[16]—"Where dost stay, dear?"—"Affaire of the goat are not affaire of the rabbit."—"But why art thou dressed all in black thus?"—"I wear mourning for my dead soul."—"Aïe ya yaïe!... No, true!... where art thou going now?"—"Love is gone: I go after love."—"Ho! thou hast a Wasp [lover]—eh?"—"The zanoli gives a ball; the maboya enters unasked."—"Tell me where thou art going, sweetheart?"—"As far as the River of the Lizard."—"Fouinq!—there are more than thirty kilometres!"—"What of that?—do t thou want to come with me?"
[16]—"Where dost stay, dear?"
—"Affaire of the goat are not affaire of the rabbit."
—"But why art thou dressed all in black thus?"
—"I wear mourning for my dead soul."
—"Aïe ya yaïe!... No, true!... where art thou going now?"
—"Love is gone: I go after love."
—"Ho! thou hast a Wasp [lover]—eh?"
—"The zanoli gives a ball; the maboya enters unasked."
—"Tell me where thou art going, sweetheart?"
—"As far as the River of the Lizard."
—"Fouinq!—there are more than thirty kilometres!"
—"What of that?—do t thou want to come with me?"
... None ever saw her by night. Her hour is the fulness of the sun's flood-tide: she comes in the dead hush and white flame of windless noons,—when colors appear to take a very unearthliness of intensity,—when even the flash of some colibri, bosomed with living fire, shooting hither and thither among the grenadilla blossoms, seemeth a spectral happening because of the great green trance of the land....
Mostly she haunts the mountain roads, winding from plantation to plantation, from hamlet to hamlet,—sometimes dominating huge sweeps of azure sea, sometimes shadowed by mornes deep-wooded to the sky. But close to the great towns she sometimes walks: she has been seen at mid-day upon the highway which overlooks the Cemetery of the Anchorage, behind the cathedral of St. Pierre.... A black Woman, simply clad, of lofty stature and strange beauty, silently standing in the light,keeping her eyes fixed upon the Sun!...
Day wanes. The further western altitudes shift their pearline gray to deep blue where the sky is yellowing up behind them; and in the darkening hollows of nearer mornes strange shadows gather with the changing of the light—dead indigoes, fuliginous purples, rubifications as of scoriæ,—ancient volcanic colors momentarily resurrected by the illusive haze of evening. And the fallow of the canes takes a faint warm ruddy tinge. On certain far high slopes, as the sun lowers, they look like thin golden hairs against the glow,—blond down upon the skin of the living hills.
Still the Woman and her follower walk together,—chatting loudly, laughing, chanting snatches of song betimes. And now the valley is well behind them;— they climb the steep road crossing the eastern peaks,—through woods that seem to stifle under burdening of creepers. The shadow of the Woman and the shadow of the man,—broadening from their feet,—lengthening prodigiously,—sometimes, mixing, fill all the way; sometimes, at a turn, rise up to climb the trees. Huge masses of frondage, catching the failing light, take strange fiery color;—the sun's rim almost touches one violet hump in the western procession of volcanic silhouettes....
Sunset, in the tropics, is vaster than sunrise.... The dawn, upflaming swiftly from the sea, has no heralding erubescence, no awful blossoming—as in the North: its fairest hues are fawn-colors, dove-tints, and yellows,—pale yellows as of old dead gold, in horizon and flood. But after the mighty heat of day has charged all the blue air with translucent vapor, colors become strangely changed, magnified, transcendentalized when the sun falls once more below the verge of visibility. Nearly an hour before his death, his light begins to turn tint; and all the horizon yellows to the color of a lemon. Then this hue deepens, through tones of magnificence unspeakable, into orange; and the sea becomes lilac. Orange is the light of the world for a little space; and as the orb sinks, the indigo darkness comes—not descending, but rising, as if from the ground—all within a few minutes. And during those brief minutes peaks and mornes, purpling into richest velvety blackness, appear outlined against passions of fire that rise half-way to the zenith,—enormous furies of vermilion.
... The Woman all at once leaves the main road,—begins to mount a steep narrow path leading up from it through the woods upon the left. But Fafa hesitates,—halts a moment to look back. He sees the sun's huge orange face sink down,—sees the weird procession of the peaks vesture themselves in blackness funereal,—sees the burning behind them crimson into awfulness; and a vague fear comes upon him as he looks again up the darkling path to the left. Whither is she now going?
