Part 15

And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the coming of the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the supernatural. _I ni pè zombi mênm gran'-jou_ (he is afraid of ghosts even in broad daylight) is a phrase which does not sound exaggerated in these latitudes,--not, at least, to any one knowing something of the conditions that nourish or inspire weird beliefs. In the awful peace of tropical day, in the hush of the woods, the solemn silence of the hills (broken only by torrent voices that cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the amazing luminosity, there is a something apparitional and weird,--something that seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless haunting. So still all Nature's chambers are that a loud utterance jars upon the ear brutally, like a burst of laughter in a sanctuary. With all its luxuriance of color, with all its violence of light, this tropical day has its ghostliness and its ghosts. Among the people of color there are many who believe that even at noon--when the boulevards behind the city are most deserted--the zombis will show themselves to solitary loiterers.

[Footnote 15: In creole, _cabritt-bois_--("the Wood-Kid")--a colossal cricket. Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes silent; and for thousands of early risers too poor to own a dock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.]

II

... Here a doubt occurs to me,--a doubt regarding the precise nature of a word, which I call upon Adou to explain. Adou is the daughter of the kind old capresse from whom I rent my room in this little mountain cottage. The mother is almost precisely the color of cinnamon; the daughter's complexion is brighter,--the ripe tint of an orange.... Adou tells me creole stories and _tim-tim._ Adou knows all about ghosts, and believes in them. So does Adou's extraordinarily tall brother, Yébé,--my guide among the mountains.

--"Adou," I ask, "what is a zombi?"

The smile that showed Adou's beautiful white teeth has instantly disappeared; and she answers, very seriously, that she has never seen a zombi, and does not want to see one.

--"_Moin pa té janmain ouè zombi,--pa 'lè ouè ça, moin!_"

--"But, Adou, child, I did not ask you whether you ever saw It;--I asked you only to tell me what It is like?"...

Adou hesitates a little, and answers:

--"_Zombi? Mais ça fai désòde lanuitt, zombi!_"

Ah! it is Something which "makes disorder at night." Still, that is not a satisfactory explanation. "Is it the spectre of a dead person, Adou? Is it _one who comes back?_"

--"_Non, Misié,--non; çê pa ça._"

--"Not that?... Then what was it you said the other night when you were afraid to pass the cemetery on an errand,--_ça ou té ka di_, Adou?"

--"Moin té ka di: 'Moin pa lé k'allé bò cimétiè-là pa ouappò moun-mò ké barré moin: moin pa sé pè vini enco.'" (_I said, "I do not want to goby that cemetery because of the dead folk;--the dead folk will bar the way and I cannot get back again._")

--"And you believe that, Adou?"

--"Yes, that is what they say.... And if you go into the cemetery at night you cannot come out again: the dead folk will stop you--_moun-mò ké barré ou._"...

--"But are the dead folk zombis, Adou?"

--"No; the moun-mò are not zombis. The zombis go everywhere: the dead folk remain in the graveyard.... Except on the Night of All Souls: then they go to the houses of their people everywhere."

--"Adou, if after the doors and windows were locked and barred you were to see entering your room in the middle of the night, a Woman fourteen feet high?"...

--"_Ah! pa pàlé ça!!_"...

--"No! tell me, Adou?"

--"Why, yes: that would be a zombi. It is the zombis who make all those noises at night one cannot understand.... Or, again, if I were to see a dog that high [she holds her hand about five feet above the floor] coming into our house at night, I would scream: _Mi Zombi!_"

... Then it suddenly occurs to Adou that her mother knows something about zombis.

--"_Ou! Mannam!_"

--"_Eti!_" answers old Théréza's voice from the little out-building where the evening meal is being prepared, over a charcoal furnace, in an earthen canari.

--"_Missié-là ka mandé save ça ça yé yonne zombi;--vini ti bouin!_"... The mother laughs, abandons her canari, and comes in to tell me all she knows about the weird word.

"_I ni pè zombi_"--I find from old Théréza's explanations--is a phrase indefinite as our own vague expressions, "afraid of ghosts, afraid of the dark." But the word "Zombi" also has special strange meanings.... "Ou passé nans grand chimin lanuitt, épi ou ka ouè gouôs difé, épi plis ou ka vini assou difé-à pli ou ka ouè difé-à ka màché: çé zombi ka fai ça.... Encò, chouval ka passé,--chouval ka ni anni toua patt: ça zombi." (You pass along the high-road at night, and you see a great fire, and the more you walk to get to it the more it moves away: it is the zombi makes that.... Or a horse _with only three legs_ passes you: that is a zombi.)

