“You’re looking for a situation?”
“I want to hire myself out.”
“What can you do?”
“Anything.”
“Can you cook?”
“Yes.”
“I mean cook, not just drop a bit of breadfruit into a pan of hot water.”
“Yes, I know.”
“Good. But who taught you?”
“My grandmother’s mother once worked for the Labardines.”
“Good. Can you iron?”
“Yes.”
“I mean iron, not just thump old rags into shape.”
“I know. Putting a gloss on poplin shirts with wing collars.”
“Right. But one thing must be clearly understood—this is a respectable house. Have you got a husband or anything?”
“No. I live alone with my grandmother.”
“Good. Loose living never got anyone anywhere, you know. If you show proper respect, get on with your work, and attend to your own troubles instead of dawdling around with your mouth open, you can stay. The job’s there. But I warn you, you’re only on trial.”
I left my bundle in what was to be my room, a little shack some distance from the house, by the stables, and started to wash a pile of dirty linen Madame Desaragne showed me, in a little sink with a brass tap.
Then Fond-Zombi was before my eyes and began to float up out of its slough—hill after hill, green after green, stretching wave upon wave to the mountain, Balata Bel Bois, where it melted into the clouds. And I realized a great wind might come and blow, and sweep away that godforsaken spot cabin by cabin, tree by tree, down to the last speck of earth, but it would always be reborn again in my memory, intact.
Noise, frenzy, bustle all died away at the end of that path. Everything had a place, a time, a precise reason; nothing was left to chance; the air itself distilled a sense of eternity. Every day unfolded as the mistress had decreed the day before. It was time divested of novelty or surprise, seeming to spin on its own axis. All day long each action smoothly succeeded another in its proper order. I was surrounded now with piercing, steely, distant eyes under whose gaze I didn’t exist. My mistress’s voice was rather curt, but what is a rather curt voice if you don’t listen to it? And the master, and the master’s son, and the foreman all chased other girls, not me, in the bedrooms, the kitchen, or the stable, according to their rank. My only concern was to keep out of the way, to nip this way and that, with one single thought in my heart: I must be like a pebble in a river just resting on the bottom. Let the water flow over me, clear or troubled, foaming, calm or turbulent—I was only a little stone.
At that time my work gave satisfaction, and I received many compliments on my béchamel sauce in the dining room full of solid mahogany furniture anchored heavily, immutably, to the floor. “Don’t praise her too much,” said Madame to her husband. “She won’t take so much trouble next time, you watch.” But she was wrong: I wanted to spend my little respite here at Belle-Feuille in peace, I didn’t want any trouble. Sometimes in the midst of this orderliness and bloodless serenity I would be overwhelmed by a sudden sadness; I was thirsty for a peal of laughter; Queen Without a Name’s little lamp was calling to me, I missed it. On those days I would sing as I went about my work, and my heart would grow lighter, for behind one pain there is another—that was what Grandmother said. And through the darkness I would see Queen Without a Name’s smile—“The horse mustn’t ride you, my girl, you must ride it”—and that smile would put heart into me, and I would sing as I worked, and when I sang I diluted my pain, chopped it in pieces, and it flowed into the song, and I rode my horse.
Once I got into the rhythm of Belle-Feuille, Madame Desaragne handed over the cooking and housekeeping entirely to me. We rarely had occasion to exchange even a few words. But every Tuesday afternoon she presided in person over the starching of the master’s shirts. She would inform me, with a smile of wonder and delight: “He’s so sensitive, your master—too much starch and it cuts him, too little and the material is limp and sticks to him. So you see I have to watch and see you get it just right.” I was already used to these tricks, this humbug. I took the words and sat on them with all my sturdy weight—white man’s words, that’s all. As I listened I gradually added water to the mixture, running it through my fingers so that she could see and judge its strength for herself. This operation took place at the back of the house, on a veranda facing west. On the other side of the house the sun poured down in full force on the bougainvilleas, but on our side there was shade and a breeze. I mixed the starch and Madame wore a tranquil smile and an air of detachment. Then, without looking at me, she said dreamily, as if to herself: “Tell me, girl—I’m very glad to see you so cheerful, singing and laughing and skipping about—but just the same, tell me: what do you really know?”
I went on mixing the starch carefully, on the alert, ready to dodge, to slip between the meshes of the trap she was weaving with her breath—I was a stone beneath the water, I said nothing.
