Continued, Black Shack Alley

It was nevertheless fairly easy for me to get over the loss of my old friend Médouze. The big event that M’man Tine kept announcing every day finally took place. Mam’zelle Léonie had completed my suit, and one Monday, instead of taking me to the river as usual, M’man Tine donned her pretty dress, decked me out in new clothes (a pair of breeches and a shirt of gray calico with fine black stripes, and a small straw hat, bought the day before in Saint-Esprit) and we set out for Petit-Bourg.

M’man Tine often went to Petit-Bourg, even at nights after her work; for she avoided as much as possible having to buy anything at the “house.” But although this village was the nearest one to Petit-Morne, I had never seen it except from a distance.

It comprised a narrow alley lined by small wooden houses, dotted with public standpipes, and I enjoyed watching the clear water fall upon the wide worn-down stones.

The school, a low house roofed with galvanized sheets and surrounded by a veranda, was on a hillock next to the little village church. So close in fact that the church’s courtyard also served as the yard of the school. All the children played in the yard under the church porch. Cavorting in all directions, they shouted gleefully, making me feel like joining in right away in their games, although I was a bit shy. Many of the kids were wearing shoes; but most of them were barefooted—like me. And they were all very clean, just as Mr. Médouze had told me.

Making her way through this noisy swarm of brats, M’man Tine went in search of a copper-skinned woman who was walking under the veranda. She had a pretty dress, fine shoes, and her hair was parted in two long black plaits that started at the nape of her neck and her temples, falling on both sides of her neck onto her chest, right down to her waist. She spoke pleasantly with M’man Tine and smiled at me. I expected to be questioned by her, for along the way M’man Tine had instructed me that if she asked me: “What’s your name?” I should reply: “José Hassam”; if she asked: “How old are you?” I was to reply: “Seven years old, Madame,” and that every time she spoke to me I was to say: “Yes, Madame, no Madame,” very politely. But such was not the case.

M’man Tine urged me to be good and left. For a long while I watched the children at play, then at the lady. She went to one end of the veranda, pulled the chain of a bell just like the one that signaled the time for lunch and for work to start again in Petit-Morne. The ringing caused all the children to assemble under the veranda.

The large room I entered with the pupils was unlike anything I had ever imagined. And I felt a deep sense of well-being as I sat on a bench like the other children (both girls and boys, all about my age), admiring all that was stuck, written, and hanging on the walls, and looking at, rather than listening to, the lady with the soft, pleasant voice, who drew fine things in white on a wide blackboard.

At eleven o’clock, at the sound of the bell, I went over to the lady’s house to which M’man Tine had taken me for the morning: Mme Léonce.

Mme Léonce was a woman of approximately the same complexion as M’man Tine, but very fat, her head tied with a madras, and dressed in a long, shapeless dress, from beneath which as she moved about came the sound of old slippers.

Mme Léonce had never seen me but seemed nevertheless to know me, since my mother, Délia, had been a servant at her house before I was born.

She handed me the little cretonne bag my grandmother had brought that morning with my lunch in it: a small bowl containing two slices of yam and a piece of cooked cod with some oil on it. And she told me, showing me the corridor: “Go and eat over there. Don’t spill any grease on the floor. When you’re finished, you’ll drink some water: the standpipe is near the road, opposite. Then, sit in front of the door, over there. When you see the schoolchildren coming out, follow them.”

Mme Léonce and the other people living with her were moving to and fro deep inside the house, which to me looked mysterious, impenetrable. I could hear them talking but couldn’t see them.

I ate my lunch with all the precautions as instructed, and without making any noise, so I wouldn’t even let anybody know I was there. My meal finished, I went to the standpipe to quench my thirst, freshen up my face, and wash my feet and legs.

Then I settled down next to the entrance to watch the people go by and wait for the first pupils.

After class that night at the top of the village, on leaving the other children who, themselves separated from one another to go off toward other parts of the country, and on taking by myself the road to Petit-Morne, I was a completely different child. I had just been through a day full of new faces, new things, and new feelings which had left me very excited, and to my love of Black Shack Alley and everything in it was added the love of what was for me a new world.

I found M’man Tine in front of our hut. She did not kiss me; she almost never kissed me. But I was not insensitive to all the tenderness and satisfaction that showed in her eyes as she greeted me.

“How did you spend your day?”

Actually, she had never spoken to me in such a pleasant tone.

I gave her all the details. Already I had learned the names of many new objects: the class, the desk, the board; the chalk, the slate, the ink, the inkwell . . . I knew new expressions such as: “fold your arms”; “keep quiet”; “line up;” “dismiss.”

Nor had I ever been so talkative. M’man Tine followed my speech with a face that was more rested and radiant than when she was smoking her pipe and with eyes that seemed to find me really changed indeed.

M’man Tine woke me up early in the morning, made me take my cup of coffee with cream and my bowl of cassava flour, and after carefully checking the corners of my eyes, my ears, my nostrils, my nose, and my neck, I got dressed. Finally, I took my little cretonne lunch bag and left, while she continued wishing me a good day and pestering me with do’s and don’ts.

At the foot of the hill I nearly always met friends from Courbaril or Fonds Masson and we would walk together all the way to the school.

Each day would bring me some new emotion. The mistress would make me read or, in turn, go through all by myself and in my child’s singsong, the days of the week. Or I’d make one more friend. Or I’d fight with a wicked boy. Or the mistress had beaten me with that little bamboo switch she used both when showing us the letters to read on the board and when correcting those not paying attention or talking in class.

The only thing I didn’t really enjoy was going to have lunch in Mme Léonce’s corridor. It was probably a case of my pride being hurt; in addition, the inside of that house, of which I’d never seen any more than the corridor and the dark room I barely entered to leave my little bag, inspired in me an indescribable revulsion because of the lack of attention paid to me in it. I had the distinct impression that in the corridor I was considered as being completely outside and that from the very first day, despite her pleasant promise to M’man Tine to welcome me at midday, Mme Léonce had kept me out of her house in a way I couldn’t fully understand.

On Thursdays M’man Tine would take me with her to the fields. That holiday was pleasant for me, especially during the time when sugarcanes were being planted in the new fields. My greatest pleasure was to suck the pieces remaining in a pile around those cutting the cane for planting.

I had also made progress in my shrimp catching and it was not without a touch of pride that, all the while enjoying myself, I supplied M’man Tine with what she needed to make the gravy for our evening meal.

Those Thursdays spent with M’man Tine filled me with a joy I’d never experienced before. And it was with even more happiness that, the following day, I returned to the village and my school.

On Sundays I would always accompany M’man Tine to Saint-Esprit; but on Mondays I lost the privilege of going to the river with her.

I had discovered, not long before, that opposite Mme Léonce’s, behind the standpipe, lived Raphael, one of my classmates. He too had singled me out and, ever since then, we would leave the school together. It was he who, after lunch, would give me, from the other side of the alley, the departure signal.

Raphael was one of the bigger pupils, for the class was divided into big children and small children. He wrote on a copybook whereas I had just received my first slate. That, plus the fact that he was born in the village and lived there, gave him a certain superiority over me, but didn’t prevent us from becoming bosom pals.

Raphael was of a lighter complexion than I; his hair was smooth and black and always stuck neatly to his skull. But he dressed more or less like me and also went to school without shoes, just like me. He had a bigger brother at another school in the village (for there was our school at one end of the village and a larger one at the other) and a small sister who was not yet at school.

His maman was a huge woman like Mme Léonce, but did not wear a madras, and her rope-colored hair formed a large knot atop her head. She made coconut rock-cakes and other cakes which she sold from a small tray on the sill of her window.

After lunch, when I went to have a drink of water and wash my hands and legs at the standpipe, I had only to linger awhile. Raphael would come out to do likewise and we would chat at the side of the alley. In the long run, I ventured as far as the front step of Raphael’s mother’s house and we played some relatively silent games until his mother shouted to him that it was time to go back to school.

As a result, I cut short as much as possible the time I took for my lunch so I could go and play with Raphael; in the end, the uneasiness I felt at middays when I had to remain in the corridor or in front of Mme Léonce’s house gradually disappeared.

However, I was afraid of Raphael’s mother. Was it because she resembled Mme Léonce? Possibly, also, because she had never paid any attention to me either and because the rare occasions on which she had looked at me while I was outside with Raphael, her eyes seemed harsh and mistrustful?

But Raphael apparently loved her very much. He called her M’man Nini, which led me to believe she was his grandmother and the insinuation was that she couldn’t be a bad person. Furthermore, Raphael himself became very attached to me, very nice, to the point of saying:

“Pity! You’re not here on Sundays; M’man Nini makes pastry and lets us lick and wash all the bowls and pots in which she’s made the cakes and sweets. Sugar, syrup! Talk about tasting good!”

At times his grandmother also gave him some of the cakes that hadn’t been sold and he’d promised to remember me whenever that happened.

Raphael also taught me many things: the game of marbles, how to trundle a hoop, play hopscotch, open cashew nuts.

Extraordinary! That was the word for his knowledge of games and his ability to organize them. At school, during the recess, everybody wanted to play only with Raphael. Everyone wanted to be on Raphael’s team. He ran faster than we did whenever we played “police and thief” and never seemed to hurt himself when he fell. And, what authority he had over us!

Therefore, how painful it was to me each time the mistress beat him. For Raphael was extremely fidgety, talkative, and inattentive in class; and whether it was reading, arithmetic or writing, the mistress always had some reason to scold or punish him, beating him with a bamboo cane on his legs, or a ruler in the palm of his hand. Brave as he was, Raphael couldn’t help writhing hideously and bursting into tears. It just broke my heart.

Still, it never entered my mind to tell Raphael to behave himself better. Similarly, I never once felt any hostility whatsoever toward the mistress.

No, at such times I suffered for Raphael. I felt with painful sympathy the blows he received; and while he wept on his bench, his bowed head tightly clutched in his arms, I followed the soothing of his grief and wished within my heart that he wouldn’t do it again, or that at least the mistress would never catch him again.

But when Raphael once more raised his head, his cheeks were barely wet, his eyes barely red. His cheerfulness shone forth once more and I then felt relieved, cured along with him.

One day as I was having lunch in the corridor, I heard the sound of Mme Léonce’s sandals approaching. I was seized with panic; I looked about me frantically to see whether I’d possibly dropped some crumbs without realizing it.

“Here you are,” Mme Léonce said to me.

She handed me a small aluminum plate which I stood up to receive from her hand.

“Thank you, Madame Léonce.”

It was a dish of red beans and a piece of meat. Surprised at first, somewhat upset, I began eating immediately. But no sooner had Mme Léonce turned her back than I stopped. It was good all the same, the beans and meat, but that unfriendly look that accompanied Mme Léonce’s gesture! . . .

Suddenly I had the suspicion that the food must not in fact be good. Ever since the first day she had shown me my place in the corridor and on the threshold of the door, every time Mme Léonce appeared, I felt like a little dog in front of her. No, I wouldn’t continue eating those beans and that meat.

I quickly stuffed down my boiled green bananas, my piece of codfish, then taking Mme Léonce’s aluminum plate, I ran across the road and splash! I poured the contents in the water flowing from the standpipe. I washed it properly and returned it to Mme Léonce.

“You even washed the plate,” she cried, visibly astonished and satisfied, “but that’s just beautiful: you’re a very enterprising young man.

“Well,” she continued in a soft voice, “you can tell your grandmother it’s no point having you bring your lunch, I’ll give you something to eat at lunchtime.”

Had I been wrong then? Mme Léonce was a nice person after all. And there I was afraid of her! It was quite silly of me not to have enjoyed her beans and above all that lovely slice of meat!

That proposition delighted me all afternoon. It wasn’t so much the prospect of eating other dishes of beans and meat, rather the thought of the joy and relief that this show of generosity would bring to M’man Tine.

I was more than anxious to reach Shack Alley to relay this excellent bit of news to her.

Then too, the kindness that had pushed Mme Léonce to make me that offer had touched me, had spread in me, had given me a warm sensation of the affectionate scaling down of the world around me.

No, M’man Tine did not want to believe me.

According to her, I had misunderstood. Mme Léonce, already doing her the great favor of allowing me to take my lunch at her place, could not simply have taken me in hand like that. This bit of news tormented her more than it pleased her.

She finally said as she put me to bed, “You didn’t ask Mme Léonce for anything whatsoever?”

“No, m’man.”

“Quite sure?”

“Yes, m’man.”

“Because I give you enough to eat, not so?”

“Yes, m’man.”

“If it’s not enough, all you have to do is say so.”

“Always enough, m’man.”

And in fact I would often eat at four o’clock what was left over from midday.

To make a long story short, M’man Tine decided that, the following week, she would go down to the village to see Mme Léonce to find out what had happened and, accordingly, to apologize to her or to thank her.

And she put the whole affair at the mercy of God’s will.

All the same, the following morning, she wanted to make me carry my lunch as usual. The night didn’t seem to have rid her of her doubts.

At midday, on my return from school, I went and stood in the corridor, waiting for Mme Léonce to bring me the aluminum plate. I was too uneasy to try to guess what would probably be on it. Uneasy, almost in anguish, I didn’t know why, and couldn’t even guess.

It wasn’t long before I heard the sound of her sandals and Mme Léonce’s head, appearing through the door, said to me:

“You’re here? Do come in, come and eat.”

I crossed a small room I’d been in the day I’d come with M’man Tine; on the table, its only furniture, I used to place my little lunch bag every morning. I then followed Mme Léonce into a small adjoining room, quite dark, which was obviously the kitchen, since it contained a brick stove, a table, saucepans hanging on the walls, a thick smell of roasted onions, of rancid, burned grease, of cooked vegetables. Mme Léonce put me to sit on a stool near the table cluttered with dishes and other dirty utensils. On the stove she uncovered two or three saucepans from which she dipped carefully with a spoon one after the other. She handed me the same small plate as the previous day and said:

“Here you are, eat.”

She immediately moved to an adjoining room, where, as she half-opened the door, I thought I saw it was even darker than in the kitchen.

That must have been where she ate, for I heard the tinkle of forks and plates, and certainly with her husband, for I could hear her voice and a man’s.

I would never see Mr. Léonce. No doubt he used to return from the factory before I arrived and leave after me.

I didn’t like the kitchen at all. It was too dark. I much preferred to be like a small dog in the corridor. I felt like I was in a prison! I dared not eat.

I suddenly felt like running away, but I was immediately afraid to do so.

All of a sudden I thought I heard a chair move and I attacked the yams and fish on my plate using the fork to put them quickly into my mouth. Nobody entered but I just kept on eating.

Once finished, I got the idea to go and wash my plate at the standpipe so I could see the sun again, fill my lungs with fresh air, play with Raphael, free for a while my heart and my entire body from that oppression I’d been suffering for the past few instants. But I hesitated and suddenly once more a chair moved, sandals were heard being dragged across the floor and Mme Léonce, plate in hand, entered and said to me:

“Finished? Well! You’re going to do me a li’l favor, eh, mon petit nègre?

“Yes, Madame,” I said obediently.

“Well,” she continued, “You’re going to give me a li’l hand with the dishes.”

“Yes, Madame.”

“Come,” she said.

We returned to the small room next to the kitchen and there Mme Léonce opened a door looking onto a small paved yard where one’s eyes immediately came upon a wall covered with moss and patches of dampness. The leaves and shade from a lime tree, below which were piles of fowl droppings, filled this narrow space. Five or six hens, which had been separated from the rest, obviously thinking that they were being brought something to eat, darted toward us.

In one corner of the yard water was running from a tap into a red basin and the overflow spilled over into another small basin, which itself emptied into a gutter.

Mme Léonce put the dirty plates, pans, glasses, spoons, and forks in a small shallow basin and showed me what to do: begin with the glasses. You pass two fingers on the soap then put them into each glass, turning it around to scrub it properly. Then you rinse them in the water from the overflow and hold them up to the light to make sure they’re properly cleaned. Afterward, the forks, spoons, and knives. Then the plates. Finally the pots—give them a good scrubbing with a rag dipped in ashes.

