastery of the black suits of synchronous energy. Failure, no matter how slight, is not tolerated and has but one punishment. Each day’s crop of failures is taken to the high turret of Ghazes from which long nooses and ropes are suspended. The nooses are designed not to choke or snap, but to support the neck and spine. The young men and women are stripped naked and fitted with the nooses and lowered into the void. Their arms and legs are left unbound. And then, from the clotted darkness of the main stem, comes a gabbling, flapping sound, and the beasts rise up. Their bodies are reminiscent of a fly’s but have the bulk of an eagle’s, and indeed their flights recall a fly’s haphazard orbiting of a garbage heap. Their wings are leathery, long-vained; their faces variously resemble painted masks, desiccated apes, frogs, spiders, every sort of vile monstrosity. Their mouths are all alike, set with needle teeth and fringed with delicate organelles like the tendrils of a jellyfish. As with any great evil, study of them will yield a mass of contradictory fact and legend. The folk of the plain and forest will tell you that they are the final transformation of the Yoalo slain in battle, and this is their Valhalla: to inhabit the roots and crevices of Moselantja and feed upon the unfit. Of course since the higher ranks of the Yoalo model their energy masks upon the faces of the beasts, this is no doubt a misapprehension.

‘There are watchers upon the battlements of Ghazes, old men and women who stare at the failed recruits through spyglasses. As the beasts clutch and rend their prey, these watchers note every twitch and flinch of the dying, and if their reactions prove too undisciplined, black marks are assigned to the cadres from which they had been expelled. Many of the recruits are native-born to Moselantja, and these are watched with special interest. Should any of them cry out or attempt to defend themselves or use meditative techniques to avoid pain, then his or her parents are asked to appear the next day at Ghazes for similar testing. And should they betray the disciplines, then their relatives and battle-friends are sought out and tested until the area of contagion is obliterated. Occasionally a seam of such weakness will be exposed, one which runs throughout the turrets, and entire cadres will be overthrown. Such is the process of revolution in Moselantja…’

As he read, Jocundra tried to force her mind away from the unpleasant details, but she could not help picturing the hanged bodies in stark relief against the purple sun, rivulets of blood streaming from their necks as the beasts idly fed, embracing their victims with sticky insect legs. When he had finished, she was unable to hide her displeasure.

‘You don’t like it,’ he said.

She made a noncommittal noise.

‘Well,’ he said, blowing on his fingers as if preparing to crack a safe. ‘I know what you do like.’

She laughed as he reached for her.

A knock on the door, and Mr Brisbeau stuck in his head. ‘Company,’ he said. He was hung over, red-eyed from last night’s bottle; he scowled, noticing their involvement, and banged the door shut.

Hard slants of rain started drumming against the roof as they dressed. In the front room a broad-beamed man was gazing out the window. Dark green palmetto fronds lashed up behind him, blurred by the downpour. He turned, and Jocundra gasped. It was Papa Salvatino, a smile of Christian fellowship wreathing his features. He wore a white suit of raw silk with cutaway pockets, and the outfit looked as appropriate on him as a lace collar on a mongrel.

‘Brother Harrison!’ he said with sanctimonious delight and held out his hand. ‘When I heard you was the wonder-worker down on Bayou Teche, I had to come and offer my apologies.’

‘Cut the crap,’ said Donnell. ‘You’ve got a message for me.’

It took a few seconds for Papa to regain his poise, a time during which his face twisted into a mean, jaundiced knot. ‘Yes,’ he said. “Deed I do.’ He assessed Donnell coolly. ‘My employer, Miss Otille Rigaud… maybe you heard of her?’

Mr Brisbeau spat. Jocundra remembered stories from her childhood about someone named Rigaud, but not Otille. Claudine, Claudette. Something like that.

‘She’s a wealthy woman, is Miss Otille,’ Papa went on. ‘A creature of diverse passions, and her rulin’ passion at present is the occult. She’s mighty intrigued with you, brother.’

‘How wealthy?’ asked Donnell, pouring a cup of coffee.

‘Rich or not, them Rigauds they’s lower than worms in a pile of shit,’ said Mr Brisbeau, enraged. ‘And me I ain’t havin’ their help in my kitchen!’

Papa Salvatino beamed, chided him with a waggle of a finger. ‘Now, brother, you been cockin’ your ear to the Devil’s back fence and listenin’ to his lies.’

‘Get out!’ said Mr Brisbeau; he picked up a stove lid and menaced Papa with it.

‘In good time,’ said Papa calmly. ‘Miss Otille would like the pleasure of your company, Brother Harrison, and that of your fair lady. I’ve been authorized to convey you to Maravillosa at once if it suits. That’s her country place over on Bayou Rigaud.’

