Guadeloupe continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 25

It had been a long, strange day.
Guadeloupean buses, like battleships, all have names. These ramshackle torture-chambers hoot their way
through the mornes and savannahs under names like Le Tigre, Le Terrible, I'Ogre , or, more modestly,
Rodolfe . Their names are painted in bright colours on boards attached to the front of the vehicles. The
fearful old diligence that we boarded at Dolé to take us to Pointe-à-Pitre was I'Indomptable . It broke
down several times on the way, and at last decisively. Costa wisely unpacked his bed and went to sleep
under a breadfruit tree.
We finally entered Pointe-à-Pitre at walking pace in the wake of a funeral. Scarcely a day goes by
without one's catching at least a distant glimpse of a funeral, and Pompes Funèbres is a shop sign that
seems as common as those of butchers or grocers. Coffins are constantly being bundled into monument-
al hearses, rattling black arks with chipped drapery carved out of wood, the roof piled high with carved
scythes and skulls and hour-glasses. The letters A and Ω are sometimes painted on the panels to remind
passers-by that every beginning has an end. The plumed horses amble slowly down the street (or a recal-
citrant engine is cranked up) and the long procession shuffles after them in the direction of the cemetery.
One coffin I saw being loaded up was shaped like a cannon-shell, as though its passenger was determined
to cut out the red tape and hurtle direct to his bull's-eye in Abraham's bosom.