--"How big is the fire that the zombi makes?" I ask.

--"It fills the whole road," answers Théréza: "_li ka rempli toutt chimin-là._ Folk call those fires the Evil Fires,--_mauvai difé_,--and if you follow them they will lead you into chasms,--_ou ké tombé adans labîme._"...

And then she tells me this:

--"Baidaux was a mad man of color who used to live at St. Pierre, in the Street of the Precipice. He was not dangerous,--never did any harm;--his sister used to take care of him. And what I am going to relate is true,--_çe zhistouè veritabe!_

"One day Baidaux said to his sister: 'Moin ni yonne yche, va!--ou pa connaitt li! [I have a child, ah!--you never saw it!] His sister paid no attention to what he said that day; but the next day he said it again, and the next, and the next, and every day after,--so that his sister at last became much annoyed by it, and used to cry out: 'Ah! mais pé guiole ou, Baidaux! ou fou pou embêté moin conm ça!--ou bien fou!'... But he tormented her that way for months and for years.

"One evening he went out, and only came home at midnight leading a child by the hand,--a black child he had found in the street; and he said to his sister:--

"'Mi yche-là moin mené ba ou! Tou léjou moin té ka di ou moin tini yonne yche: ou pa té 'lè couè,--eh, ben! MI Y!' [Look at the child I have brought you! Every day I have been telling you I had a child: you would not believe me,--very well, look at him!]

"The sister gave one look, and cried out: 'Baidaux, oti ou pouend yche-là?'... For the child was growing taller and taller every moment.... And Baidaux,--because he was mad,--kept saying: 'Çé yche-moin! çé yche moin!' [It is my child!]

"And the sister threw open the shutters and screamed to all the neighbors,--'_Sécou, sécou, sécou! Vint oué ça Baidaux mené ba moin!_' [Help! help! Come see what Baidaux has brought in here!] And the child said to Baidaux: '_Ou ni bonhè ou fou!_' [You are lucky that you are mad!]... Then all the neighbors came running in; but they could not see anything: the Zombi was gone."...

III

... As I was saying, the hours of vastest light have their weirdness here;--and it is of a Something which walketh abroad under the eye of the sun, even at high noontide, that I desire to speak, while the impressions of a morning journey to the scene of Its last alleged apparition yet remains vivid in my recollection.

You follow the mountain road leading from Calebasse over long meadowed levels two thousand feet above the ocean, into the woods of La Couresse, where it begins to descend slowly, through deep green shadowing, by great zigzags. Then, at a turn, you find yourself unexpectedly looking down upon a planted valley, through plumy fronds of arborescent fern. The surface below seems almost like a lake of gold-green water,--especially when long breaths of mountain-wind set the miles of ripening cane a-ripple from verge to verge: the illusion is marred only by the road, fringed with young cocoa-palms, which serpentines across the luminous plain. East, west, and north the horizon is almost wholly hidden by surging of hills: those nearest are softly shaped and exquisitely green; above them loftier undulations take hazier verdancy and darker shadows; farther yet rise silhouettes of blue or violet tone, with one beautiful breast-shaped peak thrusting up in the midst;--while, westward, over all, topping even the Piton, is a vapory huddling of prodigious shapes--wrinkled, fissured, horned, fantastically tall.... Such at least are the tints of the morning.... Here and there, between gaps in the volcanic chain, the land hollows into gorges, slopes down into ravines;--and the sea's vast disk of turquoise flames up through the interval. Southwardly those deep woods, through which the way winds down, shut in the view.... You do not see the plantation buildings till you have advanced some distance into the valley;--they are hidden by a fold of the land, and stand in a little hollow where the road turns: a great quadrangle of low gray antiquated edifices, heavily walled and buttressed, and roofed with red tiles. The court they form opens upon the main route by an immense archway. Farther along ajoupas begin to line the way,--the dwellings of the field hands,--tiny cottages built with trunks of the arborescent fern or with stems of bamboo, and thatched with cane-straw: each in a little garden planted with bananas, yams, couscous, camanioc, choux-caraibes, or other things,--and hedged about with roseaux d'Inde and various flowering shrubs.

Thereafter, only the high whispering wildernesses of cane on either hand,--the white silent road winding between its swaying cocoa-trees,--and the tips of hills that seem to glide on before you as you walk, and that take, with the deepening of the afternoon light, such amethystine color as if they were going to become transparent.

