Guadeloupe continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 22

There were no heroes' resting-places from the battle of the Saints; no graves, indeed, earlier than the
first decades of the nineteenth century. It was a small overgrown and almost derelict marine cemetery
built in a hollow of the hills and shaded by oak-like mango trees, full of a romantic melancholy in its
abandonment and decay. The elaborate mausolea that make the cemeteries of the Caribbean so extra-
vagant and bizarre were replaced here by a forest of worm-eaten wooden crosses which leaned at every
angle among the long grass. The weather had half obliterated the names and the graves themselves were
bordered, sometimes completely covered, by the beautiful conch-shells that are scattered over every An-
tillean shore, planted in rows on their broader ends, with their cones pointing towards the sky. These
lovely shells are often over a foot in length, white and chalky in texture, twirled in spiralling volutes,
and opening spiky lips to reveal grottoes of the palest pink. A large number of the graves symbolized the
hazards of the sailor's and fisherman's life: black wooden crosses with the legend inscribed in flaking
white paint on the cross-bar: ICI GIT UN MARIN, with no name, date or nationality. Again and again
the message was repeated, marking the burial-places of bodies washed up on the island shores, with all
their features and identifying documents obliterated by their watery sojourn, and sometimes half eaten by
sharks. Now and then a tattooed anchor would be just decipherable, and this emblem, echoed in white
paint, accompanied their laconic epigraphs.
Under a cactus-plant, a marble slab marked the grave of Marie-Louise Félicité de Gimel, Baronne Ser-
indon de La Salle, who died during the reign of Louis Philippe. Who was she, and what brought her to
this minute island? A small mound covered the remains of twins who perished at the age of eight: ' Ici
reposent Yves et Germaine, deuxes anges. '
Grass, salty and rank, invaded everything. Fragile anemones and periwinkles prospered here and there,
and lizards, as motionless as though they were carved out of emerald, lay on the cracked and baking
slabs. They stared with wide unblinking eyes at nothing, in slanting postures of petrified alertness. At an
approaching footfall they scuttled along a cross with the rapidity of a missile, and stopped upside-down
in the same frozen attitude with a suddenness as astonishing as their speed. Two red butterflies wove pat-
terns round each other in the meridional blaze.
On the way back, vainly attempting to remember some lines from Valéry's Cimetière marin , I heard a
tremendous shindy in one of the back streets. A remarkably good-looking and completely drunk Breton
was reeling, inasmuch as you can reel with half a dozen people 'holding you back,' and waving his fists,
shouting ' Vive de Gaulle ' and threatening all comers. Nobody had come forward, but several minor fights
were in progress on the outskirts of the crowd, mainly between children. An old woman was sitting on
the ground screaming, quite unheeded, till her veins stood out, while a grave middle-aged man watched
the scene sorrowfully, holding under his arm a large stuffed turtle. It was an eve-of-election row, and had
plainly been going on for some time. Costa, who like me had been drawn to the noise a little earlier, had
nearly had his camera smashed.
'It means nothing at all,' the curé told us later, 'absolutely nothing.' Father Offrédo's eager, kind little
face was split up into a smile, as he carefully poured out four glasses of white wine. He was born in
Morbihan, but had lived for thirty years in different parishes of the French Antilles without returning to
Brittany, travelling sometimes for days on horseback across the Guade-loupean mornes and savannahs
to administer the Sacraments in isolated hinterland villages. His wiry, hale little frame and cheerful face
spelt nothing but well-being, although he had suffered again and again from dropsy, pneumonia and mal-
aria. His spleen had been completely removed, and he had received Extreme Unction no less than seven
times. He spoke with great affection of his island parishioners, and referred with a laughing tolerance to