Orfeo (11 page)

“It’s true, Earl,” she heard Baptiste say behind her. “The boy will be gone by tomorrow.”

“Shut it, old man. Like I fucking care about your opinion, you filthy cocksucker. This is between me and her.”

As Earl took a step toward her, Ardyce retreated a step but he held her with the glare of his eyes which appeared to shine with their own, malevolent light in the depths of his shadowy face. His skin, usually so white, now seemed to gleam with a yellowish glare against the deep, black frame of his hair. Behind her, she heard Baptiste gasp as one or two of the others grabbed hold of him.

Slowly, Earl lifted one gloved hand and, almost tenderly, placed his fingers beneath her chin, lifting her face so that she couldn’t ignore him.

“You’re coming with me,” he said very softly.

She tried to shake her head, ashamed for a moment of her tears, a sign of her weakness when she needed most to be strong.

“I can’t,” she gasped at last. “Mercy. Please, Earl... mercy.”

He gave a low laugh at this. “And did you ever show me mercy?” he asked. He stopped for a moment and looked upwards, toward the room above and behind her where she knew Orfeo was lost in his own solitary torment, almost certainly unaware of the scene that was unfolding in the street below.

“I was going to kill him, you know,” Earl said quietly at last. “But... in the end I think he’s better off alive.” He dropped his gaze back to Ardyce and repeated: “You’re coming with me.”

“Please,” she whispered. “Let me go.”

He shook his head. “No. That’s not going to happen. If you don’t come with me, your nigger singer’s dead, do you understand? Leaving New Orleans isn’t going to save him—only you can do that. Come with me, now, or he dies.”

At this, something inside Ardyce seemed to break and she felt blackness fall across her vision. Strong arms caught her before she fell and she was lifted up from the ground, carried across toward the car. Flashes of light and sound buzzed around her, and she was just able to make out Snake’s voice as a door was opened to receive her.

“Tell that cocksucker to stay away—next time I see you, old man, I’ll stick you like a pig.”

Beneath her was the cool, implacable leather of a seat and a door slammed shut behind her as someone pressed his hot, heavy body beside her. Then all fell into merciful darkness as Ardyce collapsed completely.             

Facilis descensus Averni: noctes atque dies patet atri ianua Ditis;

sed revocare gradium superasque evadere ad auras, hoc opus, hic labor est.

Easy is the descent to hell, for the door to the underworld lies open day and night.

But to retrace your steps and return to the breezes above—this is work, this is toil.

(Virgil,
The Aeneid
)

Orfeo lay on his bed, the guitar dangling listlessly in his hands. He had been picking the strings, his head full of melodies and harmonies silent to everyone but himself, but where they had previously brought him pleasure now their noise simply made him feel lonelier than before.

His body ached with the receding bliss that Ardyce had given him. His fingers, his skin, his mouth, his cock remembered her, the scent of her flesh in his nostrils, the taste of her breasts so sweet in his mouth, her warmth, wet and open for him, sucking him deep into her womb. But as those joys receded, so the pain became even worse.

He knew why she’d come—and why she’d left. She wanted to save him. Orfeo was no fool and well aware of the threat posed by Earl and his false
loa
, but she was a prize worth having above all others. She didn’t want him to die, but if she left him she had sentenced him to death as surely as if Earl came for him with a gun. Even if he lived out his allotted threescore years and ten, every day would be a living death and he knew he could not face wandering the earth without Ardyce.

Gazing across the room toward the alcove where the candles were guttering low, he stared at the photograph of his mother, Ayida. Not for the first time he wondered what she was doing, whether she was still alive, even. His chest heaved with sickness at the thought of how hard her life had become after the murder of his father, how he had betrayed her. He had squandered everything, leaving home and running with gangs. Certainly he had first been motivated by what he had thought were the noblest motives, to find those men who had killed his father and take their lives, but instead he had sunk lower and lower until, at last, he became what he beheld.

And when he fled Haiti, unable in shame to return to his family, how long had he traveled? Ten years. He counted them, each one, like a lead weight in his mind. He had fought, he had survived, he had lain with women—but had he loved? He knew the answer immediately. He had never loved, not truly, not until he had seen her that night in Apollo’s.

The memory of her filled his memory again: a woman, pale and slight, with red hair burnished and flashing in the lights of the club, her eyes so piercing, shining as she watched him sing on the stage. He smiled at the thought of how he had faltered—he, Orfeo! It was the first time his voice had ever failed him, a messenger of a dark and beautiful silence in his song. It was the first time and he realised, with complete certainty, that it would be the last.

His fists clenched and he snarled in anger. She had to come with him! Both of them would leave New Orleans together. Just as he would give up everything for her, so he was sure she would give up all that she owned for him.

But as he looked around the pitiful room, his transitory home, a wry smile replaced his anger. This was no Xanadu. He had so little to give up and what was most important to him—aside from Ardyce—could never be taken away from him while he was still living. For Ardyce, the sacrifice would be much deeper, and yet as he thought of her empty life in that rambling mansion to the east of the city he couldn’t believe that it meant more than her love, her desire, for him.

No, that was not it. It demeaned him to even consider such a thing. He knew precisely why she couldn’t leave the city. He understood enough of Earl’s reputation to realize that the king of the New Orleans underworld had no intention of letting her go. He would follow them to the literal ends of the earth and they would never be safe. For Ardyce, this was enough to banish her lover even though it would break her heart. She wanted to save him, but Orfeo felt a chill rise in waves across his naked skin as he thought what Earl and his
loa
would do to her. For such a betrayal, Earl would surely kill her as well.

