Guadeloupe continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 28

' Et alors? '
' Elle vous aime. Est-que vous l'aimez? '
' Enfin, j'aime tout le monde …'
' Alors, moi aussi? '
' Je suppose, oui .'
At this stage she danced back to her companions, squeaking and clapping her hands.
A few minutes later Costa, in a state of liquefaction, came in from the street, threw his paints into
a chair, and ordered a glass of beer. As soon as the waitress had retired, I repeated—with, I must con-
fess, some complacency—the colloquy that had just taken place. Half-way through I noticed that Costa's
enormous lettuce-green eyes were straining from their orbits with astonishment. When I had finished, he
said: 'B-but that's extraordinary. I had exactly the same c-conversation half an hour ago.' We gazed into
each other's eyes, first with amazement, then with rue, and finally burst out laughing.
The three waitresses, meanwhile, after eagerly following our conversation from a distance, were in
convulsions of laughter, as though a long fuse had at last detonated some explosive. The arches rang with
a sort of high scream, followed by a gasping sigh of indrawn breath and a powerless rocking of the head
as, bent almost double, and helplessly striking their knees with their hands, they prepared for a fresh out-
burst.
H'm.
The St. Laurent was still on strike and Pointe-à-Pitre had become as hateful to us as a plague-town.
Dredging the guide books of Guadeloupe, I discovered—how could I have missed it before?—that the
Schoelcher was not the only museum of Pointe-à-Pitre; there was also le musée l'Herminier d'Art Pré-
columbéen. I set off at once.
It was opposite the Lycée Carnot. There was nobody there. The door was wide open, all the glass was
broken, and everything was coated with the dust of decades. Apart from half a dozen shapeless arrow-
heads, there was nothing pre-Columbian. The walls were surrounded by glassless show-cases filled with
stuffed birds and eggs, all of them broken, and fish. Everything was falling to bits. One of the fish looked
rather unreal, so I reached into the case and took it out. Not only was the straw coming out of the tail,
but it was made of cotton and sewn together with pack-thread; the scales were symbolized by crescents
of red and blue paint. I thought for a long minute of slipping this treasure into my pocket, but, overcome
at last by conscience, I laid it reverently back into its place.
A flamingo standing on a tree stump was being strangled by a python. The head of the snake had
dropped off with decay, and lay glaring on the floor. Several pelicans with their wings closed hung on
wires from the ceiling. Whether they had originally represented pelicans in flight whose wings had gradu-
ally shut with the passage of time, or whether they were just suspended in mid-air to save space, it was
hard to determine. There were two fine armadilloes whose shells were miraculously intact, and, in a back
room, a two-headed calf which had been so badly stuffed that its front legs had spread outwards till its
chest touched the floor, while the hind legs had bent double at the knees. A contemporary perambulator
reposed under a dozen years' accumulation of dust.
There was something delightful about this museum, and I often think of the Herminier still. In a much
mellower mood I strolled back to the hotel to tell Joan and Costa of my discovery, and visit it again with
them in the capacity of an old habitué and cicerone.