Green Eyes

  On the morning of Dularde’s funeral, Donnell told Jocundra he had slept with Otille. He was contrite; he explained what had happened and why and said it had been awful, and swore there would be no repetition. Jocundra, who had tried to prepare for this turn of events, believed he was truly contrite, that it had been a matter of circumstance allied with Otille’s charm, but despite her rational acceptance, she was hurt and angry.

  ‘It’s this place,’ she said mournfully, staring back at the angelic faces sinking into the black quicksand of their bedroom walls. ‘It twists everything.’

  ‘I can’t leave…’ he began.

  ‘Why should you? You’re the king of Maravillosa! Otille’s prince consort!’

  ‘You seem to think everything’s fucking normal,’ he said. ‘That I’m a guy and you’re a girl, and we’re stuck in this little unpleasantness, but soon we’ll be off to some paradisiacal subdivision. Three kids with sunglasses, a green-eyed dog, the veve in the back yard next to the barbecue. I’m walking a goddamn tightrope with Otille!’

  ‘Is that what they’re calling it now?’ she sneered. ‘Walking a tightrope? Or is that Otille’s erotic specialty?’

  ‘Maybe Edman’s right,’ he said. ‘Maybe you groomed me to be your soulmate. A sappy, morose cripple! Maybe you wanted someone to pity and control, and I’m not pitiable enough anymore.’

  ‘Oh, no?’ She laughed. ‘Now that you’ve risen to the status of pet, I’m supposed to be in awe? I watch you swallow every treat she feeds you…’ Tears were starting to come. ‘Oh, hell!’ she said, and ran out of the door, down the stairs and onto the grounds.

  The sunlight leached the wild vegetation of color and acted to parch her tears. She found a flat stone beside the driveway and sat down, watching flies drone in a clump of weeds. The undersides of their leaves were coated with yellow dust. It hadn’t rained in a couple of weeks, and everything was shriveling. She felt numb, guilty. He was in enough difficulty; he didn’t deserve her insults. A butterfly settled on her knee. If a butterfly lights on your shoulders, you’ll be lucky for a year, she remembered. Her father had been full of such bayou wisdoms. Nine leaves on a sprig of lavender brings money luck. Catch a raindrop in your pocket and it’ll turn to silver. As he had grown older, he had stopped quoting the optimistic ones and taken to scribbling darker sayings on scraps of paper. During her last visit home she had seen them scattered about the house like spent fortunes, tucked between the pages of books, crumpled and flung on the floor, and a final one slipped under the door just before she had left. Those who love laughter pay court to disaster, it had read. Prayers said in the dark are said to the Devil.

  Clouds swept overhead, obscuring the sun and passing off so that the light brightened and faded with the rhythm of laboured breathing. Donnell came out of the house and headed toward the graveyard. Jocundra stood and was about to call his name, but a girl, one of the ‘friends,’ ran down the steps and fell in beside him. Green eyes in a woman means passion, bitterness in a man, Jocundra remembered, staring after Donnell’s retreating figure. One who has not seen his mother will be able to cure.

  There were six coffins in the crypt, walled off behind stone and mortar, all containing a portion of Valcours Rigaud’s remains; there was space for a seventh, but Otille said it was buried elsewhere on the grounds. She lit a candle and set it into an iron wall mount. The yellow light turned her skin to old ivory, licked up the walls, and illuminated a carved device above each of the burial niches. Donnell recognized the design to be a veve, though he had only seen a crude version of it drawn on the back of Jack Richmond’s guitar: a stylized three-horned man. The sight of it waked something inside him to a fury. His fists clenched; his mind was flocked with violent urges, shadowy recognitions, images and scenes that flashed past too quickly for recall. He had such a strong sense of being possessed, of being operated by some alienated fragment of his personality. For a long moment he could do nothing but stand and strain against the impulse to tear at the stones with his bare hands, smash the coffins, crush the rags and splinters of Valcours into an unreconstructable dust. At last the sensation left him, and he asked Otille what the design was.

  ‘The veve of Mounanchou,’ she said. ‘Valcours’ patron god. And Clothilde’s. A nasty sort. The god of gangsters and secret societies.’

  ‘Then why not use it on your calling card?’ he asked, still angry. ‘It seems more appropriate.’

  ‘I’ve rejected Mounanchou,’ said Otille, unflappable. ‘Just as I’ve rejected Clothilde and Valcours. Ogoun Badagris was the patron of… a family friend. A good man. So I adopted it.’ She brushed against him, and her touch had the feel of something roused from the dry air and darkness. ‘Why did you look so peculiar when you saw it?’

  ‘I felt the bacteria moving around,’ he said. ‘It made me a little dizzy.’