Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [17]
‘Impossible,’ I said. I could see the grey hairs in his sparse beard.
‘Fifty-six years perhaps.’ He seemed anxious to please.
The Young Bull laughed loudly. ‘He don’t know how old he is, he don’t think about it. I tell you sir these people are not civilized.’
Emile muttered, ‘My mother she knows, but she dead.’ Then he produced a blue rag which he twisted into a pad and put on his head.
Most of the women were outside their doors looking at us but without smiling. Sombre people in a sombre place. Some of the men were going to their boats. When Emile shouted, two of them came towards him. He sang in a deep voice. They answered, then lifted the heavy wicker basket and swung it on to his head-pad singing. He tested the balance with one hand and strode off, barefooted on the sharp stones, by far the gayest member of the wedding party. As the Young Bull was loaded up he glanced at me sideways boastfully and he too sang to himself in English.
The boy brought the horses to a large stone and I saw Antoinette coming from the hut. The sun blazed out and steam rose from the green behind us. Amélie took her shoes off, tied them together and hung them round her neck. She balanced her small basket on her head and swung away as easily as the porters. We mounted, turned a corner and the village was out of sight. A cock crowed loudly and I remembered the night before which we had spent in the town. Antoinette had a room to herself, she was exhausted. I lay awake listening to cocks crowing all night, then got up very early and saw the women with trays covered with white cloths on their heads going to the kitchen. The woman with the small hot loaves for sale, the woman with cakes, the woman with sweets. In the street another called Bon sirop, Bon sirop, and I felt peaceful.
The road climbed upward. On one side the wall of green, on the other a steep drop to the ravine below. We pulled up and looked at the hills, the mountains and the blue-green sea. There was a soft warm wind blowing but I understood why the porter had called it a wild place. Not only wild but menacing. Those hills would close in on you.
‘What a extreme green,’ was all I could say, and thinking of Emile calling to the fishermen and the sound of his voice, I asked about him.
‘They take short cuts. They will be at Granbois long before we are.’
Everything is too much, I felt as I rode wearily after her. Too much blue, too much purple, too much green. The flowers too red, the mountains too high, the hill too near. And the woman is a stranger. Her pleading expression annoys me. I have not bought her, she has bought me, or so she thinks. I looked down at the coarse mane of the horse … Dear Father. The thirty thousand pounds have been paid to me without question or condition. No provision made for her (that must be seen to). I have a modest competence now. I will never be a disgrace to you or to my dear brother the son you love. No begging letters, no mean requests. None of the furtive shabby manoeuvres of a younger son. I have sold my soul or you have sold it, and after all is it such a bad bargain? The girl is thought to be beautiful, she is beautiful. And yet …
Meanwhile the horses jogged along a very bad road. It was getting cooler. A bird whistled, a long sad note. ‘What bird is that?’ She was too far ahead and did not hear me. The bird whistled again. A mountain bird. Shrill and sweet. A very lonely sound.
She stopped and called, ‘Put your coat on now.’ I did so and realized that I was no longer pleasantly cool but cold in my sweat-soaked shirt.
We rode on again, silent in the slanting afternoon sun, the wall of trees on one side, a drop on the other. Now the sea was a serene blue, deep and dark.
We came to a little river. ‘This is the boundary of Granbois.’ She smiled at me. It was the first time I had seen her smile simply and naturally. Or perhaps it was the first time I had felt simple and natural with her. A bamboo spout jutted from the cliff, the water coming from it was silver blue. She dismounted quickly, picked a large shamrock-shaped leaf to make a cup, and drank. The she picked another leaf, folded it and brought it to me.