I.
NIGHT in all countries brings with it vaguenesses and illusions
which terrify certain imaginations;—but in the tropics it
produces effects peculiarly impressive and peculiarly sinister.
Shapes of vegetation that startle even while the sun shines upon
them assume, after his setting, a grimness,—a grotesquery,—a
suggestiveness for which there is no name. … In the North a
tree is simply a tree;—here it is a personality that makes
itself felt; it has a vague physiognomy, an indefinable Me: it
is an Individual (with a capital I); it is a Being (with a
capital B).
From the high woods, as the moon mounts, fantastic darknesses
descend into the roads,—black distortions, mockeries, bad
dreams,—an endless procession of goblins. Least startling are
the shadows flung down by the various forms of palm, because
instantly recognizable;—yet these take the semblance of giant
fingers opening and closing over the way, or a black crawling of
unutterable spiders. …
Nevertheless, these phasma seldom alarm the solitary and belated
Bitaco: the darknesses that creep stealthily along the path have
no frightful signification for him,—do not appeal to his
imagination;—if he suddenly starts and stops and stares, it is
not because of such shapes, but because he has perceived two
specks of orange light,
and is not yet sure whether they are only
fire-flies, or the eyes of a trigonocephalus. The spectres of
his fancy have nothing in common with those indistinct and
monstrous umbrages: what he most fears, next to the deadly
serpent, are human witchcrafts. A white rag, an old bone lying
in the path, might be a
malefice which, if trodden upon, would
cause his leg to blacken and swell up to the size of the limb of
an elephant;—an unopened bundle of plantain leaves or of bamboo
strippings, dropped by the way-side, might contain the skin of a
Soucouyan. But the ghastly being who doffs or dons his skin at
will—and the Zombi—and the
Moun-Mó—may be quelled or
exorcised by prayer; and the lights of shrines, the white
gleaming of crosses, continually remind the traveller of his duty
to the Powers that save. All along the way there are shrines at
intervals, not very far apart: while standing in the radiance of
one niche-lamp, you may perhaps discern the glow of the next, if
the road be level and straight. They are almost everywhere,—
shining along the skirts of the woods, at the entrance of
ravines, by the verges of precipices;—there is a cross even upon
the summit of the loftiest peak in the island. And the night-walker
removes his hat each time his bare feet touch the soft
stream of yellow light outpoured from the illuminated shrine of a
white Virgin or a white Christ. These are good ghostly company
for him;—he salutes them, talks to them, tells them his pains or
fears: their blanched faces seem to him full of sympathy;—they
appear to cheer him voicelessly as he strides from gloom to
gloom, under the goblinry of those woods which tower black as
ebony under the stars. … And he has other companionship. One
of the greatest terrors of darkness in other lands does not exist
here after the setting of the sun,—the terror of
Silence. …
Tropical night is full of voices;—extraordinary populations of
crickets are trilling; nations of tree-frogs are chanting; the
Cabri-des-
bois,
*
or
cra-cra, almost deafens you with the
wheezy bleating sound by which it earned its creole name; birds
pipe: everything that bells, ululates, drones, clacks, guggles,
joins the enormous chorus; and you fancy you see all the shadows
vibrating to the force of this vocal storm. The true life of
Nature in the tropics begins with the darkness, ends with the light.
And it is partly, perhaps, because of these conditions that the
coming of the dawn does not dissipate all fears of the
supernatural. I ni pè zombi mênm gran'-jou (he is afraid of
ghosts even in broad daylight) is a phrase which does not sound
exaggerated in these latitudes,—not, at least, to anyone knowing
something of the conditions that nourish or inspire weird
beliefs. In the awful peace of tropical day, in the hush of the
woods, the solemn silence of the hills (broken only by torrent
voices that cannot make themselves heard at night), even in the
amazing luminosity, there is a something apparitional and weird,
—something that seems to weigh upon the world like a measureless
haunting. So still all Nature's chambers are that a loud
utterance jars upon the ear brutally, like a burst of laughter in
a sanctuary. With all its luxuriance of color, with all its
violence of light, this tropical day has its ghostliness and its
ghosts. Among the people of color there are many who believe
that even at noon—when the boulevards behind the city are most
deserted—the zombis will show themselves to solitary loiterers.
[_]
* In creole,
cabritt-bois,—("the Wood-Kid")—a colossal
cricket. Precisely at half-past four in the morning it becomes
silent; and for thousands of early risers too poor to own a
clock, the cessation of its song is the signal to get up.
