Mr. Clarinet

wondered if their fear of him was only due to their never having seen his kind before, or if suspicion of the white man was something that had been passed down in the genes, mixed into the DNA.

Clarinette's tallest building was its imposing church?a mustard-yellow ring of reinforced concrete, topped with a thatched roof and a plain black cross. Four times the size of the next-biggest structure?a blue bungalow?it dwarfed the other amateurishly constructed clay and tin hovels clumped untidily around it. Max guessed from the way the church was positioned, right in the center of the village, that it had been built first, and then the community had evolved around it. The church didn't look much more than fifty years old.

The top of the cross scraped the clouds that hung incredibly low here, sealing the village in an impenetrable veneer of dusk, which the sun, although at its fullest, couldn't overcome. The gradual erosion of the nearby mountain ranges had brought the sky that little bit closer to the touch.

There was a freshness to the air, healthy nuances of oranges and wild herbs undercutting the smells of woodfires and cooking. In the background, over the hubbub of people going about their business, was the constant sound of the waterfall a few miles below, its great roar rendered as a persistent gurgle, water running down a drain.

They walked through the village, talking to people along the way. No one knew anything about Charlie, Beeson, Medd, Faustin, or Leballec. They weren't lying, as far as Max could see. Questions about Tonton Clarinette produced only laughter. Max wondered if Beeson and Medd had really come here, if Desyr hadn't deliberately misled them.

As they got closer to the church, they heard drumbeats coming from inside. Max sensed the rhythms going straight into his wrists, midtempo bass notes catching in his bones and creeping into his veins, getting in sync with his pulse beats before they eked down into his hands and fingers and moved up and down them, making him clench and unfurl his fists as though he had pins and needles.

The door to the church was padlocked. There was a notice board fixed to the wall, with a prominent picture of the Virgin Mary on it. Chantale read it and smiled.

'This place isn't what you think it is. It isn't a church, Max,' she said. 'It's a hounfor?a voodoo temple. And that isn't the Virgin Mary, it's Erzilie Freda, our goddess of love?our Aphrodite, one of the most exalted goddesses.'

'Looks like the Virgin Mary to me,' Max said.

'It's camouflage. Back when Haiti was a French slave colony, the masters tried to control the slaves by eradicating the voodoo religion they'd brought over from Africa and converting them to Catholicism. The slaves knew there was no point in resisting the masters, who were heavily armed, so they apparently went along with the conversions?only they were very cunning. They adopted the Catholic saints as their own gods. They went to church just as they were supposed to, but instead of worshipping the icons of Rome, they worshipped them as their own loas. St. Peter became Papa Legba, loa of the lost, St. Patrick was prayed to as Damballah, the snake loa, St. James became Ogu Ferraille, the loa of war.'

'Smart people,' Max said.

'That's how we got free.' Chantale smiled. She looked back at the notice board for a moment and then returned to Max. 'There's a ceremony today at six. Can we stay for it? I want to make an offering for my mother.'

'Sure,' Max nodded. He didn't mind, even if it meant making the trip back to Petionville in pitch darkness. He wanted to see the ceremony, just to satisfy his curiosity. At least he'd come away with something from this place.

They left the main village and walked east where two mapou trees grew, Max marveling at how tranquil and quiet the countryside was after the capital.

They came to a low, long, sandstone wall that had been abandoned before completion. The structure's south-facing end, had it been finished, would have given people on its upper floors a clear and spectacular view of the waterfalls a mile down.

'Who'd want to build here? It's out in the middle of nowhere,' said Chantale.

'Maybe that was the whole point.'

'It's too big for a house,' Chantale said, following the wall with her eyes all the way back toward the mountains behind the village.

Both mapou trees were adorned with burned-out candle stubs, ribbons, locks of hair, pictures, and small scraps of paper with handwriting on them. A little farther on, a shallow stream trickled quietly down to the chasm of Saut d'Eau. It would have been an idyllic scene were it not for the two rottweilers playing right in the middle of the water.

Their owner, a short, thickset man in jeans and a crisp white shirt, was standing on the other side of the stream, watching both his dogs and Max and Chantale, seemingly at the same time. He was holding a Mossberg pump shotgun in his left hand.

'Bonjour,' he called out. 'American?'

'That's right,' Max said.

'You with the military?' the man asked, a hint of New Jersey in his accent.

'No,' Max replied.

'You visit the falls?' the man asked, walking along his side of the bank so he could face them. The dogs followed him up.

'Yeah we did.'

'You like 'em?'

'Sure,' Max said.

'Got nuttin' on Niagara?'

'I don't know,' Max said. 'Never been.'

'There's some flat stones up ahead'll get you over this side without you needing to step in the water.' The man pointed to some vague spot in the water. 'That is, if you're meaning to come this way?'

'What's over there?' Max asked, not moving from under the shade of the trees.

'Just the French cemetery.'

'Why 'French'?'

'Where the bodies of French soldiers are buried. Napoleon's men. See all this land? Used to be a tobacco plantation. There was a small garrison stationed back where the town is. One night the slaves rose up and took control of the garrison. They brought the soldiers here, right where you stand, between those two mapoux.

'One by one they made 'em kneel down on a veve dedicated to Baron Samedi?that's the god of death and graveyards?and they slit their throats,' the man said, drawing his finger across his throat and clucking his tongue as he completed the motion. 'They drained their blood and made it into a potion, which they all drank. Then they put on the soldiers' uniforms, painted their faces and hands white?so's they'd fool anyone watching them from a distance?and they went on the rampage, killin', rapin', and torturin' every white man, woman, and child they found. Not one of them got so much as a scratch on him. When they was done and free, they all come back here and settled down.'

Max looked at the trees and the ground where he stood, as if something about them could betray their history; then, finding nothing remarkable there, he and Chantale followed the bank until they found the raised stepping stones that led across the stream.

The man and his dogs came to meet them. Max put him at about his age, midforties, maybe a few years older. He had a dark moon face and small, sparkling eyes that were full of mirth, as if he'd just regained his composure after hearing the funniest joke ever told. His forehead was heavily lined and there were deep brackets around his ears, light furrows continuing the ends of his mouth, and a spray of silver stubble around his jaw. He looked strong and healthy, with thick arms and a barrel chest. He could have been a professional body-builder in his youth, and, Max imagined, he still worked out now, pumping serious iron a few times a week to keep his flame alive and the flab at bay. They'd never met before but Max already knew him?his posture, his build, and his stare gave him away: ex-con.

Max held out his hand and introduced himself and Chantale.

'The name's Philippe,' the man said and laughed, flashing the best set of teeth Max had seen on a local. His voice was hoarse, not through shouting or any infection, Max reckoned, but through lack of use, no one to talk to, or not much worth saying to the ones he was with. 'Come!' he said enthusiastically. 'Let's go see the cemetery.'

* * *

They crossed a field and another stream until they came to a wild orange grove whose powerful, heady smell had left its trace around the village. Philippe navigated his way through the trees, sidestepping piles of sweetly rotting fruit, naturally grouped into loose shapes, part-square, part-circle, where they'd dropped off the branches and bounced and rolled to a stop. The oranges were the biggest Max had ever seen, the same size as grapefruit or small honeydew melons, their skin thick and dull with a slight blush creeping out from the stem. Their insides, where they'd burst, were flecked with red. The orchard was buzzing with flies, all feasting on the abundance of putrefying sugar.

The cemetery was some way in, a large rectangle of tall, thick grass and headstones?ostentatious and modest, straight and crooked, enclosed by a waist-high metal-bar fence and entered through one of four gates at the side.

The soldiers were all buried side by side, sixty bodies in five rows of twelve, their resting