IV.
BEHIND the roomy wooden house in which I occupied an apartment
there was a small garden-plot surrounded with a hedge
strengthened by bamboo fencing, and radiant with flowers of the
loseille-bois,—the creole name for a sort of begonia, whose
closed bud exactly resembles a pink and white dainty bivalve
shell, and whose open blossom imitates the form of a butterfly.
Here and there, on the grass, were nets drying, and nasses—
curious fish-traps made of split bamboos interwoven and held in
place with mibi stalks (the mibi is a liana heavy and tough as
copper wire); and immediately behind the garden hedge appeared
the white flashing of the surf. The most vivid recollection
connected with my trip to Grande Anse is that of the first time
that I went to the end of that garden, opened the little bamboo
gate, and found myself overlooking the beach—an immense breadth
of soot-black sand, with pale green patches and stripings here
and there upon it—refuse of cane thatch, decomposing
rubbish spread
out by old tides. The one solitary boat owned in the community lay
there before me, high and dry. It was the hot period of the afternoon;
the town slept; there was no living creature in sight; and the booming
of the surf drowned all other sounds; the scent of the warm strong
sea-wind annihilated all other odors. Then, very suddenly, there came
to me a sensation absolutely weird, while watching the strange wild
sea roaring over its beach of black sand,—the sensation of
seeing something unreal, looking at something that had no more
tangible existence than a memory! Whether suggested by the first
white vision of the surf over the bamboo hedge,—or by those old
green tide-lines on the desolation of the black beach,—or by
some tone of the speaking of the sea,—or something indefinable
in the living touch of the wind,—or by all of these, I cannot
say;—but slowly there became defined within me the thought of
having beheld just such a coast very long ago, I could not tell
where,—in those child-years of which the recollections gradually
become indistinguishable from dreams.
Soon as darkness comes upon Grande Anse the face of the clock in
the church-tower is always lighted: you see it suddenly burst
into yellow glow above the roofs and the cocoa-palms,—just like
a pharos. In my room I could not keep the candle lighted because
of the sea-wind; but it never occurred to me to close the
shutters of the great broad windows,—sashless, of course, like
all the glassless windows of Martinique;—the breeze was too
delicious. It seemed full of something vitalizing that made
one's blood warmer, and rendered one full of contentment—full of
eagerness to believe life all sweetness. Likewise, I found it
soporific—this pure, dry, warm wind. And I thought there could
be no greater delight in existence than to lie down at night,
with all
the windows open,—and the Cross of the South visible from
my pillow,—and the sea-wind pouring over the bed,—and the
tumultuous whispering and muttering of the surf in one's ears,—
to dream of that strange sapphire sea white-bursting over its
beach of black sand.
