Anonymous

It Rains—The Effect—No Miserere—Guirappa-seeking—A Skeleton Horse—B——’s Pantomimes—A Day More—The Bells of Guiness—Market Day—An Invitation—Another Plantation—A Remarkable Tree—Palm-Sunday—A Sundayless World—Dreamland—I Didn’t Smoke—Cushioned Heads.

Wednesday, 28th.

EVER since our arrival in Cuba, nature has kept in her after-dinner mood; but to-day, for the first time, clouds are come over the sky with another motive than that of simple ornament. If every cloud is an angel’s face, and no angel’s faces elsewhere, then are we not blessed with angelic physiognomies? For the first time these gauzy waves have ceased to vagabondize over our heads like mere apparitions of loveliness that cannot discover or remember their own errands in the world. In short, the rain has poured in torrents, in desperate cataracts, for two hours. Every thing, as well as the roses, is “dripping and drowned.” The streets are rushing rivers.

But I do not see that nature is especially glad, or even conscious of the change, unless it be in sympathy with our gladness; for it is here that she seems always to have within her, and in the atmosphere she breathes, a fountain of perpetual freshness and youth.

So many weeks of heat and drouth at home would calcine everything to ashes; but now we see all vegetation bright as when it was born. Nature is here a goddess of immortal youth sipping invisible nectar and ambrosia, and forever ministering to her favorites from the secret of her reservoirs.

So the rain having made us domestic, I sit behind the grates of the swelling window, mending gloves, sewing on buttons (they foresaw the rain), listening to ludicrous passages from Handy Andy, taking lessons in cribbage, studying Spanish verbs, and watching the enraptured little boys sailing miniature boats in the street; or the stately negresses passing by with the rain dripping from umbrellas upon their bare shoulders; or the omnipresent soldiers hurrying along to get out of the rain and give me a glimpse of the irresistibly comical cut of their semi-skirted coats. I do not know how better to describe these coats than that they always remind me of the pathetic condition of those redoubtable three blind mice after

This evening we mustered courage, India-rubbers, and umbrellas, and went to the cathedral to hear the Miserere. This being Holy Week, it was to be chanted every night. But the rain, that could not keep away curiosity, had quenched the fire of devotion. No one else came, and we wandered about in the silent aisles listening to no music but the echoings of our own voices through the high arches, and our footsteps over the marble floor. We saw by the dim light of the wax tapers, only vague outlines of statues and pictures draped in black crape for the sadness of the Passion-week.

Presently, through the deepening darkness, we saw emerge the black-robed figures of two pale, melancholy-looking young priests, moving about like spectres in the chancel, arranging images and ornaments, and, though unconscious of our presence, always kneeling and making the sign of the cross when passing the image of the Virgin.

Thursday, March 29th.—Again guirappa-seeking at the plantation, for our morning cordial. Young Mr. D——, who brought it, poured out the great pitcher nearly full that was left upon the ground. I exclaimed at his wastefulness, when he replied that it is free as water. The negroes and dogs all drink what they choose, and invariably grow fat in sugar time. Seeing close by a great black heap resembling a coal-pit, I inquired its nature. He said it was the animal charcoal with which the sugar is discolorized; that it comes only from Europe and nothing else can take its place. Thus the greatest whiteness and purity is obtained only by means of the blackest substance, as the whitest souls have grown fair through the darkest suffering, and sometimes, it may be, sin.

Directly a Chinese servant came from the house with the incomparable coffee and milk always used to pacify Cuban hunger until the late breakfast hour arrives. We swallowed their coffee, and they our thanks, with an equal appearance of pleasure.

In bowing ourselves away from the shadow of the building, where our horses had been standing, we turned upon a curious spectacle,—one of those skeleton horses that one so often sees moving mechanically about here under their enormous burdens. The horses pass for living, but I have more than once inclined to the supposition that it is the galvanic life which may be given to animals after death. As I was saying, one of these posthumous nags was slowly coming up the road, with a comfortable-visaged tin-pedlar mounted astride the roof of the edifice of which the horse was the basement, and between the two, and branching out each side of them, a huge pannier, plethoric with all the paraphernalia appertaining to a tin-pedlar. Over the top were dangling strings of tin basins and baking pans; long-handled dippers were hitting the poor animal’s ears at every step he took; and as he turned up to the house of one of the under overseers, I saw the man pull out from unknown depths wooden spoons, sticks of tape, molasses candy, yards of calico, china dolls, and tin boxes of shoe-blacking.

Mr. S—— is gone to Havana, and we are left quite at the mercy of our French, and the little Spanish we manage to extract from the grammar and dictionary. Nobody but our host understands a word of French, and in his absence you can imagine our mute helplessness. If anybody were to come in at that open door and ask permission to cut my throat, I should hardly be able to decline the civility or to express any opinion of my own on the subject. B——, however, as you know, is admirably ingenious in pantomime, so when we wish any thing I stand in the door, repeating by rote words I have just picked out of the dictionary, while he is stationed near talking with nose, eyes, hands, and feet, by way of explanation; as you remember, in the infancy of the drama among the Greeks, one performer stood out in the front of the stage repeating the words while the actors in the background gesticulated the play in pantomime. All this, as you may imagine, is infinitely amusing to the always-present retinue of staring servants (there are at least two and a baby to every guest). These darkeys take great pride in my success in making my wants known, by using the hissing whistling “ps-s-s-s-s-t,” with the tongue between the teeth, which always and everywhere answers in place of bells to call servants, and which I can do like a native.

