Martinique continued - The Traveller's Tree: A Journey Through the Caribbean Islands - page 52

à pain! ' The car stopped and, after punctilious farewells, this minute phenomenon walked springily down
his garden path.
The iron shutters of the Sourire de Venise were down and locked, and no amount of rapping on them
produced any response. A dock-hand sitting in a barrow explained that the police had closed it two days
before because of a fight entre deux de ces dames . We wandered down the street past a number of humble
dens with evocative names— A l'Instar de Paris, Bar de l'Enthousiasme, Caprice Antillais . At last, in
one with the signboard of a great staring eye, called L'Oeil qui voit tout , we found Sosthène in a neat blue
suit and the shirt with the pattern of bleeding hearts that he had worn on the Colombie . He was full of
complaints about the illogicality of the Sourire de Venise , where the fight, it transpired, had been about
him, between Françoise and Marie-Thérèse. He had now settled in the hotel above the Oeil , maintain-
ing—though it looked exactly the opposite—that it was more serious. He then introduced his new friend,
Jeannine, who was much prettier and quieter than either of his other two fiancées. She was slim and coal-
black, with a lot of shiny straight black hair piled in a bang on her forehead. She had a deep and gentle
voice, but most of the time seemed content to watch us in happy silence. Sosthène complained bitterly
about the conduct of his ex-fiancée. ' Vous savez, la Françoise, quand je n'étais pas là, passait son temps
à monter avec d'autres types, surtout avec d'autres gens de sa race. Eh bien, moi, je n'aime pas ça, c'est
pas correct, pas comme il faut .' He took a long drink. ' Eh, quand on pense aux maladies qui circulent,
ça vous donne la chair de poule .' Same story with la Marie-Thérèse. ' Tandis que la Jeannine ,' he con-
tinued, patting his neighbour's hand, ' c'est tout à fait autre chose, ah! tout à fait! Elle est logique. C'est
une dame, quoi, on peut la sortir n'importe où! ' Returning to the subject of Françoise, he maintained she
was a savage. During the course of a single night—after a hard day's work, too—he had been compelled
no less than three times to eject her from his room by force; but each time, by prising the lock or shinning
up a drainpipe, she had contrived to sneak back and curl up while he was asleep, until out of sheer fa-
tigue he had to tolerate her presence. 'Look at my cheeks,' he said, 'they're hollow. I'm a walking corpse.
It couldn't go on….' What was worse, she had been trying to persuade him to go to her village in the
mornes and settle with her parents; once there, he continued, they poison you slowly with the juice of the
manchineel tree, or with small chips of bamboo stirred into the food that they whittle from a stick that
has been driven into a pauper's grave. It penetrates the coffinless corpse, and after remaining there for a
week it is withdrawn for the purpose of doing in poor chaps like him. 'And they cast spells on you, too.'
Sosthène really was looking haggard after all these vicissitudes.
After a while a young Frenchman appeared, who had arrived a few days before from Radio-Paris to
visit the wireless station of Martinique, and we all went by taxi to a rather pretentious road-house outside
Fort-de-France. There were a few French people, but most of the clientèle were the palest of Mulattoes,
all elaborately dressed. We were in an atmosphere of stilt-like heels, diamond wrist-watches and popping
champagne corks. The uncompromising ebony of Jeannine's complexion, her quietness and composure
were in sharp contrast to the surrounding noise and the spuriously sophisticated atmosphere. She had
lagged behind us as we left the Sourire de Venise , and there had been the sounds of a minor row behind
us in the dark street. She told us that it was Françoise and Marie-Theérèse, who had lurked in the shadows
to threaten her with vengeance if she went out with these three békés without asking them. She laughed
gaily as she explained this, saying that she had nothing to fear; she could defend herself. Not, she contin-
ued seriously, that she approved of young women going armed. Sosthène patted her shoulder proudly and
said, 'Quite right, Jeannine.' I asked her what sort of arms. Many of the girls, she said, carried scissors