Higher up, among the trunks of the mahoganies, I saw the sawyers’ scaffolding. Elie was on the platform and Amboise was standing, legs apart, on the ground, while the jagged blade rose and fell in a cloud of sawdust. I sat down a little way off and gazed at the two toiling men—Amboise, a tall, gaunt, gnarled tree that had already let fall its fruits, and my Elie, with his slim body and the unformed wrists and ankles of the child I’d met a few years before by the river. A long moment passed away in this joyful contemplation. The planks fell, and turning calmly toward me Elie smiled, a gleam of apprehension in his eyes.
“It’s not polite,” he said at last in a voice that tried to be cheerful, “it’s not polite to look at people when their backs are turned, Mademoiselle Telumee Lougandor. Do you know I scented you at once in the breeze?”
At this, Amboise turned toward me his reddish-brown face, with its deep wrinkles and anxious piercing eyes, which lingered over me a while, then shifted away as if overcome by some strange embarrassment. For an instant I felt as if that look reached right down inside me. But by now Amboise was feigning indifference.
“Oh,” he said to Elie in a drawling voice, “so now some people claim to smell things in the breeze!”
And picking up his shirt as he went, the reddish-brown Negro took the path I’d come along, went noiselessly down the slope, and disappeared.
“Here I am drinking you up with my eyes,” said Elie, “and I haven’t even said hallo.”
“It’s for you to speak—you’re the man.”
“You want me to speak, Telumee, but you know very well all that goes on in my heart.”
“Only the knife knows what goes on in the heart of the pumpkin.”
“Why do you talk to me of knives and pumpkins? Tell me rather about the little candle that was lit and went out yesterday evening in the room at Belle-Feuille.”
So, jesting, Elie approached, and when he was close and clasped me to him I remembered having seen that gleam of apprehension in his eyes before, under the flame tree at school, when he spoke about the virgin forest and the ways that might one day be lost.
“Ah,” he breathed. “I imagined you in fine lace sheets all starched and ironed, and here we are borrowing the bed of the fieldmouse and the mongoose.”
“Let’s wait for the lace sheets then.”
A great laugh that came from the whole forest seized hold of us, and our two kites set off on their wanderings through the sky.
Opening my eyes, the first thing I heard was the sound of the stream in the ravine. My head was resting softly on a little bed of leaves, at the foot of a mahogany whose sloping roots surrounded me like the sides of a bed. Elie was sitting on one of them, gazing unsmiling at me with a frown of concentration. His face looked like the prow of a ship, capable of cutting through the wind and resisting life’s onslaughts; I found it extremely beautiful. His arms were folded as if he were in school, and his bare feet scrabbled softly at the ground. Seeing I was awake he said ceremoniously:
“Get up and let me see you walk before me.”
And I, after a few paces:
“They say you can see these things. How is my walk—has it changed?”
“It’s absolutely the walk of a woman.”
“So I should hope!” I laughed.
“So you are a woman,” Elie went on gravely, “and a faithful one, and I look at you and see you are like a fine breadfruit, just ripe, swaying in the wind. But the question is, are you going to come off the tree and fall . . . and roll away?”
“It all depends on the wind. Some winds make you fall, others strengthen you and make you cling on tighter.”
“Fine words for a little breadfruit just ripe!”
He gave me his hand and we went down toward Fond-Zombi, seeing first the upper slopes, then the tops of the trees, then the rusty roofs of the little cabins, and lastly the dust of the road. The declining sun hovered just at the level of the sea, sometimes still, sometimes in motion again, as if it couldn’t bring itself to leave the earth, to abandon the village. Darkness was not far off, and a warm wind blew in from the sea in short gusts. Elie still wore his air of gravity; his brow was still scored with two furrows; and I felt impotent, helpless, not knowing how to give him strength and assurance. But when I saw the little brand-new house there by the path not far from the cabin of Queen Without a Name, just under the Chinese plum tree as I’d wanted it to be, a sweetness descended on me and I glowed like a charcoal oven, capable of warming the very depths of heaven. Grandmother was in her rocker, dreaming of life’s illusions. She showed little surprise at seeing us coming toward her like that, in the dusk, hand in hand. She just stopped rocking and smiled a strange smile, as if she wanted to reassure the little girl standing there before her cabin, uncertain, hovering between heaven and earth.
“You’ve lost your job and you stand there laughing?” she said at last.
“I shan’t be idle long,” I answered mysteriously.
At this Elie frowned, turned to me and stopped me with a severe and distant look, as if to remind me of the seriousness of that moment and to ask me to put on my soul of honor and respect. Then, when he was satisfied with my bearing, he turned to Queen Without a Name and said:
“Queen, I come before you today as a man.”
Grandmother got up out of her rocker, and in a tone of deep gravity, the distant irony of which escaped Elie, answered:
“Know, my son, that I have put new drums in my ears, to hear you as one hears an old man of a hundred.”
