University of Virginia Library

10. BÊTE-NI-PIÉ.

I.

ST. Pierre is in one respect fortunate beyond many tropical cities;—she has scarcely any mosquitoes, although there are plenty of mosquitoes in other parts of Martinique, even in the higher mountain villages. The flood of bright water that pours perpetually through all her streets, renders her comparatively free from the pest;—nobody sleeps under a mosquito bar.

Nevertheless, St. Pierre is not exempt from other peculiar plagues of tropical life; and you cannot be too careful about examining your bed before venturing to lie down, and your clothing before you dress;—for various disagreeable things might be hiding in them: a spider large as a big crab, or a scorpion or a mabouya or a centipede,—or certain large ants whose bite burns like the pricking of a red-hot needle. No one who has lived in St. Pierre is likely to forget the ants. … There are three or four kinds in every house;—the fourmi fou (mad ant), a little speckled yellowish creature whose movements are so rapid as to delude the vision; the great black ant which allows itself to be killed before it lets go what it has bitten; the venomous little red ant, which is almost too small to see; and the small black ant which does not bite at all,—are usually omnipresent, and appear to dwell together in harmony. They are pests in kitchens, cupboards, and safes; but they are scavengers. It is marvellous to see them carrying away the body of a great dead roach or centipede,—pulling and pushing

together like trained laborers, and guiding the corpse over obstacles or around them with extraordinary skill. … There was a time when ants almost destroyed the colony,—in 1751. The plantations, devastated by them are described by historians as having looked as if desolated by fire. Underneath the ground in certain places, layers of their eggs two inches deep were found extending over acres. Infants left unwatched in the cradle for a few hours were devoured alive by them. Immense balls of living ants were washed ashore at the same time on various parts of the coast {a phenomenon repeated within the memory of creoles now living in the north-east parishes). The Government vainly offered rewards for the best means of destroying the insects; but the plague gradually disappeared as it came.

None of these creatures can be prevented from entering a dwelling;—you may as well resign yourself to the certainty of meeting with them from time to time. The great spiders (with the exception of those which are hairy) need excite no alarm or disgust;—indeed they are suffered to live unmolested in many houses, partly owing to a belief that they bring good-luck, and partly because they destroy multitudes of those enormous and noisome roaches which spoil whatever they cannot eat. The scorpion is less common; but it has a detestable habit of lurking under beds; and its bite communicates a burning fever. With far less reason, the mabouya is almost equally feared. It is a little lizard about six inches long, and ashen-colored;—it haunts only the interior of houses, while the bright-green lizards dwell only upon the roofs. Like other reptiles of the same order, the mabouya can run over or cling to polished surfaces; and there is a popular belief that if frightened, it will leap at one's face or hands and there fasten itself so tightly that it cannot be dislodged except by cutting it to pieces. Moreover, it's feet are supposed to have the

power of leaving certain livid and ineffaceable marks upon the skin of the person to whom it attaches itself:—ça ka ba ou lota, say the colored people. Nevertheless, there is no creature more timid and harmless than the mabouya.

But the most dreaded and the most insolent invader of domestic peace is the centipede. The water system of the city banished the mosquito; but it introduced the centipede into almost every dwelling. St. Pierre has a plague of centipedes. All the covered drains, the gutters, the crevices of fountain-basins and bathing-basins, the spaces between floor and ground, shelter centipedes. And the bête à-mille-pattes is the terror of the barefooted population:—scarcely a day passes that some child or bonne or workman is not bitten by the creature.

The sight of a full-grown centipede is enough to affect a strong set of nerves. Ten to eleven inches is the average length of adults; but extraordinary individuals much exceeding this dimension may be sometimes observed in the neighborhood of distilleries (rhommeries) and sugar-refineries. According to age, the color of the creature varies from yellowish to black;— the younger ones often have several different tints; the old ones are uniformly jet-black, and have a carapace of surprising toughness,—difficult to break. If you tread, by accident or design, upon the tail, the poisonous head will instantly curl back and bite the foot through any ordinary thickness of upper-leather.

As a general rule the centipede lurks about the court-yards, foundations, and drains by preference; but in the season of heavy rains he does not hesitate to move upstairs, and make himself at home in parlors and bed-rooms. He has a provoking habit of nestling in your moresques or your chinoises,—those wide light garments you put on before taking your siesta or retiring for the night. He also likes to get into your umbrella,—an article

indispensable in the tropics; and you had better never open it carelessly. He may even take a notion to curl himself up in your hat, suspended on the wall. (I have known a trigonocephalus to do the same thing in a country-house). He has also a singular custom of mounting upon the long trailing dresses (douillettes) worn by Martinique women,—and climbing up very swiftly and lightly to the wearer's neck, where the prickling of his feet first betrays his presence. Sometimes he will get into bed with you and bite you, because you have not resolution enough to lie perfectly still while he is tickling you. … It is well to remember before dressing that merely shaking a garment may not dislodge him;—you must examine every part very patiently,—particularly the sleeves of a coat and the legs of pantaloons.

