Women and Ghosts by Alison Lurie

Author:Alison Lurie [Lurie, Alison]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-0-307-82856-9
Publisher: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Published: 2012-09-12T00:00:00+00:00

THE NEXT DAY was Saturday. Celia, after a sleepless night, left her house in the hope of jogging off some of her depression. The morning was cool and fresh, the street nearly empty, but as she reached the gate of the compound next door she was greeted by Madame Miri.

In the strong sunlight her landlady was an imposing figure. Her skin shone like polished mahogany, and she wore a brilliant ballooning orange robe and turban printed with blue birds of paradise.

“What is it, chérie?” she inquired in her excellent French, putting a broad vermilion-nailed hand on Celia’s arm.

“What?” Celia said stupidly. “What is what?”

“You are troubled this morning.”

“No, not at all.” Celia tried to make her voice light and unconcerned.

Madame shook her head. “I see it, in the air around you. Please, come into the shop.” She lifted a hanging curtain printed with giant golden flowers.

Blurrily, Celia followed. Madame Miri indicated that she should seat herself beside the big cutting table heaped with fashion magazines and bolts of multicolored cloth, and brought her a cup of scalding French coffee.

“You don’t sleep well last night,” Madame Miri stated rather than inquired.

“Not very well, no,” Celia admitted.

“You have the nightmare, perhaps?”

“Well, yes, sometimes,” said Celia, thinking that the appearances of Dwayne Mudd were a kind of nightmare.

“I shall give you something.” Madame Miri rose and swept through another curtain at the dim back of the room, where she seemed to be opening drawers and unscrewing bottles, murmuring to herself in a singsong.

I’m not going to swallow any strange medicine, Celia promised herself.

“Voilà.” Returning, Madame laid before Celia a small bag of reddish homespun tied with a strip of leather.

“Take this, chérie. You don’t open it, but tonight you put it under your pillow, yes?”

“All right,” Celia promised, relieved. She knew or could guess what was in the bag: a selection of the magical and medicinal herbs and bits of bone sold at stalls in the village markets and even here in the capital. It was what people called a gris-gris—a protective charm.

“It’s good,” Madame urged, smiling, holding out the little bag. “Good against fear.”

Of course Madame Miri believes in spirits, she thought; almost everyone does here. The principal religion of Goto, after all, was animism: the worship of ancestors and of certain trees, rivers, and mountains. Ghosts and demons inhabited the landscape, and the fields and groves often displayed, instead of a scarecrow, a bundle of leaves and powders and bones given power by spells and hung from a branch or wedged into the fork of a tree. According to local belief, it protected the crops not only against birds and animals but against thieves and evil spirits.

“Thank you,” Celia said.

When she could Celia kept her promises. She therefore put the gris-gris under her pillow that night, and because of it or not, slept more easily the rest of the week. Somewhat revived in spirits, she decided to risk going out with the second of her current admirers, the Marine master sergeant in charge of the guard at the embassy.

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