Away from Home (17 page)

A tall Negro man walked into the center of the clearing, wearing a costume that was a combination of that of a priest and a medicine man. His white robes and feathers flapped behind him. In his hand he held a stick which seemed to have been dipped in white paint or liquid chalk. An assistant walked behind him carrying a bottle filled with this white fluid. The medicine manpriest began to draw a series of signs on the earth: circles, lines, a long cross. Every now and then he dipped the end of the stick into the white fluid. It reminded Helen of the stuff Bert used to use when he painted white lines on a freshly rolled tennis court on summer mornings. Those days seemed so foreign now that she felt as though she were the only person in this group who even knew such things existed. The choir of women kept on singing, more softly now.

The medicine man—priest lifted his head and howled out a line of some strange language. “Yes, yes,” the women intoned. He stooped to draw more signs on the earth and then raised his head and spoke again, loudly, in a harsh voice. “Yes, yes,” agreed the women. They continued to sing. In the distance, from a
favella
in the darkness, a rooster crowed. Everyone applauded. Evidently this was one of the signs they had been waiting for.

There was a sense of growing restlessness. Again the rooster crowed, a cry so loud and roosterlike that Helen wondered for a moment if it were artificial. The people applauded again. How could they make a rooster crow in the middle of the night? It made her skin feel cold. The women continued to sing, sweetly, monotonously, hypnotically. The rooster crowed again, but this time his cry was so loud and sharp that Helen realized how they had made him crow. She didn’t want to think about it. She hoped they were only tweaking his feathers, not torturing him. She remembered then that in a Macumba blood had to be shed, and that often in these modern days it was only the blood of a living fowl, although sometimes it turned out to be human.

Whenever the breeze turned there was a stench from the open ditches which passed for plumbing here in the
favellas
. The ground was damp under her feet and she scarcely dared move in the dark. She glanced at the partition that separated the men from the women. She could see the raised heads of Brazilians with wide-open, glittering eyes watching intensely. No one turned to look at her. She realized that right now none of these people seemed to have any sex, male or female, but only the one common urge: to call up the spirits of Black Magic here on the dark mountaintop and hear the spirits speak through their own bodies.

The medicine man—priest walked around the periphery of the clearing now, looking at the bystanders. He stopped near to Helen and pointed with his hand to a man. The man came forward, through the opening in the fence, and walked into the clearing. He was wearing faded cotton clothes, like a worker, and he was barefoot.

Helen felt Leila’s cold fingers on her arm. “Oh, I thought for a moment he was going to choose me!” Leila breathed, her eyes wide with fear.

“I wouldn’t go,” Helen whispered.

“You
have
to go.”

The man who had been chosen hopped around the clearing in an awkward, stiff dance. Everyone watched him closely, in silence, except the white-robed singers, who continued their soft chanting. Suddenly he clutched his heart, his eyes rolled back in his head, his head fell back, and he emitted a guttural grunt as if he were choking. He stiffened, his hands at his sides, the fingers bent stiffly like the fingers of someone in an epileptic fit, and he crashed down to the ground, stiff and straight, not even putting out his arms to break his fall at the last second. There was a gasp from the crowd. For a few moments the fallen man did not move, and then he stirred weakly and began to writhe. Two men ran into the clearing from the crowd and helped him to stand and then almost carried him away. There was blood on his head and saliva coming out of his mouth.

The medicine man—priest looked displeased. He waved his stick and drew more signs on the earth. The assistant brought lighted candles and set them at various points on the white drawing. There was an obvious air of unease in the crowd now, and a stirring and whispering, as if something had gone wrong. A few feet behind where Helen and Leila were standing there was a wooden plank shack with an open front and a counter, like a sort of snack bar. The two men who had escorted the stricken man away reappeared and went to this shack, where a girl gave them tin cups of coffee. They whispered concernedly to the girl and she shook her head. Now several other people from the crowd were drifting up to the shack to refresh themselves, all of them whispering and looking worried. The girl who was giving out coffee and some liquid that looked like
cachaça
seemed so gentle and pretty that Helen took up courage to speak to her.

