Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
supreme. In any other they are almost inevitably condemned to mediocrity or worse. The predicament is
full of unknown hazards. The Haitian Renaissance is only seven years old, and only the coming decades
can answer these questions.
You may say that Hyppolite, by dying, has discovered the only safe issue. But he had, by delving deep-
er and deeper into the territory he had already marked out for himself, found it long before. Urbanism and
success only drove him to mine for his buried heirloom of atavistic wealth with more vigour and single-
ness of purpose. And this, of course, is the right solution to the problem.
Mystical preoccupations even affect the names of the buses. They stood in a row down one side of a
square near the market, antique conveyances with wooden superstructures painted all over with green and
orange and scarlet. Their names were picked out in large characters: Ste. Therese, St. Charles Borromée,
les Trois Josefs, St. Jacques Majeur, Notre Dame de Perpetuel Secours, and, lastly, our own, Ste. Rose de
Lima (
La Bolide en Action, Toujours en Eveil
).
The road carried us out of the capital, through the concourse of horses and mules and into the country,
and ran northwards then as straight as a rifle bullet. The rough surface shook the vehicle so mercilessly
that every pothole threatened to break it to bits. Breakdowns and halts for rum-drinking were mercifully
frequent, and long after we had stopped, an empty cylinder of fine white dust lingered for miles above the
road as though the whole army of Sennacherib were on the march. My two neighbours in the back carried
game-cocks on their knees, and, under the temporary roof of interlocking hat-brims, dodging the random
savagery of their beaks and the criss-crossing trajectories of spit was an added hazard to the journey. Our
presence appeared to be a welcome change and a source of chaff and entertainment. Our fellow-passen-
gers, all of them peasants from Gonaïves or the North, would point us out to their acquaintances as we
rattled through the villages. '
Z
'
avons twois blancs-là
,' they would shout, indicating three figures that
must have seemed as strange in such surroundings as three Negroes would have appeared in the Outer
Hebrides. Now and then they interrupted their endless conversation in Créole to turn to one of us and ask,
'
Ça va, blanc?'
The blazing sun had soon reduced us all to liquefaction, and the dust that settled in our
mouths and throats and all over our bodies had reduced everybody,
blancs
and
noirs
alike, to a spectral
uniformity.
For hours on end there was no change in the scenery. The straight vista of road vanished ahead, and
the flat sheet of dust stretched away towards mountains as dry and wrinkled as the hide of an elephant.
In the neighbourhood of the straggling villages, dusty cane-fields appeared, a field or two of Indian corn
and a few plantations of yam and cassava. Then a derelict assembly of huts would fly past, where the
old pipe-smoking crones in their scarlet kerchiefs thumped away with their great wooden pestles and
mortars, surrounded by a swarm of naked children who waved deliriously as we passed. Lean pigs, their
necks bound in pillories of sticks to keep them from breaking through the fences, dispersed squealing at
our approach, and moth-eaten donkeys reared up at their tethers with a deafening bray. For some reason
their ears had been cut off, a mutilation which lent them the bald, unfurnished appearance of sea-horses.
The villages vanished, and the monotonous plain returned. Only cactus throve there, candelabra-cactus
growing singly, or assembling into clumps and spinneys of barrenness, or the larger organ-cactus which
springs from the plain in great gatherings of pipes. Desiccated weed flourished sparsely among them, and
thorn bushes whose roots had withered away. The lightest breath of wind would detach and send them
spinning aimlessly along the plain like overgrown globes of thistledown. The landscape was disturbing
in its sterility. Only less disturbing than the parched hamlets that rose a few feet above its dusty surface.
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