“Well,” went on Elie, “as we’re among grown-ups, I’ll put no pebble in my throat to muffle the sound of my words. And I’ll admit to you, Queen, that at this moment I’m in a bath that’s very uncomfortable, now boiling and now ice-cold, whereas what every man wants is a little bath just nice and warm. You see, I know Telumee, I see her in the woods, I see her in the fields and at the bottom of rivers, but that’s not how I want to see her. I climbed up on a roof especially to look down and see her tending to our little affairs. But I don’t know if the day will ever come when I’ll circle her finger with gold. I don’t know, Queen Without a Name, I just don’t know, but when I marry, my house won’t any longer be a field without yams or gumbos or boucoussou peas—everything will be growing in it, from a bed to a veranda to keep out the wind. I’m not a gladiolus; I can’t promise you whether I’ll come up out of the earth red or yellow. Tomorrow our water may turn into vinegar or into wine, but if it’s vinegar, don’t curse me, but let your maledictions sleep in the hollow of the bombax tree. For tell me, isn’t it a common sight, here in Fond-Zombi, the sight of a man being transformed into a devil?”
Was that the day for such words? Was it just an idea of Elie’s, just an idea? Or was it a sign sent to him by spirits? A chill came over me. I wanted to ask him, to find out; but it was up to Grandmother to speak for me. And I saw the old woman’s glance wander, travel to a place unknown to me, then come back again to us, brushing against our bodies, against our hair, and finally settling on my brow and on Elie’s, one after the other. Then, giving Elie a lovely peaceful smile, she answered:
“Don’t frighten her, man, don’t trouble the peace of doves for nothing. But since frankness calls for frankness in return, listen: we Lougandors are not pedigree cocks, we’re fighting cocks. We know the ring, the crowd, fighting, death. We know victory and eyes gouged out. And all that has never stopped us from living, relying neither on happiness nor on sorrow for existence, like tamarind leaves that close at night and open in the day.”
“And if the day itself doesn’t open, what becomes of the Lougandors then?” asked Elie.
“If they know there can be no more day, the Lougandors lie down, and then they die,” said Grandmother serenely. Then, turning to me, she went on in the same steady voice: “Sway like a filao, shine like a flame tree, creak and groan like a bamboo, but find your woman’s walk and change to a valiant step, my beauty. And when you creak like the bamboo, when you sigh with weariness and disgust, w
hen you groan and despair for yourself alone, never forget that somewhere, somewhere on the earth, there’s a woman glad to be alive.”
Finally, assuming a little off-hand air, she drew Elie to her, and, kissing him gently, murmured just for him to hear:
“If you are shipwrecked, man, she will go down with you.”
And then came silence, with Grandmother shutting her eyes and Elie remaining still, huddled over his thoughts. All I could hear were the sounds and whispers of the neighboring women who were crowding around the cabin now, eagerly straining to hear the slightest word. I squeezed Elie’s hand hard and looked at him, and all my apprehensions changed into a delicate swirl of smoke that vanished into the air. Old Abel, alerted by the bustle, appeared with hands stretched out toward us, his little yellow eyes sparkling with mischief. In the heat of his emotion his face, usually so black, had taken on a strange wine color. And his cheeks seemed to have gone suddenly hollow, the wrinkles making open slashes like those that you cut in fish. Without looking at us at all he went up to Queen Without a Name and said in a hoarse, rustling voice:
“What woes, what chains and woes . . .”
Then he went on, with a cheerful gurgle:
“Lord, the number of unfortunates that go about on the earth! Take Queen Without a Name, for example, and look at the bad luck that falls on her today, with my bar to the right of her and Telumee’s cabin to the left. Oh the chains and woes!”
He let out a funny, childish laugh, full of innocence, and Queen Without a Name icily observed:
“Old Abel, everyone knows you’re the only injured party in this affair—”
But, unable to keep it up any longer, Grandmother in her turn brought forth a little youthful laugh that leaped nimbly into the air carrying the rest of us after it, so that all the laughter, young and old, merged into one, issuing from a single human throat. Over on the other side of the road, the crowd laughed too, without knowing what it was all about. A pink light still lingered up in the sky, but the darkness was already gathering around the trees and at any moment now dusk would fall over Fond-Zombi. Grandmother picked up a fine round basket containing a coffee mill, some kitchen utensils, a bowl, a liter of kerosene, and some old clothes for us to use as a bed. Everything had been ready, waiting for us since yesterday. She handed Elie a lamp with a curved glass chimney, and the whole procession moved off, Queen Without a Name in the lead carrying the basket on her head, Elie holding the lighted lamp, me with my bundle, and Old Abel gaily bringing up the rear and scattering incomprehensible words into the breeze. The cabin was sixteen feet long by twelve feet wide, and mounted on rocks, like that of Queen Without a Name. A ladder was leaning against the roof. Old Abel went inside and came out with a red bouquet, which he gave to me, laughing. I scampered up the ladder and tied the bouquet to a rafter: there was a burst of applause from the crowd, which had remained a little way off so as not to disturb our privacy. Queen Without a Name crouched down beside three stones arranged to form a hearth, not far from the Chinese plum and a few yards away from the house. She lit the fire, drew three cobs of corn out of her bodice, and roasted them in the flame. When they were cooked she stripped off the grains and gave us some of them to eat, then poured half the remainder into Elie’s pocket and the other half down the front of my dress, between my breasts, wishing us as many pieces of silver as there were grains. Then, everything needful having been done, she declared in a voice husky with emotion:
“And now that there is fire and cooked food, you may take possession of your house.”
