Haiti - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 152

the many anniversaries of the Haitian calendar, these paladins are the objects of a public cult. Peering
through my window over the tree-tops, I could observe the crowds assembling round the image of Des-
salines, and the police persuading them back on to the pavements; and I would hurry downstairs and run
across the grass to join them. A body of the Haitian Guard came swinging through the sunlight from the
direction of the barracks, with pennants waving overhead, each platoon headed by an officer with a drawn
sword. Wheeling into line with Potsdamlike precision, they formed a guard of honour. There we would
wait, while a brass band discoursed military music to the morning air. Beyond the soldiers and the tree-
tops and the stone sword-wielder appeared the steep Tyrolean-chalet roofs of the villas which surrounded
the Champ de Mars, and beyond them the mountains were gracefully assembled. Their bare, clean lines,
the shadows branching like leaf-veins in their ravines and the crystalline purity of the sky recalled the
mountain satellites of Athens. My gaze would sink again to the ranks of Haitian soldiers. They wore their
American uniforms with extraordinary dash. With my mind still lingering on Athenian themes, and the
flashing fustanellas of the Evzones at similar functions, I regretted that a crack regiment of the Haitian
Guard was not also dressed in the ancestral war trappings of Africa. How splendid these black warriors
would appear, naked to the waist, equipped with the head-dresses of ostrich feathers, and armed with the
vast almond-shaped shields of antelope-hide, the heavy knobkerries, and the tall and glittering assegais
… ! Such reveries were interrupted by a movement in the crowd: all heads were turning in one direc-
tion, as a procession of limousines came purring down upon us through the haze. Words of command
rang out, and fanfares sounded as the vehicles glided up to the foot of the statue and discharged their
loads of officials in uniform and evening clothes: the generals, the military household, the cabinet and, at
last, the President himself. M. Estimé had reached presidential office a year before as a result of Haiti's
one bloodless revolution. (The Mulatto government of M. Lescot had been criticized for its increasingly
fascist tendencies, and had been turned out in favour of an all-Black régime.) The President, a figure of
great dignity, descended from his motor, and, making his way through the galaxy of notables, placed an
enormous wreath before the statue. Bayonets flashed in salute, the band played the National Anthem, the
air trembled with the boom of saluting ordnance. A sizzle and hiss was followed by a loud swish as the
first of many rockets sailed upwards and popped in the limpid air. The cars filled up again and purred
away, and an open limousine, escorted by a moving crackle of applause, carried the President slowly
down the avenue. The sun gleamed in the spectacles and the ebony contours of the President's face, and
added lustre, against the black serge and the starch, to the ribbons and orders. It flashed resplendently
from the top hat that was raised in a motionless attitude of acknowledgment. Then the crowd broke over
the scorched grass and we would follow the fleet of cars at a trot in the direction of the statue of Toussaint
l'Ouverture….
Along one side of this expanse of sward lies the presidential palace, an immense rectangle pierced by a
multiplicity of windows and crowned by a groined dome which is flanked by two attendant cupolas; and
all of a white so uncompromising and refractory to the sun that it appears, in that setting of parched earth
and superabundant green, to be an edifice of snow magically transported from the polar wastes. At peri-
ods of national solemnity, it is adorned at night by thousands of electric bulbs, so that, with its vast bulk
immaterialized, it hangs in the night as insubstantially as a pier which has been illuminated for a regatta.
On its highest dome the Haitian banner in neon-lighting flashes on and off every second as though it were
flapping and beating in a non-existent wind. It is often the background for the trajectories and the ex-
panding sheaves of fireworks. The Haitians gaze up through the leaves at this magic foliage, and a whiff
of cordite and saltpetre floats to their nostrils on the warm air.