Two Years in the French West Indies Part 16

Her face is in the darkness as she stands;--Fafa's eyes turned to the iron-crimson of the western sky. He still holds her hand, fondles it,--murmurs something to her in undertones.

--"Ess ou ainmein moin conm ca?" she asks, almost in a whisper,

Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!...

How much? Ever so much,--_gouos conm caze!_... Yet she seems to doubt him,--repeating her questionn over and over:

--"Ess ou ainmein moin?"

And all the while,--gently, caressingly, imperceptibly--she draws him a little nearer to the side of the nearer to the black waving of the ferns, nearer to the great dull rushing sound that rises from beyond them:

--"Ess ou ainmein moin?"

--"Oui, oui!" he responds,--"ou save ca!--oui, che doudoux, ou save ca!"...

And she, suddenly,--turning at once to him and to the last red light, the goblin horror of her face transformed,--shrieks with a burst of hideous laughter:

--"_At, bo!_" [16]

For the fraction of a moment he knows her name:--then, smitten to the brain with the sight of her, reels, recoils, and, backward falling, crashes two thousand feet down to his death upon the rocks of a mountain torrent.

CHAPTER V. LA VeRETTE.

I. --ST. PIERRE, _1887_.

One returning from the country to the city in the Carnival season is lucky to find any comfortable rooms for rent. I have been happy to secure one even in a rather retired street,--so steep that it is really dangerous to sneeze while descending it, lest one lose one's balance and tumble right across the town. It is not a fashionable street, the Rue du Morne Mirail; but, after all, there is no particularly fashionable street in this extraordinary city, and the poorer the neighborhood, the better one's chance to see something of its human nature.

One consolation is that I have Manm-Robert for a next-door neighbor, who keeps the best bouts in town (those long thin Martinique cigars of which a stranger soon becomes fond), and who can relate more queer stories and legends of old times in the island than anybody else I know of.

Manm-Robert is _yon machanne lapacotte_, a dealer in such cheap articles of food as the poor live upon: fruits and tropical vegetables, manioc-flour, "macadam" (a singular dish of rice stewed with salt fish--_diri epi coubouyon lamori_), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably bring her the largest profit--they are all bought up by the bekes.

Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever anyone in the neighborhood falls sick she is sent for, and always comes, and very often cures,--as she is skilled in the knowledge and use of medicinal herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes. But for these services she never accepts any reuneration: she is a sort of Mother of the poor in immediate vicinity. She helps everybody, listens to everybody's troubles, gives everybody some sort of consolation, trusts everybody, and sees a great deal of the thankless side of human nature without seeming to feel any the worse for it. Poor as she must really be she appears to have everything that everybody wants; and will lend anything to her neighbors except a scissors or a broom, which it is thought bad-luck to lend. And, finally, if anyybody is afraid of being bewitched (_quimboise_) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with something that will keep the bewitchment away....

II. _February 15th._

... Ash-Wednesday. The last masquerade will appear this afternoon, notwithstanding; for the Carnival is in Martinique a day longer than elsewhere.

All through the country districts since the first week of January there have been wild festivities every Sunday--dancing on the public highways to the pattering of tamtams,--African dancing, too, such as is never seen in St. Pierre. In the city, however, there has been less merriment than in previous years;--the natural gaiety of the population has been visibly affected by the advent of a terrible and unfamiliar visitor to the island,--_La Verette_: she came by steamer from Colon.

... It was in September. Only two cases had been reported when every neighboring British colony quarantined against Martinique. Then other West Indian colonies did likewise. Only two cases of small-pox. "But there may be two thousand in another month," answered the governors and the consuls to many indignant protests. Among West Indian populations the malady has a signification unknown in Europe or the United States: it means an exterminating plague.

Two months later the little capital of Fort-de-France was swept by the pestilence as by a wind of death. Then the evil began to spread. It entered St. Pierre in December, about Christmas time. Last week 173 cases were reported; and a serious epidemic is almost certain. There were only 8500 inhabitants in Fort-de-France; there are 28,000 in the three quarters of St. Pierre proper, not including her suburbs; and there is no saying what ravages the disease may make here.

III.