‘I don’t think so,’ said Donnell; he sipped his coffee. ‘But you tell her I’m intrigued as well.’

‘She’ll be tickled to hear it.’ He half-turned to leave. ‘You know, I might be able to satisfy your curiosity somewhat. Me and Miss Otille have spent many an evenin’ together, and I’ve been privy to a good bit of the family history.’

‘Don’t bullshit me,’ said Donnell. ‘You’re supposed to tell me all about her. That’s part of the message.’

Papa perched on the arm of the sofa and stared at Donnell. ‘As a fellow professional, brother, you mind tellin’ me what you see that’s givin’ me away?’

‘Your soul,’ said Donnell; he stepped to the window and tossed his coffee into the rain. At this point his voice went through a peculiar change, becoming hollow and smooth for half a sentence, reverting to normal, hollowing again; it was not an extreme change, just a slight increase in resonance, the voice of a man talking in an empty room, and it might not have been noticeable in a roomful of voices. ‘Want to know what it looks like? It’s shiny black, and where there used to be a face, a face half spider and half toad, there’s a mass of curdled light, only now it’s flowing into helical patterns and rushing down your arms.’

Papa was shaken; he, too, had heard the change. ‘Brother,’ he said, ‘you wastin’ yourself in the bayou country. Take the advice of a man who’s been in the business fifteen years. Put your show on the road. You got big talent!’ He shook his head in awe. ‘Well’ - he crossed his legs, leaned back and sighed - ‘I reckon the best way to fill you in on Otille is to start with ol’ Valcours Rigaud. He was one of Lafitte’s lieutenants, retired about the age of forty from the sea because of a saber cut to his leg, and got himself a fine house outside New Orleans. Privateerin’ had made him rich, and since he had time on his hands and a taste for the darker side of earthly pleasures, it wasn’t too surprisin’ that he fell under the influence of one Lucanor Aime, the leader of the Nanigo sect. You ever hear ‘bout Nanigo?’

Mr Brisbeau threw down the stove lid with a clang, muttered something, and stumped into the back room, slamming the door after him. Papa snorted with amusement.

‘Voodoo,’ he said. ‘But not for black folks. For whites only. Valcours was a natural, bein’ as how he purely hated the black man. Wouldn’t have ‘em on his ships. Anyway, ol’ Lucanor set Valcours high in his service, taught him all the secrets, then next thing you know Lucanor ups and disappears, and Valcours, who’s richer than ever by this time, picks up and moves to Bayou Rigaud and builds Maravillosa.’ Papa chuckled. ‘You was askin’ how rich Miss Otille was. Well, she’s ten-twenty times as rich as Valcours, and to show you how well off he was, when his oldest girl got herself engaged, he went and ordered a cargo of spiders from China, special spiders renowned for the intricacy and elegance of their webs, and he set them to weavin’ in the pines linin’ the avenue to the main house. Then he had his servants sprinkle the webs with silver dust and gold dust, all so that daughter of his could walk down the aisle beneath a canopy of unrivalled splendour.’

The wind was blowing more fiercely; rain eeled between the planking and filmed over the pictures and the walls, making them glisten. Jocundra closed and latched the shutters, half-listening to Papa, but listening also for repetitions of the change in Donnell’s voice. He didn’t appear to notice if himself, though it happened frequently, lasting a few seconds, then lapsing, as if he were passing through a strange adolescence. Probably, she thought, it was just a matter of the bacteria having spread to the speech centers; as they occupied the various centers, they operated the functions with more efficiency than normal. Witness his eyes. Still, she found it disturbing. She remembered sneaking into Magnusson’s room and being frightened by his sepulchral tone, and she was beginning to be frightened now. By his voice, the storm, and especially by the story. Fabulous balls and masques had been weekly occurrences at Maravillosa, said Papa; but despite his largesse, Valcours had gained an evil reputation. Tales were borne of sexual perversion and unholy rites; people vanished and were never seen again; zombies were reputed to work his fields, and after his death his body was hacked apart and buried in seven coffins to prevent his return. The story and the storm came to be of a piece in Jocundra’s head, the words howling, the wind drawling, nature and legend joined in the telling, and she had a feeling the walls of the cabin were being squeezed together and they would be crushed, their faces added to the collection of pasted-up images.