I tried real hard and was relieved when Mme Léonce, after checking my work, told me that it was good and that I was a really interesting little boy.

I must have spent a long time at it, for when I left that damp yard and those small dark rooms to go out into the alley, Raphael had already left and though I ran quickly, I still reached school late.

That night when I told M’man Tine that Mme Léonce was indeed giving me lunch, my grandmother was beside herself with joy and invoked heaven’s most divine blessings for this charitable woman.

I had never been prevented from playing. As a result, the time I spent each day in Mme Léonce’s dark kitchen and yard was for me a horrible experience. It was impossible for me to get rid of that sensation of being shut up deep inside the earth, from which I’d possibly never escape. Mme Léonce and her always invisible husband seemed to me capable of doing me any possible evil. I didn’t know why. In spite of all the food they gave me! Furthermore, frankly speaking, I’d never been treated badly in that house; but nothing inspired any feeling of assurance in me. I was constantly afraid of Mme Léonce whom, without wishing it, I detested because of the unending humiliation I underwent at her house. I was constantly horrified by the kitchen. I would be full of mistrust as I ate or be afraid that I would betray my repugnance. And that chore of doing the dishes, preventing me from meeting Raphael, was the most mortifying of all.

Mme Léonce’s face remained for me one without kindness and persuaded me that all she told me or had me do could not be of any good. At times I felt like telling someone about her . . . A big policeman, for example!

Whenever there weren’t many plates to wash or I had finished quickly, she would give me some men’s shoes to clean and polish. Two pairs, three pairs of large shoes, boots with long rows of buttons and pointed tips.

The first time she initiated me to this work, I told M’man Tine, showing how distressed I was, but being very careful, not yet daring to betray my disgust and indignation.

“That’s very good,” she replied. “Mme Léonce is nice to you, you must also do her a li’l favor now and then.”

And once again she invoked the blessing of God and all the saints on this good woman.

What a defeat for me!

Polishing shoes . . . I preferred doing dishes a thousand times to doing that. Perhaps it was mostly because it kept me from going to play with Raphael for the few minutes I had left after doing the dishes. I had grown accustomed, despite everything, to look upon the dishwashing chore as the logical task to follow the meal; whereas polishing shoes after lunch upset my digestion, made me drunk. And it made me reach school late every afternoon.

Added to all that, for some time now, Mme Léonce urged me to come quickly after the evening class, without loitering along the way so I could run a few errands for her in the stores in the district before going back to Petit-Morne. This further robbed me of the opportunity of walking with those of my friends who were going to Fonds-Masson, to Courbaril, to Lemberton.

I began to detest running errands even more than polishing shoes.

I had by then come to like the morning class above all, as I could take it all in without ever being scolded by the mistress for late-coming. Those morning classes were as beautiful as a spectacle, as a game. In her dress, flowered or white, both protected and enhanced by a pretty apron, and with her two long plaits she sometimes allowed to fall on her chest or threw back on her shoulders, the mistress formed huge letters on the blackboard. Then pointing at them with her long bamboo cane, she plainly articulated each letter or syllable, making her lips move with her teeth and her tongue. Finally, looking down at the entire class, she motioned us to repeat.

Then, together, our voices repeated, once. The mistress continued and we once more repeated after her. And so it went, she repeating and we doing likewise.

I began by looking at that woman’s mouth, trying to break down the charming grimace that accompanied the sound she emitted. Then as she made us repeat, her face progressively beamed with the satisfaction of hearing from all the mouths the exact sound. And from then on, it was the white signs, implacably formed on the black of the board, and projected at the end of her bamboo cane, that we strove to have sink into our heads, looking steadfastly at them, while our loud voices, echoing the authoritative, inspiring voice of that woman, created a chorus that I thoroughly and eagerly enjoyed.

I also enjoyed the delightful sternness with which we went from reading to writing.

Having gone over our work with us, the mistress would disappear into her apartment adjoining the classroom, not without threatening with the most cruel bout of licks the first one to open his mouth to talk.

I liked the thrill that ran through the class as we heard the sound of the returning mistress’s footsteps.

I liked to hear her say: “Tidy up your things” so we could say together: “In class, we must not be la . . . zy.”

I liked recess.

The girls would play under the veranda while we boys were allowed to go everywhere, and as far as we wanted, under the mango trees and near the gardens of the people living around the school. We could go into the church to admire the statues and see the hummingbirds which had made their nests on the small chains from which hung the red lamp of the Eternal Father.

Some even went as far as to rip off the golden fringes that lined the top of the altars.

We would play long tag in a cane field behind the church.

And everywhere there were woods, thickets, bushes, lending themselves to all our games; they were good for echoing our shouts as well as for hiding us or giving us, to our eyes, the illusion of being policemen, thieves, runaway blacks, chickens, mongooses, dogs, and opossums.

There was a period when we ran about like young animals enjoying their freedom, making havoc of those wild surroundings. Then without realizing that there was a transition or any change, we found ourselves at various games, assembled on the raised, flat area outside the church near to the school. Games which, though less tumultuous, less furious, were just as passionate, just as full of shouts, queries, protests, and quarrels.

And here again, Raphael was the master.

But once I had set foot in Mme Léonce’s place at midday, the rest of my day was spoiled.

How long was this torture going to last?

I could do nothing to get accustomed to it nor to put an end to it.

One afternoon I had reached school later than usual because, after the dishwashing and shoe-polishing chore, I had had to sweep the yard. I had complained to Mme Léonce with tears of anger, which placed the responsibility on her. But Mme Léonce had seized the opportunity to scold me for wasting too much time in those minor tasks she gave me to do.

One evening I arrived quite late in Petit-Morne because I had stayed behind to run a series of errands for Mme Léonce and M’man Tine didn’t want to hear anything, accusing me of loitering along the way. And, as a result, I had to remain outside on my knees until dinner time.

How much more misery was this detestable woman going to cause me? One day, Mme Léonce had just given me my lunch and gone into the dining room when she returned to the kitchen with an earthen pitcher in her hand, and said to me:

“Here, go quickly and fill this from the tap.”

She had hardly finished talking when I sprang up to do what she had asked. Holding the pitcher by its handle, I dipped it halfway into the water in the basin, leaving the neck above the water and under the tap. I then withdrew the pitcher from the basin to hurry over to Mme Léonce who was waiting for me in the kitchen. But as I raised my foot to leave, splash, the pitcher crashed onto the ground in the yard. It hadn’t slipped from my fingers, however my hand hadn’t opened. Nothing had bounced against it. My fingers remained clenched on a fragment of the handle.

Still very much in a daze as a result of the noise of the pottery broken at my feet, with the splash of water on my clothes, I immediately heard the voice of Mme Léonce shouting:

“You broke it?”

. . . And I couldn’t make out anything, neither with my eyes, nor with my ears, neither with my hands, nor with my feet.

I was out of the house. I ran and ran. Mme Léonce, Mr. Léonce, dogs, perhaps everybody else as well was running after me. I ran straight ahead in the alley without looking at the people who saw me running, without looking back to see those who must have been trying to catch me.

I didn’t know how long I’d been running. I didn’t know where I was going nor how far I would reach.

I would have crossed any obstacle as I ran: flames, burning coals, a river, a sugarcane field.

Besides, it wasn’t on my own that I ran. I was a ball of fire hurled into space.

However, little by little, my chest grew hard, like a fist being clenched, and grew heavy with a load that reached down to my knees, to my calves, and gave my bare feet the sensation of running over jagged stones.

I felt like a load about to crash to the ground. I couldn’t run any further; I was lost; they were going to hold me. I couldn’t hold out any longer; I was about to scream! I turned around, terrified—nobody.

Nobody was chasing me.

I had escaped. I was saved!

But I still couldn’t stop; my noisy irregular breath carried me along and I continued walking, irresistibly turning around every now and then.

I continued until the houses, the people, the alley regained their clarity, their reality, not hostile to my eyes, and until only the pounding of my heart in my chest, the tiredness of my legs, and the cutting of the stones into the soles of my feet made me think of seeking a refuge.

I thereupon mechanically took the road to the school.

The school was closed, the veranda empty. I was obviously the first to arrive. I sat outside the classroom and tried to compose myself in my disarray.

I wanted simply to appear to have been the first to arrive. But my breeches were wet with water to the front and, as my hand reached out to touch it, I found in my still tightly clenched fist a piece of pottery, a piece of the handle of the pitcher!

Dull anger rose up in me with such violence that tears sprang to my eyes.

“It wasn’t me who broke the pitcher. It fell by itself.” And Mme Léonce accused me there and then: “You broke it.” And that’s not true. And I would never be able to say how it happened. I don’t know.

“Mme Léonce thinks I did it. She’ll beat me, she’ll consider me less than a puppy. She’ll hate me so much she’ll do me all sorts of wicked things.”

I would weep aloud, so great was my anger and so deep was the ache in my heart.

But the mistress was going to hear me, perhaps. Perhaps I didn’t even have the right to arrive at school so early.

I dried my eyes with the sleeve of my shirt and went and threw into a nearby bush the old piece of pottery. I then returned to where I’d been sitting, my heart still heavy, my head light, unable to find anything to help me pass the time.

Finally a small group of pupils arrived and at the same time the door opened, the mistress came out and went and pulled the chain for the first bell.

Perhaps I did not appear sad that afternoon; I played as usual.

From time to time, the memory of what had happened suddenly came back, making my heart jump, then the reading, singing, and playing chased it away and reassured me that I was in school, in other words in the most pleasant, the most hospitable of the houses.

That evening after the class, I had to resolve a burning question which, alas!, I hadn’t thought about.

How could I get to Petit-Morne without passing in front of Mme Léonce’s house? The village had but one alley and Mme Léonce lived right along the path I had to take.

There was absolutely no way I could pass in front of that abominable house, even if I ran, without running the risk of being seen, if not caught. Mme Léonce must surely have been watching for my return from school and I knew that if she saw me and called, I would not be able to flee: I would surrender.

I was the last to leave the schoolyard. But I made a bold decision.

The village’s only alley ran at the foot of the hill like a river, and the houses were clustered at its edges. But to the side of the hill were scattered some shacks, among some canes, mango trees, and tall breadfruit trees, forming an area called Haut-Morne.

There had to be, under those trees, paths joining the shacks to one another and linking them from one end of the village to the other. Consequently, it should be possible to go around the entire village by going through Haut-Morne.

So, taking the paths we used to roam in around the school, I penetrated the thick foliage of Haut-Morne. I needed much instinct to guide me, but I managed to make it myself, and when a track brought me right behind the standpipe where I would wash my feet every morning as I entered the village, I felt with relief, with pride, that I was getting the better of my terrible misadventure.

That didn’t prevent my being afraid as I returned to M’man Tine.

As I saw her, I suddenly felt that she was somehow aware of what had happened. Didn’t parents know everything? Then again, no; she didn’t mention a word about it. She didn’t know anything. And I tried my best to appear calm and confident.

My God, was I hungry!

Although I hadn’t eaten any lunch, I hadn’t felt hungry at any time in the afternoon, but that night, as soon as M’man Tine lit the fire, my stomach was put to as painful a torment as were the soles of my feet on the jagged stones in the road.

While my fears had been allayed, the sensation of hunger rose to my head to the point where I’d have fainted if I didn’t take hold of myself. I suffered so much that the hunger I felt did not seem to be the lack of anything whatsoever, but something too heavy, too acute, too voluminous that invaded and overpowered me.

The following day I was fine and calm.

I set out for school.

What was I going to do? Never again pass in front of Mme Léonce’s house either on my way to or from school. Take the Haut-Morne road every day from now on. Forgo lunch at midday. Roam about around the school between eleven o’clock and one o’clock. Of course, she would find out one day.

One day she’d go to Petit-Bourg, she’d see Mme Léonce. But in the meanwhile such was my resolution.

However, this attitude quickly turned out to be less ascetic than I had envisaged.

Despite my efforts to ignore it, to mask it, by drinking my stomach full of water at the standpipe, hunger forced me to walk about Haut-Morne and in this area, every midday, some windfall would come my way, as if by magic. Someone, seeing me pass by, would send me to the store on a few errands, and as a reward would give me a couple of cents. Or I would come upon a guava tree laden with fruit, a wild cherry tree all red with cherries. I ended up finding all the fruit trees in the surrounding areas and, when they were fairly far from the shacks, I helped myself without fear or remorse. If they were near the shacks, I carefully picked my moments and stole the fruits. I would steal oranges from Mam’zelle Edouarzine, mangoes from Mr. Ténor, grenadines from Mme Sequédan, caimites from Mme Uphodor.

Harvest time began. From then on, there was no longer any need for me to use any stratagem or trick to eat lunch. All around Petit-Bourg, nearby as well as in the distance, fields of sugarcane were given over to the violent cutlasses of the “cutters,” and like so many flies attracted by the sweet juice, children would go and quench their thirst with all the canes they could suck.

At such times, I wouldn’t have given my lunch of sugarcanes for the most beautiful fish or the biggest piece of meat from Mme Léonce’s.

Oh what infinite happiness—no longer being at that woman’s house! I’d now have been prevented from going every midday to nibble on the canes. I’d have died.

I filled myself with so much sugarcane juice that, at the school’s first bell, when I ran from the field, my full stomach resounded with a noise of liquid being shaken, like a huge bell—a noise similar to that made by the belly of a trotting horse that has just finished drinking.

Nothing worried me at that time; no more fear of Mme Léonce. The way I took via Haut-Morne was pretty much safe and every day I would find my lunch with ridiculous ease.

I really was not difficult to please.

And all of this went on completely unknown to my grandmother, the schoolmistress, my friends, even Raphael himself who, for some time now, saw me only at school.

That was my secret. I was able to keep it closely guarded, or rather, it was able to keep me. It happened however that it caused me some grief. I was in fact hungry at times and was tempted to open up to a friend. But every time, fear, shyness or some indescribable modesty would stop me.

Finally there came a time when the recess breaks became very long and the games wilder and more passionate. In class itself, we did more singing than reading.

I knew and understood, I can’t say how, that school was about to finish and that for quite a while—longer than we’d done on two or three occasions before—the children were going to remain at their parents’ homes.

That was why the mistress would have us sing over half a dozen times a day:

Long live the holidays,

the holidays,

the holi . . . days!

That was why, one morning, M’man Tine had started carrying me to the fields with her once more.

I enjoyed spending Thursdays in the cane fields with my grandmother just as much as I hated following her once again every morning to all those fields that bored me and that I began to detest.

At first I was filled with pain and nostalgia for the school. Although I was certain that for the time being school was closed and that I’d be returning as soon as it reopened, my presence in the canes filled me with apprehension and remorse.

It was painful to me to spend days on end without reading aloud and in unison with other children. It was strange not hearing the school bell; and the one on the plantation at midday made my heart heavy. I felt like seeing and hearing the mistress.

I suffered as a result of not running among the swarm of schoolmates and of not shouting myself deaf and hoarse.

I often thought about Raphael.

Remaining silent beside M’man Tine in the field where the only noise I would hear was the uneven scraping of the hoe on the crust of the earth, and the rustle of wind in the leaves, having nothing else to do but sit down, stand up, cut blades of grass into little pieces . . . At times, I would spend hours attacking and decimating long lines of ants . . . I was bored.

Now, all games, save those I could play on my own, had become something of a rarity for me since the incident that had separated me from my friends in Shack Alley; and since I’d begun attending school there was almost no more contact between them and me. Almost no more friendship.

We were mutually touchy about frequenting each other. We were, it seemed to me, both suffering from a sort of inferiority complex. We no longer gave vent to our tyrannical whims in Shack Alley. No more games, no more pilfering, no more expeditions to far-off “traces,” no more massive incursions into deep woods, entwined with lianas, that frightened us by the multiple echoes of our voices.

Be that as it may, I did not relish going every day to the fields. Furthermore, the whole thing lasted too long, in my opinion, and I had this vaguely nagging fear that I would no longer be going back to school.

