At last Georges felt that the time had come to return to île de France. He had accomplished everything he hoped to, and more; his wildest dreams had come to pass. There was nothing left to do for him in Europe. He had battled civilization, and conquered it; now it was time to take on barbarism. His was a proud and enthusiastic soul, one that could never be satisfied by living in European luxury, wasting the strength he had so painstakingly built so that he might wage war on his home soil. Everything he had done in the last ten years, he had done with the sole aim of becoming such a superior man that he would be able to destroy the prejudice no colored man had yet dared oppose. He cared nothing for France’s 33 million men, nor for any of the 150 million people of Europe. The offices of deputy and minister held no attraction for him; the distinction between republic and kingdom was of no consequence to him. The chief place in his heart was occupied by a tiny green island tucked far away in the southern seas like a nearly invisible grain of sand at the bottom of the vast ocean. There, Georges believed, existed the only problem worth solving. He was haunted by the memory of his subjugation, and going home was his only hope of throwing off that yoke forever.
When the Leicester docked at Cadiz on her way to île de France, Georges requested permission to board the vessel. It was quickly granted, both because he was highly recommended by French and Spanish authorities and because another passenger, Lord Murray, learning that the young man was a native son of their destination, was anxious to learn as much as he could about the island he was to govern from the mouth of one who had been born and raised there. This young man, the Englishman reasoned, would surely be able to tell him much of the thousand tiny political and moral details of the place that it is so important for a governor to amass before setting foot on the territory over which he is to preside.
We have already seen how they renewed and expanded their acquaintance during the voyage to Port Louis, and how they had reached the point of real friendship by the time of their arrival.
We have also seen how Georges, though devoted to his father, did not reveal his identity to Pierre Munier until after yet another long, painful test of his own self-control. The old man’s joy was increased tenfold by the utter unexpectedness of it, and also by the fact that the man he now beheld was so vastly changed and improved from the boy he had missed for so many years. As they walked together down the road to Moka, the father gazed rapturously at his son, often stopping to clasp him in an embrace so loving that it brought tears to the young man’s eyes despite the stalwart manner he had cultivated so carefully.
After walking for some three hours, they reached the outer edge of the plantation. Télémaque hastened ahead of them to alert the servants, so that everyone had gathered in the courtyard by the time they arrived. Georges and his father found themselves surrounded by Negroes in a state of mingled joy and fear—after all, they had not seen this new young master since he was a child. What sort of a man had he become? What kind of master would he be? Any worries were quickly put to rest, however, when Georges decreed three days of rest for the entire household.
Anxious to see the extent of the Munier landholdings, Georges scarcely sat down long enough to dine before going out with his father to view the estate. A series of fortunate speculations, as well as years of skilled management, had made it one of the most beautiful properties on the island. Its central point was the residence, a simple and spacious building surrounded by banana, mango, and tamarind trees. A wide, tree-lined avenue led to the main road, the lush border concealing perfumed hedges covered with enormous flowers that swayed gently in the breeze, which caressed the orange and banana trees, dipping and rising like a bee caught between two succulent blooms, or a heart that hesitates to choose between two desires. Behind the house was a large and verdant garden containing more fruit trees, and beyond that, immense fields of corn and sugarcane so heavily laden with their bounty that they seemed to beg for the kind services of the harvester.
Then, too, there were the slave quarters, which indeed no great plantation was without.
The center of this area was occupied by a large structure that served as a barn in the winter and a dance hall in the summer. Sounds of merriment issued from the building now: laughter, drums, tambourines, and Malgache harps. The blacks had wasted no time in beginning their three days’ holiday. Primitive and uninhibited by nature, they worked and played with equal fervor, and often danced until they dropped from exhaustion. They were startled, however, by the unexpected arrival of the master and his son. They hurried to arrange themselves in rows, each seeking his proper place, like soldiers surprised by their captain. After a moment of silence, they burst into heartfelt applause and hurrahs of joy. They were well fed, well clothed, and fairly treated, and they adored Pierre Munier as the best mulatto in the colony; a man who was humble with the whites and never cruel to the blacks. Georges’s return, as I have said, had caused great fear among the slaves. As if he could sense the effect of his presence, he raised his hand to signal that he wished to speak. Instantly a profound silence fell. The Negroes listened raptly to the words I will momentarily recount, words that fell from the young man’s lips as slowly as a promise and as solemnly as a vow:
“My friends,” he began, “I am deeply touched by the welcome you have shown me. It gratifies me to see you so content, and to know that my father is the source of that contentment. He obviously treats you well, and I thank him for it. It is my duty, as it has always been his, to ensure the happiness of those I hope will serve me obediently and well. You are three hundred strong, with only ninety huts among you; my father tells me it is his wish to build sixty more, one for each husband and wife. Each hut will have a small garden where you may grow potatoes, tobacco, and yams, and raise chickens and pigs. Any man who wishes to may go and sell his produce at the Sunday market in Port Louis; any money you earn will be your own. Thievery will be severely punished, but if any of you are treated unjustly by the overseer, you have only to report it and justice will be served. As for the subject of runaways, I cannot imagine that any of you would commit such an act; let me simply say that I hope you are, and will continue to be, too content here to think of leaving us.”
