Haiti continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 181

The method of sacrifice is swift and inhumane. Simultaneously all the chickens' tongues were torn
out, and their legs and their wings were broken; then, with a dexterous and violent movement, their heads
were wrenched off. The sacrificers were soon up to their elbows in blood as the chickens, with savage
expertness, were pulled to pieces. Blood was poured into the cauldrons. Tufts of the neck feathers and
the gutted and dismembered carcases soon followed them. The battery of tom-toms continued without a
break, the drummers leaning forward at each roll with their long heckling snarl. The cauldrons and the
flames, the flying feathers, the blood, the ring of serious black faces in the firelight above the carpet of
green leaves, were a wild and disquieting sight. If a goat, a dog or a bull is to be sacrificed, scent is
first poured all over the victim, and it is dressed in ritual trappings. It is suspended in the air by its four
outstretched legs; the priest castrates it and severs its windpipe with two deft cutlass-blows. It was im-
possible not to wonder what the sacrificial technique had been in the obsolete Mondongo offerings. The
modern observances of the Zobops and the Vlinbindingues were an even more irresistible theme for con-
jecture.
The door of the temple had again opened, and the gyrating swords and flags were leading into the open
a procession which advanced with unnatural slowness. Surrounded by an escort of houncis, an object like
an enormous white slug with an immense hump was crawling out of the shadows of the houmfor. As
it worked its way towards us, guided by the houncis, it still remained problematical. It was, one finally
realized, a white cloth with a man inside it. But how could he be twisted into that extraordinary shape?
The houncis, crawling along beside it on all fours, were holding the edge of the sheet to the ground, so
that not an inch of the person inside it could be seen. It drew level with the fires and stopped. The mambo
fumbled with one corner of the cloth, the edge was slipped up a couple of inches, and two clasped hands
were revealed, one black, the other dark brown, and both, I noticed, left hands. One man must have been
crawling on his hands and knees, while a second, kneeling behind him with his body hunched over his
arched back, stretched down across his shoulders to clasp the hands of his mount for support. The mambo
pushed the black hand back under the cloth and rubbed the pink palm of the other with oil. She reached
into a cauldron and scooped out a handful of hot maize-flour, and, working it with grimaces of pain into
a paste, she moulded it to a cylinder and pressed it into the pink palm, forcibly closing the fingers over it
and thrusting it back under the sheet. The boiling maize on the oil must have been almost unendurable. A
tremor, accompanied by a long gasp, ran along the white shape, which slowly resumed its circuit. When
it came round again, the other hand was subjected to the same ordeal. On the next two journeys, feet
were in turn extricated and held for a moment in the flames. The white mass slithered, like some legless
mammal, unwieldily up the steps and vanished inside the houmfor. The second candidate appeared and
the operation was repeated. When he was in the temple and lying once more on the floor beside the other
candidate, the dancing and the invocations began again. The huddling mambo emptied flasks of oil into
the zins , and scattered a pool of rum all round the fires which at once burst into a blaze. The houncis,
falling to their knees, plunged their hands into the flames. The cauldrons cracked and disintegrated with
the heat, the boiling oil was mingled with the rum and a great flame leapt into the air. The remains of the
sacrifice were ceremoniously buried and a rhythmic stamping dance took place over the grave.
Soon afterwards the first crisis of possession occurred. Shaking off the usual initial paroxysm, a bulky
hounci-canzo rose from the ground in a metamorphosis whose symptoms resembled an amorous deliri-
um. Gabbling and leering, she careered unsteadily round the tonnelle , rubbing her loins against every per-
son and object that she encountered, in an erotic simulacrum. [6] Her fellow houncis seized her and began
to force her arms into the sleeves of an old morning coat several sizes too small for her. For a Ghédé had