The Devil Jars
As a scholar traveling through foreign lands, I am always suspicious. It is physically healthier to be so. I don't listen to proclamations about miracle cures or celestial orgasms anymore. I doubt first, and then weigh the chances. Suspicion also helps me keep an appropriate distance on events, in order to observe and see objects, people and behaviors as they should be witnessed: in the third person. But, I can recall one occasion when I threw off my rule and let myself inhale exotic logics.
The country was a small one, which I shall keep anonymous because the faction currently in power may read threat in the most benign of my observations. I still enjoy air travel far too much to go into hiding.
On a late spring morning, I was wandering the streets, pulled from place to place by my sense of sound and smell. I was exploring the morning market in a town on the northern outskirts of the capital. The public plaza was crowded with people, some in simple or religious dress, and others in black vinyl sports jackets with elaborate gold embroidery across the backs. From the violent gold images of birds tearing at tigers, and bulls goring snakes, I thought the jackets were the paramilitary uniform for the then growing political faction that later took over power and now rules the country. But, I later learned that these were rooters' jackets for the country's five-team soccer league.
The fanaticisms of political power will never match those of professional sports.
The busy market was a labyrinth of murmurs and cloth. The makeshift shops – which have been erected every morning for the past two thousand years – transformed the stone-paved square into a tangle of narrow pathways. Some shops sold polyester shirts or unbreakable belts. Other shops sold items to make the daily chores of living easier. (Whatever the chore, in whatever the country, a shopkeeper has a thing that will make effort vanish: Market capitalism's perpetual motion machine.) But these types of use-items never really interest me. They don’t reveal any insight into unique cultural logic. They merely reinforce the value of practicality, and that bores me. Sure, as a traveler, I might buy a wad of bread when hungry, or a hat when it rains, or a coffee for survival, but as a scholar, I come to the market to observe and feel pulses from the culture’s invisible heart. I come to watch a peoples’ spirit in rhythm, to sense its pace, beat and intensity. I might touch carpets, clothes and foods, but not to buy. I am there to note the rituals and gestures of culture in a small book.
On that day, as I turned from one row onto the next, the market was a swarm of echoing whispers. People moved and I moved. As a mass, we brushed against the brightly decorated fabrics that formed the walls of the shops. Green walls led to yellow walls which led to purple walls. Each corner offered a new colorful world: the cabbage man’s green orbs, the knife sharpener’s massive spinning wheel, the headscarf painter’s leafy patterns, the dog-skin dealer’s stink of mange. Each spoke with a different voice, volume and pitch. The laughter of fruits and vegetables was common. It was familiar and had a joyous brilliance. A pear here was as a pear there and at home. Carrots, piled on their stems in balanced clumps, seemed to lick like orange flames igniting from the ground.
This practical area of the market is visually exciting and, to its credit, produce is usually safe. You can kind-of trust vegetables. They make few assertions, claims or promises.
But, as I continued my market stroll, I entered the area where the tents end. This is the semi-abandoned zone where I am always most leery. This is where men stand on small perches, shouting in a song-like chant while waving a sample of something in their hand that you must buy in a taped box. This is the zone of trust and persuasion. This is where a culture really sings its loves, lusts and fears.
The first stand I approached was surrounded by an aggressive mob of elderly ladies. Their voices screeched and battled with each other. Every voice fought to express that she was the angriest about how rude this crowd was. Each of the old ladies held a small plastic bucket in one hand and struggled against the shoving bulk to thrust her other hand through the dense wall of grandma-mass. I surmised that they were trying to reach into some box at the center, a box that nobody could actually see. I watched them struggle, push and bump. Finally I saw what their common goal was. Each had to reach through and grab as many tiny snakes as their arthritic hand could hold. Each successful serpent-grabber pulled her hand out from the bickering boil and tossed a squirming silver handful into her bucket. After quickly paying the snake seller, each lady tossed a departing curse at those who continued to grab at snakes.
I moved on and let the bustling nest of crotchety squabble fade away.
Far enough from the snake box mob to hear conversation-level speech again, I came to another stand that caught my interest. This one was not as crowded. It was simply a small, red Formica table. Upon it, a man had placed 24 household glass jars, neatly lined up from edge to edge. Four rows of eight jars, each with a vague red spot painted on its lid.
And, inside each jar, supposedly, the breath of the devil was contained.
The seller was dressed in dirty beige polyester slacks and wore a black vinyl jacket with the picture of a large gold dog licking its paws over a pile of 11 bloody bird carcasses. He told the story behind the jars as a convincing narrative of fear. His voice had a style that seemed particularly fitting considering the nature of his product.