“Ah,” she continued, with the voice and expression of someone who looks at the sky and says it’s going to be fine, “ah, do you really know who you are, you Negroes here? You eat, you drink, you misbehave, and then you sleep—and that’s it. But do you even know what you’ve escaped? You might be wild savages now, running through the bush, dancing naked, and eating people stewed in pots. But you’re brought here, and how do you live? In squalor and vice and orgies. How often does your husband hit you? And all those women with their bellies on credit? Personally I’d rather die, but you people, you like it. Some taste! You wallow in the mire, and laugh.”
I glided in and out between the words as if I were swimming in the clearest water, feeling the cooling breeze on my neck, my arms, the back of my legs. And, thankful to be a little Negress that was irreducible, a real drum with two sides, as Ma Cia put it, I left one side to her, the mistress, for her to amuse herself, for her to thump on, and I, underneath, I remained intact, nothing ever more so.
After a pause she resumed, but now with a shade of irritation:
“Look at you yourself—I talk to you and you don’t even answer, you haven’t got anything to say for yourself. Tell me now, honestly, do you think that’s any way to behave? Good Lord, what’s one to do with such people—might as well talk to a brick wall!”
Then I looked up, and, still stirring the starch around in the calabash, I gazed at Madame Desaragne from under my eyelids, seeing her whole, however, thin and transparent, with her eyes that had classified and arranged and thought of everything behind their lifeless pupils. And I said softly, with an air of surprise:
“Madame, they say some people love light and others love filth, and that’s the way of the world. I know nothing about all that, I’m a little blue-black Negress, I wash and iron and make béchamel sauce, and that’s all.”
Madame Desaragne gave a sigh of satisfaction, shook her yellow hair close to me, and said in a tone of faint but I think sincere regret:
“Oh, I shall never understand you people.”
Then she tested the starch to see if it was the right consistency and went away, her head thrown slightly back, swinging her long loose hair as if to say, “Where’s your hair, black girl, hanging down behind?” And she opened the big French window, turned around once more, and tossed her hair again. “You can add the blue now, Telumee, and get on with the starching.” And she vanished lightly away, trailing her sandals behind her like little boats on the water.
I dipped the shirts carefully in the thick blue water, singing already, in the saddle already, riding my horse.
5
ON SUNDAY, if there was a party, it was one long procession of open carriages, a day of bowing, kissing hands, curtseying, and the sound of fingernails on Baccarat glasses, punctuated with wistful talk about the old days, when everything was in its proper place, including the black man. The guests seemed to be on the lookout for the slightest defect in the service. If a dish wasn’t set down as quietly as it ough
t to be, or if a plate or glass wasn’t offered from the right side, they saw it as confirmation of their opinion about Negroes. They’d comment noisily and laugh and tap you condescendingly on the arm. “Nothing to cry about, girl, it doesn’t matter. Just think how you’re improving yourself. You’re seeing nice things, serving at table, learning the difference between dishrags and table napkins, chalk and cheese. How else were you to know, poor thing, eh?” In the midst of all this I came and went, tossing pancakes, spreading them with jam, making cream sorbets, chocolate sorbets, coconut and water-lemon sorbets, red sorbets, green and blue and yellow sorbets, bitter sorbets and sweet sorbets, enough to turn me into a sorbet myself. And I served and cleared away, smiling at everyone, wove in and out, stepping now to the right and now to the left, my one thought to keep myself safe, to remain intact under the white man’s words and gestures and incomprehensible grimaces. And all through those afternoons at Belle-Feuille, slipping in and out among the guests, I beat a special drum in my heart, I danced, sang every part, every cry, possession, submission, domination, despair, scorn, and the longing to throw myself off the top of the mountain, and all the while Fond-Zombi slept within me as though at the bottom of a great lake.