—"Oti ou kallé là?" he cries.
—"Mais conm ça!—chimin tala plis cou't,—coument?"
It may be the shortest route, indeed;—but then, the fer-de-lance!...
—"Ni sèpent ciya,—en pile."
No: there is not a single one, she avers; she has taken that path too often not to know:
—"Pa ni sèpent piess! Moin ni coutime passé là;—pa ni piess!"
... She leads the way.... Behind them the tremendous glow deepens;—before them the gloom. Enormous gnarled forms of ceiba, balata, acoma, stand dimly revealed as they pass; masses of viny drooping things take, by the failing light, a sanguine tone. For a little while Fafa can plainly discern the figure of the Woman before him;—then, as the path zigzags into shadow, he can descry only the white turban and the white foulard;—and then the boughs meet overhead: he can see her no more, and calls to her in alarm:—
—"Oti ou?—moin pa pè ouè arien!"
Forked pending ends of creepers trail cold across his face. Huge fire-flies sparkle by,—like atoms of kindled charcoal thudding, blown by a wind.
—"Içitt!—quimbé lanmain-moin!"...
How cold the hand that guides him!... She walks swiftly, surely, as one knowing the path by heart. It zigzags once more; and the incandescent color flames again between the trees;—the high vaulting of foliage fissures overhead, revealing the first stars. Acabritt-boisbegins its chant. They reach the summit of the morne under the clear sky.
The wood is below their feet now; the path curves on eastward between a long swaying of ferns sable in the gloom,—as between a waving of prodigious black feathers. Through the further purpling, loftier altitudes dimly loom; and from some viewless depth, a dull vast rushing sound rises into the night.... Is it the speech of hurrying waters, or only some tempest of insect voices from those ravines in which the night begins?...
Her face is in the darkness as she stands;—Fafa's eyes are 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 ça?" she asks, almost in a whisper.
Oh! yes, yes, yes!... more than any living being he loves her!... How much? Ever so much,—gouôs conm caze!... Yet she seems to doubt him,—repeating her question 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 path, 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 ça!—oui, chè doudoux, ou save ça!"...
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:
—"Atò, bô!"[17]
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.
[17]"Kiss me now!"
[17]"Kiss me now!"
—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 Mirait; 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 isyon màchonne 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 épi coubouyon lamori), akras, etc.; but her bouts probably bring her the largest profit—they are all bought up by the békés. Manm-Robert is also a sort of doctor: whenever any one 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 medical herbs, which she gathers herself upon the mornes. But for these services she never accepts any remuneration: she is a sort of Mother of the poor in her 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 anybody is afraid of being bewitched (guimboisé) Manm-Robert can furnish him or her with something that will keep the bewitchment away....
February 15th.
... Ash-Wednesday. The last masquerade will appear this afternoon, notwithstanding; for the Carnival lasts 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 Vérette: 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.
... 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 multitudes; and its tiny square,—the Batterie d'Esnotz,—thronged with békés.—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-à?" 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 every one 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 class forever, put on the douilette 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 ouè!—vini ouè!" cry the children to one another,—"come and see!" The drums are drawing near;—everybody is running to the Grande Rue....
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 massing of maskers in rose and blue and sulphur-yellow attire.... Then what adegringoladebegins!—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,—theSans-souciand theIntrépides.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 coarse 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.
... 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 snatches of Carnival song are being sung:—"Cambronne, Cambronne;" or "Ti fenm-là doux, li doux, li doux!"... "Sweeter than sirup the little woman is";—this burden will be remembered when the rest of the song passes out of fashion. Brown hands reach out from the crowd of masks, pulling the beards and patting the faces of white spectators.... "Main connaitt! ou, chè!—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. Prom 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 passes with a huge swing,—a regular swaying to right and left.... It will take at least an hour for all to pass; and it is an hour well worth passing. 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 theSans-soucistrikes up the melody of the latest French song in vogue,—Petits amoureux aux plumes("Little feathered lovers"[18]). 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.
