Jacques looked sorrowful. "I tell you, Monsieur, that Duchamps is a bad man to cross."
"That's his problem."
"If you say it, Monsieur."
That night, I dreamed I was back in St. Pierre again, on that fatal morning in 1902.
"Willy," said Denise, "we must do something about this. A middle-aged man cannot go without sleeping, night after night."
"Okay; I'll see a doctor. We were going to Fort-de-France anyway."
We had one minor set-to with our undergraduate older daughter. She wanted to visit the city in what was then the new uniform of rebellious youth: ragged blue jeans and a man's shirt tied up to expose the midriff. (The youth revolt had just come to a boil in the United States.) Denise and I stood firm, insisting that such scruffy garb was unbecoming to foreigners in a French city.
"Even if they're black," I said, "these people are just as French as the white Frenchmen of France. Same virtues, same faults. One thing they don't like is for outsiders to come in and throw their weight around."
Héloise gave in, put on a dress, and sulked for a couple of hours.
Fort-de-France is a bustling, businesslike place, with little tropical languor. We took one another's pictures standing before the statue of the Empress Josephine; having been born there, she is the leading ikon of Martinique. We toured through the Museum of Fort St. Louis, ate a huge but delicious French restaurant lunch, and shopped. At least, the girls shopped. Stephen and I wearily stood or sat, save when Stephen bought one of those strange, cartwheel-shaped straw hats they wear on Guadeloupe.
After Denise had, with a few well-chosen French words, verbally beheaded a snippy black salesgirl in M. Alfred Reynard's perfumery shop, we hunted up a physician listed in the international medical directory. He gave me a phial of sleeping pills.
"If it marches not," he said, "come back and we will try something else."
We had a fine dinner at The Hippopotamus. I said: "If I eat here very often, I'll begin to look like a hippo myself."
Back at the Argenton house, Jacques had left, to bike back to Schoelcher and his family. The next day, Sunday, he had off.
Jacques Lecouvreur seemed a good man and not unintelligent, but Claudine left much to be desired. She was a sullen slattern, who drank a lot and cooked badly. When Denise, with the proper French reverence for food, gave her instructions, she listened dumbly and then went on doing exactly as before. Héloise, full of what she thought were advanced ideas, explained Claudine's behavior as a case of colonial neurosis, brought on by capitalistic exploitation. I, however, think Claudine would have been the same anywhere.
We had drums that evening, but, thanks to the pills of Monsieur le médecin, no more dreams. Nor did I suffer any Sunday night, either.
Monday morning, we were loading the car for an expedition to the church of Sacre' Coeur de Montmartre de Balata and to Morne Rouge, when Oreste Duchamps again materialized in our driveway. He gave a strained little smile and polite greeting.
"Does all go well with you, Monsieur?" he said.
"Very well, thank you."
"Have you decided to leave?"
"At the end of my three weeks, Monsieur; not before."
"You have not been incommoded by any—ah—psychic manifestations?"
"No, Monsieur, I have not. To what do you refer? Do you know something special?"
He shrugged. "There are rumors, such as the recent one of the phantom of Louis Mouttet. But we, as civilized men, dismiss them as the idle superstition. Still, I asked myself."
"Well, you may cease to concern yourself, Monsieur. All marches well."
He growled something about "batards blancs" and walked off.
That evening, Claudine came out on the porch with another wanga, made of parts of a rat.
"Bad place," she said. "I think you better go."
At least, that is what I think she said. Jacques could speak français ordinaire when he put his mind to it, but Claudine had only Créole.
That night, Denise and I were just going into our bedroom, when she said: "What is that on the floor? A piece of old rope—"
Her words were cut off as I grabbed her and swung her around behind me. In the gloom of Argenton's inadequate electric lighting, I saw the rope move. It whipped into a spiral coil and drew back its head to strike.
"Snake!" I said. "Get me a broom, quick!"
Then it was simply a matter of whacking the reptile with the broom handle until it was dead, despite its efforts to strike.
The snake was a fer-de-lance about a meter long, brown with black diamond-shaped markings like those of a rattlesnake. It had the wide, heart-shaped head of the rattlesnakes and all the other pit vipers.
"Monsieur Duchamps doesn't give up easily," I said. "I'll try the cops."
Next morning, I drove into Fort-de-France and stopped at the nearest police station. I brought the battered carcass of the fer-de-lance in a paper bag. The man on the desk referred me to a brigadier or sergeant of police, Hippolyte Frot.
Sergeant Frot was a big black man, as tall as I, younger, and heavier, with the beginnings of a paunch. I told him my tale, and he examined the snake in a relaxed and genial manner.
"They have become rare since the introduction of the mongoose," he said. "The only time we see them is when some peasant brings one down from the hills, to stage a snake-and-mongoose fight. Some like them better than cockfights."
That is not what my biologist friends at the Museum of Natural Science tell me. They say the mongoose generally avoids the pit vipers, whose strike is much faster than a cobra's. Instead, the mongoose have wrought such havoc among the West Indian birds, lizards, and other small game, not to mention the farmers' chickens, that on some islands the bounty has been taken off the snakes and put on the mongoose instead. Still, I was not going to argue the matter with Frot.
"About this Duchamps," he went on, "you understand, Monsieur Newbury, that we have the freedom of religion here. If Duchamps wants to proselyte his primitive polytheism, that is his affair, so long as he behaves himself. Such superstitions are all but extinct on this island, anyway."
West Indians like to deny that there is any voodoo left, at least on whatever island the speaker belongs to. Other islands may still have it, he says; but not his, which is much too advanced and cultured.
"On the other hand," continued Frot, "we must not forget the mission civilizatrice of France. This demands that things be done in an orderly, civilized manner. If the cult of Duchamps creates disturbances or introduces serpents into houses, we shall have to take stern action. But please remember that, from what you have told me, we have no evidence that the serpent did not crawl into your house on its own initiative. We could not arrest Duchamps on any such accusation.
"Permit me to suggest that you leave the remains of the serpent with me. I shall assign men to look in on the house of Monsieur Argenton from time to time. If there are any further manifestations, be sure to let me know. What is your telephone number?"
"There is no telephone. I came here to get away from such trammels of civilization."
Frot chuckled. "But now it seems a less admirable idea, hein? I have seen it before. We find that the oars of civilization raise blisters on our hands and cause our back muscles to ache. So we cast them away. Then we find that the current carries our little boat towards the cascade. So we try to snatch the oars back, if they nave not drifted out of reach. Anyway, you have an automobile, so keep me informed."
For several days, there were no more manifestations, save for the nightly serenades of the drummers. The children caught on, as children will, despite Denise's and my efforts not to discuss the matter before them. Stephen, who had been writing notes for a high-school paper on Martinque, which he meant to present next fall, said: