Tropic of Night Read online

  “Okay, thank you, I get it, I get it!” I say out loud. And the world cranks up again, moon, wind, palm, and mockingbird, all having their being, and me too. A little apotheosis in the night, hasn’t happened in a long time to me, and was always rare, they don’t like you to look behind the machinery of nature, uh-uh, pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. The bird stops singing and flies off, the moon slides behind a thicker cloud bank, the garden grows dark, the wind seems to drop a few knots, or maybe that’s my imagination. In any case, show’s over. As I climb the stairway, I notice my body feels different, and I pause and puzzle for a moment about it. Ah, yes. The Dolores slouch is missing. I am walking like Jane. This won’t do, but oh, my, it’s going to pinch and tickle climbing into that heavy, scratchy costume again. I was trained to stand up straight and be proud of my height and my big-boned body. Winsoum she wase, and like a jolly colte, tall as a maste and straight as a bolte: my husband, quoting Chaucer, of me, lovingly. Faire Alisoun, in “The Miller’s Tale.”

  Where does love go when it’s gone?

  I am aware that my disguise is something of a libel on the actual Dolores Tuoey, S.M., who did not slouch, and whose poor taste in clothing and coiffure (if any) was masked by the modified habit she wore and her neatly cropped head. I didn’t know her well, but she was a figure on the streets of Bamako and the outlying district. I model thus a product of my sick imagination: what Dolores would be like had she betrayed everything she believed in, her sisters and her church. This phantasm would, I think, be as repugnant to Dolores as it is to me.

  I lie back in my hammock, and unconsciously I hook my toes into the strands of the edges on either side, opening my genitals to the tropic breezes. My hammock is a Yucatan string model, colored red, green, yellow, purple, of the larger sort called matrimonio, although, of course, I sleep in it alone. How to fuck in a hammock without falling out was one of the very many things taught to me by Marcel Vierchau, and I find that, what with the night, the night, and the poetry, and thinking about Marcel and my nonflaming, but nevertheless hotter than now, youth, I feel unaccustomed warmth and humidity among the nether petals. Father forgive me, it has been three years and 220 days since my last decent fuck. No, none of that, now. I am in enough trouble and I am not ready to …

  I unhook my toes and press my legs together and roll up with sheet and pillow into the fetal crouch in which I generally sleep, and after a bit I think, not ready for what? Run, do nothing, fight. I ran already. I am more disinclined than formerly to do it again. I am presently doing nothing, but with increasing discomfort. Almost four years is a long time, a jail sentence for a fairly serious felony, although the worst of what I did is probably in the codes of neither Florida nor the state of New York. Maybe the kid makes me eligible for parole.

  Which leaves fighting. The way of sorcery is often about healing, and fate, and other spiritual activities, but day in and day out it is about war, mainly skirmishes, brief firefights, I sock your guy so you blow up my guy. This goes on in Miami and New York and L.A. all the time, anyplace where brujos, hougans, curanderos, and santeros are found among the believing immigrant communities. Marcel used to point out that it was a great error to imagine that traditional technologies of power were controlled by people any less rotten in the main than those who controlled industrial technologies of power. Spiritual don’t mean nice. Inuit and !Kung villages have, and always have had, murder rates in excess of those current in Miami, and most of these killings are due directly or indirectly to sorcery. There are saints and the wise among shamans, of course, but they are about as common as saints and the wise among generals, corporation presidents, and politicians.

  Oh yes, fighting. Back in the day, the Melanesians living in the Solomon Islands had wars of a sort, twenty or so young guys all stoned on kava, with clubs and spears, mixing it up, maybe a busted arm or two, a rare busted head, and maybe they thought they knew what war was like, but when in 1942 the marines landed and blasted the Japanese out of the Solomons, those guys all learned something about a different kind of war, the few that survived. If my husband really is here, and I have to fight him, we will start in Miami something that stands in relation to the kind of petty crap that goes on in the Cuban and the Haitian communities as the battle of Guadalcanal stands to a Melanesian clubfest. I have to decide whether letting him kill me, or worse, is preferable to that. Collateral casualties is, I think, the term of art. A deeply moral question. And there’s the little girl.

