12. "PA COMBINÉ, CHÈ!"
I.
… MORE finely than any term in our tongue does the French word
frisson express that faint shiver—as of a ghostly touch
thrilling from hair to feet—which intense pleasure sometimes
gives, and which is felt most often and most strongly in
childhood, when the imagination is still so sensitive and so
powerful that one's whole being trembles to the vibration of a
fancy. And this electric word best expresses, I think, that long
thrill of amazed delight inspired by the first knowledge of the
tropic world,—a sensation of weirdness in beauty, like the
effect, in child-days, of fairy tales and stories of phantom
isles.
For all unreal seems the vision of it. The transfiguration of
all things by the stupendous light and the strange vapors of the
West Indian sea,—the interorbing of flood and sky in blinding
azure,—the sudden spirings of gem-tinted coast from the ocean,
—the iris-colors and astounding shapes of the hills,—the
unimaginable magnificence of palms,—the high woods veiled and
swathed in vines that blaze like emerald: all remind you in some
queer way of things half forgotten,—the fables of enchantment.
Enchantment it is indeed—but only the enchantment of that Great
Wizard, the Sun, whose power you are scarcely beginning to know.
And into the life of the tropical city you enter as in dreams
one enters into the life of a dead century. In all the quaint
streets—over whose luminous yellow façades
the beautiful burning
violet of the sky appears as if but a few feet away—you see
youth good to look upon as ripe fruit; and the speech of the
people is soft as a coo; and eyes of brown girls caress you with
a passing look. … Love's world, you may have heard, has few
restraints here, where Nature ever seems to cry out, like the
swart seller of corossoles:—"
ça qui le doudoux?" …
How often in some passing figure does one discern an ideal
almost realized, and forbear to follow it with untired gaze only
when another, another, and yet another, come to provoke the same
aesthetic fancy,—to win the same unspoken praise! How often
does one long for artist's power to fix the fleeting lines, to
catch the color, to seize the whole exotic charm of some special
type! … One finds a strange charm even in the timbre of these
voices,—these half-breed voices, always with a tendency to contralto,
and vibrant as ringing silver. What is that mysterious quality in a
voice which has power to make the pulse beat faster, even when
the singer is unseen? … do only the birds know?
… It seems to you that you could never weary of watching this
picturesque life,—of studying the costumes, brilliant with
butterfly colors,—and the statuesque semi-nudity of laboring
hundreds,—and the untaught grace of attitudes,—and the
simplicity of manners. Each day brings some new pleasure of
surprise;—even from the window of your lodging you are ever
noting something novel, something to delight the sense of oddity
or beauty. … Even in your room everything interests you,
because of its queerness or quaintness: you become fond of the
objects about you,—the great noiseless rocking-chairs that lull
to sleep;—the immense bed (lit-à-bateau) of heavy polished wood,
with its richly carven sides reaching down to the very floor;—
and its invariable companion, the little couch or sopha,
similarly shaped
but much narrower, used only for the siesta;—
and the thick red earthen vessels (
dobannes) which keep your
drinking-water cool on the hottest days, but which are always
filled thrice between sunrise and sunset with clear water from
the mountain,—
dleau toutt vivant, "all alive";—and the
verrines, tall glass vases with stems of bronze in which your
candle will burn steadily despite a draught;—and even those
funny little angels and Virgins which look at you from their
bracket in the corner, over the oil lamp you are presumed to
kindle nightly in their honor, however great a heretic you may
be. … You adopt at once, and without reservation, those creole
home habits which are the result of centuries of experience with
climate,—abstention from solid food before the middle of the
day, repose after the noon meal;—and you find each repast an
experience as curious as it is agreeable. It is not at all
difficult to accustom oneself to green pease stewed with sugar,
eggs mixed with tomatoes, salt fish stewed in milk, palmiste pith
made into salad, grated cocoa formed into rich cakes, and dishes
of titiri cooked in oil,—the minuscule fish, of which a thousand
will scarcely fill a saucer. Above all, you are astonished by
the endless variety of vegetables and fruits, of all conceivable
shapes and inconceivable flavors.
