Martinique - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 35

and the half-castes, and the Hindu world, especially the coolies. We would meet out in the country, you
know, among the sugar-cane. It was remarkable, I assure you! Or better still, under the cataracts up in the
mornes , drenched to the skin. J'aimais beaucoup les cataractes ….' His long, ringed hand described the
arc of a waterfall.
It was soon pitch dark, and time to return to Fort-de-France. The streets of François were so full that
it was necessary to slow down, and finally to stop. A fair was in progress, and the whole of the central
square was ablaze with serbies and acetylene flares. Every inch of space was filled with villagers all
singing and laughing and arguing, or shaking dice at the gambling booths, or shooting at clay pipes. One
side of the square was lined with tombola booths—minute, dazzlingly-lit cubes of rushwork and carpet
from which a wall had been folded back to reveal, among an undergrowth of ribbons and tinsel, decor-
ated bottles of Vermouth and bogus Sèvres vases and celluloid thumbs-ups, and, for some reason, entire
families of Negroes sitting amongst them in mournful silence, as if they, too, were waiting to be won. But
everywhere else the hubbub was deafening. Somewhere in the background, the ear could just detect the
thud of tom-toms.
We worked our way through the crowd, moving from booth to booth. All at once I saw Costa's hand
being wrung by a towering Negro sergeant whose breast clanked with medals. ' Nom d'un nom, qu'est
que vous faites ici, mon lieutenant? ' It was a war-time comrade-in-arms of Costa's from the Free French
forces in Africa. We were soon sitting in his little dilapidated living-room drinking Triple-Sec, and talk-
ing to his wife. She was a Greek girl from Aleppo, very dusky, and plainly had some Arab blood. She
spoke a queerly garbled and corrupt Greek of the type one hears in many towns of the Levant seaboard
and hinterland, interspersed with guttural sounds that have never passed Athenian lips. She seemed to be
very happy with her husband—a big, kind, gentle person who gazed at her with great pride as she talked
in her strange language. Two children huddled against her skirts, addressing her occasionally in a mixture
of French and Greek and Arabic, their eyes fixed on us in a bewildered stare. Yes, she was happy with
Hyacinthe, she said, looking fondly at him; he was very good to her. But the Martinicans! She made the
orthodox sign of the Cross three times and struck her forehead; wild, wild people! Agrioi anthropoi! If
only she and Hyacinthe had stayed in Aleppo….
It was a very sad and empty little room—an unmade bed in which they obviously all four slept, some
household utensils, one chair and a few stools, all, in the wavering rushlight, appearing even shabbier
than they really were. In the middle of the floor, placed there, one felt, for display as much as for use,
stood a sewing machine of obsolete make. She placed her hand lovingly on its rusty back, and told us
that it had been her dowry. How she had cried when, on the journey, they thought it was lost! But it had
turned up as they got off the ship. We made plans to meet again in Fort-de-France, when they both went
in on market day. (But they did not appear.)
Outside, in the torchlight chiaroscuro of the market-place, the noise, the shouting and the music
seemed to have grown; amplified in my ears, perhaps, by the effects of the Triple-Sec, which had fallen
like petrol on the embers of our midday celebrations inside me, and rekindled them into a generous blaze.
At any rate, all seemed suddenly exciting, and almost magical, especially the roundabouts.
These were ramshackle contrivances, and the circus of galloping horses, gaudy wooden mounts dec-
orated with rings and spots and stripes, was propelled, not by machinery, but by the exertions of an army
of little boys who pelted round and round clutching some part of the framework, screaming at the top
of their voices, shouting and laughing and fighting for a chance to help in the pushing. For, instead of
being paid to do the work of the absent machinery, free fights for the privilege radiated from the merry-