The River at the Beginning of the World
In the time before time, high upon the volcano, at the very top of the world, a huge silk-cotton tree grew up out of the stone. This tree has four giant roots which go deep down into the very center of the earth. Right down there into the sea of creation. From the fissures made by the roots of this tree there spring four rivers which flow in the four directions down the side of the volcano and fill up the oceans. There is enough water down there under that tree that the whole world would be flooded, except for those roots.
Or perhaps, afraid of the flood, the first man searches about and finds four large stones, which he uses to stop the flow of water from the four springs. Sometimes it goes that way, I think. But I like the other way better.
Our story begins with two old men who are sitting by the side of a river. It is a nameless river in a nameless place. An island, perhaps, in a sea, like the blue Caribbean Sea. Only, this sea, if it exists, is as nameless as the river. The men sit on one of the large rocks which lay along the banks, smoking their pipes. Joseph Paul puffs on his favorite cherry-wood, purchased from the corner tobacconist in Los Angeles in 1948. Cyparis holds a jewel of hand-hewn mahogany he carved years earlier at Morne Rouge, while recovering from the first eruption of Mt. Pelée. He finished it the very day they took him from the parish church to the hospital in Fort de France. Several weeks later the mountain exploded again, more fiercely than the first time, sweeping away Father Mary and the town of Morne Rouge along with him.
Cyparis, the black man, and Paul, the white man, breathe-in the silence, listen to the water lapping against the rocks beneath their feet. It’s been a long time, and words can wait for their proper moment.
Paul clears his throat, but doesn’t speak.
So, says the black man, at last, Have you figured it out yet, Priest? Is this heaven or hell?
Ah yes, says the white man. Judging by the fact that you are here with me, my friend, I would say it must be hell.
Cyparis laughs and says, Or perhaps we find ourselves in the Fortunate Isles, and you are my slave, eh?
Now, there is a fantasy for you, Auguste. Paul is laughing fully now, and Cyparis joins him with great guffaws.
Yes, the bèké priest polishing my boots. I like this fantasy.
I would happily polish your boots, my friend.
Ah yes, and wash my feet, also. But I want you to hear the crack of my whip, Priest.
Cyparis smiles. It is the warm smile of old friends reminiscing. He picks up a small stone and skips it across the water. The two men resume their silence.
After awhile, Cyparis says, The only thing better would be a pretty wasp to chase through the indigo, yes? Do you remember that sweet little capresse in St. Pierre. The day I cut that boy with my knife? It was you I wanted to cut, white man. Plissoneau was sending you to New York the next day, and I thought, I will give my priest a going away present. She had eyes for you, and you were as blind as a rum barrel. I said to her, You know my bèké friend here studied to be a priest. He has God in him. Do you know why he quit the seminary?
Her eyes grew as big as mangoes and she said, Is he really a priest, Samson?
Cyparis studies Joseph Paul’s face, perhaps to see if he is properly offending his old friend, but Paul is lost in reverie.
I said, No, but do you know why he quit the seminary? And she said, No, Samson, why did he quit the seminary?
Cyparis pauses in his story. A long pause to draw out the tension.
Finally, Paul can wait no longer. And so, what did you say?
I said, Because he is in love with you, dear, and wants to get you into his bed.
You didn’t! says Paul.
Yes, that’s why she came to our table and flirted with you all evening.
She wasn’t flirting with me! For several seconds Paul retreats again. He is trying to remember. At last he repeats, She wasn’t flirting with me –but this time adds, was she?
Cyparis looks at his friend with a little sadness, but his eyes are laughing.
The first time I saw you, my friend, I thought, what the hell is this crazy bèké doing here in this working man’s bar tonight? Maybe he wants to get himself killed. That would not be good, a white man killed in the Lonbaj Blé. The gendarmes would shut it down for good, and where would poor Cyparis get his rum?
Yes, said Paul, I was foolish to go there, perhaps. Impulsive youth!
That’s why I decided to be your protector. And that is when I discovered that you were not just a crazy white man, but a crazy bèké priest who did not even know whether or not he believed in God. Perfect, I thought. I also do not know if I believe in a god.
Yes, I wanted to talk god with the common people. Such idealism! I wanted to know what you thought. And politics. What did socialism mean to the working man?
They are important questions, yes? If there was something, in those days, which drew me as much as rum or a pretty woman, it was a good conversation about these wheels that grind the manioc. Even when I sit on the cold stone of the jailhouse floor, I am thinking these things. It is a curse which I blame on my granmé. She said to me when I was young, Cyparis, you are the smart one. You will pass on the stories, the stories from the ancestors which have been told by many generations. By the Indigene. By the ones from Mother Afrika. Those things which are lost to the people today. They are very important stories, yes? I say, yes granmé. And I believe it to be so. And I thought perhaps, here is a man of God, a man who studies le questions anciennes. Perhaps he can help me to remember.
And did I help you to remember, Auguste?
Yes, but not in the way I thought you would. Even before le catastrophe, I was already a makobarukwa. The cards and the wasps, they are beautiful, but there is more to life than drunken foolishness. Years later, after St. Pierre lay in ashes and I began to wander the great wastelands, it was your doubt which gave me something to hold on to.
How so, my friend?
If a priest is allowed to doubt god, then why can’t a makobarukwa remember? Why can’t he reconstruct his own memories? And now, here I am with you in this place, a forgetful ghost. One who is destined to walk the afterlife alone. And yet, here you are also. There must be a reason for this, yes?
But I can’t imagine what it would be, Auguste. Aren’t we just words already written?
You are such a fatalist, Paul. That youthful idealism was not such a bad thing, you know? You are more than a bad poet’s cliché. Why would your god put you in a prison from which there is no escape?
But we are in that prison, Auguste. We are born and we die. There is no escaping that. Joseph Paul looks at the river, and then the sky, and he laughs, wryly. I can’t even touch my grandchildren any longer. Not in this place.
You are wrong, priest. You see, those words which have been written, are meant to be read, you know.
Paul sighs. It is you Auguste, who should have been the priest.