CHAPTER XIX
THE BAMBOULA
DOCTOR FOUCHÈRE returned shortly after dark. He expressed himself as delighted at seeing his guest.
This man was by far the most brilliant Haytian of Dessalines' acquaintance; his life had been spent largely in the capitals of Europe; the later association with his wife had done much to give him polish. The element which raised him most above his compatriots was the fact that he came of higher caste. There are caste grades among the African negro as with any other great race, and Fouchère was descended from the highest of these. He was a Marabout of direct descent; a breed distinct by virtue of both physical and mental superiority; his maternal grandmother was still alive; she was a mama-loi, at least eighty years of age; in appearance, forty.
Dessalines, fatigued by his long journey, retired early; the Fouchères did the same. Haytians retire early when they retire at all. Dessalines' sleep was deep and refreshing; at dawn he awoke brimming with strength. Jules shaved him, laid out ultra-English riding clothes, and when Dessalines descended for déjeuner the effect he produced upon his host and hostess was flatteringly noticable.
In the morning Dessalines rode down the mountain to confer at greater length with General Miragoâne. The voluptuary chuckled as he greeted him.
"And La Fouchère?" he questioned. "Was she glad to see you, Aristide, camarade? Can you not manage to get rid of that peacock, her husband! Oh, m'cher! oh, oh!"
Miragoâne detested Dr. Fouchère whom he regarded with a secret awe but thought proud and un-Haytian. Fouchère spoke of Miragoâne as "ce paysan Miragoâne."
"Mon Général," replied Dessalines reprovingly, "it is the time for war, not women."
"Oh,—oh,—you are right, m'cher!" exclaimed the general, accepting the reproof good-naturedly from Dessalines of whom he was sincerely fond; the two promptly became involved in strategy.
Dessalines lunched with his general; later in the afternoon he mounted his great horse and rode slowly up the mountain. Half way to La Coupe he met Fouchère who was riding down in haste.
"Holà, Aristide!" called the latter, drawing rein so sharply that his pony slid for several feet upon his haunches. "Myself, I am for Port au Prince. News comes that there is prospect of fighting at Petit Goâve between the Fouchardists and the Firminists! Peste, this accursed turbulence! I have houses in Petit Goâve and some fool is sure to set them ablaze."
"But you are not going there?" cried Dessalines.
"No; I go to demand protection for my property from the Provisional Government. It can do no good, but may serve to reimburse me in the event of any destruction. I must haste. Au revoir, camarade! Madam is expecting you; you will of course remain until my return." With a flourish of his hat and a gash of his cruel spurs Fouchère sped on down the tor rent- washed road.
Dessalines continued, disturbed in mind; he did not desire to be left alone with La Fouchère. It was evident that he attracted her. One felt her to be lawless as a forest fire; less restrained than the tempest; her soul contained neither fear nor modesty; also, she had a mind; more than he.
Fouchère he liked and respected, although there was an element about the Marabout which awakened his distrust. Yet he was his friend, and Dessalines, imitative, of strong natural decency, innate tendencies for good, was still colored by his British precepts. In the bright sunshine, decency predominated over religious scruples; as soon as the shadows began to lengthen, this decency would dwindle and his impulses would be restrained by the flaming vision of an irate God. He would scent brimstone as his passions swelled. But now, in the daylight, it was his clean British perception which prevailed; the sight of his conventional costume, riding breeches, gloves, crop, boots, all so English, did much to strengthen his good resolution.
Madam was reclining upon the veranda when he arrived. Dessalines joined her. Célèstine brought wine and biscuits; champagne, tepid and in glasses which according to Haytian custom were not overclean. In Europe, neither would have raised such a glass to the lips; in Hayti one scarcely noticed it; it stood in no relief against the smirched background.
Madam was pensive, quiet, the quiet of the dozing cat who will prowl the night through; the air was fine but hot. She permitted Dessalines to fan her, watching him dreamily from beneath long, curving lashes. Swathed as she was in the silk kimono, each detail of a figure entirely voluptuous, was accentuated. Dessalines feared to look at her.
She said little, watching him chiefly; her smoky hair enveloping her pallid face in nebulous wisps; her many-colored eyes mere slits; bosoms aquiver with each long breath; lithe body, supple as a puma as she turned to ease her position. Dessalines forgot England; his mouth grew dry. He thought of Saint Anthony, a ridiculous legend told him in his boyhood by a Jesuit priest, but serious to him as such biblical folklore always is to a savage.
At last, to his relief, madam arose to dress for dinner. She slipped from the hammock, the kimono slid above her knees; her legs were bare, white as snow, rounded as are never the legs of negresses. Dessalines went also to dress.