As some degree of consolation, every night I organized a class in M’man Tine’s hut, tracing on the wall with charcoal the letters I knew, pointing at them with a bamboo rod, playing both mistress and pupil at the same time. And I rounded everything off with a boisterous medley of all the songs learned at school until M’man Tine, charmed and proud at the outset, shouted to me in a suddenly irritated voice: “’is nighttime, enough singing!”

M’man Tine had once more started to talk about writing to my mother.

The time for resumption of classes was fast approaching and I had to get a new suit. Every Sunday, on her return from Saint-Esprit, M’man Tine would keep talking to herself about the various bits of fabric she had bargained over in order to buy me a new suit. This perspective should have sufficed to make my heart able to bear my days in the fields if, at that same time, the awful rainy season hadn’t arrived. Had I become more sensitive to those heavy downpours, with the frightful noise of storms? Was that season exceptionally violent? The fact remained that I could no longer allow myself to be drenched as passively as before.

For M’man Tine, I felt the same pity, the same desolation that tormented her for my sake. I wouldn’t have wanted her to allow herself to get soaked. But she only worked herself all the more to death pulling on her hoe.

My grief became so intense that in the end the sugarcane fields seemed a danger to me—that danger had killed Mr. Médouze without anyone seeing how and which could at any moment, especially on a stormy day, also kill my grandmother under my very eyes.

When the sun began to set and M’man Tine persisted in uprooting those stubborn clumps of Guinea grass, a feeling of great panic spread through me.

I had finally understood that Médouze had died from fatigue, that it was the stalks of cane, the clumps of Guinea grass, the showers, storms, sunstrokes which, once evening had fallen, had struck him down. Now it was M’man Tine’s turn to undergo all of that: sun, storms, weeds, cane stalks, cane leaves.

It was quite clear that school must have been about to re-open, for M’man Tine was still mulling over whether to write to my mother, and my returning to school was the daily subject of her debate and interdiction. That’s the way M’man Tine was when she had anything to do: she would begin by talking about it—to herself alone, and never to another soul on this earth—once, twice, over and over; then she would go over her projects with impassioned fervor and finally, with the same thrust, she would move on to carrying them out.

Thus leaving work earlier than usual, M’man Tine went down to Petit-Bourg to see Mam’zelle Charlotte and have her write a letter to my mother. That decision filled me with sudden joy that made me see my return to school as a triumph and the end to those sad, wretched days on the plantation.

But M’man Tine returned from the village that night thoroughly upset.

“When you went to school, where did you eat at midday, José?” she asked me point-blank.

I didn’t know her voice to be so calm, so deep when she was scolding me. Her tone as she addressed me was so serious and heartfelt that I asked myself before replying whether it was the start of a set of questions which, as usual, would lead to a spanking or whether it was some bit of grief that was responsible for that quivering in my grandmother’s voice, which she tried her best to control.

I hadn’t yet replied to her question.

With regard to what I was guilty of, the question, to my mind, was badly put. I could not answer.

Why hadn’t she asked me whether or not I’d broken the pitcher? Or why I had done it? Or why had I run from Mme Léonce’s? Since she was obviously leading up to that, wasn’t she?

Unless, perhaps, that ole Mme Léonce had told her things about me I couldn’t even imagine.

“Eh!” M’man Tine pursued, “where did you have lunch when you were going to school?”

“Nowhere, m’man.”

“How you mean, nowhere?”

“No, m’man.”

“What did you eat then?”

“Nothing, m’man.”

“And why didn’t you tell me you weren’t going to Mme Léonce’s anymore?”

I didn’t reply to any other question. Besides, M’man Tine didn’t insist. She didn’t mention a word about the broken pitcher. But never had I seen her so heartbroken and despondent.

As if she had become almost dazed, she started moaning profusely:

“The poor child! Remaining like that without lunch. A worm could have bitten his heart. They could’ve brought this child home dead, starved to death! How shameful for me! And what would Délia have said? What explanation would I have given her? And no one would’ve believed how ignorant, how innocent I was in all this. The law would possibly have put me in chains, dragged me away, like a grandmother who sent her grandson off to school with an empty stomach. God above, do you really believe I wouldn’t have given this child even a speck of flour? . . .”

I couldn’t understand this reaction on the part of M’man Tine. She hadn’t administered the most stinging of spankings—I couldn’t get over it! That sort of tenderness seemed abnormal to me. Mme Léonce hadn’t told her that I’d broken the pitcher then? And wasn’t I guilty of having fled, of having constantly given the impression that I was still having lunch at Mme Léonce’s, of having gone roaming about the village every midday?

No, the whole thing left me completely baffled.

For most of the following day M’man Tine still spoke to me in the field with that sad, grief-stricken voice, and that accent which little by little made a lump stick in my throat.

For a whole week, M’man Tine went down to the village almost every night, which did not put me out in any way since on each occasion she would bring me back either a sweet or a bit of bread, which I ate—one and the other—as dessert after my dish of vegetables and gravy.

One day she began to take things off her shelves, the way she would do whenever she cleaned the shack from top to bottom. But instead of washing her cups, glasses, and plates only to put them back where they had been, she wrapped them in rags and put them in her bamboo basket. In similar fashion, she gathered together everything in the shack.

It was a visit from our neighbor, Mam’zelle Valérine, that finally made me understand what was happening.

“So, you’re leaving us, it seems?” she asked.

“Oh, yes,” replied M’man Tine. “Mam’zelle Charlotte is a person who doesn’t like children; it’s no point my asking her to allow José to take lunch at her place at midday. Mme Léonce was the one to do me that favor and see what . . . So, that’s all I could do—school reopens next week.”

“When are you going to move? I’d like to give you a li’l hand.”

M’man Tine was leaving Black Shack Alley. She was going to live in Petit-Bourg!

I would be returning to school and at midday I’d be going home to M’man Tine’s; I would be eating at her place. I would become a child of the village.

And this was done a few days afterward.

To my eyes everything took place with an ease that, once again, reinforced my conviction that parents sometimes held prodigious powers that children would never understand.

Everything was done as if M’man Tine had been one of those old women Mr. Médouze used to talk about in his tales, who, whenever a nice person was unhappy, would appear to deliver him and carry out his wishes.

Hadn’t M’man Tine really been the fairy who made my dream come true?

Everything was arranged in an order such as my brain could not have created and which held me spellbound.

We were living at Cour Fusil.

Two long parallel sets of barracks covered with tiles, divided into units, looking onto a narrow blind alley with a rough, uneven surface.

The entire area bore the name of the great local aristocrat who owned it: Fusil.

My mother had certainly sent the money, for I had a new suit and I had returned to school.

Every morning, M’man Tine would do exactly as she had done when we used to live at Petit-Morne: coffee, my cup of coffee with cream along with cassava flour; vegetables for lunch; the packing of her bamboo basket; her usual bits of advice:

“Don’t get your clothes all torn, don’t rip off your buttons to play marbles with, don’t run too fast and fall and bruise your knees, don’t interfere with anything in the bedroom. Don’t do anything to make me mad.”

She would then light her pipe, settle her basket on her head, put herself in God’s hands and set off for Petit-Morne.

For she remained attached to it, as did most of the people of the village besides who went to work on the neighboring plantations.

At midday I returned, ate my lunch, searched the room from top to bottom, found the sugar tin and skillfully took my dessert from it.

Then I went roaming about in search of fruits until the school’s first bell sounded.

On evenings I stayed behind with some friends in front of the school, then returned to Cour Fusil after making sure that I wasn’t guilty of anything extraordinary. At times I would go to a standpipe at the side of the alley to wash my face, hands, and feet and, while waiting for M’man Tine to return home, would remain at the entrance to the yard so I could look at the people: the factory workers, the travelers on their way back from Fort-de-France on a little steamboat which, via Rivière-Salée, linked the village to the sea and the entire region to the town.

It was also the time when the other residents of Cour Fusil were returning from work. Most of them probably worked at the factory not far from the village, since many of them went home for lunch at midday.

I didn’t know them all. M’man Tine scarcely paid any visits to her neighbors.

I knew Mam’zelle Délice since I’d heard her call and above all because she had aroused my curiosity in particular—a small, old woman, short and upright, with a tiny face, but who was endowed with the biggest foot you ever saw.

From under her crumpled skirt there extended one leg and one foot that were just like the naked foot and leg extending from the crumpled skirt of any old black woman; but next to that, the other leg, from the knee down, was swollen, rounded out evenly and puffed up to bursting point, looking like a huge, black sausage, then growing narrower as it met her instep which, yielding to the same movement and in the same proportion, imitated the form of an overturned half-calabash. She had huge warts for toes and they each made me think of a stone, so much so that I was just as surprised not to hear this foot make any noise as I was at the ease with which Mam’zelle Délice walked.

I had nevertheless seen cases of erysipelas and of lymphadenitis in Shack Alley, I can assure you! But that elephantiasis seemed to be the most horrible monster.

It was, I was to learn subsequently, a case of quimboisement, an evil spell that a former jilted lover, his pride wounded, had cast on Mam’zelle Délice.

I also knew Mam’zelle Mézélie, whose room was immediately adjacent to ours. A tall woman who, once home, was always dressed in a simple smock and who would always send me to buy rum whenever there was a man inside with her.

Then there was Mr. Toussaint who, for his part, must have worked on a plantation—on his trousers he wore the sack cloth apron like the workers in Petit-Morne.

There was a woman whose breasts bobbed about like two calabashes in her dress. She had an infant who kept crying almost the entire day because he had to remain alone while his maman was at work.

The most pleasant person, and the most important to my eyes, was Mr. Assionis, storyteller, singer, and a drummer by profession. His wife, Ti-Louise, though hardly younger than my grandmother, had a brilliant reputation as a dancer of bel-air.

He did not work at the factory nor on any plantation. He remained at home during the day, and almost every day people would come to fetch him to go and “sing” at the wake of some dead person, either close by or far away. Then almost every night, he would put his drum on his back, take his stick and, together with Ti-Louise, would set off.

His presence would sometimes be required in several places at the same time. People would beg him, promise him left and right vast sums and all sorts of good things to eat and drink during the night. He would become angry, show everybody out and, later on, go off with the most persistent of his customers.

On Saturday nights he would go to play and sing on the plantations; and it was there, between two laghias of death, that Ti-Louise would dance the bel-air like a woman who had sold her soul to the devil, according to the bystanders.

Mme Popo was also nice—she sold corrosol and made ginger beer.

Finally, Cour Fusil’s inhabitants comprised other people whom I heard laughing, talking, quarreling, and whom I’d seen very little of until that time.

I had never visited the other rooms in Cour Fusil but, seeing them from the outside, I imagined that they were similar to the one M’man Tine occupied: somewhat small, somewhat dark, with a flooring of long, disjointed, shaky boards, that made everything dance about at every movement made and every step taken; infested as well with roaches, mice, and rats, and pervious to rain and sunlight.

In one corner M’man Tine had mounted the bed—the same four boxes as at Shack Alley, with the planks, the straw mattress, and the rags. On another box placed at the head of the bed, she had put her basket containing our good clothes. Her table, her shelves, her kitchen utensils, everything else had been set up the way it was in the “front room” when we lived at Black Shack Alley.

From what I could see whenever I glanced into the other inhabitants’ homes as I passed by, the room was divided in two by a screen of printed cotton, wallpaper or newspaper. The forward portion was the “front room” and the section behind the screen was the bedroom.

For a long time I wondered why M’man Tine hadn’t done likewise. In the end I came to the conclusion—I knew not how—that it was the women who had a man with them who hid their beds with a screen.

Something had changed in my way of life. On Thursdays, instead of following M’man Tine to the sugarcane fields, I would remain in the village. I no longer went to Petit-Morne.

Like the majority of the children in the village, I spent my Thursdays walking about the bank of the Rivière-Salée. Along with other friends, I enjoyed catching, so we could play with them and mutilate them afterward, tiny crabs whose holes dotted the bank, and launching onto the water bits of wood under the guise of racing boats, and also fishing for shrimp.

I had learned to swim by watching the bigger ones jump into the water and cross over to the other bank, wildly beating their arms and feet in the process.

The number of my friends had increased considerably. In particular, I was friendly with Michel, a huge lad, whom we called Paunch because of his big belly. He was strong and never cried. Michel had a brother, Ernest, by contrast frail and very cowardly, and a younger sister, Hortense.

The three were always seen together.

I knew Sosso, one whom we respected a lot because he was a good swimmer and made things unbearable for us in the water when we didn’t obey him.

There was also Camille, whose breeches just refused to be mastered by any suspenders or any belt, and would slide down from his belly at the most unexpected moments and in the most inappropriate places.

Raphael was still my good friend but we only saw each other at school. He lived somewhat far from M’man Tine’s and, furthermore, his grandmother would always give him petty domestic chores to do after class.

Michel, Ernest, Hortense, Camille, I appreciated them all, in particular out of school, near the river, for example. And Raphael was almost exclusively my schoolmate.

I had another friend who in class used to sit right next to me: Vireil. The mistress beat him often, accusing him of being “as lazy as a louse” and “as talkative as a parrot.” In spite of everything, Vireil was a boy who astonished me.

Of tanned complexion, his skin and hair (long, black, and soft) shone as if he bathed every morning in coconut oil. His suit was too tight across his shoulders, his chest, and his legs. His breeches always seemed about to burst in the area of his behind, for he was thickset and stocky. He spoke in a voice that made everyone turn around and which the mistress always heard, even when he tried his best to whisper. The fact was, his voice was already that of a man, a big man already working, riding on horseback, smoking, and talking to women. And, like a man, he had long, stiff hair on the back of his hands and on his huge calves. Vireil was one of the rare pupils who wore shoes to school. He was the son of a manager, the one at Digues, I was made to understand.

We all liked Vireil and it was a great stroke of fortune to be sitting next to him. Vireil knew lots of things and told us sparkling, captivating tales that delighted us, held us in suspense and made us shudder.

Stories about gens-gagés, for example—people who, at night, would turn into any beast, sometimes even into plants and who, in that form, did evil things to others, to Christians, on orders from the devil.

Vireil had already heard about bâtons-volants—gens-gagés in the form of sticks with wings who at night flew over the countryside with a noise of wind that seemed to talk and spread sickness, misfortune, and death even in the shacks.

As such, he had advised us to erect a wooden cross on the roof of our parents’ houses since, according to him, that was the only weapon that killed the bâtons-volants.

The animal whose form the gens-gagés assumed more often than not was the hare. One night you are returning from some fête, for example, and suddenly something white leaps across your path: a rabbit! a gens-gagés. Make the sign of the cross.

Gens-gagés also sometimes assumed the form of huge dogs that you would come across at night, at a crossroad, its eyes projecting blinding light, its mouth all aflame.

How upset we all were then, the day Vireil informed us that every night there was a horse with only three legs running up and down, from one end of the village to the other. When there was absolute silence, it seemed, all the people in the village could hear the footsteps of that hideous animal.

Vireil cited names of people in the village reputed to be gagés—people to whom one had to be respectful, whom one had to be careful not to laugh at or to make fun of, people like Mr. Julios, Mme Boroff, Mr. Godisart, Mam’zelle Tica.

He gave us recipes for protecting ourselves from the evils done by zombis: always wear around your waist next to your skin, just as he did, a string of mahot.

Confirming what Mr. Médouze had told me, Vireil informed us that all békés, all the rich folks, were thieves who were gagés.

In addition to those real-life adventures, those personal testimonies, Vireil also told us stories. But the way he told them, the stories weren’t in any way different from reality.

