Blackfly Season

24

RED BEAR REMEMBERED RECEIVING those scars to the day, hour and minute. It had been his twenty-first birthday. Uncle Victor had taken him to the tool shed. To this day, no one but the two of them knew the goings-on in that little concrete shed, a miniature outbuilding surrounded by brute high-rises. Who could have suspected the magical power emanating from the backyard of a housing project in Toronto, that least magical of cities?

Victor led him to the tool shed, blindfolded him and steered him in darkness beyond the back wall and into his temple. The stench no longer bothered Red Bear—or Raymond, as he was then known. Far from nauseating him, the stench set his pulses pounding. Uncle Victor had been preparing him for this day; through years of training, had brought him ever closer to the black beating heart of Palo Mayombe. Raymond could feel it pulsing around him, the heart of magic.

“Today is the most important day of your life, Raymond.” Uncle Victor’s wheezy, disembodied voice was like a speaking kazoo. “Today you will become a full priest of Palo Mayombe. You do not have to take this step, remember. There is still time to change your mind.”

“I know. I want it, Uncle.”

“You are sure?”

“I am sure. There is nothing I want more.” Red Bear/Raymond inhaled deeply the smells of candle wax, cinquefoil and wormwood, and, above all, rotting meat.

“Very well. Two things will happen today. First, you will give up your soul. And second, you will be rayed out. You know what these things mean?”

“Yes, Uncle. My soul will die. And so for me there will be no chance of eternal happiness and no chance of eternal damnation. But I will be freer than any other man alive: free to take other souls.”

“And to be rayed out?”

“To be rayed out means that I will accept the pain of the scars in return for the light and the power of Palo Mayombe.”

“And you choose to do these things of your own free will?”

“I do.”

“Has anyone forced you in any way to do these things?”

“No.”

“And you recognize that once done they cannot be undone?”

“I do.”

“Very well then, we will proceed.”

Raymond heard his uncle draw the ceremonial knife from its sheath. This was followed by the sound of steel against whetstone. Then his uncle secured Raymond’s wrists in the leather cuffs hanging from the ceiling. His mouth dried. Tremors shook his body.

That wheezy voice, dry as paper, chanting now in the language of his chosen religion, Palo Mayombe. Then the first searing touch of the blade.

Who can number all the ingredients that go into the creation of a monster? A dead body, the brain of a murderer, a bolt of lightning—the mad scientist throws a switch, life courses through dead veins and evil walks the earth. The case of Red Bear is more prosaic.

Long before Red Bear was Red Bear, he was Raymond Beltran, son of a teenaged prostitute named Gloria Beltran, who was shipped out of Cuba in the Mariel boat lift of 1980. Little Raymond had been eight years old then, and if his life in Havana had been unstable, it was nothing compared to the journey he was about to undergo.

Gloria’s first stop was Miami, along with the other hundred thousand-plus Cubans of that exodus. She moved in with a cousin who threw her out when she came home to find Gloria plying her trade on the living-room couch, young Raymond not more than ten feet away in the next room. Her next stop was with an uncle, a much older and apparently more tolerant man. Unfortunately, Gloria had to quit that place on a matter of principle when the uncle insisted that she pay her rent in kind. The list of addresses that followed was long: two weeks here, three months there, each basement apartment more unpleasant than the last.

Then Gloria and Raymond caught what seemed like a break when they took up with Inigo Martinez, a drug dealer who had tired of the murderous competition in Miami and set his sights on the wide open market of Canada. Which was how Raymond Beltran came to grow up in a housing project called Regent Park on the east side of downtown Toronto.

Whenever the government does a census, Regent Park comes out as the poorest neighbourhood in Toronto. Most of its inhabitants are recent immigrants trying to realize some tiny approximation of their dreams. Many are single parents living on welfare; almost all are law-abiding. Inigo Martinez was not. Nor was he a successful businessman. His vision of Canada as a vast, undersup-plied market for his product turned out to be incorrect. So incorrect that a disgruntled competitor had him thrown from the top of a high-rise.

Gloria managed to evade deportation by persuading a Canadian of Cuban heritage to marry her. For a small financial consideration, he agreed to appear at several immigration interviews, have photographs taken of their “honeymoon” and so on. After her status was legalized, Gloria tried to coerce him into providing “child-support” payments, but he disappeared from her life as people with any sense were wont to do.

