Two Years in the French West Indies Part 20

For it was the savage, natural, primitive gesture of mourning,--of great despair.

... Then all begin to compare their misfortunes, to relate their miseries;--they say grotesque things,--even make jests about their troubles. One declares:--

--"_Si moin te ka venne chapeau, a fce moin ni malhe, toutt manman se fai yche yo sans tete._" (I have that ill-luck, that if I were selling hats all the mothers would have children without heads!)

--Those who sit at their doors, I observe, do not sit, a rule, upon the steps, even when these are of wood. There is a superst.i.tion which checks such a practice. "_Si ou a.s.sise a.s.sous pas-lapte, ou ke pouend doule toutt moune_." (If you sit upon the door-step, you will take the pain of all who pa.s.s by.)

XXIII. _March 30th._

Good Friday....

The bells have ceased to ring,--even the bells for the dead; the hours are marked by cannon-shots. The ships in the harbor form crosses with their spars, turn their flags upside down. And the entire colored population put on mourning:--it is a custom among them centuries old.

You will not perceive a single gaudy robe to-day, a single calendered Madras: not a speck of showy color visible through all the ways of St.

Pierre. The costumes donned are all similar to those worn for the death relatives: either full mourning,--a black robe with violet foulard, and dark violet-banded headkerchief; or half-mourning,--a dark violet robe with black foulard and turban;--the half-mourning being worn only by those who cannot afford the more sombre costume. From my winndow I can see long processions climbing the mornes about the city, to visit the shrines and crucifixes, and to pray for the cessation of the pestilence.

... Three o'clock. Three cannon-shots shake the hill: it is the supposed hour of the Saviour's death. All believers--whether in the churches, on the highways, or in their homes--bow down and kiss the cross thrice, or, if there be no cross, press their lips three times to the ground or the pavement, and utter those three wishes which if expressed precisely at this traditional moment will surely, it is held, be fulfilled. Immense crowds are a.s.sembled before the crosses on the heights, and about the statue of Notre Dame de la Garde.

... There is no hubbub in the streets; there is not even the customary loud weeping to be heard as the coffins go by. One must not complain to-day, nor become angry, nor utter unkind words,--any fault committed on Good Friday is thought to obtain a special and awful magnitude in the sight of Heaven.... There is a curious saying in vogue here. If a son or daughter grow up vicious,--become a shame to the family and a curse to the parents,--it is observed of such:--"_ca, c'est yon peche Vendredi-Saint!_" (Must be a _Good-Friday sin!_)

There are two other strange beliefs connected with Good Friday. One is that it always rains on that day,--that the sky weeps for the death of the Saviour; and that this rain, if caught in a vessel, will never evaporate or spoil, and will cure all diseases.

The other is that only Jesus Christ died precisely at three o'clock.

n.o.body else ever died exactly at that hour;--they may die a second before or a second after three, but never exactly at three.

XXIV. _March 31st._

... Holy Sat.u.r.day morning;--nine o'clock. All the bells suddenly ring out; the humming of the bourdon blends with the thunder of a hundred guns: this is the _Gloria!_... At this signal it is a religious custom for the whole coast-population to enter the sea, and for those living too far from the beach to bathe in the rivers. But rivers and sea are now alike infected;--all the linen of the lazarettos has been washed therein; and to-day there are fewer bathers than usual.

But there are twenty-seven burials. Now they are ring the dead two together: the cemeteries are over-burdened....

XXV.

... In most of the old stone houses you will occasionally see spiders of terrifying size,--measuring across perhaps as much as six inches from the tip of one out-stretched leg to the tip of its opposite fellow, as they cling to the wall. I never heard of anyone being bitten by them; and among the poor it is deemed unlucky to injure or drive them away....

But early this morning Yzore swept her house clean, and ejected through door-way quite a host of these monster insects. Manm-Robert is quite dismayed:--

--"_Fesis-Maa!_--ou 'le malhe enc pou fai ca, che?" (You want to have still more bad luck, that you do such a thing?)

And Yzore answers:--

--"_Toutt moune icitt pa ni yon sou!--gouos conm ca fil zagrignin, et moin pa menm mange! Epi laverette enc.... Moin coue toutt ca ka pte malhe!_" (No one here has a sou!--heaps of cobwebs like that, and nothing to eat yet; and the verette into the bargain... I think those things bring bad luck.)