[18]"Petits amoureux aux plumes,Enfants d'un brillant séjourVous ignorez l'amertume,Vous parlez souvent d'amour:...Vous méprisez la dorure,Les salons, et les bijoux;Vous chérissez la Nature,Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"Voyez là bas, dans cette église,Auprès d'un confessional,Le prêtre, qui veut faire croire à Lise,Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;—Pour prouver à la mignonneQu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux,N'a jamais damné personnePetits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"[Translation.]Little feathered lovers, cooing,Children of the radiant air,Sweet your speech,—the speech of wooing;Ye have ne'er a grief to bear!Gilded ease and jewelled fashionNever own a charm for you;Ye love Nature's truth with passion.Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!See that priest who, Lise confessing,Wants to make the girl believeThat a kiss without a blessingIs a fault for which to grieve!Now to prove, to his vexation,That no tender kiss and trueEver caused a soul's damnation,Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!
[18]"Petits amoureux aux plumes,Enfants d'un brillant séjourVous ignorez l'amertume,Vous parlez souvent d'amour:...Vous méprisez la dorure,Les salons, et les bijoux;Vous chérissez la Nature,Petits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"Voyez là bas, dans cette église,Auprès d'un confessional,Le prêtre, qui veut faire croire à Lise,Qu'un baiser est un grand mal;—Pour prouver à la mignonneQu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux,N'a jamais damné personnePetits oiseaux, becquetez-vous!"
[Translation.]
Little feathered lovers, cooing,Children of the radiant air,Sweet your speech,—the speech of wooing;Ye have ne'er a grief to bear!Gilded ease and jewelled fashionNever own a charm for you;Ye love Nature's truth with passion.Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!See that priest who, Lise confessing,Wants to make the girl believeThat a kiss without a blessingIs a fault for which to grieve!Now to prove, to his vexation,That no tender kiss and trueEver caused a soul's damnation,Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!
... Extraordinary things are happening in the streets through which the procession passes. 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 Petit 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 passion of the dance comes upon them. "Ah!" cries one,—"nou ké amieusé nou!—c'est zaffai si nou mò!" [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 averrettier.
... The costumes are rather disappointing,—though the mummery has some general characteristics that are not unpicturesque;—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, Dominion, 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,—thecongo, thebébé(orti-manmaille), theti nègue gouos-sirop("little molasses-negro"); and thediablesse.
The congo is merely the exact reproduction of the dress worn by workers on the plantations. For the women, a gray calico shirt and coarse petticoat of percaline; with two coarse 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 rough material, blue canvas pantaloons, a large mouchoir fatas to tie around his waist, and achapeau Bacoué,—an enormous hat of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.
The sight of a troupe of young girls enbébé, in baby-dress, is really pretty. This costume comprises only a loose embroidered chemise, laoe-edged pantalettes, and a child's cap; the whole being decorated with bright ribbons 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.
The "molasses-negro" wears nothing but a cloth around his loins;—his whole body and face being smeared with an atrocious mixture of soot and molasses. He is supposed to represent the original African ancestor.
Thedevilesses(diablesses)are few in number; for it requires a very tall woman to play deviless. These are robed all in black, with a white turban and white foulard; they wear black masks. They also carryboms(large tin cans), which they allow to fall upon the pavement from time to time; and they walk barefoot.... The deviless (in true Bitaco idiom, "guiablesse") represents a singular Martinique superstition. It is said that sometimes at noonday a beautiful negress passes silently through some isolated plantation,—smiling at the workers in the cane-fields,—tempting men to follow her. But he who follows her never comes back again; and when a field hand mysteriously disappears, his fellows say, "Y té ka ouè la Guiablesse!"... The tallest among the devilesses always walks first, chanting the question, "Jou ouvè?" (Is it yet daybreak?) And all the others reply in chorus, "Jou pa'ncò ouvè." (It is not yet day.)
—The masks worn by the multitude include very few grotesques: as a rule, they are simply white wire masks, having the form of an oval and regular human face;—and they disguise the wearer absolutely, although they can be seen through perfectly well from within. It struck me at once that this peculiar type of wire mask gave an indescribable tone of ghostliness to the whole exhibition. It is not in the least comical; it is neither comely nor ugly; it is colorless as mist,—expressionless, void, dead;—it lies on the face like a vapor, like a cloud,—creating the idea of a spectral vacuity behind it....
