The Woman Who Lost Her Soul Hardcover (17 page)

Tom, this ceremony was very big, very grand, said Gerard. Many people came from far
away, hundreds of people.

What was this ceremony for? What was going on?

I think it was for the woman, said Gerard. Who is rich enough to afford two bulls?

Gerard, she didn’t even want to pay the
houngan
five dollars for
. . .
what? I don’t even know what to call it. A consultation.

This day Bòkò St. Jean was a big man with two bulls to sacrifice to the
lwas
. Two, Tom. Not one, two. Only the whites have this money to waste. One bull would
be enough for the Haitian bourgeoisie.

Gerard did not see the bulls sacrificed later that day. He drank a little
clairin
and ate some food and watched people dance to the drums and left by midafternoon
to visit friends in Saint-Marc. But when he returned after dark to drive the woman
back to Port-au-Prince, Eville Burnette was there, and Gerard heard people talking
about something happening, something that he would remember when he heard that the
woman had been killed. One of the guests at the ceremony was another
bokor,
a powerful
macoute
during the time of the dictators, named Honore Vincent, from the northeastern mountains,
who ruled as the emperor of one of the secret
vodou
societies in Haiti. Honore Vincent was very drunk with
clairin
and jealous of Bòkò St. Jean’s good fortune. When he saw the two whites among the
people, he went to them, said Gerard, and acted stupid.

Tom groaned, afraid to hear what had happened next. What kind of stupid? Aggressive?

Yes, that.

Did he lay his hands on her?

Yes.

Did she go after him?

The people tell me yes.

And the soldier was there? asked Tom. Was he wearing his uniform?

No. The same as we.

Eville Burnette had stepped between the woman and Honore Vincent and pushed him away
hard and he stumbled to the ground and Bòkò St. Jean and his followers cautioned Vincent
and warned him to behave properly or be expelled from the ceremony and then somebody
took him away. In the weeks ahead the incident was responsible for many rumors and
Gerard heard what the people were saying, but of course they were not all saying the
same thing. Some people believe she is one woman with two names. Here was the second
gros neg
who had been defeated by the white woman, who could not then be a mere woman but a
mambo,
a
blan
sorceress, and that she had been possessed by a
lwa
during her battle with Honore Vincent, that only Erzulie Mary could fight a
bokor
as powerful as Vincent, and that this was not a fight that took place on earth but
in the spirit world. Others said no, she was an army woman, she knew military fighting,
she knew how to kick and fly like a Chinaman in the movies. And other people said
no, they were there, the woman was very drunk and falling down but they never saw
her fight with the
boko
. And eventually Gerard heard second- and third-hand accounts of Honore Vincent’s
fate, that Bòkò St. Jean had weakened him with a spell, and strengthened her with
a potion, and that Bòkò St. Jean had done the same thing for her when she went after
Jacques Lecoeur’s man up north because both men were nationalists and strong leaders
who resisted the occupation. What is going on here is plain to see, Honore Vincent
had been heard to say: She is an American spy, and Bòkò St. Jean is an American spy,
and I will take care of them both. You know Haiti, said Gerard. You know how the people
talk. You know how the stories grow from small to big.

The last thing, Tom, said Gerard. The day after the woman is killed, the American
soldier comes to me in Port-au-Prince.

Why?

To drive to the north. And in Le Cap I hear people say someone kill the
boko
.

St. Jean? he asked and Gerard said no, the other one, Vincent.

All right, said Tom Harrington. Let’s go to Saint-Marc.

