Chita: A Memory of Last Island

by Lafcadio Hearn

unity of will in their motion, a unityof menace in their utterance--the idea of one monstrous and complexlife! The sea lived: it could crawl backward and forward; it couldspeak!--it only feigned deafness and sightlessness for some malevolentend. Thenceforward she feared to find herself alone with it. Was itnot at her that it strove to rush, muttering, and showing its whiteteeth, ... just because it knew that she was all by herself? ... Siquieres aprender a orar, entra en el mar! And Concha had well learnedto pray. But the sea seemed to her the one Power which God could notmake to obey Him as He pleased. Saying the creed one day, she repeatedvery slowly the opening words,--"Creo en un Dios, padre todopoderoso,Criador de cielo y de la tierra,"--and paused and thought. Creator ofHeaven and Earth? "Madrecita Carmen," she asked,--"quien entonces hizoel mar?" (who then made the sea?).

  --"Dios, mi querida," answered Carmen.--"God, my darling.... All thingswere made by Him" (todas las cosas fueron hechas por El).

  Even the wicked Sea! And He had said unto it: "Thus far, and nofarther." ... Was that why it had not overtaken and devoured her whenshe ran back in fear from the sudden reaching out of its waves? Thusfar....? But there were times when it disobeyed--when it rushedfurther, shaking the world! Was it because God was then asleep--couldnot hear, did not see, until too late?

  And the tumultuous ocean terrified her more and more: it filled hersleep with enormous nightmare;--it came upon her in dreams,mountain-shadowing,--holding her with its spell, smothering her powerof outcry, heaping itself to the stars.

  Carmen became alarmed;--she feared that the nervous and delicate childmight die in one of those moaning dreams out of which she had to arouseher, night after night. But Feliu, answering her anxiety with one ofhis favorite proverbs, suggested a heroic remedy:--

  --"The world is like the sea: those who do not know how to swim in itare drowned;--and the sea is like the world," he added.... "Chita mustlearn to swim!"

  And he found the time to teach her. Each morning, at sunrise, he tookher into the water. She was less terrified the first time than Carmenthought she would be;--she seemed to feel confidence in Feliu; althoughshe screamed piteously before her first ducking at his hands. Histeaching was not gentle. He would carry her out, perched upon hisshoulder, until the water rose to his own neck; and there he wouldthrow her from him, and let her struggle to reach him again as best shecould. The first few mornings she had to be pulled out almost at once;but after that Feliu showed her less mercy, and helped her only when hesaw she was really in danger. He attempted no other instruction untilshe had learned that in order to save herself from being half choked bythe salt water, she must not scream; and by the time she becamehabituated to these austere experiences, she had already learned byinstinct alone how to keep herself afloat for a while, how to paddle alittle with her hands. Then he commenced to train her to use them,--tolift them well out and throw them forward as if reaching, to dip themas the blade of an oar is dipped at an angle, without loudsplashing;--and he showed her also how to use her feet. She learnedrapidly and astonishingly well. In less than two months Feliu feltreally proud at the progress made by his tiny pupil: it was a delightto watch her lifting her slender arms above the water in swift, easycurves, with the same fine grace that marked all her other naturalmotions. Later on he taught her not to fear the sea even when itgrowled a little,--how to ride a swell, how to face a breaker, how todive. She only needed practice thereafter; and Carmen, who could alsoswim, finding the child's health improving marvellously under this newdiscipline, took good care that Chita should practice whenever themornings were not too cold, or the water too rough.

  With the first thrill of delight at finding herself able to glide overthe water unassisted, the child's superstitious terror of the seapassed away. Even for the adult there are few physical joys keenerthan the exultation of the swimmer;--how much greater the same glee asnewly felt by an imaginative child,--a child, whose vivid fancy canlend unutterable value to the most insignificant trifles, can transforma weed-patch to an Eden! ... Of her own accord she would ask for hermorning bath, as soon as she opened her eyes;--it even required someseverity to prevent her from remaining in the water too long. The seaappeared to her as something that had become tame for her sake,something that loved her in a huge rough way; a tremendous playmate,whom she no longer feared to see come bounding and barking to lick herfeet. And, little by little, she also learned the wonderful healingand caressing power of the monster, whose cool embrace at oncedispelled all drowsiness, feverishness, weariness,--even after thesultriest nights when the air had seemed to burn, and the mosquitoeshad filled the chamber with a sound as of water boiling in manykettles. And on mornings when the sea was in too wicked a humor to beplayed with, how she felt the loss of her loved sport, and prayed forcalm! Her delicate constitution changed;--the soft, pale flesh becamefirm and brown, the meagre limbs rounded into robust symmetry, the thincheeks grew peachy with richer life; for the strength of the sea hadentered into her; the sharp breath of the sea had renewed andbrightened her young blood....

