Strange Conflict (32 page)

‘Very well, then. This morning we might have a look round the town, and, since you are keen to learn about Voodoo, this afternoon I will take you to a Hounfort.'

‘What is that?' Marie Lou asked.

‘A Hounfort, Madame, is a Voodoo temple, or perhaps one could describe it more correctly as a place in which a Houngan lives with his family and retainers and carries out his Voodoo ceremonies.'

‘That really would be most interesting,' said the Duke.

When the Doctor had finished his breakfast his car was brought round and in it they drove down to Port-au-Prince. On the previous evening they had been too concerned with other matters to pay much attention to what little of the town they had seen, and they now realised that it was a much larger place than they had at first supposed. The Doctor told them that it contained a hundred and twenty thousand inhabitants, being by far the largest and, in fact, the only considerable town in Haiti, as there were no others in which the population exceeded twenty thousand.

The main streets were wide but ragged. Few of the houses were of more than two storeys but outside their upper floors nearly all of them had verandahs—airy balconies supported on pillars—upon which their owners could sleep during the midday heat. There were a few miles of tramway, and here and there a lorry or a battered car bumped along the uneven way, but there was very little traffic apart from a certain number of ox-wagons and poor, mangy little donkeys saddled with panniers which were stuffed to the brim with goods.

They visited the cathedral, a twin-towered architectural
monstrosity of Victorian times, and the Senate House, in which the theoretical representatives of the people held their meetings and heard the decisions of the President, in whom all real power was vested. There were numerous markets: one very big, open one in a wide space in front of the cathedral, and another, a covered market, which was entered through a quadruple-towered arch—one of the most hideous structures that de Richleau had ever set eyes on. It had been erected, Doctor Saturday said, to the memory of General Hippolite, who had been President for seven years, from 1889 to 1896, a record term in the whole island's history for a continuous and peaceful reign.

The curious bits and pieces in the meat market did not bear close inspection for anyone with a delicate stomach but the many varieties of local fish were interesting and the wealth of fruit and vegetables was positively astounding, for tropical varieties flourished in the lowlands and those natural to the more temperate climate of Europe, which had originally been brought over by the French, were still grown in the higher lands of the interior.

The attire of the citizens of Haiti was diverse. Most of them wore the wide-brimmed, locally-made, straw hats to keep off the strong sun, and the Doctor bought two of these for his companions. But in every other detail of dress the Haitians showed the most varied tastes; particularly the women, whose striped, spotted and self-colour head-coverings and neckerchiefs were of every hue under the rainbow. Although it was only ten o'clock it was already very hot, and few of the men in the streets wore coats; only a white, and generally dirty, open-necked shirt.

When the Doctor took them to the one hotel they found that the Haitian upper classes showed a very different taste in dress. No women, except the serving girls, were present, which made Marie Lou feel a little awkward, but the Doctor was greeted with respect wherever he went, and they sat down at a little table near the entrance to the big bar. In it, and at the neighbouring tables, there were at least a hundred men, all dressed, despite the heat, in black frock-coats or some kind of uniform.

The frock-coated men, whose wide straw hats had been enamelled a shiny black, were, the Doctor told them, Haitian politicians; and the others, although their uniforms
differed almost without exception, were generals. It appeared that in Haiti they had had exactly the same number of generals in their army as they had had privates—to be exact, 6,500 of each—that is, up to the date of the American occupation. Before evacuating the island the United States officers had reorganised Haiti's defence force on more usual lines, but there were still countless generals who had obtained their rank when quite young men and had very determinedly stuck to it.

They did not look very much like generals, but more like black footmen in rather badly-designed and shop-soiled liveries, for in nearly every case the uniforms had done many years—and often even generations—of service, having been handed down as treasured possessions from father to son. The tunics, trousers and cloaks were of all colours and the oddest fits; the only thing which they had in common being tarnished gold lace, wherever it could be tacked on, and a rakish cockade of colourful plumage stuck in each battered shako or cap. Some of the generals carried revolvers in the gaily-tasselled sashes about their waists, while others clattered rapiers and sabres, some of which had seen service at the time of the French Revolution or, even earlier, in the hands of the pirates on the Spanish main.