“What is it?” she asked softly. “What has happened?”

“It is bad,” the girl whispered back. “That man was not supposed to fall that way. He disobeyed. The priest gave him a task which he did not do.”

“What will happen now?”

The girl shook her head. She seemed reluctant, or frightened. “I don’t know. They haven’t decided. He will have to pay some kind of penance or else the spirits will not speak tonight. Perhaps he will be whipped.” She shook her head again. “It is bad.”

Oh, no, Helen thought. I don’t want to stay here to see someone being beaten or tortured. I want to get out of here.

The medicine man—priest was in consultation with his assistant. More of the onlookers were walking about now, as calmly as if they were taking an intermission. Helen could not understand how they could be so calm; yet, it was not really calmness but resignation. They seemed to accept that something violent was going to have to happen before the spirits of Black Magic would be appeased, and until that form of violence was decided upon or showed itself spontaneously they were going to drink sugarcane alcohol and wait.

After a few minutes they began to go back to their seats. The singing began to grow louder. The man who had fallen went back into the clearing. He wore a small white bandage on the side of his head where he had been hurt by his fall. He began to hop, carefully and solemnly, around the outline of the white chalk drawing. Perhaps, Helen thought hopefully, they are giving him another chance. She shivered.

A large, stout old woman, dressed in a voluminous white sheet and puffing on a cigar, walked out of the crowd then and into the clearing. She hopped up and down with surprising energy despite her huge bulk, puffing intermittently on the cigar and letting forth a stream of unintelligible words. Everyone seemed pleased to see her doing this and watched her seriously and admiringly. The fat woman began to whirl. She whirled around and around, digging up the dirt with her bare toes like a pile driver, the bits of earth spraying out around her feet, her arms held stiffly at her sides, her fingers crooked like the claws of an arthritic. Then she fell to the ground and writhed there, babbling the unknown tongue, clawing at the earth with her stiffened fingers. Finally she lay still, her eyes rolled back so only their white showed. She was left to lie there where she had fallen.

A thin woman then followed her, and a very old man, both of them hopping and whirling independently, as if no one were watching them but the spirit that had overtaken their jerking bodies.
Ahhh
… came a sound from the crowd, a sound of awe and satisfaction. The spirits of Macumba had been called up; the spirits were here. The thin woman fell into a crouch, her head rubbing the dirt, her arms and legs curled together as if she were a sick animal. The old man tripped and sprawled awkwardly, and then tried weakly to get to his feet. A man entered the clearing from the crowd to help him, and when he was standing again the old man tried again to do this possessed dance, although he was so weak he could hardly move.

There was a young girl’s frightened scream. From the bleachers a girl who could not have been more than sixteen tore herself away from the restraining hands of her friends and tried to crawl under the fence to get into the clearing. She hit her head on the wooden crossbar, so loudly that Helen could hear the crack, but she did not seem to feel it. Blood was pouring down her cheek from a cut above her eye, and the eye was beginning to close, but she did not seem to feel that either, and she danced and hopped until she fainted. The girl who had screamed began to sob.

“She is my sister!” the weeping girl cried out. “She is my sister! Someone help her!” She broke away from the others and jumped over the fence.

There were several people bending over the fallen girl, and two of them lifted her and carried her out of the clearing. Her sister followed, crying, holding on to the unconscious girl as though her touch might save her. The blood she had left where she fell was beginning to seep into the bare earth.

People were beginning to come forward now as supplicants to the altar, to ask for favors. Kill my enemy, make my enemy sicken and die. My husband beats me; put a curse on him. Kill my wife, because I have found a better woman. Break my neighbor’s legs; he has stolen from me. Requests in ominous whispers to the dark spirit, from hearts so full of superstition, resentment, and frustration that the force of these emotions alone filled the air like the power of a presence. It was not the black spirit of evil these people were calling upon, but the dark fears within themselves. Standing behind the fence, staring at the tiny winking candle flames, listening to the song that was as old and persuasive as the sound of the tides of the sea, Helen began to tremble.