Cries of approval greeted this little speech. It will doubtless appear quite alien to those sixty million Europeans whose happy fortune it is to live in constitutional freedom, but it was the first charter of its kind ever bestowed in that colony.
VII
THE BERLOQUE
The next evening, which, as I have said, was a Saturday, in another barn located at the foot of Mont Trois-Mamelles, a different and more serious group of blacks sat around a large fire, occupied in what the colonies call a berloque; that is, everyone busied himself with a variety of tasks according to his needs, his temperament, or his character. Some worked at handicrafts destined for sale at the Sunday market; others cooked rice, manioc, or bananas. One man smoked a pipe of tobacco that was not entirely indigenous but had been grown in his own garden, while another simply chatted in a low voice to his neighbor. Women and children came and went ceaselessly among the groups, tending the fire. Despite the industrious atmosphere and the fact that it was a Saturday, though, the gathering had a decidedly gloomy air. The source of this unhappiness was not, as one might expect, the master of the plantation; rather, it was the mulatto overseer. For this building was located on the lower part of the Williams Plains, at the foot of Mont Trois-Mamelles, an area that formed part of the property of our old acquaintance M. de Malmédie.
Surprisingly, M. de Malmédie was not a bad master, as we understand the word in France; this rotund little man was not given to hatred or vengeance. He was simply puffed up with pride in his own civil and political importance, and in the purity of the blood that flowed through his veins. He had a healthy share of native pride, and his was the sort of prejudice that, on île de France, still plagued men of color at that time. His slaves were not worse off than anyone else’s; nor were they better off. Still, they shared the unhappiness co
mmon to slaves everywhere. M. de Malmédie saw Negroes not as men, but as machines, made for labor. If one of these machines did not function satisfactorily due to laziness or fatigue, it must simply be wound up again—with a whip, if necessary; this was precisely what M. de Malmédie had instructed his overseer to do.
As for Henri de Malmédie: He was the exact portrait of his father—but twenty years younger, and possessed of an even stronger dose of pride.
The moral and material situations of the Williams Plains slaves and those of the Moka quarter were vastly different, as we have seen. Gaiety came naturally at the Munier berloques; elsewhere, it was forced. A song, an acrobatic feat, or a tale of fantasy was needed to excite M. de Malmédie’s slaves; happily, there was one man among them who habitually took this task upon himself. In the tropics just as in our country, in the Negro quarters just as in the soldiers’ barracks, there is always a man who assumes the exhausting duty of making his fellows laugh. He is recognized and thanked in a thousand different ways, though it is true that if his comrades forget to honor his efforts, as sometimes happens, the buffoon suddenly realizes that he is the creditor, and that his audience owes him. In this case, the name of the man who filled the position occupied by Triboulet and Angeli at the court of the kings Francis I and Louis XIII was Antonio; most people called him Antonio the Malay to distinguish him from the other Antonios on the island, who undoubtedly would have been offended by the misidentification. He had been born at Tingoram. He was a small man, with a block-like torso supported by a pair of impossibly spindly legs. His feet were enormous; his arms, so long that he resembled an orangutan and looked as if he could pick up an object from the ground without bending over. The whites found him grotesque, but among the less partisan and beauty-loving blacks he was noted for his humor, energy, and wit—even though, from time to time, he seemed to bare a tiger’s teeth from beneath his monkey skin.
The berloque was decidedly gloomy, as I have said, until Antonio slipped unseen behind one of the barn’s large wooden pillars. Peeking from his hiding place, he hissed in perfect imitation of a cobra, one of the most terrifying reptiles to be found on the island of Malay. This sound, so common on the plains of Tenasserim, in the marshes of Java, and on the sands of Quiloa, would have frozen most people with terror—but île de France holds no such dangerous reptiles, other than the sharks that swim in schools along the coastline, and here the effect was quite different than the wide-open eyes and mouths the Malay might have hoped for. Laughter and cries of: “It is Antonio the Malay! Viva Antonio!” erupted from the gathering. Only those who were Malgaches, Yoloffs, or natives of Zanzibar, who remembered the cobra’s hiss from their youth, were momentarily afraid. One man, a beautiful youth who might have passed for white had his fine features been a shade or two paler, half rose to his feet. He, too, murmured “Antonio the Malay,” but his voice held a note of disdain quite absent from those of his neighbors.
With three bounds of his long legs, Antonio moved to the center of the circle and sat down tailor-fashion on the ground near the hearth. “Sing to us, Antonio!” his audience clamored. Unlike some virtuoso sure of the effect he will produce, Antonio did not wait to be asked twice. Twanging a few preliminary notes on a mouth organ, he danced about crazily as he sang the following song:
I live in a little hut
I must duck down to enter;
My head touches the ceiling
While my feet touch the floor.
I have no need of light
At night, when I want to sleep;
Because I have the moon
And many holes to see it through, thank God!
