Tropic of Night (59 page)

Paz felt his neck jerk up, felt the cords of the chair under him pressing on the backs of his knees. He was stiff. I must have dozed off, he thought. He looked around. The candles his mother had lit were dim in the bottoms of their glass cylinders. That was crazy: he couldn’t have been out that long. His mother was sitting at the table, with Jane, who was still slumped with her head hanging over her shoulder, eyes shut. His mother was singing something, not in Spanish or English, low, a chant. He barely recognized her face. The lines drawn by tyranny, pride, and suffering appeared to have melted away, bird tracks on the beach, leaving a fine, dense surface that glowed like an old piano. He felt a pang of resentment; I could have used some of this, if this was peace, you could have shared it … anyway, what was he doing here with this mumbo-jumbo. He said it to himself, Mumbo-jumbo, and then out loud, Mumbo-jumbo. He stood up. The hell with this shit.

Jane’s head snapped up and she looked at him. “Hold still. He’s coming here.” Her voice sounded deeper than it had before.

“Who, Moore?”

“No. Yes. Look, can you pray? I mean literally. Do you know any prayers?”

“You mean like Hail Mary?”

“Yes, that’s fine. He’s trying to get to you, he’s planting those thoughts, he wants you knocked out. Your mom’s like a rock, he can’t touch her, she’s Yemaya now. But he can get you. Pray, and don’t stop for anything. Oh, and say ‘Star of the Sea,’ add it to the prayer, it’ll link you up to Yemaya.”

“This is ridiculous, Jane, I don’t even believe in that shit anymore, and even if I did …”

There was a sound, a fluttering, clattering sound. They looked at the chick in its cage. It was battering itself against the mesh frantically, smashing its head, over and over, shattering its beak. It fell at last to the floor of its cage, vibrated briefly, and was still. A thread of blood came from its gaping mouth and formed a glistening droplet on the tip of its broken bill. The candles grew dim. The air in the room changed subtly, objects appearing as if seen through filthy glass.

Paz said, “HailMarystaroftheseafullofgracetheLordiswiththeeblessed-artthouamongwomenandblessedisthefruitofthywombJesus …” and continued in a low voice, concentrating on the words, fighting the thoughts that came bubbling up like foul oils in a well.

Then Witt Moore was in the room, no sound on the stairs, no opening of the door, he was just there, looking about the same as he had looked the other night during the supposed arrest, the same clothes, the same half-smile on his face. Standing next to him was Dawn Slotsky, wearing a man’s shirt over her great belly. Her legs were bare, her eyes shut, an expression of beatific calm on her face.

Moore said, “Well, Janey, what are we going to do with you?”

Paz wanted to stand up but found he had forgotten how to send messages to his arms and legs. The chair was far too deep to get out of without help. He would wait for backup. Meanwhile, he would say the prayer and watch.

“What do you want?” she asked. Her voice was cold.

“What do I want? I want you, Jane. You’re my wife.”

“I’m not your wife. You’re a grel .”

“Everyone’s a grel, dear. You don’t believe I’m Witt Moore? Ask me anything. Social Security number, our address in the city, anything. You have a little round brown birthmark about the size of a nailhead on your inner thigh about a half inch below your pussy. See?”

“How’s the Captain?”

Paz saw a little frown start, just a flicker, before he put on the confident smile again. “The Captain’s fine, Jane. Writing’s going great.”

“Yeah, real great; you’re copying Whitman in a little box back in Danolo, with all the women you killed.”

He laughed. “Oh, Jane, you always look on the negative side. And you seemed to like it pretty well, me and my big black cock. You seemed to like it just fine.”

“I got out of it, though, unlike Witt. You screwed up. You never should have allowed my sister’s ghost in there. She forgave me and that broke me out. A miracle in hell. You don’t understand love, is your problem.”

“A fantasy of the weak, like God. There are only the eaters and the eaten. Come with me, Jane. We have things to do.”

Paz watched, horrified, as she rose from the chair and went over to him, and he put his arm around her shoulders. Paz strained to move, but his limbs were uncoordinated and cramped. He fell out of the chair and sprawled on the floor. Moore laughed. “Jane, that’s one sorry nigger you picked. What is that boy doing? Praying? We’re going to have to have a talk about that sometime, Jane. Now, just so you know, here’s what we’re going to do right now. First, we’re going to lay your pal here down on your kitchen table, and I have to say it’s really so convenient that you arranged a pregnant neighbor, and I’m going to complete my okunikua, and you’re going to help, just like you did that time in Danolo. Maybe I’ll save a bite or two for you.”

