The Four Freedoms speech, Carella thought, and wondered if she had a green card.
'Francisco Palacios tells us you sometimes do the ceremony.'
'Pardon? Do the ceremony?'
'Conduct the ceremony. Whatever.'
'What ceremony do you mean?'
'Come on, Miss Prouteau. We're talking here, and we're talking the lady who implores
Legba to open the gate, and who sacrifices...' 'Sacrifices? Vraiment, messieurs...'
'We know you sacrifice chickens, goats...' 'No, no, this is against the law.' 'But nobody cares,' Carella said. She looked at them.
The specific law Clotilde had referred to was Article 26, Section 353 of the Agriculture and Markets which specifically prohibited overdriving, overloading torturing, cruelly beating, unjustifiably injuring maiming, mutilating, or killing any animal, wild or tame. The offence was punishable by imprisonment for not more than a or a fine of a thousand dollars, or both.
Like most laws in this city, this one was designed to protect a civilization evolved over centuries. rarely ever invoked the law to prevent animal in religious ceremonies, lest all the civil rights advocates demanded their shields and their Clotilde was now weighing up whether these two were about to get tough with her for doing something was done routinely all over the city, especially Haitian neighborhoods. Why bother with me? she was wondering. You have nothing better to do, messieurs' You have no trafiquants to arrest? No terroristes? how had they learned about Friday night, anyway?
'What is it you are looking for precisely?' she asked.
'We're trying to locate a person who may have driven a live chicken to a voodoo ceremony,' Hawes said, and felt suddenly foolish.
'I am sorry, but I did not drive a chicken anywhere,' Clotilde said. 'Live or otherwise. A chicken, did you say?'
Hawes felt even more foolish.
'We're trying to find a person who may have stolen a gun from a borrowed Cadillac,' Carella said.
This didn't sound any better.
'I did not steal a gun, either,' Clotilde said.
'But did you conduct a voodoo ceremony this past Friday night?'
'Voodoo is not against the law.'
'Then you have nothing to worry about. Do you?' 'I did.'
'Tell us about it.' 'What is there to tell?' 'What time did it start?' 'Nine o'clock?'
An indifferent shrug. Another drag on the cigarette in its red holder that matched the earrings, the necklace and the pouty painted lips. A cloud of smoke blown away from the two detectives.
'Who was there?'
'Worshipers. Supplicants. Believers. Call them whatever you choose. As I have told you, it is a religion.'
'Yes, we've got that, thanks,' Hawes said. 'Pardon?'
'Can you tell us what happened?'
'Happened? Nothing unusual happened. What do you think happened?'
We think someone delivered a chicken for sacrifice and stole a gun from the car while he was at it. Is what we think happened, Hawes thought, but did not say. 'Did anyone arrive with a chicken?' Carella asked. 'For what?' 'For sacrifice.'
'We do not sacrifice.'
'What do you do?' Hawes insisted.
Clotilde sighed heavily.
'We meet in an old stone building that was once a Catholic church,' she said. 'But, as you know, are many elements of Catholicism in voodoo, al though our divinities constitute a pantheon larger than holy trinity. It is my role as mamaloi to call upon Legba...'
'Guardian of the gates,' Carella said.
'God of the crossroads,' Hawes said.
'Yes,' Clotilde whispered reverently. 'As mentioned earlier, I implore him to open the gate...'
'Papa Legba, ouvrez vos barr ires pour Papa Legba, oh sont vos petits enfants?'
The gathered faithful in the old stone church their eyes and chant in response, 'Papa Legba, violht. Papa Legba, ouvrez vos barribres pour laisser passer!'
'Papa Legba,' Clotilde pleads, 'open the gate,..' 'Open the gate,' the faithful intone. 'Papa Legba, open the gate...' 'So that we may pass through.' Call and response.
Africa.
'When we will have passed...'
'We will thank Legba.'
'Legba who sits on the gate ...'
'Give us the right to pass.'
The strong African elements in the religion.
And now a girl of six or seven glides toward the altar. She is dressed entirely in white and she holds in either hand a lighted white candle. In a thin, high,
liltingly haunting voice, she begins to sing. 'The wild goat has escaped. 'And must find its way home. 'I wonder what's the matter. 'In Guinea, everyone is ill. 'I am not ill. 'But I will die.
'I wonder what's the matter.'
Clotilde fell silent. The detectives waited. She drew on the cigarette again, exhaled. Piaf was still singing of unrequited love. 'Guinea is Africa,' Clotilde explained. She fell silent again, as if drifting back to
Haiti and beyond that to Africa itself, to the Guinea in the child's plaintive song, to the Grain Coast and the Ivory Coast and the Gold Coast and the Slave Coast, to the empires of the Fula and the Mandingo and the Ashanti and Kangasi, the Hausa and the Congo. Still the detectives waited. Clotilde drew on the cigarette again, exhaled a billow of smoke, and began speaking in a low, hoarse voice. From the rising smoke of the cigarette and the hypnotic smoke-seared rasp of her voice, the old stone church seemed to materialize again, a young girl in white standing before Clotilde,
the priestess sprinkling her hair with wine and oil water, whitening her eye-lids with flour. Clotilde blows out the candles. The faithful are chanting again. 'Mistress Ezili, come to guide us! 'If you want a chicken, 'We will give one to you! 'If you want a goat, 'It is here for you! 'If you want a bull,
'We will give one to you! 'But a goat without horns, 'Oh, where will we find one.. 'Where will we find one... 'Where will we find one?' The bar went silent.
Clotilde exhaled another cloud of smoke, blowing over her shoulder, away from the detectives.
'That is essentially how the ceremony goes,' she said 'The faithful call to Ezili until she appears. Usually takes the form of a woman being mounted...' 'Mounted?'
'Possessed, you would say. Ezili possesses her.
Goddess Ezili. I left out some things, but essentially...' 'You left out the sacrifice,' Carella said. 'Well, yes, in Haiti a goat or a chicken or a bull be sacrificed. And perhaps, centuries ago in Africa, the': sacrifice may have been human, I truly don't know. I suppose that's what the goat without horns is all about. But here in America? No.'
'Here in America, yes,' Carella said.
Clotilde looked at him.
'No,' she said.
Yes, Carella said. 'After the oil and the water... 'No.'
'... and the wine and the flour, someone slits the throat of a chicken or a goat...'
'Not here in America.'
'Please, Madame Proteau. This is where the priestess dips her finger into the blood and makes a cross on the girl's forehead. This is where the sacrifice is placed on the altar and the drumming begins. The sacrifice is what finally convinces Ezili to appear. The sacrifice...'
'I am telling you there are no blood sacrifices in our ceremonies.'
'We're not looking for a cheap three-fifty-three bust,' Hawes said.
'Good,' Clotilde said, and nodded in dismissal.