And it does not seem possible that even the simplest little
recurrences of this antiquated, gentle home-life could ever prove
wearisome by daily repetition through the months and years. The
musical greeting of the colored child, tapping at your door
before sunrise,—"Bonjou', Missié,"—as she brings your cup of
black hot coffee and slice of corossole;—the smile of the
silent brown girl who carries your meals up-stairs in a tray
poised upon her brightly coiffed head, and who stands by while
you dine, watching every chance to serve, treading quite silently with
her pretty bare feet;—the pleasant
manners of the
màchanne who
brings your fruit, the
porteuse who delivers your bread, the
blanchisseuse who washes your linen at the river,—and all the
kindly folk who circle about your existence, with their trays and
turbans, their
foulards and
douillettes, their primitive grace
and creole chatter: these can never cease to have a charm for
you. You cannot fail to be touched also by the amusing
solicitude of these good people for your health, because you are
a stranger: their advice about hours to go out and hours to stay
at home,—about roads to follow and paths to avoid on account of
snakes,—about removing your hat and coat, or drinking while
warm. … Should you fall ill, this solicitude intensifies to
devotion; you are tirelessly tended;—the good people will
exhaust their wonderful knowledge of herbs to get you well,—will
climb the mornes even at midnight, in spite of the risk of snakes
and fear of zombis, to gather strange plants by the light of a
lantern. Natural joyousness, natural kindliness, heart-felt
desire to please, childish capacity of being delighted with
trifles,—seem characteristic of all this colored population. It
is turning its best side towards you, no doubt; but the side of
the nature made visible appears none the less agreeable because
you suspect there is another which you have not seen. What
kindly inventiveness is displayed in contriving surprises for
you, or in finding some queer thing to show you,—some fantastic
plant, or grotesque fish, or singular bird! What apparent
pleasure in taking trouble to gratify,—what innocent frankness
of sympathy! … Childishly beautiful seems the readiness of this
tinted race to compassionate: you do not reflect that it is also
a savage trait, while the charm of its novelty is yet upon you.
No one is ashamed to shed tears for the death of a pet animal; any
mishap to a child creates excitement, and evokes an immediate
volunteering of services. And this compassionate sentiment is
often
extended, in a semi-poetical way, even to inanimate
objects. One June morning, I remember, a three-masted schooner
lying in the bay took fire, and had to be set adrift. An immense
crowd gathered on the wharves; and I saw many curious
manifestations of grief,—such grief, perhaps, as an infant feels
for the misfortune of a toy it imagines to possess feeling, but
not the less sincere because unreasoning. As the flames climbed
the rigging, and the masts fell, the crowd moaned as though
looking upon some human tragedy; and everywhere one could hear
such strange cries of pity as, "
Pauv' malhérè!" (poor
unfortunate), "
pauv' diabe!" … "
Toutt baggaïe-y pou allé,
casse!" (All its things-to-go-with are broken!) sobbed a girl,
with tears streaming down her cheeks. … She seemed to believe
it was alive. …
… And day by day the artlessness of this exotic humanity
touches you more;—day by day this savage, somnolent, splendid
Nature—delighting in furious color—bewitches you more.
Already the anticipated necessity of having to leave it all some
day—the far-seen pain of bidding it farewell—weighs upon you,
even in dreams.
II.
READER, if you be of those who have longed in vain for a glimpse
of that tropic world,—tales of whose beauty charmed your
childhood, and made stronger upon you that weird mesmerism of the
sea which pulls at the heart of a boy,—one who had longed like
you, and who, chance-led, beheld at last the fulfilment of the
wish, can swear to you that the magnificence of the reality far
excels the imagining. Those who know only the lands in which all
processes for the satisfaction of human wants have been perfected
under the terrible stimulus of necessity, can little guess the
witchery of that Nature
ruling the zones of color and of light.
