“Ah,” she’d say in a voice of happiness, of delight, with a kind of faint smile that suited her, “when you see a woman’s hair going white, let it be, for it is quite right to sacrifice oneself for one’s children. Take me—I’ve six daughters, but if I wanted to I could open a shop this very day with all the things they send me from Pointe-à-Pitre. If I opened my cupboard and showed you the piles of new towels, the pleated dresses and everything, not to mention such trifles as sugar, rice, and cod that I don’t even bother to mention, you’d really understand my position in the world. You see me in rags, with a hole in the roof, and you may think I’m in a bad way—but don’t you believe it! Just drop in one day and I’ll show you my cupboard, maybe.”
“Quite true,” Grandmother would answer at once, backing her up firmly. “You see people in torn dresses, lying down and getting up in ramshackle cabins, but who knows what they may have in their cupboards? Who knows?”
And old Filao, coming to the aid of Queen Without a Name, would say in his fluting voice:
“Someone speaks, and an angel hears in heaven.”
“Ah, words,” another voice would say, “what a blessing.”
“Yes, and what a pleasant afternoon, but here it is, nearly over,” Adriana would say, heaving herself out of her chair. “And if anyone isn’t satisfied, let him lift his finger and tell us what else his heart can desire. . . . Brother Negroes, if one listened to you, you would never stop. Think of the lovers—when are they going to court each other if we stay here buzzing in their ears like a swarm of wasps? Words are words and love is love.”
And turning finally to me she would add mischievously:
“You’re just right now, Telumee, like a ripe breadfruit. Too green it sets your teeth on edge, too mellow and it’s lost its taste. Come back to us, my girl, don’t wait for a wind to knock you off the tree and scatter you on the ground. Try to pull yourself off while you’re just right.”
At that the cabin emptied, then the yard, and a little breeze reached us coming down from the mountain. Queen Without a Name pretended she had something to do, and she too vanished. We were left alone. There’d be a great silence and we’d breathe in the scent that rises in the evening from the very heart of the bloodworts. Outside, people were back from their visits, and in every cabin conversation was at its height. The village vibrated like a huge assembly. In the dusk the glowworms’ lanterns twinkled faintly, then grew stronger and more brilliant as the darkness deepened. The lamps were lit, the last laughter died away. Sunday was over.
Elie was nearing the end of his apprenticeship and had arranged to be paid half in cash and half in sets of planks with which to build our future house. In the twilight of Sunday evenings he would talk about our cabin in such detail I would enter right inside it, walk along the veranda, sit down on one of the three chairs by the little round table, and lean my elbows on an embroidered cloth. He wanted me to be the one to go up on the roof and fix a red bouquet there. He’d let me know when everything was ready, by coming and serenading me at night at the Desaragnes’. We were sitting on the edge of the bed, and his eyes glittered in the half light, looking at me gently, warily, a little askance it seemed to me, as if he was afraid to show his resentment. I would caress him, and cling close to him, and the unhappiness would go out of his eyes, and he would murmur plaintively:
“But should you really be there, with your sixteen-year-old breasts, shaking the white men’s doormats?”
“Don’t try to be clever, Mr. Sawyer—as soon as our house is finished I’ll come and fill it as a candle fills a chapel.”
“I let you skip about, my little goatling. Your rope is long between my hands, but one day I’ll shorten it—close up against your neck.”
“Long rope or short, when the goat wants to run away—”
“No,” Elie would interrupt, laughing. “I’ve got my eye on it, and if it makes a move I’ll kill it.”
A clump of bamboo creaked in the evening breeze, and up in the woods the animals began to call to one another, freed from the heat of the day.
“I’m a new man,” he’d say.