‘Valcours’ children spent most of their lives tryin’ to repair the family name,’ said Papa. ‘They founded orphanages, established charities. Maravillosa became a factory of good works. But ol’ Valcours’ spirit seemed to have been reborn in his granddaughter Clothilde. Folks told the same stories ‘bout her they had ‘bout him. And more. Under her stewardship the family fortune grew into an empire, and them-that-knowed said this new money come from gun-runnin’, from white slavery and worse. She was rumored to own opium hells in New Orleans and to hang around the waterfront disguised as a man, a cutthroat by the name of Johnny Perla. It’s a matter of record that she was partners with Abraham Levine. You know. The Parrot King. The ol’ boy who brought in all them Central American birds and set off the epidemic of parrot fever. Thousands of kids dead. But then, right in the prime of life, at the height of her evil doin’s, Clothilde disappeared.’

Papa heaved another sigh, recrossed his legs, and went on to tell how Clothilde’s son, Otille’s father, had followed the example of his grandparents and attempted to restore the family honor through his work on behalf of international Jewry during World War II and his establishment of the Rigaud Foundation for scientific research; how Otille’s childhood had been scandal after scandal capped by the affair of Senator Millman, a weekend guest at Maravillosa, who had been found in bed with Otille, then twelve years old. Donnell leaned against the stove, unreadable behind his mirrored lenses. The storm was lessening, but Jocundra knew it would be a temporary lull. July storms lingered for days. The damp air chilled her, breaking a film of feverish sweat from her brow.

‘The next few years Otille was off at private schools and college, and she don’t talk much ‘bout them days. But around the time she was twenty, twenty-one, she got bitten by the actin’ bug and headed for New York. Wasn’t long before she landed what was held to be the choicest role in many a season. Mirielle in the play Danse Calinda. ‘Course there was talk ‘bout how she landed the part, seein’ as she’d been the playwright’s lover. But couldn’t nobody else but her play it, ‘cause it had been written special for her. The critics were unanimous. They said the play expanded the occult genre, said she incarnated the role. Them damn fools woulda said anything, I expect. Otille probably had ‘em all thinkin’ slow and nasty ‘bout her. She’ll do that to a man, I’ll guarantee you.’ He smirked. ‘But the character, Mirielle, she was a strong, talented woman, good-hearted but doomed to do evil, bound by the ties of a black tradition to a few acres of the dismal truth, and ol’ Otille didn’t have no trouble relatin’ to that. Then, just when it looked like she was gonna be a star, she went after her leadin’ man with a piece of broken mirror. Cut him up severe!’ Papa snapped his fingers. ‘She’d gone right over the edge. They shut her away in a sanatorium someplace in upstate New York, and the doctors said it was the strenuousness of the role that had done her. But Otille would tell you it was ‘cause she’d arrived at certain conclusions ‘bout herself durin’ the run of the play, that she’d been tryin’ to escape somethin’ inescapable. That the shadowy essence of Valcours and Clothilde pervaded her soul. Soon as they let her loose, she beelined for Maravillosa and there she’s been for these last twelve or thirteen years.’ He puffed out his belly, patted it and grinned. ‘And I been with her for six of them years.’

‘And is she crazy?’ asked Donnell. ‘Or is she evil?’

‘She’s a little crazy, brother, but ain’t we all.’ Papa laughed. ‘I know I am. And as for the evil, naw, she’s just foolin’ with evil. The way she figures it, whichever she is she can’t deny her predilection, so she surrounds herself with oddballs and criminal types. Nothin’ heavy duty. Pick-pockets, card sharps, dopers, hookers…’

‘Tent show hucksters,’ offered Donnell.

‘Yeah,’ said Papa, unruffled. ‘And freaks. You gonna fit right in.’ He worried at something between his teeth. ‘I’ll be up front with you, brother. Goin’ to Otille’s is like joinin’ the circus. Three shows daily. Not everybody can deal with it. But gettin’ back to her theory, she figures if she insulates herself with this mess of lowlife, she’ll muffle her unnatural appetites and won’t never do nothin’ real bad like Valcours and Clothilde.’ He fingered a card out from his side pocket and handed it to Donnell. ‘You wanna learn more ‘bout it, call that bottom number. She’s dyin’ to talk with you.’ He stood, hitched up his trousers. ‘One more thing and I’ll be steppin’. You’re bein’ watched. Otille says they on you like white on rice.’

Donnell did not react to the news; he was staring at the card Papa had given him. But Jocundra was stunned. ‘By who?’ she asked.

‘Government, most likely,’ said Papa. ‘Otille says you wanna check it out, you know that little shanty bar down the road?’

‘The Buccaneer Club?’

