by Maryse Conde
“What am I going to do with all this time on my hands?”
8
Roro the Fisherman’s Tale
I haven’t done anything wrong. I have nothing to reproach myself for. I took him to Dominica because he was my friend and he asked me to. When the winds blow in the right direction, from Saint-Louis to Roseau, it’s a breeze. Half a day at the most. So I didn’t even think of refusing.
The sea’s my maman, my wife, my mistress, my child and my sister!
When I climb into my Marie, Mére de Dieu, my boat daubed in blue and white, the colors of the Virgin Mary, and I lean on my oars, I become another person. I’m no longer a nonentity mocked by the children and nicknamed Roro Rum because of what happened to my papa. I forget the rat-hole where I live just two steps from the seashore. I forget the rags I have for clothes. I forget I haven’t got a wife or a child, I forget I’ve lost my maman and my papa. That I’ve got nothing to warm my heart or my body. Except for my boat, a few bamboo lobster pots, a few nets I patch up as best I can. And the sea.
I prefer the bad weather days when it squalls, when the waves rise up to soak the dome of the sky, when a black bar shuts out the horizon and you can see neither Terre-de-Bas nor Terre-de-Haut, the islands of Les Saintes, and even less Dominica, usually lying close by on the other side of the channel. But I also like those days when, lapping over the sandbanks, the water takes on the color of hope and the sand sparkles white under the sun like the teeth of a handsome black woman.
Maman has gone where we’ll all go one day or another, a few hours after I was born. Yet I didn’t grieve as a small boy because I had my papa.
My father was a master seiner. His family, who supplied the fish for the Murats’ table, had never really known slavery, so to speak. They were a proud and upstanding race.
At eighteen, papa had four boats under him and as many accompaniers, water-beaters, divers and lookout men who sailed off with him in the early morning to net the shoals of fish in the ocean depths. Most of the time his seine brought in loads of cavali, tarpons and tuna. Under their weight the net swelled like the belly of a pregnant woman and seemed on the verge of tearing. When he came home with a good catch like that, there was jubilation in Saint-Louis. People came dancing out of their cabins to help the men carry in the fish. The children played hammock in the nets and everyone hauled them up onto the shore. In the evening when we went to bed we had our stomachs full and hunger did not lie down beside us on our pillows.
Sometimes papa did not go far and was merely content to let his net drag in the creeks around Marie-Galante. On those days he brought back only silversides and bonefish, just for him and his crew.
Because of his fine catches, everybody in Saint-Louis looked up to him. When he walked by in the street, his bakoua hat firmly clapped on his hair scorched by the salt, people greeted him with respect.
“Good day, master Ben!”
He didn’t even answer. On Sundays he recited the words of the mass louder than anyone else. He placed banknotes on the collection tray and was the first to walk to the altar to take communion. In the evenings he won against everyone at dice and dominoes at the rum shop. On his way home, he had only to look at the woman he liked and she would follow him on the spot to warm him up in bed. And then from one day to the next he took to drinking rum, and that was the end of him. People say someone jealous cast a kimbwa on him on account of a woman, and this could be true. I don’t know. When he was young he didn’t gulp down any more rum than others of his age—a few neat white rums a day. Then it became a liter, a liter and a half and two liters. From that moment, he lost his way to the sea. He got up and went to bed in vomit. He slept on the path, on the beach, on the rocks, in the mud and on the sand, wherever sleep took him. He imagined rats, bats and centipedes crawling over his belly, his stomach and his face, and he would scream like a hog being slaughtered. One drizzly morning they found him lying stiff under a manchineel tree. Rain had fallen during the night and his entire body was burnt. He was unrecognizable. They threw him in a hole under the casuarinas in the cemetery and the priest did not even take the trouble to come out of his presbytery for him. I inherited his boat, his nets and his cabin made of planks next to a wild banyan tree. Every All Saints’ Day I go and light candles for him because to me papa was not a bad sort.
When First-Born Sabrimol arrived in Saint-Louis, he immediately became my friend. How did we meet? One day while I was minding my own business a brute tried to hit me out of pure spite in front of Ma Tétéche’s shop and he stepped in between us. Yes, that’s how our friendship began. When they saw we were inseparable, people made fun of us.
“Roro Rum and First-Born? Now we’ve seen everything!”
Nevertheless I’ve got a brain to understand and two eyes to see what’s going on around me. I understood full well that First-Born was hiding something under his rags, his bare feet and that look of his; I realized that it was not his real name. I could see he was no ordinary fellow like us, no orphan abandoned under the sun. The fine features of his face, the way he spoke French, the way he walked erect and drank with moderation all told me that his placenta was not buried under any old tree; rather under a locustwood, a West Indian mahogany tree or an ebony from Senegal.
On Saturdays and Sundays I went and fetched him before sunrise and we would set off to sea. I would row as far as the islands of Les Saintes, Petite-Terre, La Désirade and Dominica. Sometimes even further. The sea is not everyone’s cup of tea. At first he would climb into my boat trembling, looking around him at the waves, the waves that rolled on forever.
