last Wednesday. There is a lot of junk, of course, you have to discriminate, as the locals do. Like in New York.
Then we got into Geertz’s theories about art as a cultural system, and semiotics, and the deeper zones of modern anthro, which is home base to me, and I jumped in and we talked and talked, technical stuff, the four-color flat painting of the Abelam people of New Guinea, comparisons with Yoruba art, the unity of form and content, comparison to the Euro. Renaissance output; Moroccan poetry, its function as an indicator of social status and prestige, the relation of this to what West African griots do, praise singing in general, the Iliad, the modern epic poets of the Balkans, which way the influence traveled through these cultures, that, or an independent creation satisfying an instinctive human need, the possibility of a reliable semiotics of art.
Glanced over from time to time at W. to see how he was enjoying this, he was the artist here, he should be eating this up, plus I thought the discussion was better than most jabber in salons of New York, but he had a sour, bored expression on his face, and five empty lager bottles in front of him. Fact = W. can’t drink. I thought, I should be like Melanie, I should go over and make nice and then I thought I was having a good time, brain was coming alive, like when I was with M., and I turned away.
The next time I looked it was because he was laughing with Soronmu, loud, and everyone stopped their conversation amp; waited for the other people to explain the joke. The joke was white folks trying to understand Africa, W. explained to Soronmu what an Oreo was. I looked at Greer, saw that his jovial host persona was wearing thin. He made some genial comment, inviting them to join the discussion, and W. said no, boss, us niggers’ll be happier down the street, all this high-tone shit be over our heads. And the two of them staggered out, cackling.
He’s still gone and it’s after two. I don’t know what to do now. I know he loves me. I can’t be wrong about that.
TWELVE
Can we talk?” Paz asked. “I could come back later or meet you someplace, if you’re busy now.”
“Now is fine,” said Dr. Salazar, “but not here.” Something in her tone and look reminded Paz of the characteristic wariness of the fugitive, what you saw in a snitch. Dr. Salazar, he thought, was on the lam.
“We could go for coffee,” he said. “There’re plenty of places on Le Jeune …”
“The faculty club, I think. The coffee isn’t so good, but we won’t be disturbed.”
Seated at a quiet table overlooking the campus lake, they passed some minutes in small talk, in Spanish, Paz consciously upgrading his diction and idiom to match hers, which was that of the prerevolutionary Havana gratin. After a pause, Paz asked, “What you said before … who did you think was going to disturb us?”
“Oh, you know … unpleasant people. The last time I ate in a public restaurant, a man came up and spat into my food. I’d prefer to avoid such scenes.” Paz gave her a questioning look.
“You don’t keep abreast of politics in the Cuban community? No, why should you? The politics of the Cuban community has little to do with people who look like you. I should explain, though, that I’m considered inadequate in my hatred of Fidel and his regime. I signed a petition, for example, asking that the embargo be lifted to allow the importation of medicines and baby formula. Also, I was so remiss as to tape an interview that was shown on Cuban television. It wasn’t about politics, but only about my field of study; still, it was construed as being a comfort to the enemy. I was also friendly with Fidel beyond the time when it was considered appropriate, that is, when he began to seize the property of the rich.”
“You knew Fidel?”
“Everyone knew Fidel,” she said dismissively. “Cuba is a small country and he never desired to hide his candle under a barrel. Also, we were at the university together.” He saw her eyes unfocus for an instant, something he had seen his mother do often, when the lost world of the Cuban past presented itself in some particularly vivid way. “But you didn’t search me out to speak of ancient history. You wish to consult me on … what?”
“Lydia Herrera suggested I talk to you. I went to see her because this showed up at a murder scene.” He took out the opele nut and put it on the table. She looked at it but did not pick it up. He went on, “Besides this, the murder was … it looked like it might be some kind of ritual killing, and the victim’s body was loaded with a bunch of exotic drugs. Narcotic and psychotropic drugs.”
“And you think it might have something to do with Santeria?”
“Do you?”
“With organized Santeria as it exists in the United States and Cuba? No, absolutely not. There’s no tradition of drug use in Santeria, aside from a few ritual swallows of rum, nor, of course, is there human sacrifice.”
“There’s animal sacrifice, though,” said Paz, and got a sharp look.
“Yes, and Catholics eat their God during communion, but no one supposes that they’ll depart from the symbolic to the literal and consume actual flesh and blood. You of all people should know this.”
“Why, because I’m a black Cuban? I’m sorry, but that’s as wrong as assuming you’re a rabid Alpha 66 supporter because you’re a white Cuban.”
A bristling moment, Paz cursing himself for getting miffed at a potential information source again, but to his surprise, Dr. Salazar smiled. “There you have it in a nutshell, why Fidel is still in power and we are all over here. We are a waspish, disagreeable little people, are we not? I beg your pardon for my unwarranted assumption, which smacked, too, of racism.”
“No offense taken,”said Paz. “But the fact is, my ignorance of Santeria is practically total. My mother was particularly against it. She thought it was low.”
His mother. A memory flashed into his mind. He had come home from school with a slip of paper. It explained that in the fifth grade he was going to start in a remedial class. He explained to her that this was where they put the dumb kids. The mother was surprised. But you can make change, you can add up in your head, you read everything, and from an early age. Why are they doing this, in the school? It was embarrassing to say the real reason; perhaps his mother had not yet observed this element of American culture. He shrugged. He didn’t answer. His mother was smarter than he thought, however. There was a Herald reporter who came to the restaurant. He was in love with her food, also a little with the cook. At his table one evening she stopped and told him the story. A smart boy, why do they want to put him with the estupidos? The reporter knew why. He knew that the school system had determined that although it could not get away with actual racial segregation, it could do the next best thing by insuring that little black and little white children would never have to sit in the same classrooms, for it was an element of the American creed that the reason They do not do well in life is that They are not very smart. A story was duly run about tracking and its discontents. Jimmy was placed in the gifted and talented track and became officially part of the Talented Tenth along with Oprah and Colin, so the Americans could go back to thinking that all was well in that area of national life.
Dr. Salazar was staring at him peculiarly. Had he missed something? He said, “Sorry, I got distracted by the past for a second there. You were saying?”
Through a faint smile she said, “I was saying that I should have acknowledged that any deeply held faith can produce monstrosities. Some years ago in Matamoros, a group of men who called themselves santeros committed more than a dozen murders, supposedly as part of a ritual. But that had as much to do with the true religion as the Jonestown atrocity or that terrible man in Waco had to do with Christianity. So, it’s entirely possible that you’re dealing with someone, a madman, who’s warped Santeria to his own sick ends. Can you tell me something about the ritualism associated with this murder?”
Paz did, leaving out, as usual, some important details. Dr. Salazar’s face became very grave, nearly stricken. She picked up the opele nut in its plastic envelope.
“This is African,” she said.
“So I understand. Does that make a difference?”
“Yes. It’s quite possible that you are dealing not with a Cuban or an Afro-Cuban, but with an African, a practitioner of the original religion from which the various New World religions were derived.”
“And that original one would involve human sacrifice?”
“If we’re talking about Africa, who knows? Certainly not me. There have been any number of cultures in which human sacrifice was accepted?the Aztecs are the most famous, but also we have Carthage, and thuggee in India, and ritual headhunting in the South Pacific, and there may be some similar cults in Africa. The Ibo certainly
