It being a Wednesday, cock fights were on at Clery’s Pitt near Riviere Pilote. No sport so excites the Martiniquais, particularly the men. I watched one, then left to see the Empress Josephine’s early home, favoring past human drama over present ornithological combat. At nearby La Pagerie, Dr. Rose-Rosette showed me his own repairs and reconstructions of the buildings. “I had no money to give, so I gave time-29 years. The Martiniquais are not fond of Josephine and Napoleon, for he reinstated slavery, they felt, at her suggestion. But it is part of our history, and should be maintained.”
In the clustered hills, another banana grower, Jean-Louis, packed his fruit. He has several men and seven acres. “I make a crop. I live. I even have a son who shares work, one of six children—six legitimate children. I have surely twenty bastards. Why not? A great many Martiniquais are illegitimate. Life is difficult, you see, but not worthless. Come, we will leave these miserable bananas and go to my house for a drink.”
We drove down through hibiscus and oleander and blazing flame trees to Le Poirier, a very poor fishing village where Michel had a ramshackle house at the sea’s edge. Four men were peeling eels in the sun. Their hands being sticky, I shook their elbows. “Dites bonjour au monsieur,” said Michel. They said good-day, doubtfully. Poirier does not get many visitors. “Monsieur’s a writer. He wishes to learn about our life.” “Here?” said one, sardonically. “Foreigners get their information from the Pthfecture in Fort de France, and then they leave.” “Fort de France is not Martinique,” Michel replied. “Monsieur understands this.”
“C’est déjà quelque chose—That’s a start, anyway,” said the doubtful man, pausing to pick up another eel. “He speaks French, if not Creole. We will talk to him of fishing.”
They did, with growing friendliness. “We are sentenced to this work,” they said, listing the same problems that cursed the men of Grand’ Riviere in the north, where my story began. “No organization, no means of storing fish, no proper marketing. No big boats. No other work. We sometimes go a miquelon. Do you know what that means? Far, far out. We say `miquelon’ because in France there are two islands called St. Pierre and Miquelon. They are obviously very far away, so to us `miquelon’ means `distant’.”
I saw no reason to point out that St. Pierre and Miquelon lie near Canada. The analogy was clear enough. We drank sparingly at a shack of a bistro, near a little garagelike chapel where candles guttered. The men had built it themselves. “There was nothing, you see. It is best to have a chapel of some sort.” They brought me fruit and told stories, often of bitterly amusing failures. “I filled my gommier with flying fish,” said Pierrot, a burly, cheerful man. “Hundreds of them; never have I seen so many flying fish. But so did the other boats. So I got 25 francs [about five dollars]. And the fuel cost me twice that.”
But he laughed, healthy and happy in the soft evening. The men shook hands and went off to eat whatever there was for supper. No beef, we could be sure, but plenty of bread and enough good seafood stew—blaff, they call it in these parts—boiled sea urchin and vegetables, to send hungry men well-filled to their rest. We ate similarly at Michel’s house, where his wife had used herbs artfully to make fine dishes of simple ingredients.
“France Is Our Mother”
I stayed three days. One night as I drifted toward sleep to the rustle of wavelets among clean stones and the bell tones of frogs, warm, low voices reached into my consciousness: two fishermen making their way home. Their Creole came through to me, for the subject was familiar. “This affair of autonomy, of independence, I don’t know, I’m not a politician, but I’m French, I fought for France….”
“Listen, mon vie, it’s simple enough,” said the other. “France is our mother. She created us. She supports us. But… ! She should listen to us and treat us as a mother treats a son, a son grown to manhood. Pi c’est tout!— That’s all!”