Haiti - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 153

Late one afternoon during the three days of festivity that mark the anniversary of independence, I
paused outside the railings of the President's palace. On the shady lawns inside, a great garden party
was in progress. Innumerable groups conversed under the palm trees. There were many uniforms, and
scattered fragments of black or violet signalled the participation of the clergy. The hats and dresses and
parasols of the ladies had sought and achieved the exact equipoise between gala and formality. The occa-
sional pallor of a European, as the member of a foreign mission sauntered in colloquy with some grave le-
gislator of the Republic, looked almost ghost-like. Splendidly dressed footmen moved through the elong-
ated shadows with silver trays of champagne, and from the orchestra under the mangoes came the notes
of the Invitation to the Waltz . It was a scene of singular and authentically Firbankian charm.
The day after Christmas is celebrated in Pétionville by a succession of cockfights. I wonder if this, and
the kindred ceremony of the Boxing Day Meet in England, commemorate in some obscure and atavistic
fashion the stoning of Saint Stephen? And the Easter Bull Fights in Spain? Do they combine with their
Mithraistic traditions a memento of the Passion, the Via Dolorosa and Golgotha, with the Lamb sym-
bolism expanded to a sacrifice of Mithras and the Spectators in the role of the Hierosolymite mob? The
banderillas would commemorate the scourging, the crowning with thorns, the bulrush-sceptre. The incid-
ent of St. Veronica is plainly referred to in the sporting jargon of the afición and the kill, the Moment of
Truth, would equate to the Roman's ultimate and dissolving lance-thrust….It is a problem that could be
profitably debated by Wyndham Lewis and Hemingway and the College of Cardinals.
The cockpit in Pétionville is a rectangle of beaten earth enclosed by a barrier of plank and sheltered
from the sun by a roof of matting. After the blinding glare, the interior seemed almost pitch dark. There
were about two hundred Negroes and Mulattoes, most of them belonging to the working class, clustering
in little groups round the feathered champions. Tipsters and bookies circulated everywhere, and pedlars
selling Coca-Cola and beer and rum. Some of the bets placed looked enormous, and bulbous rolls of
gourde and dollar notes appeared from the pockets of the humblest labourers. The gourde is equivalent
to a fifth of the U.S. dollar, and is divided up into centimes and cobs ; and as American currency also
circulates as legal tender, it is a long time before you are fully abreast of the intricacies of centimes or,
centimes Haitiens, cobs , U.S. dollars and gourdes . I heard two explanations for the curious name of the
larger Haitian unit. One was that it derives from the old Spanish peso gordo; the other that Christophe
commandeered all the actual gourds in the kingdom (those hollowed, pumpkin-like globes are almost the
only domestic utensils in the country areas) and issued them again as currency. The vision of shopping
with a hundred gourds, or banks whose vaults contained them by the million, is so bewildering that one
is unwillingly driven back to the first explanation.
We sat on a bench surrounded by standing Haitians. Most of the feet at the end of the forest of legs
were bare, and so calloused with walking that they were virtually equipped, like espadrilles, with soles
of fibre or rope. Occasionally a pair of legs was enclosed in white linen and shod with bi-coloured shoes
which wove their way like raffish pythons through the groves of darker extremities. These were usually
owned by business men and fight-promoters smoking large cigars.
It was the Haitian equivalent of a Regency sporting occasion. Jet black Bang-Up Corinthians stood
with arms akimbo, discussing form with the Hawbucks and the Gemmen of the Fancy. The game-cocks
were passed from hand to hand, prodded and fumbled and appraised and held at arm's length for display,
or placed on the ground and pressed up and down as though to test the resilience of their legs. There