... Now comes the band of theIntrépides, playing thebouèné.It is a dance melody,—also the name of a mode of dancing, peculiar and unrestrained;—the dancers advance and retreat face to face; they hug each other, press together, and separate to embrace again. A very old dance, this,—of African origin; perhaps the same of which Père Labat wrote in 1722:—
—"It is not modest. Nevertheless, it has not failed to become so popular with the Spanish Creoles of America, and so much in vogue among them, that it now forms the chief of their amusements, and that it enters even into their devotions. They dance it even in their Churches, and in their Processions; and the Nuns seldom fail to dance it Christmas Night, upon a stage erected in their Choir and immediately in front of their iron grating, which is left open, so that the People may share in the joy manifested by these good souls for the birth of the Saviour."[19]...
[19]... "Cette danse est opposée à la pudeur. Avec tout cela, elle ne laisse pas d'être tellement du goût des Espagnols Créolles de l'Amérique, & si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la meilleure partie de leurs divertissements, & qu'elle entre même dans leurs devotions. Ils la dansent même dans leurs Églises & à leurs processions; et les Religieuses ne manquent guère de la danser la Nuit de Noël, sur un théâtre élevé dans leur Chœur, vis-à-vis de leur grille, qui est ouverte, afin que le Peuple ait sa part dans la joye que ces bonnes âmes témoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."
[19]... "Cette danse est opposée à la pudeur. Avec tout cela, elle ne laisse pas d'être tellement du goût des Espagnols Créolles de l'Amérique, & si fort en usage parmi eux, qu'elle fait la meilleure partie de leurs divertissements, & qu'elle entre même dans leurs devotions. Ils la dansent même dans leurs Églises & à leurs processions; et les Religieuses ne manquent guère de la danser la Nuit de Noël, sur un théâtre élevé dans leur Chœur, vis-à-vis de leur grille, qui est ouverte, afin que le Peuple ait sa part dans la joye que ces bonnes âmes témoignent pour la naissance du Sauveur."
... Every year, on the last day of the Carnival, a droll ceremony used to take place called the "Burial of the Bois-bois,"—the bois-bois being a dummy, a guy, caricaturing the most unpopular thing in city life or in politics. This bois-bois, after having been paraded with mock solemnity through all the ways of St. Pierre, was either interred or "drowned,"—flung into the sea.... And yesterday the dancing societies had announced their intention to bury abois-bois laverette,—a manikin that was to represent the plague. But this bois-bois does not make its appearance.La Véretteis too terrible a visitor to be made fun of, my friends;—you will not laugh at her, because you dare not....
No: there is one who has the courage,—a yellow goblin crying from behind his wire mask, in imitation of the màchannes: "Ça qui 'lè quatòze graines laverette pou yon sou?" (Who wants to buy fourteen verette-spots for a sou?)
Not a single laugh follows that jest.... And just one week from to-day, poor mocking goblin, you will have a great many more than quatorze graines, which will not cost you even a sou, and which will disguise you infinitely better than the mask you now wear;—and they will pour quick-lime over you, ere ever they let you pass through this street again—in a seven franc coffin!...
And the multicolored clamoring stream rushes by,—swerves off at last through the Rue des Ursulines to the Savane,—rolls over the new bridge of the Roxelane to the ancient quarter of the Fort.
All of a sudden there is a hush, a halt;—the drums stop beating, the songs cease. Then I see a sudden scattering of goblins and demons and devilesses in all directions: they run into houses, up alleys,—hide behind door-ways. And the crowd parts; and straight through it, walking very quickly, conies a priest in his vestments, preceded by an acolyte who rings a little bell.C'est Bon-Dié ka passé!("It is the Good-God who goes by!") The father is bearing the "viaticum" to some victim of the pestilence: one must not appear masked as a devil or a deviless in the presence of the Bon-Dié.
He goes by. The flood of maskers recloses behind the ominous passage;—the drums boom again; the dance recommences; and all the fantastic mummery ebbs swiftly out of sight.
Night falls;—the maskers crowd to the ball-rooms to dance strange tropical measures that will become wilder and wilder as the hours pass. And through the black streets, the Devil makes his last Carnival-round.
By the gleam of the old-fashioned oil lamps hung across the thoroughfares I can make out a few details of his costume. He is clad in red, wears a hideous blood-colored mask, and a cap of which the four sides are formed by four looking-glasses;—the whole head-dress being surmounted by a red lantern. He has a white wig made of horse-hair, to make him look weird and old,—since the Devil is older than the world! Down the street he comes, leaping nearly his own height,—chanting words without human signification,—and followed by some three hundred boys, who form the chorus to his chant—all clapping hands together and giving tongue with a simultaneity that testifies how strongly the sense of rhythm enters into the natural musical feeling of the African,—a feeling powerful enough to impose itself upon, all Spanish-America, and there create the unmistakable characteristics of all that is called "creole music."
