The Faculty Club: A Novel (21 page)

She slapped her forehead.

"Miles, what did I say when you asked me to marry you?"

I felt the room stop, as if all the fountains froze at once.

Miles turned bright red.

My mouth dropped open. So did Sarah's.

"Well?" Isabella demanded.

"You said, when I grow up," Miles mumbled.

"Sweetie, does
this
seem grown up to you?"

He shook his head sheepishly.

I'd never seen Miles chastened before. He lowered his head, like a puppy waiting for its punishment.

Isabella sighed, running her hands into her hair. It was midnight black, a nest of unruly, graceful ringlets. Her green eyes sparkled. She closed them, and it was like a light went off in the room. She hummed to herself. Finally, she laughed and shook her head.

"Okay, okay, my sweetheart. What do you want to know?"

Miles let out a giant sigh of relief. He gave us a goofy grin.

"Everything. Izzy, tell us everything."

"First of all, forget every ridiculous thing you've ever heard about voodoo. Forget zombies. Forget voodoo dolls. Our story begins four thousand years B.H.--Before Hollywood--in the ancient civilizations of Egypt, Assyria, Ethiopia. Their accounts of the stars, the planets, the human soul--these gave birth over millennia to the religions of the African tribes: the Fons, the Igbos, the Kongos, and dozens more. The slave trade brought these ideas to the New World: to Brazil, Cuba, Haiti, Galveston, New Orleans. Religions mixed and transformed, as slaves from different tribes were integrated . . . if you'll excuse the term . . ." Isabella leaned in and gave us a smile that was as large and majestic as she was.

"Of course, it all starts with the word itself. In the language of the Fons,
Vo
means 'introspection.'
Du
means 'into the unknown.' Voodoo is therefore the investigation of mystery. Not just of gods and heavenly bodies, but of our own souls." Isabella drew a line with her finger across the table. "The voodoo temple is the
oum'phor,
held up by a central post--the solar support--and balanced by the moon, a small boat hung from the ceiling, which represents the voodoo goddess Erzulie. The top of the sun-post is the center of the sky. The bottom is the center of hell. The post itself is the wood of justice, with a whip strung from it to
symbolize penitence and redemption. The post is the physical center of the temple--it is, as they say, the cosmic axis of voodoo magic. The oum'phor has many chambers: a holy of holies, and symbolic 'tombs' for the uninitiated--death before rebirth. On the altar are
pots-de-tete,
small jars that contain a bit of the soul of each person in the room.

"Everything flows from the power of the gods--the
loas
. You legal types may be interested to know that
loa
comes from the French word
lois,
or 'law.'" That smile again, magnetic. She leaned in. "Ask me where the gods live."

"Where do the gods live?"

"In the astral city Ife, in a star that bakes at thirty thousand degrees Celsius. You've heard of the ceremonies. Drums. Incantations. An animal sacrifice, or sometimes a plant. The
loa
comes down to earth to mount a voodoo practitioner, who becomes the god's horse. This is an act of possession, so that the gods may perform an earthly task: heal the sick, accept a sacrifice. The mounting begins with a violent struggle but ends moments later with a whimper: in a flash it's over."

Isabella went to a cabinet. She pulled a small object out of a box, unwrapped the felt cover, and placed it on the table.

"Perhaps the most powerful item in voodoo is the
baka.
" She traced a circle around it on the table with her finger. "The baka is a talisman, but with a very special and dangerous composition. It is the fusion of two souls: the
ka,
the terrestrial soul that stays with the body after death, and the
ba--
the celestial soul that ascends to heaven. It is this combination that makes the baka's power so volatile: it is whatever the holder wants it to be. A healing charm. A weapon."

Isabella paused. She put the charm away. She walked to a
cupboard, took out four glasses, and filled them with an almond liquor.

"For a time, voodoo did quite well in the New World. But you have to imagine the slave tent on a quiet night. The glow of the flames. The hint of drums. Rumors of rituals, miraculous seizures. The slave owners came down brutally, even for them: hangings, beatings, even flayings, punishments for the slightest whiff of voodoo.