When there were no guests, and when it suited Madame Desaragne’s mood, she would give me all Sunday afternoon off. But Madame Desaragne’s moods were unpredictable: she was a weathervane and you never knew which breeze she had caught. Sometimes when she came back from mass she would sigh, and talk of a great gulf opening up at her feet, and of the ever-increasing wickedness of the world. “Telumee,” she’d say, her head bowed as if it was too heavy for her neck, “Telumee, my girl, you must stay in today. I need you to say vespers with me. We’ll say them together out of doors, in the yard. Two voices are more pleasing to God than one.” Other times, mass would reinvigorate her and she would step out of her carriage lightly, with a look that was abstracted and mysterious, smiling, her eyebrows faintly raised above a gaze astonishingly like a little girl’s. Then I’d put cacao lotion on my hair and oil my braids, put on my print and take leave of Madame Desaragne. At the last moment she’d always seem rather put out, rather reluctant, secretly, to see me go. “But really, Telumee, what are you going to do in Fond-Zombi? Get yourself a belly on credit? Learn to chuck breadfruit into salt water? I don’t know how to put it, but try to understand me, girl: this is the only place around here where they make béchamel sauce.”
But in less than no time the hibiscus path and then the road were carrying me far away from Belle-Feuille, and a wind caught up Madame Desaragne’s words and dropped them on Balata mountain, on the tops of the mahoganies, where they rang out for the birds, the tree ants, for God, for nobody.
Every Sunday the inhabitants of Fond-Zombi sallied forth to go to church in La Ramée, carrying their portion of want over the ramshackle Bridge of Beyond. They swarmed through the town with souls completely new, Sunday souls without a trace of prickles or sweat or canes. They jested, strolled, heard the news of marriages, deaths, drownings at sea, and notorious local love affairs. And they laughed, they laughed, till you’d have thought all they knew of life was laughter and pleasure. After mass they overran the surrounding districts seeking out relations, friends, fellow workers in the canes, anyone who on Sunday wanted to forget his weekday soul, for on Sunday they liked to think of themselves as respectable men.
When I came in sight of Fond-Zombi, by the mombin tree that looked down over the last slope, it was an oppressive time of the day: everything looked dumb and asleep. At the least breath of wind, ripe fruit crashed to the ground. I was filled with a bitter smell, a serene happiness, and I felt I hadn’t the strength to leave the shade. I looked the hamlet over from north to south, east to west. When examined like that, it didn’t seem quite the Fond-Zombi I knew: some tin roofs had gotten rusty, hedges had been mended here and there, and Sunday seemed to lend the whole place a halo of mystery. Then in the midst of this torpor a shrill voice would be heard in the distance: “Here she is—she’s come!” The alarm had been given. Soon after, Elie would appear at the bottom of the hill, and not far behind him a little group of children and pregnant women who couldn’t get down to the town, together with the solitaries who saw the world only from their doorsteps—Adriana, Filao, and a few others. Elie rushed ahead of the rest and arrived streaming with sweat, sending out before him a sort of long bitter look that got shorter and sweeter as he approached, as if to show me his infinite patience. He would sit down, take me in in silence, and finally say with surprise:
“You smell of cinnamon in spite of the mombins.”
“You smell of cinnamon too,” I’d murmur.
Then he’d pull up his shirt sleeve, put his arm beside mine, and observe playfully:
“We’re the same color, no wonder we’ve got the same smell.”
But the others snatched me away from him, hugging me, carrying me, looking at me from every angle, sizing up the important person I’d become. “How nice you look, how nice you look, dear—your braids have gotten longer again. Did you put cacao lotion on them? What a fine bamboo in the wind you’re growing and what a fine flute you’ll make. Whoever plays your music will be a lucky man, eh Elie? But first you’ll play us a little tune of Belle-Feuille, won’t you, love? For in our own way we’ve been waiting for you too.”
Elie drew away from the group and looked at me from a distance, just addressing a little nod to me from time to time, or a slight gesture of the hand, the way you might greet someone on the other side of the river. Escorted thus, I reached our cabin, where Queen Without a Name received me in her rocker, hunched up and wizened by a joy that made her face dim and bereft of life. But her eyes gave out a little flicker, and seemed to stand out from the rest of her face to touch me, question me, tell me how she’d been getting on lately. And, each time, everyone would fall silent before the eyes of Queen Without a Name, and someone would say timidly:
“Ah, Queen, you’ll never die. What can happen to you now, and what kind of a feather is it for you, death?—a hummingbird’s feather or a peacock’s?”
And the Queen would smother still more the fire of her glance, and, rocking nonchalantly, just repeat the words, the way one states a well-known fact:
“I’ve never asked for anything, but I do see that with all these blessings I shall never die.”