When Queen Without a Name had gone we sat in the doorway of our house and watched the dusk descending over the village, the mountain, the sea in the distance —melting everything into one pink and blue mist, except for the little yellow gleams in the cabins on the ground, and the silver glitter of the stars above us. The people of Fond-Zombi were making energetic preparations for Christmas, and singing could be heard far off, and waves of accordion music rolling from cabin to cabin, hill to hill, as far as the edge of the forest. Sometimes there was the sound of carols, and the wind wafted the smell of gooseberries boiling merrily to be eaten on Christmas night. And I thought to myself that with smells like that in their nostrils women feel more like women, men’s hearts begin to dance, and children don’t want to grow up any more. After a while I arranged the clothes on the floor and we lay down on them, in silence, close up against one another, like two thieves, and we watched the village sink slowly into the night and disappear, as gradually as a ship being swallowed up in mist.
7
THE NEXT MORNING I woke with the feeling I was fulfilling my destiny as a Negress, that I was no longer a stranger on the earth. There was not a human voice to be heard, no barking of dogs. There were gleams of light on top of the mountain, but the village was an island in a sea of darkness. I looked at Fond-Zombi in relation to my cabin, and my cabin in relation to Fond-Zombi, and felt I was in my right place in life. Then I started to make my coffee and see to my other little chores with slow, precise gestures, as if I’d been doing these things at the same time and in the same place for a hundred years.
The sea breeze sprang up and a luminous mist spread over Fond-Zombi. House doors banged in the distance, and Old Abel appeared outside his shop, clapping his hands when he caught sight of me. Then Elie came, took the coffee I held out to him, and started sipping it, not taking his eyes off me for a moment. He had a shapeless felt hat pushed back on his head and was wearing his working drills. He said nothing, but looked at me with an expression of intense curiosity, his eyes dancing like wavelets in strong wind. Sitting down on a big rock, he put his empty cup down between his feet and said to it, with dreamy eyes full of solicitude, as if he were addressing something alive: “You are beautiful by night, you are beautiful by day, and here you are in my cabin. What can God mean me to die of, after all that?” Then rumpling his tousled hair with an embarrassed air, he heaved a sigh and muttered, half glad and half sorry:
“All that ought to be ready is ready, so that for once instead of reproaching myself I can eat my reproaches in the forest as if they were sweets.”
He picked up his lunch box, all nice and hot, and I prepared to see him go and to watch him as long as I could on his way toward the river. But he didn’t move, and there suddenly welled up from deep inside him, from the very marrow of his bones, a great powerful laugh like a waterspout in Lent, which immediately filled all the space around us. The laughter overtook the grass and made the leaves of the Chinese plum rustle, as for the second time that morning I felt I was in my right place in life. The fancies, terrors, and doubts of the day before were left far behind. Elie looked at me with satisfaction and pride, pulled his hat down over his eyes as if he didn’t want to see anything but me that day, and walked off serenely toward the forest.
I began my first day as a woman nervously, uneasily, afraid of the comments, noise, and laughter of the neighbors. But I was surprised a little while later, when I went down to do my washing by the river, to see other women looking at me quite naturally, saying simply: “It’s a good thing, now and again, for one of us to have a new roof and caresses. It makes one believe in the sun.”
“Oh, so you were spying on me during the night?” I said, laughing.
And then the novelty faded away in the stream, in the gestures and laughter of the women doing their washing, and it was as if they’d always known in their minds that my destiny was to live on a branch in Fond-Zombi, under Elie’s wing.
In the afternoon the air would suddenly go still, the roof was white hot, and I’d seek the shade of our Chinese plum. Then I’d feel as if something subtle and new was weaving itself around me, and around the cabin still wearing its red bouquet. One day I told Queen Without a Name about what I felt under the tree in our yard. Grandmother didn’t answer right away: she looked at me searchingly, her scrutiny piercing into me like a gauge into oil. Her examination completed, she kissed my forehead, rubbed my back, and said:
“Good.
I like to hear questions like the ones you ask. Look.”
Picking up a dry branch, she started to draw a shape in the loose earth at her feet. It looked like a spider’s web, with the threads intersecting to make ridiculously tiny little houses. Then, all around, she drew signs resembling trees, and, pointing with an ample gesture to her work, said, “That’s Fond-Zombi.”
Seeing my surprise, she explained tranquilly:
Bridge of Beyond Page 10