—"Bimbolo!"
—"Zimabolo!"
—"Bimbolo!"
—"Zimabolo!"
—"Et zimbolo!"
—"Et bolo-po!"
—sing the Devil and his chorus. His chant is cavernous, abysmal,—booms from his chest like the sound of a drum beaten in the bottom of a well....Ti maillelà, baill moin lavoix!("Give me voice, little folk,—give me voice!") And all chant after him, in a chanting like the rushing of many waters, and with triple clapping of hands:—"Ti marmaille-là, baill moin lavoix!"... Then he halts before a dwelling in the Rue Peysette, and thunders:—
—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!—mi! diabe-là derhò!"
That is evidently a piece of spite-work: there is somebody living there against whom he has a grudge.... "Hey! Marie-without-teeth! look! the Devil is outside!" And the chorus catch the clue.
DEVIL.—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!"...
CHORUS.—"Marie-sans-dent! mi!—diabe-là derhò!"
D.—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!"...
C.—"Marie-sans-dent! mi!—diabe-là derhò!"
D.—"Eh! Marie-sans-dent!"... etc.
The Devil at last descends to the main street, always singing the same song;—I follow the chorus to the Savanna, where the rout makes for the new bridge over the Roxelane, to mount the high streets of the old quarter of the Fort; and the chant changes as they cross over:—
DEVIL.—"Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?" (Where did you see the Devil going over the river?) And all the boys repeat the words, falling into another rhythm with perfect regularity and ease:—"Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?"
DEVIL.—"Oti ouè diabe?"...
CHORUS.—"Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?"
D.—"Oti ouè diabe?"
C.—"Oti ouè diabe-là passé lariviè?"
D.—"Oti ouè diabe?"... etc.
About midnight the return of the Devil and his following arouses me from sleep:—all are chanting a new refrain, "The Devil and the zombis sleep anywhere and everywhere!" (Diabe épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout.) The voices of the boys are still clear, shrill, fresh,—clear as a chant of frogs;—they still clap hands with a precision of rhythm that is simply wonderful,—making each time a sound almost exactly like the bursting of a heavy wave:—
DEVIL.—"Diabe épi zombi."...
CHORUS.—"Diabe épi zombi ka dàmi tout-pàtout!"
D.—"Diabe épi zombi."...
C.—"Diabe épi zombi ka dòmi tout-pàtout!"
D.—"Diabe épi zombi."... etc.
... What is this after all but the old African method of chanting at labor. The practice of carrying the burden upon the head left the hands free for the rhythmic accompaniment of clapping. And you may still hear the women who load the transatlantic steamers with coal at Fort-de-France thus chanting and clapping....
Evidently the Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are running;—the pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds like a heavy shower.... Then the chanting grows fainter in distance; the Devil's immense basso becomes inaudible;—one only distinguishes at regular intervals the crescendo of the burden,—a wild swelling of many hundred boy-voices all rising together,—a retreating storm of rhythmic song, wafted to the ear in gusts, in rafales of contralto....
February 17th.
... Yzore is acalendeuse.
The calendeuses are the women who make up the beautiful Madras turbans and color them; for the amazingly brilliant yellow of these head-dresses is not the result of any dyeing process: they are all painted by hand. When purchased the Madras is simply a great oblong handkerchief, having a pale green or pale pink ground, and checkered or plaided by intersecting bands of dark blue, purple, crimson, or maroon. The calendeuse lays the Madras upon a broad board placed across her knees,—then, taking a camel's-hair brush, she begins to fill in the spaces between the bands with a sulphur-yellow paint, which is always mixed with gum-arabic. It requires a sure eye, very steady fingers, and long experience to do this well.... After the Madras has been "calendered" (calendé) and has become quite stiff and dry, it is folded about the head of the purchaser after the comely Martinique fashion,—which varies considerably from the modes popular in Guadeloupe or Cayenne,—is fixed into the form thus obtained; and can thereafter be taken off or put on without arrangement or disarrangement, like a cap. The price for calendering a Madras is now two francs and fifteen sous;—and for making-up the turban, six sous additional, except in Carnival-time, or upon holiday occasions, when the price rises to twenty-five sous.... The making-up of the Madras into a turban is called "tying a head" (marré yon tête); and a prettily folded turban is spoken of as "a head well tied" (yon tête bien marré).... However, the profession of calendeuse is far from being a lucrative one: it is two or three days' work to calendar a single Madras well...