... Three o'clock, hot and clear.... In the distance there is a heavy sound of drums, always drawing nearer: _tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_ The Grande Rue is lined with expectant mult.i.tudes; and its tiny square,--the Batterie d'Esnotz,--thronged with bekes. _Tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_... In our own street the people are beginning to gather at door-ways, and peer out of windows,--prepared to descend to the main thoroughfare at the first glimpse of the procession.

--"_Oti masque-a?_" Where are the maskers?

It is little Mimi's voice: she is speaking for two besides herself, both quite as anxious as she to know where the maskers are,--Maurice, her little fair-haired and blue-eyed brother, three years old; and Gabrielle, her child-sister, aged four,--two years her junior.

Every day I have been observing the three, playing in the door-way of the house across the street. Mimi, with her brilliant white skin, black hair, and laughing black eyes, is the prettiest,--though all are unusually pretty children. Were it not for the fact that their mother's beautiful brown hair is usually covered with a violet foulard, you would certainly believe them white as any children in the world. Now there are children whom everyone knows to be white, living not very far from here, but in a much more silent street, and in a rich house full of servants, children who resemble these as one _fleur-d'amour_ blossom resembles another;--there is actually another Mimi (though she is not so called at home) so like this Mimi that you could not possibly tell one from the other,--except by their dress. And yet the most unhappy experience of the Mimi who wears white satin slippers was certainly that punishment given her for having been once caught playing in the street with this Mimi, who wears no shoes at all. What mischance could have brought them thus together?--and the worst of it was they had fallen in love with each other at first sight!... It was not because the other Mimi must not talk to nice little colored girls, or that this one may not play with white children of her own age: it was because there are cases.... It was not because the other children I speak of are prettier or sweeter or more intelligent than these now playing before me;--or because the finest microscopist in the world could or could not detect any imaginable race difference between those delicate satin skins. It was only because human nature has little changed since the day that Hagar knew the hate of Sarah, and the thing was grievous in Abraham's sight because of his son.....

... The father of these children loved them very much: he had provided a home for them,--a house in the Quarter of the Fort, with an allowance of two hundred francs monthly; and he died in the belief their future was secured. But relatives fought the will with large means and shrewd lawyers, and won!... Yzore, the mother, found herself homeless and penniless, with three children to care for. But she was brave;--she abandoned the costume of the upper cla.s.s forever, put on the douillette and the foulard,--the attire that is a confession of race,--and went to work. She is still comely, and so white that she seems only to be masquerading in that violet head-dress and long loose robe....

--"_Vini oue!--vini oue!_" cry the children to one another,--"come and see!" The drums are drawing near;--everybody is running to the Grande Rue....

IV.

_Tam!--tam!--tamtamtam!_... The spectacle is interesting from the Batterie d'Esnotz. High up the Rue Peysette,--up all the precipitous streets that ascend the mornes,--a far gathering of showy color appears: the ma.s.sing of maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow attire....

Then what a _degringolade_ begins!--what a tumbling, leaping, cascading of color as the troupes descend. Simultaneously from north and south, from the Mouillage and the Fort, two immense bands enter the Grande Rue;--the great dancing societies these,--the _Sans-souci_ and the _Intrepides_. They are rivals; they are the composers and singers of those Carnival songs,--cruel satires most often, of which the local meaning is unintelligible to those unacquainted with the incident inspiring the improvisation,--of which the words are too often coa.r.s.e or obscene,--whose burdens will be caught up and re-echoed through all the burghs of the island. Vile as may be the motive, the satire, the malice, these chants are preserved for generations by the singular beauty of the airs; and the victim of a Carnival song need never hope that his failing or his wrong will be forgotten: it will be sung of long after he is in his grave.

[Ill.u.s.tration: RUE VICTOR HUGO (FORMERLY GRANDE RUE), ST. PIERRE]

... Ten minutes more, and the entire length of the street is thronged with a shouting, shrieking, laughing, gesticulating host of maskers.

