Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [52]
Vain, silly creature. Made for loving? Yes, but she’ll have no lover, for I don’t want her and she’ll see no other.
The tree shivers. Shivers and gathers all its strength. And waits.
(There is a cool wind blowing now – a cold wind. Does it carry the babe born to stride the blast f hurricanes?)
She said she loved this place. This is the last she’ll see of it. I’ll watch for one tear, one human teat. Not that lank hating moonstruck face. I’ll listen…. If she says good-bye perhaps adieu. Adieu – like those old-time songs she sang. Always adieu (and all songs say it). If she too says it, or weeps, I’ll take her in my arms, my lunatic. She’s made but mine, mine. What will I care for gods or devils or for Fate itself. If she smiles or weeps or both. For me.
Antoinette – I can be gentle too. Hide your face. Hide yourself but in my arms. You’ll soon see how gentle. My lunatic. My mad girl.
Here’s a cloudy day to help you. No brazen sun.
No sun … No sun. The weather’s changed.
******
Baptiste was waiting and the horses saddled. That boy stood by the clove tree and near him the basket he was to carry. These baskets are light and waterproof. I’d decided to use one for a few necessary clothes – most of our belonging were to follow in a day or two. A carriage was to meet us at Massacre. I’d seen to everything, arranged everything.
She was there in the ajoupa; carefully dressed for the journey, I noticed, but her face blank, no expression at all. Tears? There’s not a tear in her. Well, we will see. Did she remember anything, I wondered, feel anything? (That blue cloud, that shadow, is Martinique. It’s clear now … Or the names of the mountains. No, not mountain. Morne, she’d say. ‘Mountain is an ugly word – for them.’ Or the stories about Jack Spaniards. Long ago. And then she said, ‘Look! The Emerald Drop! That brings good fortune.’ Yes, for a moment the sky was green – a bright green sunset. But not half strange as saying it brought good fortune.)
After all I was prepared for her blank indifference. I knew that my dreams were dreams. But the sadness I felt looking at the shabby white house – I wasn’t prepared for that. More than ever before it strained away from the black snake-like forest. Louder and more desperately it called: Save me from destruction, ruin and desolation. Save me from the long low death by ants. But what are you doing here you folly? So near the forest. Don’t you know that this is a dangerous place? And that the dark forest always wins? Always. If you don’t, you soon will, and I can do nothing to help you.
Baptiste looked very different. Not a trace of the polite domestic. He wore a very wide-brimmed straw hat, like the fishermen’s hats, but the crown flat, not high and pointed. His wide leather belt was polished, so was the handle of his sheathed cutlass, and his blue cotton shirt and trousers were spotless. The hat, I knew, was waterproof. He was ready for the rain and it was certainly on its way.
I said that I would like to say good-bye to the little girl who laughed – Hilda. ‘Hilda is not here,’ he answered in his careful English. ‘Hilda has left – yesterday.’
He spoke politely enough, but I could feel his dislike and contempt. The same contempt as that devil’s when she said, ‘Taste my bull’s blood.’ Meaning that will make you a man. Perhaps. Much I cared for what they thought of me! As for her, I’d forgotten her for the moment. So I shall never understand why, suddenly, bewilderingly, I was certain that everything I had imagined to be truth was false. False. Only the magic and the dream are true – all the rest’s a lie. Let it go. Here is the secret. Here.
(But it is lost, that secret, and those who know it cannot tell it.)
Not lost. I had found it in a hidden place and I’d keep it, hold it fast. As I’d hold her.
I looked at her. She was staring out to the distant sea. She was silence itself.
Sing, Antoinetta. I can hear you now.
Here the wind says it has been, it has been
And the sea