“There was a little boy without a maman who used to live with his godmother. In the country, of course. A place like Courbaril. The godmother was a wicked, wicked woman and she used to beat him. Polo was the little boy’s name. At nights after dinner, the godmother and her godson would put on their nightclothes and go to bed. As there was only one very small room, the godmother did not make a separate bed for Polo and they both slept in the same bed. Besides, she didn’t have a husband. Then she would blow out the lamp and Polo would soon be asleep. Polo was a very sound sleeper, but a very early riser. He would be awake at the first crowing of the cocks. As there was no place for him to go, he would remain in bed but could hear all the noises of the new day as it began. And as soon as the light had filtered through the cracks in the partition, he could make out everything in the room. So that, on one occasion, as Polo opened his eyes he noticed that his godmother was no longer lying beside him. She couldn’t possibly be elsewhere in the room either. There was no light, no noise. That hadn’t frightened him, but he was no less puzzled by this occurrence when, all of sudden, he heard ‘woo-woo’—something flying above the roof of the shack. Then the noise stopped and at the same time Polo felt as if a huge bird had alighted on the shack.

“That time, his heart began to pound.

“Thereupon he heard the door open and someone came into the room.”

“His godmother!” Raphael exclaimed.

“But she was without her skin,” Vireil continued.

“Good heavens! . . .”

“Bundled up like a rabbit, she entered quietly. Polo did not stir. The godmother went behind the door, unhooked something: her skin! She put it on the way you put on a jacket and a pair of trousers, shook herself a bit to adjust it, and became herself once more.

“Naturally, the day did not go by without Polo receiving a flogging. She was a wicked woman, I tell you.

“Since that time, Polo would not be sleeping when his godmother blew out the lamp. Shortly afterward, he would hear her get up, light the lamp once more. Then she would take off all her clothes, remaining stark naked; then she would make some gestures, like this and this, murmur a few words, prayers no doubt, and her skin would fall off, exactly like a piece of clothing. She would pick it up, hang it on a nail behind the door, and ‘woo-woo-woo,’ she would fly off into the air above the shack.”

“So she was a bâton-volant!”

“Polo didn’t like that woman at all and ever since he realized that she was gagée, hated her all the more.

“Now, one day she beat him so badly with a strip of liana that she made blood flow from his bruised skin. And that night, as she was about to go to bed, she said to Polo:

“‘Let me put a little medicine on your sore.’

“In her hand she held a basin full of a liquid with which she washed the child’s sore. Good God! It was brine. Imagine how the poor little fellow ached, how he hollered with pain, how he cried!

“But when he was in bed an idea came to him.

“He waited for his godmother to take off her skin for her diabolical expeditions through the air and no sooner had she flown off than he got up, looked for the basin with the rest of the brine, took the skin, dipped it in it, spreading it all over the inside, then carefully hung it back in place.

“At dawn ‘woo-woo-woo,’ the godmother returned as usual, went behind the door, took her skin, but: ‘Oh-yo-yo-ee! oh-yo-yo-ee,’ she wailed, ‘oh-yo-yo-ee!’ every time she tried to put the skin on her flesh.

“Oh-yo-yo-ee,” Vireil imitated.

And his grimacing, his wincing, and his twisting were so impressive, so suggestive, that the godmother’s torment made us squirm while sympathy for Polo roused us, made us burst out both with vengeful horror and in a laugh of triumph. But, there came the mistress bearing down on us!

By the time we moved away, bending backward with our arms held up to shield us and shouting: “Not me, Madame,”the bamboo cane had broken the spell. And the entire group, down to Vireil himself, sobbed with pain.

But nothing was going to prevent us from hearing the end of that fascinating story.

Shortly afterward Vireil got back to his task and whispered to us, one hand before his mouth:

“The godmother was unable to put her skin back on. When day finally broke, she died, for sunlight kills gens-gagés. Since she had a fine shack and a large property, Polo inherited them. He bought a beautiful horse and married an adorable woman.”

Vireil, what an extraordinary pupil! What a wonderful friend! So extraordinary and so wonderful to us in fact that though the mistress would constantly repeat, all to no avail, that he was the worst pupil, our admiration for him always remained nothing short of complete.

The school was mixed but we could not play with the girls during recess, since they would remain under the veranda under the watchful eyes of the mistress. In class there were benches for girls and benches for boys, so much so that, not being able to have fun with them, we would play jokes on them, tease them, and call them all sorts of ugly names.

Warmer still was my friendship with Georges Roc. He had a brown, round face, with coarse hair, sticking to his skull like a cap, large black eyes, always veiled with melancholy, and heavy, drooping lips. Georges Roc was bigger than I. He was possibly fatter but could not have been stronger, at any rate. He was always clean, changing clothes on Mondays and Fridays and, just like Vireil, wore boots which, again just like Vireil, he took off so he could run about more easily during recess.

It wasn’t at school that I’d met him. His parents lived not far from Cour Fusil and whenever I was passing by in the street, sometimes at midday and every night, I would see him sitting under a veranda.

One day, having noticed that we attended the same school, we struck up a conversation. Was it he who spoke first, or I? Since then, although I didn’t specifically look for him at school, every midday and every night I would go to meet him under the veranda to chat.

The house in which Georges Roc’s parents lived was much more beautiful than the other surrounding houses. Painted in bright colors, the facade contained many windows with venetian blinds. I had never seen Georges Roc’s maman nor his papa.

She was always inside, it seemed, and he, Mr. Justin Roc, came on evenings in his car; and from as far off as Georges could hear the horn, or even the noise of the engine, he would shout, cutting short any conversation.

“My papa! Off with you!”

My going to chat with Georges Roc seemed to involve an element of risk for him or for me. At any rate, my friend, though insisting that I keep on coming, appeared to be infringing some ban!

Yet I had become very attached to Georges Roc. I liked him, not for the joy of playing with him, not for some talent that made him stand out from the rest, not even for his kindness; above all, I liked him because he was always sad and because the things he told me caused me some degree of pain.

I had never felt any sadness for any friend. Georges Roc was the first being I’d met who saw and felt himself unhappy.

In my seven-year-old infant heart, he had secured a special place, the most sensitive and the most gloomy.

Every day Georges Roc would have some misfortune. Every day he had been crying and when on evenings, about six or seven o’clock, I went to meet him, it was his misfortunes that he spoke about.

Mam’zelle Mélie had complained to his mother about him and the latter had beaten him. Mam’zelle Mélie was an old black woman in a black dress and with dried legs, whom, in my mind, I associated with a crow because of her silhouette and her name. In Mr. Justin Roc’s house, she appeared to be a maid with great esteem which conferred on her even a certain authority over Georges.

He had either dirtied this or dropped that, hadn’t done such and such a thing, had said something or the other, as a result of which he had been beaten or scolded.

As for me, I used to do as much without being punished in most instances. Whereas everything he did led to blows—the cat whose tail he would sometimes pull; his shoes which he wore down too much or which he hadn’t polished properly; his clothes that he would soil or rip apart; his teeth he hadn’t brushed; his fingernails he hadn’t cleaned; his fork that he would hold incorrectly at table. The result was that Georges Roc was in a perpetual state of chagrin and when, later on, following the confidences and revelations each of his outpourings brought me, I learned his story, Georges Roc became for me the object of greatest pity.

How could I have imagined that one could have a maman who was always in the shade and freshness of such a lovely house, and a father who was in charge of the factory, with a car, and not be the happiest boy in the world?

I had to hear Georges Roc, sitting on the ground beside me, under the veranda, relate his sad story for himself in a low voice.

At home he was called Jojo, but for all that received no special favors. His father, a tall mulatto, had a mustache and wore a Panama hat. But Mme Justin Roc, whose footsteps and voice I could sometimes hear behind the venetian blinds, was not his mother.

Imagine my amazement when Jojo confessed to me that his real mother was Mam’zelle Gracieuse, that woman who lived not far from Cour Fusil, not far from Mr. Justin Roc’s house, whom I saw every day and for whom I’d even run some errands on occasions.

Why was Jojo not living with his mother? Why had I never seen him at her place? Why didn’t he go there very often?

“Why don’t you go there right now, for example, now that that woman who’s not your maman has just beaten you?”

Jojo’s explanation was even more frightening and pitiful.

Mr. Justin Roc was the bastard son of an old béké. Before taking over the factory, Mr. Justin had been manager of the Reprise plantation.

Mam’zelle Gracieuse was a worker on the plantation and as nothing was easier for the managers and overseers than to do what they wanted at the whim of their desires, tastes, and appetites, both with the young girls, their breasts barely beginning to show, as well as with the soft, musky-fleshed women, their backs bent over in the fields, Gracieuse had had a child for Mr. Justin.

Since she was a young, plump, beautiful octoroon with an amber-colored complexion, Mr. Justin had made her his mistress and acknowledged the child. They had come to live in the village when Mr. Justin had been promoted to foreman. In a small three-room dwelling Gracieuse had continued living with him, at the same time loving, respectful, and obedient, passing in the eyes of her former friends for a woman who had been lucky enough to be chosen as the mistress of a mulatto, of a foreman, and in fact finding herself in the situation of a maid who slept with her master.

Thus Jojo lived. I was no doubt still at Petit-Morne. And he was never beaten, never wanted for anything, and was spoiled by his papa. He was as free, as happy with everything as all the boys of the village.

Then one day everything changed.

Mr. Justin Roc had built this lovely house, had outfitted it with new furniture; there was a function, with many cars, many mulattoes, a few békés, and ladies in formal dresses. Mr. Justin had gotten married.

He had brought Jojo to live in the lovely house with the new wife who was called Mme Justin. His mother had remained alone in one room instead of three and whenever Jojo went to see her, would embrace him with tears in her eyes.

To my way of looking at things, it was regrettable, but I couldn’t yet see what there was in that change to make Jojo himself so unhappy.

“I cried a bit, too,” Jojo told me, “since I saw maman crying; but I used to go to see her often and didn’t feel the change very much. I would pass to give her a kiss every morning on my way to school, at eleven o’clock on my way back, after lunch on my return to school, and at four o’clock I would spend a longer time with her, eating the afternoon snack she’d left me and playing in front of her door.

“But, I don’t know why, one day maman Yaya—that’s how Papa told me to address his lady—told me she didn’t want me spending so much time with my maman. So I cut short my visit after the evening class; but as soon as I was alone under the veranda I would run over—after all, it was just for a minute—to see Maman ’cause I couldn’t remain alone like that, under the veranda, while she was right there, just a stone’s throw away.

“Well, fairly often, while I was over there, Mam’zelle Mélie (’twas maman Yaya who had brought her) would come and fetch me and on every occasion maman Yaya would scold me.

“This went on every day until one night, following a complaint from maman Yaya, Papa gave me a licking with a wide leather belt: ‘Since you’re so disobedient,’ he shouted, ‘I forbid you to go and see maman Gracieuse without my permission.’

“The following morning, on my way to school, I told m’man Gracieuse what had happened, and that night when my father returned home, maman Yaya told him how that morning, like a true black woman from the plantation, m’man Gracieuse had come to the front of the house and had called her out and insulted her.

“She then turned on my papa, telling him that if he hadn’t been such a damn’ scamp before his marriage, running around with those dirty, vulgar black girls, I wouldn’t have existed to come and cause her so much scandal. And that night I received a few slaps. Since then, Mam’zelle Mélie was given the job to accompany me to school, way past my maman’s place to make sure I didn’t stop in at all.

“One day m’man Gracieuse had a fight with Mam’zelle Mélie. Another time, she came here to abuse and curse my papa’s wife.

“Nonetheless, every time I found the opportunity, I ran over to see my maman. But Mam’zelle Mélie kept spying on me and did not fail to carry tales to maman Yaya and my papa. Then they took everything out on me—there was always something to reproach me for so they could beat me or have my papa do so.”

As a result Jojo could not go beyond the limits of the veranda to go and play elsewhere with the other boys of the village. He was always worried, always trembling, urging me to run off or to hide every time he heard his maman Yaya stir, Mam’zelle Mélie talk or his father’s car approach. He begged me every day to return that evening, since I enjoyed the freedom of being able to play awhile in the neighborhood after dinner, as opposed to him, who was only allowed to remain squatting under the veranda until his father’s car returned.

Jojo did not tell me all of that in one go. Each one of his outpourings brought out secrets that made my friend’s misfortune impossible to fathom.

At times I would have wanted to indulge in noisy, devilish games, as was my custom. But he was a boy bound and condemned to silence. He found that I always spoke too loudly, and that I laughed too heartily.

Jojo was to my eyes all the more worthy of pity because, since I’d come to live in the village, M’man Tine almost never beat me anymore. Every now and then I would receive one or two boxes on my ears for having ripped buttons from my clothes to play at marbles with Raphael, who always beat me—he would beat almost everybody—or for having pinched some sugar when I felt like some. Furthermore, M’man Tine though not showering me with any more affection than before, still paid a lot of attention to me. On certain evenings she would question me about what was being taught to me in class and would ask me to read her a little story, a fable or a song. Occasionally she would give me a piece of printed paper in which had been wrapped two cents’ worth of sugar or one cent’s worth of pepper, and would ask me to read what was on it for her. On more than one evening, while in the glow of our kerosene lamp, I was struggling valiantly with one of those bits of paper, I thought for a minute that I detected in M’man Tine’s eyes a look of deepest tenderness, enhanced by the most touching admiration.

My life was beginning to assume a routine nature. I already knew the village, its houses, all its woods, the slightest little path in the surrounding area. I no longer feared approaching Mme Léonce’s house. The people who were the most noticeable for one reason or another were as familiar to me as the most laden of fruit trees.

There was nothing left for me to discover.

Time went by, impassively, or rather seemed not to go by at all. People, things, my friends remained the same.

And if at school we learned new things, that was not sufficient to make me feel that I was changing or that anything or the other was undergoing any shake-up.

Some things were so quietly incorporated into the string of events that they had appeared quite natural to me, almost worthless—my moving from Mme Saint-Brix’s class to the bigger children’s school, at the top of the village, my entrance into the catechism class, the disappearance of certain of my mates, among them Vireil who, it was widely held, had become so badly-behaved that he had made a girl from the country pregnant.

Nothing seemed to make the time go by anymore.

First of all, M’man Tine had told me that she was sending me to school to learn my alphabet and how to write my name.

Later, when I could write my name in full and spell a few words, she told me that, with that knowledge, I was sure I wouldn’t have to go to work on the plantations and that I had a chance to become a factory worker.

I was already quite proud of this new light on things, though I’d never yet seen what a factory was like—hence my impatience to grow up.

And now she was telling me I had to continue up to the examination class—a proposition that was much less attractive for me, I must confess, for I did not know, for I couldn’t see how I could get out of it.

The fact of the matter was, though, that I was still all too happy to be at school. I still had my good friends and gaiety and joy abounded therein.

Catechism, however, was a bit boring and sad.

Ever since, one Sunday after mass, M’man Tine had gone and given my name to the village priest, every evening after class I had to go to Mam’zelle Fanny’s to learn catechism.

Mam’zelle Fanny, the “instruction mistress,” was a woman feared by all the children and respected by all the adults.

She had, it seemed, the power to save or destroy with her tongue anybody she saw fit; to transform herself into angel or devil. When speaking to the priest she was holier than the Virgin Mary. When speaking to the mayor or a schoolmaster she was more sophisticated than a marchioness—such as I’d seen in the reading books. But whenever she abused someone in the street or when she was angry or when she was beating us, she was worse and more awful than one of the gens-gagés.

As for me, she made me wish night and day that she were dead and I had sworn a long time to burn her alive when I grew up.

I didn’t know why it was Mam’zelle Fanny who was the one to look after the souls of the children in the village—she who picked those who were about the age of reason to place them in the catechism class when the parents themselves hadn’t done so.

I was therefore part of Mam’zelle Fanny’s class along with Jojo, Michel-Paunch, Nanise, and a score of others.

Raphael was not one of the group because his maman Nini could read and taught him the catechism herself.

From that time on, every evening after class I would make a flying visit to M’man Tine’s and set off again to meet my friends who gathered in the street, in front of the door to Mam’zelle Fanny’s house.

Normally she would not be in at that moment, for though she did not work either on a plantation or in a factory, Mam’zelle Fanny seemed to have pursuits that were as numerous as they were far-flung. But on her arrival, we had to be all there. Failing that, the slightest bit of tardiness required precise excuses and caused long, painful bouts on our knees.

