Two Years in the French West Indies Part 33

What is the "malifice"? All that can be ascertained is that certain little p.r.i.c.kly seeds have been scattered all over the ground, where the barefooted workers are in the habit of pa.s.sing. Ordinarily, treading on these seeds is of no consequence; but it is evident in such a case that they must have been prepared in a special way,--soaked in some poison, perhaps snake-venom. At all events, the physician deems it safest to treat the inflammations after the manner of snake wounds; and after many days the hands are perhaps able to resume duty.

XI.

While Cyrillia is busy with her _canari_, she talks to herself or sings.

She has a low rich voice,--sings strange things, things that have been forgotten by this generation,--creole songs of the old days, having a weird rhythm and fractions of tones that are surely African. But more generally she talks to herself, as all the Martiniquaises do: it is a continual murmur as of a stream. At first I used to think she was talking to somebody else, and would call out:--

--"_epi quiless moune ca ou ka pale-a?_"

But she would always answer:--"_Moin ka pale anni c moin_" (I am only talking to my own body), which is the creole expression for talking to oneself.

--"And what are you talking so much to your own body about, Cyrillia?"

--"I am talking about my own little affairs" (_ti zaffai-moin_).... That is all that I could ever draw from her.

But when not working, she will sit for hours looking out of the window.

In this she resembles the kitten: both seem to find the same silent pleasure in watching the street, or the green heights that rise above its roofs,--the Morne d'Orange. Occasionally at such times she will break the silence in the strangest way, if she thinks I am not too busy with my papers to answer a question:--

--"_Missie?_"--timidly.

--"Eh?"

--"_Di moin, che, ti manmaille dans pays ou, toutt piti, piti,--ess ca pale Anglais?_" (Do the little children in my country--the very, very little children--talk English?)

--"Why, certainly, Cyrillia."

--"_Toutt piti, piti?_"--with growing surprise.

--"Why, of course!"

--"_C'est drole, ca_" (It is queer, that!) She cannot understand it.

--"And the little _manmaille_ in Martinique, Cyrillia--_toutt piti, piti_,--don't they talk creole?"

--"'_Oui; mais toutt moune ka pale negue: ca facile_." (Yes; but anybody can talk negro--that is easy to learn.)

XII.

Cyrillia's room has no furniture in it: the Martinique bonne lives as simply and as rudely as a domestic animal. One thin mattress covered with a sheet, and elevated from the floor only by a lefant, forms her bed. The _lefant_, or "elephant," is composed of two thick square pieces of coa.r.s.e hard mattress stuffed with shavings, and placed end to end. Cyrillia has a good pillow, however,--_bourre epi fleches-canne_,--filled with the plumes of the sugar-cane. A cheap trunk with broken hinges contains her modest little wardrobe: a few _mouchoirs_, or kerchiefs, used for head-dresses, a spare _douillette_, or long robe, and some tattered linen. Still she is always clean, neat, fresh-looking. I see a pair of sandals in the corner,--such as the women of the country sometimes wear--wooden soles with a leather band for the instep, and two little straps; but she never puts them on. Fastened to the wall are two French prints--lithographs: one representing Victor Hugo's _Esmeralda_ in prison with her pet goat; the other, Lamartine's _Laurence_ with her fawn. Both are very old and stained and bitten by the _bete-a-ciseau_, a species of _lepisma_, which destroys books and papers, and everything it can find exposed. On a shelf are two bottles,--one filled with holy water; another with _tafia camphree_ (camphor dissolved in tafia), which is Cyrillia's sole remedy for colds, fevers, headaches--all maladies not of a very fatal description. There are also a little woollen monkey, about three inches high--the dusty plaything of a long-dead child;--an image of the Virgin, even smaller;--and a broken cup with fresh bright blossoms in it, the Virgin's flower-offering;--and the Virgin's invariable lamp--a night-light, a little wick floating on olive-oil in a tiny gla.s.s.

I know that Cyrillia must have bought these flowers--they are garden flowers--at the Marche du Fort. There are always old women sitting there who sell nothing else but bouquets for the Virgin,--and who cry out to pa.s.sers-by:--"_Gagne ti bouquet pou Viege-ou, che!_... Buy a nosegay, dear, for your Virgin;--she is asking you for one;--give her a little one, _che cocott_."... Cyrillia says you must not smell the flowers you give the Virgin: it would be stealing from her.... The little lamp is always lighted at six o'clock. At six o'clock the Virgin is supposed to pa.s.s through all the streets of St. Pierre, and wherever a lamp burns before her image, she enters there and blesses that house. "_Faut lime lampe ou pou fai la-Viege pa.s.se dans cae-ou_," says Cyrillia. (You must light the lamp to make the Virgin come into your house.)... Cyrillia often talks to her little image, exactly as if it were a baby,--calls it pet names,--asks if it is content with the flowers.