IV

... It is a breezeless and cloudless noon. Under the dazzling downpour of light the hills seem to smoke blue: something like a thin yellow fog haloes the leagues of ripening cane,--a vast reflection. There is no stir in all the green mysterious front of the vine-veiled woods. The palms of the roads keep their heads quite still, as if listening. The canes do not utter a single susurration. Rarely is there such absolute stillness among them: upon the calmest days there are usually rustlings audible, thin cracklings, faint creepings: sounds that betray the passing of some little animal or reptile--a rat or a manicou, or a zanoli or couresse,--more often, however, no harmless lizard or snake, but the deadly fer-de-lance. To-day, all these seem to sleep; and there are no workers among the cane to clear away the weeds,--to uproot the _pié-treffe, pié-poule, pié-balai, zhèbe-en-mè_: it is the hour of rest.

A woman is coming along the road,--young, very swarthy, very tall, and barefooted, and black-robed: she wears a high white turban with dark stripes, and a white foulard is thrown about her fine shoulders; she bears no burden, and walks very swiftly and noiselessly.... Soundless as shadow the motion of all these naked-footed people is. On any quiet mountain-way, full of curves, where you fancy yourself alone, you may often be startled by something you _feel_, rather than hear, behind you,--surd steps, the springy movement of a long lithe body, dumb oscillations of raiment;--and ere you can turn to look, the haunter swiftly passes with creole greeting of "bonjou'" or "bonsouè, Missié." This sudden "becoming aware" in broad daylight of a living presence unseen is even more disquieting than that sensation which, in absolute darkness, makes one halt all breathlessly before great solid objects, whose proximity has been revealed by some mute blind emanation of force alone. But it is very seldom, indeed, that the negro or half-breed is thus surprised: he seems to divine an advent by some specialized sense,--like an animal,--and to become conscious of a look directed upon him from any distance or from behind any covert;--to pass within the range of his keen vision unnoticed is almost impossible.... And the approach of this woman has been already observed by the habitants of the ajoupas;--dark faces peer out from windows and door-ways;--one half-nude laborer even strolls out to the road-side under the sun to watch her coming. He looks a moment, turns to the hut again, and calls:--

--"Ou-ou! Fafa!"

--"Êti! Gabou!"

--"Vini ti bouin!--mi bel négresse!"

Out rushes Fafa, with his huge straw hat in his hand: "Oti, Gabou?"

--"Mi!"

--"Ah! quimbé moin!" cries black Fafa, enthusiastically; "fouinq! li bel!--Jésis-Maïa! li doux!"... Neither ever saw that woman before; and both feel as if they could watch her forever.

There is something superb in the port of a tall young mountain-griffone, or negress, who is comely and knows that she is comely: it is a black poem of artless dignity, primitive grace, savage exultation of movement.... "Ou marché tête enlai cornu couresse qui ka passé lariviè" (_You walk with, your head in the air, like the couresse-serpent swimming a river_) is a creole comparison which pictures perfectly the poise of her neck and chin. And in her walk there is also a serpentine elegance, a sinuous charm: the shoulders do not swing; the cambered torso seems immobile;--but alternately from waist to heel, and from heel to waist, with each long full stride, an indescribable undulation seems to pass; while the folds of her loose robe oscillate to right and left behind her, in perfect libration, with the free swaying of the hips. With us, only a finely trained dancer could attempt such a walk;--with the Martinique woman of color it is natural as the tint of her skin; and this allurement of motion unrestrained is most marked in those who have never worn shoes and are clad lightly as the women of antiquity,--in two very thin and simple garments;--chemise and _robe-d'indienne_.... But whence is she?--of what canton? Not from Vauclin, nor from Lamentin, nor from Marigot,--from Case-Pilote or from Case-Navire: Fafa knows all the people there. Never of Sainte-Anne, nor of Sainte-Luce, nor of Sainte-Marie, nor of Diamant, nor of Gros-Morne, nor of Carbet,--the birthplace of Gabou. Neither is she of the village of the Abysms, which is in the Parish of the Preacher,--nor yet of Ducos nor of François, which are in the Commune of the Holy Ghost....

V

... She approaches the ajoupa: both men remove their big straw hats; and both salute her with a simultaneous "Bonjou', Manzell."

--"Bonjou', Missié," she responds, in a sonorous alto, without appearing to notice Gabou,--but smiling upon Fafa as she passes, with her great eyes turned full upon his face.... All the libertine blood of the man flames under that look;--he feels as if momentarily wrapped in a blaze of black lightning.

--"Ça ka fai moin pè," exclaims Gabou, turning his face towards the ajoupa. Something indefinable in the gaze of the stranger has terrified him.

