by Maryse Conde
For in fact the sun had risen, brightening the sky, a patch of crumpled cloth above the eternally muddy sea. Papa Doc had needed the entire night to unravel his sad story. Since the Galibi woman had already left to sell her wares at the market he set about heating up some watery coffee, which he poured out equally into tin mugs. The two men dunked their pieces of cassava, drank, and ate, both locked in identical thoughts. How amazing life is! There they were, side by side, sharing the same fate, victims of the same Celanire! Each of them had been born and had lived on opposite sides of the world, one in the Americas, the other in deepest Africa. Each of them had been separated by so many lands, oceans, and mountains! Did it mean they were going to die together? What nature of spirit was driving their common enemy? Why was she bent on doing evil from sunrise to sunset, from north to south? What caused her rage? What did she want to destroy in the world? Reluctantly, Hakim set off for Monsieur Thénia’s house. Out of the two, he was perhaps the more shaken. In dismay he realized he wouldn’t be able to tell his story before nightfall, and he felt something he had not felt for a very long time. Certainly not since he had been in Cayenne, where he lived as if in a daze. In fact he got the impression he had been born in this patch of forest and that the memory of what he had left behind had been erased from his mind. Had he ever been anything else but one of life’s rejects, thrown into the last circle of hell? That morning, his memory returned, and with it, the memory of the terrible injustice he had been a victim of. Abandoned by his father. Spurned by his family. Rejected by society. But suddenly another thought crossed his mind, interrupting his litany of woes. What if, like Papa Doc, he was paying for a crime unbeknown to him? Hakim had seldom thought of himself as a pervert. Fondling Bokar had not left him with a feeling of guilt. On the contrary, it had given two lonely, tortured teenagers a taste of happiness. Simply the death of his beloved had convinced him that because of something abnormal about him he was never meant to be happy. For the first time, he realized he was a degenerate who deserved the most terrible punishment.
In the past the promontory at Saint-François was known for its unhealthy vapors, rising up from the white and black mangrove trees soaking in the brackish, snake-infested waters, and capable of causing deadly diseases. Then some convicts had cleaned up the area and built dwellings for the notability. Monsieur Thénia’s house was the most remarkable of them all. As a safeguard against the risk of fire, the governor of the bank had shipped a metal framework from Bordeaux. The building’s slender columns and its numerous apertures gave it an impression of airiness. But people did not just admire the zinc friezes, the scrolled consoles made of iron, or the elaborate balustrades. They went into raptures over the gardens. Hakim, who had under his orders a horde of gardeners, the ‘banished,’ as the convicts were called, simply common-law criminals but paradoxically the most dangerous type, had them hoe, weed, rake, and graft until they were ready to give up the ghost. He had invented an irrigation system of pulleys and paddle wheels. In his new frame of mind he realized that morning that unconsciously he had taken as inspiration the gardens at the Home for Half-Castes in Bingerville. The bamboo grove, the hibiscus hedges, the clumps of crotons, the beds of periwinkles, the English lawn, and the aviary where all sorts of nocturnal and diurnal butterflies, as striking as those in the Ivory Coast, beat their powdery wings—nothing was missing.
He now understood that his entire past was embedded deep inside him. Nothing had been exorcized. Bingerville and the never-ending rainy season. Koffi Ndizi. Thomas de Brabant. Betti Bouah. Every one of these ghosts was alive and well and living inside him. Papa Doc’s story had opened the door of their jail, and now, liberated, they were prowling around him.
Among his team of gardeners were three Arab convicts, Mimoun, Rachid, and Ahmed, who were serving a sentence for peccadillos committed in their bled. They spoke to no one, didn’t mix with either black or white, and all the convicts knew they only had intercourse among themselves. When he approached them, Hakim was aware of something being triggered inside him. He realized his old passions were not dead. He looked the three men straight in the face. Blackened by the sun, as angular as a vine stem, tattooed from top to bottom, Mimoun was certainly the handsomest. Trembling with a secret emotion, Hakim assigned him his day’s work. Mimoun listened to him without saying a word, walked away, then, turning to his companions, said a few words in their gravelly, hermetic language and all three of them burst out laughing.