“I never helped,” she said. Paz thought her voice sounded weak and tired. He found he was able to sit up now.

“Yes, you did, Janey. You just don’t remember. But you will when you have a taste again. Then we’re going to leave this town, which if you remember we never liked, and have some fun together.”

Dawn climbed up on the table. Moore unbuttoned her shirt. Paz got to his feet. He couldn’t think of what to do. He couldn’t think at all, because as soon as his mind stopped being full of the prayer, it was occupied by someone who wasn’t him, someone nasty and full of rage.

Jane said, “I want my little girl. I want Luz.”

“No time for that, Jane.” He took a knife made of shining black stone out of his pocket.

“I get to bring Luz, or I don’t go. I can’t beat you, but I can mess up this ritual. You can’t control me and her and him at the same time.”

He raised the knife, wiggled it. “I could fix that.”

“Yes, you can kill me. But then who will you have to show off for?”

Moore considered this for a moment and laughed. “Oh, all right, the little orphan girl. We’ll take her along, too. A happy family. I can train her.” He turned to Paz. “My nigger? Would you kindly go and fetch my wife’s rug rat?” Paz headed for the ladder. It seemed like the right thing to do. As he ascended, he heard Moore say, “You know, we should take him along, too. We need someone to step and fetchit. We’ll have to customize him, though. He’ll be a lot of fun, until he starts to smell bad. Jane, is that a tear? Oh, you like him? You slut, Jane! Now, we’re definitely taking him.”

Paz found he could stand. He walked to the ladder and climbed up to the loft. The child was not sleeping. She was sitting up in bed doing something to her feet. He checked out the room, still mumbling the prayer. No way out, except through the high window. Besides, why should he try to save the kid, it wasn’t his kid, just a … No! Focus, Paz, pray, pray, take the child. What was she doing? Trying to pull on a pair of bright canary-colored tights over her thin legs. He bent and helped her. She handed him a little leotard in the same color; wordlessly he pulled it onto her. Pray. There were fluffy feathers glued or sewn to the leotard, and golden spangles on the front. “This is my canary costume,” said Luz. “It has wings, too.”

It did. Paz attached them to the Velcro pads on the leotard. They were made of soft armature wire and yellow net and feathers. “I want to show my muffa.” Luz raced away for the ladder, Paz following.

Paz saw what happened from the lowest step, or rather, his eyes recorded something, some events and patterns, that his brain could not adequately interpret. The little girl ran into the room, wings flapping. Jane saw her, cried out, and snatched her up. Jane was chanting something, her voice now strong and loud. She snatched a glass from the table and sprinkled a few drops of rum on the child’s head. Something happened in the room, it grew brighter, or the air became clear, more than clear, like air on a mountain, everything, every shiny surface was sharp, crystalline. The candles flared, their flames impossibly high, like welding torches. He himself felt different, the insistent voices in his head had stopped. He said a final Hail Mary, crossed himself, and thought of nothing, no thoughts, no plans or doubts crossed his mind; he was simply Paz.

But around Jane and Moore things seemed different, blurry, like a bad TV getting ghosts, or messages from more than one channel. Both of them were stock-still, eyes closed in concentration, Jane clutching the child. Moore had grown bigger and blacker. He was naked, a different person?no, more than one person … Many arms, faces. Paz did not want to look at him. He looked at Jane and Luz instead.

Something odd was happening with Luz, she seemed less distinct, her colors muddy. Luz … or was it Luz? Paz knew the child had a name and that he knew it, but he couldn’t quite recall what it was.

“No!” A shriek from Jane. “You can’t do that! You can’t! It isn’t … debentchouajé … it will break the net!”

Now came a violent change, as if all the air and color had been sucked from the room and replaced with an alien gas, an alien spectrum. A presence entered, something heavy, awful, and vast, something far larger than the room, larger than the world. Paz found he could hardly breathe, and also that he didn’t have to. Something had gone wrong with time. He felt turned to stone; he couldn’t move his head, but he saw it out of the corner of his eye.