  The Olo call it jiladoul, the sorcerers’ war. You wonder why there are only twelve hundred Olo left. That’s why. It’s all a matter of technology.

  And there was a time I didn’t believe that either. Last thought before plunging into the grateful dark. A memory.

  Marcel and I are in Paris, after our first night in his apartment on Rue Louis-David in Passy, behind the Palais de Chaillot, where the Museé de l’Homme is. Pearly dawn is peeping in. It’s June again, a year after I first laid eyes on him, I’m a graduate of Barnard and I have finally let us go to bed together, and am glad I did and also glad I held off for so long. We have been at it all night, something I’ve never done before, not that I was at the time any kind of expert in the love arts, although he, as I have just learned, is. I am twenty-one, and it is my first serious, industrial-strength, heavy-duty, military-specification fuck. He is five years younger than my father, but I have almost stopped thinking about this. We are on his bed, sticky and exhausted, staring up at the high cream ceiling, with a flap of sheet over us, the French windows are open and that Paris scent is coming through, sharp and tickling to the nose. Marcel whispers in my ear and runs his hand down my body and places it on my sopping what I have just learned to call le con. I mumble about being sore, and then I feel something cool and hard and smooth inside me, and he draws out an egg. I guffaw and say gosh, I didn’t think I was ovulating, and he laughs, too, and claps his hands together, crushing the egg, and out flies the pigeon. I have this stupid frozen smile on my face.

  Legerdemain. Leger-my-ass! The pigeon flutters around the room and finally alights on top of a high wardrobe. We’ve been together all night. He is grinning at me. He’s naked. I pull off the sheet and roll him over on his side and tear the slips off the pillows and then I get out of bed and look under it, him laughing like a lunatic, and I run out bare-assed to the little balcony outside the French windows, where sits the wicker cage in which Marcel keeps his pigeons. All four of them are sitting there on their perches, looking as stupid as I feel. I run back inside and there is no pigeon in the room at all.

  EIGHT

  9/12 Lagos

  Desmond Greer & others are back. I like him. Back story is ghetto kid, horrible family, street-fighting man, now cool with white academic culture. Headed for the usual, dope & crime, one Sunday he happens to drop into the Field Museum to get out of the cold, runs into Ndeki Mfwese, the greatest African Africanist of his generation. Des sees this carbon-colored guy in flowing robes & skullcap floating down the hallway & he follows him like, as he says, the pied fucking piper. Mfwese befriends him & the rest is history. Man knows more about Yoruba cosmology & religion than most Yorubas do, he’s an initiate in the Shango cult, adopted into the Ogunfiditimi clan. He’s incredibly sweet to me, as if he knows what happened the last time I tried fieldwork?strange because I don’t even know that. He knows M., though … has he talked to him? About me? A natural anthropologist, like M., that scuba-diver talent, total immersion & then withdrawal. Where does it come from? Deracination? M. a Jew, a refugee in childhood, transplanted into French culture, family killed by the Nazis. Des a black guy in white (mainly) profession.

  W. somewhat frosty to him, and I can’t figure out why. Oedipal thing? Jealousy of Des’s authentic ghetto upbringing? A little spat later in our room.

  The rest of the crew reasonably pleasant. Coleman Lyttel & Carol Washington are Des’s grad students; Godwin Adepojin, Nigerian grad student, did his undergraduate work in the States at Madison, back home to do
his dissertation under Des on Aripon mask dancing in the Ketu region. Godwin, unfortunately, has made himself into what seems to me a parody of hip-hop-ness, backwards ball cap, baggies, big sneaks, the boxer shorts over the belt line. Tunji worships him as a god. Music sometimes drifts through the hotel?he has a boom box in his room?and it drives W. nuts. Six thousand miles & I still have to listen to Dr. Dre? A little culture war available for study without leaving the premises.

  Des not pushing me, my Yoruba still crummy, also studying the dialects over in Egbado, Gelede cult center. Godwin helping me at this, because his area is in the same region, to the west, in Nigeria & the Rep. of Benin. In return I am teaching him French, as Benin (where Ketu proper is located) is Francophone. Des thinks Gelede will be a good area for me, a female-dominated witch cult, one of the few here in macho Africa.

