Flying in the Heart of the Lafayette Escadrille (37 page)

I argued with a man once who claimed Jesus couldn’t be in heaven because he committed suicide. He made an analogy: if a man stands in a highway, knowing a truck is bearing down on him, and he does nothing to save himself, then he killed himself. Jesus, he said, knew crucifixion was coming and did nothing to save himself.

I said there is no philosophic intent in suicide. A martyr dies for a cause. Suicide is self-serving. Martyrdom is selfless. Intent makes the martyr. But isn’t it at least a kind of death wish? he said. Why seek death? I don’t know. It could be a death wish. My friends at Greenpeace accused me of as much when I left. “Lone activists don’t come back,” someone told me. “They just disappear.”

But I didn’t feel on the way to my death walking behind Seydou. The sun was still the sun, though a little hotter than I liked, and the good ground felt solid beneath my feet. Nothing appeared any different here than it did in Abdijan or Sydney or Santiago or Chicago. It’s a part of Earth’s wonder: at the same time New York literati gather to toast some poet’s latest book, down the street cancer kills a young woman in the oncological ward, while a block away a seventeen-year-old basketball player passes an Algebra test for the first time, while across the globe a child who thinks she’s a witch doctor digs for diamonds in the day and is molested by the assistant to the assistant crew chief at night.

Same planet, different worlds.

Seydou led me on a trail through the brush. Higher on the hills, the ground was dry, dusty and porcelain hard. Animal musk, oxen or cattle I supposed, mixed with hot ground.

Seydou said “Where are you from?”

I’d been to so many places in the previous years, I wasn’t sure how to answer. “I’m from Abdijan, and I’m here to help.”

She nodded emphatically as if she knew what I was talking about. What would she take from that? I wanted to prevent the child labor? Surely not. Or I was investigating Devoe?

I asked her how many children worked in the pits. She shrugged her shoulders. “All of them. Have you seen Dipri before?”

“No.”

“Do not talk to anyone. They will ignore you.” She stopped on the trail, and I almost ran into her. “Are you a good man, like your saints? They say God used them. Would
you
be a tool for good?”

A sweat sheen glistened on her face. Sometime before we’d left, she had cleaned herself and changed. Where I thought she was skinny before, I saw wiry strength. “Yes, I would. That is why I’m here,” I said without hesitation.

“I thought so. I can tell. Devoe does not like you, you know? He mocks you when your back is turned. That speaks well for you.”

I mulled that over. It didn’t bother me Devoe didn’t like me. He was a part of the problem, the lower, brutish part that implemented policies formed in some distant, clean boardroom by men who never went to where their policies ruined lives, but a part just the same. It did make me think I should watch Devoe. After all, if my report did any good, he could lose his job, perhaps even be arrested.

“Thank you,” I said. Ahead I saw buildings, not the tin-roofed ones I’d seen everywhere between Abdijan and Seguela, but sturdy mud-walled houses with darkly thatched roofs. On the first house we passed, a humped thatch pile turned to watch as we went by, and I realized someone was in it.

Seydou noticed. “It is a panther man. He will come down soon and take part in the ceremonies.”

I walked backwards for a few steps, watching him, afraid he might leap from the roof. What, exactly, was panther-like in the panther men? His eyes peeked out beneath thick, dried leaves. Some strands had been braided into circles above his head. But other than his eyes, which I hadn’t seen at first, and his hands poking out from the costume, I wouldn’t have known he was human if he hadn’t moved.

“They are not civilized anymore,” she said. “They spend seven months in the bush, living as wild animals, to prepare for Dipri. They search for the animal spirits. They search for God too, Baily, like you.”

She baffled me. How could she come to that conclusion from a book and a short conversation?

The Wè village marked the boundary between Seydou’s universe and mine. Even the sun’s quality seemed altered. Colors sharpened. Nothing seemed fuzzy. A fly landed on a bucket twenty feet away, each leg distinct and individual. I felt I could identify that particular fly if I saw it again. In a swarm, I could pick it out. For the first time in my life, I felt as if I were an alien. The village operated in a different dimension. Only Seydou acknowledged my presence. Only Seydou knew I stood there, but I was invisible to the rest.

A woman staggered by us, bumping into a wall, stumbling for a moment, then going on.

“What is wrong with her?” I said, truly rattled.

