Tiki

By

Robert B. Schofield

On St. John’s Eve one hundred years ago voodoos danced naked in the bayou.  Drums of deerskin stretched over barrels and pounded with ass’s thigh bones beat like the swamp’s own heart just outside the small city of New Orleans.  The city has grown up now, and the swamp is mostly quiet, except for mosquitoes and palmetto bugs, and the cries of small animals destined to become late night feasts for the crocodiles.

And sometimes, other things happen.

On this St. John’s Eve Byron Andrews, a tourist staying over from an actuary convention, entered an antique shop on Royale Street.  The shop smelled musty, although it was neat for its cluttered small space.  Byron looked around as the tinkling of the door chime died away.  Dozens of crystal chandeliers dangled above silver pie servers, ornate vases, beaded glass birds, and silk smoking jackets on racks.  As Byron slowly walked in he saw Egyptian rings in cases unfold, knives, napkin holders, intricate chopsticks, ancient books of wonder, and parchment tied with string.  He saw a wooden chain ending in a ball within a cage carved from a solid piece of teak wood.  He saw opera glasses, a bullet cigar cutter with intricate carvings, a pipe rack, and, on an old spindle-leg table, a tiki statue.

The statue was a foot high, five inches in diameter, made of some black hardwood.  Byron picked it up and turned it around in his hands.  It was heavy.  He looked at the three large-eyed faces, carved one on top of the other, separated by thick scrolling arches.  The two bottom faces grinned happily, a bit of plump tongue protruding from each wide-lipped mouth.  The top face was a snarling grimace.  Byron looked closer and saw jagged shark’s teeth inside the gnashing visage.  Byron held the statue at arms length and scowled.  The top face glared back at him.  Byron set the tiki down and looked out of the shop’s window.  Revelers partied by outside, masks and feathered boas, a Mardi Gras-clad troupe sloshing Pat O’Brien Hurricanes staggered past.  The French Quarter, on the river end of Bourbon, was always like that these days.

Byron went to the next aisle, and bent to consider an onyx tie-tac in a case.

“Estate jewelry,” the shop proprietor said as he came silently around the corner and straightened a china soup tureen, barely glancing at Byron.

Byron looked up.

“But you don’t want that,” the old man continued.

“Excuse me?” Byron said.

“How about this?”  The proprietor turned away, picked something up, then turned back.  He held a small object between his fingers.  The proprietor was small with a pointed nose and large eyes.  He seemed ferret-like in the dim room.

“What is it?” Byron asked.

“An earring.”

“I don’t wear earrings.  I’m not married, and I don’t have a girlfriend.”

“How about a daughter?”

“I used to.”  Byron thought of rosy cheeks and quiet giggles.

“Really?”  The shopkeeper suppressed a tight-lipped smile.  “Anyway, you don’t want this as jewelry.  The story that goes with it makes this particular item valuable.”

“What story?“  Byron asked.  As the shopkeeper scrutinized him Byron glanced sideways and noticed the glaring face of the tiki statue reflected in a gold-framed mirror on the wall.

“This isn’t a woman’s earring,” the proprietor said twirling the small bit of jewelry between his pointed fingertips.  “It belonged to a voodoo priest, not all that long ago.”

“Oh.”

“No ordinary one.  This voodoo priest was special.  He had power, over women.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well . . .” the shopkeeper began, taking a breath.

*

Euphrasine Tabouis was fifteen, the only daughter of a jeweler on Royale Street about the time of the depression.  Euphrasine’s mother died at birth.  And her father, the jeweler, whose shop was where the antique shop now stands back then, had just learned from his doctor that he did not have long to live due to a bad heart.  Monsieur Tabouis’ last wish was to see his sweet daughter safely married.  He thought his prayers had been answered when Jules Pigeon, recently arrived from Paris, applied for a job at his jewelry shop.  As soon as Monsieur Tabouis discovered that Jules Pigeon was a bachelor he hired him immediately, and invited him to stay in the apartment upstairs from the shop.  Soon Euphrasine’s father revealed his intention, that he wanted Monsieur Pigeon to marry his daughter.  His only demand was a vow that Monsieur Pigeon would love and cherish Euphrasine forever.

Monsieur Pigeon quickly agreed.  He had fallen in love with Euphrasine at first sight.  When they told Euphrasine, she turned pale, but as a well brought up Creole girl she agreed without protest.

The children on Royale Street made fun of Monsieur Pigeon.  He was short, with features that matched his name, they said.  They called him, ”Monsieur le Pigeonneau!” and  “Monsieur le Squab!”  Euphrasine cried in her room.  Yet the two were married.  A month later, Monsieur Tabouis died in his sleep.

*

The shopkeeper looked up from the earring to Byron, while continuing to twirl the jewelry between his fingers.