  Also working with Ola Soronmu = project major domo, semi-official liaison with the bureaucracy & our all-around fixer. Mrs. Bassey has no use for him, confirms my general opinion, hints broadly that he was connected with the military government. Mrs. B. says he is low, a flash man.

  Ola’s working w/ me on our shipment problem, cases containing laptops, tape recorders & video equipment, Honda DC generator, solar power rigs, accessories & spares. Most bought w/ Doe Foundation funds, so I have been elected to sort it out. Ola slippery as a smelt, things are complex, video equipment, the authorities don’t know what you will do with it, it is political … short version: they claim we want to make porno films. Oh, yes, this is a big problem, Europeans come here & buy girls & little boys & make terrible movies. Lie so outrageous, I’m not sure he even believed it himself. Who wants the bribe? A Colonel Alouf Musa, who controls air shipping in & out, hence a smuggler & an extortionist. Been bribed already according to O., still refuses to part with our stuff.

  Organized expedition to yell at Musa, Ola objecting. The Colonel was a busy man. The Colonel was not a small person, you understand, in the government, he had many friends, truly, Jane, seriously, this is not done, this is not at all done. All the way to the car. W. came, too, and we set out for the airport. W. & Ola are best buddies now. Ola somehow got hold of one of W.’s poetry collections, and quotes him from time to time, always the way to my man’s heart. It’s great that he has a pal, because I think he is more disoriented by Africa than he lets on. I don’t think it was what he expected. I tried to talk to him about it the other night, when he was silent during dinner, and morose afterwards, which is not like him at all. In NY, he was always the life of the party. But he wouldn’t cop to anything being wrong.

  State House on Lagos Island, past the gunned-up scary teenagers in green uniforms. Ola nervous, talking rapidly, he had been here before, and got the runaround, I didn’t listen to him, stupid probably, and simply barged into Colonel Musa’s office. Air-conditioned, expensive furniture, raffia on the walls. I demanded to see the Colonel. The Colonel was fat & covered with medals, probably for rape above & beyond call of duty, valorous murder of helpless civilians. He was leaning back in a big leather chair, cleaning his nails with an ivory letter-opener, the complete image of not-busy. W. should put this character into a book. He said our equipment impounded subject to judicial hearing. Bullshit about making pornography?video cameras, computers?the regime was suppressing this vice.

  Didn’t bother to object to this absurdity, demanded to see stuff in warehouse. He refused. Light dawned, wasn’t bigger bribe he wanted, bastard had ripped off the shipment, probably sold it already. I accused him of this, got yelled at, shook his fist, said I’d insulted honor of Nigerian Army, serious crime, threat of prison. I said, just try, bub. He started screaming in a language I didn’t understand, prob. Hausa?, then four soldiers came in & dragged us out & tossed us onto the street. Bruises, & Ola’s nice suit ripped knees & lapels. W. weird, almost jolly about it, said you sure showed him! Lawsie me, Miss Ann, she threwed a tantrum & de darky didn’t do what she said. Whatever is de world coming to? Kicked him in the ankle, went back to the car, drove in silence until I saw that we were passing the main post office, stopped car, went in, called Dad.

  Explained rip-off?he got upset too. Doe family gives it away but can’t stand getting robbed, which made me feel that I wasn’t crazy, or not crazy about this issue, & he said he’d call Hank & Uncle Bill & they’d take care of it. Famous Doe Family Emergency Red Handle, not for me personally, but principle of the thing.

  Back at the truck, W. asked did I call Daddy and I said, as a matter of fact, I did. Got some more mockery. Why is he doing this?

  Then back to Yaba & I went up to our room to collapse & Ola Soronmu & W. went off to get a drink. When he came back, I was pretty chilly to him, he was drunk, trying charm, like with Mom at Sionnet. Mom likes being with charming drunks, me & Dad being no fun . Mom not here in Lagos however & I resented it & the more he charmed the more I resented it. He tried to be masterful & sexy, said a good fuck would clear the air. Lost it then, screaming how dare he trot out that Miss Ann horseshit & how dare he imply it was racist to get our stuff back from a corrupt thief, representative of a regime that had murdered & tormented more black people than KKK, plus Musa stealing from locals since we were donating that stuff to poor starving University of Lagos.