That left Gloria to raise Raymond on the income she received from Social Services and the proceeds from selling her body. Neighbours complained, of course, and the police were frequent visitors. The Catholic Children’s Aid Society repeatedly hauled her before the provincial court at 311 Jarvis Street on charges of child neglect. Having left school forever at the age of fourteen, Gloria saw no reason why her son should attend; she liked having him around the apartment.

In addition to his mother, the other major influence on Raymond Beltran’s character—the bolt of lightning that zapped the latent murderer’s brain to life—was witchcraft.

Witchcraft, or more properly brujeria, came to Raymond in the person of Victor Vega, a fellow Cuban who looked to young Raymond to be about a hundred years old. Vega was bony, twisted and stooped. One leg dragged behind the other, the legacy of a long-ago car accident. His brown face was a cartoon exaggeration of brows and cheeks. All in all, an unprepossessing exterior for a man who commanded the respect—even fear—of those who knew what he was.

Vega was a witch, a padrone in the religion of Palo Mayombe. Palo Mayombe, like the better-known Voodoo and Santeria, is an African belief system whose gods wear the guise of Christian saints. Like its two sister religions, it concerns itself with magic, but in Victor Vega’s hands it was magic of the blackest kind.

He lived down the hall from Gloria and Raymond; they saw each other often in the elevators. They greeted each other in Spanish, exchanged comments about the weather, but not much more than that. But the old man always looked at them with curiosity, as if he recognized them from somewhere. One day, when they were waiting for the elevator to arrive, Victor said, “I see you are a follower of Santeria.” He was pointing with a sinewy finger at a huge carved bracelet on Gloria’s wrist.

“I light my candles,” Gloria said. “I ask now and again for guidance.”

“Do you know about Mayombe?”

“Yes. I have a cousin who is a padrone. My father and mother did not believe, however, so I did not learn much about it.”

“Still, I could see it is in your family.”

“Oh, yes?”

“Your son’s eyes. He has the kind of eyes that can see the future.”

“Well, it’s true he sometimes knows things he should not know.” She turned to Raymond. “Even as a little boy, Raymond. Even as a child, many of the things you said had a habit of coming true. There was the time—long ago, this was back in Havana—you pointed to the mulata Lena Lindo and said, ‘But she is dead, that woman.’ And the next day she was indeed dead.”

“I saw it in a dream,” Raymond said. “I thought it was real.”

“Yes, of course,” the old man said. “Of course you did. But I will tell you something right now, something that is true: One day you are going to be a padrone.”

“I don’t think so,” Gloria said. “Raymond is not a religious person.”

“Oh, yes he is. He may not know it yet, but it is obvious from those eyes. One day he is going to be the most powerful padrone we have ever seen.”

After that day, the three of them became more friendly. Vega took a kindly interest in the boy, taking him to Blue Jays games and teaching him how to fix cars and all kinds of motors. It was the most sustained attention Raymond had ever had from an adult, and he thrived under it. He got along better with the old man than he did with boys his own age, and Gloria was happy to see him spend time with someone from the old country. The three of them became very close.

Victor often paid Raymond to help him with his work. For, in addition to being a witch, the old man was in charge of grounds maintenance at the housing project. From the outside, his tool shed seemed nothing more than a cramped, concrete structure with a metal door and a roof of corrugated tin. It was heavily padlocked at all times unless Victor was inside; no one else had a key. If any of the local teenagers had decided to break in, they would have found the usual assortment of clippers, lawn mowers, weed whackers, shears, gloves and hoses.

But no one ever did break in, and it is unlikely that anyone would ever attempt it, because the place smelled so bad. Bags of sheep and cow manure were stacked against the entire back wall of the shed, and in summer it stank to high heaven.

That was Raymond’s first sense of the place, how the smell hit you in the face like a wall of cement. The lungs closed off in self-defence and the gorge rose in the throat. The first few times he stepped inside, he was consumed with fear, fear strong enough to set his stomach tumbling even before Victor opened up the back room, the secret room, the place he referred to as his “temple.”

Whenever Raymond and Victor were together, the old man talked to him about magic. He taught him that you could affect the events of this world with help from the creatures of the next. All that was required was a knowledge of how to control them. This knowledge, Victor hinted strongly, was something that was his to convey. Raymond began pestering Victor to teach him. Eventually, Victor agreed to show him his temple.

That first day—Raymond was not yet twelve—Victor squatted beside him and gripped his shoulder hard. His breath smelled of onions, but it was nothing compared to the stench in that shed.