At half past six Fouchère had not returned. Dessalines was troubled, but being told by his hostess that they would dine at seven, he went to the apartment placed at his disposal to change his costume. Dessalines was still dressing when La Fouchère, who was on the veranda, heard a horseman approaching the house by the road which led up the mountain from Port au Prince. A moment later a negro boy, riding the pony of Dr. Fouchère, dismounted at the gate.
"A letter for madam from M. le Docteur," he said. La Fouchère eagerly tore open the missive. It read:
Ma Belle Déesse:
Business calls me in haste to Anse-à-Veau. Retain him at all costs for forty-eight hours. F.
Madam Fouchère laughed, then frowned; she had meant to detain Dessalines, but not for purposes of politics. She had confided in her husband the ambitions of Dessalines. Fouchère knew that Dessalines had sailed from New York; knew his projects in large measure; intended to employ these projects for purposes of his own. He trusted his wife; his vanity made him believe her incapable of deceiving him. He flattered himself also that she not only loved but feared him.
Madam was not long in recovering from her pique. What the game now lacked in flavor it gained in safety. Madam was an epicure; æsthetic, she was at the same time discreet; she loved life; it held much for her as it might for one of highly developed senses and the mind to use them to the limits of their capacities, and that without surfeit.
She entered the house, held the letter over one of the piano candles, saw it consumed, began to play. She was a skilled and talented musician.
"I have received word from Fouchère," she said, still glancing back at Dessalines over her bare, rounded shoulder. She ran her fingers over the keys. Madam was informal; Bohemian.
"Ah!" replied Dessalines eagerly, "he is coming?"
La Fouchère, with a stab of pique, observed the eagerness of his tone. She turned and regarded him with reproach.
"Do you then so fear a tête-à-tête with me, my friend. I am quite harmless; I will not bite." Her white teeth closed with a little click which belied her words. "No; he regrets that the present unsettled condition of the country makes it imperative for him to go to Petit Goâve. He has a plantation there, and you know one expects a battle between the troops of Firmin and Fouchard. He prays that you will remain here until his return."
"He is … you are both most kind," replied Dessalines, "but that will be quite impossible."
"At any rate you cannot leave here to-night."
"Not conveniently; I will remain to-night with gratitude."
Dinner was served. Madam was delightful; witty, sparkling, she scintillated. Before long Dessalines' confidence had returned; he himself grew talkative. The atmosphere of conventionality, madam in a dinner gown of Paris make, perfect fitting, modest, he himself in faultless evening clothes, Jules properly assisting in the service; it was delightful.
Madam's mood of coquetry seemed passed; there were no half-veiled significances; her manner held a delightful camaraderie; it was thus that one should be treated by the wife of a friend. A negro, a child, and a dog have a strong sense of the fatness of things. Lack of propriety worried Dessalines, puzzled and half frightened him, placed him ill at his ease. But there was nothing of this to-night. He rested. Madam had enjoyed her rest in the afternoon.
They dined slowly. Madam drank perhaps a glass of wine; Dessalines took only eau sucré with his dinner, and a glass of crême de menthe at its conclusion. Madam smoked a cigarette; Dessalines did not smoke; he had no vices. As a boy he had essayed the use of tobacco; it had nauseated him; he never tried it again.
When they left the table madam went to the piano; she played a few pieces: "le Cake Walk" as the Parisians say. Dessalines was delighted; he was unable to keep his feet from shuffling.
Later they went out on the veranda. The night was very dark, very humid, heavy with perfumes; directly beneath, the depth of the valley seemed profound, elusive through the murk, canopied by a veil of haze which might have been vapor, might have been a dimness of the eyes. Up from the abyss there floated random, muffled sounds—the cry of a night bird, water murmuring with a sound which suggested subterranean cascades. Once a wail, long, eerie, inviting, floated weirdly up; it seemed a summons. Madam started and clasped both hands over her bosom: Dessalines' nostrils dilated at the sound; the skin twitched at the back of his neck; an odd gurgle arose to his throat.
There was a silence. Madam leaned toward him; her voice trembled as she spoke.
"Have you ever attended the dance, Comte Dessalines?"
His heart leaped at the query.
"The bamboula?"
"Yes; the parent of all dances."
"In my boyhood—once. It terrified me; then the priest forbade it. I never went again."
"I did not know that you were Catholic."
"I am not; I am strongly Protestant."
"Church of England?"
"No; madam. A small sect which exists only in one district in England. As a boy I was Catholic, but later was accidentally brought to the true faith."