With a sigh, he stood and crossed to the alcove, staring at the photograph of his mother as he placed the other charm around his neck. This was the most precious thing he owned along with the old photograph, for she had made the amulets for him when he was a child, praying to Bondye to keep him from harm. He held the trinket in his hand, his fingers rubbing along the stones and bones and iron nails, feeling the rough and the smooth. Such things had failed to bring him peace, but perhaps it would offer her a little protection.

Letting it fall back against his chest, he took in a deep breath. The air was stifling in here: though the night outside would be growing cooler it was far too humid in the room and he crossed to the window.

With a frown he looked out as he opened it, seeing a group of figures struggling in the street below. The lights of a car shot out, half-illuminating the people and he could hear voices raised. One of the figures was being carried toward the car and, with a shock, Orfeo realized that it was Ardyce.

As the door closed on her and one, then two of the others clambered in, he bellowed out, a cry of hate and rage. The figure in a hat looked up at the window and the fire in his body turned to ice as he saw Papa stare at him with a smile. As his companion pushed Baptiste to the floor, the vile man raised a hand to his hat in an ironic salute and quickly turned back to the car.

Immediately, Orfeo leaped across the bed and ran to the door, yanking it open and running, half jumping down the stairs. He took the final flight in a reckless career, crashing into the young woman, a prostitute who lived in the building and who would sometimes
listen to him sing. Without a pause he flung himself at the door that led to the street and ran outside.

Halting at last on the sidewalk, disoriented for a second, he saw the headlights of the car as it reversed at speed toward the main road. Then, with a screech, it spun around and sped away.

He was already running toward it, his heart beating as he pounded the road in his bare feet, his skin hot despite the cold air flowing around his naked torso. When he turned the corner, all he could see were the rear lights of the car—red, malevolent eyes—shooting away from him. With a cry of despair he sank to his knees, feeling the hard and relentless surface against his bones.

“They’ve taken her.” As Orfeo looked up, at first he couldn’t see anything, his eyes blinded by the tears that streamed down his face. “They must have followed us. I’m sorry.”

Orfeo’s vision cleared and he saw Baptiste, looking sallow and unhealthy in the street lights that illuminated this part of the slums. The man’s clothes were dirty from where he had been pushed to the ground, and he looked even older now, his eyes sunken with fear.

“Where!” Orfeo demanded. “Where have they taken her?”

“There’s nothing you can do now, son,” Baptiste told him gently. “Earl always wanted her. He’d never let her go. You pushed him too far.” He reached down to touch the young man, but Orfeo batted away his hand angrily.

Standing slowly, he turned to face Baptiste. His face was like stone, or hard iron, the shadows falling across his brow as he dipped his head to look at the older man making his skin appear blacker than ebony, his eyes pits of darkness other than a demonic gleam barely visible in his features.

“Where have they taken her?” he repeated, his voice low and ominous.

Watching this tall, muscular man in front of him, naked from the waist up with some strange necklace around his neck, his arms tensed loosely by his side, Baptiste felt a shiver of fear run through him. “It’s no good,” he began to protest, taking a step backwards. “You can’t help her. They’ll kill you—and heaven alone knows what they’ll do to her.”

Orfeo let out a vicious laugh. “You think they can touch me? I am Sousson-Pannan, who will drink up their blood. I am Baron Kriminel, condemned to death and passing swift judgment. I am Samedi, king of the dead. You think these
men
can touch me?” He spat on the ground. “I’ll ask for the last time, old man. Where have they taken her?”

Trembling, Baptiste fussed with his moustache. “Hades,” he whispered at last and then, raising his voice he repeated: “Hades. They’ll have taken her to Hades.”

Nodding, Orfeo looked back toward the street where the car had driven away. “Then I’ll go and get her back.”

As he strode away, Baptiste stared after him in amazement. “What? You think you can just walk there and find her? Are you really that much of an idiot?
C’est sa Couillon
!” The broad, powerful shoulders of Orfeo receded away from him, however, and after a few moments the young black man began to run, his strides becoming longer as he ran.

And he ran and he ran and he ran. He ran as his blood rose up like fire inside him, and he ran until he felt that his lungs were bursting. He ran through along the roads and through dank, dark alleys. He ran beside the hidden river and he ran across bridges and between houses where music filled the air, though none of it as sweet as the songs that Orfeo sang.

He knew where Hades was, though it was a place he had never entered. When, at last, he came to a standstill across from the large, blank walls of the nightclub, a fortress of dark stone, he almost collapsed for a moment, his chest feeling as though it would explode from his exertions. Midnight had come and gone and though the air was much colder now sweat ran down his chest and limbs, his eyes bulging slightly as he sucked in his breath, trying to calm his heart which hammered in his rib cage.

Before the doorway, which glowed with a diabolical red light, a line of people snaked along the sidewalk, eager to taste the sins of Hades whose name was picked out in shining purple above that gateway into hell. It was rumored that anything could be bought—and sold—in Hades, but until now Orfeo had always taken great care to avoid Earl’s lair.

At last the agony in his limbs began to diminish as the air eased into his arteries and muscles. Each breath was still a mighty swelling and falling of his chest but it no longer felt as though fire was being poured into his lungs. Glancing down, however, in the eerie purple glow Orfeo could see that the skin of his feet was patched with darker blood from the cuts he had received whilst running. Not that it mattered now.

His gaze fixed stonily ahead of him, he began to walk across the road to the doorway. Without looking either left or right, ignoring the cries and catcalls of the clientele seeking to enter the club, he pushed his way forward—and everyone, believing him to be some crazy black man out of his mind on drugs, moved out of his way.