Part 17

--"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....

XI

_February 17th._

... Yzore is a _calendeuse._

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....

XII

_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]

[Footnote 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....]

XIII

_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 of _sang-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....

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.

XIV

_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 called _mamelouc_;--or 122 to 4, as in the _quarteronné_ (not to be confounded with the quarteron or quadroon);--or even 127 to 1, as in the _sang-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.

XV

_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 doulè Tout-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....

[Footnote 21: "_Bel ladine, moin ka montré ou ti pièce moin!--ba moin làgent toutt tempe ou ka clairé!_"... This little invocation is supposed to have most power when ottered on the first appearance of the new moon.]

[Footnote 22: "Guardian-angel, watch over me;--have pity upon my weakness; lie down on my little bed with me; follow me whithersoever I go."... The prayers are always said in French. Metaphysical and theological terms cannot be rendered in the patois; and the authors of creole catechisms have always been obliged to borrow and explain French religious phrases in order to make their texts comprehensible.]

XVI

_March 6th._

This morning Manm-Robert brings me something queer,--something hard tied up in a tiny piece of black cloth, with a string attached to hang it round my neck. I must wear it, she says.

--"_Ça ça yè, Manm-Robert?_"

--"_Pou empêché ou pouend laverette_" she answers. It is to keep me from catching the verette!... And what is inside it?

--"_Toua graines maïs, épi dicamfre._" (Three grains of corn, with a bit of camphor!)...

XVII

_March 8th._

... Rich households throughout the city are almost helpless for the want of servants. One can scarcely obtain help at any price: it is true that young country-girls keep coming into town to fill the places of the dead; but these new-comers fall a prey to the disease much more readily than those who preceded them. And such deaths often represent more than a mere derangement in the mechanism of domestic life. The creole bonne bears a relation to the family of an absolutely peculiar sort,--a relation of which the term "house-servant" does not convey the faintest idea. She is really a member of the household: her association with its life usually begins in childhood, when she is barely strong enough to carry a dobanne of water up-stairs;--and in many cases she has the additional claim of having been born in the house. As a child, she plays with the white children,--shares their pleasures and presents. She is very seldom harshly spoken to, or reminded of the fact that she is a servitor: she has a pet name;--she is allowed much familiarity,--is often permitted to join in conversation when there is no company present, and to express her opinion about domestic affairs. She costs very little to keep; four or five dollars a year will supply her with all necessary clothing;--she rarely wears shoes;--she sleeps on a little straw mattress (_paillasse_) on the floor, or perhaps upon a paillasse supported upon an "elephant" (_léfan_)--two thick square pieces of hard mattress placed together so as to form an oblong. She is only a nominal expense to the family; and she is the confidential messenger, the nurse, the chamber-maid, the water-carrier,--everything, in short, except cook and washer-woman. Families possessing a really good bonne would not part with her on any consideration. If she has been brought up in the household, she is regarded almost as a kind of adopted child. If she leave that household to make a home of her own, and have ill-fortune afterwards, she will not be afraid to return with her baby, which will perhaps be received and brought up as she herself was, under the old roof. The stranger may feel puzzled at first by this state of affairs; yet the cause is not obscure. It is traceable to the time of the formation of creole society--to the early period of slavery. Among the Latin races,--especially the French,--slavery preserved in modern times many of the least harsh features of slavery in the antique world,--where the domestic slave, entering the _famillia_, actually became a member of it.

XVIII

_March 10th._

... Yzore and her little ones are all in Manm-Robert's shop;--she is recounting her troubles,--fresh troubles: forty-seven francs' worth of work delivered on time, and no money received.... So much I hear as I enter the little boutique myself, to buy a package of "bouts."