"How droll! But it would interest you to see a bamboula."
"It is a sinful, pagan orgy … the curse of our nation."
"But do you not think it your duty as the father of your country to be acquainted with its curses in order that you may stamp them out?"
Dessalines hesitated. He had known a clergyman who informed him that he frequently visited the brothels of London for this purpose."
"Of course," pursued madam, "it is impossible that the orgy could interest you more than as a savage spectacle. Listen!"
From deep in the shadow there came a hollow, rhythmic sound; even, monotonous, varying no fraction of time.
Dessalines bristled, twitched, felt his muscles quiver; tremors, cold as ice, ran through each nerve. His heart began to pound furiously; his breath quickened; his mouth grew dry. A wolf reared among dogs might have so quivered at the distant midnight howl of one of his own kind; a tiger, reared on milk, might have so quivered at the scent of warm, fresh blood.
He recovered himself with an effort; he did not notice the agitation of madam.
"When I am in power," he said in a low voice, "I will investigate and abolish such practices."
Presently the drum ceased its beating. Dessalines breathed deeply with relief.
"You are fatigued," said madam presently. "You would like to retire?"
"I thank you. I have been much in the sun to-day," replied Dessalines. He was aware of the utter impossibility of sleep, but he knew that the drum would later recommence. He wished to fight his fight alone; to have recourse to prayer.
"Then let us retire; I also am fatigued," said madam, and this time he caught the suppressed trembling of her voice and it seemed to set his heart on fire. Her eyes were glowing like the pit of a crucible. They rested for a moment upon his and she gave him a hand, cold as ice.
"Good night, my friend, may your dreams be such as you desire!"
•••••
Dessalines awoke, still upon his knees. The night wind striking down from the heights smote his bare chest and he shivered with the chill. A late, yellow moon blazed luridly through his wide-opened jalousies .
His numbed faculties roused. Hark! … the drum! … pulsing up with insistent beat; the scent of the stephanotis, distilled in the sun, dissolved in the dew; he crouched quivering.
Outside his window a balcony ran the length of the house. A loose plank creaked; a thin, banded shadow flitted through his opened door, lay athwart his couch.
"Dessalines … Dessalines … Dessalines!" From without there came a whisper, sibilant as the hiss of a snake. He arose stealthily and stole to the casement.
Without stood La Fouchère. She was in her kimono, and the late moonlight turned her neck and arms a creamy, diaphanous yellow. She leaned on the rail, staring down into the valley.
"Ah, madam!" gasped Dessalines, "you are indiscreet … you forget that your husband is absent!" His voice had the imploring accent of a boy about to be chastised.
She raised her hand. "Listen, mon ami!"
"It is not well to listen," said Dessalines with a shudder.
She turned to him suddenly. "I wish to go down; to witness this thing. I cannot sleep."
"But, madam, it is not a thing for you to see!"
"Nevertheless, I wish to see it. I am going! Must I go alone? We can sit back in the shadows and watch; it is an exciting spectacle; to the peasants it is maddening, infuriating, but to us it will remain a spectacle. Will you accompany me?"
"I cannot permit madam to go alone—but it is a madness. What would your husband say?"
"He would be amused. He often attends; he considers it most diverting, a frolic. Once he permitted me to accompany him."
"But I implore madam"
"Nevertheless I am going down. I will slip on a traveling cloak. Ah, look! Is it not fascinating, mon ami!"
The yellow moon had peered over the shoulder of the mountain and bathed the tentlike mist in a sheen of amber; it hung a golden veil, the apron of the mountain; while up from beneath came the steady beat of the drum.
La Fouchère slipped into her room to reappear in a gray traveling cloak; beneath it peeped her bare ankles and feet encased in slippers of pink brocade. She handed to Dessalines a dressing gown.
"Come," she said impatiently. He followed her through her own room, down the stairs and out into the soft, sensuous night. They passed swiftly and in silence down the road to the valley, then turned sharply into a path which led straight over the brow of the declivity.
•••••
Down they went by a winding trail which wound first through the bananas, then over the brink of a slope so steep that one hardly held a footing; next into the jungle, beneath a foliage too dense to permit the passage of one errant ray of light.
Into this murk La Fouchère slipped like a fay. Her small hand clutched the wrist of Dessalines, partly in support, partly to guide his steps. For herself there was no doubt, but in the rush of his emotions Dessalines did not pause to wonder at her familiarity with the way. Twigs lashed his face; bamboo thorns ripped head and shoulders.