“What happened to her?” Byron asked.

“She became a prostitute on Basin Street,” the shopkeeper answered.  “In The House of The Rising Sun.”

Byron caught a glimpse of the tiki in the mirror.  The top face seemed to be laughing now more than snarling.  “What about that?” Byron asked, walking around and pointing at the tiki.

“That,” the proprietor said joining him, “Is a tiki statue from Yoyo Island.  Very rare.  Interesting of you to notice it.”  The shopkeeper cocked his head toward Byron.

“Yoyo Island?”

“Yes, it raises and sinks.”

Byron turned and lifted an eyebrow.

“So they say.”  The shopkeeper picked up the statue.  “See how the teeth are held in place with wooden pegs?  Very old.

“I‘ve never heard of any island that raises and sinks,” Byron said.  “Where is it?”

“In the Pacific.  Exactly opposite Shangri La, they say.”

  “This top face looks so out of place.  Is that another story?”

  “Yes,“ the shopkeeper replied.  “But the swamp will have to tell you that one.”  The proprietor turned his back to Byron and faced the window.  “Five hundred dollars,” the shopkeeper said.

  “What?”

  “For the tiki.  You can afford it.”

And the next thing Byron knew he was standing on Royal Street under a full moon with the tiki under his arm, and a charge receipt for five hundred dollars with his signature on it in his pocket.  He turned back to the antique shop but it was dark, with a “closed” sign hanging in the window.

*

Euphrasine tried to like and respect her new husband, but he was old, at thirty-six.  Her life did not change much, except that she now had a husband to care for instead of a father.  In the evenings he was tired, and would doze by the fire, with his belt loosened from dinner while Euphrasine read to him, just as she had done for her father.  He did not dance, did not enjoy the theater, and found parties boring.  Monsieur Pigeon, however, did not mind if Euphrasine went to parties, after ensuring she was properly chaperoned, of course.

They were married a year when Euphrasine was invited to a voodoo meeting on St. John’s Eve.  She had heard of voodoo her entire life and had even once seen the great voodoo queen Marie Laveau sweeping down Royale Street with her entourage.  It had filled her with excitement to see the proud Marie Laveau striding with such purpose, self-assured in her voodoo power.  Handmaidens trailed her.  Some used to be voodoo queens themselves, until Marie Laveau took over and gave them a choice: join me, or die.

*

Byron looked around at an empty Royale Street with fog rolling in.  He glanced at his watch, ten thirty.  He headed toward Bourbon, one block over.  As Byron turned the corner onto St. Peter he saw a mob standing in front of a garage door ahead to his left.  Preservation Hall was packing them in, as usual.  Opposite the crowd was Reverend Zombie’s Voodoo Shop.  Byron walked up, skirting the crowd, and peered into the voodoo store’s small window.  Tourists and trinkets, candles, voodoo dolls, and Mardi-Gras masks.  Junk.  But the tiki felt strange under his arm.  It was warm, and seemed heavier than before.  Byron continued along St. Peter and around onto Bourbon where he passed Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo.  This time he stopped and gazed intently at the storefront.  The tiki felt like lead.  He wrapped his other arm around it to hold it.  The scene in front of him changed.

He saw a dilapidated old house with tall grass, the porch a foot off the ground, raised on rickety timbers.  The grass was flattened in places, and on the porch was a child-sized coffin.

*

On St. John’s Eve one hundred years ago a group of sightseers, including Euphrasine Pigeon, climbed into carriages and set out for the wilderness around Bayou St. John.  When they reached the bayou they found a scene as wild as they could imagine, torches around a clearing, a tall Negro woman screaming instructions to a mass of nearly naked dancers, black skin shone as they chanted and gyrated to the beat of tom-tom drums.

Many of the women wanted to leave, but Euphrasine crept closer, in awe of the spectacle.  Suddenly the drums ceased, and into the clearing whirled a tall black man with a slender waist and rippling muscles.  He wore only a red handkerchief to cover himself, one earring, and an anklet of tiny bells that jingled as he danced.  And he danced like nothing Euphrasine had ever seen, twirling and leaping into the air, his body glowing in the firelight.  “Who is that?” a woman asked.  “Prince Basile,” a man answered.  “A quadroon witch doctor.”

Euphrasine pulled her cape tight, and scarcely aware of what she was doing, turned away from her friends and walked into the brush surrounding the clearing.  No one noticed at first.  When they did they searched and searched, but her friends never saw Euphrasine Pigeon again.

*

Byron squeezed his eyes shut, then looked again.  Marie Laveau’s House of Voodoo storefront was back.