--"_Pa ka fai moin pè--fouinq!_" (She does not make me afraid) laughs Fafa, boldly following her with a smiling swagger.

--"Fafa!" cries Gabou, in alarm. "_Fafa, pa ça!_"

But Fafa does not heed. The strange woman has slackened her pace, as if inviting pursuit;--another moment and he is at her side.

--"Oti ou ka rété, chè?" he demands, with the boldness of one who knows himself a fine specimen of his race.

--"Zaffai cabritt pa zaffai lapin," she answers, mockingly.

--"Mais pouki ou rhabillé toutt noué conm ça."

--"Moin pòté deil pou name moin mò."

--"Ale ya yaïe!... Non, voué!--ça ou kallé atouèlement?"

--"Lanmou pàti: moin pàti delé lanmou."

--"Ho!--ou ni guêpe, anh?"

--"Zanoli bail yon bal; épi maboya rentré ladans."

--"Di moin oti ou kallé, doudoux?"

--"Jouq lariviè Lezà."

--"Fouinq!--ni plis passé trente kilomett!"

--"Eh ben?--ess ou 'lè vini épi moin?"[16]

And as she puts the question she stands still and gazes at him;--her voice is no longer mocking: it has taken another tone,--a tone soft as the long golden note of the little brown bird they call the _siffleur-de-montagne_, the mountain-whistler.... Yet Fafa hesitates. He hears the clear clang of the plantation bell recalling him to duty;--he sees far down the road--(_Ouill!_ how fast they have been walking!)--a white and black speck in the sun: Gabou, uttering through his joined hollowed hands, as through a horn, the _ouklé_, the rally call. For an instant he thinks of the overseer's anger,--of the distance,--of the white road glaring in the dead heat: then he looks again into the black eyes of the strange woman, and answers:

--"Oui;--moin ké vini épi ou."

With a burst of mischievous laughter, in which Fafa joins, she walks on,--Fafa striding at her side.... And Gabou, far off, watches them go,--and wonders that, for the first time since ever they worked together, his comrade failed to answer his _ouklé._

--"Coument yo ka crié ou, chè?" asks Fafa, curious to know her name.

--"Châché nom moin ou-menm, duviné."

But Fafa never was a good guesser,--never could guess the simplest of tim-tim.

--"Ess Cendrine?"

--"Non, çé pa ça."

--"Ess Vitaline?"

--"Non, çé pa ça."

--"Ess Aza?"

--"Non, çé pa ça."

--"Ess Nini?"

--"Chaché encò."

--"Ess Tité?"

--"Ou pa save,--tant pis pou ou!"

--"Ess Youma?"

--"Pouki ou 'lè save nom moin?--ça ou ké fai épi y?"

--"Ess Yaiya?"

--"Non, çé pa y."

--"Ess Maiyotte?"

--"Non! ou pa ké janmain trouvé y!"

--"Ess Sounoune?--ess Loulouze?"

She does not answer, but quickens her pace and begins to sing,--not as the half-breed, but as the African sings,--commencing with a low long weird intonation that suddenly breaks into fractions of notes inexpressible, then rising all at once to a liquid purling bird-tone, and descending as abruptly again to the first deep quavering strain:--

"À tè-- moin ka dòmi toute longue; Yon paillasse sé fai moin bien, Doudoux!

À tè-- moin ka dòmi toute longue; Yon robe biésé sé fai moin bien, Doudoux!

À tè-- moin ka dòmi toute longue; Dè jolis foulà sé fai moin bien, Doudoux!

À tè-- moin ka dòmi toute longue; Yon joli madras sé fai moin bien, Doudoux!

À tè-- moin ka dòmi toute longue: Çé à tè..."

... Obliged from the first to lengthen his stride in order to keep up with her, Fafa has found his utmost powers of walking overtaxed, and has been left behind. Already his thin attire is saturated with sweat; his breathing is almost a panting;--yet the black bronze of his companion's skin shows no moisture; her rhythmic step, her silent respiration, reveal no effort: she laughs at his desperate straining to remain by her side.

--"Marché toujou' deïé moin,--anh, chè?--marché toujou' deïé!"...

And the involuntary laggard--utterly bewitched by the supple allurement of her motion, by the black flame of her gaze, by the savage melody of her chant--wonders more and more who she may be, while she waits for him with her mocking smile.

But Gabou--who has been following and watching from afar off, and sounding his fruitless ouklé betimes--suddenly starts, halts, turns, and hurries back, fearfully crossing himself at every step.

He has seen the sign by which She is known....

[Footnote 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?"]

VI

... 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!_...

VII

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!"