The whole crowd talked and gesticulated incessantly, and it was clear to the visitors that this was the true ‘house of representatives'; where the real business of the island was conducted during each morning session throughout the year, whether the Senate was supposed to be sitting or not. While they rested there the Doctor and his guests enjoyed an excellent ‘planter's punch' made from iced rum, the juice of fresh limes, sugar and various other ingredients, but so many curious glances were cast at them that Marie Lou was heartily glad when they got away.

By eleven o'clock the town was beginning to empty, as the broiling sun was already high overhead, and people were making their way home for the midday meal, after which they would indulge in a siesta until three o'clock, thereby virtually dividing their working-day into two widely-separated periods—early morning and late afternoon.

Back at the Doctor's house, they lunched at midday and directly afterwards the Doctor said that he felt sure they
would like to rest during the great heat; so they thanked him and went through to the side of the house in which the row of guests' bedrooms was situated.

‘Well.' asked the Duke immediately they were alone, ‘how are you feeling?'

‘Not too bad,' said Marie Lou in a voice that belied her words.

It was now twenty-seven hours since they had wakened in their comfortable rooms at the Pancoast Hotel, Miami, and during that period they had been through a greater strain than most people are called upon to undergo in an unusually hectic week; but they knew that they had many hours to endure yet before they could hope for the succour that Richard and Rex would bring.

‘Don't you think,' she said after a moment, ‘that it would be all right for us to sleep a little now it's the middle of the day? As our enemy was at us all last night, he must be awake himself, otherwise he won't be able to sleep and attack us again tonight.'

De Richleau shook his head. ‘I'm sorry, Princess, but the probability is that, like everybody else in the island, he's just about to take his siesta; so we dare not risk it. Still, if you like to lie down and cat-nap, I don't think there would be any harm in that. I shall have to shake you gently every few minutes to prevent you from dropping right off, but a lie-down and doze would be better than nothing.'

Knowing what was ahead of her and that she must conserve every atom of resistance that she could, Marie Lou agreed to the suggestion and lay down on the Duke's bed. She had hardly relaxed before she fell asleep, but he woke her and after about a quarter of an hour they had to give up the experiment as the constant dragging back just as she was leaving her body proved more of a strain than a relief.

Somehow or other they got through the next two hours, until the chief house-boy came to knock on their doors. Then they had a wash to freshen themselves and joined the Doctor in the big living-room.

Their mouths were parched, their eyes sunk in their sockets; whereas he was looking spruce and fresh in a clean suit of white drill. They both felt that he could not possibly help noticing their miserable condition, but he did not seem at all conscious of it; which they put down to the fact that
the faces of both of them were now disfigured by sun-blisters as well as acute fatigue.

In spite of the applications of the Doctor's liniment and some soothing poultices that he had sent along to them by one of the houseboys, their foreheads, noses, ears and necks had now gone a dull red and were a mass of tiny, painful blotches. Marie Lou had done her best to disguise the disfiguring effects but the Duke had told her that she must on no account put any of her scented powder on the raw places, for fear it might poison them, so she had been unable to do very much except hide her burnt forehead under a clean white handkerchief which she had tied across it pirate-fashion.

The Doctor drove them off in his car, up the hill this time, for about a mile, until they entered a considerable village and, passing through it, came to the Hounfort. It was a big enclosure containing several one-storeyed buildings and a number of open thatches of banana-palm fronds laid one on top of the other in a network which was supported by a few dozen poles of all sizes and leaning at all angles.

The Houngan, a bald-headed, bespectacled, intelligent-looking Negro, dressed in a long, white, cotton garment, welcomed the Doctor and his companions. He spoke a little very bad French but enough for the Duke and Marie Lou to converse with him in simple sentences.