“Little Raymond,” he said. “What I am about to show you is a great secret. You have told me you wish to learn about magic. To learn how to command the spirits. To employ them in bringing good things to the people you love, to your mama and to me. To learn how to protect yourself from enemies. To see the future. Are you still interested in these things?”

“Yes, Uncle.” Victor had told him to call him uncle and, by now, it came naturally. “Uncle, why does it smell so bad?”

“When you understand magic, you will know that that is a good smell, not bad at all. But now will you listen to what I am telling you?”

“Yes.”

“Because it is the most important thing you will ever hear me say. I repeat: What I am about to show you is a great secret. So secret that if you ever tell anyone what you see in here, or what I do in here, or what you do in here, I will kill you. Do you understand me? I will kill you, Raymond.”

Uncle Victor’s face, seamed and brown as a walnut, drew closer. His black eyes looked into Raymond’s, and Raymond knew he could see his fear.

“I won’t tell, Uncle.”

“I love you, my child, but if you tell, I will kill you with no more hesitation than a butcher kills a pig. You will die, you will be buried, and your mother will weep endless tears for you and she will never be happy again in her life. You don’t want that, do you?”

“No, Uncle.”

“So, if someone says to you, ‘Hey, that Victor is a strange old bird. What does he get up to in that shed of his?’ what do you say to this person?”

“I don’t say anything.”

“They may force you to say something. What will you tell them if they twist your arm and hurt you to make you talk?”

“I will tell them I don’t know what you do in here?”

“No, you will tell them this: ‘Uncle Victor keeps his gardening tools in there.’ That’s all. Not a word more. It is the truth, after all. No one can call you a liar. So what do you say?”

“‘Uncle Victor keeps his gardening tools in there.’”

The bony fingers gripped his shoulder; it was like being squeezed by a hawk. “Good, Raymond. You are a good boy. You are worthy to learn about magic. Now I will show you my temple.”

Victor slipped a foot under a rack of manure bags and pressed on a pedal. Something clicked, and the back wall shifted on a pivot. The smell became ten times worse, and Raymond gagged.

“It’s all right,” Victor said. “You will get used to the smell. In time, you will come to love the smell. It is the smell of power.”

The room was tiny, and pitch dark except for the single red bulb that glowed overhead. As Raymond’s eyes adjusted, he saw there was very little in the room: one large table, a hatchet and an array of knives fixed to the wall. The wall itself was painted with symbols he didn’t understand. In the middle of the table was a large iron pot. From this, a quiver of long sticks protruded, so straight they might have been arrows.

There was a chicken tied to a bolt in the table, black eyes glistening with fear.

Victor gestured toward the iron pot. “The source of my power. It doesn’t look like much, does it?”

Raymond sensed that no answer was required. Victor reached for him to lift him up, and Raymond shrank back.

Victor leaned down and spoke gently.

“You have nothing to fear, my child. Nothing. I am in control here. You will learn to ignore these feelings of fear. Eventually you will feel nothing and, believe me, to feel nothing is a great advantage in this world. For now, know that I will protect you. I will let nothing harm you. Nothing.”

“I want to go home, Uncle.”

“It is too late, Raymond. Stay by my side and nothing bad will happen to you.”

He hoisted Raymond up and stood him on an apple crate so the boy could see into the pot. There was a foul, congealed liquid with solids of indistinct shape adrift in it.

“Nganga,” Victor said. “This is called the nganga. In here we place the things we give to the gods. If we want a favour from Oggun, the god of iron, for example, we might put in a railway spike, or some large nails. If we want a favour from Ochosi, god of hunters, we might put in an arrowhead.”

“But there’s only one God, isn’t there?”

The brown face waggled at him.

“That is a different religion altogether. I’m teaching you a much older, much more powerful religion. In the Christian religions, yes, there is only one God. In Palo Mayombe, there are many. Into this nganga we also put the things we need in order to control the spirits. Spirit beings, you see, have no power over human beings unless it is given to them. They are vessels, drifting this way and that, until we give them power. We—that is to say, the wizards—give them life. We give them breath and we give them the power to see, the power to hear, to go places, to grasp things.” Victor flexed a claw open and shut before Raymond’s eyes.

“Where do spirits come from?”

“From living creatures. Animals. Sometimes from human beings. We take them from this world in such a way that we control them in the next. Then they do our bidding. They work for us, you see. Only wizards have this right, this power. Now be silent. Clear your mind of all fear, and just watch what I do. We will do something nice for your mother. We will ask Oggun to bring her something nice.”

