the crypt, walled off behind stone and mortar, all containing a portion of Valcours Rigaud's remains; there was space for a seventh, but Otille said it was buried elsewhere on the grounds. She lit a candle and set it into an iron wall mount. The yellow light turned her skin to old ivory, licked up the walls, and illuminated a carved device above each of the burial niches. Donnell recognized the design to be a veve, though he had only seen a crude version of it drawn on the back of Jack Richmond's guitar: a stylized three-horned man. The sight of it waked something inside him to a fury. His fists clenched; his mind was flocked with violent urges, shadowy recognitions, images and scenes that flashed past too quickly for recall. He had such a strong sense of being possessed, of being operated by some alienated fragment of his personality. For a long moment he could do nothing but stand and strain against the impulse to tear at the stones with his bare hands, smash the coffins, crush the rags and splinters of Valcours into an unreconstructable dust. At last the sensation left him, and he asked Otille what the design was.
'The veve of Mounanchou,' she said. 'Valcours' patron god. And Clothilde's. A nasty sort. The god of gangsters and secret societies.'
'Then why not use it on your calling card?' he asked, still angry. 'It seems more appropriate.'
'I've rejected Mounanchou,' said Otille, unflappable. 'Just as I've rejected Clothilde and Valcours. Ogoun Badagris was the patron of... a family friend. A good man. So I adopted it.' She brushed against him, and her touch had the feel of something roused from the dry air and darkness. 'Why did you look so peculiar when you saw it?'
'I felt the bacteria moving around,' he said. 'It made me a little dizzy.'
Otille went to the door. 'Baron,' she called. 'Would you bring my parasol from my office. I don't want to burn.'
Beyond the door, beyond rows of tombstones tilted at rustic angles, was the raw mound of earth covering Dularde's coffin. A group of 'friends' was in line beside the grave, laughing and chattering; more were straggling toward the line along the path leading from the cabins. Simpkins stood atop the grave, a box of syringes and medicine bottles at his feet. As each of the 'friends' joined him on the mounded earth, he would tie off their arms with a rubber tube and give them an injection. Then they would stagger away, weaving, and collapse among the weeds to vomit and twitch, their arms waving feebly, like poisoned ants crawling from their nest to die. It was, thought Donnell, an ideal representation of the overall process of Maravillosa: these healthy, attractive men and women bumping together in line, playfully smacking one another, being changed into derelicts by the cadaverous Simpkins and his magic fluid. He appeared to be enjoying his work, spanking the newly injected on the rumps to get them moving again, beaming at the next in line and saying, 'This one's on Brother Dularde.' Someone switched on a radio, and a blast of rock and roll static defiled the air.
Donnell stepped out of the crypt, squinting against the sun. Just above his head, surmounting the door, was a whitewashed angel with black tears painted on its cheeks, and he could relate to its languishing expression. Clea, Papa and Downey had not yet arrived, and their absence meant he had to put up with Otille nonstop. He peered down the path, hoping to see them. A man and a woman were walking toward the graveyard, dressed - he assumed at first - in gaudy uniforms of some sort. But as they neared, he realized the uniforms were a satin gown and a brocade jacket, and he saw that their faces were brown and mummified, the faces of the corpses identical to those he had seen in the Replaceable Room. He wheeled about on Otille. She was smiling.
'Just a reminder,' she said.
He looked back at the corpses; they were holding hands, now, skipping along the path, and he wondered if there really had been corpses in the Replaceable Room, or if there had only been these counterfeits. He turned back to Otille.
'I don't need a reminder of what a bitch you are,' he said.
He had expected she would flare up at him, but she drew back in fright as if the sound of his voice had menaced her.
'What's the problem, Otille?' he asked,