We had to look out for her arrival from as far as we could see, so we could halt our games, fold our arms, and shut up, without the slightest sound.

Mam’zelle Fanny was so irritable!

So profound a silence reigned among us that, without doubt, those colleagues standing in this respectful trance felt, like I did, tempted to fall on their knees or to make a sign of the cross to greet Mam’zelle Fanny.

But we only managed to intone all together and in as angelic a voice as possible: “Good evening, Godmother Fanny.” For, in appreciation of the unanimous affection we were supposed to have for her, Mam’zelle Fanny had insisted on that form of greeting from us.

Our arms firmly folded, we gathered around in a circle on a sort of terrace which was between the roadway and the threshold of the door.

Godmother Fanny would go inside to put down all she was carrying, then reappear a transformed being, a picture of recollection, and with a gracious, almost pure gesture, would make a touching sign of the cross and start prayers.

That part was not very difficult. Some of us knew that particular prayer and since the recitation was done aloud, those who weren’t too sure of the words had only to keep up the rhythm, for Godmother Fanny, despite her profoundly inspired air, did not fail to exercise extraordinary vigilance, following the movements of our lips and being able to detect automatically the slightest error.

Following that, opening a small book she carried in her dress, she would begin the catechism lesson.

She would read a question and have us repeat it. Then she’d read the answer, would go over it, making us repeat it word by word. All together, we would repeat.

“Again!”

Once, twice.

“Again!”

Three times, four times . . .

And we repeated aloud, all together and at the same rhythm; so much so that by dint of constant repetition, we ended up twisting the sentence into a singsong rhythm which, on its own, tirelessly dragged us along. I then noticed that Mam’zelle Fanny had disappeared like a real saint, and it was from way inside her bedroom or her kitchen that she kept shouting: “Again,” and repeated along with us to stimulate us.

During that time she was no doubt lighting a fire, peeling some vegetables, ironing her clothes.

Soon afterward, she had reappeared. She would move on to another question in the same fashion and, having asked it, would go back inside to her domestic chores.

In the alley, the passersby looked at us with the same respect paid to the front of a church one passed, if not to a funeral one crossed. I suppose that spectacle must have enhanced all the more Mam’zelle Fanny’s reputation in the entire village, even making her position more fearsome and more enviable at the same time.

The lesson dragged on until it was too dark for Mam’zelle Fanny to see to read. Then to close, she would again assume her place in the circle and lead the long evening prayer whose composition must have been, to my mind, comparable to that of a copious menu, with its pleasant preamble, the different sections of varying length and, for me, varying difficulty, varying consistency. And the final litanies were a real dessert, having even the effect of liqueurs.

But it was the following evening that everything changed.

Having done her lesson the previous evening and having taken great pains to make us repeat the answers over and over again, Mam’zelle Fanny now moved to the stage of asking questions. And that evening she appeared with whip in hand. Apart from the fact that, already, we had forgotten everything we’d repeated in our singsong way the evening before, the frightening look on Mam’zelle Fanny’s face, as well as our obsession with the inevitable licking, made any effort at remembering anything virtually impossible.

For example, when asked about penitence, I began by: “Penitence is a sacrament which . . . ,” repeating those words every time the ensuing silence seemed to make me dizzy, waiting to receive the fatal blow on my head, on my back, even wishing it would land as quickly as possible, since the anguish and torment that took hold of my tortured body while I was searching or pretending to search for the answer were even more painful than having my skin whipped.

That saved me, for Mam’zelle Fanny, tapping it out on my shoulders with her whip, supplied the answer and I repeated after her some fifty times. Then she moved to the following pupil.

None of us escaped.

And the evening after that we fared no better.

All the same, I wasn’t one of the more unfortunate ones in this catechism class. Certain pupils, whose memories were poor and who had been recommended to Mam’zelle Fanny by their parents, would sometimes leave with their legs bleeding.

Jojo was one of those.

As catechism pupils, we had to attend common prayer at church every Friday during Lent. As a result, instead of going to Mam’zelle Fanny we gathered in front of the little church. Mainly women came—nearly all those from Cour Fusil. M’man Tine never missed a day. She would come in her work clothes, having however, for the sake of decency, loosened the waist of her dress and thrown a scarf over her shoulders.

Prayers began at six o’clock but the priest did not take part in those. The staunch members sat in the first pews and right in front of the holy table were three prie-dieux occupied by old Mr. Popol, who assisted the priest on Sundays, Mam’zelle Fanny, and Mme Léonce. For the latter, from all appearances, was also very strong in prayer and had a fine reputation in the village.

Those were, moreover, the only times I ever saw her.

We catechism pupils did not sit on the seats reserved for us every Sunday, but as the congregation was nowhere near the crowd that came on Sundays we sat in the regular pews.

Mr. Popol began the prayers. At times he would read from a book that was not very big, but very thick; at others, he would recite, hands clasped, eyes firmly shut. Kneeling, everyone listened, hands clasped, head bowed. I listened to the slow, endless murmur of his voice which, gradually, began to sink in and form in my head visions of heavenly life with angels playing trumpets, flocks of soft, white lambs, processions of saints in long robes of blue, red, yellow, and gold . . .

Then came Mme Léonce’s turn.

Well! When her turn came it was already beginning to get dark. One candle alone placed near her along with the flame of the Eternal Father emitted a subdued glow in the middle of the church. In addition, the effort we had made to remain quiet during the first part of the service was starting to show signs of flagging.

Furthermore, Mme Léonce would read in a voice that made us laugh. “A voice like a mad goat,” said Michel-Paunch. Or rather, according to Nanise, “a voice like a hen that has just laid an egg.”

At the same time as well, most of the staunch members, their bodies worn out by the hardship of a long day’s work, and for some time now kept silent and immobile, began to nod, drowsy with sleep.

Then in the darkness, we began to have this uncontrollable urge to laugh, and without exchanging a single word, we felt just about to burst out laughing. But with all my strength, with all my will, I kept it in, clenching my fists, biting my lips, holding my body together till it felt like my bones would break.

Suddenly the tone of the prayer changed and, with Mme Léonce’s voice coming to a halt, the congregation continued in a dull, monotonous murmur which, because it had surprised us and because it was deep enough to allow us to take the chance, was increased by our unbridled giggling.

From then on it was impossible to control ourselves; we laughed at anything, but in a way that neither the fear of being heard nor the terror of all the saints who must surely be looking down on us (despite the darkness and despite the color of our skins) could restrain.

At times, in a supreme effort not to let out the hearty laugh that convulsed him, one of us would let out a fart, and it was the breaking of that barrier that deafened the outburst of all our sniggering.

But our ensuing punishment was swift and violent. Mam’zelle Fanny, who hadn’t forgotten to bring her whip, lashed out in the darkness with blows on our backs and even on our faces if we hadn’t had time to bend down. And she would lead two victims away by their ears, putting them to kneel down in front of the Holy Table.

Finally it was she, Mam’zelle Fanny, who brought the service to an end.

She muttered a few words in haste and launched into a long list of objects such as: Ivory Tower, House of Gold, Star of the Morning; names of animals and saints, especially female ones. She knew more saints than there were inhabitants of Petit-Bourg. After each name, in the same murmur of black voices that covered our silly laughter so well, everybody responded: “Pray for us.”

Some time after that, as I left catechism class one night, I found M’man Tine’s bedroom full of women from the surrounding houses. On her bed of rags, M’man Tine, in her old work dress, her feet all covered with dried mud, was stretched out with her eyes closed. At intervals, she uttered a sigh of pain.

“You take the cake as a bad little fellow,” Mam’zelle Délice said to me. “Your maman comes back dying and you weren’t even here . . .”

My explaining that I’d been to catechism class was to no avail; everybody accused me of staying behind to play.

But what was wrong with M’man Tine? She was being given a tisane and there was talk of wrapping her in wool blankets and of giving her hot infusions to make her sweat like the cover of a canari. I was sent to buy some rum and soft candle. On my return people were still coming and going, carrying cups, bowls, jars, medicinal leaves, and flowers.

A fire was lit, water was heated, and I was made to go outside so they could take off M’man Tine’s dirty dress and put on a white smock found in the clothes basket. Then the lamp was lit.

Later, Mam’zelle Délice brought me something for dinner.

When everyone had left, I was finally able to get close enough to M’man Tine to tell her “Good night, m’man.” Although she seemed to be in a sound sleep, she groaned, opened her eyes and asked:

“Did you eat?”

“Yes, M’man Tine . . . You’re sick?”

“Yes, my son,” she said, “your maman’s body is not so good anymore. Your maman’s body has only old, weary bones.”

I couldn’t find anything else to say to her and I remained leaning on the foot of the bed for a long time, looking at M’man Tine’s chest heave up and down and examining her face which bore no sign of suffering, but which seemed to be simply hollow and lifeless.

The kerosene lamp lit up the table, surrounding it with smoke, and the silence between M’man Tine’s sighs seemed about to overwhelm me. I couldn’t tell whether she had really slept soundly or whether she had just dozed off for a long while, but opening her eyes all of a sudden and seeing me at her feet, M’man Tine said:

“You’re still here? Go and wash your feet and get ready for bed.”

That night I was afraid to go outside. I didn’t wash my feet. I took my rags, bundled in the corner where I put them every morning, spread them on the floor, and was perhaps about to get right down to bed just as I was, when M’man Tine’s voice reminded me:

“Take off your clothes, put on your night things, and don’t forget to say your prayers . . .”

The following morning my grandmother did not get up. The women came back with cups of coffee and bowls of tisane. M’man Tine didn’t feel capable of going to work.

I began to feel somewhat puzzled, embarrassed, and even annoyed, for Mam’zelle Délice (with her big foot, she was the most zealous of all the women) sent me to ask everyone for medicines with difficult names and when the first school bell sounded and I was about to leave, she pointed out that my grandmother was sick and told me I should remain at home with her.

For several days I didn’t go to school. I spent my days in the bedroom next to M’man Tine, always ready to bring the cup of tisane nearer when her hands groped out in search of it on the box that had been placed at the head of her bed, to receive the mug from her hand when she had finished drinking, and to hand her the first object she asked me for.

If she seemed to be asleep, I slipped stealthily out, remaining sufficiently close to the door so I could hear her faintest call, and there I frittered away my time, the way I would do in the sugarcane fields.

In the morning, at midday, and again at night, M’man Tine would receive visits and care from the neighbors. They would always come loaded with all sorts of plants and sometimes there would be a lively discussion on the tisane or the brew to be made.

Mam’zelle Délice always brought me my meals along with the bowls of pap for my grandmother.

In the end, a few days later, Mam’zelle Délice who, to all appearances, had been given something rather important to do, returned to give an account to all those women gathered near M’man Tine’s bed, that the Séancier had “seen” that my grandmother had drunk cold water while her body was still hot and had caught pleurisy as a result.

Everybody looked discouraged. Mam’zelle Délice suggested writing to my mother in town, but M’man Tine would have none of it, on the grounds that my mother had sent her some money not too long before and that my mother was going to find her indiscreet; or that she was going to waste her time leaving where she was to come to see her; she preferred to wait a bit.

M’man Tine groaned all night long. Already, for several days now, she no longer smoked her pipe and shouted that she was stifling.

Mam’zelle Délice proposed that she be cupped and Mr. Assionis, who was no doubt the most skillful person in Petit-Bourg at cupping, after cutting M’man Tine’s skin and applying his little calabashes to her side, declared that her blood had already turned to water.

After a day of feverish activity in the bedroom and of long conversations, the women brought men who carried a long bamboo pole with a hammock. They wrapped my grandmother, who kept moaning and crying.

“You must go, dear friend,” Mam’zelle Délice said to her, “you’ll be all right.”

She was placed in the hammock while each end of the bamboo pole rested on a man’s shoulder; she was covered with a sheet thrown over the bamboo, the flaps of which fluttered from side to side.

At that moment M’man Tine called out, weeping aloud:

“José, José . . .”

“José!” someone shouted, “come and tell your maman goodbye.”

The flap of the sheet was raised and M’man Tine took my head in her cold hands, pressed my cheek against her icy, tear-streaked face.

And with no more attention being paid to me, a cortège gathered around the hammock, proceeded into the yard and into the alley.

I remained in front of the door and didn’t even think of going to see in which direction my grandmother was being taken.

So she was dead. Yet, Mr. Médouze . . . Perhaps there were several ways you could die . . . Was she going to return? Would I ever see her again? Mam’zelle Délice had said she would be all right. Ah! . . .

Mam’zelle Mézélie, who was perhaps the only one to remain in the yard, seeing me there, came to me and said, placing her hand on my head:

“José, poor child!”

I cuddled up close to her and began to sob.

She took me to her house and gave me a glass of cold water and some bread.

“Next week, your maman is going to be back; they’ve taken her to the hospital for treatment. She’ll come back all cured.”

When Mam’zelle Délice returned, hardly able to move her foot which seemed to pull her down from her temples, she explained that M’man Tine was at the Saint-Esprit hospital.

Mam’zelle Délice washed and tidied up everything in the shack, fed me, and that night asked me if I wanted to sleep at her place or alone in M’man Tine’s. I opted for the second proposal.

“Won’t be afraid?” she asked me.

No; my fear that M’man Tine was dead having passed, I was no longer afraid of anything and it was with a heart full of tenderness that I went and snuggled up on the bed of rags in her place.

Mam’zelle Délice took care of me, gave me my meals, made me change my clothes, washed the dirty ones, cajoled me from time to time and scolded me as well when I dirtied my things or when she didn’t find me in the yard on her return from work. From the very day after M’man Tine’s departure, she had made me return to school.

Jojo was the only one I told my troubles to and I wondered whether I didn’t experience a certain pride at being his equal as a result of the misfortune that had thus befallen me.

But I soon realized that M’man Tine’s absence was lasting a long time.

I even began to suffer for I somehow suddenly felt that the people in the yard were looking at me as if I were something unpleasant. None of them could see me pass by without sending me to run errands; they even took advantage of my kindness and it seemed that the more that happened, the less consideration they had for me.

No longer did I change my clothes on Fridays and before the end of the week; I was disgustingly filthy, ashamed of myself. In addition to that, I was constantly hungry—a hunger that knew no end. At night after my dinner, I could still have eaten two or three times what I’d just finished. Luckily, sleep would come to take all hunger from my mind. But on mornings I would wake up with even more demanding pangs of hunger. I no longer had my cup of coffee with cream, well sweetened, with cassava flour, only a bit of coffee at the bottom of a tin cup, a bit of vegetable cooked the night before and roasted on the charcoal embers in the morning. As it happened, especially on mornings, I didn’t have the time to run about Haut-Morne looking for fruits.

No sooner did I enter class than I was gripped by intense hunger; I felt like feasting myself on enormous cups of sweetened coffee with huge amounts of cassava flour.

And it was precisely at that time that the mistress would come to have her breakfast.

For after the reading exercise, she would give us a bit of written work and while we were thus occupied, she’d go to her place and return with a large porcelain bowl and a huge piece of bread on a waiter.

The mistress broke the bread into small pieces in the bowl. The bread was a golden brown and crunched under her fingers, dropping little crumbs that I felt like avidly snatching up to eat. Then, dipping the little silver spoon into the bowl, the mistress carried to her mouth pieces of bread covered with a brown, milky, oily liquid that smelled of vanilla and must have been sweet and delicious.

I did not write. I looked at the mistress. The hand in which she held the beautiful spoon was fine and clean. Her hair was well done. Her face was of a clear complexion, made velvety by a touch of powder, her eyes shone with pure, quiet brilliance, and her mouth, which she half-opened as the spoon passed, was at the same time the most beautiful and the most cruel thing to behold.

Then too, that bowl of white porcelain with pink and blue flowers, that silver spoon, that waiter of polished mahogany, how it all must have served to enhance and complete the taste of that meal! How it all added to my torture!