Victor turned to the nganga and spread his hands like a Catholic priest over the altar. He began to speak in a language Raymond did not recognize. He knew it was not Spanish or English or French.

“Bahalo! Semtekne bakuneray pentol!” Victor turned to Raymond and spoke in an aside. “Always you must speak firmly to them. We do not beg on bended knee like the Christians and the Muslims. We tell them. We command.”

Victor raised his arms over the cauldron once more.

“Bahalo! Seeno temtem bakuneray pentol!”

Victor took the hatchet from the wall, grabbed the chicken and removed its head with a single stroke. He tossed the head into the pot. The headless chicken strained at its leash, running this way and that, unaware that it was dead.

Raymond started to cry. He tried to stop himself, but he couldn’t; his entire body shook with sobs.

Victor took hold of the chicken by the feet and unclipped the leash. He held the still-struggling bird upside down over the nganga so that the hot blood squirted into the pot. He started to say more words, then turned on Raymond, gripping his shoulders: “Stop crying now, Raymond. You hear me? Stop crying.” The bony hands shook him. “If you show fear, you allow the spirits to control you. This must never happen. Stop crying now. Take a deep breath and show them you are in command.”

Raymond tried to do it, but he was hopeless that first day.

Later that week, when he came home from school, Gloria was entertaining a customer. Raymond went straight to his bedroom and tried not to hear the noises the man made, his mother’s elaborate cries of ecstasy. When the man was gone, Gloria came to her son’s room.

“Come with me,” she said. “I have a surprise for you.”

They rode the battered elevator down to the lobby. Gloria took Raymond out to the parking lot and sat him in a brand new Honda Prelude. It had a leather interior and a wonderful radio and it smelled powerfully of new car. Sunlight glittered off every surface. “How do you like Mommy’s Honda?”

Raymond touched the steering wheel.

“Isn’t it fantastic?” she said. “Uncle Victor got it for me from a friend of his.”

“Who?” Raymond asked.

“A friend. I don’t know who. It doesn’t matter who.”

She started it up and pulled onto Gerrard Street. Five minutes later they were cruising along the Gardiner Expressway. Lake Ontario flashed brilliant blue and silver in the sun. The few clouds were absurdly white. Gloria opened all the windows and the sunroof, and their hair whipped about their ears. Raymond didn’t have to ask who had given her the car. It had been Oggun. Oggun had given them this car, just as Victor had told him to.

As time went by, Raymond got braver and braver in his uncle’s temple. Over the following months and years, Victor instructed him in the art of controlling the spirits. He taught him that when you took a soul, you had to do so with the utmost pain. Really, the sacrifice had to be screaming as it died, otherwise you could not command its soul. And if you showed the slightest fear, then the spirit would end up controlling you.

He showed Raymond how you remove the claws or feet, toe by toe, so the spirit would be able to grasp, how you cut off the feet and throw them into the nganga so the spirit would be able to move about and, finally, how you look into the sacrifice’s eyes in its final agony and tell it you would come for it in hell. Then you took the brain and transferred it to the nganga, so the spirit would be able to understand your commands, would be able to think.

Raymond threw up the first few times. But eventually it was just as Uncle Victor had said; he got used to it. The fear diminished, and by the time he was fourteen he felt no fear whatsoever. Chickens, goats, dogs, cats—in the end, it made no difference. Raymond learned to master the screaming animals and to stare into their eyes as they died.

Then his uncle taught him how to summon the spirit of the creature you had sacrificed, how to make him work for you.

Time, the twenty-one-year-old Raymond learned, took on a whole new meaning when you were on the receiving end of the blade. The hot blood turned sticky on his back, and his head ached monstrously from gritting his teeth against the pain.

His uncle removed the blindfold, and Raymond had to close his eyes against the candles that blazed in rows and rows. Then Victor released the leather cuffs and sat Raymond down.

“Don’t worry,” Uncle Victor said. “The wounds will soon heal.”

Cool water splashed over his back. His uncle dabbed at him gently. “You have nothing to fear, you know. From the moment I first noticed you—that time in the hall—I looked into your eyes and I said to Gloria, ‘Your son is going to be a priest. A very powerful priest.’”

Raymond remembered, but the old man often repeated the story.

Uncle Victor rubbed ointment on the long lines he had cut into Raymond’s back. The pain began to attenuate, to become bearable.

“You will have nothing to fear, Raymond. Believe me. You are going to be the most powerful priest walking the earth. A true collector of souls.” And then Victor did an amazing thing. He knelt down and bowed his head.