"Not so fast!" he gasped, but La Fouchère panting, still dragged him on. He marveled at the strength of her slim fingers.
The beat of the drum was incessant, but seemed to grow no nearer; would grow no nearer although they stood at the shoulder of him who beat it.
They crossed an open glade where the moonbeams straggled down in sickly pallor. Half way across, a thick voice boomed from the inky darkness beyond.
"Ou c'a v'aller?"
"Fouchère!" panted the woman.
"Bon!" growled the negro sentinel and slipped back into the gloom.
There were others near, for Dessalines heard a voice say "La belle Française," and a low, mocking laugh from some dark recess.
A light glowed upward, increasing suddenly as they approached, until it seemed as if the whole jungle were ablaze; a few steps and they had reached the edge of the amphitheater—a clearing in the forest. It seemed to Dessalines that the god of darkness here worshiped, had taken an active part in the furnishing of his tabernacle. About an open space of perhaps fifty feet in diameter there was a circle of dead and dying trees; trees girdled by cane hooks, and from the giant limbs of these which clawed against the darkening sky line like gaunt, crooked fingers, there hung funereal festoons of moss which swayed gently in the upward rush of heated air from a huge fire, roaring in the middle of the elliptic, open space.
This much Dessalines saw while yet within the shelter of the trees. He saw also that a great concourse thronged the outer edge of the amphitheater; the firelight shone redly on scores of ebony faces, glistening with sweat from the great heat. Every black recess was the nest of negro faces; their twisted limbs as they crouched uncouthly were indistinguishable from the gnarled roots of the trees.
La Fouchère stopped suddenly; her lithe body swayed to this side and that as she peered beneath the screening boughs; she turned to Dessalines and her pale face shone eerie against the surrounding black ones; she smiled with a flash of her white teeth. Her body swayed toward him.
"We will creep to the edge and sit where we can watch," she whispered. "They have not yet begun."
They worked their way quietly to the edge of the amphitheater; here they were visible, but of their presence none gave any sign. Dessalines, the sweat streaming into his eyes from the heat of the fire, stared about him with awed interest; the early summons, their furtive arrival, the sinister surroundings all stirred powerfully something deep within him; something of which he had always been conscious, lived in fear, dreaded to awaken. Now it quivered, seemed to stretch and expand, a genius long dormant, roused to action by the terrific heat, the unhallowed rites.
La Fouchère motioned for him to sit upon the ground; he sank into the angle formed by the spreading, buttressed roots of a great ma-poo tree. She dropped to his side, her body against his, her head against his great arm. They waited in silence.
At the farther end of the amphitheater he saw dimly through the flames a large, square object, apparently an altar built of logs and mud; it was chest high; upon it lay a bleeding carcass which might have been that of a goat.
They waited in silence for many minutes, and all the while from some unseen, dark corner the drum continued its even, tireless beat. The fire burned lower; the heat of the flames became supportable, its crackling less loud. No sound, came from the waiting audience; one caught the flash of white eyeballs, ruby hued in the reflected light, the glistening of black, reeking faces; that was all.
"Look!" whispered La Fouchère suddenly.
Into the inclosure there had flitted a wild figure; a woman, stark naked, tall, muscular in form and with a skin as fine as black satin. She wore a necklace of human finger bones threaded upon a thong. Her feet were incased in colored sandals. Her hair, black and straight, was tied with wisps of colored worsted. In her hand was a long bone. She turned several times, then crouched before the altar.
"The mama-loi!" whispered La Fouchère. "She is the grandmother of my husband; is she not droll?"
A twig snapped; then came the rustle of moving bodies and the pat, pat of naked feet upon the hard packed earth. Into the open there emerged a file of negroes. They passed behind the altar and down the sides of the amphitheater. They were of both sexes, apparently quite young; they sat upon the ground and again there was silence.
Suddenly the priestess sprang from the ground and tapped three times upon the altar with the bone she held in her hand; then rapidly she made the circuit of the inclosure, mumbling words unintelligible to Dessalines. Having made the circuit she passed in front of the altar and uttered what seemed a sharp command. The effect was instant; the dark assemblage arose like a wave; one by one they approached the altar, were harangued by the mama-loi, made obeisance, and shuffled back to their places.
This ceremony was short; the worshipers were eager for the dance. Men brought a great caldron which was swung above the fire; in securing it some of the contents was spilled and it seemed to Dessalines that the fluid was sanguineous. Others brought goats which were roasted whole.
