Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
' Elle est twès, twès mauvaise .'
' Mauvaise? Pourquoi? '
' C'est une espionne .'
Costa returned with his straw-hatted girl. In the middle of the dance she had pressed something into
his hand. A key! ('Well, for heaven's sake!') This, it appears, is not so much for actual use as for a con-
ventional token of complaisance. I danced with the spy, who at once slipped into a strangle-hold of such
un-Dominican impudeur that, coupled with my inexpert attempts at mastering the complexities of the
biguine, it was miraculous how we maintained our balance. Sitting down, after a few minutes, was a dis-
tinct relief.
There was something curiously engaging about these girls. Except for the one next to Sosthène, who
was a terrible chatterbox, the rest were rather quiet, sitting relaxed upon their chairs with their hands
folded in their laps, gazing solemnly at nothing; or else, if one's eyes crossed, smiling with the most
transparent ingenuousness and benignity. They seemed to be extraordinarily unmercenary. When offered
drinks, they quite often refused, or ordered a punch martinicais , which costs well under a shilling. Very
different from the platinum blonde blunt instruments that would be their equivalents in a European bar of
the kind. They had an extraordinary aura of rather comic integrity, and seemed miraculously to have es-
caped any feeling of vice and guilt, considering their status to be not so much discreditable as extremely
humble. This stubbornly incorruptible innocence is a quality that, if it ever existed there, has vanished
from the whole of Europe except Greece. A long and erudite essay could be written to explain exactly
why the descendants of jungle dwellers and of the most civilized race in the world should have won this
bloodless and permanent victory over the sense of sin.
Charlemagne accompanied us some of the way uphill (feeding the conversation at well-chosen points),
and also Sosthène. We made an appointment to meet him at the Sourire de Venise later in the week, to be
introduced to Françoise, ' ma fiancée—une jeune fille vraiment logique .'
We were talking of ghosts. I had heard a diverting story about the deputy for a constituency in the west
of the island. According to a local tradition, an ordinary hen's egg, if it is kept warm in the human armpit
during the whole of Lent, hatches out on Easter Day and reveals a manikin three inches high, who at once
prostrates himself before his foster-father and swears eternal obedience to him. He is invisible to all but
his master. The deputy in question, owing to his adroitness at amateur conjuring tricks, already enjoyed
a great reputation as a wizard, and did not bother to make glowing promises or to attack the opposition
in his pre-election speech. He informed the electorate simply that he had posted one of these Easter-egg
myrmidons inside the electoral urn with instructions to destroy any voting slips in favour of the opposi-
tion. The opposition, hearing this, knew that the game was up, and he was elected unanimously.
The road that led us northwards into the steep heart of the island soon reached a watershed. We were able
to look westwards through the treetops at the quiet Caribbean Sea, and eastwards over the Gros Morne to
where the jagged Caravelle peninsula intruded its long and intricate outline into the Atlantic. We gazed at
this promontory with interest, for it was the home, in the eighteenth century, of the heroine of a singularly
romantic story.
A beautiful Créole girl called Aimée du Buc de Rivry, the daughter of a nobleman with large estates in
the neighbourhood, when walking one evening in the mornes with her favourite cousin, encountered an
old Negro woman sitting under a mango tree who was famous in the region as a kind of Sibyl. They asked
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