When she returned Grandmother prepared our meal in silence and we ate under the protection of her calm, her tranquil joy—outside, sitting on rocks, amidst the peace of the evening. And each time, as he went, Elie would touch one of the beams and say, “That’s how hard Telumee’s head is.” When I woke next morning, fine mists swirled over Fond-Zombi, silence and dew were over all the village. Then I’d set out for Belle-Feuille, my eyes full of the vision of my future home. When, still early in the morning, I went through the Desaragnes’ gate, the vision still followed me, and I’d sit down on the lawn with my legs stretched out in the cool grass for a last gloat over the brand new tin roof of my house shining in the cheerful morning sun, the red bouquet, the table, and the embroidered cloth.
Then Madame Desaragne’s voice would be heard behind me:
“You gave me a fright, child. Haven’t you anything else to do at this hour but sit on the grass? Fond-Zombi certainly has a very bad influence.”
And as I shook my head in bewilderment, still lost in my dream of glory, she’d add:
“Come, girl, snap out of it—the sun’s high in the sky already.”
6
A LEAF FALLS and the whole forest trembles. It all began for me with a laugh that would come upon me any time, anywhere, for no reason that I could discover. When my mind was troubled over it, I’d cheat it with the thought that I was laughing for Grandmother, Elie, Adriana, or someone else who might happen at that moment to need my laughter. But the people and servants at Belle-Feuille knew its meaning better than I, having heard it on other lips, and there was a sudden flurry, a sudden peal of compliments that made me fly so high I was breathless. One promised me the town, another the country. “If you died now,” they said, “God wouldn’t take you like that—he’d send you back on earth for your youth to shine forth. Oh no, heaven won’t take a girl who doesn’t shine for any man.” Meanwhile Christmas was approaching, there was great activity, parties and visits followed one on another at Belle-Feuille, and Sundays came and went without my being able to go to Fond-Zombi. The note of my laughter rose higher and higher. Even the guests noticed it and said to Madame Desaragne as I served the punch:
“You have the gift of surrounding yourself with beautiful things, cousin. How do you get hold of them?”
“Don’t go by appearances,” Madame Desaragne would say coldly. “A Negro’s a Negro, but since the music of the whip is no longer in their ears they take themselves for civilized.”
“Oh well, I’m more easygoing than you, Aurora dear. We’ll talk about it again later, when they’re really enlightened. Meanwhile, there’s no one like her for serving punch—a pleasure both for the palate and for the eyes.”
One day as I was crouching in the tank washing the kitchen cloths, I felt a prickling sensation at the back of my neck. When I came to the rinsing, curiosity got the better of me and I turned around, to see Monsieur Desaragne standing still in the middle of the yard looking at me out of gray eyes tinged with green and mysteriously quizzical. Although he was stoutly built he was naturally easy in his movements and seemed to draw support from the air, like a bird. At this moment, however, he was slightly unsteady on his legs. At last he sighed, turned away slowly, and reluctantly withdrew, while I thought in my heart: “So now, my girl, you’re finding out the white men’s weaknesses.” But that thought was soon replaced by another, and by the time I went to bed that evening I’d completely forgotten the notion that had occurred to me in the tank. The air was heavy, there were no stars in the sky, no hope of rain. There was a knock at my door. The coachman sometimes came and asked me to prepare a custard-apple infusion when Madame couldn’t sleep. So I got up and opened the door, and to my great surprise Monsieur Desaragne walked calmly in, shut the door behind him, and leaned against the wall. He was carrying a silk dress which he tossed to me, smiling, as if it were an understood thing betw
een us. Then he came over to me and put his hands up my skirt, muttering: “No pants, eh?” Trouble is something that takes you by surprise—a tick that jumps on you and sucks you to the last drop of your blood. At my age, and by no means ignorant, I’d thought myself safe from this sort of attack, but for all our experience we know no more about life than we do about death. I made no resistance as Monsieur Desaragne put his arms around me, but as he unbuttoned himself with one hand, I murmured softly: “I’ve got a little knife here. And even if I hadn’t, my nails would be enough.” He seemed not to have heard, and as he went on with what he was doing I continued in the same cold calm voice: “Monsieur Desaragne, I swear to God you won’t be able to go into any other maid’s room because you won’t have the wherewithal.” He laughed, I brandished my nails, and he leaped back in dismay, suddenly understanding what I was saying. He wore a faint, uneasy smile.