And everyone would scuttle about, then settle down. Dresses crackled with all the starch in them, pipes gave out a light cloud of smoke. Sunday afternoon had begun.
“And now,” Grandmother used to say, “now we’re among ourselves, tell us about the white men at Galba.”
The cabin could hold about five or six people, some sitting on the bed and the others on the floor leaning against the wall. But there were at least as many more out in the yard, pricking up their ears, and as soon as Grandmother pronounced these words, heads poked in through the open door, and anxious looks were bent on me, drinking up what I said in advance. Everyone wanted to know what life was like at Belle-Feuille, behind all those ramparts of green—how they ate, talked, drank, went about their daily lives. And above all, what was important to them in life, and were they at least glad to be alive? This was the fundamental question that concerned the harassed souls of Fond-Zombi. I hesitated slightly before answering, because I’d already talked to them on previous Sundays, and in fact all Belle-Feuille would have fitted into a thimble. My difficulty was evident to all those present, and someone brought glowing eyes close to me to say: “There, there, get back the lightness of your breath, love.” All eyes were on me, and, faced with so much eagerness, I did begin to talk to them about Galba, visible and invisible; and unwittingly a different Belle-Feuille would issue from my lips, so that my listeners couldn’t help seeing an ocean, with waves and breakers, whereas all I was trying to show was a bit of foam. For want of anything better I’d always end on the words with which Madame Desaragne had taken leave of me a little while before, the business of the béchamel. Those who knew the story alrea
dy would laugh, but if there was someone there who’d come for the first time, they’d say with great interest:
“If it’s so good tell us how to make it, for our own stomachs.”
“Stephen, man,” Grandmother would say gently, “there’s nothing good in béchamel, let me tell you. I tasted it once, and you can take it from me: there’s nothing good about it. Telumee,” she went on, turning to me, “Telumee, dear flame tree, whenever your heart bids you, you can come and cook two slices of salted breadfruit over some wood in the yard here, and not worry whether the others have got their béchamel.”
And she’d season her joke with a free Negress’s fine deep-throated laugh, and I’d be a human being again and not a maker of béchamel sauce. And my soul would rise up and float over all the faces, and I’d think that other rivers could twist about, changing their courses and currents, but what I wanted was a hidden life without foam, here at Fond-Zombi, under one roof and one man, surrounded by faces whose slightest eddy was as visible to me as ripples on the water. Everyone laughed with the Queen, leaving the whites to their béchamel; and, laughing, they were themselves again, ringdoves ever on the watch and juggling with sorrow.
Many of the faces changed from one Sunday to another, but there were three I encountered regularly on each of my descents to Fond-Zombi, and these I must mention. They were those of Amboise, Filao, and Adriana. Amboise was the reddish-brown Negro who’d saved Elie from the canefield. Up on their scaffolding they’d become friends, and every Sunday Amboise would be there in Grandmother’s cabin standing on one foot, leaning against a wall, taciturn, rarely laughing, only opening his mouth to answer questions about the life of white people in France, where he’d dragged out an existence for nearly seven years. His views on the white people in France disconcerted us. He regarded them as burst bladders that had set themselves up as lanterns, and that was that. Filao was an old man who’d worked in the canefields, with a worn, grooved face like a nutmeg, slow-moving eyes, and an oblique uncertain gaze; he was always giving expression to some dream. He spoke in a tiny little voice, perhaps afraid someone would break the thread of his reverie if he could be properly heard; and so everyone’s eyes would be fixed on his lips, though whenever he opened them it was to say something like: “Do you know what, my friends? I’ve some important news to tell you. Imagine, a little green lizard like me who runs from wall to wall without a roof of his own, well, yesterday . . .” Adriana was a stout Negress of about fifty with arms still nicely plump, white and yellow braids slightly greenish in places, and heavy lids forever lowered over blank eyes—so as not to see the world, or so as not to be seen by it? She was one of the host of waifs and strays who wandered from cabin to cabin in search of a thrill. When she opened her mouth her eyelids lifted reluctantly, and rolling the whites of her eyes she would utter strange words, words that seemed to come from elsewhere, none knew where. “My lost sheep,” she’d say, “my little fleecy princes of the dark . . .” and then she’d recast her life, sweetly, innocently, knowing no one would like to contradict, to lift up her feathers and reveal her flesh.
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