I had nearly forgotten to mention a little incident that occurred the day of our arrival, and has since been frequently repeated. Dinner had just gone out, and we were sitting enjoying our exclusive knowledge of the English language, which makes us almost as much isolated as if we had the luxury of a separate table and house, and keeps the curiosity of the rest of the company in an absolutely abnormal condition of activity,—thus we were sitting and talking while waiting for the supplement, the amen to our dinner, viz., the cup of caffÉ noir (and, mind you, this word noir is by no means figurative: this after-dinner coffee is so black and opaque that if an elephant were in the bottom of the cup you could not see him). Well, as was I trying to say, we were sitting waiting and talking, when an unaccustomed noise was heard upon the brick pavement of the parlor; we looked, and lo! what should we see walking majestically through the parlor, through the doors, through our piazza, dining-room, through the walk of the courtyard, but the very fine, well-kept American horse of Monsieur, mine host. B—— and I were of course sufficiently amused, and the rest of the company sufficiently astonished at our amusement: the only novelty to them was that the horse came alone, without the volante.

Friday, March 30th.—This morning, as every morning, I was not awakened by the bells and clocks of Guiness; though, for the matter of a capacity to rupture sleep, they might have been invented by all the imps of discord. You can no more comprehend than you can describe them. It would be interesting to know where can have been found metal so base to produce sounds so execrable that “sweet bells jangled out of tune” would be heavenly harmony compared with them. You would suppose they been tuned by an earthquake. If I had to manage to endure them, I should see to it and have my hours longer, or farther apart. But yet, as I said, it was not the “braying, horrible discord” of the bells that sent Queen Mab off in a hysteric fit; it was, alas! the earlier five o’clock sounds of washings and scrubbings in the next rooms. Such scourings and pourings and dashings of walls and floors, and of all supposable things, were surely never heard out of Holland, where, Leigh Hunt tells us, the women wash everything but the water.

Much as I doat on cleanliness, I find it a poor exchange to pay for it in the more precious commodity of sleep, and I record myself to you as a wretched victim to this diurnal deluge of neatness.

On our way to the ingenio I mustered Spanish enough to beg a cane-stalk of the negresses who were cutting it down with great rapidity in the fields, using huge sharp knives that I could scarcely lift. They eagerly gave us more than we could carry, enough to keep us sucking all the way home, and a six weeks to come. Willis says, “Nobody can starve here: the cane-fields are all open; and if hungry, one has only to cut a stick and suck.” We discovered this morning still another sugar plantation, but distrusting the availability of our Spanish, only rode past the sugar-house without asking for guirappa. As we passed a gate near which groups of women were at work, one of them came up with outstretched hand, begging countenance, and some sort of a jumble, and all the rest started to follow her example; but being purseless, and with no great mind to use a purse if I had had it, I shook my head and said, “No hablo Espagnol,” emphasizing the remark by a decided application of my horsewhip to the horse.

Saturday, 31st.—This evening we promised ourselves another visit to our mountain, but an unusual amount of heat and exhaustion forbade the ascent, and very soon found me reclining under the irresistible shadow of trees that knew how to make shade, while B—— galloped off to reconnoitre. But I soon found myself comparing myself to Gulliver when he became populated with Liliputians, so many insects shared in my taste for shade and solitude; and I was glad enough when B—— made his perspiring appearance.

This being market-day, we found great amusement in watching the peasants astride their panniers which bestrode the horses. In addition to being stuffed monstrously with vegetables, over the edge of most of the panniers were dangling chickens, ducks, and Guinea-hens, tied together by their feet, feathers ruffled, wings flapping backwards, heads dangling downwards, and an expression on their faces of pious resignation adapted to the study of bigger bipeds. All the poor things were alive, but one was sure must die of vertigo or apoplexy, before they could by any possibility reach the town. Here we noticed particularly the tethering of the horses and cattle, a custom indispensable in a country where there are no fences and rarely hedges. One end of the rope being tied around the animal’s neck, the other is fastened to a tree or shrub or stake driven in the ground, or sometimes to the long, strong grass. Thus localized, they are allowed food and exercise to the full capacity of the rope, but no farther. Each one is made a hermit, ruminating round and round in his solitude and his circle, which, instead of increasing, is sure to diminish, for the rope gets tangled in knots, or twisted around sticks, or the animal’s own legs, so that prudence soon forces a sedentary life upon him. Not unfrequently these ropes were lying in ambush across our path, often so hidden by the grass that neither ourselves nor our horses discovered them until we were nearly caught in the snare. Imagine the interesting frights and ingenious summersaults that we escaped!