Did I really feel like tasting that milk chocolate? I’d never eaten any, but I dearly longed for some. Perhaps I wasn’t good enough for such a meal? Sometimes M’man Tine made plain chocolate with water and raw cocoa and thickened it with a pap of starch, or soaked my cup of cassava flour with it.

But my stomach, my entire chest hurt me and my hand trembled, unable to write. I was dizzy.

The sight of the mistress’s milk chocolate tortured me so much that I felt only suffering, no desire, so much so that, in point of fact, I had the distinct sensation of being less starved once, having finished her meal, she took the waiter back inside and returned to her chair.

“Bring your books up for correction,” she exclaimed.

But when, a little later, the pangs of hunger again gripped me, it was under the appearance of a large bowl of milk chocolate, smelling of vanilla, with golden bread, that the mirage of supreme relief presented itself.

I couldn’t have the slightest grudge against Mam’zelle Délice. I had fully understood that she lacked the means to give me more. I liked her a lot. I had become so attached to her that I didn’t even notice her hideous foot anymore.

About that same time a grave misfortune befell Jojo, making me forget my sorry plight for several days. Mam’zelle Gracieuse had left the village, going off with a man who had large gardens of yams and sweet potatoes in Chassin, on the other side of Petit-Bourg.

His stepmother forbade him to cry.

One afternoon he had hidden himself in a little corner of the house so he could cry and Mam’zelle Mélie, having surprised him, had shouted:

“But what’s wrong with this Jojo? How come he’s crying?”

Thereupon Mme Justin Roc had put him in punishment until his father came home.

Jojo’s maman had thus also gone far away, like someone who had died or gone to hospital . . .

And to think that on certain nights despite our grief, we took delight in dreaming aloud!

“When I’m big,” Jojo said, “Papa and maman Yaya will be dead. I’ll be foreman at the factory. I’m going to buy a prettier car than Papa’s, and I’ll go for m’man Gracieuse and I’ll build a beautiful house to live with her. But I’m not marrying a wicked woman like m’man Yaya. I prefer to remain with Maman.”

As for me, I’d have a large property, as big as the whole countryside around us. I wouldn’t plant any sugarcane, except a few stalks for my dessert. But I’d have many people cultivating vegetables and fruits along with me, rearing hens, rabbits, but even to go to work, they’d put on trousers and shirts that were not torn, they’d wear fine suits on Sundays, and their children would all go to school. M’man Tine would not be dead; she’d take care of the hens, gather the eggs. M’man Délia would look after the housework.

I was really dreaming when Jojo, bringing me back to everyday reality, said to me, without any malice:

“But you couldn’t have all that—you’re not white, you’re not a béké.”

“Makes no difference.”

“But your workers, then, they’ll be almost as well fed and lodged as the békés! Then, there’ll be no more niggers; and what are the békés going to do!”

I remained confused, ashamed, somewhat sad.

I was at school the day M’man Tine returned from the hospital. She had come out by herself, on foot. I found her at midday. Sitting on her bed, looking tired but radiant at the same time. I was surprised. I exclaimed: “M’man Tine!” and remained standing at the entrance, unable to go a step further.

“Come,” she said.

Then, confused and overcome with joy, I went close to her, weeping aloud, tears streaming uncontrollably down my face.

I did not take my First Communion that year owing to M’man Tine’s illness. I resigned myself readily to this fact but not without the painful impression, in spite of everything, that those of my mates, such as Jojo and Raphael, who took theirs had left me behind.

Furthermore, I learned very quickly how to abstain from many a fête and ceremony destined for children, and always for the same reasons: no fine suits, no shoes. In particular no shoes, since I hadn’t taken my First Communion which, for all the kids like me, was the occasion to christen their first pair of shoes.

It was an entirely different picture the day I was forced to stop going to play with Jojo. One evening we were under the veranda, chatting quietly as usual. Seeing Mam’zelle Mélie approaching from the road, we remained quiet and still, the way, to be on the safe side, we always did, our heads down so she could go inside.

On that occasion when she was close to us, she stopped and asked Jojo:

“What were you talking about, for you to jump like that when you saw me?”

“Nothing,” Jojo replied, trembling already.

“Nothing?” Mam’zelle Mélie said threateningly; “Every night you’ talking for hours with this little black boy (Mam’zelle Mélie, as I said, was to my eyes black like me, if not like a crow) and tonight you weren’t saying anything. Well, you’ll explain that to Madame.”

No sooner was she inside than the voice of Mme Justin called Jojo.

Jojo knew, alas!, what was waiting for him and with tears in his eyes he dashed off.

He had hardly left me, indeed, before I heard the jerky outbursts of his cries, so agonizing that, myself filled with anger and fright, I left the veranda and went into the alley, straight across from the house, in an attempt to catch a glimpse of what was going on inside and in the hope that, perhaps, after his spanking Jojo would return.

Luckily I had gotten up. Mam’zelle burst out from the corridor with a basin in her hands and, seeing me in the road, shouted to me:

“You’ lucky. I’d have bathed you down . . . that’ll teach you to remain in your mother’s shack instead of coming here to teach other people’s children vices.”

I had to wait till the next day at school for Jojo to tell me what that awful woman had said about us.

“She said that I speak only créole with you and that you’re teaching me bad words.”

Jojo had always told me that Mme Justin had forbidden him to speak patois and as he couldn’t resist doing so, we had agreed to speak as softly as possible in order to go against his stepmother’s prohibition.

Now, Mam’zelle Mélie spoke nothing else but patois and I was surprised that she disowned us with such scorn. With respect to the foul words she accused us of uttering—a pure invention—Mam’zelle Mélie then seemed to me more odious than M’man Tine had said she was and I firmly believed that adults never told lies.

Thereafter Jojo was forbidden to play with me. He was greatly perturbed at no longer having a single schoolmate. At first I was concerned for him, even very embarrassed. But I had no end of friends. All my original buddies, and new ones too. Like Audney, for instance.

He lived at Haut-Morne and his father had a horse.

One of the chores Audney had to do after class was to take the horse to drink at middays from a pond at the foot of the other side of the hill, and, on evenings, to go and cut grass for it along the “traces.”

I had become his companion and helper.

As we carried it to drink, we both rode on the back of the animal and, on evenings, as we cut the grass, we found guavas and other wild fruits.

But the most pleasant part of the caring for the horse was bathing him on Sunday mornings. We had to rise early, get astride the animal, and take it to the little lake in Génipa. The sun had already risen, but it wasn’t very hot as yet.

That was the day that nearly all the men working on the Poirier plantation came for their baths and to bathe the horses belonging to the managers and overseers. Some took the opportunity to wash their old work clothes. They all took off all their clothes. Each one mounted his horse and made it enter the water. The animal moved deeper in, disappeared in the water, swam around, head held high. And the man’s body emerged, evoking that half-man, half-horse figure that I saw on the packets of vermicelli.

The animal then came back to the bank, the man alighted and, with a wisp of straw, rubbed it down energetically, returning to the water afterward to rinse off the creature. We did likewise with our mount.

It was pleasant being carried into the water by the horse, snorting as it swam. The water, in the rays of the rising sun, felt heavenly on our skins.

And I’d never seen anything so simple and so beautiful as big black men in the nude, standing beside stalwart horses, their reflections mirrored in the water of a lake.

I was now in Class I, the toughest in the school. And we no longer had a mistress, but a master.

This was a source of joy for the inhabitants as well, for this master was a son of the commune who, after serving just about everywhere in the island, had just been appointed principal of the Petit-Bourg school.

The word had spread quickly among the pupils that he was a teacher who “explained” well and beat severely.

He didn’t hit with a bamboo cane nor did he beat you with a ruler in the palm of your hand; he didn’t wring your ears. He beat with his bare hands. He boxed you on your ears!

He was as impressive as a school principal could be in the eyes of little eleven-year-old country children, which we were.

He sported a tanned complexion, was tall, and wore black shoes with shiny, pointed tips. His trousers were of white drill with two arrow-straight creases running down the front and his jacket was of the same material, its little upper pocket bedecked with a heavy gold watch chain. His head, which he kept high and rigid, was distinguished by two gold teeth nestled among his large white teeth, a black mustache, a pair of pince-nez, and a straw hat.

Mr. Stephen Roc had long, thick, powerful hands with fingernails hard like ducks’ beaks; he kept constantly breaking the chalk as he wrote on the blackboard.

Yes, a box on the ears from hands like that must have really hurt!

Already, the mere sound of his voice coming from his chest, even if it were very faint, always seemed to be shouting at us to be careful.

However, our first feeling toward Mr. Roc was one of respectful as well as affectionate admiration. For us, who had now become the “bigger ones” in the school, proud as we were to have such a master, it was at the same time very pleasant to feel afraid of him. Everything he taught us presented itself in a fascinating, alluring way, even when there were difficulties.

But this was perhaps not so for everybody after a few days. Mr. Roc had no doubt sounded each one of us out and what had been heard about him the morning school opened began to manifest itself.

We were already being boxed on our ears. I had had my share over the agreement of the past participle. Michel-Paunch, who was strong in problems, received clouts every day for spelling. Raphael, always for the same reason: talking in class; and Jojo, for everything. The master made him recite each lesson, questioned him, endlessly examined his exercise books—the entire proceedings unfolding not without his clouting him a few times on the back of his neck or his ears. Jojo would shake without stopping.

It seemed to me, nevertheless, that Jojo was not the weakest or the laziest pupil in the school; but the master called him a blockhead at his slightest lapse and flogged him with his hands that were ever ready to strike.

I came to the conclusion, without any logical justification, that it was because he was related to Jojo that he beat him so much.

I wasn’t mistaken. Subsequently, Jojo himself admitted that his father and stepmother had recommended to his uncle, the schoolmaster, that the latter make him work a lot, and above all, that he beat him when his work was not correct.

Be that as it may, Jojo, by reason of the constant and terrible amount of care on the part of the master, seemed to me once again more worthy of pity than of envy.

If we could have seen each other at nights the way we did before, perhaps he would have told me about all the suffering he underwent between his father’s house, where he led an unhappy life, constantly likely to be flogged, and the classroom, where every day he was boxed about the ears at least a good dozen times or more. But our relationship at school did not have the intimate character of our conversations under his father’s veranda and either we played as madly as possible during the recess breaks or we spent entire days pretending to be indifferent to each other. Furthermore, was it children’s nature to speak about sad things when frolicking and games were beckoning to them? There were even times when I laughed or smiled as Jojo, caught in some pitfall, burst out sobbing after the heavy hand of his uncle had rained a few clouts on his head.

Frankly speaking, our life had changed. You might say that the very presence of our schoolmaster had made it assume a somewhat manly air. We had lessons to learn. We had many exercise books, all of which we had to keep very tidy. We had many books belonging to the Caisse des Ecoles, which we had to avoid destroying. Everything we did was governed by the fear of receiving a box on the ears from Mr. Roc and by the concern that he and our parents drummed into us ever since school had reopened: that of the examination for the Certificat d’Etudes Primaires.

As far as I was concerned, there was also something else to worry about: my First Communion.

I had resolutely quit Mam’zelle Fanny’s catechism class. Raphael, who had taken his First Communion the year before and who was now a choirboy, had lent me his catechism book and I studied alone, reading aloud and late into the night near the kerosene lamp, so as to reassure M’man Tine, who doubted that I could manage on my own.

The rest had not changed.

We had not given up any of our amusements and remained fondly attached to everything we had liked. Not without the attendant penalties. Hadn’t we once been condemned to put up and pay for tiles we’d broken while throwing stones at a mango tree near Mme Sequéran’s house? Hadn’t we, Michel-Paunch, Ernest, Audney, and I, been surprised one day by a manager as we were cutting sugarcanes in a field, when it was not even time for the canes to be cut, making our parents pay a fine of fifteen francs for each of us? And that same Michel, didn’t he sport, for months on end, a wound he’d received on his foot as he went for some pommes-lianes in a patch of bushes?

We did so many things that delighted us and caused us to be banned or beaten and we felt life so full of things to do around us!

On beautiful evenings we would play in the moonlight.

Moonlit nights meant a sort of nocturnal fête in the village.

After dinner everyone would sit in front of the houses, some on chairs, others on the front step itself. Those in groups chatted, told stories, gave timtims. Those by themselves sang or hummed. Couples went for walks in the road.

The children would assemble and swarm in noisy games all over the places that could serve as play areas.

As such, late into the night the village would still be celebrating the moonlight. There were things, it seemed to me, that people said only on moonlit nights, games that were played that could only have been played on moonlit nights and not in broad daylight, nor in the pitch-black darkness of night.

At times also, the sound of a flute, the source of which was impossible to pinpoint (did it come from the direction of Mr. Toi in Haut-Morne? Or from Mr. Mamès on the other side of Cour Fusil?), would penetrate the still air like a silver thread, or would float limply over everything like a long sigh from the moon itself. Never had any sound seemed to be so closely identified with the moonlight as that one emanating from those rustic flutes played for the night in festive yet pensive mood by some little black boy sitting on the front step of a shack that was difficult to imagine.

I was part of the noisier ones, part of those who could not remain dreaming near their maman, watching the moon sail by in a periwinkle sky and pass, from time to time, without rolling or pitching, through huge waves of clouds.

I belonged to the frenzied band of those who met in front of the church near the school for the “little ones,” our former school. Whenever there were many girls among us, we would dance and sing in a circle—one of those outsized circles—well-sealed by our hands. And we would sing in one innumerable voice, light as the flight of small birds, songs we had never learned, but were being sung because it was a moonlit night and because there were a lot of us and we were happy.

Then we would play “eel” in order to feel out the shadows sleeping under the bushes, “gauntlet” so we could sit very closely next to one another, hide-and-seek so we could run about a little, “my bag” for the pleasure of hitting one another with a cloth-filled bag.

For certain, we’d have gone on playing until daybreak if, all of a sudden, our parents’ voices didn’t call us one after the other. And, still playing and singing, we would run to the standpipes to wash the dust from our feet and retire home.

Meanwhile, the time was fast approaching for me to take my First Communion and, although not part of Mam’zelle Fanny’s class, I still knew my lessons.

M’man Tine spoke to me about that forthcoming First Communion with the zeal she injected into her soliloquies, as she made plans for things that she set her heart on. She never stopped making up in her mind and evaluating aloud the outfits I would need: a white suit for the retreat, another for when I received absolution from my sins; underpants, white socks, handkerchiefs. And above all, the communicant’s dress: a white piqué suit, silk armband, white straw hat, gloves, candle, shoes. All items white and brand new. That was compulsory, indispensable in order to taste the white host.

So many things, so much clothes, so many suits for me! It was enough to make me die with longing and impatience. But I couldn’t see how M’man Tine would manage to procure all that for me. It was true that those whom I’d already seen take their First Communion had not been dressed in anything else, although their parents were field or factory workers.

It was true that M’man Tine was talking not only of writing, but of actually going to Fort-de-France to find M’man Délia to talk to her and make her understand that it was time for me to take my First Communion. It was equally true that she had been praying a great deal for some time now in order to obtain the grace to have me take that First Communion, and that she seemed certain that God would help her to do so.

Well! It really looked as if that category of women as represented by the old black, unfortunate mothers did possess in their hearts, beating under their rags, some sort of power to change dirt into gold, to dream and to wish for something so ardently that, from their earth-stained, sweating, empty hands, could appear the most palpable, the most immaculate, and the most precious of realities. For already, every Sunday on her return from Saint-Esprit, M’man Tine would bring back either a remnant of material or a pair of socks.

And after talking about doing so for a long time in advance, of course, M’man Tine decided to take me to see my godmother. A child did not take his First Communion without going to embrace his godmother, no matter how far she lived.

I had never seen my godmother. I knew that her name was Mme Amélius and that she lived in a country district called Croix-Rivail on the other side of the village of Trou-aux-Chats.