     Shaken, Byron stumbled two doors down carrying the leaden tiki.  At a loud bar he ordered rum and coke and finished the drink in two swallows.  Then he walked another block and ordered a Hand Grenade from a sidewalk bar.  “The most powerful drink in town” the sign proclaimed.  Halfway down the next block, neon glared, “Live Sex Acts!”  Harmonica and washboard jazz of zydaco music assaulted him.  He passed a kiosk and paused long enough to pick up a pamphlet describing local swamp tours.  He shoved the leaflet into his shirt pocket and finished his drink.  He had just ordered another at a different sidewalk bar when a cab pulled up.  Byron waved him away, but the cabbie opened the door.

     “No, I--” Byron started,

     “You can’t take that out of the Quarter,” the cabbie said, pointing at Byron’s drink.

     “No, I don’t need a cab.”

     “Get in,” the cab driver said.

     It was a long walk back to his hotel.  Byron climbed into the sky blue sedan.  “Drive down Royale and let me finish this, will you?” Byron asked.

     “Sure.”

     “It’s been a strange night.”  Byron pulled at his drink, the dilapidated house with the child coffin image popped into mind.

     “This is one of the strangest,“ the cabbie agreed.  They reached the end of Royale.  “Finish that,” the cabbie said.  Byron did.

     “Where to?”

     “The International.”

     “You sure you wouldn’t rather go to the swamp?”

     “What?  Why’d you say that?”

     The cab driver pointed at the swamp tour pamphlet sticking out of Byron’s pocket.

     “Oh.”

     Byron settled back in his seat, resting the tiki next to him.  It felt good to let go of the weight.  The cab rocked gently and Byron’s eyes closed.

     It had been too long.  Byron’s eyes jerked open.  “Where are we?”

     “The swamp.”

     “What?”

     “That’s what you said.  You woke up and said the swamp.  I asked if you were sure, and you said yes.  Twenty-two-fifty,” the cab driver said.

     Byron looked next to him.  The tiki grinned mischievously.  He handed the cabbie a twenty and a ten.  “Keep it.”

     “Thanks.”

     He stepped out and the cab drove away.  Byron was in the swamp on St. John‘s Eve.

     It was nearly midnight.

*

     Prince Basile lived in a one-room shack near Lake Pontchartrain.  A shelf on one wall held several skulls and half-burned candles.  A pile of filthy quilts served as his bed.  There was a rusting charcoal furnace in one corner for heat and cooking.  On St. John’s Eve Prince Basile kicked out his mulatto concubine and replaced her with Euphrasine.

    Despite the dirt and poverty Euphrasine found that she was happy, deliriously so.  She embraced the witch doctor.  She felt alive in his powerful arms.  Prince Basile bent her back and kissed her deeply.  Then, as Euphrasine shuddered, he entwined his fingers in her soft hair and yanked hard.  Euphrasine screamed.

     The witch doctor stepped back and laughed.  Then he smacked her.  Euphrasine stared in shock.  Then she smiled.

     Prince Basile was a brutal lover, scratching and biting and leaving marks on Euphrasine‘s young body.  But Euphrasine was cursed with masochism that matched Basile’s sadism.

     He kept her a year, but Prince Basile had no intention of staying with this white novelty forever.  The following St. John’s Eve he brought home a coal black woman and told Euphrasine to leave his shack.  Euphrasine begged him to keep her, but Basile and his new mistress beat her and drove her away.

*

     Gnarled trees with hanging moss and puddles of foul smelling water lined the rutted, muddy road.  A thin dirt path led off into the darkness.

     Byron held the tiki out and looked at the face grinning in the moonlight.  He set the statue in the mud and backed away.  The black lump sat, silent and motionless.  Byron turned away from the statue.  Then, staggering from the alcohol, he headed down the narrow dirt path.

     The overgrown trail twisted through the swamp.  Byron tripped over knotted roots and lurched around distorted bushes.  Several times he staggered off the path, once stepping into brackish goo, which made him curse.  Another time he cut his hand on a thorn bush.  As he pulled his hand back and stared at the blood on his palm in the moonlight his eyes twitched, and the corners of his mouth pulled up.  Then, strangely, Byron Andrews nostrils flared, and he licked the blood from his hand.

     “Ta’atoa,” he said.  Then wondered why he had said it.  He staggered on.

     Byron Andrews lost track of time.  How long had he been in the swamp?  Forever, it seemed.  He staggered, bleeding, along a dirt trail that never ended.  Twisted trees rose and moss hung down and the mud slurped as he trudged.

     And then Byron Andrews stopped and saw a blackness rising out of blackness.  It was purple-black, erupting from a pool of mud, tentacles and grinning shark teeth, smirking.  The tiki mouth.  It loomed above a mud pool with swinging mud vines.

     “T'araea,” it said.  “T‘ivi.  Maro'ura.”  The sound was a groaning rumble, the mouth a huge, toothy form.

     Byron Andrews looked down at himself, and saw the tiki statue under his arm, the tiki he had left behind on the road, somehow there.

