her head.
'You think magic is simple,' the old woman whispered. Once more our eyes met. 'You think it's something you can leave behind when you cross an ocean. You think
'No, I don't.'
Once again she laughed, a low and mocking laugh.
'You never saw their full power, English man,' she said. 'You made things shake and shiver, but that was all. You were a stranger in a strange land with your Candomble. You forgot Oxala, but he never forgot you.' I was fast losing all composure.
She closed her eyes and her fingers curled around Merrick's smallboned wrist. I heard the rattle of the priest's rosary, and then came the fragrance of fresh-brewed coffee mingled with the sweetness of newly falling rain. It was an overwhelming and soothing moment—the close moist air of the New Orleans springtime, the sweetness of the rain coming down all around us, and the soft murmur of thunder far off to the right. I could smell the candle wax and the flowers of the shrine, and then again there came the human scents of the bed. It seemed a perfect harmony suddenly, even those fragrances which we condemn as sour and bad.
The old woman had indeed come to her final hour and it was only natural, this bouquet of fragrances. We must penetrate it and see her and love her. That was what had to be done.
'Ah, you hear it, that thunder?' asked Great Nananne. Once again her little eyes flashed to me. She said, 'I'm going home.'
Now, Merrick was truly frightened. Her eyes were wild and I could see her hand shaking. In fact, as she searched the old woman's face she appeared terrified.
The old woman's eyes rolled and she appeared to arch her back against the pillow, but the quilts seemed far too heavy for her to gain the space she craved.
What were we to do? A person can take an age to die, or die in one second. I was afraid too. The priest came in and moved ahead of us so that he could look down at her face. His hand was easily as withered as her own.
'Talamasca,' the old woman whispered. 'Talamasca, take my child. Talamasca, keep my child.' I thought I myself would give way to tears. I had been at many a deathbed. It is never easy but there is something crazily exciting about it, some way in which the total fear of death kindles excitement, as if a battle were beginning, when indeed, it is coming to an end.
'Talamasca,' she said again.
Surely, the priest heard her. But the priest paid no attention at all. His mind was not difficult to penetrate. He was only here to give the rites to a woman he knew and respected. The shrine was no shock to him.
'God's waiting on you, Great Nananne,' said the priest softly, in a strong local accent, rather rural sounding. 'God's waiting and maybe Honey in the Sunshine and Cold Sandra are there too.'
'Cold Sandra,' said the old woman with a long sigh and then an unintentional hiss. 'Cold Sandra,' she repeated as though praying, 'Honey in the Sunshine ... in God's hands.'
This was violently disturbing to Merrick. It was plain from her face. Merrick began to cry. This girl, who had seemed so strong throughout, now appeared quite fragile, as if her heart would be crushed.
The old woman wasn't finished.
'Don't you spend your time looking for Cold Sandra,' she said, 'or Honey in the Sunshine, either.' She gripped Merrick's wrist all the harder. 'You leave those two to me. That's a woman who left her baby for a man, Cold Sandra. Don't you cry for Cold Sandra. You keep your candles burning for the others. You cry for me.' Merrick was distraught. She was crying without a sound. She bent down and laid her head on the pillow beside that of the old woman, and the old woman wrapped her withered arm around the child's shoulders, which appeared to droop.
'That's my baby,' she said, 'my baby girl. Don't you cry over Cold Sandra. Cold Sandra took Honey in the Sunshine with her on the road to Hell.'
The priest moved away from the bed. He had begun to pray in a soft voice, the Hail Mary in English, and when he came to the words 'Pray for us sinners, now
'I'll tell you if I find those two,' said Great Nananne in a murmur. 'St. Peter, let me through the gates. St. Peter, let me through.'
I knew she was calling on Papa Legba. Possibly they were one and the same for her, Papa Legba and St. Peter. The priest probably knew all about it too.
The priest drew near again. Aaron stood back out of respect. Merrick remained with her head down on the pillow, her face buried in it, her right hand against the old woman's cheek.
The priest raised his hands to give the blessing in Latin,
I looked again at the gruesome altar, and at the huge statue of St. Peter with his Heavenly keys, very like the one I was to see years later—only a night ago—in Merrick's hotel suite.
I stepped back and into the hallway. I looked out the back door, though why, I was uncertain, perhaps to see the foliage darkening as the rain fell. My heart was pounding. The big noisy wet drops came in the back door and in the front, and left their mark on the soiled old wooden floor.
I heard Merrick crying aloud. Time stood still, as it can on a warm afternoon in New Orleans. Suddenly, Merrick cried all the more miserably, and Aaron had put his arm around her.
It had been an awakening, to realize that the old woman in the bed had died.
I was stunned. Having known her for less than an hour, having heard her revelations, I was stunned. I could make no sense of her powers, except that too much of my Talamasca experience had been academic, and, faced with true magic, I was as easily shaken as anyone else.
We remained near the door of the bedroom for three quarters of an hour. It seemed that the neighbors wanted to come in.
Merrick was at first against it, leaning against Aaron and crying that she'd never find Cold Sandra, and Cold Sandra ought to have come home.
The child's palpable misery was dreadful to us all, and the priest again and again came to Merrick and kissed her and patted her.
At last, two young women of color, both very fair and with obvious signs of African blood, came in to attend to the body in the bed. One woman took Merrick in hand and told her to close her godmother's eyes. I marveled at these women. It wasn't only their gorgeous colored skin or their pale eyes. It was their old-fashioned formal manner, the way they were dressed in shirtwaist dresses of silk, with jewelry, as if to come calling, and the importance of this little ceremony in their minds.
Merrick went to the bed and did her duty with two fingers of her right hand. Aaron came to stand beside me in the hall. Merrick came out, asked Aaron through her sobs if he would wait while the women cleaned up Great Nananne and changed the bed, and of course Aaron told her that we would do as she wished.
We went into a rather formal parlor on the other side of the hall. The old woman's proud statements came back to me. This parlor opened by means of an arch into a large dining room, and both rooms contained many fine and costly things. There were huge mirrors over the fireplaces, and these had their heavily carved white marble mantels; and the furniture, of rich mahogany, would fetch a good price.
Darkened paintings of saints hung here and there. The huge china cabinet was crowded with old patterned bone china; and there were a few huge lamps with dim bulbs beneath dusty shades.
It would have been rather comfortable except it was suffocatingly hot, and though there were broken windowpanes, only the dampness seemed to penetrate the dusty shadows where we sat down.
At once, a young woman, another rather exotically colored creature, lovely and as primly dressed as the others, came in to cover the mirrors. She had a great deal of folded black cloth with her, and a small ladder. Aaron and I did what we could to assist.
After that she closed the keyboard of an old upright piano which I had not even noticed. Then she went to a large casement clock in the comer, opened the glass, and stopped the hands. I heard the ticking for the first time only when it actually ceased.
A large crowd of people, black, white, and of different racial blending, gathered before the house. At last the mourners were allowed to come in and there was a very long procession, during which time Aaron and I retired to