Within their primeval circles, the earth remains radiant and
young as in that preglacial time whereof some transmitted memory
may have created the hundred traditions of an Age of Gold. And
the prediction of a paradise to come,—a phantom realm of rest
and perpetual light: may this not have been but a sum of the
remembrances and the yearnings of man first exiled from his
heritage,—a dream born of the great nostalgia of races migrating
to people the pallid North? …
… But with the realization of the hope to know this magical
Nature you learn that the actuality varies from the preconceived
ideal otherwise than in surpassing it. Unless you enter the
torrid world equipped with scientific knowledge extraordinary,
your anticipations are likely to be at fault. Perhaps you had
pictured to yourself the effect of perpetual summer as a physical
delight,—something like an indefinite prolongation of the
fairest summer weather ever enjoyed at home. Probably you had
heard of fevers, risks of acclimatization, intense heat, and a
swarming of venomous creatures; but you may nevertheless believe
you know what precautions to take; and published statistics of
climatic temperature may have persuaded you that the heat is not
difficult to bear. By that enervation to which all white
dwellers in the tropics are subject you may have understood a
pleasant languor,—a painless disinclination to effort in a
country where physical effort is less needed than elsewhere,—a
soft temptation to idle away the hours in a hammock, under the
shade of giant trees. Perhaps you have read, with eyes of faith,
that torpor of the body is favorable to activity of the mind, and
therefore believe that the intellectual powers can be stimulated
and strengthened by tropical influences:—you suppose that
enervation will reveal itself only as a beatific indolence
which will leave the brain free to think with lucidity, or to revel in
romantic dreams.
III.
YOU are not at first undeceived;—the disillusion is long
delayed. Doubtless you have read the delicious idyl of Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre (this is not Mauritius, but the old life of
Mauritius was wellnigh the same); and you look for idyllic
personages among the beautiful humanity about you,—for idyllic
scenes among the mornes shadowed by primeval forest, and the
valleys threaded by a hundred brooks. I know not whether the
faces and forms that you seek will be revealed to you;—but you
will not be able to complain for the lack of idyllic loveliness
in the commonest landscape. Whatever artistic knowledge you
possess will merely teach you the more to wonder at the luxuriant
purple of the sea, the violet opulence of the sky, the violent
beauty of foliage greens, the lilac tints of evening, and the
color-enchantments distance gives in an atmosphere full of
iridescent power,—the amethysts and agates, the pearls and
ghostly golds, of far mountainings. Never, you imagine, never
could one tire of wandering through those marvellous valleys,—of
climbing the silent roads under emeraldine shadow to heights from
which the city seems but a few inches long, and the moored ships
tinier than gnats that cling to a mirror,—or of swimming in
that blue bay whose clear flood stays warm through all the
year. *
Or, standing alone, in some aisle of colossal palms, where
humming-birds are flashing
and shooting like a showering of jewel-fires,
you feel how weak the skill of poet or painter to fix the sensation
of that white-pillared imperial splendor;—and you think you know why
creoles exiled by necessity to colder lands may sicken for love of their
own,—die of home-yearning, as did many a one in far Louisiana,
after the political tragedies of 1848. …
… But you are not a creole, and must pay tribute of suffering
to the climate of the tropics. You will have to learn that a
temperature of 90° Fahr. in the tropics is by no means the same
thing as 90° Fahr. in Europe or the United States;—that the
mornes cannot be climbed with safety during the hotter hours of
the afternoon;—that by taking a long walk you incur serious
danger of catching a fever;—that to enter the high woods, a path
must be hewn with the cutlass through the creepers and vines and
undergrowth,—among snakes, venomous insects, venomous plants,
and malarial exhalations;—that the finest blown dust is full of
irritant and invisible enemies;—that it is folly to seek repose
on a sward, or in the shade of trees,—particularly under
tamarinds. Only after you have by experience become well
convinced of these facts can you begin to comprehend something
general in regard to West Indian conditions of life.