--"Ah! you have not eaten yet!" cries Manm-Robert. "_Vini epi moin!_"

(Come with me!)

And Yzore--already feeling a little remorse for her treatment of the spiders--murmurs apologetically as she crosses over to Manm-Robert's little shop:--"_Moin pa tchoue yo; moin cha.s.se yo--ke vini enc_." (I did not kill them; I only put them out;--they will come back again.)

But long afterwards, Manm-Robert remarked to me that they never went back....

XXVI. _April 5th._

--"_Toutt bel bois ka alle_," says Manm-Robert. (All the beautiful trees are going.)... I do not understand.

--"_Toutt bel bois--toutt bel moune ka alle_," she adds, interpretatively. (All the "beautiful trees,"--all the handsome people,--are pa.s.sing away.)... As in the speech of the world's primitive poets, so in the creole patois is a beautiful woman compared with a comely tree: nay, more than this, the name of the object is actually subst.i.tuted for that of the living being. _Yon bel bois_ may mean a fine tree: it more generally signifies a graceful woman: this is the very comparison made by Ulysses looking upon Nausicaa, though more naively expressed. ... And now there comes to me the recollection of a creole ballad ill.u.s.trating the use of the phrase,--a ballad about a youth of Fort-de-France sent to St. Pierre by his father to purchase a stock of dobannes, [24] who, falling in love with a handsome colored girl, spent all his father's money in buying her presents and a wedding outfit:--

"Moin descenne Saint-Pie Achete dobannes Aulie ces dobannes C'est yon _bel-bois_ moin mennein monte!"

("I went down to Saint-Pierre to buy dobannes: instead of the dobannes, 'tis a pretty tree--a charming girl--that I bring back with me")

--"Why, who is dead now, Manm-Robert?"

--"It is little Marie, the porteuse, who has got the verette. She is gone to the lazaretto."

XXVII. _April 7th._

--_Toutt bel bois ka alle_.... News has just come that Ti Marie died last night at the lazaretto of the Fort: she was attacked by what they call the _laverette-pouff_,--a form of the disease which strangles its victim within a few hours.

Ti Marie was certainly the neatest little machanne I ever knew. Without being actually pretty, her face had a childish charm which made it a pleasure to look at her;--and she had a clear chocolate-red skin, a light compact little figure, and a remarkably symmetrical pair of little feet which had never felt the pressure of a shoe. Every morning I used to hear her pa.s.sing cry, just about daybreak:--"_Qui 'le cafe?--qui 'le sirop?_" (Who wants coffee?--who wants syrup?) She looked about sixteen, but was a mother. "Where is her husband?" I ask. "_Nhomme-y m laverette 'tou_." (Her man died of the verette also.) "And the little one, her _yche_?" "Y lazarett." (At the lazaretto.)... But only those without friends or relatives in the city are suffered to go to the lazaretto;--Ti Marie cannot have been of St. Pierre?

--"No: she was from Vauclin," answers Manrn-Robert. "You do not often see pretty red girls who are natives of St. Pierre. St. Pierre has pretty _sang-melees_. The pretty red girls mostly come from Vauclin. The yellow ones, who are really _bel-bois_, are from Grande Anse: they are banana-colored people there. At Gros-Morne they are generally black."...

XXVIII.

... It appears that the red race here, the _race capresse_, is particularly liable to the disease. Every family employing capresses for house-servants loses them;--one family living at the next corner has lost four in succession....

The tint is a cinnamon or chocolate color;--the skin is naturally clear, smooth, glossy: it is of the capresse especially that the term "sapota-skin" (_peau-chapoti_) is used,--coupled with all curious creole adjectives to express what is comely,--_jojoll, beaujoll_, etc. [25]

The hair is long, but bushy; the limbs light and strong, and admirably shaped.... I am told that when transported to a colder climate, the capre or capresse partly loses this ruddy tint. Here, under the tropic sun, it has a beauty only possible to imitate in metal.... And because photography cannot convey any idea of this singular color, the capresse hates a photograph.--"_Moin pas noue_," she says;--"_moin ououge: ou fai moin noue nans ptrait-a_." (I am not black: I am red:--you make me black in that portrait.) It is difficult to make her pose before the camera: she is red, as she avers, beautifully red; but the malicious instrument makes her gray or black--_noue conm poule-zo-noue_ ("black as a black-boned hen!")

... And this red race is disappearing from St. Pierre--doubtless also from other plague-stricken centres.