The Sugar Islands by Alec Waugh Read Free Book Online

skirts the effect of a Victorian bustle. Some tried to make themselves appear attractive; the majority tried to make themselves as plain as possible. In Forte de France there were occasional satirists. One afternoon a group of men, dressed up as women in skirts five inches long, had paraded the streets singing ‘Malpropre baissez la robe’. Most of the songs that are sung at carnival are impromptu references to some local event. The chief song at Roseau commemorated an attempted suicide.
    â€˜Sophia drink wine and iodine
Why, Why, Sophia?’
    During the afternoon Roseau echoed the name Sophia. Every shop was shut. Half the population was ‘running mask’. The stray groups that had shouted down the streets during the morning had joined up into a solid phalanx, seventy yards in length, that marched backwards and forwards, singing and dancing, cracking whips; while separate bands of twenty to a dozen girls, dressed uniformly, marched with small orchestras to solicit alms. Each band represented something. One band dressed in yellow represented Colman’s mustard; another Tit-bits ; a third, hung with red, white, and blue, carrying plates of oranges and maize and breadfruit, ‘Dominica Produce’. It was the Martinique carnival on a small scale, surpassed by it in the same way that in its turn Martinique is surpassed by Trinidad. If you want to see street carnival go to Port of Spain. But if you want to see that of which street carnival is the symbol you will stay in Fort de France. In white-run sections of the world I never expect to see a more astounding exhibition than the Bal Lou-Lou. [ The Bal Lou-Lou exists no longer. ]
    Twice a week, on Saturdays and Sundays, there is a ball, or rather there are several. There is the Palais and the Casino. But it is at the Select Tango that you will see it at its best. There is nothing to tell you that you are to see anything extraordinary. At the end of a quiet street facing a river there is a large tin building. You pay your twelve francs and you are in a long room hung with lanterns and paper streamers. A gallery runs round it, on which tables are set, and at each end of which there is a bar. It is rather like a drill-hall. And as you lean over the balcony you have the impression that you are at a typical provincial palais de danse. You see the kind of people that you would expect to see. On the gallery there are one or two family parties of white people. The white women will not dance. They will look on, and they will leave early. In the hall below are a certain number of young Frenchmen of good family with their dusky mistresses. There will be some white policemen and white soldiers; but for the most part it is a coloured audience of shop assistants, minor officials, small proprietors; a typical provincial dance hall. And at first, in the dance itself, there is nothing that you would notexpect to see in such a place. The music is more barbaric, more gesticulatory; but that you would expect to find. As the evening passes, as the custom at the bar grows busier, the volume of sound increases, but that, too, you would expect. That you have seen before. You grow tired and a little bored. You begin to wonder whether it is worth staying on. Then suddenly there is the wail of a clarionette. A whisper runs round the tables: ‘Danse du pays.’ In a moment the galleries are empty.
    It is danced face to face. The girl clasps her arms round the man’s neck. The man holds her by the hips. The music is slow and tense. ‘ Le talent pour la danseuse,’ wrote Moreau St. Méry, ‘est dans la perfection avec laquelle elle peut faire mouvoir ses hanches et la partie inférieure de ses reins en conservant tout le reste du corps dans une espèce d’immobilité .’ The couples appear scarcely to move. In a dance of twenty minutes they will not make more than one revolution of the room. They stand, close clasped and swaying. The music does