Others walked around the village in the same condition. We were in the center of thirty or forty houses where there was a well. Their eyes bulged blankly, and their postures were contorted. Some moaned. Others babbled in Dioula, a dialect in this part of the world I didn’t understand.

“She is possessed by sékés. They control our bodies. Sometimes there are self mutilations, but no pain.” Seydou sought for the proper word as we wove between other villagers, some who seemed fine. A young man smiled at Seydou, and she smiled back. “The sékés are beneficent spirits. Some come from the forest, and from the river and mountains. We hope this Dipri to attract a diamond sékés.”

She sounded reasonable. Intelligent. Well spoken through accent. “You do not believe in these spirits, surely. This is hysterical behavior.” I pointed to the woman who’d bumped us. She thumped into a wall, turned and went the other way.

“And how long have you been seeking God?” Seydou said enigmatically.

“I’m not seeking God.”

Her mood shifted, became dark. “This is not good, here. The company does not care for us. We don’t have schools. We don’t have medicine. During droughts, we suffer. Mothers dry up and their children die. Our elders are buried without ceremony. But we listen to radio. In Seguela, we have seen television. Some of us have gone to schools and come back. We do not have to live like this. We need the price out.”

“A diamond?” I focused my camera on a woman in a one piece dress. Barefooted, cheap plastic gold earrings, close cropped hair; she walked with a limp; one shoulder drooped, as if she suffered from a stroke. She ran into a man seated in the road. He didn’t react to the blow. She almost tripped, then continued her unbalanced walk away. “Maybe you don’t want one. Devoe says bad follows the big stones.”

She said, “And bad will find one.”

Startled, I put my hand on her arm. Those were the words from my dream.

“Everybody knows the stones are cursed. How can a good people find a big diamond without bringing the curse too? It has always been the problem,” she said. “Here, come up and we can see the ceremonies.”

We climbed stairs onto a small platform overlooking the street. I saw several others like it in the village, but I never learned what function they served. In the meantime, it was a good place to watch where the possessed wouldn’t run into us.

Soon a sort of parade formed. Several houses up the street a crowd gathered, chanting, moving to the chant’s rhythm. They made their way toward us, a hundred villagers. A panther man, brandishing a thick-headed club, scuttled by, his leafy outfit rustling. He threatened an old couple, and they flattened themselves against a wall. Some in the parade wore costumes and masks. The masks . . . oh, the masks were arresting: black helmets that covered the face, white shells in lines striping the head or outlining the mouth, or pointing out around the eyes. And red tassels dangling from their chins or lining the foreheads. Their bodies too were striped in white and black. A giant rose up from the crowd. I swallowed a scream. Seydou looked at me and smiled. A man on stilts, wearing a grass skirt, red and black pants to where his knees would be, and blue cloth to his feet, walked among the revelers.

Five dancing, muscled men painted in black and white proceeded the parade, leading it to the our platform. At first I thought they were performing for me, but they weren’t. They looked up, but through me as if I didn’t exist. They performed for Seydou. She stood beside me, her hands on the rail, nodding as they danced. Who was she? Maybe she did act as a shaman to these people. I felt as if I’d entered a cathedral and stood beside the priest. I almost expected her to raise her hands in benediction.

A young girl, wearing a beautiful white-feathered headdress came from the crowd—she might have been eight years old—and joined the dancers. One dancer bent down, forming his hands into a cup; she stepped into it, and he stood, sending her into the air, high above their heads. Two other dancers caught her, bouncing her up again. She spun back to the first who now had a partner. The men tossed her back and forth to the crowd’s applause. Every flight changed. Gravity didn’t hold her. She spun, flipped, rotated backwards, all with long limbed grace. Then, the fifth man stepped into the space between them. The girl flew over his head. He pulled a narrow knife from his waistband, holding it high. The girl bounced back, her arms extended, her back arched, as if in a swan dive. As she reached her peak, the knife tip appeared to touch her. I held my camera at my chest, afraid to raise it to my eyes.

She flipped, kissed the knife as she went over; he appeared to catch her on knife point, to lift her up. The villagers clapped and chanted. The sun beat down and their feet raised dust. My camera dropped to the rail, stopped by my neck strap. I would have fallen; my heartbeat flooded my face, pulsing in my ears, but Seydou touched me. “She’ll be fine,” she said.