CHAPTER TWELVE

From the moment they had arrived at the clearing on the banks of an emerald-green
river in a valley deep in the roadless mountains, everything had escalated at a rate
that left the exact chain of events a hallucinatory smear in Tom’s mind. A dozen or
so men—unarmed, as far as he knew, though several carried machetes—had materialized
out of the jungle where the land steepened above the clearing. Jackie began taking
pictures, a lot of pictures, the long lens of her camera sweeping from one glowering
face to another. Dashing forward from the group, a man began yelling in Kreyol for
Jackie to put the camera down yet she ignored both Tom’s translation of the command
and his own emphatic effort to underscore it. The men came closer, Jackie continued
shooting. Eville Burnette, to Tom’s relief, moved back and out of the way where he
would not contribute to the growing tension. Tom recognized the yelling man, Lecoeur’s
second in command, from a previous expedition in these mountains, many months before.
He was not a large or tall man but strapped and banded with muscles, whom Tom remembered
as being a hothead, speaking always in bursts of rage. Attention, tell her to put
the camera down now, Lecoeur’s man said, focusing on Tom, declaring her as Tom’s responsibility,
and Tom stepped in front of Jackie to block her view.

What the fuck are you doing?

What’s it look like I’m doing? she said. Come on, you’re in my way.

An elbow banged against his right ear as the guerilla fighter reached across Tom’s
shoulder to seize the camera and he was knocked aside, his attention lost for the
fleeting span of seconds it took Lecoeur’s man and Jackie to become violently entangled,
each with a hand on the camera, the man’s other hand grabbing for her hair but finding
the neck of her shirt, which tore away, and his hand fell down her chest to place
a twisting grip on the middle strap of her bra. In the struggle the white globe of
a breast emerged and Jackie’s other hand whipped out of her vest pocket with a can
of spray. She aimed for his eyes and when he howled in pain she lunged at him and
they tumbled together to the ground, she on top of him, the nozzle of the can shoved
into his mouth, blood flowing from where his teeth broke the skin on her fingers.

Everyone rushed forward to intervene but in the same instant jumped back, choking
from the sear of fumes. Jackie rolled onto the grass, coughing and spitting, her face
afire and eyes a fountain of tears. Then Eville was kneeling beside the man, his own
tears streaking down his cheeks, his open knapsack on the ground, a radio or transponder
clearly visible within as he searched its contents, his hand stopping on an unseen
object. A calm issue of instructions wheezed from Eville’s mouth and Tom obeyed—Explain
to these men that this man will suffocate without an emergency operation, explain
the procedure, explain not to be alarmed by the procedure, explain that the procedure
will save the man’s life. When Tom finished these explanations, no one said anything,
and out came the knife from Eville’s knapsack and then came a pistol from the waistband
of one of the guerillas, pointed at the American but uncocked.

Now tell them this, said Eville, as he made an incision below the man’s larynx. Tell
them this man is gravely injured and must go to a hospital. Tell them a helicopter
is coming to take him to the hospital.

You planned this out, didn’t you? Tom said, his ears already tuning to the faint sound
of a machine, its premature arrival suggesting it had been in the air and shadowing
them all along.

You’re wrong, said Eville.

You think these guys are pissed now, wait and see how unhappy they are when a helicopter
shows up.

Tell them the UN wouldn’t allow this mission to proceed without security.

This is not a UN mission. I am not under UN jurisdiction.

Whatever you say. Tell them I tricked you.

When the bird was above them in the valley, Lecoeur’s men became more agitated, hollering
accusations, air whistled in and out of the lungs of the man on the ground, and Jackie,
red-eyed and disheveled, was back on her feet, clutching her vest closed and shrieking
for her camera.

Get this crazy bitch to back off, Eville said to Tom, and then he yelled at Jackie
not with anger but as if she were on the other side of the river, to stand still and
accept what he was asking Tom to do.

Don’t fake it. Smack her a couple of times.

I can’t do that, said Harrington.

Our friends here need some satisfaction.

That’s not who I am.

Kneel down then and keep this guy breathing, said Burnette, and he jumped up in a
fury Tom had never before seen him express and with the back of his hand slapped Jackie
hard enough to snap her head around and then he hit her again with enough force to
send her spinning to her hands and knees.

How do you say stupid cunt in Kreyol?

I don’t know.