The vitality of the creature is amazing. I kept one in a bottle without food or water for thirteen weeks, at the end of which time it remained active and dangerous as ever. Then I fed it with living insects, which it devoured ravenously;—beetles, roaches, earthworms, several lepismaoe, even one of the dangerous-looking millepedes, which have a great resemblance in outward structure to the centipede, but a thinner body, and more numerous limbs,—all seemed equally palatable to the prisoner. … I knew an instance of one, nearly a foot long, remaining in a silk parasol for more than four months, and emerging unexpectedly one day, with aggressiveness undiminished, to bite the hand that had involuntarily given it deliverance.

In the city the centipede has but one natural enemy able to cope with him,—the hen! The hen attacks him with delight, and often swallows him, head first, without taking the trouble to kill him. The cat hunts him, but she is careful never to put her head near him;—she has a trick of whirling him round and round upon the floor so quickly as to stupefy him: then, when she sees a

good chance, she strikes him dead with her claws. But if you are fond of your cat you will let her run no risks, as the bite of a large centipede might have very bad results for your pet. Its quickness of movement demands all the quickness of even the cat for self-defence. … I know of men who have proved themselves able to seize a fer-de-lance by the tail, whirl it round and round, and then flip it as you would crack a whip,— whereupon the terrible head flies off; but I never heard of anyone in Martinique daring to handle a living centipede.

There are superstitions concerning the creature which have a good effect in diminishing his tribe. If you kill a centipede, you are sure to receive money soon; and even if you dream of killing one it is good-luck. Consequently, people are glad of any chance to kill centipedes,—usually taking a heavy stone or some iron utensil for the work;—a wooden stick is not a good weapon. There is always a little excitement when a bête-ni-pié (as the centipede is termed in the patois) exposes itself to death; and you may often hear those who kill it uttering a sort of litany of abuse with every blow, as if addressing a human enemy:—"Quitté moin tchoué ou, maudi!—quitté moin tchoué ou, scelerat!— quitté moin tchoué ou, Satan!—quitté moin tchoué ou, abonocio!" etc. (Let me kill you, accursed! scoundrel! Satan! abomination!)

The patois term for the centipede is not a mere corruption of the French bête-à-mille-pattes. Among a population of slaves, unable to read or write, * there were only the vaguest conceptions of numerical values; and the French term bête-à-mille-pattes was not one which could appeal to negro imagination. The slaves themselves invented an equally vivid name, bête-anni-pié (the

Beast-which-is-all-feet); anni in creole signifying "only," and in such a sense "all." Abbreviated by subsequent usage to bête-'ni-pié, the appellation has amphibology;—for there are two words ni in the patois, one signifying "to have," and the other "naked." So that the creole for a centipede might be translated in three ways, —"the Beast-which-is-all-feet"; or, "the Naked-footed Beast"; or, with fine irony of affirmation, "the Beast-which-has-feet."

II.

WHAT is the secret of that horror inspired by the centipede? … It is but very faintly related to our knowledge that the creature is venomous;—the results of the bite are only temporary swelling and a brief fever;—it is less to be feared than the bite of other tropical insects and reptiles which never inspire the same loathing by their aspect. And the shapes of venomous creatures are not always shapes of ugliness. The serpent has elegance of form as well as attractions of metallic tinting;—the tarantula, or the matoutou-falaise, have geometrical beauty. Lapidaries have in all ages expended rare skill upon imitations of serpent grace in gold and gems;—a princess would not scorn to wear a diamond spider. But what art could utilize successfully the form of the centipede? It is a form of absolute repulsiveness,—a skeleton-shape half defined:—the suggestion of some old reptile-spine astir, crawling with its fragments of ribs.

No other living thing excites exactly the same feeling produced by the sight of the centipede,—the intense loathing and peculiar fear. The instant you see a centipede you feel it is absolutely necessary to kill it; you cannot find peace in your house while you know that such a life exists in it: perhaps the intrusion of a serpent would annoy and disgust you less. And it is not

easy to explain the whole reason of this loathing. The form alone has, of course, something to do with it,—a form that seems almost a departure from natural laws. But the form alone does not produce the full effect, which is only experienced when you see the creature in motion. The true horror of the centipede, perhaps, must be due to the monstrosity of its movement,— multiple and complex, as of a chain of pursuing and inter- devouring lives: there is something about it that makes you recoil, as from a sudden corrupt swarming-out. It is confusing, —a series of contractings and lengthenings and, undulations so rapid as to allow of being only half seen: it alarms also, because the thing seems perpetually about to disappear, and because you know that to lose sight of it for one moment involves the very unpleasant chance of finding it upon you the next,— perhaps between skin and clothing.