  ... Thou primordial Sea, the awfulness of whose antiquity hath strickenall mythology dumb;--thou most wrinkled diving Sea, the millions ofwhose years outnumber even the multitude of thy hoary motions;--thouomniform and most mysterious Sea, mother of the monsters and thegods,--whence shine eternal youth? Still do thy waters hold theinfinite thrill of that Spirit which brooded above their face in theBeginning!--still is thy quickening breath an elixir unto them thatflee to thee for life,--like the breath of young girls, like the breathof children, prescribed for the senescent by magicians ofold,--prescribed unto weazened elders in the books of the Wizards.

  III

  ... Eighteen hundred and sixty-seven;--midsummer in the pest-smittencity of New Orleans.

  Heat motionless and ponderous. The steel-blue of the sky bleached fromthe furnace-circle of the horizon;--the lukewarm river ran yellow andnoiseless as a torrent of fluid wax. Even sounds seemed blunted by theheaviness of the air;--the rumbling of wheels, the reverberation offootsteps, fell half-toned upon the ear, like sounds that visit adozing brain.

  Daily, almost at the same hour, the continuous sense of atmosphericoppression became thickened;--a packed herd of low-bellying cloudslumbered up from the Gulf; crowded blackly against the sun; flickered,thundered, and burst in torrential rain--tepid, perpendicular--andvanished utterly away. Then, more furiously than before, the sunflamed down;--roofs and pavements steamed; the streets seemed to smoke;the air grew suffocating with vapor; and the luminous city filled witha faint, sickly odor,--a stale smell, as of dead leaves suddenlydisinterred from wet mould,--as of grasses decomposing after a flood.Something saffron speckled the slimy water of the gutters; sulphur somecalled it; others feared even to give it a name! Was it only thewind-blown pollen of some innocuous plant?

  I do not know; but to many it seemed as if the Invisible Destructionwere scattering visible seed! ... Such were the days; and each day theterror-stricken city offered up its hecatomb to death; and the faces ofall the dead were yellow as flame!

  "DECEDE--"; "DECEDEE--"; "FALLECIO;"--"DIED." ... On the door-posts,the telegraph-poles, the pillars of verandas, the lamps,--over thegovernment letter-boxes,--everywhere glimmered the white annunciationsof death. All the city was spotted with them. And lime was pouredinto the gutters; and huge purifying fires were kindled after sunset.

  The nights began with a black heat;--there were hours when the acridair seemed to ferment for stagnation, and to burn the bronchialtubing;--then, toward morning, it would grow chill with venomousvapors, with morbific dews,--till the sun came up to lift the torpidmoisture, and to fill the buildings with oven-glow. And theinterminable procession of mourners and hearses and carriages againbegan to circulate between the centres of life and of death;--and longtrains and steamships rushed from the port, with heavy burden offugitives.

  Wealth might flee; yet even in flight there was peril. Men, who mighthave been saved by the craft of experienced nurses at home, hurriedlyd
eparted in apparent health, unconsciously carrying in their blood thetoxic principle of a malady unfamiliar to physicians of the West andNorth;--and they died upon their way, by the road-side, by theriver-banks, in woods, in deserted stations, on the cots of quarantinehospitals. Wiser those who sought refuge in the purity of the pineforests, or in those near Gulf Islands, whence the bright sea-breathkept ever sweeping back the expanding poison into the funereal swamps,into the misty lowlands. The watering-resorts becameovercrowded;--then the fishing villages were thronged,--at least allwhich were easy to reach by steamboat or by lugger. And at last, evenViosca's Point,--remote and unfamiliar as it was,--had a stranger toshelter: a good old gentleman named Edwards, rather broken down inhealth--who came as much for quiet as for sea-air, and who had beenwarmly recommended to Feliu by Captain Harris. For some years he hadbeen troubled by a