“Claircine, I feel so unhappy.”
“Why so, mamselles, there am nothings to be misleraable ‘bout, is there?”
Sestrina responded by giving a deep sigh. Then the old negress started to gabble away, as Sestrina sat on her bed for companionship. The woman’s inconsequential chatter cheered Sestrina.
“You look so beautiful nows you be coming womans,” said Claircine as she touched her mistress’s mass of glittering hair and ran the shining tresses through her dark fingers, and sighed in the thought that her own locks were so short and woolly. “Ah, Sessy, you ams like your mother,” said Claircine, who had been her mother’s maid from the time of Sestrina’s birth. Then the old negress continued: “She too had nicer hair and white flesh, for she had a father who was a real handsome white mans!”
After a while the conversation changed. Sestrina and the negress began whispering. Several times they glanced as though in some fright towards the bedroom door as a moan came to their ears. It was only the noise of the wind sighing down the orange groves that murmured like sad phantoms just outside the open casement as the girl and negress talked on. There was something eerie and dreadful sounding in the slightest noise that night! Claircine had also seen President Gravelot come home under the terrible influence of the vaudoux fetish. The old negress had seen the President behave like a maniac, and had then seen the after effects as he came round, laid his head on the table, and moaned in remorseful despair.
“’Tis the terrible, but wonderful papaloi who he see at the secret mountain temples where they do drink ze blood and rum; yes, dey make your father look like dat!” said Claircine. Then the negress added: “I no tell you such tings, Madamselle Sessy, but I now tink it be best dat you know such tings since dat you be getting older.”
“Do you really believe in such things, that the papaloi are the chosen priests of the heavens?” whispered Sestrina, as she heard such things as she had never heard before or dreamed of. Claircine had spoken to the girl in an awestruck, reverent way, about the terrible vaudoux priests.
“No, madamselle, it am no good me believing, I am only low-caste, and so am not allowed to attend great vaudoux worships.” Then the old negress sighed, and added: “If I’d been good enough, I would have marry handsome Chaicko, for you know that women who am vaudoux worshippers are watched over by ze god of the Goat without Horns, and am always happy in dere love affairs.”
“Surely you don’t mean that, or believe that my father would drink human blood?” whispered Sestrina, as she looked despairingly into the negress’s eyes. Her face looked pallid, almost death-like, dark rings about her eyes.
“Ah, Madamselle Sessy, this chile does believe in the greatness of ze papaloi. I do often see ze zombis (ghosts) creep ’bout under de mahogany trees when the great papaloi chant in ze forest.”