[_]
* Rufz remarks that
the first effect of this climate of the
Antilles is a sort of general physical excitement, an exaltation,
a sense of unaccustomed strength,—which begets the desire of
immediate action to discharge the surplus of nervous force. "Then
all distances seem brief;—the greatest fatigues are braved
without hesitation."— Études.
IV.
… SLOWLY the knowledge comes. … For months the vitality of a
strong European (the American constitution bears the test even
better) may resist the debilitating climate: perhaps the
stranger will flatter himself that, like men habituated to heavy
labor in stifling warmth,—those toiling in mines, in founderies
in engine-rooms of ships, at iron-furnaces,—so he too may
become accustomed, without losing his strength to the continuous
draining of the pores, to the exhausting force
of this strange
motionless heat which compels change of clothing many times a
day. But gradually he finds that it is not heat alone which is
debilitating him, but the weight and septic nature of an
atmosphere charged with vapor, with electricity, with unknown
agents not less inimical to human existence than propitious to
vegetal luxuriance. If he has learned those rules of careful
living which served him well in a temperate climate, he will not
be likely to abandon them among his new surroundings; and they
will help him; no doubt,—particularly if he be prudent enough
to avoid the sea-coast at night, and all exposure to dews or
early morning mists, and all severe physical strain.
Nevertheless, he becomes slowly conscious of changes
extraordinary going on within him,—in especial, a continual
sensation of weight in the brain, daily growing, and compelling
frequent repose;—also a curious heightening of nervous
sensibility to atmospheric changes, to tastes and odors, to
pleasure and pain. Total loss of appetite soon teaches him to
follow the local custom of eating nothing solid before mid-day,
and enables him to divine how largely the necessity for caloric
enters into the food-consumption of northern races. He becomes
abstemious, eats sparingly, and discovers his palate to have
become oddly exacting—finds that certain fruits and drinks are
indeed, as the creoles assert, appropriate only to particular
physical conditions corresponding with particular hours of the
day. Corossole is only to be eaten in the morning, after black
coffee;—vermouth is good to drink only between the hours of
nine and half-past ten;—rum or other strong liquor only before
meals or after fatigue;—claret or wine only during a repast,
and then very sparingly,—for, strangely enough, wine is found
to be injurious in a country where stronger liquors are
considered among the prime necessaries of existence.
And he expected, at the worst, to feel lazy, to lose
some physical energy! But this is no mere languor which now begins to
oppress him;—it is a sense of vital exhaustion painful as the
misery of convalescence: the least effort provokes a perspiration
profuse enough to saturate clothing, and the limbs ache as from
muscular overstrain;—the lightest attire feels almost
insupportable;—the idea of sleeping even under a sheet is
torture, for the weight of a silken handkerchief is discomfort.
One wishes one could live as a savage,—naked in the heat. One
burns with a thirst impossible to assuage—feels a desire for
stimulants, a sense of difficulty in breathing, occasional
quickenings of the heart's action so violent as to alarm. Then
comes at last the absolute dread of physical exertion. Some
slight relief might be obtained, no doubt, by resigning oneself
forthwith to adopt the gentle indolent manners of the white
creoles, who do not walk when it is possible to ride, and never
ride if it is equally convenient to drive;—but the northern
nature generally refuses to accept this ultimate necessity
without a protracted and painful struggle.
… Not even then has the stranger fully divined the evil power
of this tropical climate, which remodels the characters of races
within a couple of generations,—changing the shape of the
skeleton,—deepening the cavities of the orbits to protect the
eye from the flood of light,—transforming the blood,—darkening
the skin. Following upon the nervous modifications of the first
few months come modifications and changes of a yet graver kind;—
with the loss of bodily energy ensues a more than corresponding
loss of mental activity and strength. The whole range of thought
diminishes, contracts,—shrinks to that narrowest of circles
which surrounds the physical sell, the inner ring of merely
material sensation: the memory weakens appallingly;—the mind
operates faintly, slowly, incoherently,—almost as in dreams.
