Part 16

... 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. A _cabritt-bois_ begins 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.

[Footnote 17: "Kiss me now!"]

La VÉRETTE

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 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 is _yon 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....

II

_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.

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 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....

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 massing 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 _Intrépides._ 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 the _Sans-souci_ strikes 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.

[Footnote 18: "Petits amoureux aux plumes, Enfants d'un brillant séjour Vous 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 mignonne Qu'un baiser bien fait, bien doux, N'a jamais damné personne Petits 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 fashion Never 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 believe That a kiss without a blessing Is a fault for which to grieve! Now to prove, to his vexation, That no tender kiss and true Ever caused a soul's damnation, Pretty birdlings, bill and coo!]

V

... 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 a _verrettier._

VI

... 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,--the _congo_, the _bébé_ (or _ti-manmaille_), the _ti nègue gouos-sirop_ ("little molasses-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 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 a _chapeau Bacoué_,--an enormous hat of Martinique palm-straw. He walks barefooted and carries a cutlass.

The sight of a troupe of young girls en _bébé_, 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.

The _devilesses_ (_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 carry _boms_ (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....

VII

... Now comes the band of the _Intrépides_, playing the _bouèné._ 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]...

[Footnote 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."]

VIII

... 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 a _bois-bois laverette_,--a manikin that was to represent the plague. But this bois-bois does not make its appearance. _La Vérette_ is 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!...

IX

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.

X

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!"