But Yzore does not depend upon calendering alone for a living: she earns much more by the manufacture of moresques and of chinoises than by painting Madras turbans.... Everybody in Martinique who can afford it wears moresques and chinoises. The moresques are large loose comfortable pantaloons of thin printed calico (indienne),—having colored designs representing birds, frogs, leaves, lizards, flowers, butterflies, or kittens,—or perhaps representing nothing in particular, being simply arabesques. The chinoise is a loose body-garment, very much like the real Chinese blouse, but always of brightly colored calico with fantastic designs. These things are worn at home during siestas, after office-hours, and at night. To take a nap during the day with one's ordinary clothing on means always a terrible drenching from perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion almost indescribable—best expressed, perhaps, by the local term:corps écrasé.Therefore, on entering one's room for the siesta, one strips, puts on the light moresques and the chinoise, and dozes in comfort. A suit of this sort is very neat, often quite pretty, and very cheap (costing only about six francs);—the colors do not fade out in washing, and two good suits will last a year.... Yzore can make two pair of moresques and two chinoises in a single day upon her machine.
... I have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle machines;—the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by hand,—with a sort of little crank....
February 22d.
... Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them?...
It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and deadly, had been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind of robes and tread of myriad dancing feet,—by the crash of cymbals and heavy vibration of drums! Within a few days there has been a frightful increase of the visitation, an almost incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the number of new cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled, quadrupled....
... Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more thickly peopled streets,—about one hundred paces apart, each being tended by an Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is done with the idea of purifying the air. These sinister fires are never lighted but in times of pestilence and of tempest: on hurricane nights, when enormous waves roll in from the fathomless sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in the world, and great vessels are being driven ashore, such is the illumination by which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts to save the lives of shipwrecked men, often at the cost of their own.[20]
[20]During a hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian steamer was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of the island by having her propeller fouled. Some broken and drifting rigging had become wrapped around it. One of the crew, a Martinique mulatto, tied a rope about his waist, took his knife between his teeth, dived overboard, and in that tremendous sea performed the difficult feat of disengaging the propeller, and thus saving the steamer from otherwise certain destruction.... This brave fellow received the Cross of the Legion of Honor....
[20]During a hurricane, several years ago, a West Indian steamer was disabled at a dangerously brief distance from the coast of the island by having her propeller fouled. Some broken and drifting rigging had become wrapped around it. One of the crew, a Martinique mulatto, tied a rope about his waist, took his knife between his teeth, dived overboard, and in that tremendous sea performed the difficult feat of disengaging the propeller, and thus saving the steamer from otherwise certain destruction.... This brave fellow received the Cross of the Legion of Honor....
February 23d.
A coffin passes, balanced on the heads of black men. It bolds the body of Pascaline Z——, covered with quick-lime.
She was the prettiest, assuredly, among the pretty shop-girls of the Grande Rue,—a rare type ofsang-mêlée.So oddly pleasing, the young face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate the recollection of it from the memory of the street. But one who saw it last night before they poured quick-lime upon it could discern no features,—only a dark brown mass, like a fungus, too frightful to think about.
... And they are all going thus, the beautiful women of color. In the opinion of physicians, the whole generation is doomed.... Yet a curious fact is that the young children of octoroons are suffering least: these women have their children vaccinated,—though they will not be vaccinated themselves. I see many brightly colored children, too, recovering from the disorder: the skin is not pitted, like that of the darker classes; and the rose-colored patches finally disappear altogether, leaving no trace.
... Here the sick are wrapped in banana leaves, after having been smeared with a certain unguent....
FORT-DE-FRANCEThe city from the heights of Le Calvaire, behind the town.
FORT-DE-FRANCEThe city from the heights of Le Calvaire, behind the town.
There is an immense demand for banana leaves. In ordinary times these leaves—especially the younger ones, still unrolled, and tender and soft beyond any fabric possible for man to make—are used for poultices of all kinds, and sell from one to two sous each, according to size and quality.
February 29th.
... The whites remain exempt from the malady.