Serious reading, vigorous thinking, become impossible. You doze over
the most important project;—you fall fast asleep over the
most fascinating of books.
Then comes the vain revolt, the fruitless desperate striving
with this occult power which numbs the memory and enchants the
will. Against the set resolve to think, to act, to study, there
is a hostile rush of unfamiliar pain to the temples, to the
eyes, to the nerve centres of the brain; and a great weight is
somewhere in the head, always growing heavier: then comes a
drowsiness that overpowers and stupefies, like the effect of a
narcotic. And this obligation to sleep, to sink into coma, will
impose itself just so surely as you venture to attempt any mental
work in leisure hours, after the noon repast, or during the heat
of the afternoon. Yet at night you can scarcely sleep. Repose
is made feverish by a still heat that keeps the skin drenched
with thick sweat, or by a perpetual, unaccountable, tingling and
prickling of the whole body-surface. With the approach of
morning the air grows cooler, and slumber comes,—a slumber of
exhaustion, dreamless and sickly; and perhaps when you would rise
with the sun you feel such a dizziness, such a numbness, such a
torpor, that only by the most intense effort can you keep your
feet for the first five minutes. You experience a sensation that
recalls the poet's fancy of death-in-life, or old stories of
sudden rising from the grave: it is as though all the electricity
of will had ebbed away,—all the vital force evaporated, in the
heat of the night. …
V.
IT might be stated, I think, with safety, that for a certain
class of invalids the effect of the climate is like a powerful
stimulant,—a tonic medicine which may produce astonishing
results within a fixed time,—but which if taken beyond that time
will prove dangerous. After
a certain number of months, your
first enthusiasm with your new surroundings dies out;—even
Nature ceases to affect the senses in the same way: the
frisson
ceases to come to you. Meanwhile you may have striven to become
as much as possible a part of the exotic life into which you have
entered,—may have adopted its customs, learned its language.
But you cannot mix with it mentally;—You circulate only as an
oil-drop in its current. You still feel yourself alone.
The very longest West Indian day is but twelve hours fifty-six
minutes;—perhaps your first dissatisfaction was evoked by the
brevity of the days. There is no twilight whatever; and all
activity ceases with sundown: there is no going outside of the
city after dark, because of snakes;—club life here ends at the
hour it only begins abroad;—there is no visiting of evenings;
after the seven o'clock dinner, everyone prepares to retire.
And the foreigner, accustomed to make evening a time for social
intercourse, finds no small difficulty in resigning himself to
this habit of early retiring. The natural activity of a European
or American mind requires some intellectual exercise,—at least
some interchange of ideas with sympathetic natures; the hours
during the suspension of business after noon, or those following
the closing of offices at sunset, are the only ones in which busy
men may find time for such relaxation; and these very hours have
been always devoted to restorative sleep by the native population
ever since the colony began. Naturally, therefore, the stranger
dreads the coming of the darkness, the inevitable isolation of
long sleepless hours. And if he seek those solaces for loneliness
which he was wont to seek at home,—reading, study,—he is made
to comprehend, as never before, what the absence of all
libraries, lack of books, inaccessibility of all reading-matter,
means for the man of the nineteenth century. One must send abroad
to obtain even a review, and
wait months for its coming. And
this mental starvation gnaws at the brain more and more as one
feels less inclination and less capacity for effort, and as that
single enjoyment, which at first rendered a man indifferent to
other pleasures,—the delight of being alone with tropical
Nature,—becomes more difficult to indulge. When lethargy has
totally mastered habit and purpose, and you must at last confess
yourself resigned to view Nature from your chamber, or at best
from a carriage window,—then, indeed, the want of all
literature proves a positive torture. It is not a consolation to
discover that you are an almost solitary sufferer,—from climate
as well as from mental hunger. With amazement and envy you see
young girls passing to walk right across the island and back
before sunset, under burdens difficult for a strong man to lift
to his shoulder;—the same journey on horseback would now weary
you for days. You wonder of what flesh and blood can these
people be made,—what wonderful vitality lies in those slender
woman-bodies, which, under the terrible sun, and despite their
astounding expenditure of force, remain cool to the sight and
touch as bodies of lizards and serpents! And contrasting this
savage strength with your own weakness, you begin to understand
better how mighty the working of those powers which temper races
and shape race habits in accordance with environment.
