Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [21]
‘You talk of St Pierre as though it were Paris,’ I said.
‘But it is the Paris of the West Indies.’
There were trailing pink flowers on the table and the name echoed pleasantly in my head. Coralita Coralita. The food, though too highly seasoned, was lighter and more appetizing than anything I had tasted in Jamaica. We drank champagne. A great many moths and beetles found their way into the room, flew into the candles and fell dead on the tablecloth. Amélie swept them up with a crumb brush. Uselessly. More moths and beetles came.
‘Is it true,’ she said, ‘that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up.’
‘Well,’ I answered annoyed, ‘that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream.’
‘But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal?’
‘And how can millions of people, their houses and their streets be unreal?’
‘More easily,’ she said, ‘much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream.’
‘No, this is unreal and like a dream,’ I thought.
The long veranda was furnished with canvas chairs, two hammocks, and a wooden table on which stood a tripod telescope. Amélie brought out candles with glass shades but the night swallowed up the feeble light. There was a very strong scent of flowers – and the noise, subdued in the inner room, was deafening. ‘Crac-cracs,’ she explained, ‘they make a sound like their name, and crickets and frogs.’
I leaned on the railing and saw hundreds of fireflies – ‘Ah yes, fireflies in Jamaica, here they call a firefly La belle.’
A large moth, so large that I thought it was a bird, blundered into one of the candles, put it out and fell to the floor. ‘He’s a big fellow,’ I said.
‘Is it badly burned?’
‘More stunned than hurt.’
I took the beautiful creature up in my handkerchief and put it on the railing. For a moment it was still and by the dim candlelight I could see the soft brilliant colours, the intricate pattern on the wings. I shook the handkerchief gently and it flew away.
‘I hope that gat gentleman will be safe,’ I said.
‘He will come back if we don’t put the candles out. It’s light enough by the stars.’
Indeed the starlight was so bright that shadows of the veranda posts and the trees outside lay on the floor.
‘Now come for a walk,’ she said, ‘and I will tell you a story.’
We walked along the veranda to the steps which led to the lawn.
‘We used to come here to get away from the hot weather in June, July and August. I came three times with my Aunt Cora who is ill. That was after …’ She stopped and put her hand up to her head.
‘If this is a sad story, don’t tell it to me tonight.’
‘It is not sad,’ she said. ‘Only some things happen and are there for always even though you forget why or when. It was in that little bedroom.’
I looked where she was pointing but could only see the outline of a narrow bed and one or two chairs.
‘This night I can remember it was very hot. The window was shut but I asked Christophine to open it because the breeze comes from the hills at night. The land breeze. Not from the sea. It was so hot that m night chemise was sticking to me but I went to sleep all the same. And then suddenly I was awake. I saw two enormous rats, as big as cats, on the sill staring at me.’
‘I’m not astonished that you were frightened.’
‘But I was not frightened. That was the strange thing. I stared at them and they did not move. I could see myself in the looking-glass the other side of the room, in my white chemise with a frill round the neck, staring at those rats and the rats quite still, staring at me.’
‘Well, what happened?’
I turned over, pulled up the sheet and went to sleep instantly.
‘And is that the story?’
‘No, I woke up again suddenly like the first time and the rats were not there but I felt very frightened. I got out of bed quickly and ran on to the veranda. I lay down in this hammock. This one.’ She pointed to a flat hammock, a rope at each of the four corners.