Chase the Morning

But whatever their origins, swaying, jostling to that soft sinuous beat, they all looked alike, horribly alike. If ever I doubted the brotherhood of man, I saw it paraded before me that night – at its worst and darkest. Kinship is a terrible thing when it lies in cold, devouring looks, merciless, ruthless, utterly selfish or actively malign, weighing us up like prospects for a show. I could imagine Romans looking that way at captives in the arena, or predatory Western tourists at some of the nastier Bangkok cabarets, more with cruelty and delight in degradation than plain old lust. It had less effect on me than it might; I was too worried about Mall and Clare. But it did cross my mind momentarily that there were worse ways to be than empty. If my life had been hollow, fuelled by nothing but ambition, at least it hadn’t been filled with that sort of feeling, driven by those drives. At least emptiness was neutral – not a good thing maybe, but not a bad one either, depriving nobody but myself. Or was it?

It was as blinding in its way as that crack on the head, the sudden shock of recognition. They might have been ambitious, too, these people, just as I was. They sure as hell looked it; they looked just like the types I knew. They might have cut everything else out of their lives, just as I had; got what they wanted, where they wanted – and what then? A plateau. Nowhere else to go; or a long, long wait. And what could they do then? I’d been sensing it already, that emptiness in my life, that gnawing discontent – right from that moment at the traffic lights. Sheer ambition – casual sex – they’d been growing less enjoyable all the time, these sterile pleasures of mine. When they finally waned, what then? What would I have gone looking for, to fill up my hollow life? What short-cuts to rewards I felt I deserved, to fulfilments I felt cheated of? What else, that I mightn’t have known was evil, because I hadn’t left myself enough feeling, enough empathy, to judge? Suppose I came across something like this … Would I have woken up, one bright morning, and seen that look in my shaving mirror?

Back and forth they swirled, chattering, drinking, reaching up a hand to caress the tall white stones as they passed them. The stone was stained and scarred with what looked like firesmoke; it highlighted some sort of markings on them, rough crude scratchings hardly worth being claimed even as primitive art. They looked childish, moronic almost, and yet this elegant, excited crew was greeting them with an almost sensuous reverence.

‘Take me out to the ballgame!’ remarked Jyp laconically. ‘What’s the big attraction, old man? This is some sort of houmfor, right?’

Stryge sneered. ‘More than that, infant! Can you read the signs on those stones? I thought not! That is the work of these red savages, these Caribal apes, carved before other men came to these islands. This is a sobagui, an altar, one of their ancient shrines – and their cult, you will remember, was amusing.’

‘Wait a minute,’ I said, with a sudden sinking feeling. ‘It’s not only the sea that’s named for them, is it? Caribals … Cannibals?’

‘You got it,’ said Jyp. ‘Can’t you just see it, them and the Wolves squabbling over our chitlings? Me, I’d sooner feed the Caribs – any day.’

‘Would you?’ Stryge spat in the dust. His voice was venomous with contempt. ‘When they slashed open your sides while you still lived, to stuff you with herbs and peppers for the spit? They worshipped cruel gods, that tribe, preying on their hapless neighbours to feed their observances. When slaves mingled with them, raised in cruelty, shaped with the lash and the brand – oh, they understood such worship all right. Some took it, mingled it with their own Congo witchcraft and the brutalities their masters taught them. They worshipped a new god then, one who set himself above the rest, whose rite could bind and bend them to his will. A cult of wrath and anger and revenge, drawing its strength from all things common men call vile.’

He turned to me, his gaunt face working with strange emotions. ‘You, boy – do you hear those drums? Do you? You who would not leave well enough alone, you who would meddle in the affairs of forces past the scope of your empty dreaming! They are the drums I made you hear, far away, beyond the ocean and the sunset, the tambours maringuin. They speak a name, softly yet; soon, more loudly, till the hillsides throb with the beat, and all in town or village tremble and bar their doors, clasp their charms tight against loup-garous and mangeurs moun. For this is the cult of Petro, the dark way of ouanga, the leftward path of vodun that can twist and deform even the Invisibles themselves into shapes of vicious evil. And this, tonight at these ancient stones, this is its ancestral tonnelle, the temple where it was first proclaimed.’