In the town that morning ugly looks had been cast at the two visitors and some of the men lounging about the markets had hissed after them, ‘
Blanc',
since Whites are not popular in Port-au-Prince; but here their reception was very different and seemed full of the kindness which goes with the genuine Negro character. The men, women and children of the Houngan's family—which numbered the best part of a hundred—all crowded about them with wide-mouthed grins.

Soon after their arrival the people from the village began to crowd in, as it was a Wednesday afternoon and the weekly service to Dambala was just about to begin.

As they stood apart, so that the Priest could proceed with his ritual, Doctor Saturday explained that Dambala, the chief of the beneficent Rada gods, was thought by many
people to be Moses. Why the great Jewish prophet should have been deified by the Negroes of the West African coast no student of folklore had ever been able to explain, but the two definitely had much in common. For example, the green snake which was Dambala's symbol had also been that of Moses. It is recognised that certain African Witch Doctors have the power to hypnotise a snake into rigidity so that they can use it as a walking-stick, but at their will it wakes and becomes live again in the hand. It is more than probable that Moses's rod was a hypnotised snake of a special variety which by habit attacked and ate another variety of snake; so that when he threw down his rod before Pharaoh he knew that it would become alive and devour the snake-rods of the Egyptian priests which were of the second variety. The snake which they saw beside the pool, near the Voodoo altar, was, the Doctor said, regarded not as the actual god but only as his servant or handmaiden.

Actually there were a number of altars, each dedicated to one of the principal Voodoo gods, both Rada's and Petro's. All the altars had an extraordinarily heterogeneous collection of objects piled on them in a jumble: pictures and cheap plaster figures of the Catholic saints who were associated with the various gods, bottles of rum, little bells, and innumerable crude pottery dishes containing offerings of food and beads. Each altar was canopied with an elaborate arrangement of palm fronds, the leaves of which had been frayed out by hand, until they looked like huge green feathers, and in and out among them were woven hundreds of streamers of coloured paper. The whole effect was far from impressive as they looked more like a row of dirty junk-shops than anything else.

The Houngan took the centre of the stage, sitting down in a low chair, and the Mambo, or Priestess, huge old Negro woman, stood behind him, while on either side, on cane-seated chairs, sat the Hounci, Voodoo adepts who had passed the first degree of initiation, and the Canzos, who had passed the second degree of initiation. Among them were the drummers, each of the great drums which they clasped between their knees being dedicated to a particular god. Also near the Houngan was the
Sabreur,
or sword-bearer, and the
Drapeaux
who held above their heads two silk flags embroidered and fringed with silver. But only
the most rudimentary order was maintained, as the Priest's assistants jostled one another for places, laughed, argued and cracked jokes with each other. The congregation, too, moved freely about the great compound, which was like that of an African chieftain; sometimes appearing to pay attention to what was being done, and at others disputing among themselves or going up to talk to the Houngan and his entourage.

‘There will be four ceremonies,' said the Doctor. The first to Papa Legba, the God of the Gate, who lives in that great great silk-cotton tree outside the gate there. He must be propitiated before the way is open to any of the other gods. Next they will make a sacrifice to Papa Loco, the God of Wisdom, lest he become jealous and afflict them with some ill. The third sacrifice will be for Mah-Lah-Sah, the Guardian of the Door Sill. And finally there will be the sacrifice to Dambala himself.'

Seated in his low chair before the altar the Houngan covered his head with a ceremonial handkerchief and began a monotonous litany to which the whole congregation made the responses. It was a longish business and the visitors would have found it extremely wearisome had it not been for the sweetness of the Negroes' singing.

After a time the chanting stopped and they crowded into a big room, where spread on a wide table were all sorts of foods and drinks which were being offered to the gods. The Priest came out again, drew on the ground a design in corn-meal and poured a little of each of the dedicated drinks upon it. He then took pieces of all the offered foods and piled them up in a small heap in the middle of the design.