Trinidad - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 106

of La Bohème . The jacket, too, the Bim-Bim, or Saga-Boy-coat, has an eccentric and individual cut.
There is no padding in the shoulders, a wasp waist, a vent up the back, and lappets that descend in some
cases—and this is what gives them their distinctive character—as low as the voluminously trousered
knee. They are sometimes cut square in front, so that the whole lower part forms a kind of elongated
bell. A broad snap-brim hat is worn with this costume, absolutely straight on the head, or tilted rather
forward. The shirts may be severely cut out of some pastel-shade material with a high collar and deep
cuffs fastened with glittering links, or in patterns of crossed Coca-Cola bottles, mandolines, palm trees,
hearts transfixed with arrows, peonies or masks of Tragedy or Comedy; or even of toile de Jouy , with
quiet pastoral scenes of rustics and grazing cattle, against the background of a watermill or ivy-hung ru-
ins. The ties, secured with gold pins or chains, have the splendour of lanced ulcers. A rare but notable
affectation is the wearing of a long gold Cab Calloway watch-chain, running from the belt in a loop that
may fall below the knee before curving up again to the left-hand trouser pocket. The effect of all this on
the Trinidadians, with their wide shoulders, long legs and diminutive middles, is flamboyant, certainly,
but at the same time elegant and imposing beyond words. The magnificent Negro carriage comes into its
own at last. The ensemble is, exactly as it should be, ineffably foppish and voulu , but worn with a flaunt-
ing ease and a grace of deportment that compels nothing but admiration; and like the authentic dandyism
of Baudelaire and Constantin Guys, it is much more than a mere point of fashion. It is a philosophy and
a way of life: the symbol, the outward and visible sign of the Saga Weltanschauung .
The disreputable side of this world has developed a jargon that is sometimes as lively and as difficult
as the cant of Alsatia in seventeenth-century London, or the ballads of Villon. A 'Robust Man'—with the
stress on the first syllable—is fairly simply, a tough guy. A 'Sweet Man' is the same as a Saga Boy, while
a 'Smart Man' is a crook. The sympathetic word 'Mopsy,' was translated to me as 'a girl, a little number,'
while 'Spoat' is a downright whore. A 'Mauvais' Langue'—only interesting as a survival—is a scold,
'Black as White' means 'anything goes,' and 'Mattafix' is O.K. 'Mareeko,' after the Spanish Maricon ,
and 'Mama Poule,' both of which mean a pathic, hint that catamitish delights are not unknown in this
easy-going society. These are the only words I managed to collect in the limited time at my disposal for
linguistic fieldwork, but I believe that, with time and application, a large vocabulary of Saga words could
be assembled. Perhaps it has been done. If not, it would be worth doing—it would take the student clean
out of the study and the rut of a library research.
The distance from the lower strata of the Saga world to the world of razor-slashing and serious crime
cannot be great, and, to judge by the Port of Spain newspapers and some of the Calypsoes, this is pretty
advanced. One Calypso has a dolefully recurrent chorus about 'Port of Spain alone, boasting a criminal
zone,' as though its existence were a source of sombre pride.
In the English-speaking Negro world of the Americas, Harlem is Rome, St. Louis might be Athens or
Alexandria, and Port of Spain is Byzantium: Jazz; Blues; Calypso.
These songs are supposed to have started about the time of the Emancipation, and they were composed
at first in the Créole patois, which the slaves had learnt from their masters, at that time predominantly
French. Trinidadian students of the subject attribute the tunes to a mixture of African tribal songs with
the music of France and Spain. English words began to be used as the new language ousted the old some
time before the turn of the century. French, it seems, must have been the dominant influence for too short
a time for Créole to sink the sturdy roots that it grew in Dominica and other Windward Isles. But the Eng-