"And so the religion evolved again. It cloaked itself in secrecy. Catholic saints were used to signify voodoo gods. Rituals were cloaked in other rituals. Erzulie becomes the Virgin Mary. Legba the Lion becomes Christ. Is it so surprising? Religions are always borrowing, mixing. Some believe that Moses himself was inducted into voodoo, under the tutelage of a black scholar named Pethro. Some even say Moses married a black woman briefly, until his family intervened. Who knows? But that is how voodoo, cloaked in a new skin, survived four hundred years of slavery in the New World. And how it exists to this very day."

Isabella sat back in her chair and spread her hands.

"That, my friends, is all I know about voodoo."

Miles, Sarah, and I each seemed to have the same reaction. Interesting--but what did it have to do with us? What did it tell us about the V&D? How was it going to save us? I weighed my words.

"Isabella, tell us about voodoo and death."

"Well," she said, thinking it over. "It's common to honor the souls of your ancestors. And to prepare one's soul for death. Penitence and redemption, like I said."

"Okay, but what about . . . preventing death?"

"You mean healing the sick?"

"Not exactly . . . I mean, like,
cheating
death."

Isabella wrinkled her brow.

"I don't understand."

"I met a man who was planning to live beyond his own obituary. To live forever. You didn't say how someone would use voodoo to do that."

She shook her head.

"They wouldn't."

"How do you know?"

"It's just not a part of it."

"Come on, there must be
something
."

There was a strain in my voice. This was our last thread. Our only remaining clue. And it was unraveling before my eyes.

"What about zombies?" I tried. "That's a way to bring people back from the dead, right?"

"I told you, forget about zombies."

"Do they
exist
?"

"That's Hollywood stuff. It's not part of the culture."

"But do they
exist?
"

Isabella pulled back. My voice sounded wild, plaintive. She sighed.

"I don't know. There are stories, rumors. Once, some Harvard scientists claimed to find chemicals in Haiti that would knock a person out and bring them back, sleepy and submissive. But you know the legend as well as I do. A zombie is mindless, empty. If I wanted to live forever, it wouldn't be like that."

A fair point. Running around with my tongue hanging out might be fun for a Saturday night--but eternity?

"Please, Isabella,
think
. There has to be something."

Isabella closed her eyes for a moment. She filled the room with
her warmth, her calm. In the fluorescent light her strand of gray hair seemed to glow. She appeared to be searching for an answer to my question. Then she opened her eyes and held her hands out to me. She rubbed the tops of my hands with her thumbs, like she was reading my fortune. Her expression was kind, but she shook her head.

"At some point, every culture has to choose between the circle and the line. The circle seeks contentment: the seasons, the tides, sunrise and sunset, birth to death and maybe even death to birth, who knows?

"The line . . . the line seeks progress: acquisition, mastery, refinement of the world around you.

"Neither is intrinsically good or evil. That's the thing most people don't realize. It's the
balance
that matters . . .

"But to live forever, as one person, through all time? To cheat the cycle? That's the line, Jeremy . . . that's the line out of control. What you're describing isn't voodoo. There's no magic, no belief to make that happen. I'm sorry, but I think you're looking in the wrong place."

I felt frantic. This was our last clue.

"But what if someone found a way to
use
voodoo--someone from outside the culture--in a way it was never intended?"

Isabella thought about it.

"Well, if that's the case," she said, with that magnificent, wry smile, "then my black half is
very
disappointed in my white half."

We left, with our final clue in shambles.

I was devastated for about an hour, and then I cracked the whole damn thing wide open.

"Why don't you tell him the joke?" Humpty Dumpty said. "Maybe he'll thank you."

"Enough," Bernini snapped. "Remember your deal."

I kept turning those words over and over in my head. We were missing something. Something that was right there, hanging in front of us.

I couldn't shake the feeling that we had everything we needed to save ourselves.