  He came back with I didn’t understand, how I couldn’t comprehend this country because I was locked up in white skin, I had embarrassed Ola with pushy neocolonial ways, how dare I impose discredited Eurocentric concepts on black men! Exactly the kind of speech W. would have put into mouth of some dashiki-wearing associate professor of black studies as parody.

  Threw things then, water jug, washbasin, bedside lamp, alarm clock, a copy of The Yoruba of Southwestern Nigeria , by W. R. Bascom, yelling who the fuck are you & what have you done with my husband? Haven’t thrown things before, so missed with most, except clock, which broke.

  Flung myself onto the bed and burst into tears, exactly like Scarlett fucking O’Hara—type person he was making me into.

  Greer came by & I let him come in. Told him the whole wretched story and he declined to give me any daddyish wise advice only asked, do you think we’ll get our stuff back? & I told him that my dad was calling my uncle Bill, who was the VP of the World Bank & Hank Schorr his old sailing buddy, who was CFO of Exxon & they would probably make some calls about it. I said if we did not get it all back then neocolonialism was total bullshit & we could joint-author a paper on it. Laughed. Then he said I’ve seen this before, a black man, American, comes to Africa, all pumped up, he’s coming home, man, precious lost Guinée. Then he finds out there’s no light in the window for him. The people here see him & they don’t see the black skin that’s always defined him his whole life. They see an American, with more money than they’ll ever have in their wildest dreams, just like the other Americans. But I’m black , the guy says, & they just look at him. Then it hits him: there ain’t no black people in Africa. We got the Yoruba, Hausa, Ibo, Fulani, Ga, Fon, Mandinka, Dogon & Tofinu & a couple hundred others, but no black folks except maybe where there are white tribes like in S. Africa. So, hey, you want to look for roots? God bless, but don’t expect to be recognized . Guinée’s dead & gone & negritude ain’t going to help you. America is your nation, heaven your destination, and tough shit. And he looked puzzled, said, It’s funny, seen his plays, read his stuff, I thought if anybody would be hip to that, it would’ve been him.

  He’s still invisible, I said. He thought I would be invisible here, but I’m not.

  He said, I’ll go talk to him, I said thank you, he said, I honor the suffering, the history, the culture, the guts it took to survive and get over. I’m in awe. Then he pinched the skin on his arm, but this color ? It’s horseshit. He pushed a strand of my hair back behind my ear. He said, You know, they used to sell girls with hair like this to guys like me in the slave markets of Algiers.

  Those were the days, I said, & we both laughed.

  9/14 Lagos

  This a.m. big army truck pulled up to our hotel & soldiers unloaded all our
equipment. Some of it was uncrated & had obviously been used. One of the laptops had a cracked screen & 100 megabytes of hard-core porn on its disk.

  Saw W. watching from inside along with Ola. I asked him if he wasn’t going to help drag the stuff in off the street, but he gave me a strange look & turned away. He can’t be disappointed that we got the stuff back?

  NINE

  Doris, that’s all I’m telling you, because that’s all we know right now,” lied Jimmy Paz. “You have enough for a great story, you’ll win another prize. No, I don’t know whether this is the work of a crazed serial killer. Okay, crazed, I’ll give you crazed, serial we don’t know yet. Right, go ahead and print that: police wait for him to strike again. Helplessly wait, that’s better.”

  Paz held the receiver a few inches from his ear and Cesar the prep cook grinned at him around a lot of gold. Paz was in the kitchen of his mother’s restaurant and on the phone, as he had promised, with Doris Taylor the crime reporter. It was six-thirty, a relatively peaceful time in the kitchen, for only the tourists ate that early. Satan might be loose in Dade County, but people still had to eat, and perforce others had to cook for them. Paz, who did not believe in Satan, had left Barlow as soon as he could manage and come here.

  “I understand that,” he said calmly, “believe me, but … where did you hear that? Hey, if you hear stuff, you’re supposed to inform the police. No, we have no evidence that it was a cult killing. No, of course it wasn’t a domestic. Why don’t you call it a presumed deranged individual? No, you can’t quote me on that, I’m not supposed to be talking to you at all. I got to go now, Doris. Fine. Right, just keep my name out of the papers. I love you, too, Doris. Bye.”