‘Yeah. You go down there tomorrow. ‘Bout half a mile past it’s a dirt road, and just off the gravel you gonna find a stake out. Two men in a nice shiny unmarked car. They ain’t there today, which is why I’m here.’ Papa twirled his car keys and gave them his most unctuous smile. ‘Let us hear from you, now.’ He sprinted out into the rain. Jocundra turned to Donnell. ‘Was he telling the truth?’ He was puzzled by the question for a moment, then said, ‘Oh, yeah. At least he wasn’t lying.’ He looked down at the card. ‘Wait a second.’ He went into the back room and returned with a notebook; he laid it open on top of the stove. ‘This,’ he said, pointing to a drawing, ‘is the last sketch I made of the patterns of light I’ve been seeing. And this’ - he pointed to a design at the bottom of the card - ‘this is what my sketch is a fragment of.’

Jocundra recognized the design, and if he had only showed her fragmentary sketch, she still would have recognized it. She had seen it painted in chicken blood on stucco walls, laid out in colored dust on packed-earth floors, soaped on the windows of storefront temples, printed on handbills. The sight of it made all her explanations of his abilities seem as feckless as charms against evil.

‘That’s what I want to build with the copper,’ said Donnell. ‘I’m sure of it. I’ve never been…’ He noticed her fixation on the design. ‘You’ve seen it before?’

‘It’s a veve,’ said Jocundra with a sinking feeling. ‘It’s a ritual design used in voodoo to designate one of the gods, to act as a gateway through which he can be called. This one belongs to one of the aspects of Ogoun, but I can’t remember which one.’

‘A veve?’ He picked up the card. ‘Oh, yeah,’ he said. ‘Why not?’ He tucked the card into his shirt pocket.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’m going to wait until morning, because I don’t want to appear too eager.’ He laughed. ‘And then I guess I’ll go down to the Buccaneer Inn and give Otille a call.’

Donnell dropped in his money and dialed. A flatbed truck passed on the road, showering the booth with spray from its tires, but even when it had cleared he could barely make out the pickup parked in front of the bar. The rain dissolved the pirate’s face above the shingle roof into an eyepatch and a crafty smile, smeared the neon letters of the Lone Star Beer sign into a weepy glow.

‘Yes, who is it?’ The voice on the line was snippish and unaccented, but as soon as he identified himself, it softened and acquired a faint Southern flavor. ‘I’m pleasantly surprised, Mr Harrison. I’d no idea you’d be calling so quickly. How can I help you?’

‘I’m not sure you can,’ he said. ‘I’m just calling to make a few inquiries.’

Otille’s laugh was sarcastic; even over the wire it conveyed a potent nastiness. ‘You obviously have pressing problems, or else you wouldn’t be calling. Why don’t you tell me about them? Then if I’m still interested you can make your inquiries.’

Donnell rubbed the phone against his cheek, thinking how best to handle her. Through the rain-washed plastic, he saw an old hound dog with brown and white markings emerge from the bushes beside the booth and step onto the road. Sore-covered, starved-thin, dull-eyed. It put its nose down and began walking toward the bar, sniffing at litter, unmindful of the pelting rain.

‘I need three tons of copper,’ he said. ‘I want to build something.’

‘If you’re going to be circuitous, Mr Harrison, we can end this conversation right now.’

‘I want to build a replica of the veve on your calling card.’

‘Why?’

At first, prodded by her questions, he told half-truths, repeating the lies he had been told at the project, sketching out his plan to use the veve as a remedy, omitting particulars. But as the conversation progressed, he found he had surprisingly few qualms about revealing himself to her and became more candid. Though some of her questions maintained a sharp tone, others were asked with childlike curiosity, and others yet were phrased almost seductively, teasing out the information. These variances in her character reminded him of his own fluctuations between arrogance and anxiety, and he thought because of this he might be able to understand and exploit her weaknesses.

‘I’m still not quite clear why you want to build this precise veve,’ she said.

‘It’s an intuition on my part,’ he said. ‘Jocundra thinks it may be an analogue to some feature of my brain, but all I can say is that I’ll know after it’s built. Why do you have it on your card?’

‘Tradition,’ she said. ‘Do you know what a veve is, what its function in voodoo is?’

‘Yes, generally.’

‘I’m quite impressed with what I’ve heard about you,’ she said. ‘If anyone else had called me and suggested I build the veve of Ogoun Badagris out of three tons of copper, I would have hung up. But before I commit… excuse me.’

The hound dog had wandered into the parking lot of the bar and stood gazing mournfully at Mr Brisbeau’s tailgate; it snooted at something under the rear tire and walked around to the other side. Donnell heard Otille speaking angrily to someone, and she was still angry when she addressed him once again.