My bed is a little Madagascan mat,
My pillow a piece of white wood,
My water jug is an old calbasse
And I drink rum from it on New Year’s Day.
When my wife keeps house
On Saturdays, for supper
She cooks for me, in my little hut,
A banana, roasted in the ashes.
My trunk has no hinges,
And never do I close it
In a bamboo box like that with no lock
Who would want my loincloth?
But on Sunday, if I am given the day
I buy a bit of tobacco,
And all week I smoke it
In my big Carouba pipe.
The effect this somewhat crude song had on the listeners cannot be understood without having lived among this race of simple and primitive men, for whom everything is a matter of sensation. Despite the song’s weak rhymes and simple ideas, the slaves were transported. The first and second verses were greeted with laughter and applause; the third, with shouts of approval and hurrahs. Only the young Negro who had greeted Antonio’s arrival with scorn shrugged, an expression of disgust on his face.
Strangely, rather than basking in the attention he was receiving, Antonio slumped forward with his head in his hands. Since he was the sole source of gaiety among the slaves, they began to be sad again, and begged him to sing another song or tell another story—but he turned a deaf ear, remaining incomprehensibly immobile and silent. One of his friends clapped him on the shoulder. “What’s wrong with you, Malay?” he demanded. “Are you dead?”
“No,” Antonio said. “I’m quite alive.”
“Well, what are you doing?”
“Thinking.”
“About what, for heaven’s sake?”
“I’m thinking about the berloque,” Antonio said. “It should be a happy occasion. Every man is able to work for himself—though there are some lazy good-for-nothings who idle the time away smoking, like you, Toukal; or cooking bananas like Cambeba there. Look how industrious Castor is, making chairs! Bonhomme carves wooden spoons! Nazim is the laziest of all; he does nothing.”
“I do what I please,” scowled the fine-featured and disdainful young black. “I am the Stag of Anjouan, just as Laïza is the Lion. The affairs of stags and lions are of no concern to snakes.”
Nazim’s words seemed to echo in the large barn. After a moment of silence, Antonio continued. “As I said, the berloque is a time for pleasure, but it seems to me that to keep your work from overtiring you, Castor, and to make your tobacco taste even sweeter, Toukal, and to keep you from falling asleep while your banana cooks, Cambeba, there must be someone here to tell you stories and sing you songs.”
“Well, yes, but that’s what you are for, Antonio,” said Castor. “You know many fantastic stories and wonderful songs.”
“But,” said Antonio, “if I were not here, then who would sing songs and tell stories? You would be so tired from the week’s work that you would all fall asleep! Then there would be no berloque! You would make no more bamboo chairs, Castor—nor you any more wooden spoons, Bonhomme! Your pipe would go out, Toukal—and Cambeba, the banana you are roasting would surely burn! Isn’t this true?”
“True, true,” the crowd murmured. Only Nazim remained silent and disdainful.
“So it seems to me that you should be grateful to me, for keeping you awake and making you laugh!”
“Yes, thank you, Antonio! Thank you!” the crowd cried.
“Who can tell tales to keep you awake, and sing songs to make you laugh?”
“Laïza; Laïza also knows many stories!”
Antonio frowned. “Yes, but his stories make you tremble with fear, do they not?”
“True,” murmured the Negroes again.
“Who else can sing songs for you, but Antonio?”
“Nazim—he knows many beautiful songs.”
“Yes,” said Antonio. “But his songs always make you cry.”
“Yes,” agreed the crowd.
“So it is only Antonio who knows funny stories and songs!”
“Yes, it is true,” the Negroes said.
“Who sang you a song just four days ago?”
“You, Malay.”
“Who told you a story just three days ago?”
“You, Malay.”
“Who sang you a song t
he day before yesterday?”
“You, Malay.”
“Who told you a story only yesterday?”
“You, Malay.”
“And who has already sung you one song today, and will soon tell you a story?”
“You, Malay. It is always you.”
Antonio puffed out his chest. “Well, since I am so important and do so much for you while you work and smoke and cook your bananas, since I sacrifice myself for you so much that I can’t do anything for myself, isn’t it fair that I receive something from you in return?”
The justice of this observation struck everyone in the crowd—but my historian’s conscience must admit to you that only a few actually raised their voices to reply in the affirmative.
“For example,” the Malay continued, “I think Toukal should give me a little of his tobacco for my pipe. Don’t you think, Cambeba?”
“Yes!” Cambeba cried eagerly, thrilled that he had not been the one asked to contribute. So Toukal was forced to share his tobacco with Antonio.
“Now,” continued the Malay, “just the other day I lost my wooden spoon. I have no money to buy another one, because instead of working I have spent my time singing songs and telling stories for you. Don’t you think, Toukal, that Bonhomme should give me a wooden spoon to eat my soup with?”
“Of course!” Toukal exclaimed, glad that he was not the only one imposed on by the Malay.
Antonio extended his hand to Bonhomme, who handed him the wooden spoon he had just finished whittling.
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