This image of the Virgin is broken: it is only half a Virgin,--the upper half. Cyrillia has arranged it so, nevertheless, that had I not been very inquisitive I should never have divined its mishap. She found a small broken powder-box without a lid,--probably thrown negligently out of a boudoir window by some wealthy beauty: she filled this little box with straw, and fixed the mutilated image upright within it, so that you could never suspect the loss of its feet. The Virgin looks very funny, thus peeping over the edge of her little box,--looks like a broken toy, which a child has been trying to mend. But this Virgin has offerings too: Cyrillia buys flowers for her, and sticks them all round her, between the edge of the powder-box and the straw. After all, Cyrillia's Virgin is quite as serious a fact as any image of silver or of ivory in the homes of the rich: probably the prayers said to her are more simply beautiful, and more direct from the heart, than many daily murmured before the _chapelles_ of luxurious homes. And the more one looks at it, the more one feels that it were almost wicked to smile at this little broken toy of faith.

--"Cyrillia, _mafi_," I asked her one day, after my discovery of the little Virgin,--"would you not like me to buy a _chapelle_ for you?"

The _chapelle_ is the little bracket-altar, together with images and ornaments, to be found in every creole bedroom.

--"_Mais non, Missie_," she answered, smiling, "_moin aimein ti Viege moin, pa le gagnin dautt_. I love my little Virgin: do not want any other. I have seen much trouble: she was with me in my trouble;--she heard my prayers. It would be wicked for me to throw her away. When I have a sou to spare, I buy flowers for her;--when I have no money, I climb the mornes, and pick pretty buds for her.... But why should Missie want to buy me a _chapelle?_--Missie is a Protestant?"

--"I thought it might give you pleasure, Cyrillia."

--"No, Missie, I thank you; it would not give me pleasure. But Missie could give me something else which would make me very happy--I often thought of asking Missie...but--"

--"Tell me what it is, Cyrillia."

She remained silent a moment, then said:--

--"Missie makes photographs...."

--"You want a photograph of yourself, Cyrillia?"

--"Oh! no, Missie, I am too ugly and too old. But I have a daughter. She is beautiful--_yon bel bois_,--like a beautiful tree, as we say here. I would like so much to have her picture taken."

A photographic instrument belonging to a clumsy amateur suggested this request to Cyrillia. I could not attempt such work successfully; but I gave her a note to a photographer of much skill; and a few days later the portrait was sent to the house. Cyrillia's daughter was certainly a comely girl,--tall and almost gold-colored, with pleasing features; and the photograph looked very nice, though less nice than the original.

Half the beauty of these people is a beauty of tint,--a tint so exquisite sometimes that I have even heard white creoles declare no white complexion compares with it: the greater part of the charm remaining is grace,--the grace of movement; and neither of these can be rendered by photography. I had the portrait framed for Cyrillia, to hang up beside her little pictures.

When it came, she was not in; I put it in her room, and waited to see the effect. On returning, she entered there; and I did not see her for so long a time that I stole to the door of the chamber to observe her.

She was standing before the portrait,--looking at it, talking to it as if it were alive. "_Yche moin, yche moin!... Oui! ou toutt bel!--yche moin bel_." (My child, my child!... Yes, thou art all beautiful: my child is beautiful.) All at once she turned--perhaps she noticed my shadow, or felt my presence in some way: her eyes were wet;--she started, flushed, then laughed.

--"Ah! Missie, you watch me;--_ou guette moin_.... But she is my child.

Why should I not love her?... She looks so beautiful there."

--"She is beautiful, Cyrillia;--I love to see you love her."

She gazed at the picture a little longer in silence;--then turned to me again, and asked earnestly:--

--"_Pouki yo ja ka fai ptrai pale--anh?... p.i.s.se yo ka tire y toutt samm ou: c'est ou-menm!... Yo doue fai y pale 'tou_."

(Why do they not make a portrait talk,--tell me? For they draw it just all like you!--it is yourself: they ought to make it talk.)

--"Perhaps they will be able to do something like that one of these days, Cyrillia."

--"Ah! that would be so nice. Then I could talk to her. _C'est yon bel moune moin fai--y bel, joli moune!... Moin se cause epi y_."...

... And I, watching her beautiful childish emotion, thought:--Cursed be the cruelty that would persuade itself that one soul may be like another,--that one affection may be replaced by another,--that individual goodness is not a thing apart, original, untwinned on earth, but only the general characteristic of a cla.s.s or type, to be sought and found and utilized at will!...

Self-cursed he who denies the divinity of love! Each heart, each brain in the billions of humanity,--even so surely as sorrow lives,--feels and thinks in some special way unlike any other; and goodness in each has its unlikeness to all other goodness,--and thus its own infinite preciousness; for however humble, however small, it is something all alone, and G.o.d never repeats his work. No heart-beat is cheap, no gentleness is despicable, no kindness is common; and Death, in removing a life--the simplest life ignored,--removes what never will reappear through the eternity of eternities,--since every being is the sum of a chain of experiences infinitely varied from all others.... To some Cyrillia's happy tears might bring a smile: to me that smile would seem the unforgivable sin against the Giver of Life!...

CHAPTER XII. "PA COMBINe, CHe!"