--"_Assise!_" says Manm-Robert, handing me her own chair;--she is always pleased to see me, pleased to chat with me about creole folk-lore. Then observing a smile exchanged between myself and Mimi, she tells the children to bid me good-day:--"_Allé di bonjou' Missié-à!_"

One after another, each holds up a velvety cheek to kiss. And Mimi, who has been asking her mother the same question over and over again for at least five minutes without being able to obtain an answer, ventures to demand of me on the strength of this introduction:--

--"_Missié, oti masque-à?_"

--"_Y ben fou, pouloss!_" the mother cries out;--"Why, the child must be going out of her senses!... _Mimi pa 'mbêté moune conm ça!--pa ni piess masque: c'est la-vérette qui ni._" (Don't annoy people like that!--there are no maskers now; there is nothing but the verette!)

[You are not annoying me at all, little Mimi; but I would not like to answer your question truthfully. I know where the maskers are,--most of them, child; and I do not think it would be well for you to know. They wear no masks now; but if you were to see them for even one moment, by some extraordinary accident, pretty Mimi, I think you would feel more frightened than you ever felt before.]...

--"_Toutt la nuite y k'anni rêvé masque-à_," continues Yzore.... I am curious to know what Mimi's dreams are like;--wonder if I can coax her to tell me....

XIX

... I have written Mimi's last dream from the child's dictation:--[23]

--"I saw a ball," she says. "I was dreaming: I saw everybody dancing with masks on;--I was looking at them. And all at once I saw that the folks who were dancing were all made of pasteboard. And I saw a commandeur: he asked me what I was doing there. I answered him: 'Why, I saw a ball, and I came to look--what of it?' He answered me:--'Since you are so curious to come and look at other folks' business, you will have to stop here and dance too!' I said to him:--'No! I won't dance with people made of pasteboard;--I am afraid of them!'... And I ran and ran and ran,--I was so much afraid. And I ran into a big garden, where I saw a big cherry-tree that had only leaves upon it; and I saw a man sitting under the cherry-tree. He asked me:--'What are you doing here?' I said to him:--'I am trying to find my way out.' He said:--'You must stay here.' I said:--'No, no!'--and I said, in order to be able to get away:--'Go up there!--you will see a fine ball: all pasteboard people dancing there, and a pasteboard commandeur commanding them!'... And then I got so frightened that I awoke."...

... "And why were you so afraid of them, Mimi?" I ask.

--"_Pace yo té toutt vide endedans!_" answers Mimi. (_Because they were all hollow inside!_)

[Footnote 23:--"Moin té ouè yon bal;--moin rêvé: moin té ka ouè toutt moune ka dansé masqué; moin té ka gàdé. Et toutt-à-coup moin ka ouè c'est bonhomme-càton ka dansé. Et main ka ouè yon Commandè: y ka mandé moin ça moin ka fai là. Moin reponne y conm ça:--'Moin ouè yon bal, moin gàdé-coument!' Y ka réponne moin:--'Pisse ou si quirièse pou vini gàdé baggaïe moune, faut rété là pou dansé 'tou.' Moin réponne y:--'Non! moin pa dansé épi bonhomme-càton!--moin pè!'... Et moin ka couri, moin ka couri, main ka couri à fòce moin te ni pè. Et moin rentré adans grand jàdin; et moin ouè gouôs pié-cirise qui té chàgé anni feuill; et moin ka ouè yon nhomme assise enba cirise-à. Y mandé moin:--'Ça ou ka fai là?' Moin di y:--'Moin ka châché chimin pou moin allé.' Y di moin:--'Faut rété içitt.' Et moin di y:--'Non!'--et pou chappé cò moin, moin di y:--'Allé enhaut-là: ou ké ouè yon bel bal,--toutt bonhomme-càton ka dansé, épi yon Commande-en-càton ka coumandé yo.'... Epi moin levé, à fòce moin té pè."...]

XX

_Mardi 19th._

... The death-rate in St. Pierre is now between three hundred and fifty and four hundred a month. Our street is being depopulated. Every day men come with immense stretchers,--covered with a sort of canvas awning,--to take somebody away to the _lazaretto._ At brief intervals, also, coffins are carried into houses empty, and carried out again followed by women who cry so loud that their sobbing can be heard a great way off.