Two Years in the French West Indies Part 18

CHORUS.--"_Diable epi zombi ka d'omi tout-patout!_"

D.--"_Diable epi zombi_."

C.--"_Diable epi zombi ka dmi tout-patout!_"

D.--"_Diable epi zombi_."...etc.

... What is this after all but the old African method of chanting at labor, The practice of carrying the burden upon the head left the hands free for the rhythmic accompaniment of clapping. And you may still hear the women who load the transatlantic steamers with coal at Fort-de-France thus chanting and clapping....

Evidently the Devil is moving very fast; for all the boys are running;--the pattering of bare feet upon the pavement sounds like a heavy shower.... Then the chanting grows fainter in distance; the Devil's immense ba.s.so becomes inaudible;--one only distinguishes at regular intervals the _crescendo_ of the burden,--a wild swelling of many hundred boy-voices all rising together,--a retreating storm of rhythmic song, wafted to the ear in gusts, in _raifales_ of contralto....

XI. _February 17th._

... Yzore is a _calendeuse_.

The calendeuses are the women who make up the beautiful Madras turbans and color them; for the amazingly brilliant yellow of these head-dresses is not the result of any dyeing process: they are all painted by hand.

When purchased the Madras is simply a great oblong handkerchief, having a pale green or pale pink ground, and checkered or plaided by intersecting bands of dark blue, purple, crimson, or maroon.

The calendeuse lays the Madras upon a broad board placed across her knees,--then, taking a camel's-hair brush, she begins to fill in the s.p.a.ces between the bands with a sulphur-yellow paint, which is always mixed with gum-arabic. It requires a sure eye, very steady fingers, and long experience to do this well.... After the Madras has been "calendered" (_calende_) and has become quite stiff and dry, it is folded about the head of the purchaser after the comely Martinique fas.h.i.+on,--which varies considerably from the modes popular in Guadeloupe or Cayenne,--is fixed into the form thus obtained; and can thereafter be taken off or put on without arrangement or disarrangement, like a cap. The price for calendering a Madras is now two francs and fifteen sous;--and for making-up the turban, six sous additional, except in Carnival-time, or upon holiday occasions, when the price rises to twenty-five sous.... The making-up of the Madras into a turban is called "tying a head" (_marre yon tete_); and a prettily folded turban is spoken of as "a head well tied" (_yon tete bien marre_).... However, the profession of calendeuse is far from being a lucrative one: it is two or three days' work to calender a single Madras well....

But Yzore does not depend upon calendering alone for a living: she earns much more by the manufacture of _moresques_ and of _chinoises_ than by painting Madras turbans.... Everybody in Martinique who can afford it wears moresques and chinoises. The moresques are large loose comfortable pantaloons of thin printed calico (_indienne_),--having colored designs representing birds, frogs, leaves, lizards, flowers, b.u.t.terflies, or kittens,--or perhaps representing nothing in particular, being simply arabesques. The chinoise is a loose body-garment, very much like the real Chinese blouse, but always of brightly colored calico with fantastic designs. These things are worn at home during siestas, after office-hours, and at night. To take a nap during the day with one's ordinary clothing on means always a terrible drenching from perspiration, and an after-feeling of exhaustion almost indescribable--best expressed, perhaps, by the local term: _corps ecrase_. Therefore, on entering one's room for the siesta, one strips, puts on the light moresques and the chinoise, and dozes in comfort.

A suit of this sort is very neat, often quite pretty, and very cheap (costing only about six francs);--the colors do not fade out in was.h.i.+ng, and two good suits will last a year.... Yzore can make two pair of moresques and two chinoises in a single day upon her machine.

... I have observed there is a prejudice here against treadle machines;--the creole girls are persuaded they injure the health. Most of the sewing-machines I have seen among this people are operated by hand,--with a sort of little crank....

XII. _February 22d._

... Old physicians indeed predicted it; but who believed them?...

It is as though something sluggish and viewless, dormant and deadly, had been suddenly upstirred to furious life by the wind of robes and tread of myriad dancing feet,--by the crash of cymbals and heavy vibration of drums! Within a few days there has been a frightful increase of the visitation, an almost incredible expansion of the invisible poison: the number of new cases and of deaths has successively doubled, tripled, quadrupled....

... Great caldrons of tar are kindled now at night in the more thickly peopled streets,--about one hundred paces apart, each being tended by an Indian laborer in the pay of the city: this is done with the idea of purifying the air. These sinister fires are never lighted but in times of pestilence and of tempest: on hurricane nights, when enormous waves roll in from the fathomless sea upon one of the most fearful coasts in the world, and great vessels are being driven ash.o.r.e, such is the illumination by which the brave men of the coast make desperate efforts to save the lives of s.h.i.+pwrecked men, often at the cost of their own.

[19]

XIII. _February 23d._

A Coffin pa.s.ses, balanced on the heads of black men. It holds the body of Pascaline Z----, covered with quick-lime.