… Ultimately, if destined for acclimatation, you will cease to
suffer from these special conditions; but ere this can be, a long
period of nervous irritability must be endured; and fevers must
thin the blood, soften the muscles, transform the Northern tint
of health to a dead brown. You will have to learn that
intellectual pursuits can be persisted in only at risk of life;—
that in this part of the world there is nothing to do but to
plant cane and cocoa, and make rum, and cultivate tobacco,—or
open a magazine for the sale of Madras handkerchiefs and foulards,
—and eat, drink, sleep, perspire. You will understand
why the tropics settled by European races produce no sciences,
arts, or literature,—why the habits and the thoughts of other
centuries still prevail where Time itself moves slowly as though
enfeebled by the heat.
And with the compulsory indolence of your life, the long exacerbation
of the nervous system, will come the first pain of nostalgia,—the
first weariness of the tropics. It is not that Nature can become ever
less lovely to your sight; but that the tantalization of her dangerous
beauty, which you may enjoy only at a safe distance, exasperates at last.
The colors that at first bewitched will vex your eyes by their
violence;—the creole life that appeared so simple, so gentle, will reveal
dulnesses and discomforts undreamed of. You will ask yourself
how much longer can you endure the prodigious light, and the
furnace heat of blinding blue days, and the void misery of
sleepless nights, and the curse of insects, and the sound of the
mandibles of enormous roaches devouring the few books in your
possession. You will grow weary of the grace of the palms, of
the gemmy colors of the ever-clouded peaks, of the sight of the
high woods made impenetrable by lianas and vines and serpents.
You will weary even of the tepid sea, because to enjoy it as a
swimmer you must rise and go out at hours while the morning air
is still chill and heavy with miasma;—you will weary, above all,
of tropic fruits, and feel that you would gladly pay a hundred
francs for the momentary pleasure of biting into one rosy juicy
Northern apple.
VI.
—BUT if you believe this disillusion perpetual,—if you fancy
the old bewitchment has spent all its force upon you,—you do not
know this Nature. She is not done with you yet: she has only
torpefied your energies a little. Of your willingness to obey
her, she takes no
cognizance;—she ignores human purposes, knows
only molecules and their combinations; and the blind blood in
your veins,—thick with Northern heat and habit,—is still in
dumb desperate rebellion against her.
Perhaps she will quell this revolt forever,—thus:—
One day, in the second hour of the afternoon, a few moments after
leaving home, there will come to you a sensation such as you have never
known before: a sudden weird fear of the light.
It seems to you that the blue sky-fire is burning down into your
brain,—that the flare of the white pavements and yellow walls is
piercing somehow into your life,—creating an unfamiliar mental
confusion,—blurring out thought. … Is the whole world taking
fire? … The flaming azure of the sea dazzles and pains like a
crucible-glow;—the green of the mornes flickers and blazes in
some amazing way. … Then dizziness inexpressible: you grope
with eyes shut fast—afraid to open them again in that stupefying
torrefaction,—moving automatically,—vaguely knowing you must
get out of the flaring and flashing,—somewhere, anywhere away
from the white wrath of the sun, and the green fire of the hills,
and the monstrous color of the sea. … Then, remembering
nothing, you find yourself in bed,—with an insupportable sense
of weight at the back of the head,—a pulse beating furiously,—
and a strange sharp pain at intervals stinging through your
eyes. … And the pain grows, expands,—fills all the skull,—
forces you to cry out, replaces all other sensations except a
weak consciousness, vanishing and recurring, that you are very
sick, more sick than ever before in all your life.