Then the medevac was down and they had to wrestle her aboard. Her camera had disappeared
and she brayed for it relentlessly, refusing to get on the helicopter with Eville
Burnette and the man she had almost killed, who was strapped down to a canvas stretcher
and lifted by his angry comrades and passed through the hatch to the waiting hands
of Pakistani soldiers, his face strained and bloated over and smeared with mucous,
the tube from Harrington’s ballpoint pen implanted in his windpipe. There was a fair
chance it might go bad for Tom if he did not get on the helicopter himself.

Harrington told Eville he still had a job to do and was confident the situation remained
manageable as long as Jackie did not stay behind as she insisted, her own eyes swollen
half-closed and cascading tears, a madwoman in a tempest screaming over the roar of
the propellers that she wanted her camera and that Tom needed her. But she and Burnette
were the last people on earth he needed now and the only thought in his mind was to
separate himself from them. Eville was in the hatchway yelling for her to get aboard,
Tom was behind Jackie pushing against her manic resistance, which suddenly turned
Amazonian and he found himself flipped sideways onto the ground, looking up as Burnette
hopped out and wrapped her thrashing and kicking into his powerful arms to heave her
inside the fuselage and then Burnette bellied inside himself as the helicopter began
to rise and veer away, leaving in its wake a hurricane’s eye of silence.

When the shouting and protestation began anew he sat up and slowly stood, dispirited
but resolute, repeating to the guerillas that they must honor their promise and take
him to Lecoeur. But Lecoeur was there already, had mingled among the band of his men
who had come out of the forest but had not stepped forward to identify himself and
Harrington had not recognized him. His bushy hair and Che beard were clipped off,
his clean-shaven face revealing a weak jaw, the vocabulary of his clothes—a tracksuit,
cheap running shoes, and a sports jersey, as if he had just come from a soccer match—separating
him from the insurgent peasants and their idiom of torn and muddy trousers and straw
hats. His bitter questions were to be expected, and Tom, without answers, first told
the lie that Eville Burnette had suggested and confessed he was as dismayed and outraged
by the behavior of the girl as they were, and could not explain it. But Lecoeur and
his men had suspected from the beginning that the man was an American soldier and
were now convinced the woman was a spy and Tom thought wearily,
Well, we’re all spies, aren’t we
. It seemed to be a preexisting condition, like whiteness.

She’s a journalist, said Tom. She didn’t come with the soldier, she came with me.
Then, feeling the unease of his former lie, he said the soldier had tricked him and
immediately regretted this declaration of naïveté. Lecoeur asked what the soldier
had hoped to gain by coming into the mountains but Tom again had no answer except
to say that Eville Burnette had assured him that it wasn’t his idea. But the
blans
had compromised the security of Lecoeur’s stronghold in the mountains and Harrington
said he was sorry. I cannot explain any of it.

I believe you are our friend, said Lecoeur. But is it true you have come to investigate
me? You have come to examine our hands for innocent blood?

It’s true that I have come to talk to you about the bourgeoisie who are missing. Maybe
you know what happened to them. Maybe you know where I can find them.

Monsieur Tom, here in the mountains, the
macoutes
have not stopped their war with the people.

Yes.

What do the Americans want in Haiti? They said they came to throw out the
macoutes,
but the
macoutes
are still here.

Yes.

If you ask me if I still must fight for freedom, the answer is yes. If you ask me
if I still must fight to protect the people from the
macoute,
the answer is yes. If you ask me is there freedom without justice, the answer is
no.

Lecoeur’s hand signaled toward someone behind him and a skeletal youth stepped forward
from the circle of men who had listened solemnly to the conversation. Monsieur Tom,
this boy will take you back to the village. Lecoeur called another man’s name and
the camera reappeared, the unspooled celluloid curled on the ground like a molted
snakeskin. Tom put the camera in his day pack and turned to leave but Lecoeur placed
light fingertips on the white man’s arm and steered him aside.

In the night, no one is in control, Lecoeur said. Walk fast.