I must not forget a remarkable tree we discovered across the fields, which attracted so much our fancy that we immediately turned off, overleaping hedges and ditches (small ones) to examine it. Its outward proportions were on the most magnificent scale, eclipsing in size all its neighbors and all the trees we have before seen, but the trunk proved to be nearly or quite hollow. B—— rode in through the gothic opening, turned his horse around inside, and came out again, and I might have done the same thing at the same time. It would make a dwelling absolutely larger than some of the inhabited huts I have seen here. That admirable disciplinarian, the old woman who lived in her shoe, etc., would here have found “ample room and verge enough” for all her surplus of light infantry, while those who had to go to bed without molasses or bread could have amused themselves with the echoes of their own squallings, for the cavity sounded hollow, like a great unfurnished room. But at the time I only thought how much the tree resembled those magnificent lives spreading out so fair and grandly, reaching so near their kindred blue that in the eyes of the world they are fulfilling all of a high and happy destiny. You must approach very near, perhaps penetrate the abysses of their being, to find that the great heart is gone; its place is only supplied by hollow echoes and aching void.

April 1st.—Palm Sunday—like all the other Cuban Sundays, except that two, or at most three, men have passed on horseback, with long palm branches in their hands.

A south wind again, more enervating than can well be imagined by those who have never felt it come hot and hissing from the equator. It is an incipient sirocco, and always sends the Italians to bed. Of course, too languid for the early, and only mass, coming as it does, before breakfast: the rest of the day we have only to endure with the aid of a fan, and to watch the altitudes of the thermometer.

I have not yet recovered from the uncomfortable sensation of living in a Sundayless world,—a world which being so elaborate in its upholstery, is supposed to have required the full seven days to complete it, leaving no rest or hallowing for anybody.

You can well understand that writing to you, or anybody, on these hot but heavenly days, is simply a contrivance for inking over my dulness. As you suspect, I am getting to live quietly here, dreaming away life, without much help of books, it is true, but, what is better still, without much hindrance from them either.

After all, why not take a little time to dream a few little dreams in this large dream of life? Death will come soon enough to tap us on the forehead, or it may be to shake us rudely, and then we shall be wide awake, and for a long time. Besides, if it takes a long time to dream one’s dreams, it takes as long time to undream them; and you know—who does not?—that they are a kind of atmosphere which penetrates where everything is as much as where everything is not.

I also assure you that pen and ink have no natural, or so far as I am concerned, acquired relations with these transcendent tropical nights we are having now; nights when you can feel this wonderful moonlight, creeping in its slippers of silence, over all the longing darkness, through all the sleeping lids of this softly breathing nature, sprinkling them all the time with its white juice-of-love-in-idleness. Sometimes, you lie its willing and helpless victim, until all your unpastured emotions come to be swayed by it, as by a shepherd’s voice. Again you can think of it only as growing, growing, more and more, wider and deeper, all over the world, like a blanched and intangible parasite, which no morning will ever dare with profane fingers to pull up by the roots.

Tuesday, April 3d.—Yesterday we remembered the invitation of the major domo of the sugar plantation, where oxen instead of steam get the saccharineness out of sugar-cane, as we do out of babies—by squeezing. The consequence was that the rough Creole saw the sun and us dawning upon him at the same distinguished moment; that we dismounted to be conducted over the establishment; that the trampling feet of oxen, the monotonous and endless cries of their female drivers, rang in my ears as repulsively as they did at first, and still keep doing, in spite of all my efforts to banish them; that we stood beside the boiling cauldron, where two withered old men were stationed to skim off the scum, and remind one of the witches in Macbeth bent over their cauldron to catch the scum, the “Bubble, bubble, Toil and trouble” of human destiny. While I stood looking at this strange scene, our conductor, with great empressment, drew from his pocket two fine cigars, offering one to me, and the other to B——, and was sorely chagrined and puzzled that I declined it. I was obliged to resort to the plea of invalidism to pacify him. From this we went to the refining house, where little inverted tin pyramids, full of sugar, were setting all over the floors, with thick layers of black clay spread over their heads, and little tubs, to catch the molasses, set under the opening in their feet. This apartment opened into the one for drying in which these little vessels had been emptied; the whitened sugar lay evenly all over the floor, and a fat negress walked over it with a rake in her hand, and the shoes she was born in on her feet.

I noticed here, as often before, deep scars on the women’s necks, cheeks, and arms, frightfully disfiguring, and painfully suggestive, but I was relieved to find it is only the effects of their favorite custom of tattooing. I thought before, that nature and the most servile of drudgery had carried the ugliness of these poor wretches to the extremest verge of possibility, but I find that, in that “deep,” as well as in all others, there is still a “lower deep.”

We were also puzzled to divine the import of immense round cushions fastened securely upon nearly all the women’s heads, but soon discovered they were to make a comfortable seat for the immense burdens of sugar going from one house to another; for all the ordinary burdens we had before seen, carried on the head (negroes here have no idea that their heads were made for any other use) had been simply with the aid and comfort of the woolly padding of nature.

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