Chapter 6: Recovered Artefacts

Soon Bronson came into the mess and the men greeted each other.

“So how did your meeting at the embassy work out? All squared away?” Bronson asked.

“Goddamn, round, oval, rectangle—any shape you want except square—that shape is my head after I keep banging it to be sure I’m not dreaming,” Jonas muttered.

“Shit, is everything okay? I thought that there’d be no trouble.”

“No, sorry to mislead you. I’m still in a daze. Here, the embassy officer gave me a printout of what he found in my DoD file.”

Jonas passed him the copy of the “Alert” message and Bronson read it with wide eyes.

“No effin’ shit! This is ... wow. Hey, no wonder they grilled me a year or two after you left Germany. They must have been vetting you for this.” He shook the paper. “So when are you having the presentation? I’d love to be there if I can.”

“I’d like that too but I need to get the situation with my wife and kid settled.”

“Of course,” Bronson agreed.

“So, for what happened during the rest of the embassy trip, I found out that people are still hunting for Cassandra and Fabienne. It’s fortunate that we never checked into a hospital or got any medical aid in Port-au-Prince, other than from people at the port who didn’t get our names and only saw us briefly, so we didn’t seem to leave any trace of my family. Just some embassy people know and I think that they won’t talk. Long story short, then, for a deception to keep Vanessa away, we’ve pretended that they died in the quake...”

“Yeah, I heard something of that from one of my corpsman who assisted; he said the whole thing was to be kept hush-hush and since I was the NCO in charge, I needed to know what his section was doing. Didn’t know you were involved though.”

“Right. And my friend Henri is setting up the funeral and burial. At least the poor unknown souls whose bodies we’re using will get a proper spiritual sendoff and I hope the lwa will forgive our intervention with the spirits.”

“Say, you’re into the Haitian religion a bit.”

“When your wife—and your mother—both are priestesses, it’s hard to avoid the influence. But the practices and celebrations kind of make sense to me. I was nominally a Catholic and most of the Vodou religion has many Catholic elements. For example, the spirits I referred to—their Catholic counterparts are the saints. I kind of view Vodou as Catholicism with folk overtones. Hey, enough proselytizing. We never got to talk about your life since Germany. Is there a Mrs Bert?”

Bronson laughed. “Yep, and four little Berts too. Three girls, God bless ‘em, and a guy.”

“Let me guess. You kept trying till you made a boy, right?”

“You know me too well, my buddy-in-arms,” he laughed.

“How old are they now?”

“Doris is twelve; Iris and Ivy, twins, they’re nine; and Jonas is six.”

Tears sprang to Jonas’ eyes. “Don’t tell me—your son is named after me?”

“Sure is; he wouldn’t be here if not for you.”

Jonas got up and hugged him.

“Shit,” Jonas muttered, “the honors keep coming.”

Jonas went on to tell him about the Marines at the embassy. They chatted for a while and then Bronson told him that he had to get back to duty. He gave Jonas his shore contact information and waved good bye; then Jonas left the ship’s mess and found his way to an outside deck to relax for an hour or two.

Jonas was about to take a brief nap on a chair there when his phone buzzed. It was Henri. He answered.

“Hi Jonas. Some good news, I guess. We were able to get some personal things out of the ounfò. There was a metal box filled with Cass’ papers; some were a bit singed but only on the edges. Her birth certificate was there, Fabienne’s too, and a marriage document. A lot of important-looking stuff. There was a bunch of photos, too.”

“Wow, that’s excellent!”

“There’s more. A lot of her ceremonial items had been put away in a cabinet in one corner of the room—near where we broke the window out—and the fire didn’t reach there. Most of the wall hangings—the vevé symbols—didn’t burn either, like the Papa Legba one survived, all but one of the others did too. We rolled those up. Everything we found fit in an old duffle bag I had and my son Emanuel has to go to Port-au-Prince to pick up some parts. He can go now or tomorrow and can drop off the duffle. Since my call went through, I guess you haven’t left Haiti and you’re still at the ship?”

“That’s great news, Henri. Yeah, I’m here till noon tomorrow; then the flight leaves. If Emanuel could drop it off today, that would be best. Cass will be so happy. She treasures the relics in that cabinet.”

“Oh, and I found a bunch of books too. They look like college texts. Mostly in English.”

“Oh my. Must be Fabienne’s. I’ll bet they’re from the Universite GOC library. Was the school damaged much?”

“I don’t think so; I haven’t been up that road since the quake, but that area seems not too bad.”

“They’ll be happy to get them back. Fabienne borrowed their books all the time.”

“Okay. I’ll do that. It’s too dangerous to get anywhere into your house other than your bedroom so we need to wait for the front-end loader; that’ll be after the funeral in two days. I’ll send Emanuel with the duffle now. The roads are much better, so he should get there in about an hour.”

“Wonderful. I’ll be at dockside. He’s in the shop van?”

“Right. I never thought how official it looked until we used it after the quake,” he chuckled.

“Thanks again, my friend,” Jonas said.

“Till we speak again,” Henri replied.

Forty minutes later, Jonas went down to the pier and a half hour after that, the shop van drove up and Emanuel hopped out with a battered but serviceable duffle bag. Jonas hugged him.

“Thanks so much, buddy; this is a treasure for Cass,” Jonas said.

