XI.
… TRAVELLING together, the porteuses often walk in silence
for hours at a time;—this is when they feel weary. Sometimes
they sing,—most often when approaching their destination;—and
when they chat, it is in a key so high-pitched that their voices
can be heard to a great distance in this land of echoes and
elevations. But she who travels alone is rarely silent: she talks
to herself or to inanimate things;—you may hear her talking to
the trees, to the flowers,—talking to the high clouds and the
far peaks of changing color,—talking to the setting sun!
Over the miles of the morning she sees, perchance, the mighty
Piton Gélé, a cone of amethyst in the light; and she talks to
it: "0u jojoll, oui!—moin ni envie monté assou ou, pou
moin ouè bien, bien!" (Thou art pretty, pretty, aye!—I would
I might climb thee, to see far, far off!) By a great grove of
palms she passes;—so thickly mustered they are that against the
sun their intermingled
heads form one unbroken awning of green.
Many rise straight as masts; some bend at beautiful angles, seeming
to intercross their long pale single limbs in a fantastic dance;
others curve like bows: there is one that undulates from foot to
crest, like a monster serpent poised upon its tail. She loves to
look at that one—"
joli pié-bois-là!—talks to it as she goes by,
—bids it good-day.
Or, looking back as she ascends, she sees the huge blue dream of
the sea,—the eternal haunter, that ever becomes larger as she
mounts the road; and she talks to it: "Mi lanmé ka gaudé moin!"
(There is the great sea looking at me!) "Màché toujou deïé moin,
lanmè!" (Walk after me, 0 Sea!)
Or she views the clouds of Pelée, spreading gray from the
invisible summit, to shadow against the sun; and she fears the
rain, and she talks to it: "Pas mouillé moin, laplie-à!
Quitté moin rivé avant mouillé moin!" (Do not wet me, 0 Rain!
Let me get there before thou wettest me!)
Sometimes a dog barks at her, menaces her bare limbs; and she talks
to the dog: "Chien-a, pas módé moin, chien—anh! Moin pa fé ou arien,
chien, pou ou módé moin!" (Do not bite me, 0 Dog! Never did I anything
to thee that thou shouldst bite me, 0 Dog! Do not bite me, dear! Do
not bite me, doudoux!)
Sometimes she meets a laden sister travelling the opposite
way. … "Coument ou yé, chè?" she cries. (How art thou, dear?)
And the other makes answer, "Toutt douce, chè,—et ou?" (All
sweetly, dear,—and thou?) And each passes on without pausing:
they have no time!
… It is perhaps the last human voice she will hear for many a mile.
After that only the whisper of the grasses—graïe-gras, graïe-gras!
—and the gossip of the canes— chououa, chououa!—and the husky
speech of the pois-Angole, ka babillé conm yon vié fenme,—that
babbles like an old woman;—and the murmur of the filao-trees, like
the murmur of the River of the Washerwomen.