Part One
“We knew that the large ones were easy to catch and
that all we had to do was to allow them to settle and
wait for them to fold the wings ever so slightly.
Easy for me who knew how to walk on the tips of my toes without making any false moves and
who possessed the art of muffling the crunch of dried leaves under my feet.
Me who could judge without error the distance and time to stop,
to reach out my hand and stretch my body flexibly,
to close my thumb and index finger on the wings of the little creature at rest.
Easy for me who could, on a well-endowed branch,
catch a dragonfly in each hand, almost at the same time.”
“All of a sudden M’man Tine fell silent and,
as I could not see what she was doing, as I could no longer follow her,
I suddenly felt myself losing my balance. I didn’t know what was happening.
That awful silence isolated me in my confusion, clearing everything around me, …”
“I couldn’t send her to school because there weren’t any schools in the village as yet,
but I looked after her till she was twelve, as if I’d been a rich woman.”
“That night M’man Tine did not shorten my prayer as she did on some occasions
when she was tired or I was sleepy. On the contrary.
She started from the ‘Let us be in the presence of God!,’
continued with the ‘Our Father,’ the ‘I salute thee,’ the ‘I believe in God.’
She refused to prompt me, crying ‘come on, come on!’ every time I stopped.”
“The emotion, the confusion, the tears, the anger,
and the consternation that rocked Shack Alley that night and
the following day all over again, had shaken me twenty times more than the whippings,
the beatings, the clouts M’man Tine had rained on me.”
“I wasn’t aware that we were to be given money because we went with our parents to work.
I was so puzzled I could not distinguish anything around me.
I was confused at the presentiment that my name would be called and …
But after Gesner, after Orelie, after all of them, the overseer did not shout my name.”
“We therefore no longer saw one another as often and in total freedom.
But we were not of the age when one complained of one’s lot.
And then, what was there to complain about?
Weren’t we equal to one another and to all those around us?”
“She then made me a fish-hook with a pin,
took some sewing thread which she tied to a bamboo rod,
added a round bit of dried cane to the thread,
and I thus learned to catch shrimp by line.”
“You’re finished picking up bad habits on the plantation.
You’re going to school to get some education in your head and learn to sign your name.
For the Good Lord allowed me not to spend the few coins your maman sent for you;
I’ve bought you a li’l suit.”
“‘Medouze is dead,’ he said in a tone befitting the occasion.”
Part Two
“It was nevertheless fairly easy for me to get over the loss of my old friend Medouze.
The big event that M’man Tine kept announcing every day finally took place.”
“But I was not insensitive to all the
tenderness and satisfaction that showed in her eyes as she greeted me.”
“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.”
“Raphael also taught me many things: the game of marbles,
how to trundle a hoop, play hopscotch, open cashew nuts.”
“I had never been prevented from playing.
As a result, the time I spent each day in
Mme Leonce’s dark kitchen and yard was for me a horrible experience.
It was impossible to get rid of that sensation of being
shut deep inside the earth, from which I’d possibly never escape.”
“My grief became so intense that in the end the sugarcane fields seemed
like a danger to me—that danger had killed Mr. Medouze 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.”
“M’man Tine was leaving Black Shack Alley. She was going to live in Petit-Bourg!”
“Something had changed in my 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.”
“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.”
“Vireil knew lots of things and told us sparkling,
captivating tales that delighted us, held us in suspense and made us shudder.”
“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.”
“‘Yes, my son,’ she said, ‘your maman’s body is not so good anymore.
Your maman’s body has only old, weary bones.’”
“‘Jose!’ someone shouted, ‘come and tell your maman goodbye.’”
“So she was dead. Yet, Mr. Medouze…
Perhaps there were several ways you could die…
Was she going to return Would I ever see her again?
Mam’zelle Delice had said she would be all right. Ah!”
“Next week, your maman is going to be back;
they’ve taken her to the hospital for treatment. She’ll come back all cured.”
“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.”