"The devil is not dead, as we are told to believe. I have spoken with it, face to face, and I know that it's very much alive and real. Its breath smells of sulfur and garlic. It is an awful smell. This I swear to you."
As he spoke, sitting behind his multiple layers of glass, he gripped the edges of the red table and rocked from side to side with his eyes closed. The jars jiggled slightly, making delicate chimes. The curved glass jars reflected the red table and the twisted faces of the onlookers. The salesman existed completely within his trance of storytelling.
The man’s voice quickly rose and fell, telling how he had been ill for over six years and that his family would routinely put him in a small room while they ate dinner. He said this was understandable because his illness was, "the kind that ruins people's appetites." He didn't name his illness in any more detail than that, except to say that it was very serious and that his doctor had given up hope of his survival.
More people came to the red table, attracted by the man’s vocal shapes and personal drama. People looked close into the jars, trying to find traces of the devil’s exhalations.
The man went on. One night while in isolation with his family eating on the opposite side of the door, he said he called at the ceiling to whatever power “either of good or not of good” (his exact phrasing) that could cure him. Soon after his isolated plea for relief, he said he heard a scratching of hooves on the concrete floor of his room and he could feel the sulfur and garlic breath of the devil moving across his face in the accelerated pants of a heavy smoker. The man said:
“The devil spoke very softly, very different than the devil in the movies."
The man’s voice imitated the devil speaking in a dialect I didn’t understand. It was a gentle voice, as through asking a child to tell you directions. The man translated the devil’s message, saying that the devil did not ask for his soul or for the souls of anyone.
"The devil doesn’t want more souls. The devil wants space. The devil wants to buy cheap land. That is why I am selling these jars of breath. I must sell breath for the devil because it saved my life. But, you only have to pay for the breath and you can then enjoy its benefits. There are no other obligations for you. I promise you this is the truth. No obligations.”
I was intrigued by the notion of the devil giving up his traditional role as the tormentor of souls for the chance to own property, so I stayed and listened to the questions that always follow such a hawker's pitch.
"Did the devil show himself to you?" said a man whose pants were tightened around his waist by a chain of rubber bands. "How can we be sure this is really the devil's breath and not your own?"
"If it were my own breath, wouldn't I be able to make more than 24 jars?" responded the seller.
This froze the crowd in a moment of reason-weighing. The scales of logic seemed to balance level in about half the onlookers. The others left. The rubber-banded questioner nodded and leaned closer to the table. He bent down to stare deeply into the breath-filled jars.
“Do the jars all have the same amount of devil’s breath?” a woman holding a baby asked.
“Some weigh a little more than others, but that’s maybe because of the glass. You are free to choose whatever jar you wish.”
“I’ll take this one, and this one,” a tall man with a cane wrapped in red tape said while grabbing his jars. “I bought a jar of breath from this man last month and it helped me walk again.”
The crowd voiced a collective, “Hmmmm,” and moved closer.
Call me a cynic, but I wondered if the red-cane-man was part of the sales team.
“Does devil’s breath give good luck, or just heal?” a small, bent woman with beautiful hair asked.
“Of course it does. Health is one form of good luck,” said the breath-seller.
“I’ll buy this one,” she said, pointing a thin finger at a jar near the center.
“Excellent choice,” said the seller as he plucked the jar out with a slight “Ta-Ting!”
As he handed the jar to the woman, the man with the red cane came up to me.
His eyes looked oddly scratched, like they had seen too much suffering to care about the difference between focus and blur. He took out one of the jars he had purchased and asked me in an accented English,“Would you like to smell the devil’s breath? One sniff, for free.”
He twisted the lid loose, and then twisted it tight again. I could see the red mark on the top was a fingerprint.
An odor appeared. The floating invisible shape wrapped my head, its edge as sharp and defined as the border of a foreign land.
A certain power erupted somewhere within me. Something undeniable and urgent. A calling to self-purpose that was more addictive than any pain medicine I have ever been prescribed. It was a sureness of my thinking, a total confidence that no other meaning could possibly make as much sense as the thought that was appearing in my mind, whatever that thought might be. Like never before, I felt that I believed in something. I felt what supreme leaders must feel. No other truth I had ever learned could compete with the understanding I was forming. And, I knew my next thought would surely be even better.
The effect lasted for close to 15 minutes.
I bought one jar of the devil’s breath that morning.
I’m saving it for a day when I’ll need to take action.
Cover image by Francis Sevillo Strings