One might therefore hastily suppose that liability to contagion would be diminished in proportion to the excess of white blood over African; but such is far from being the case;—St. Pierre is losing its handsomest octoroons. Where the proportion of white to black blood is 116 to 8, as in the type calledmamelouc;—or 122 to 4, as in thequarteronné(not to be confounded with the quarteron or quadroon);—or even 127 to 1, as in thesang-mêlé, the liability to attack remains the same, while the chances of recovery are considerably less than in the case of the black. Some few striking instances of immunity appear to offer a different basis for argument; but these might be due to the social position of the individual rather than to any constitutional temper: wealth and comfort, it must be remembered, have no small prophylactic value in such times. Still,—although there is reason to doubt whether mixed races have a constitutional vigor comparable to that of the original parent-races,—the liability to diseases of this class is decided less, perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral experience. The white peoples of the world have been practically inoculated, vaccinated, by experience of centuries;—while among these visibly mixed or black populations the seeds of the pest find absolutely fresh soil in which to germinate, and its ravages are therefore scarcely less terrible than those it made among the American-Indian or the Polynesian races in other times. Moreover, there is an unfortunate prejudice against vaccination here. People even now declare that those vaccinated die just as speedily of the plague as those who have never been;—and they can cite cases in proof. It is useless to talk to them about averages of immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;—they have seen with their own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die of the verette, and that is enough to destroy their faith in the system... Even the priests, who pray their congregations to adopt the only known safeguard against the disease, can do little against this scepticism.
March 5th.
... The streets are so narrow in this old-fashioned quarter that even a whisper is audible across them; and after dark I hear a great many things,—sometimes sounds of pain, sobbing, despairing cries as Death makes his nightly round,—sometimes, again, angry words, and laughter, and even song,—always one melancholy chant: the voice has that peculiar metallic timbre that reveals the young negress:—
"Paw' ti Lélé,Paw' ti Lélé!Li gagnin doulè, doulè, doulè,—Li gagnin doulèTout-pàtout!"
I want to know who little Lélé was, and why she had pains "all over";—for however artless and childish these creole songs seem, they are invariably originated by some real incident. And at last somebody tells me that "poor little Lélé" had the reputation in other years of being the most unlucky girl in St. Pierre; whatever she tried to do resulted only in misfortune;—when it was morning she wished it were evening, that she might sleep and forget; but when the night came she could not sleep for thinking of the trouble she had had during the day, so that she wished it were morning....
More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's children across the way, after the sun has set, and the stars come out.... Gabrielle always wants to know what the stars are:—
—"Ça qui ka clairé conm, ça, manman?" (What is it that shines like that?)
And Yzore answers:—
—"Ça, mafi,—c'est ti limiè Bon-Dié." (Those are the little lights of the Good-God.)
—"It is so pretty,—eh, mamma? I want to count them."
—"You cannot count them, child."
—"One—two—three—four—five—six—seven." Gabrielle can only count up to seven. "Moin pride!—I am lost, mamma!"
The moon comes up;—she cries:—"Mi! manman!—gàdé gouôs difé qui adans ciel-à!" (Look at the great fire in the sky!)
—"It is the Moon, child!... Don't you see St. Joseph in it, carrying a bundle of wood?"
—"Yes, mamma! I see him!... A great big bundle of wood!"...
But Mimi is wiser in moon-lore: she borrows half a franc from her mother "to show to the Moon." And holding it up before the silver light, she sings:—
—"Pretty Moon, I show you my little money;—now let me always have money so long as you shiner!"[21]
Then the mother takes them up to bed;—and in a little while there floats to me, through the open window, the murmur of the children's evening prayer:—
"Ange-gardien,Veillez sur moi."* * * *"Ayez pitié de ma faiblesse;Couchez-vous sur mon petit lit;Suivez-moi sans cesse."[22]...
I can only catch a line here and there.... They do not sleep immediately;—they continue to chat in bed. Gabrielle wants to know what a guardian-angel is like. And I hear Mimi's voice replying in creole:—
—"Zange-gàdien, c'est yon jeine fi, touts bel." (The guardian-angel is a young girl, all beautiful.)
A little while, and there is silence; and I see Yzore come out, barefooted, upon the moonlit balcony of her little room,—looking up and down the hushed street, looking at the sea, looking up betimes at the high flickering of stars,—moving her lips as in prayer.... And, standing there white-robed, with her rich dark hair loose-falling, there is a weird grace about her that recalls those long slim figures of guardian-angels in French religious prints....