“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.”
“As for me, I’d have a large property, as big as the whole countryside around us. …
‘But you couldn’t have all that—you’re not white, you’re not a beke.’”
“I was at school the day M’man Tine returned from the hospital.
She had come out by herself, on food. I found her at midday.
Sitting on her bed, looking tired but radiant at the same time.”
“She said I speak only creole with you and that you’re teaching me bad words.”
“Everything he taught us presented itself in a fascinating,
alluring way, even when there were difficulties.”
“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.”
“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.”
“Oh! Liberating intoxication of my childish escapades!”
“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.”
“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.”
“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 towards examination candidates: …”
“I could see only the lighted frame of the window and
could hear only the lone voice of the man reading the results… Hassam Jose!”
“If I were successful, I would be going to to a school in Fort-de-France, to the lycee.
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.”
“We stopped at every crossing.
M’man Tine asked a passerby the way, then we set off again.
My grandmother was an amazing woman.”
“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 mag 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.”
“And taking a bit of blue paper which was lying near his plate, he unfolded it, saying to me:
‘You were succesful 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 that I had seen on his face at times of great joy.”
Part Three
“I had obtained from the Colony a quarter scholarship.”
“In the offices of the head of the Office of Public Instruction,
where my mother, Delia, and I had learned the news,
a young clerk had told us that with scholarships it was a question of whom you knew,
and that she was surprised that by some unheard-of stroke of luck,
without the intervention of anyone with some pull, or any recommendation,
that a partial scholarship had come my way.”
“In the bursary at the lycee, a bit later on, it was explained to us that,
in order to benefit from the quarter scholarship,
we still had to pay eighty-seven francs fifty per term for my schooling.
We were both crushed by this disappointment.
But what I couldn’t understand was that my mother
did not show any sign of discouragement or of giving up.”
“They know only too well that giving you a quarter scholarship
is the same as not giving you anything at all.
But they don’t know what a fighting woman I am.
Well! I’m not giving up this quarter scholarship. You will go to their lycee!”
“Next to me, in the study, sat a boy wering an identification bracelet
with his first name engraved on it: ‘Serge.’
The name of a clean, fresh child, of a fair-skinned child.
At any rate, not the name of a little black, unfortunate boy.”
“Of course, if there were one who had been born in a Black Shack Alley,
one whose parents wielded a spade or a cutlass,
I’d have recognized him and approached him. But I was the only one of my kind.”
“My mother was told that I could leave school with
enough knowledge to enable me to go to France and
become a doctor, a lawyer, an engineer.”
“I cried for my mother, who wanted to see me become a good student and
whom I had disappointed and caused grief.
But when I dried my eyes, I wanted, if it were possible,
to return to school immediately. I had made up my mind to work.”
“Be that as it may, I liked New Year’s Day on account of that
very feeling of gloom as well as the mood M’man Tine inspired in me on that day.”
“She would start preparing lunch with infinite tenderness,
although it was never very substantial.”
“My second term at the lycee showed a marked difference from the first.
An improvement. I learned my lessons thoroughly;
I gradually attained more confidence. I became aware of what was happening.
From time to time, the teachers asked me questions.”
“And I had a friend. We sat beside each other in nearly all the classes and in the study.
His name was Bussi, Christian Bussi.”
“Indeed, looking fully satisfied,
he showed me a large hunk of his oversized sandwich and,
with a gesture of disgust, dropped it, catching it before it hit the ground with
a kick that propelled it toward a corner of the yard.
And I found enough control over myself to appear indifferent to his gesture and
to smile foolishly as if to approve the skill with which he had booted home the bread.
But at that moment it wasn’t hunger I was struggling with—rather with
a sudden and wild impulse to also kick Bussi with all my strength.
For what he had just done resounded in me as if it were I who had received it,
right in my behind; or as if it were a little boy,
very much like me, whose behind Bussi had kicked in my presence.”
“In the following Easter vacation, I did not go to Petit-Bourg.
