The Lower Deep (40 page)

She nodded. "Do you believe in possession, Steve?"

Only briefly did he hesitate. "As a medical man
I'd like not to. But we've both seen people possessed at voodoo rites, haven't we?" And I, he thought, was damn near killed just a little while ago by a middle-aged St. Joe cook who almost certainly was possessed by this Gèdé Cinq Jours Malheur we're talking about.

Even now he could close his eyes and see Lazaire with the butcher knife—an ordinary St. Joe peasant repeatedly transformed into a raging fury that looked and acted like nothing human.

"Very well." Nadine was still on one elbow, still gazing down at him. "When you came to after blacking out there at La Souvenance, you were possessed by this
Gedé
of the five days misfortune. Off and on for the whole five days you were out, you were
Gedé
Cinq Jours Malheur. Now must I tell you why I wouldn't open the door to you when you left?"

Again Steve remembered the thing he had fought with in the hall: the thing that probably would have killed him if Tom Driscoll, saving his life for the second time, had not driven it back with the silver letter opener. Dreading the answer and tempted to let the matter drop forever now, he nevertheless said grimly, "Tell me, woman. I have to know!"

"You're going to hate yourself. Maybe you'll even hate me for telling you. That's what I've been so afraid of, you know—that you might hate me."

"Tell me."

"All right." She put her mouth to his first, as if to draw courage from kissing him again. "I was a total mess when you got through with me, darling. My face looked like something in a horror movie and my body was black and blue all over. The fact is, you nearly killed me."

"My God," Steve whispered.

"Or
Gèdé
did. If half the hospital staff hadn't answered my calls for help, you might have done me in."

Steve clung to her for long moments of silence. Then when the first shock had worn off and he could speak again, he drew back and looked at her. "I guess we know what happened now, don't we?" he said. "He was punishing me for leaving that ceremony when I was told not to. Lazaire actually expected me to die when I walked through that gate, you know. He as much as told me so. But you didn't let it happen, and they sought revenge by turning me against you." He felt his eyes filling with tears as he gazed at her. That these healing hands of his could have abused this woman he so loved was more than he could bear to accept. "Dear God, Nadine, I didn't do it to you. He did. You have to believe that, just as we have to believe that Paul Henninger could never have done what he did down there in the cave without the help of his Agoué. There's good and bad in voodoo. We both know that."

She nodded.

"Forgive me?"

"I did that long ago, even before you came back to St. Joe." Again her lips brushed his. "Tom Driscoll and I talked about it for days and thought we had a pretty good idea of why you turned against me. I did wonder about that Gèdé Cinq Jours, of course. Nobody we asked seemed to know about that particular
loa."
She shrugged and smiled at the same time. "We just didn't know anyone that well versed in voodoo."

"There are so many
loa.
Did I use his name when I was—when I turned on you?"

"That you did, dear heart. Over and over you yelled at me in Creole. Most of what you were saying I couldn't even translate, because even now we don't speak the language that well, either of us. Every little while you'd become a different person—one I hardly recognized—and keep screaming that you were this
Gèdé. I
can hear you now,
love.
'Mwen Gèdé Cinq Jours! M'Gèdé Cinq Jours! Ma touyé ou!"

"Ma touyé
ou." Steve winced. "Means 'I'm going to kill you.'" He began to shiver and for a moment could not stop. When he did stop, he drew Nadine to him again and wrapped both arms around her. "All right, love. I'm not
Gèdé
now. I'm Steve Spence again for good, and I've loved you a long, long time. And now—would you consider marrying me?"

"I considered it quite a while ago and decided I would if you ever asked me."

"I'm asking you."

"Then I will. Oh, yes, darling, I want to!"

When they had made love and Steve had come down off his cloud nine a little, he said, "Shall we get dressed and go tell Tom about us?"

"I'd like that. He's a wonderful man, really. Of all the doctors I've known—next to you, of course—I think I admire Tom and Louis Clermont the most."

Together they went to Tom Driscoll's room. It was after ten P.M. but Driscoll had not yet retired.

Wearing pajamas and a robe, he sat at his desk, going over staff reports on some of the Azagon's patients.

Here, Steve thought, was a perfect example of what the Azagon was essentially all about: a man reborn through a restoration of his old self-confidence. This was rehabilitation with a capital R.

"Things are creeping back to normal, as you can see." Tom's smile was wry, but still it was a smile. "By the way, Lazaire was released from the Sacré Coeur today. He's back here."

"At his old job?" Steve frowned.

"No, he's not up to that. Just staying the night, then he'll be going to his lady friend on the plantation for some tender loving care. If we can't promote one of the kitchen crew to be head cook, we'll have to advertise again." Tom's gaze shifted to Nadine. "What's on your mind, you two? You look very happy tonight."

"We've decided we ought to be married," Nadine said, reaching for Steve's hand.

"Wonderful! When?"

"As soon as possible," Steve said.

"Here in St. Joe?"

"Why not, unless you object to having members of your staff sleeping together."

"Lord, no." Driscoll extended a hand to each of them. "Go talk to Louis Clermont, why don't you? He's a—what do they call them here?
Notaire? Juge de
Paix? Anyway, he can marry people. You'd like that, no?"

"We would indeed," Nadine said.

At a knock on his door Tom Driscoll released
their hands and called out, "Come in!" The institution's former chef, Ti-Jean Lazaire, entered with a tray on which were a stack of sandwiches and a cup of steaming chocolate. To Steve and Nadine he murmured, "Good evening."