… And with the tedious ebbing of the long fierce fever, all
the heat seems to pass from your veins. You can no longer
imagine, as before, that it would be delicious to die of cold;—
you shiver even with all the windows
closed;—you feel currents
of air,—imperceptible to nerves in a natural condition,—which
shock like a dash of cold water, whenever doors are opened and
closed; the very moisture upon your forehead is icy. What you now
wish for are stimulants and warmth. Your blood has been changed;
—tropic Nature has been good to you: she is preparing you to
dwell with her.
… Gradually, under the kind nursing of those colored people,
—among whom, as a stranger, your lot will probably be cast,—you
recover strength; and perhaps it will seem to you that the pain
of lying a while in the Shadow of Death is more than compensated
by this rare and touching experience of human goodness. How
tirelessly watchful,—how naïvely sympathetic,—how utterly
self-sacrificing these women-natures are! Patiently, through
weeks of stifling days and sleepless nights,—cruelly unnatural
to them, for their life is in the open air,—they struggle to
save without one murmur of fatigue, without heed of their most
ordinary physical wants, without a thought of recompense;—
trusting to their own skill when the physician abandons hope,—
climbing to the woods for herbs when medicines prove, without
avail. The dream of angels holds nothing sweeter than this
reality of woman's tenderness.
And simultaneously with the return of force, you may wonder
whether this sickness has not sharpened your senses in some
extraordinary way,—especially hearing, sight, and smell. Once
well enough to be removed without danger, you will be taken up
into the mountains somewhere,—for change of air; and there it
will seem to you, perhaps, that never before did you feel so
acutely the pleasure of perfumes,—of color-tones,—of the timbre
of voices. You have simply been acclimated. … And suddenly the
old fascination of tropic Nature seizes you again,—more strongly
than in the first days;—the frisson of delight returns; the joy
of it thrills through all your
blood,—making a great fulness at
your heart as of unutterable desire to give thanks. …
VII.
… MY friend Felicien had come to the colony fresh from the
region of the Vosges, with the muscles and energies of a
mountaineer, and cheeks pink as a French country-girl's;—he had
never seemed to me physically adapted for acclimation; and I
feared much for him on hearing of his first serious illness.
Then the news of his convalescence came to me as a grateful
surprise. But I did not feel reassured by his appearance the
first evening I called at the little house to which he had been
removed, on the brow of a green height overlooking the town. I
found him seated in a berceuse on the veranda. How wan he was,
and how spectral his smile of welcome,—as he held out to me a
hand that seemed all of bone!
… We chatted there a while. It had been one of those tropic
days whose charm interpenetrates and blends with all the subtler
life of sensation, and becomes a luminous part of it forever,—
steeping all after-dreams of ideal peace in supernal glory of
color,—transfiguring all fancies of the pure joy of being.
Azure to the sea-line the sky had remained since morning; and the
trade-wind, warm as a caress, never brought even one gauzy cloud
to veil the naked beauty of the peaks.
And the sun was yellowing,—as only over the tropics he yellows
to his death. Lilac tones slowly spread through sea and heaven from
the west;—mornes facing the light began to take wondrous glowing
color,—a tone of green so fiery that it looked as though all the
rich sap of their woods were phosphorescing. Shadows blued;—far
peaks took tinting that scarcely seemed of earth,—iridescent
violets and purples interchanging
through vapor of gold. … Such
the colors of the
carangue, when the beautiful tropic fish is
turned in the light, and its gem-greens shift to rich azure and
prism-purple.