We set off one morning during the Easter vacation. Whenever she had such a trip to make, M’man Tine would avoid, and prevent me from, talking about it the night before so that evil spirits wouldn’t make her oversleep. We therefore set out early. Through paths wet with dew, we crossed savannahs where oxen still lay sleeping. We climbed several hills. We passed several habitations where dogs barked and cocks crowed. Without uttering a word, M’man Tine walked on, her skirt tucked up on account of the wet grass, while I trotted barefooted behind her.

When the sun beamed down on us M’man Tine began to talk, evoking memories of my godmother whom she hadn’t seen in years and whom she’d probably met only twice since the day I was christened. She also mentioned the names of quite a few inhabitants of Croix-Rivail whom she doubted she would see again as it had been so long since she’d heard anything about them.

We kept walking like that all morning and I was, perhaps, just about to collapse. I was hungry and thirsty, my legs couldn’t make it anymore. We arrived at a place where the land was divided into small gardens surrounding shacks sheltered by mango trees. That was Croix-Rivail.

Groups of children stood in front of the shacks. Every now and then we met a man or a woman whom M’man Tine asked the way to Mme Amélius. On each occasion she was assured it wasn’t far again; she was shown the way and we set off again. But after covering some distance in this fashion and jumping over a ravine, after climbing a hill and passing through the damp shade of a large cacao plantation, we had to ask for directions once more before continuing our journey.

My godmother was an old, thin black woman.

She didn’t spoil me as much as I had been led to believe she would by M’man Tine’s laudatory soliloquies. She kissed me, found that I had grown, upbraided M’man Tine for not bringing me before. She offered us lunch: yams, codfish with oil, and okras—and to think I detested okras!—and spoke all the time about her sorrows.

Since the last time she had seen M’man Tine, she had lost her husband, her eldest daughter, and her brother, Gildéus. She took all the time in the world relating their ailments, her successive bouts of grief, and the confusion that ensued over the things each one left.

When it was M’man Tine’s turn to tell her that I was about to take my First Communion, she greeted the news with a cry, as if it were a climax to her frustrations:

“But, Amantine, why did you wait so long to tell me? How unfortunate! Here I was wanting to give my godson such a nice gift—his First Communion suit, for example—and it’s only today you bring him. Only two weeks before!”

In that regard, there was hardly a reproach that was not leveled at M’man Tine who, moreover, was more or less all apologetic.

In the end she couldn’t see what she could rightly offer me. She was heartbroken.

When M’man Tine wanted to leave, my godmother put a handful of seeds in a tin, went outside, shook it, thus calling together her numerous fowls in front of her house and, with an agile movement of her hand, grabbed a tall chicken. She stroked it, still saying in her pitiful voice:

“I have nothing, nothing to give my fine godson, Tine, my dear, I’m going to give him this chicken. If you don’t make a fricassee with it for the Communion lunch, it’ll become a fine hen, a good layer; and if José is lucky with me, it could in the long run bring him as much money as an ox.”

She uprooted a tuft of wild grass which she twisted and with which she tied the two feet of the chicken. Still looking around for some possible gift, she found a coconut and asked M’man Tine to make some jam for me with it. Then some cassava starch she had made herself, so my clothes would be good and stiff.

I was, I believed, very happy. Besides, despite the tiredness I felt as a result, I was always very happy to make journeys of that sort with my grandmother. M’man Tine seemed content as well. Was it the trip or was it the fact that she’d seen my godmother again? Was it the presents? . . .

To make me happy, she let me hold the hen under one arm and the coconut in my other hand; and she put the little packet of cassava starch in her pocket.

We walked quickly on our return. M’man Tine kept looking at the sun and repeating:

“Before it reaches the crest of the hill over there, we must be in Belle-Plaine.”

We were going along a path at the side of a hill bordered by a cane field. The joy of carrying my presents gave me courage to walk. At a certain time, my fingers, weary from holding the coconut, slackened their grip no doubt, and the fruit went pelting down in the grass toward the foot of the hill.

Seeing how upset I was, M’man Tine assured me that I was going to find it and told me:

“All you have to do is go down and look for it there, in the bushes.”

I rid my other hand of the tied-up chicken which I laid on the side of the path, while my grandmother stood waiting for me, and I got ready to go down into the bushes where my coconut had rolled. But immediately, M’man Tine gave a shout, threw her arms into the air, and started to prance about: the chicken had escaped!

The grass holding its feet together had come loose, and it had fled away with a cackle right in front of M’man Tine who, in her bewilderment, tried to block it in all directions.

Retracing my steps, I too began to run after it. But thereupon, the bird reached the cane field and disappeared.

M’man Tine spent a long time searching for it and I myself almost got lost. We didn’t give a second thought to the coconut.

We returned to the village; it was dark.

That incident had been too much for M’man Tine and that night she brooded aloud over it almost to the point of tears, saying that I was a poor little black boy who didn’t have any luck at all, none whatsoever.

Personally, I viewed the whole episode with absolute indifference, bordering on insensibility.

The following morning the first thing M’man Tine noticed was that, during the night, rats had gnawed at the pocket of her dress in order to eat the little packet of starch which she had forgotten in it. Struck dumb with amazement, she hardly uttered a word.

Oh! What a memory I was going to have of my First Communion!

When I related this trip to my schoolmates, one of them immediately shouted!

“Bet your godmother is a gagée!”

That was their unanimous opinion. It was mine as well. My godmother remained for a long time in my mind under that diabolical aspect. She died, I think, without my ever seeing her again.

That first Sunday of the patronal festival of Petit-Bourg was not, alas!, to go by without another traumatic experience, this time even more brutal for me and all the pupils of our class.

As early as the Saturday night, as happened every year, a rickety, noisy truck had arrived with wooden horses. In the afternoon, the merry-go-round (the same little merry-go-round with squared, stiff horses patched up with bits of planks and nails, bedecked with gaudy garlands, which between appearances had gone all over the island from village to village) had been set up there in the market square, topped by its pointed hat of sail canvas, in the midst of the bubbling excitement of all the brats in the village. And as was done every year, that Saturday night, on the eve of the festival, the merry-go-round had offered three free rides to the children.

Our need for money was far more pressing than any I had ever experienced hitherto, on a Saturday night, in Black Shack Alley; for, from the Saturday night before the festivity, you had to be sure you had the necessary sums—at least fifteen to twenty cents—for two or three rides on the merry-go-round. That year, with my First Communion coming up, counting on M’man Tine’s generosity was out of the question. Now, I had more of a problem than my friends, since I didn’t have a bigger brother, nor an uncle, nor an aunt, nor a godfather, nor a godmother who could help me out. But as I did so many favors for everybody, I hoped to receive the rewards already promised by several kind people.

Friends, like Michel-Paunch, Raphael, were even boasting that they had saved up some money—from the shrimp they’d caught or the land crabs they sometimes sold. I would never have any savings. I used to spend all my money on macaroons, cakes, and other sweets like everybody else, and above all on my one luxury: school supplies. I loved fine exercise books to copy the poems and songs we learned in class. I bought fine sheets of blotting paper—one for each exercise book—red ink and green ink for the titles of the poems, colored crayons to illustrate the songs, compasses to make rosettes, erasers. M’man Tine had never had to worry about my school supplies.

Furthermore, since M’man Tine had definitely forbidden it, I couldn’t ask adults for money the way most of my friends did, and at certain times, I found myself in the most agonizing of situations.

I awoke on the Sunday morning with the sole five-cent piece M’man Tine had given me for collection and which, in compliance with the orders given by my friends, for that period, I was careful to keep.

Later my grandmother asked me:

“How much money do you have?”

“None, M’man.”

To save me from despair she gave me a cent, saying:

“I don’t have any money to give you, you know, for the wooden horses . . . Look, take this, to get some barley sugar . . .”

A bit later on one or two other coins were added upon a chance meeting or out of sheer luck. At the advice of my friends, I roamed about the game tables and the little tents that had sprung up in the market square next to the merry-go-round. Didn’t the more experienced among my friends claim that people, while playing or drinking themselves drunk, sometimes inadvertently dropped coins? Many boys had already found in this way ten-cent pieces, even as much as two francs. But I never found anything. Nothing, except empty peanut shells and bottle caps. So I stopped in front of a game—one of the many trays forming so many islands of players standing in that ocean of people who were strolling about in every direction.

My favorite games were rouge et noir, entonnoir, and pataclac. I saw people winning and met Raphael or Michel-Paunch—always very lucky, they were—who were winning or had already accumulated eighteen cents or a franc, whereas they had come with no more than two cents. With a confident heart (for the luckier ones had willingly told us their secret for winning: do not hesitate, do not be afraid), I bet a cent, lost it, then another cent, but which (was it because, in those ups and downs, my heart had begun to pound somewhat heavily?) ended up giving in and disappearing.

Apart from the free rides on the merry-go-round the night before, I hadn’t yet been on it once, whereas the wooden horses had been turning around and around since morning after mass, and it was already past midday.

The orchestra accompanying the merry-go-round enthralled the entire village. From afar only the beat of the drums reached us, keeping the time of the waltz to whose rhythm the merry-go-round turned. But they only seemed like strokes of a gong inviting people to enjoy themselves and were like blows to my entrails. To the pain of my alarming and almost desperate situation when money didn’t come my way, and like a constantly coaxing voice and an irresistible, evil force, they brought us all back to the market square. As you drew closer, you could hear the rhythmical sticks and the maracas and, just as the swiveling roof with gaily colored banners came into sight, the sound of the clarinet burst forth in my head, in my belly, took hold of me, drew me forward more quickly.

Then, from seeing women walking by under the effect of the music, rolling their shoulders and shaking their behinds, and men with waists rolling strangely up and down; from seeing, close up, the wooden horses spin around with children astride in white dresses with red bows, children in new suits, children in polished shoes, black children, with clear, infectious laughter; and from feeling deep in my soul the convulsion of the drumbeats, loud and sweet like thick blood, I remained in a sort of trance from which I took a long time coming out.

When night fell the high society came out in full dress; the little tents were lit and everything that went to make up the festival and everything around it took on a brilliance and resonance that were even more disturbing, and still not a cent had fallen into my hand. If the Devil himself (the one in my catechism) were to offer me ten cents for my soul, which the coming First Communion was going to cleanse from sin, I would not have refused.

That year I was to invent, in order to ride on the merry-go-round, a means I hadn’t thought about in previous years.

The merry-go-round was operated by two men who, running around, from inside, pulled the circular floor with the horses. But some insignificant little brats, with whom we did not play, were pushing along with the two men.

This voluntary help afforded them, by way of reward, the advantage of getting up onto the merry-go-round without paying, for once the impetus given to the turning floor had attained its climax, they would spring on it and, crouching or standing, find themselves enjoying the ride as much as if they were on the finest horses of the merry-go-round.

Suppose I too were to join in! . . . It seemed a bit difficult because you no doubt had to push hard—both men were sweating and their bare feet dug a path all around. It seemed to require great skill to be able to jump onto the floor once the merry-go-round was started, to heavy drumming, at such a speed that, from the horses, you couldn’t look at the crowd which, standing on the ground, could not make out those who were going around. But I felt myself capable. At the end of that ride, all I would have to do was climb onto the floor, cross it and take up my place as a pusher on the inside.

However, my feet couldn’t yet make up their minds to take that simple step. Scruples, scruples . . . If M’man Tine . . . For sure, she would beat me lame if she were to catch me; but apart from the fact that there was every likelihood she wouldn’t see me—since, at that hour, M’man Tine was in Cour Fusil—no formal ban had been imposed on me as yet with respect to going to push wooden horses. That was a great advantage vis-à-vis my conscience and my grandmother. Still, all the same . . .

Suddenly, I turned around. Someone had placed his hand on my shoulder. Oh! Was it possible? Jojo! Jojo, about whom I couldn’t have been thinking at that time! Jojo all alone in the festival, not accompanied by his distinguished parents or chaperoned by Mam’zelle Mélie. And without his blue velvet breeches, his white silk jacket with the sailor collar, his shoes with ankle-straps, and his white socks with designs on the side. Jojo, in school clothes, dressed like me, almost, with coarse shoes to boot. How come? Why?

“Been looking for you,” he exclaimed.

Jojo’s eyes shone with triumphant brilliance.

He did not answer my questions; he showed me discreetly, but with a thrill of joy, a note of one hundred cents crumpled up in the palm of his hand.

“I found it,” he said.

“Where?”

“At home, in the dining room. It was possibly maman Yaya or Papa who dropped it without even noticing.”

What luck, all the same, for Jojo! Finding money at home!

“This morning, I found it. So I hid it in my room, and as I knew they weren’t going to bring me to the festival because of the zero on my exercise book, when everybody went to sleep, I gently opened the window and . . .”

Good heavens! Could Jojo really be so brave, so bold!

But the important thing right then was to spend the five francs as quickly as possible so Jojo could return home in the same manner he had left.

First of all, we would buy some cakes. But which one of the two of us was going to confront Mam’zelle Choute, the woman selling them, with that large note of hundred cents? Jojo, of course, since it belonged to him. No; he was afraid. Mam’zelle Choute would probably notice him and would say something to Mam’zelle Mélie. Jojo was full of mistrust. Adults talked about children so much!

Thus, I had to go. My fear, on the other hand, was that Mam’zelle Choute would suspect me of having stolen that money. People were so suspicious of black children! I too was afraid. I spurred Jojo on and the desire to stuff ourselves with everything that tempted us was to end up getting the better of him.

We chose cakes with coconut jam, bits of barley sugar shaped like men, flat cassava flour cakes, cornets of peanuts.

While munching away at our goodies, we sprang onto the wooden horses. One ride, two rides, three consecutive rides. Oh! Liberating intoxication of my childish escapades! Then we bought a bottle of aerated lemonade which we went into the shade to empty, leaning against the gable of a house and pouring it into our mouths from the bottle held above our heads.

We tried our luck at several games, giving up at the loss of the first cent, or calling it quits after winning the first cent. We stopped outside a dance to listen to songs, enhanced by strains of the accordion, composed in the village itself, which well-bred children only sang when they were far from school and out of earshot of their parents. Men and women were dancing with the disturbing mimicry of dances of love and of joy.

We saw with our own eyes two men quarreling in the middle of a crowd of people unable to quiet them and actually saw one of them slit the flesh of the other with a swift, violent stroke of a razor.

Finally, with the last ten cents, we each had a last ride on the merry-go-round and, the games, the crowd, the merry-go-round having now become less attractive, we went down to the bottom of the village to go to sleep.

At the entrance to Cour Fusil, I took leave of Jojo.

Having found M’man Tine’s room, I had only to lean against the door, for only a huge stone on the inside kept it closed.

Imagine my disappointment when I didn’t see Jojo in class the next day! Not only did I have my heart set on hearing how he managed to make it back into his room, but I was dying to get together with him again to relive our previous evening out.

For my part I was delighted. All the others told me about their festival Sunday caused me no envy or regret. What a pity Jojo wasn’t there.

He did not turn up in the afternoon either, and to my impatience to see him again was added the budding feeling of concern. Jojo never missed school.

That evening, at my own risk and peril, I went roaming about in front of Mr. Justin Roc’s house. But not once did Jojo come outside. I dared not believe some misfortune had befallen him. Could it be he was caught as he returned home and was beaten so much he couldn’t walk? We’d have heard about that at school. None of us ever received a spanking from our parents without, by our cries, betraying the fact to a friend in the neighborhood, who willingly saw it as his duty to broadcast the news in class.

Well, there was indeed a bit of news the following morning at school:

Jojo had run away.

Could I believe it?

Jojo had fled from his father’s home like a runaway slave; he had gone off into the woods . . . It was a topic of heated discussion in the entire school.

I was the only one left thunderstruck by it. I was afraid. I was completely lost. I couldn’t understand how Jojo could have run off on his own. And at what time? After leaving me, not having gone back to his papa’s house, or after being caught and flogged? Had he fled to escape the blows or did his maman Yaya throw him out?

Nobody knew for sure at school. Everyone just kept repeating, only too happy to spread the news:

“Georges Roc’s run away. Georges Roc’s run away!”