"Good evening, Ti-Jean," Steve replied. Did the man remember what he had done when possessed? He seemed not to. But then, the mind of a certain Dr. Stephen Spence had also gone blank under similar circumstances, hadn't it?

He recalled, too, having spoken to people at various voodoo ceremonies after they were possessed, one of them a small boy who couldn't possibly have been pretending. They hadn't remembered, either.

Lazaire arranged a small table for Driscoll before speaking again. Then he said with a look of sadness on his middle-aged St. Joseph face, "I am sorry about
M'sié
Henninger, Doctor."

"You did everything you could to help him, Ti-Jean," Steve said.

"But not enough."

"Nevertheless, he was sure in his heart you had helped him. According to George Benson, he felt he was not alone at the end. Your Agoué was with him."

The cook's face brightened. "And do you also believe that, Doctor?"

"Well, I wasn't there. I mean I was not in the sea with him but on the boat, as you must have heard by now. But yes, I believe it."

"Thank you, Doctor," Lazaire said with dignity. "I am glad." Murmuring "Good night, good night all," he departed.

"A good man," Tom Driscoll said, "in spite of what happened outside my door here." The look he directed at Steve was an impish one that told Steve a healthy healing was in progress. "Just as you're a pretty decent fellow, too, in spite of what you tried to do to Nadine at the Brightman. You know about that now, of course. She wouldn't be marrying you if you didn't."

"Yes, Tom, I know about it."

Tom Driscoll's old-time grin was aimed at Nadine now. "And, of course, you've forgiven the bounder."

"If I had known then what I know now," Nadine said, "I never would have let him go. I would have understood what happened to him." A touch of sadness flickered across her face as she reached again for Steve's hand. "When you take time to think about it, we know so little about such a lot of things, don't we?"

Dr. Louis Clermont had spent most of that evening with the parents of Ginny Jourdan, telling them the truth about what had happened to their daughter, but pledging them to secrecy. On returning home he found the army jeep parked in front of his house and Roger Etienne in it, waiting for him.

"Just want to ask a few questions to complete my report," Etienne said. "Do you mind, Doctor?"

Clermont was almost talked out, but decided he had better take his caller inside and cooperate. He would not, of course, tell Etienne about the tiny creature he and Dr. Beliard had removed from Ginny Jourdan's womb. Anything like that, ap
pearing in the lieutenant's report to his superiors, might stand this primitive island country on its ear. But, yes, he would answer any other questions the lieutenant might ask.

He did so—they seemed to him mostly routine—then Etienne departed and Clermont's phone rang. The caller was Commander Norman Morris, in Guantanamo.

"Just checking to make sure the boat got away all right," Morris said. "For some pretty good reasons, we thought we'd better hightail it out of there in a hurry and couldn't be sure."

"It did, Commander. Yes. And I've been told by some very grateful people about the part you played in its escape. What was that thing you dropped, may I ask?"

"Doctor, we didn't drop anything. We weren't even there."

"I see."

"I'm sure you do. Anything new on Paul? Has he turned up yet?"

Louis Clermont recounted what George Benson and Dannie André had told him about the last few moments in the life of the commander's brother-in-law.

There was a long silence.

"Well, Doctor, I'll say good night," Morris said. "One of these days I'll drop in on you and maybe you'll be good enough to let me talk to Benson about all this."

"Of course."

"Till then, so long. And thanks."

"We should thank you," St. Joseph's Abe Lin
coln said fervently. "Every last one of us here, and perhaps others we don't even know about." The phone clicked.

Clermont leaned back in his chair, his hands linked behind his head, and allowed himself to think about those who had died. Of Ginny Jourdan, with a monster inside her. Of Dr. Juan Mendoza and George Benson's wife, Alice. Of Lawton Lindo. Of the three on the
Ti Maman.
But most of all of Paul Henninger.

Paul Henninger, the soccer player. The artist.

The Man. Especially the Man.

Into Clermont's consciousness seeped a sound, then, that he normally would have paid little attention to. Voodoo, after all, was a way of life in this island town. The sound of drumming from The Hounfor was as familiar as were the sounds of the sea, the streets, and the marketplace.

At one in the morning, still hearing the drums, he went to bed.

At four o'clock he awoke to a sound of footfalls in the street outside his window, and went to the window to look out.

It was a procession.

A procession in the moonlight, obviously on its way to Pointe Pierre. In the lead was the
houngan,
Auxian Ramses, flanked by two bearers of multicolored ritual flags that fluttered limply in a gentle breeze from the sea. In his outstretched hands Ramses held a small wooden boat filled with offerings of food and drink. Offerings, Clermont knew, to the voodoo sea god, Agoué.

There was no drumming now, though three of the marchers carried drums. There was no chanting. In complete silence some twenty followers of Auxian Ramses trailed their leader past the house. A parade of ghosts.

A thank-you to Agoué? Probably, Clermont decided. These people knew what had happened, of course. Somehow they always knew what happened.

He went back to bed.

Half an hour later he heard the drums again, and knew the sound came from Pointe Pierre this time as the
houngan
and his followers embarked in one of the fishing boats.

It was, somehow, a very comforting sound when you stopped to think what the faith of that brave man, Paul Henninger, had done for him. As a doctor, Louis Clermont would never cease to swear by the power of faith.

More than once he had seen it move mountains.