The mama-loi traced two circles about the fire; then stepping to a young man who had entered with the neophytes she took him by the hand and led him trembling to the circle; as he entered she handed him fetishes, bones, hair, feathers tied in little bundles, some of which articles she swung about his neck. Striking him lightly with her baton of bone she began a weird, monotonous chant to the time of the drum which had never ceased its even beat, and suddenly the entire assemblage caught up a wild inspiring chorus.
The effect upon the youth was startling; his first frenzied leap carried him from the circle, into which the mama-loi turned him. The song continued; the rapid motions of the man increased in time, became more extravagant, wilder, less coordinate, and at last convulsive. With a startled scream he pitched suddenly upon his face and lay writhing.
His place was taken by another of the neophytes, this time a girl; the same phenomena resulted, while moans, sobs, stifled cries seemed wrenched from the savage audience.
Against the shoulder of Dessalines, La Fouchère stirred restlessly; he heard the gasps of her rapid breathing. The dancers were now in twos and threes—groups of whirling, gyrating figures, many of whom were falling from exhaustion and were dragged by others into the jungle. Soon the neophytes had disappeared; others from the edge of the amphitheater took their places. All, as they danced, drank great draughts of the mixture in the caldron; the women tore the clothes from their bodies.
Dessalines, from the depths of his lair, had watched silently. At first the sinister scene had excited him, stirred his wild fancies, half frightened him. This sensation had been dispelled by the mummery about the altar; as an educated man it roused his contempt; as a Christian, his righteous anger. It had given him time to collect himself; to array his forces against what was to follow: the dance which had nothing to do with aught but the senses; made no appeal to the mind.
As the dance commenced he had watched in a disgusted horror which increased when the victim fell foaming to the ground. Then the girl had leaped into the ring to take his place; she was physically pleasing, her lithe movements were full of grace. He became intertested; he was stirred, but sorry when she had been overcome.
Other women had danced; danced less modestly, yet with a frenzy which made their actions less obscene than startling; theirs was not lewdness; it was sexuality gone staring mad. Far more demoralizing was the brain-eroding beat of the bamboula and the frenzied clamor to which it set its flawless time. Dessalines forgot his contempt; he struggled to remember that he was a spectator; cold, dispassionate, watching from a height the writhings of worms. His muscles began to twitch, his bulging eyes to roll.
The dance progressed; beside him La Fouchère trembled spasmodically. Shocking scenes were enacted; the earth seemed to have ruptured and spewed up the denizens of hell. The drum beat on; the chorus grew hoarse, supplicating, convulsive. Dessalines' brain swam; like a drowning man all but unconscious, he fought on blindly, not knowing why he should fight. He gripped the tortuous roots beneath him until his fingers burst and the blood oozed out unheeded. He had known temptation many times before, the temptation of the virile human animal to slip the leash which binds it to the mental part and range untrammeled; now it was not temptation which he fought; it was the death of his soul: the soul he had so struggled to possess, to hold cleanly.
He had no idea toward what he was impelled; no thought; his longing was to let go; to leap into the circle and rave and revel and drink that bloody brew. It forced cries from his chest; he struggled against a torturing impulse to give his great voice vent in a roar of the chorus of that maddening song which seemed to shake the foundations of the swamp; set the tree roots aquiver. He was the battle ground of an unfair fight; centuries crowding decades; the outcome could only be one way.
The great fire burned lower, unheeded; the leaping flames sank, licking redly along the burned-out embers, now shooting upward to shrink again. These flaring lights painted in a flash sights at which the soul of the struggling man reached and recoiled and sprang again, eager as the yellow tongues of the panting fire; reaching for what the shadows held, recoiling from what the flames showed. The fire became merely a lurid glow; glistening shapes, heaving bodies, swam about him; the gloom of the jungle was peopled with unreal hell shapes; they represented the concentrated lust from the earth from which they had been banished. The air was thick with black passions.
Something stirred at his side—a flutter, a gasp. A white figure passed between him and the palpitating glow of the fire, lightly, with the swirl of a wisp of smoke borne on a zephyr. A low laugh trilled above the guttural sighs springing from the glistening shapes seen dimly through the gloom. Again the laugh bubbled like a spring from the side of a mossy bank—a cool, a fresh, a thirsty sound in that place of gaspings. The light of the fire was almost out, yet enough remained to touch dimly these figures, the unregenerate ones of the fanatics, the degenerate shape of the griffone as she danced lightly, silhouetted against the central glow.
And then as the embers cooled she seemed to fade; to slip away even as she danced and laughed, and, as she faded, the gurgling laugh suddenly changed ; it carried a new note—the call of kind, and as this call pierced his straining senses the things which held him to the present snapped; he slipped back into the shadow.