The explanation I sought was brought to me at Cour Fusil by Mam’zelle Délice, a close friend of Mam’zelle Mélie, as she related to the tenants that incident that set the tongues a-wagging in the village.

In the middle of the night, Mme Justin heard a noise of something falling. Fearing it might be a burglar, she woke her husband. Mr. Justin went to have a look and found Jojo, who hadn’t had time to close the window behind him and who was now slipping into bed.

“Say, it’s you, Jojo? Where are you now coming from?” the father asked. “Eh, where on earth you just come from?”

Jojo, who was supposed to be in his nightshirt and asleep in his bed, was dressed in his school clothes that he wore last week, with his socks on his feet and his shoes on the floor.

Was he about to leave? Did he just come back?

“You were out? Fine,” said Mr. Justin. “Tomorrow morning, we’ll see about all that.”

The following morning, no Jojo.

“He must have gone back to his mother,” Mam’zelle Délice hinted.

And that hypothesis determined my ideas and dispelled my worry.

Ever since then, Jojo, for as long as I remembered him, was to remain in mind as a little prisoner, a stolen child who, one morning at dawn, escaped like a runaway slave to find his mother and freedom. But a deep feeling of sadness and true remorse often came over me.

I missed that evening of festivity spent almost clandestinely with Jojo. If only I could also have been his accomplice when, out of sheer despair, he fled into the high woods and vast sugarcane fields.

And in my head, Jojo was running with tears in his eyes, in turn lost through fear and guided by instinct; and in my heart, there weighed the feeling of guilt at having shared the cakes, the sweets, the merry-go-round rides he’d offered me with the five francs concealed from his father, without enduring any of his misadventure.

And now, was he happy or unhappy that he had run away? Had he found his mother? Was he at school? Would he be taking the Certificat d’Etudes?

I also imagined him still wandering about, starving and naked. But every time I met Mam’zelle Mélie and thought about Mme Justin, everything led me to believe that Jojo was happy with his real mother.

Jojo’s absence had greatly changed the atmosphere in class. Mr. Roc would now do a whole lesson without stopping to clout anybody at all about the ears. Jojo was missed when the time came to correct the dictation and, in particular, the problems, and during every lesson at that, for everything used to start with him. Indeed, the class seemed strangely quiet for a few days. Then it became restless and austere.

The master would keep us in on evenings after four o’clock to prepare for the examination—difficult dictations, tough problems, names of rivers and mountains, names of battles, dates of victories.

There were ten of us being groomed in this way. Ten whom, according to the saying prevalent among the inhabitants of the village, Mr. Roc was going to send to Saint-Esprit. The master filled our heads to such an extent that the four or five days away from school for the ceremonies surrounding my First Communion and the new sacrament had hardly detracted me from the worries of that supreme examination.

Not only did Mr. Roc relentlessly make us go over our books again and again, he preached morning, noon, and night about the virtues of the Certificat d’Etudes, which was most indispensable to the humblest of men, without which you could not write other examinations nor do any lucrative work. Without the Certificat d’Etudes, we would all end up in the petites-bandes and all our parents’ sacrifices would have been to no avail.

Did Mr. Roc himself believe in the effectiveness of his sermons on us? If not, did he notice all their effect? However, there was no doubt that, warmed up and urged on in that fashion, it was in a state of veritable heroism that we lived until that day of the examination.

The day before, a Sunday, all the girls and many of the boys had taken communion—except me, and to my shame. For, so as not to confess to the priest that, through a crack in the partition, I had seen our neighbor Mam’zelle Mézélie stark naked on her bed with a man who was touching her, I had already stopped going for communion.

Then in the afternoon, Mam’zelle Fanny had gathered them all together in front of her door, the way they did for catechism.

Because I hadn’t taken communion and because I had broken off with that spiritual godmother a long time before, I couldn’t be part of the group. So, curious to know what was going to happen, I went and stood in a clump of bushes on the other side of the alley. I should have known: it was so they could meet and pray. Standing in a semicircle, facing Mam’zelle Fanny, herself standing in the doorway with arms folded, they prayed aloud for success in the examination they were about to take.

At first I felt a tinge of regret at not being with them—wasn’t that a chance for success that I was losing? They invoked all the saints I knew to be reputed for their kindness toward examination candidates: Saint Expédit, Saint Michael, Saint Anthony.

Mam’zelle Fanny, hands together, eyes raised to heaven, let flow from her mouth a stream of stirring prayers.

And I would be the only one not to benefit from all the grace which, right then, through Mam’zelle Fanny’s intervention, came down and spread over my friends to lighten their spirits, sharpen their intelligence, and make them successful. But I quickly consoled myself. That morning M’man Tine had taken communion on my behalf and experience had already proven on many occasions that everything M’man Tine requested of God she would receive. So, half envious, half contemptuous, I let them shout themselves out of breath reciting litanies thus in public, and I returned to Cour Fusil because the master had recommended that we get plenty of rest that day.

I fell asleep while M’man Tine was preparing all I would need the following day.

Spurred on by a devotion that, to my eyes, magnified the importance of the event I was about to experience, she had ironed my First Communion suit, brushed my black boots that I had only worn some five or six times. Sleep took hold of me as she was frying the codfish to make sandwiches for me to carry.

After she woke me, very early, she gave me a mug of very strong coffee and when I was dressed and armed with my supplies, I set out in the morning twilight. Mr. Roc had summoned us all to be in front of his house at five o’clock.

We had always appreciated Mr. Roc, despite the stinging clouts to Jojo’s skull and his slaps that made our ears ring. But I don’t think our feelings ever attained such a degree of affection as there was in us that morning as we walked alone on the road beside that man, that sort of shepherd who relentlessly showered us with bits of advice that betrayed to what extent, more than we, he was concerned and moved.

The day went by with the disappearance of all our fears, an exaltation of our hopes.

Our schoolmaster was satisfied with the overall accounts of our dictation, the scrap work from our problems, and our composition. He had even found new faith in Germé, the girl who was incurably obsessed with the mania of putting an “s” at the end of every word, and in Louisy, who got all puzzled up at the slightest rule of three.

It was evening and in the darkness of the Saint-Esprit schoolyard we awaited proclamation of the results.

We remained literally tied together in the crowd of pupils and parents filling the yard.

Only Mr. Roc left us and returned. We constantly heard children spelling, in the surrounding clamor, such and such a word from the dictation, or giving the results of the problems.

We were hardly tired from remaining standing in one place for so long, but some, like me, complained that their feet were hurting them. As such, taking advantage of the darkness, I was among the first to relieve myself by taking off my boots. I had tied the laces together and held them tightly so as not to lose them.

The later it became, the more an ill-contained state of nervousness took hold of us, manifesting itself in some by endless chattering, plunging others into a silence bordering on a daze.

Suddenly, there was a confusion of voices, the crowd lurched forward, then silence. A window on the first floor had been opened and its rectangle of light formed a frame, against this light, around the busts of two men. One of them immediately began to announce names of pupils.

As these were called out, shudders, muffled outbursts, and stifled exclamations shook the crowd. I did not move. My blood, my entrails had been crushed together by the appearance of those two men and I remained riveted, hanging on to the voice from the magic window calling out names that floated down on the pupils like a shower of stars. There was an endless constellation of them and the more the names came, the more I moved away from the crowd which was already bursting about me.

I could see only the lighted frame of the window and could hear only the lone voice of the man reading the results . . . Hassam José!

That name, coming from the man’s lips, hit me full in the chest with enough violence to blow me to bits.

Never had I heard my name pronounced in so solemn a tone. Never had I felt with such acuteness everything that bound my being to those four syllables. But if that name hadn’t been called I’d no doubt have turned into stone.

My friends were hugging one another, hugging me.

“We all passed! All ten of us!” they shouted.

I didn’t jump, I didn’t shout, I just allowed myself to be carried along, smiling, not finding anything to say. Mr. Roc was very excited and almost submerged by the pupils’ show of joy. He kept on repeating with a smile that looked rather like a grimace: “That’s good, that’s good,” and looked at us with sparkling eyes behind his spectacles. He turned around constantly, starting a sentence, interrupting himself, turning around once more, shouting:

“It’s late, children, hurry up.”

Under the glow of the streetlamps all the streets of Saint-Esprit were swarming with pupils and in an uproar.

Mr. Roc took us to a garage owner and hired a taxi into which piled all ten of us along with him.

M’man Tine, like all the people in Cour Fusil, was already in bed when I reached Petit-Bourg. She was not asleep; no sooner did I touch the door, held shut as usual by a stone placed behind it on the floor, than she had lit her lamp and asked me:

“José, how did you do, son?”

I threw my hands into the air and danced.

“Ah, thank God!” said M’man Tine, clasping her hands together over her heart.

That was all. She went back to bed, told me that my dinner was covered in a plate on the table and that my bedding must be quite nice, since she had put it out to sun for the entire day.

The following week, when classes were practically finished and our activities at school consisted of more games than work, Mr. Roc gave me a letter to post, explaining that it was an application for another examination I was to take shortly afterward: the Scholarship Examination.

Of the ten I was the only one who was successful in the Certificat d’Etudes, the others being above the required age. This competitive examination was to be held in Fort-de-France. If I were successful, I would be going to a school in Fort-de-France, to the lycée. Mr. Roc told me all of that without betraying any emotion, without smiling, but with an air of seriousness beneath which I could sense a certain indescribable feeling of anticipated joy, whose warmth made all the more impressive the prospect he was presenting me.

As far as I was concerned, I did not even have the faintest idea how all the schoolmaster was talking about could come to pass. Consequently, it was not my application to take the Scholarship Examination that took up a lot of my time during the succeeding days.

When we stopped playing, it was to make plans for the future, only it was an immediate future.

Raphael would be going to the Cours Supérieur in Saint-Esprit, where his brother Roger was already a student, to prepare for the Brevet Elémentaire.

Mérinda, lucky girl she was!, said that the postmistress would take her on in the office to teach her to operate the telephone.

Two others, from among the girls, were going to learn to sew in Rivière-Salée. There was only Laurette who did not have any plans—her parents were hesitant to send her to Saint-Esprit for fear that she would meet boys along the way.

Mr. Roc had shattered my own dream. For the time being, my one and only borrowed dream was to be successful in the Scholarship Examination so I could attend the lycée. Later on, I could be a lawyer, a doctor . . . But did I really believe that?

The fact remained that I was happy at the idea of going to take an examination in Fort-de-France, because, at the same time, I would be able to see my dear mother, M’man Délia.

After going to see Mr. Roc about it, M’man Tine had made up her mind:

“Well! I’ll have to get my petticoat with the English embroidery ready for this trip.”

I had often seen the sea in the distance. From Haut-Morne one looked down onto a marshy plain crossed by a wide, lazy river, and the sea, in the distance, into which it blended. For me the sea was something visible and beautiful, but as inaccessible as its brother, the sky. Now, Lake Génipa, where I often went to bathe, though small, had given me such an idea of what the sea could be like viewed from a short distance, that I was not particularly impressed that day when, in the little steamboat that linked Fort-de-France to Petit-Bourg, I found myself on the high sea. M’man Tine accompanied me. Travelers from the country, barefooted and wearing coarse straw hats, and immaculately dressed people were talking aloud, laughing, eating, sharing bread and fried foods among themselves.

But I only had eyes for what was going on outside the boat. It was a huge bath of space. The only thing to impress me was the void between the sky and the water. Strange, too, the force with which the water moved in all directions, like a herd of blue, skinless excited beasts that barked, foamed, and lashed the small boat with their soft, slimy sides, then sped away, their manes flying in the breeze, to beset and toss about the few canoes around us that seemed to be heading nowhere.

In the long run M’man Tine, no doubt noticing that I was beginning to feel upset by this perpetual motion, made me put my head on her lap and I fell asleep.

When, still stiff, we found ourselves on the wharf, I wondered whether M’man Tine would manage to find the place where the examination was being held. The town seemed to me more extensive, noisier than the deepest forests, the biggest plantations, the most awful factories I could ever imagine. What a lot of streets! What a lot of automobiles!

But M’man Tine, less disturbed than I was, took her time putting on her shoes, making sure her dress looked presentable, fixing her petticoat, then, taking me firmly by the hand, ventured out toward the town.

We stopped at every crossing. M’man Tine asked a passerby the way, then we set off again.

My grandmother was an amazing woman. We arrived at the girls’ lycée—that was where the examination was being held. There was the same atmosphere as at Saint-Esprit the day of the examination for the Certificat d’Etudes—students milling around in the yard, with teachers and parents, the roll call, the entrance into the classrooms.

The dictation seemed easy. As for the two problems, so easy in comparison with those Mr. Roc had trained us on, when I returned to the yard after the composition and heard the other candidates shouting the figures they had arrived at, I realized that I had done one wrong. I was immediately very much put out by this, but tried my best not to let M’man Tine see. And I hardly thought about it anymore for we had to go to see my mother right away.

On my return to Petit-Bourg, I had not hidden from Mr. Roc the blunder which caused me to do my second problem badly. At first he rebuked me, then changed his mind:

“Too bad, the essential thing was the Certificat. Now, you’ve got that already.”

But what was I going to do?

On more than one occasion I had heard M’man Tine ask:

“My God, how shall I manage to send this child to the Cours Supérieur?”

She did not know anyone who could receive me at middays. Personally, I felt capable of doing without anything. The experience I had been subjected to at Mme Léonce’s probably did a lot toward this feeling of mine, and I saw myself willingly having for lunch under the school veranda the most frugal of meals, which I would have brought with me in the morning. But where I proved as stubborn as a mule was on the question of shoes. You couldn’t attend the Cours Supérieur barefooted. Of course, there were my First Communion boots and I could make them last longer by carrying them in my hand on the road between Petit-Bourg and Saint-Esprit, putting them on only to go into class; but, at any rate, they would still go. And afterward? I once had the idea of going to work in the petites-bandes during the long vacation to earn enough to buy me a pair of shoes. Vergène and her brother, for instance, used to do that every year in order to buy a new suit for the opening of school. I couldn’t bring myself to do it. It was not my fault: there was no particular liking for sugarcane fields. Despite all the pleasure I had nibbling on and sucking pieces of sugarcane, a field still represented in my eyes a damnable place where executioners, whom you couldn’t even see, condemned black people from as young as eight years old to weed, to dig, in storms that caused them to shrivel up and in the broiling sun that devoured them like mad dogs—blacks in rags, stink with sweat and dung, fed on one handful of cassava flour and two cents’ worth of molasses rum, who became pitiful monsters with glassy eyes, with feet made heavy by elephantiasis, destined to collapse one night in a furrow and to breathe their last breath on a dingy plank on the ground of an empty, grimy hut.

No, no! I wanted no part of the splendor of the sun and the charm of the work songs sung in a sugarcane field. And the wild sensual delight of the love that consumed a vigorous mule driver with a fiery black girl in the heart of a sugarcane field. For too long a time I had witnessed, helpless as I was, my grandmother dying a slow death in those fields of sugarcane.

As a result, my idea of joining the petites-bandes scarcely had time to take root. Furthermore, it would not have worked. M’man Tine would have objected strenuously and might even have whipped me for coming up with such a plan.

The long vacation was about to begin and the prospect of my going on outings in the country, making fishing trips, picking fruits, and roaming about in the most unrestricted fashion, soon erased all worry from my mind.

The long vacation had hardly begun when, one night, the woman who swept the classrooms and cleaned Mr. Roc’s house came on his behalf to fetch me at M’man Tine’s place, to the great amazement of the latter.

When I entered, Mr. Roc was sitting at the dinner table.

“My boy,” he said, swallowing a mouthful, “you’re lucky, you know. Look, I’ve just received this.”

And taking a bit of blue paper which was lying near his plate, he unfolded it, saying to me:

“You were successful in the Scholarship Examination.”

He handed me the telegram. His eyes sparkled and his half-open mouth showed the edge of his teeth—an expression that wasn’t quite a smile, but one I had seen on his face at times of great joy.

And he repeated:

“You lucky boy, you!”