Thicker and thicker the press becomes;--the drums are silent: all are waiting for the signal of the general dance. Jests and practical jokes are being everywhere perpetrated; there is a vast hubbub, made up of screams, cries, chattering, laughter. Here and there s.n.a.t.c.hes of Carnival song are being sung:--"_Cambronne, Cambronne_;" or "_Ti fenm-la doux, li doux, li doux!_ "... "Sweeter than sirup the little woman is";--this burden will be remembered when the rest of the song pa.s.ses out of fashion. Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks, pulling the beards and patting the faces of white spectators.... "_Moin connaitt ou, che!--moin connaitt ou, doudoux! ba moin ti d'mi franc!_" It is well to refuse the half-franc,--though you do not know what these maskers might take a notion to do to-day.... Then all the great drums suddenly boom together; all the bands strike up; the mad medley kaleidoscopes into some sort of order; and the immense processional dance begins. From the Mouillage to the Fort there is but one continuous torrent of sound and color: you are dazed by the tossing of peaked caps, the waving of hands, and twinkling of feet;--and all this pa.s.ses with a huge swing,--a regular swaying to right and left.... It will take at least an hour for all to pa.s.s; and it is an hour well worth pa.s.sing. Band after band whirls by; the musicians all garbed as women or as monks in canary-colored habits;--before them the dancers are dancing backward, with a motion as of skaters; behind them all leap and wave hands as in pursuit. Most of the bands are playing creole airs,--but that of the _Sans-souci_ strikes up the melody of the latest French song in vogue,--_Pet.i.ts amoureux aux plumes_ ("Little feathered lovers"). [17]

Everybody now seems to know this song by heart; you hear children only five or six years old singing it: there are pretty lines in it, although two out of its four stanzas are commonplace enough, and it is certainly the air rather than the words which accounts for its sudden popularity.

V.

... Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through which the procession pa.s.ses. Pest-smitten women rise from their beds to costume themselves,--to mask face already made unrecognizable by the hideous malady,--and stagger out to join the dancers.... They do this in the Rue Longchamps, in the Rue St. Jean-de-Dieu, in the Rue Peysette, in the Rue de Pet.i.t Versailles. And in the Rue Ste.-Marthe there are three young girls sick with the disease, who hear the blowing of the horns and the pattering of feet and clapping of hands in chorus;--they get up to look through the slats of their windows on the masquerade,--and the creole pa.s.sion of the dance comes upon them. "_Ah!_" cries one,--"_nou ke bien amieuse nou!--c'est zaffai si nou m!_" [We will have our fill of fun: what matter if we die after!] And all mask, and join the rout, and dance down to the Savane, and over the river-bridge into the high streets of the Fort, carrying contagion with them!... No extraordinary example, this: the ranks of the dancers hold many and many a _verrettier_.

VI.

... The costumes are rather disappointing,-though the mummery has some general characteristics that are not unpicturesquel--for example, the predominance of crimson and canary-yellow in choice of color, and a marked predilection for pointed hoods and high-peaked head-dresses, Mock religious costumes also form a striking element in the general tone of the display,--Franciscan, Dominican, or Penitent habits,--usually crimson or yellow, rarely sky-blue. There are no historical costumes, few eccentricities or monsters: only a few "vampire-bat" head-dresses abruptly break the effect of the peaked caps and the hoods.... Still there are some decidedly local ideas in dress which deserve notice,--the _congo_, the _bebe_ (or _ti-manmaille_), the _ti negue gouos-sirop_ ("little mola.s.ses-negro"); and the _diablesse_.

The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by workers on the plantations. For the women, a gray calico shirt and coa.r.s.e petticoat of percaline with two coa.r.s.e handkerchiefs (_mouchoirs fatas_), one for her neck, and one for the head, over which is worn a monstrous straw hat;--she walks either barefoot or shod with rude native sandals, and she carries a hoe. For the man the costume consists of a gray shirt of Iuugh material, blue canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas to tie around his waist, and a _chapeau Bacoue_,--an enormous hat of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutla.s.s.

The sight of a troupe of young girls _en bebe_, in baby-dress, is really pretty. This costume comprises only a loose embroidered chemise, lace-edged pantalettes, and a child's cap; the whole being decorated with bright ribbbons of various colors. As the dress is short and leaves much of the lower limbs exposed, there is ample opportunity for display of tinted stockings and elegant slippers.