“What a little devil, eh?” he whispered, still with the same smile but his face going pale and set in the candle-light. “So a dress isn’t enough? Do you want a gold chain or a pair of earrings? Listen, I need a little singing Negress more lively than lightning, a little blue-black Negress. That’s just what I like.”
Now he was not looking at me but gazing wistfully around, object by object, at my wretched room—the bench that served me as a bed, the stool, the bit of mirror stuck on a nail, the apron, the bundle of linen hanging from a string. And it was as if I myself were spread all over the room, I myself from whom he, a melancholy smile on his lips, expected I knew not what. A tempest had swept down on Monsieur Desaragne; it had lifted up his white feathers, and I had seen his flesh. I stayed where I was, oblivious of my naked bosom and my skirt half up my thighs. An icy intoxication filled my head, and without thinking what I was saying I answered calmly:
“Ducks and chickens are alike, but the two species don’t go on the water together.”
His eyes went very pale. He shrugged his shoulders, spread his fingers as if to let through a trickle of sand, and, resuming his royal sorrow, fell back step by step into the night, still gazing at me with a strange smile in the depths of his gray eyes.
My job as a maid entitled me to sleep in a little closet adjoining the stable, with an opening the size of a hand, which was fitted with a tiny shutter that I raised at night so as not to die of heat. This opening looked out over my employers’ land, and in the distance, beyond the tall spears of the canes, lights flickered in the huddle of the Negroes’ cabins. Christmas was nearly here, and as I lay on my straw mattress I could hear carols rising up from the cabins to the stars as if imploring love to descend—or trying to pluck it down from the sky. Now and then, borne by a breath of wind, I caught the rumble of drums, too, and I thought how the heart of the devil himself must hurt to see all that misery, and the Negro’s ingenuity in forging happiness in spite of everything. There was a truce over there in the little cabins buried among the canes, there was a respite for the Negro, who became, I thought, all the more ingenious through doing all these magic tricks, dancing and drumming simultaneously, at once both wind and sail. The struggle with Monsieur Desaragne was a thing of the past, and I hadn’t realized the victory I’d won, as a Negress and as a woman. It was just one of the little currents that would ripple my waters before I was drowned in the sea. But now a sadness came to me in the evening, as the Sundays passed away at Belle-Feuille and the vision of the red bouquet I was to put on my house broke up and faded with each day. I thought my man had forgotten me, and a dream tormented me every night, a strange dream I couldn’t decipher however hard I tried. It was winter, and I was a servant in some French town which I saw in terms of the descriptions I’d heard from Amboise. Snow was falling ceaselessly and it seemed to me quite natural. The white people had strange eyes—like bits of frosted glass that gave no reflection—but they were amazingly kind, and my mistress often asked me how the climate affected me. I told her I liked it very much, and she would laugh, disbelieving. This laugh tore me in two, and one day when she started it again I said to her calmly: “I’m going to prove I’m not cold,” and I took off my clothes and went out naked into the snow. She watched me in astonishment from behind the kitchen curtains. Then I felt my muscles stiffening until they turned to ice, and I fell down dead.
One night when the nightmare kept me awake and open-eyed on my pallet, I was made even more uneasy by hearing someone singing. I even thought I recognized Elie’s voice. For some time past my room had been attacked by mosquitoes, attracted by a pigsty that had just been built behind it. “I must be going crazy,” I thought. “But who’d have believed mosquitoes could have driven me so crazy I hear songs?” And then I remembered a promise Elie had made me, eternities ago it seemed now, and a serenade he was supposed to come and perform when the house was quite finished and lacked nothing but my red bouquet. The dogs belonging to the house barked, and the voice fell silent. But a little while later it rose once more into the night, farther away this time, on the other side of the road, as if it had gone out of reach of the dogs. And yet despite Elie’s efforts to pierce the denseness of the night, or perhaps because of them, because of those sudden shrill flights, the words of the song communicated a great melancholy.