Reclining in our chairs, we watched the strange splendor from
the veranda of the little cottage,—saw the peaked land slowly
steep itself in the aureate glow,—the changing color of the
verdured mornes, and of the sweep of circling sea. Tiny birds,
bosomed with fire, were shooting by in long curves, like embers
flung by invisible hands. From far below, the murmur of the city
rose to us,—a stormy hum. So motionless we remained that the
green and gray lizards were putting out their heads from behind
the columns of the veranda to stare at us,—as if wondering
whether we were really alive. I turned my head suddenly to look
at two queer butterflies; and all the lizards hid themselves
again. Papillon-lanmó,—Death's butterflies,—these were called in
the speech of the people: their broad wings were black like
blackest velvet;—as they fluttered against the yellow light,
they looked like silhouettes of butterflies. Always through my
memory of that wondrous evening,—when I little thought I was
seeing my friend's face for the last time,—there slowly passes
the black palpitation of those wings. …
… I had been chatting with Felicien about various things which
I thought might have a cheerful interest for him; and more than
once I had been happy to see him smile. … But our converse
waned. The ever-magnifying splendor before us had been
mesmerizing our senses,—slowly overpowering our wills with the
amazement of its beauty. Then, as the sun's disk—enormous,—
blinding gold—touched the lilac flood, and the stupendous
orange glow flamed up to the very zenith, we found ourselyes awed
at last into silence.
The orange in the west deepened into vermilion.
Softly and very
swiftly night rose like an indigo exhalation from the land,—filling
the valleys, flooding the gorges, blackening the woods, leaving only
the points of the peaks a while to catch the crimson glow. Forests and
fields began to utter a rushing sound as of torrents, always deepening,
—made up of the instrumentation and the voices of numberless little
beings: clangings as of hammered iron, ringings as of dropping
silver upon a stone, the dry bleatings of the
cabritt-bois, and
the chirruping of tree-frogs, and the
k-i-i-i-i-i-i of
crickets. Immense trembling sparks began to rise and fall among
the shadows,—twinkling out and disappearing all mysteriously:
these were the fire-flies awakening. Then about the branches of
the
bois-canon black shapes began to hover, which were not birds
—shapes flitting processionally without any noise; each one in
turn resting a moment as to nibble something at the end of a
bough;—then yielding place to another, and circling away, to
return again from the other side … the
guimbos, the great bats.
But we were silent, with the emotion of sunset still upon us:
that ghostly emotion which is the transmitted experience of a
race,—the sum of ancestral experiences innumerable,—the mingled
joy and pain of a million years. … Suddenly a sweet voice
pierced the stillness,—pleading:—
—"Pa combiné, chè!—pa combiné conm ça!" (Do not think, dear!—
do not think like that!)
… Only less beautiful than the sunset she seemed, this slender
half-breed, who had come all unperceived behind us, treading
soundlessly with her slim bare feet. … "And you, Missié", she said
to me, in a tone of gentle reproach;—"you are his friend! why do you
let him think? It is thinking that will prevent him getting well."
Combiné in creole signifies to think intently, and therefore
to be unhappy,—because, with this artless race, as with children,
to think intensely about anything is possible only under great
stress of suffering.
—"Pa combiné,—non, chè," she repeated, plaintively, stroking
Felicien's hair. "It is thinking that makes us old. … And it
is time to bid your friend good-night." …
—"She is so good," said Felicien, smiling to make her pleased;
—"I could never tell you how good. But she does not understand.
She believes I suffer if I am silent. She is contented only when
she sees me laugh; and so she will tell me creole stories by the
hour to keep me amused, as if I were a child." …
As he spoke she slipped an arm about his neck.
—"Doudoux," she persisted;—and her voice was a dove's coo,—"Si
ou ainmein moin, pa combiné-non!"
And in her strange exotic beauty, her savage grace, her supple caress,
the velvet witchery of her eyes,—it seemed to me that I beheld a
something imaged, not of herself, nor of the moment only,—a something
weirdly sensuous: the Spirit of tropic Nature made golden flesh, and
murmuring to each lured wanderer:—"If thou wouldst love me, do
not think" …