     A tentacle reached out from the swampy muck and struck Byron.  The smack cleared his mind.

     Byron thought of the shopkeeper’s story, of Euphrasine and Prince Basile.  And suddenly, he hated Prince Basile.  He wanted him dead.  He wanted to kill him with his bare hands, to wring the life from his arrogant throat.

     Byron was not afraid of the looming mud creature.  He looked up at the swaying tiki god.  This Polynesian god was powerful, and it was in him.  But how powerful?  Were the voodoo gods stronger?

*

     Euphrasine wandered through the swamp in a daze.  Dressed in rags, half starved and bloody after days of walking aimlessly, she appeared on the doorstep of The House of The Rising Sun on Basin Street.  Despite her condition, and the scars on her body, the mistress recognized her potential and took her in.  Once cleaned up, and after a prolonged rest, Euphrasine was put to work.  The House of The Rising Sun was a high-class social club, only for well dressed, well mannered, and especially well paying men.  Euphrasine was extremely popular.  She had fine clothes and lived in luxurious surroundings, but she longed for the days of the shack with her voodoo lover.

     One day, while strolling down the streets of New Orleans in her finery, she met the eyes of a small, pointy-featured man who recognized her at once.

     “Euphrasine!” Monsieur Pigeon exclaimed.  “Euphrasine, she has brought you back to me!  Marie Laveau has brought you back!”

     Euphrasine gasped, and fainted in the street.

*

     Byron Andrews walked with a purpose.  He knew where he was going and what he would do.  In no time he found himself in front of a shack that should have collapsed years ago.  It leaned, with gaping cracks that appeared like black teeth in the moonlight.  On the beaten dirt in front of the shack, in a ring of stones, embers glowed from an earlier fire, and a small child-sized coffin sat off to one side.

     “Come out,” Byron Andrews commanded.

     There was rustling in the shack, and a wizened man appeared at the door.  He was ancient, shriveled and bent, with deep wrinkles in his sagging black skin.  There was a smile of confidence on his face.

     “You!” Byron Andrews said.

     Prince Basile raised his head and looked into the eyes that were those of both Byron Andrews and Jules Pigeon.

     “I have waited a long time for this, Basile.  You stole my Euphrasine from me, not once, but twice.”

     “She come back to me of her own free will,” Basile said.  His voice was ragged, but strong.  “She don’t love you.  Face it.”

     “You will pay.”

     “Erzulie and Danbhalah warn me you come,” Basile said.  “You come ridin’ a outsider, but I know you come.  Your tiki god weak.”

     “Euphrasine was back with me.  You broke into my house and stole her.”

     “You wrong,” Basile said.  “Ask her yourself.  Girl!  Come here!”

     There was more rustling in the shack, and a shriveled old woman appeared next to Basile.  Her teeth were gone, her hair gray and thin.  Tattered rags hung loose on her scar-covered body.

     “Euphrasine!  Oh, Euphrasine!”

     “What?  What’s goin’ on?” the old crone asked.

     “Marie Laveau brought you back to me and he stole you again.  It has taken me so long to find you, Euphrasine.”

     “Who are you?” the hag asked.

     “It is me, Jules, your husband.”

     “I ain’t got no husband.”

     “Remember back.  It has been so long, so long for me to find a way to be with you.  I had to pay the tiki gods. . .” Jules Pigeon stumbled.

     “He’s crazy,” the old woman pointed a crooked finger at the man who held the tiki statue.

     “They promised me I would be with you again, but I had to give them something.”

     Prince Basile stepped out of the doorway onto the packed dirt in front of his shack.

     “You ‘shore did,” he said.  “Danbhalah told me that too.  But that was a long time ago.  And I guess now I can thank ya for it.”  Basile’s mouth formed a gap-toothed smile.  “You know, maybe that bargain’s what brought this here girl back to me.  She kept comin’ back, over and over.”

     “Aaahhh!” Jules Pigeon screamed and charged at the old man.

     “There it is,” Basile said, pointing.  “You wanna’ see?”

     Basile’s finger pointed at the child coffin.  Jules Pigeon froze in his tracks. 

     “I kept it here.  That’s what Erzulie tell me to do,” Basile said.

     Slowly Jules Pigeon, and Byron Andrews, approached the coffin.

     “Go on ahead, open it up.”

     Jules/Byron lifted the lid.

     Inside was a tender young girl, sweet, innocent, with rosy cheeks and flowers in her hair.  Dead.

     “Innocence,” Basile said.  “You done paid all right.”

     The man holding the tiki statue fell to his knees.  The tiki dropped from his grasp and rolled away.

     A cry of anguish pierced the night in the swamp that St. John’s Eve.

     Jules Pigeon howled, “I vowed to love her forever.”

The End