‘Come to Maravillosa, Mr Harrison. We’ll talk. I’ll decide whether or not to be your sponsor. But you had better come soon. The people who’re watching you won’t allow your freedom much longer.’

‘How do you know?’

‘I’m very well connected,’ she said tartly.

‘What guarantee do I have they won’t be watching me there?’

‘Maravillosa is my private preserve. No one enters without my permission.’ Otille made an impatient noise. ‘If you decide to come, just call this number and talk to Papa. He’ll be picking you up. Have that old fool you’re staying with take you through the swamp to Caitlett’s Store.’

‘I’ll think about it,’ said Donnell. Gray rain driven by a gust of wind opaqued the booth; the lights of the bar looked faraway, the lights of a fogbound coast.

‘Not for too long,’ said Otille; her voice shifted gears and became husky, enticing. ‘May I call you Donnell?’

‘Let’s keep things businesslike between us,’ he said, irked by her heavy-handedness.

‘Oh, Donnell,’ she said, laughing. ‘The question was just a formality. I’ll call you anything I like.’

She hung up.

Someone had drawn a cross in blue ink above the phone, and someone else, a more skilful artist, had added a woman sitting naked atop the vertical piece, wavy lines to indicate that she was moving up and down, and the words ‘Thank you, Jesus’ in a word balloon popping from her lips. As he thought what to to next, he inspected all the graffiti, using them as background to thought; their uniform obscenity seemed to be seconding an inescapable conclusion. He walked back to the truck, cold rain matting his hair.

After Donnell described the conversation, proposing they see what Maravillosa had to offer, Mr Brisbeau grunted in dismay. ‘Me, I’d sooner trust a hawk wit my pet mouse,’ he said, digging for the car keys in his pocket.

‘She sounds awful,’ said Jocundra. ‘Shadows can’t be any worse. At least we’re familiar with the pitfalls.’

‘She’s direct,’ said Donnell. ‘You have to give her that. I never knew what was going on at Shadows.’

Jocundra picked at an imperfection of bubbled plastic on the dash.

‘Besides,’ said Donnell, ‘I’m convinced there’s more to learn about the veve, and Maravillosa’s the place to learn it.’

Rain drummed on the roof, the windows fogged, and the three of them sat without speaking.

‘What’s today?’ asked Donnell.

‘Thursday,’ said Mr Brisbeau; ‘Friday,’ said Jocundra at the same time. ‘Friday,’ she repeated. Mr Brisbeau shrugged.

Donnell tapped the dash with his fingers. ‘Is there a back road out of here, one the truck can handle?’

‘There’s a track down by the saw mill,’ said Mr Brisbeau. ‘She’s goin’ to be damn wet, but we can do it. Maybe.’

‘If Edman still spends his weekends at home,’ said Donnell, ‘we’ll give him a chance to make a counterproposal. We’ll leave now. That way we’ll catch whoever’s watching by surprise, and they won’t expect me to show up at Edman’s.’

‘What if he’s not home?’ Jocundra looked appalled by the prospect, and he realized she had been counting on him to reject Otille’s offer.

‘Then I’ll call Papa, and we’ll head for Caitlett’s Store. Truthfully, I can’t think of anything Edman could say to make me re-enter the project, but I’m willing to be proved wrong.’

She nodded, downcast. ‘Maybe we should just call Papa. It might be a risk at Edman’s.’

‘It’s all a risk,’ he said, as Mr Brisbeau switched on the engine. ‘But this way we’ll know we did what we had to.’

As Mr Brisbeau backed up, the right front tire jolted over something, then bumped down, and Donnell heard a squeal from beneath. He swung the door open and climbed down and saw the old hound dog. The truck had passed over its neck and shoulders, killing it instantly. It must have given up looking for food and bellied under the wheel for shelter and the warmth of the motor. One of its eyes had been popped halfway out of the socket, exposing the thready structures behind, and the rain laid a glistening film upon the brown iris, spattering, leaking back inside the skull. Bright blood gushed from its mouth, paling to pink and wending off in rivulets across the puddled ground.

Mr Brisbeau came around the front of the truck, furious. ‘Goddamn, boy! Don’t that tell you somethin’?’ he shouted, as if it had been Donnell’s fault he had struck the dog. ‘You keep up wit this Rigaud foolishness, and you goin’ against a clear sign!’

But if it was a sign, then what interpretation should be placed upon it? Pink-muzzled, legs splayed, mouth frozen open in a rictus snarl; the grotesque stamp of death had transformed this dull, garbage-eating animal into something far more memorable that it had been in life. Donnell would not have thought such a miserable creature could contain so brilliant a colour.