She was the prettiest, a.s.suredly, among the pretty shopgirls of the Grande Rue,--a rare type of _sang-melee_. So oddly pleasing, the young face, that once seen, you could never again dissociate the recollection of it from the memory of the street. But one who saw it last night before they poured quick-lime upon it could discern no features,--only a dark brown ma.s.s, like a fungus, too frightful to think about.

... And they are all going thus, the beautiful women of color. In the opinion of physicians, the whole generation is doomed.... Yet a curious fact is that the young children of octoroons are suffering least: these women have their children vaccinated,--though they will not be vaccinated themselves. I see many brightly colored children, too, recovering from the disorder: the skin is not pitted, like that of the darker cla.s.ses; and the rose-colored patches finally disappear altogether, leaving no trace.

... Here the sick are wrapped in banana leaves, after having been smeared with a certain unguent.... There is an immense demand for banana leaves. In ordinary times these leaves--especially the younger ones, still unrolled, and tender and soft beyond any fabric possible for man to make--are used for poultices of all kinds, and sell from one to two sous each, according to size and quality.

XIV. _February 29th._

... The whites remain exempt from the malady.

One might therefore hastily suppose that liability of contagion would be diminished in proportion to the excess of white blood over African; but such is far from being the case;--St. Pierre is losing its handsomest octoroons. Where the proportion of white to black blood is 116 to 8, as in the type called _mamelouc_;--or 122 to 4, as in the _quarteronne_ (not to be confounded with the _quarteron_ or quadroon);--or even 127 to 1, as in the _sang-mele_, the liability to attack remains the same, while the chances of recovery are considerably less than in the case of the black. Some few striking instances of immunity appear to offer a different basis for argument; but these might be due to the social position of the individual rather than to any const.i.tutional temper: wealth and comfort, it must be remembered, have no small prophylactic value in such times. Still,--although there is reason to doubt whether mixed races have a const.i.tutional vigor comparable to that of the original parent-races,--the liability to diseases of this cla.s.s is decided less, perhaps, by race characteristics than by ancestral experience. The white peoples of the world have been practically inoculated, vaccinated, by experience of centuries;--while among these visibly mixed or black populations the seeds of the pest find absolutely fresh soil in which to germinate, and its ravages are therefore scarcely less terrible than those it made among the American-Indian or the Polynesian races in other times. Moreover, there is an unfortunate prejudice against vaccination here. People even now declare that those vaccinated die just as speedily of the plague as those who have never been;--and they can cite cases in proof. It is useless to talk to them about averages of immunity, percentage of liability, etc.;--they have seen with their own eyes persons who had been well vaccinated die of the verette, and that is enough to destroy their faith in the system....

Even the priests, who pray their congregations to adopt the only known safeguard against the disease, can do little against this scepticism.

XV. _March 5th._

... The streets are so narrow in this old-fas.h.i.+oned quarter that even a whisper is audible across them; and after dark I hear a great many things,--sometimes sounds of pain, sobbing, despairing cries as Death makes his round,--sometimes, again, angry words, and laughter, and even song,--always one melancholy chant: the voice has that peculiar metallic timbre that reveals the young negress:--

"_Pauv' ti Lele, Pauv' ti Lele!

Li gagnin doule, doule, doule,-- Li gagnin doule Tout-patout!_"

I want to know who little Lele was, and why she had pains "all over";--for however artless and childish these creole songs seem, they are invariably originated by some real incident. And at last somebody tells me that "poor little Lele" had the reputation in other years of being the most unlucky girl in St. Pierre; whatever she tried to do resulted only in misfortune;--when it was morning she wished it were evening, that she might sleep and forget; but when the night came she could not sleep for thinking of the trouble she had had during the day, so that she wished it were morning....

More pleasant it is to hear the chatting of Yzore's childlren across the way, after the sun has set, and the stars come out.... Gabrielle always wants to know what the stars are:--

--"_ca qui ka claire conm ca, manman?_" (What is it s.h.i.+nes like that?)

And Yzore answers:--

--"_ca, mafi,--c'est ti limie Bon-Die._" (Those are the little lights of the Good-G.o.d.)

--"It is so pretty,--eh, mamma? I want to count them."

--"You cannot count them, child."

--"One-two-three-four-five-six-seven." Gabrielle can only count up to seven. "_Moin peide!_--I am lost, mamma!"

The moon comes up;--she cries:--"_Mi! manman!--gade gouos dife qui adans ciel-a!_ Look at the great fire in the sky."

--"It is the Moon, child!... Don't you see St. Joseph in it, carrying a bundle of wood?"

--"Yes, mamma! I see him!... A great big bundle of wood!"...

But Mimi is wiser in moon-lore: she borrows half a franc from her mother "to show to the Moon." And holding it up before the silver light, she sings:--

"Pretty Moon, I show you my little money;--now let me always have money so long as you s.h.i.+ne!" [20]

Then the mother takes them up to bed;--and in a little while there floats to me, through the open window, the murmur of the children's evening prayer:--