Hakim hung his head. Mimoun had seen through him. No, he hadn’t changed. He would never be cured of what he carried inside him. He would never be anything else but what he was.
He had such a reputation as an expert gardener that in the afternoons Monsieur Thénia lent him to the colonial administration to weed the public squares and plant jasmine and mignonette. On his way to the town center each day he would meet processions of escaped convicts, their numbered prison uniforms in tatters, returning to the fold at gunpoint. The dream of escape was the convict’s obsession. The idée fixe was freedom. Although the men knew only too well that the end of the line would be Charvein or the Ile Saint-Joseph for life, they never gave up trying. There was the story of a convict who had escaped twenty-four times, had been recaptured twenty-four times, and on his last trip to his cell slit his belly open with a cutlass. Since Hakim no longer had any dreams, he had never tried to escape. When he was at Saint-Laurent-du-Maroni he had been told about the gold that lay hidden upriver. Boats loaded with gold diggers on their way upstream would pass the convict vessels. It was said that the gold formed in the heart of the Tumuc Humac Mountains, then the rainwater washed it down along the riverbeds, where it glittered supreme, the object of the gold diggers’ lust. So sometimes he pictured himself as a marauder, scraping the sand and the gravel, pocketing his gold nugget. Yet what would be the point? Even if he managed to sell it, what would he do with the money?
When the eye of the sun began to droop low in the sky, Hakim hurried to go and join Papa Doc. All he wanted was to start telling his tale; he wanted it to be his turn to tell his story, which he now saw in a different light. He was cursed before he was born because of those wicked instincts planted inside him. When he arrived at the shack, the Galibi woman, her hands reddened with blood, was busy scaling a skewer of grouper fish. Crouching a few steps away, a Saramaka, as tall as a mapoo, a bow and arrows slung on his side, holding a cutlass, was waiting for Papa Doc. The latter no sooner appeared than the Saramaka leapt to his feet. The two men embraced like old acquaintances. Then the Saramaka began to explain in his grating, incomprehensible (at least to Hakim) tongue that he had traveled all this way because a terrible epidemic was ravaging his village. Countless villagers were being carried off. Men, women, and children were burning with fever and bleeding to death through every orifice. Papa Doc nodded. It sounded very much like hemorrhaging dengue fever, which he had successfully treated in the past at Grande-Anse. While he was quickly collecting together his vials and unguents, Hakim was seized by an irresistible compulsion. To hell with Monsieur Thénia’s garden: he would follow the two men, even though he knew full well that any unjustified absence was immediately reported to the penitentiary administration. The price he would have to pay for absconding might very well be landing up again on the Ile Royale.
They left Cayenne in total darkness under a delicate, lusterless moon that was emerging from its sleep. To reach the river, they first had to cross the banks of the Cayenne, then wade for miles with mosquitoes on their heels across a swamp, through soft mud strewn with tree trunks whose rotten stench grabbed them by the throat. It was almost daylight when they arrived at the spot where the Saramaka’s pirogue was bobbing patiently, half hidden by the thick vegetation on the bank, to which it was leashed by two stakes. A whitish vapor wafted over the surface of the water, apparently dormant under its duvet. Soon the current picked up speed, and the boat sped along like an arrow. The Saramaka and Papa Doc, perfectly at home on this shaky, precarious craft, silently manipulated their p
addles, and Hakim envied them their quiet assurance. Once the river slowed down, narrowed, and they glided between two sheer cliffs. Flocks of birds flew from one wall to the other. Then the waters widened again. At noon the sun pitched itself vertically, and all at once the smoldering sky burst into flames. In agony, Hakim slaked his thirst as best he could by drinking the river’s muddy water in the cup of his hand. At one point, the Saramaka pointed out amid the mangrove trees a solitary hut standing on the bank, fringed with white sand and teeming with equally white birds.