“Yeah, Papa told me that. Glad we could pull that stuff out for her.”

“What about anything else left?”

“Zip. Nothing left except what’s in here. The drums didn’t survive. They got crushed when the wall fell on them. That one whole side of the building is gone; just the one corner where the cabinet stood survived. And strangely, almost all of the lwa tapestries survived too. Just one got burned.”

Jonas shrugged. “Maybe that’s a sign?”

Emanuel crossed himself. “The saints sometimes protect their own. I think Cass is blessed.”

The men hugged again and Emanuel left.

Of course Jonas had an interesting time bringing the duffle bag through the ship’s security station and Jonas had to involve Bronson, who involved the ship’s XO, and then, since religious objects were involved, the chaplain had to become involved too. Finally the XO declared that these were personal religious folk objects and not cultural artefacts and therefore not contraband, so they could be allowed.

That got Jonas thinking. What would happen with the duffle bag at the airlift aircraft and how would U.S. Customs react? Instead of boarding the ship with the duffle bag, he pulled out his cell phone and dialed Grant at the embassy.

“Mr Grant? It’s Jonas Bernard again.”

“How is your family doing. Everything okay? The medical flight is arriving tomorrow at around 0815 and will unload supplies. It’s still set to leave at 1200.”

“That’s good news. The family’s okay so far. I won’t see them until 1800 today but I need to ask something about bringing our personal effects, what little we have, to the States.”

“There shouldn’t be any problem bringing in personal items.”

“Okay, so the problem is the nature of the personal items.”

Jonas went on to explain what happened with the ship’s security personnel and the XO’s ruling.

“So how can we avoid someone confiscating them as contraband?” he asked.

“Are you on the pier now?” Grant asked. “The cultural attaché’s office is right next door to me and she’s there, as we speak. I’ll send a car now. It should take 20 minutes. Bring your artifacts.”

“Thanks, sir.”

“No problem. See you soon.”

Fifty minutes later, Jonas was in the cultural attaché’s office, being introduced by Grant.

“Mr Bernard, this is Janice Richman, our cultural attaché.”

Jonas shook her hand and began laying out the items from the duffle bag. He began to explain what each item was and how it was used in a Vodou ceremony.

“I haven’t seen some of these items used before,” he told her. “But I know that many of those are folk talismans; these,” he pointed, “are called travay. I think some of them are known as pwen when they become a spiritual or magical focus. And these bunches of wrapped bundles are called pakèt or pakèt kongo and are talismans as well. They’re used in healing rites. This little gourd wrapped in decorated cords with the attached bell is a kind of rattle. It’s called an asson, and it’s a symbol of position that’s given to priests and priestesses by their teacher when they reach the highest level of achievement. It’s a treasure for Cassandra, because having the asson allows the manbo or oungan to invoke and approach the lwa to which they’ve been initiated. Many of these items have been in Cassandra’s family for many generations and these two here, these gris-gris amulets, came from Dahomey in western Africa when slaves first came to Haiti and they’re among Cassandra’s most prized possessions.

“The smaller items are used to prepare herbs for bathing or lotions for massage. The tapestries are vevé symbols of the saints. This one is for Papa Legba; he’s ... it’s like Cassandra’s patron. The others, I’m not sure ... um ... wait, yes, I know their names: this is Ayizan Velekete, Ogou Feray, Azaka Mede, Erzulie Mansur, Baron Samedi, Granne Erzulie, Manman Brigitte, Agwe Tawoyo, Damballah Wedo, and Ayida Wedo. They all correspond to the saints venerated in Catholicism and occupy the same purpose in our observances.”

He looked into the bottom of the duffle bag; there were several other items down there. He reached in and pulled out a doll, two stuffed animals, and a few other little toy girlie figures. He put them on the table and grinned.

“And these are my daughter’s religious and cultural artefacts, also rescued from our burned temple.”

Richman chuckled. “Most important possessions too, I assume.”

“Assuredly, since these must have been found where Fabienne spent most of her free time reading and playing. I’m guessing that these are precious too. She’ll be delighted that they were saved.”

“I’m sure she will. I have a young daughter and artefacts like those are her precious possessions too.”

Jonas nodded and went on with his appeal, smiling. “I’m sure that Cassandra will want to continue to follow in her ancestors’ steps and continue as a Vodou priestess and these, except the last few items I took out, are some of the tools she needs to do that. These aren’t museum artefacts, despite some of them being quite ancient. They are her family’s possessions and heritage. Can you help her keep her possessions?”

Richman nodded her head. “Thanks for that tour of this amazing collection and your explanation of the items. May I photograph them? It would give me a wonderful background in understanding your culture and religious practices.”

“Certainly. I know Cass wouldn’t mind. There’s nothing secret here. These are treasures, but only to her.”

“I can definitely give you an official letter certifying that these are personal possessions of a religious nature, the property of a clergy person, and not cultural artefacts being improperly exported from Haiti. I’ll also explain that with the current emergency, there are no Haitian officials available for the certification. That should satisfy the Customs people. Many times, merely mentioning ‘clergy’ is the key. Let me photograph these and you can pack them as I finish.”

She did the photos and then went off to dictate the authorization letter. A half hour later, she returned with an imposing letter on State Department letterhead with several embossed seals and the ambassador’s signature, followed by the ambassador himself.