- The Estimé government has passed a law which forbids promenading in the streets sans shoes: this is a hard, uneconomical ruling, and an uncomfortable one as well, especially for those peasants who must bring their produce to market afoot. But the government, now anxious to make the country more of a tourist attraction, feels that shoeless Haitians might depress his potential trade, that the poorness of the people should not be overt. By and large, however, Haitians are poor, but about this poverty there is none of that vicious, mean atmosphere which surrounds the poverty that demands a keeping-up of appearances.
It always makes me rather wretched when some popular platitude proves true; still, it is a fact, I suppose, that the most generous of us are those that have the least to be generous with. Almost any Haitian who comes to call will conclude his visit by presenting you with a small, usually odd gift: a can of sardines, a spool of thread; but these gifts are given with such dignity and tenderness that, ah! the sardines have swallowed pearls, the thread is purest silver.
- This is R.’s story. A few days ago he went out into the country to sketch; suddenly, coming to the bottom of a hill, he saw a tall, slant-eyed, ragged girl. She was tied to the trunk of a tree, wire and rope binding her there. At first, because she laughed at him, he thought it was a joke, but when he tried to let her loose several children appeared and began to poke at him with sticks; he asked them why the girl was tied to the tree, but they giggled and shouted and would not give an answer. Presently an old man joined them; he was carrying a gourd filled with water. When R. asked again about the girl, the old man, tears misting his eyes, said, “She is bad, monsieur, there is no use she is so bad,” and shook his head. R. started back up the hill; then, turning, he saw the man was letting her drink from the gourd, and as she took a last swallow she spat into his face; with a gentle patience the old man wiped himself and walked away.
- I like Estelle, and I must say I have come to care less for S. because he doesn’t: there is no brand of intolerance so tiresome as that which results in condemning characteristics you yourself possess: in the opinion of S., Estelle is lusty, vulgar, a fraud; S., to be sure, and except for the first mentioned, is not without these qualities himself. In any event, it shows a finer nature to be unconsciously vulgar than to be consciously virtuous. But of course S. is very much “in” with the American colony here, and their views, with a few isolated exceptions, are often gray and always severe. Estelle isn’t cherished by any group. “Who gives a damn?” says she. “Listen, egghead, there’s nothing wrong with me but the fact that I’m so almighty good-looking, and when a girl’s as good-looking as me and she won’t let a lot of crumbs crawl all over, well, thumbs down, get it?”
Estelle is one of the tallest girls I’ve ever seen, an easy six feet; her face is strong and bony, in the Swedish manner, her hair rosy, her eyes cat-green: somehow there is always an aura about her which suggests that she has just been tossed about in a hurricane. She is several Estelles, actually. One of them is the heroine of a not-too-good novel: here today—gone tomorrow, hello, you heartache of a world, that school of antics. Another Estelle is a big puppy of a girl dizzy for love: she is always quite sure the most improbable people have the most honorable intentions.
A third Estelle is not so much shady as she is shadowy: who is Estelle? what is she doing here? how long does she intend to stay? what is it that makes her get up in the morning? Now and then this third element of the multiple Miss E. will refer to her “work.” But the nature of her work is never labeled. Most of the time she sits in a café on the Champ de Mars and, at a cost of ten cents a round, drinks rum punches. The bartender is always asleep, and whenever she wants anything she swaggers over and thumps his head as though it were a ripe watermelon. There is a crazy little lop-eared dog that follows her everywhere, and usually she has some human crony with her, too. Her favorite is a pale, prim man who might be a Bible salesman; as it happens, he is a traveling entertainer who hops from island to island with a suitcase full of puppets and a head full of nonsense.
On clear evenings Estelle sets up headquarters at a table on the sidewalk outside the café; many of the young native girls bring their love problems here to this table: about other people’s love she is serious and sad. Once she herself was married, when or to whom I do not know, she is so altogether vague, but, and even though she is only twenty-five, it must have been a very long time ago. Last night I passed by the café, and as usual she was sitting at her sidewalk table. But there was a difference.
She was wearing make-up, which she seldom does, and a neat, conventional dress; there were two pink carnations burning in her hair, the sort of decoration of which I’d thought her incapable. Also, I’d never seen her really drunk before. “Egghead, hello, is it you? Yesyesyes,” she said, tapping me on the chest, “listen, kid, I’m going to give you proof positive, I’m going to show you it’s a fact, it’s a fact that when you love somebody that somebody can make you eat any goddamn thing. Look now”—and she yanked a carnation from her hair—“he’s nuts about me,” she said, thrusting the flower at the little dog crouched at her feet, “he’ll eat it just because I say to, damn if he won’t.”
But the dog merely sniffed.
The last few weekends here have been devoted to the rahrahs preceding carnival, and carnival, which began yesterday, continues for three days. Rahrahs are miniature previews of carnival itself; Saturday, sometime past noon, the drums commence, separately at first, one high in the hills, another nearer town, back and forth these signals run, insinuating, insistent, until there is established a pervasive vibration which shimmers the surface of silence, ripples like heat waves, and here where I am, alone in this arsenic-colored room, all action seems to stem from their sound: doom die doom, over there, look: light quivers in the water jar, a crystal bubble, set in motion, rolls across a table, shatters on the floor, wind, catching curtains, curling Bible leaves, tells doom die doom.
By dusk the island takes the expanding shape of a sound of drums. Small bands carouse the streets; these are made of family groups, or secret societies, all singing different songs which sound the same; the leader of each band wears feathers in his hair, a spangled crazy-quilt suit, and each has a pair of cheap dark glasses; while the others sing and stamp their feet he spins around, grinds his hips, cocks his head from side to side like an evil parrot: everybody laughs, and some couples join together, dancing with their heads thrown back, their lips ajar, doom die doom, the rhythm rotates their haunches, their eyes are rich moons, doom die doom.
Last night R. took me into the midst of the carnival. We were going to see the ceremony of a young boungan, that is to say, Voodou priest, this one an extraordinary boy whose name I never heard. It was held at a distance from the city, and so we had to take an autobus, a small wagon which can inconveniently carry ten passengers; but there were almost double that number, some of them in costume, including a dwarf wearing a cap of bells and an old man with a mask like raven wings; R. sat next to the old man, who at one point said, “Do you understand the sky? Yes, I thought you would, but it was I who made it.”
To which R. answered, “I suppose you made the moon, too?”
The man nodded. “And the stars, they are my grandchildren.”
A rowdy woman clapped her hands and announced that the old man was crazy. “But, dear lady,” he replied, “if I am crazy, then how could I have done these beautiful things?”
It was a slow trip; the autobus stalled, crowds surged around, faces concealed behind masks dangled in the dark, archaic light of candle torches showering them like some eccentric yellow rain.
When we reached the boungan’s, which is above the town, a quiet place shrill only with the night noises of insects, the ceremony had already begun, although the boungan himself had not yet appeared. Surrounding the temple, a long thatch-roofed shed with altar rooms at either end