I want, the people whispered to the dark spirit. I need, I need, I need. Take me away, into the sea, into the sky, into the heart of the candle flame. Give me a new life. Help me.… The night breeze wafted the ugly odors of poverty and filth, the rooster screamed from a dark shack, and the strange, sweetish cigar smoke hovered on the air, filled with fever dreams. Helen felt her body beginning to sway with the music.

Her feet moved, first only a tapping in time to the rhythm of the song, then forward. She felt herself inching toward the fence and she was powerless to stop. The clearing was almost filled now with people hopping and writhing, crying out in the sounds they had kept locked within their hearts, tortured, guttural sounds, the voice of the Macumba magic. A very old woman, bent over with arthritis, crept into the clearing and suddenly straightened up with a shrill cry of triumph. She fell to the ground then and crawled, her arms outstretched and fingers clawing ahead of her, oblivious of the dirt that covered her dress, her chin, even her mouth, as she strove to reach closer to the call of the spirit.

Oh, God, Helen thought, I don’t want to be old like that and lost. I want … I want … She felt delirious. She wasn’t sure what it was, but she knew that something had already been lost to her, and had been lost for a long, long time, stolen, unattainable. Loneliness filled her and she felt such an emptiness that it seemed as if there were no body inside her skin at all. She held out her arms and her empty hands, not knowing for what, moving forward and shivering in the warm night breeze.

She brushed by the partition as she moved forward and she felt a hand take hold of her shoulder, so lightly it might not have touched her at all. She stopped and turned her head. Sergio Leite Braga was standing against the men’s side of the partition, reaching out with his hand, his face very white in the candlelight.

“Let’s get out of here,” he whispered in English. She realized then that his hand was cold, and he looked as if he were going to be sick.

“I … don’t know,” she whispered.

“I’m leaving for a while,” Sergio said. His tone was forcedly casual, but he spoke so quickly she knew he would not give her time to decide. She suddenly felt that if he were to leave now he would melt back into the black, leafy mountainside and she would never meet him again.

She went quickly to Leila and touched her. “I’m going to wait in the car.” She pushed past the others again, past the men’s area, and out to the gate which led to the dark steps.

He was standing there waiting for her, and when he saw it was she he turned without a word and opened the gate. Two natives were standing there who had arrived too late to be allowed in. They were standing patiently and resignedly, leaning against the fence, and one of them carried a bottle of
cachaça
. They looked as though they would be willing to wait there all night.

Helen had to hold on to the railing and look carefully at the ground to keep her footing. When they had gone a few steps Sergio looked back to see if she were still there, like a man first coming back to consciousness, and then he slowed his pace so she could follow close behind him. They could hear the sounds of the singing and outcries all the way down the hill.

The air seemed very clear at the bottom of the hill, and the voices and lights were so far away that now they seemed only a bad dream which one could view with tolerance and no fear. But Helen could not stop trembling. She did not feel ill; she simply felt as if something within her had been exposed and was exposed still, throbbing and vulnerable. She did not know what to do to close it up and protect it again, so she waited and trembled.

Sergio took her hand, and his hand was no longer cold. “Do you feel all right now?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I feel so strange. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

“I do too. I had to get out of there.”

They began to walk slowly, hand in hand, toward his car. Although Helen had heard gruesome stories about what happened to people who ventured into the
favella
district alone at this hour of night, now she did not feel in the least afraid. She felt as though every evil thing which might happen was safely occupied in that orgy on the mountaintop. The plateau where they were was still high; through the trees she could see the faraway glitter of the city. She had a sense of height and isolation, but now not loneliness.

“I need a drink,” Sergio said. “I think that would help.”

“Do you feel strange?”

“Very. You know, my friends were smiling as if it were all a big joke. They didn’t feel anything. But I felt something supernatural. I don’t know what it was. I knew I had to get out of there, and when I looked at you I knew you did too.”