They moved swiftly along the narrow trail through the steam and scratch of the jungle,
fast enough to reach the village of Bois Caïman before twilight. By the time they
arrived the muscles in Tom Harrington’s legs were a persistent ache, his shirt transparent
with sweat, pants wet to midthigh and boots soggy from the last river it had been
necessary to ford. A helicopter passed unseen, somewhere overhead, headed up-country,
and he began to feel the vibes, something wrong in the air, when none of the village’s
children ran out to greet them, and then his guide pulled up and, pointing ahead,
uttered the words,
Armée Rouge
. Tom looked toward where he had left his SUV on a vacant lot at the edge of town.
Two white Toyota Hilux pickup trucks were now parked next to it and heavily armed
men were milling about.

Who is the Red Army? Tom asked the boy.

Macoutes
.

What are they doing here? he asked, but the boy reversed down the path back toward
the safety of the bush and Tom braced himself for trouble and walked on, crossing
a footbridge over the cool invitation of the rushing river that separated the village
from the wilderness.

They were from the elite families and not hostile and in fact greeted him with a pretense
of camaraderie that he did not bother to reciprocate. He was surprised, though, to
see that he knew the man who presented himself as their leader, Emil Gaillard, a slightly
obsequious mulatto educated by Jesuits in New Orleans and said to be the bastard black
sheep of the family of Gaillard landowners. During the first weeks of the invasion
his ambiguous loyalties tipped toward the peasants when he joined a mob in the town
his family had controlled for centuries to uproot the Haitian army’s casern and afterward
had handed over captured weapons to the Special Forces. Not long thereafter, Harrington
had interviewed him briefly about a massacre during the time of the de facto regime,
and Gaillard had introduced him to a tenant farmer, a survivor of the atrocity. We
are here, Gaillard explained, to protect you from the
chimères,
but Harrington was unfamiliar with this word.

The phantoms, they come from the mountains to do us harm.

This recurring irony of protection merited only Harrington’s ingratitude. Obviously
Emil Gaillard and his gang were using his presence in Bois Caïman as an excuse for
a show of force. But Gaillard reminded him the northwest district was notorious for
its Balkanized mentalities, the unpaved road back to Route National One winding through
partisan villages in perennial conflict with one another, daylight being the only
condition for safe passage. Now the sun was setting and Gaillard offered an escort
to the highway.

You call yourself Red Army, said Tom. Is the Red Army on the side of the people?

But there were no sides beyond the blood of one’s own. The
chimères
attack our families, Gaillard said, his nervous eyes and the timidity of his English
creating a supreme impression of untrustworthiness, and please don’t say we have no
right to defend ourselves.

Bon,
said Tom. Where are the bodies and the graves? Give me evidence, eyewitnesses, police
reports, something to work with beside rumors and, receiving no reply, told Gaillard,
Look, I don’t think I can unravel this on my own.

The sun is down. Please, for your safety, accept the escort.

That would send the wrong message. No one in Haiti is my enemy.

Perhaps the wrong message is the only one you have brought, said Emil Gaillard, and
in another minute the paramilitaries of the
Armée Rouge
had shouldered themselves together in the cabs and beds of the two trucks and driven
away into the darkness with headlights off. Looking at his wristwatch, Harrington
gave them a five-minute lead before driving slowly down the dusty lane through the
center of Bois Caïman, glancing at the shacks on either side, their interiors a warm
glow of candlelight crossed by cautious shadows, then accelerating at the edge of
town onto the rough road through the countryside.

He did not slow his approach to the next village a few miles farther on, unable to
recall if it was a good village or a bad village, but sped through without incident,
nearly hitting a dog that ran barking toward his tires. Intermittently along the shoulder
of the road, pedestrians loomed out from the void and flashed away, silhouettes of
blackness absorbed by blackness, their unseen faces turned from the glare of his lights.
Neither could he remember the affiliation of the next village, or the third, so that
by the time he saw the firefly radiance of a single lantern in the middle of the road
at the entrance to the fourth village and then the rocks lined up behind it, he could
not be sure which faction might be manning the roadblock, friend or foe, or even assure
himself that anyone was his friend, this night in the mountains, but he had been waved
through countless roadblocks during his time in Haiti, more often than not by swaggering
kids extorting a toll of a few gourdes, and was not automatically concerned.