“Mami Wata,” he cawed.
Hakim knew the legend. It existed in the Ivory Coast as well. A siren with long, shiny hair spends her days swimming in the river depths. At night she emerges and retreats to her house on the bank. There she sings song after song, so melodious they sound like a heavenly concert. But woe betide the traveler who hears her and approaches her house, for she throws herself onto him and drags him down to her watery palace, the better to devour him.
Toward the end of the afternoon they swung away from the center of the stream and finally landed. As they stepped out of the canoe, their feet sank into a sticky humus that stuck to their soles. They had to walk for a good hour before the ground became firm again. Daylight was fast fading. A bitter smell of bruised vegetation reached their nostrils as the Saramaka hacked their way through the poisonous flowers, the lianas and wild plants. At a bend in the path the village loomed up in a clearing. Hakim was not surprised to find the same charming appearance as the villages in the African bush! The ground was covered with fine sand. Large huts perched on stilts were arranged in a semicircle. All around the forest had been cleared and neatly planted with plots of tobacco and cassava. Now he was convinced it was the hand of Europe that defaced everything, blindly imposing its architecture and its discipline. There was only one dark side to the picture: surrounded by mourners, a dozen bodies lay unburied, waiting for the night to be carried to their final resting place. Without wasting any time, Papa Doc entered one of the huts. Hakim climbed into a hammock hung under a carbet. As night fell, the clouds of mosquitoes became bolder and joined the bats in flight. Insects and birds, emerging from every tree branch, chirped, warbled, and screamed. In the distance monkeys burst into laughter, while some animal howled in response. The music they composed was enough to frighten the most intrepid.
Hakim could not help shivering, as if he had caught a fever, and he wondered what had got into him to follow Papa Doc to such an inhospitable spot. Just then the Saramaka women, who had finished their cooking, brought him a copious dinner of haunch of venison and freshwater fish. Every one of them had an infant clinging to her side who was intrigued and frightened by this stranger. Hakim could not touch his meal. Instead, he greedily sucked rum from a bottle, something he seldom did.
He finally fell asleep.
Hardly had he done so than a young Saramaka woke him. In a daze, Hakim first thought it was Kwame Aniedo. The same jet-black skin, the same hair tied into small braids, above all the same smell, the smell he could not forget, a mix of sweat and vegetable fat. Then he realized his mistake. This one was darker, not so tall, slightly built, with filed teeth. Smiling, the young man placed a finger to his lips and motioned him to follow. He obeyed and stumbled to his feet. As fast as his senses returned, the more frightened he became. He was sure he would never forget that night. Sheer pandemonium! A sinister drumming was unable to cover up the screams of the women mourning. Pyres burned in front of the huts silhouetted against the dark backdrop of trees. Their eerie glow exaggerated the flickering shadows of the men and women who with heartrending wails were burning their dead. The young Saramaka left the village and fearlessly plunged into the forest. By magic, every noise stopped on their approach, and they walked on in muffled silence. Soon they reached the river, rippling with tiny iridescent waves in the darkness, and climbed into one of the small boats anchored among the mangrove trees. Straining with all his muscle power, the Saramaka paddled against the current, and after an hour they landed on the other bank. They cautiously set foot on dry land. Then suddenly the moon emerged from its hiding place and illuminated every nook and cranny of the landscape. Blinded by its glare, Hakim got the impression he was living a nightmare and thought he recognized the spot. The isolated creek. The wreath of mangrove trees. The wattle hut, its doors and windows mysteriously closed. It was the home of Mami Wata! The Saramaka, however, still smiling, motioned to him to wait and climbed back into the boat. He remained alone under this glare of moonlight, even more frightening than the dark, listening to the fading sound of water lapping as the boat disappeared into the night. He couldn’t say how long he waited, standing motionless and paralyzed on the sand. Finally the boat returned, and he could make out two shapes. Next to the Saramaka was Papa Doc who did not seem to be afraid of being where he was. The only sign something was wrong was that Papa Doc, who had been so nimble up till now, almost stumbled as he set foot on the shore. When Hakim saw his friend, his terror vanished and his serenity returned. He knew what awaited him, and it was no coincidence they were both together in this place. The two of them were going to live their final adventure.