“I’m scared, Roro!” he would say in a tiny little voice. I would laugh.
“What for, for goodness sake? If the sea hugs you in its arms, you’ll forget all about Asturias. Believe me, it’ll be the tenderest kiss you’ve ever had. What woman’s body is as soft and vast as hers?”
While I rowed he sat motionless at the back of the boat and stared at the changing sails of the sky. I didn’t ask any questions and he didn’t tell me anything. One day, while we were coming back from Terre-de-Haut-des-Saintes, he suddenly asked me: “Do you know my papa’s name?”
“What a question!” I replied, shrugging my shoulders. “How do you expect me to know it if you’ve never told me?” He took on an inspired look, like someone about to sail on the high seas.
“Razyé!”
Hearing that name gave me such a start. It was as if he had said his father’s name was Lucifer or his papa’s called Beelzebub or any other name given to the spirit of Evil. He then told me the story of his family. While he talked, for the first time I noticed little details that hadn’t struck me before. How thick his mop of hair was and how it grew into a widow’s peak over his forehead. How his eyes stared, black and shining. How his mouth was red and sensual. Now that I think about it, his face was rather unsettling. He stared at me again.
“Do you know why I’m hiding here, in the filth of Tonin’s cabin?”
“No, I don’t,” I stammered, still under the shock.
“If there’s one thing I take after him for,” he went on, “it’s my taste for women. Ever since I was small I’ve been like that, I can’t help it. If Irmine, my maman, had cherished me, caressed me and taken me in her arms, things would have been very different. Like all other boys my thoughts would have lurked around her bed. Nothing more. Alas! Maman couldn’t bear me. So on Sundays when, unbeknownst to papa, mabo Julie took me to church with my brothers, I would stand behind the confessional and spy on the Virgin Mary suckling the Infant Jesus. My blood burned, thinking I could be in the place of this baby. Later I started to hang around the Mome-à-Cayes, behind the prison, around the hospice, in the districts where the women hang out. I went into their bars to get a smell of them, to try and make out the shape of their breasts under their loose-fitting dresses. And that’s how all my misfortune began.”
He reeled off all thi
s and lots more besides. How his papa found out he had taken his pleasure in the bed of one of his mistresses and how he had almost killed him. While he talked, I wondered whether he wasn’t worrying himself for nothing. Blood is thicker than water. Who knows if his papa hadn’t already forgotten all this nonsense! And yet I remembered what I had heard about Razyé and his tiger’s heart, and I said to myself perhaps he was right.
And that’s all I know.
When he started paying visits to Mademoiselle Cathy de Linsseuil, the schoolteacher, he had me believe it was to learn natural science, algebra and geometry. And I believed him.
Asturias’s brothers broke open the door of my cabin and then they threw me on the floor and pummelled me with their fists and feet, shouting: “Scoundrel! We’ll teach you! Didn’t you know what he put in our sister’s belly? You deliberately helped him to escape.”
That’s not true. I took him to Roseau because he was my friend and he asked me to. I know nothing else, nothing. And that’s the truth.
After having almost beaten me to death, Asturias’s brothers hacked at the wood of my cabin with their cutlasses and left. You would have thought a hurricane had gone through it.
When we pushed the boat into the water it was close to ten o’clock in the evening. You could count the stars in the sky. No need for the lantern to light the velvet of the sea. Sailing down toward Grand-Bourg we kept the shore in sight and all along we could see the oil lamps in the cabins flickering like candles in a cemetery on All Souls’ Day. Then the blackness blotted everything out. Not a sound could be heard except for the lapping of the water against the boat’s hull and the wind whistling in the sails. Flying fish, their bodies gleaming like knife-blades in the dark, jumped into the air as if they wanted to keep an eye on us. Flocks of seabirds flew over our heads, so low we could almost touch them. Here and there we caught sight of fishermen dragging their nets from their boats, looking to surprise the tuna fish and sea-bream deep in their sleep.
Both of them were sitting at the back of the boat, with their wicker baskets between their legs. At first I had trouble recognizing her with the headtie pulled tight over her forehead like an old woman. They didn’t say a word to each other. They didn’t touch each other. You would have thought they didn’t know each other. I was flabbergasted to see them sitting there side by side. I didn’t understand what was going on, since he never told me anything about her. Except that she was his schoolteacher and was nice to him. Not superior at all. Sometimes I gave her a skewer of fish and he brought me her thanks. I had so many questions I wanted to ask him but couldn’t because she was sitting there. Unanswered, they went swirling round and round in my head. Why had he left Saint-Louis? Had his terrible papa discovered where he was hiding and come to kill him? Why was he taking Mademoiselle Cathy with him? What was going on between them? About midnight, still without saying a word, he put his arm around her waist and made her lay her head on his knees. Then he sat rigid, without moving an inch, as if he was afraid he’d prevent her from sleeping. Around two o’clock in the morning there was a chill in the air, the wind got up and the sky blackened as if we were in for a squall. Fortunately, it didn’t last. The clouds scudded away and the night sky cleared again. At sunrise the mountains of Dominica, crisscrossed by the silver threads of rivers, loomed up in front of us like a solid wall. He woke her up and all three of us watched as land drew near.
