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A heavy, humid breath lay over New Orleans, covering the streets like a warm, leathery, impermeable skin. The smell rose straight from the ground, burst citrus fruit rotting in the mud, the oily smoke of fishing boats clinging to clothes and skin and hair. Between the boards of the houses, the water from the last rainy nights pooled, swamp water mixed with algae and rotten reeds, from the courtyards crept the smell of rum, burnt sugar, fermenting sweetness that you could taste on your lips and palate if you breathed in too deeply. All of it mingled with the iron bitter smell of rotting meat waste the slaughterhouses had tossed into the side streets to be torn apart by dogs or whatever animal dared. But even the hungriest creature didn’t want to feast on it. People with money wore sweet perfume that blended with their salty sweat, embedded deep in the fabric of their clothes .. cold, old sweat with the smoky undertone of a cigar. When you lived in this city, you no longer smelled any of it, or you ignored it, the same way you ignored each other except for the polite, sometimes exaggerated greetings you threw around in the street. Romain had no scent of his own. He moved through streets and alleyways like a phantom that barely left a trace... and only his clothes carried the scent of the swamps, rotten plant flesh, musty water, and the fragrant herbs he used to brew teas, to heal himself, to conduct rituals always carried out in the dark and in secret.
Romain’s figure, however, was striking, and when you saw him wandering the streets at night, you memorized the image automatically, only for it to fade days later, like a shadow on a wall. Few knew him personally, fewer had ever exchanged a word with him, and when they did, he often left a cold feeling in their souls. You could sense death clinging to him, could feel that he was part of it, you didn’t even need superstition for that. It was what wrapped around him in place of an inherent smell, a dark, morbid aura that many found incomprehensible, suspended far between birth and the end. He wasn’t an evil being .. not something that aligned with true malevolence but perhaps something worse, something neutral. Neutrality couldn’t be grasped, couldn’t be fully understood, it twisted, shifted, and wiped away logical thought.
The man who always wore a dark robe or else moved through the swamps nearly naked, painted with black ink that seemed to waft beneath the skin, didn’t enjoy being among humans, and yet he knew he was part of the greater whole, a fragment of this earthly society that sometimes had to adapt in order to survive. He needed food, like any other human, a great deal of food to keep his body alive and strong. His human needs were the same as everyone else’s, he felt cold, felt the burning damp heat on his skin, and felt the sting of sickness or parasites that sometimes afflicted him. But he felt so much more because of the gift that made him unique, at least in this region. The dead who hadn’t moved on spoke to him, accompanied him, pleaded and begged for guidance. They felt lost, trapped in something they didn’t understand, and he listened, listened to their stories, their lament over a life that had slipped from them, to the memories they couldn’t let go of. He gave them all his empathy, his knowledge, his presence, letting their souls feed on his energy like the countless leeches in the swamp water, and he never doubted that it could harm him deeply... or that someday it might drag him into that in between realm as his mother had once predicted.
Through her, he had known motherly love, even if he wasn’t of her flesh and blood. She had given him everything a growing person could need, and he repaid her by caring for her, preparing her food, talking to her, performing rituals to ease her ailments. And yet both knew their time together would soon end, and that it was time to say goodbye. Mambo Éloise had once been the chief priestess who practiced voodoo magic in her small kingdom, magic without real supernatural power, but it didn’t matter. She helped people, anyone who came to her, and her heart was full, so her counsel worked like magic anyway. She believed deeply in the balance of good and evil, that one could not exist without the other and that balance was the pillar of this world. And here, too, her concern for her son flared, because she sensed he was neither, that he fit into none of the patterns this world offered.
His heart beat faster as he approached the center of New Orleans. The city felt more agitated than usual that night. People poured into the streets, some half dressed, some not fully conscious after being roused from sleep or passion. A part of the city where the poor lived, and those who served the rich burned. Flames shot up wooden huts, devouring everything, gnawing at the dusty ground, stirring up a heat that spread everywhere. There was barely any air, every breath stung, and you couldn’t see your own hand in front of your face. Yet Romain walked through the thick black smoke as if it meant nothing, his skin was white with ash, split open in places, but he didn’t care. He knew he had to be here many souls had been torn from their bodies, and he wanted to offer them safe passage. These people deserved peace.. they had endured too much in life. A little girl reached for his right hand, looked up at him, smiling and he smiled back, guiding her, recognizing the gratitude in her eyes. Hours passed, the screams, the outraged looks from those who’d lost nothing, and the panic slowly faded into exhausted silence. The wealthy retreated back into their houses while others worked to extinguish the remaining flames and tend to what remained. Romain accompanied the souls away as well, digging several graves on the outskirts of the city and blessing the end with respect. The next afternoon, as he left the city behind, he was followed by riders, lawmen who wanted to uncover the myth, to capture the man people only whispered about. They caught him, tied his hands, and led him to the city dungeons. You always needed someone to blame when catastrophe struck, and since Romain always appeared in moments like this, he was the perfect figure to accuse without the burden of evidence. A nonchalant grin touched his lips as they searched him, trying to pull words out of him to twist, but he stayed silent, silent when they beat him, silent when they tortured him, silent when they locked him away, and a few hours later, he was gone, like a phantom or a ghost that had never existed.