For the same reasons as at Christmas.
But my second term report was better than the first. My mother was happy.”
“Soon I’d be big, I’d be successful in my examinations,
and she’d not have to work in the sugarcane fields, or anywhere else.”
“I was only familiar with Black Shack Alley, Petit-Bourg,
Sainte-Therese, men, women and children, all more of less black.”
“Were I dare to say: ‘She works in sugarcane fields,’
the whole class would burst out laughing. … ‘Farmer,’ I finally stammered out.”
“Thus, at an age when I felt myself naturally given to a carefree existence,
all my impulses were at the same time thwarted by the constant suffering,
by a sort of oppression that weighed more and more despicably on my grandmother.”
“You know I can’t work like that anymore, with my son to look after…
And then the bekes are becoming more and more demanding, more and more distrustful…”
“A grandiose spectacle of men under pressure;
under a broiling sun, everything was movement.”
“Long was my sorrow, too, over having lost my freedom.
But with the reopening of school,
my uneasiness at adapting to this new district disappeared.”
“No, Petit-Fond didn’t resemble Black Shack Alley after all,
and I couldn’t be with my new neighbors the way I was with
my old friends from Petit-Morne or from Sainte-Therese.”
“I belonged to no category. I was supposed to be good at English.
Nevertheless, I didn’t work at it particularly hard.
I was rather average than weak in mathematics,
because it took nothing out of me to learn my lessons and
because I did them out of kindness for the teacher who,
for his part, put so much of himself into his teaching.”
“The passages the teacher accused me of having ‘copied from some books’ were
precisely those that were the most personal to me and
which had come most directly, without any reminiscence.”
“It was he who had decreed that we would no longer speak patois,
something I was reluctant to suggest to him.
It was he who fixed to his liking the length of our sessions,
even to the point of making me neglect my personal work to
try to satisfy the zeal he showed for working.”
“Their condition seemed justified in their eyes by the existence and
presence of the bekes—since there were bekes,
then their place had to be on top and on the shoulders of the blacks.”
“‘I’m glad,’ Jojo said. In his eyes there remained
a warm glow and he repeated: ‘I’m glad for you, Hassam!’
That whole day I remained shaken by the shock of that encounter.”
“I did not have anything to tell him. My life was insignificant.”
“I did not pass my examinations. I wasn’t upset in the least,
for that was the logical result of my school year.
I had never understood why the things I had normally learned with
the greatest of pleasure became so unpleasant to me the moment
they became part of the syllabus of an examination.”
“My mother was very heartbroken over my failure.
Jojo and Carmen, who had put up money in advance to buy a bottle of champagne
in anticipation of my success, did not want this champagne to
remain on their hands—it was drunk to my future success.”
“I started by lending him the books I had devoured when I was in my first year.
Jojo surprised me by the amount he could read in the little free time he had.”
“In particular, he liked novels that made him regret he was
not strong enough in ‘writing’ to do similar ones.”
“Carmen, Jojo, and I all enjoyed commenting on the films we had just seen and
our discussions were never more impassioned than when the film had a black character.”
“Who was it who invented for the blacks portrayed in the cinema and
in the theater that language the blacks never could speak and in which,
I am sure, no black man will manage to express himself?”
“I passed the first part of my baccalauréat just
as easily as I had failed it three months before. …
My mother wept with joy. Carmen and Jojo barged into my room,
their arms bulging with bottles and food, and brought in little groups the maid,
servant boys, gardeners, and drivers from the neighborhood to drink to my success.”
“M’man Delia’s voice was not her natural one. I took the paper and opened it.
‘Your mother sick, come right away.’ It was from Mam’zelle Delice.
I looked at my mother. She had been crying.”
“Jojo and Carmen came, stayed with me a long time, talked between themselves,
since it was impossible for me to reply to what they were saying.”
“Like every night since my heart was filled with
the sadness of being a poor orphan, Carmen and Jojo came to see me.”