Until this moment Paz had thought that the carved depictions of African deities he had seen in museums were imaginary abstractions?the gigantic heads, the slitted eyes, the razor-sharp planes of the features; but now he found that they were actually very good likenesses. The room was full of people now, or rather flickering images, like a thousand films being shown at once, no, not that either … He could not take it in, but neither could he close his eyes. He understood, without knowing how he understood, that this was Ifa himself, not riding on a person, but the actual orisha, the lord of fate.

Around him time ripped away from its welding to space and matter. He saw Jane, as she was now, and as a baby, and a little girl, and as a pregnant woman with a swelling middle, and as a crone, and dead, all together, as the gods see us, and Jane, his Jane, was bowing to the being with her hands covering her face. He heard screams. Geometries that the human brain was not designed to record occupied the room. Paz shut his eyes.

Now blackness and … it came to him then, a dream, or a memory. His room, above the restaurant on Flagler, he must have been four or five, waking at night to the sound of drums, going out of the little room he shared with his mother, to the living room, and there was his mami, in a white dress, and other women and men with drums and a strange smell in the air, smoke and rum, and they were playing drums, and he went up to his mami, frightened, and she turned around and there was someone else living in his mami. He screamed and someone picked him up, a thin man, and he said, Forget this, little boy, go to sleep.

His mother was shaking him. He was late for school. He tried to pull the covers over his head, but they weren’t there. She was grabbing at his arm, his hand, putting something into it, something heavy. He opened his eyes.

His mother said, “Outside. They’re coming to help him.”

Questions formed but froze on his tongue. He looked at what was in his hand and saw that it was Jane’s Mauser pistol. He got up and walked slowly around the periphery of the room, fingers trailing the walls, the furniture, eyes on the ground. There was still stuff going on that he didn’t want to know about. He found the doorknob and went out onto the landing.

One of them was already on the stairs, a squat brown man in an undershirt and shorts. He looked ordinary except for all the blood on him. Paz shot him in the chest. The thing kept on coming. He remembered you weren’t supposed to let them touch you. Paz shot him again and the man collapsed and rolled down the stairs. Others appeared at intervals. The last one was Eightball Swett, identifiable only by his clothes and the smell, because his face had mostly fallen off. Paz used the last of the bullets on him. He looked at the big pistol, its action popped back, the breech empty.

What a peculiar dream, he thought, I really want to remember this when I get up. He walked back through the open door into Jane’s apartment.

The weirdness had quite gone, replaced by what looked like a candlelit domestic scene except that Dawn Slotsky was lying naked on the kitchen table. Jane seemed to be talking to Moore in an ordinary voice, while on her hip perched the little girl, still in the yellow bird costume.

“I was the goat,” Jane said. “God knows how long Uluné has been planning this, probably before either of us was born. He set a trap for the leopard in a village far away. And you fell into it. You tried to unmake time before you’d done the fourth sacrifice. Maybe if you’d waited, you might have been able to whip Ifa, I don’t know. But he came, just like in Ifé in the old days, not mounted, but as himself. And he took it all back, all the power, like they did in the Ilidoni .”

She set the child down. Paz saw his mother motioning to him. He walked over to her and she threw her arms around him, hugging him like she used to when he was small. He started to ask her what was going on, but she held her fingers over his mouth. They both looked at Jane and her husband.

“You can’t do sorcery anymore, can you? The rat bit the baby, so they burned down the house.” Her voice became softer, and she reached out her hand to him, tentatively. “Is there any of you left in there, Witt? Anything?”

Paz couldn’t see the man’s face, but he saw the glittering black knife flying at the little girl and heard the hoarse cry, words in a tongue he didn’t know, issue from the man’s throat. He pulled away from his mother and leaped toward them, although he knew it was going to be too late. But Jane stepped aside and crouched, with the little girl still on her hip, and somehow the man went stumbling across the room. He caromed off the refrigerator. The glass knife flew from his hand, spun through the air, hit the stove top, and shattered.

Now a high-pitched shrieking, like a siren. Dawn Slotsky was back among the conscious. Paz started to move toward Moore, but Slotsky was off the table and on him, screaming and battering Paz with her fists. She sank her nails into his face. He grabbed at her hands, and over her shoulder was able to see Witt Moore get to his feet and take an eight-inch chef’s knife from the magnetic rack over the sink. Paz looked around wildly for Jane but she was gone. In an instant so was Moore. Paz yelled for his mother.