Then, the girl sprung from two of the dancers in the other direction, landing on her feet. The knife man howled, his eyes rolling back. He staggered once in a wide circle, his knife blindly in front, and the crowd retreated.

“This is good. The sékés visit him. It means our quest will go well if a dancer receives a spirit.”

The man howled, his back distorted, eyes unfocused. He waved the knife, edge careless, and it caught him on the upper arm, opening a long cut. Skin flapped while blood ran to his elbow. As he twirled, the knife passed by his face, and he seemed to see it for the first time, as if it wasn’t in his hand before. He stood below us, his head level with knees, two feet away. The knife came down, rested on his belly. I could smell his sweat, he posed so close. He looked down at the knife, watching it touch him, and he became very still. The crowd hushed. The knife moved, almost on its own; the dancer did not appear to be in control. It rotated out, so the point stayed on his stomach. He gripped the handle with his thumb on the end, and the blade entered him. Two or three inches disappeared. He cut a slit to the side, then dropped the knife without reaction. No pain displayed. No moan. Blood soaked his shorts; it washed down his leg, over white paint.

I stepped back, chills rushed in my back, goosebumps everywhere, my skin as cold as stone; my gut tightened. The sun, though, still pressed down, sharp-edged, flaming tiny reflections from earrings, from the knife at his feet. Dust caked in my mouth.

He reached into the cut, pulled out a section of his own intestine, then turned to the crowd. They moved in. When he fell in contorted rigor, they caught him.

“He’ll be fine, too,” Seydou said. “They will rub his wound with herbs so he will heal without infection.”

Everyone chanted, bouncing to the rhythm, the heads rising and falling like waves, and it felt as if I were on the ship again, a deep sea swell moving through me. Seydou left the platform and walked into the crowd; they parted to make room for her. She waited for me, then directed me from the village.

I’m not very old, but I’ve been places. I’ve seen things most people have never seen, but I’ve never felt anything like Dipri: people bouncing around me, calling out words, chanting; I heard pattern in the chaos, and they pressed between the houses. Some laughed and chattered, but beneath it was their feet sounds moving down the path, and Seydou’s hand on my back, keeping me in line. A woman bumped me, her eyes roved through the space I occupied, never pausing. She couldn’t see me. Again I felt as if I’d stepped onto another planet. I didn’t belong. Some other day, perhaps, but not today as they walked and danced toward the diamond pit.

It had taken twenty minutes to walk to the village. No time passed before we were at the raw gouge again, over the edge, sliding toward the bottom. The huge pit held us all, the entire village gathered in the middle. They jostled me, but Seydou kept her hand on my back, pushing now, moving to the center. I didn’t feel afraid, but it was as if I’d lost volition. Somewhere between the time when I’d ascended the platform and now, I’d surrendered myself to the day. Villagers’ sweat-damp skin rubbed by me, boys, men, girls, women, the elderly, dancing in the pit. Here their feet dug into mud. Steps splashed. Mud splattered to their knees; on some, it stained their shirts, smeared their faces. People I ran into turned to look, but I had become a space in the crowd; their eyes grew wide. Seydou said in French to them, “It’s fine. Don’t worry,” then she spoke in Dioula.

A voice rose above the chants, swearing. “Whores, you black sons of bitches! Let me go.” Heads turned in that direction. Seydou’s final push brought me to the center, a cleared area ten feet wide. I stood in the middle, Seydou behind me. Two burly men held Devoe between them, pinning his arms to their chests. He roared something in another language. It might have been German, but it sounded obscene. Then, he saw me. “Baily, tell them to let me be.” His face twisted in fear.

Around us the villagers pressed in close, quiet now and intent. Seydou moved beside me, her face shining, then she handed me the knife the dancer had used to cut himself, pointing it toward Devoe who stood a foot away. The closest villagers leaned back. The air crackled. Voices murmured. A man said, “Ça plane!” I didn’t understand. It floats? He looked at my hand. “Le couteau Ça plane!” It means, “The knife, it floats.”

The man’s eyes rolled up to their whites, and he passed out, sinking to the ground. Their stares were on the knife. In the sun, in the glare,
I
couldn’t see my hand, but the blade stood out, solid and sharp. Had I really disappeared?