In spite of the early hour, what a commotion was going on in the harbor when we entered! Roseau is busier than Saint-Louis and even Grand-Bourg. Travellers say that only Fort-de-Prance in Martinique is busier. There was no counting the number of three-masters, schooners, barges and small fishing boats rubbing against each other’s hulls. The smoke from steamships blackened the air. First-Born took me by the arm and held out a letter murmuring:
“Count two times seven days and give it to someone you trust to deliver it personally to Maman in La Pointe. Don’t post it, please. You never know.”
He hugged me as if he would never see me again on this earth. It was then, with a grief-stricken heart, I had to ask him.
“But tell me why are you leaving? What is there in Roseau? How long are you going to stay here?” His only answer was his finger on his lips.
“Shh!” he whispered.
He embraced me again. Then he took her by the arm and set off toward the town. I stood there, looking helpless, my feet in the sand, not knowing what I ought to do. And then, after a while, I got back in my boat and went back out to sea.
I had lost my only friend.
That’s all I know.
9
By Way of a First Epilogue
. . . He found my trail. So I had to flee even further
to escape him. I wonder whether we shall ever see
each other again in this world.
—Your First-Born.
How could she get through to the young man who sent her these lines that the papa he so dreaded had passed on? Irmine turned the letter over and over in her hands but could find no indication where it came from. The paper was ordinary. The ink purple. The messenger had disappeared before Hosannah had had time to offer him a goblet of water. Grief seemed to blind her as she thought of her lonely, hapless son, exiled in a distant land.
It was bright daylight. All around her the air was filled with the smell of turpentine, the sound of hammers and the rasp of handsaws as the workers banged nails into the roof, replaced beams and repainted the walls. From one day to the next Irmine woke up to find herself one of the richest women on the island. But she had ignored the advice of the notary, and did not have the heart to leave La Pointe to which so many memories moored her. Monsieur Desfossés, who had untangled Razyé’s succession, wasted his time telling her in all manners of ways that Guadeloupe was going to the dogs. Yesterday’s propertied classes had become today’s dispossessed. The white Creoles were rushing to buy berths on the steamships and sailing empty-handed for Pau, Bordeaux, anywhere they could hope to start a new life. Their country properties and their town houses were being auctioned off to the firstcomer. Matouba, Grippiére, Sainte-Marthe, Le Moule, the great plantations were being parcelled off. For the price of a mortgage. There was no counting the number of mulattos who were moving into the ancestral homes and the blacks taking over good acres of sugarcane. If she wanted to, she could have the biggest estate. She had stood firm and settled on repairing at great cost the house on the Place de la Victoire. She had spared no expense. The pink stone had come from Italy, the roof from a factory in Trois-Ilets in Martinique and the red cedar wood from the forests of Guyana. In the dining room painters delicately drew their brushes over the tiles and brought to life an imaginary town with children, fountains, flower sellers and horsemen seated erect on their mounts. Gardeners dug over the garden and planted the yard with hibiscus, lemon and pomegranate trees. Irmine had also bought a horse and tilbury complete with coachman, and hired three servants, one to do the washing, one to do the housework and the third to serve at table. Since she did not go to church and never paid any visits, the only time the coachman got the horse out and put on his livery was once a week when he drove her to Razyé’s grave. As for Hosannah, she had nothing else to do except spend her time chattering, tasting the sauces and criticizing the color of the washing put out to bleach in the yard, the amount of starch or the heat of the flat-irons on the coals.
Finally, Irmine had found a meaning to her life.
With Razyé’s death a chapter had closed and everything could have gone back to how it was when she was a child. But she could not accept that way of life any longer. Once her initial tears and despondency were over, she was seen to show a determination that perhaps she had never possessed. It was as if the deceased’s temperament, of which she herself had been a victim, passed into her body and she was determined to carry out his revenge to the very end. It was for him and his memory that she restored the house on the Place de la Victoire to its
former glory. She wanted the mabos cradling their infants under the sandbox trees, the lovers strolling along the paths and even the good-for-nothings sitting on the benches to lift up their eyes at the balconies, the frieze and the dormer windows and say to themselves, trembling with emotion: “Ah yes! That’s where Razyé once lived.” After the school holidays, she decided she would send Zoulou and Gengis to a boarding school in France run by Jesuits. They were already rich. They would graduate with flying colors. For the time being, however, their life was hell. They had difficulty finding their way in their new life for the memory of their father floated around them like a bad smell. Both their money and their color were unpardonable. At school the teachers showered them with poor marks. Students in the same class avoided them; the bigger ones beat them up. Every day they came home with their clothes torn. She would have to help them smash open the doors of La Pointe’s polite society, locked against them, and burn down the hypocrisy. Her heart ached because one way or another she would lose all her boys. First it was Justin-Marie. Then Razyé II. Soon these two. Too bad. It had to be done.
She reread the letter she had dropped in her lap.
“I wonder whether we shall ever see each other again in this world.”
In spite of herself, tears rolled down her cheeks.