But this is not all:—the sensation produced by the centipede is still more complex—complex, in fact, as the visible organization of the creature. For, during pursuit,—whether retreating or attacking, in hiding or fleeing,—it displays a something which seems more than instinct: calculation and cunning,—a sort of malevolent intelligence. It knows how to delude, how to terrify;—it has marvellous skill in feinting;—it is an abominable juggler. …

III.

I AM about to leave my room after breakfast, when little Victoire who carries the meals up-stairs in a wooden tray, screams out:— "Gadé, Missié! ni bête-ni-pié assous dos ou!" There is a thousand-footed beast upon my back!".

Off goes my coat, which I throw upon the floor;—the little servant, who has a nervous horror of centipedes, climbs upon a chair. I cannot see anything upon the

coat, nevertheless;—I lift it by the collar, turn it about very cautiously—nothing! Suddenly the child screams again; and I perceive the head close to my hand;—the execrable thing had been hiding in a perpendicular fold of the coat, which I drop only just in time to escape getting bitten. Immediately the centipede becomes invisible. Then I take the coat by one flap, and turn it over very quickly: just as quickly does the centipede pass over it in the inverse direction, and disappear under it again. I have had my first good look at him: he seems nearly a foot long,—has a greenish-yellow hue against the black cloth,—and pink legs, and a violet head;—he is evidently young. … I turn the coat a second time: same disgusting manreuvre. Undulations of livid color flow over him as he lengthens and shortens;—while running his shape is but half apparent; it is only as he makes a half pause in doubling round and under the coat that the panic of his legs becomes discernible. When he is fully exposed they move with invisible rapidity,—like a vibration;—you can see only a sort of pink haze extending about him,—something to which you would no more dare advance your finger than to the vapory halo edging a circular saw in motion. Twice more I turn and re-turn the coat with the same result;—I observe that the centipede always runs towards my hand, until I withdraw it: he feints!

With a stick I uplift one portion of the coat after another; and suddenly perceive him curved under a sleeve,—looking quite small!—how could he have seemed so large a moment ago? … But before I can strike him he has flickered over the cloth again, and vanished; and I discover that he has the power of magnifying himself,—dilating the disgust of his shape at will: he invariably amplifies himself to face attack. …

It seems very difficult to dislodge him; he displays astonishing activity and cunning at finding wrinkles and

folds to hide in. Even at the risk of damaging various things in the pockets, I stamp upon the coat; —then lift it up with the expectation of finding the creature dead. But it suddenly rushes out from some part or other, looking larger and more wicked than ever,—drops to the floor, and charges at my feet: a sortie! I strike at him unsuccessfully with the stick: he retreats to the angle between wainscoting and floor, and runs along it fast as a railroad train,—dodges two or three pokes, —gains the door-frame,—glides behind a hinge, and commences to run over the wall of the stair-way. There the hand of a black servant slaps him dead.

—"Always strike at the head," the servant tells me; "never tread on the tail. … This is a small one: the big fellows can make you afraid if you do not know how to kill them."

… I pick up the carcass with a pair of scissors. It does not look formidable now that it is all contracted;—it is scarcely eight inches long,—thin as card-board, and even less heavy. It has no substantiality, no weight;—it is a mere appearance, a mask, a delusion. … But remembering the spectral, cunning, juggling something which magnified and moved it but a moment ago,—I feel almost tempted to believe, with certain savages, that there are animal shapes inhabited by goblins. …

IV.

—"IS there anything still living and lurking in old black drains of Thought,—any bigotry, any prejudice, anything in the moral world whereunto the centipede may be likened?"

—"Really, I do not know," replied the friend to whom I had put the question; "but you need only go as far as the vegetable world for a likeness. Did you ever see anything like this?" he added, opening a drawer

and taking therefrom something revolting, which, as he pressed it in his hand, looked like a long thick bundle of dried centipedes.

—"Touch them," he said, holding out to me the mass of articulated flat bodies and bristling legs.

—"Not for anything!" I replied, in astonished disgust. He laughed, and opened his hand. As he did so, the mass expanded.

—"Now look," he exclaimed!

Then I saw that all the bodies were united at the tails—grew together upon one thick flat annulated stalk … a plant!—"But here is the fruit," he continued, taking from the same drawer a beautifully embossed ovoid nut, large as a duck's egg, ruddy-colored, and so exquisitely varnished by nature as to resemble a rosewood carving fresh from the hands of the cabinet-maker. In its proper place among the leaves and branches, it had the appearance of something delicious being devoured by a multitude of centipedes. Inside was a kernel, hard and heavy as iron-wood; but this in time, I was told, falls into dust: though the beautiful shell remains always perfect.

Negroes call it the coco-macaque.