One morning some gold diggers paddling upriver discovered the bodies of Hakim and Papa Doc near a jetty. They were scarcely recognizable, swollen by their long immersion, drained of their blood by vampire bats, and half eaten by birds of prey and ants. They came to the conclusion that the two companions must have left Cayenne by night and tried to reach one of the villages along the river for one of those illegal card games, the only means for a convict to get cash to buy cassava flour, one or two liters of rum, cans of sardines, and, if they were lucky, some black-eyed peas. Unfortunately, on the way there, their boat must have overturned. Although convicts, both Hakim and Papa Doc were baptized Christians. The gold diggers brought them back to Cayenne, where the duty of the penitentiary administration was to find them a final resting place. They planned to throw them into the communal grave. But they misjudged popular opinion.
United in life, Hakim and Papa Doc were separated in death. Nobody was affected by Hakim’s death; he was, after all, nothing but a convict like so many others, and had never made a name for himself. He seemed good only for growing flowers. Nobody understood why he was such close friends with Papa Doc and why he had followed him deep into the forest to their death. Papa Doc, however, was a living god to the hundreds of wretches he had cared for in the poor districts of Cayenne. As soon as they learned the news of his death, they marched to the penitentiary building and demanded the body. Then they carried his rough pine coffin to his shack on the Saint-François promontory. Meanwhile the Indian and Maroon villages along the rivers emptied, and long processions of canoes converged on Cayenne, swelling the crowds streaming toward the shack. Breaking with the legendary impassiveness of the Indians, the Galibi woman was weeping hot tears for her man. She was frantically talking with those of her tribe who had come to console her. There was something unnatural in his death, there was something mysterious about this business. Among the numerous Saramakas present at the wake, not one of them looked like the beanpole who had dragged Papa Doc off a few days earlier. None of them had heard of a terrible epidemic, neither on the Oyapock nor on the Approuague. The only three convicts from the French Caribbean, two from Martinique and one from Guadeloupe, obtained leave from Charvein, where the prisoners had forced the warders to fly the tricolor at half staff. They had never met Papa Doc. But his body was their property. After all, they were from the same island womb. Too bad if there was not enough rum or thick soup! They would make do with a wake, and the farewells would be heartfelt and passionate. One of them grabbed a flute, another a mandolin, yet another a guitar, and they played mazurkas and beguines from their native land. Then, with his tongue loosened by a little rum, one of them grew bold and improvised as a storyteller.
Soon the traditional words reverberated:
Yé krik, yé krak
Yé mistikrik, yé mistikrak
A pa jistis
à nonm ka konté
Ta là, sé la jol i té yé
Kan mem, sé té an mal nèg
Se té an nèg doubout.
These loyal followers of Papa Doc refused to let his body be thrown into the communal grave as if he were a common mortal. They found enough money to buy him a burial plot and erected a tomb, which they covered with black-and-white flag-stones, in the very middle of the cemetery on the promontory at Saint-François reserved for high-ranking officials. It’s odd that in his book on the penal colony Albert Londres does not devote one line to Papa Doc, who was a real character in his time and left his mark on people’s memory. To prove it, even to this very day, the descendants of the convicts have not forgotten him, and every All Saints Day his tomb is lit with candles in his memory. In 1960 a delegation of nationalist militants traveled from Guadeloupe and laid claim to the corpse. Taking up the arguments of Dieudonné Pylône, they asserted that Papa Doc had in fact been banished as a political opponent. According to them, he was one of the first to have demanded independence for Guadeloupe. But the colonial authorities categorically refused to accept their request, and the delegation returned home empty-handed.
Ever since, the Guadeloupeans, who come to let off steam at the carnival in Cayenne and admire the costumes of the touloulous, have made the graveyard a place of pilgrimage and laid fresh flowers on their compatriot’s tomb.