Why live Odilo
Just to swim
And always face down
Never
Never
Floating on your back
One moment.
When I opened my eyes, at dawn, the sky was full of low-lying clouds like ships in distress pitching in the wind. A great silence hovered, and there were still patches of shadow over the objects in my room. I was seized with a desire for flight and space. The sun goes away at night, leaving you with your troubles, and doesn’t rise any faster when you are full of joy. I slipped out into the growing light and went to the sink beside the tank. I ran cold water into my mouth, over my arms and shoulders, and over my tear-swollen eyes that felt as large as pigeon’s eggs. Then I carried a little bowl full of water back to my room, crushed some patchouli leaves in it, and sat down by it to perform my morning toilet. My wages were hidden under a plank in the bench: three five-franc pieces—three whole months without one Sunday in which to take wing and rest my body. I took down my bundle and put my three coins in, then set out for the big house with it balanced on my head. Madame Desaragne was already up and about in the drawing room, notebook in hand. I went up to her and said:
“The mosquitoes were very bad last night. I need a rest.”
She started; then, looking at me closely, smiled timidly as people do at someone who’s gone crazy.
“Yes,” she said awkwardly and with a slight tremor in her voice, “the mosquitoes were terrible last night. Go home, girl, as quick as you can, and don’t linger on the way.”
A breeze caught me up and I didn’t come to until I was on the road, far from the house with colonnades and bougainvilleas, in free possession of myself and my two breasts. By now the sun had emerged from the mountain and was on the edge of the sky, just behind the fleet of threatened clouds. I’d cried so much that night there was a veil of pink silk between my eyes and the sky, the road, the nearby canefields, the distant bluffs fading away into greens ever paler and more soft, and, right on the far horizon, Balata Bel Bois, still indistinguishable from the clouds. My legs had taken the road to Fond-Zombi, but my eyes never left the mountain: I was trying to make out the Bois Riant slopes, where my man sawed his planks. I laughed to myself, remembering that when a woman loves a man she sees a field and says it’s a mule. There’s air, water, sky, and the earth we walk on—and there’s love. That’s what keeps us alive. And if a man doesn’t give you a belly full of food but gives you a heart full of love, that’s enough to live on. That’s what I’d always heard people saying around me, and that’s what I believed. And now here I was on the way to Fond-Zombi, a woman in free possession of myself and my two breasts, and at each step I felt Elie’s eyes against mine and his steps within mine, and though the people I greeted on the way thought I was alone, he
was already within me. When I got to the Bridge of Beyond the sinking clouds had been swallowed up and the sun was darting blinding red flames into a completely green sky. On one side was the road leading to Fond-Zombi, cracked clay full of stumps and stones; on the other was a path running directly into the forest. Hesitation gripped me—I felt more nebulous than the foam on a mountain stream. And then I told myself that however much the river may sing and meander, in the end it has to go down to the sea and be drowned. And so, turning aside from the road to Fond-Zombi, I followed the path leading to Bois Riant, as if drawn irresistibly by the presence of my sweating Negro on those scaffoldings built by little men with ten fingers and two eyes. Even in the midst of my heart’s confusion I had a vague feeling that the clearing I was heading for was mined; but it dazzled me and drew me toward it willy-nilly. And as I hurried along, running over hillocks and through muddy hollows, everything grew dazzling, appareled in the light descending from Bois Riant. I went, as in a dream, amid the smell of rotting vegetation. There was a river at the foot of the slope where Elie and his friend Amboise had their scaffolding. I climbed down the slippery slope, parted some branches, and bathed my eyes one last time—a few moments ago they’d started to weep again, I didn’t know why. Here and there, around green rocks, the water was almost stagnant, then it flowed clear and transparent again farther on. Looking at my reflection, I thought how God had put me on earth without asking me if I wanted to be a woman or what color I’d like to be. It wasn’t my fault he’d given me a blue-black skin and a face not overflowing with beauty. And yet I was quite content; and perhaps, if I was given the choice, now, at this moment, I’d choose that same bluish skin, that same face not overflowing with beauty.
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