Miles was spread out on the comforter of the shabby bed in our shabby motel room. He was mindlessly twisting his Rubik's Cube--scramble, solve, scramble, solve. Miles wasn't quite what they called a speed cuber, but he did go to a few conventions in high school, where math nerds, sci-fi fanatics, comic book collectors, and other of our fellow virgins would commune to break international cube-solving records. The fastest people today could solve a scrambled cube in fifteen seconds or less. Amazing how the world changes--it took Erno Rubik, the Hungarian mathematician, an entire month to solve his own cube for the first time.

"Why don't you tell him the joke? Maybe he'll thank you."

Why would I thank him?

Miles was the only action in the room. We were holed up, stuck in a holding pattern. Scramble, solve, scramble, solve. His fingers were large but nimble.

Sarah was watching him too.

"How do you
do
that?" she finally asked.

Miles looked up, surprised, as if we'd woken him from a particularly deep dream.

"This?" He held up the cube.

"Yeah. How do you do it so fast?"

"It's not that hard, really. The secret is the middle square. It never changes. Once you see the middle square, you know what color that side has to be. Everything else turns around that. From there, it's just pattern recognition, clockwork."

That's when it clicked. The whole thing.

Why don't you tell him the joke?

What was our middle square?

It had to be the dead professor who wasn't dead. Everything turned around him.

It occurred to me: what if we had the wrong middle square? What if our clues didn't fit together because everything flowed from the middle square--and we had the middle square totally backward? We saw red and thought it was blue . . .

The whole puzzle fell into place, like water molecules snapping into ice.

"Oh my God," I said, and they looked at me. I told them everything. I couldn't see my own expression, but I saw it reflected in their faces.

I saw fear.

Immortality was one thing.

But
this
?

For our sake, I hoped I was right. And so help me, I hoped I was wrong.

There was only one way to find out.

I hadn't been to Nigel's apartment since the night of his dinner party, and that felt like another lifetime. I walked up the steps to his brownstone. It was almost four in the morning, and the cold was so intense, so harsh, that my nose and throat burned every time I took a breath. The streets were perfectly still. I hadn't seen a soul on my way over. And believe me, I was looking--for any shadowy figure that might be in the vicinity.

I was surprised to see a light already on in Nigel's window. The doorbell echoed through his apartment. Lights flipped on from room to room, closer and closer, and then footsteps came my way. Nigel opened the door. He was fully dressed and didn't seem at all surprised to see me. That, I think, was the moment I knew just how stupid I was. Why didn't I just chain myself to the bell tower in the center of campus, with a sign that said hey secret evil club: come and get me! But this was the only way. We had to know. I told myself that and heard another voice, that class clown in the back row of my brain, calling out obnoxious comments. It was Arthur Peabody's voice, and it said:
Now or later . . . they'll get me.

There you go. Now or later. Let it happen.

Wise words from the late, great Humpty Dumpty.

"Jeremy," Nigel said pleasantly. "Come in."

We passed the dining room to the last door in the hallway, the only one I hadn't been in before. On one end of the room was Nigel's bed, a canopy with four elegant spiral posts; at the other was an oak desk, next to a limestone fireplace with a roaring fire.
Behind the desk were rows of books. I sat in the leather chair he indicated and started scanning the bookshelves. I found what I was looking for easily enough--it was part of a set--the antique he'd shown me on the first day of school, a leather-bound collection of political essays. The one he'd wanted to give Daphne in his crazy quest for her affection. The one I'd talked him out of giving her, back when I was giving love advice to Nigel even though
I
wanted Daphne. Back when altruism and friendship seemed like virtues to me. Well, the book was there, anyway. At least he listened. I also saw, perhaps too late, that the phone on his desk was off the hook. It was an old-fashioned phone with a rotary dial and a vertical shaft like a lamppost that cradled the receiver. But not now. Now the receiver was sitting facedown on his desk, and the first thing he did when he sat down was lift it up to his mouth.

"I need to go now," he said into the phone, looking at me. "Yes," he said. "Yes. Quite." He smiled. "I will."

He hung the phone up.

"Who was that?" I asked, trying to sound casual.