Wide Sargasso Sea - Jean Rhys [51]
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 says it must be, it must be
And the sun says it can be, it will be
And the rain …?
‘You must listen to that. Our rain knows all the songs.’
‘And all the tears?’
‘All, all, all.’
Yes, I will listen to the rain. I will listen to the mountain bird. Oh, a heartstopper is the solitaire’s one note – high, sweet, lonely, magic. You hold your breath to listen … No … Gone. What was I to say to her?
Do not be sad. Or think Adieu. Never Adieu. We will watch the sun set again – many times, and perhaps we’ll see the Emerald Drop, the green flash that brings good fortune. And you must laugh and chatter as you used to do – telling me about the battle off the Saints or the picnic at Marie Galante – that famous picnic that turned into a fight. Or the pirates and what they did between voyages. For every voyage might be their last. Sun and sangoree’s a heady mixture. Then – the earthquake. Oh yes, people say that God was angry at the things they did, woke from his sleep, one breath and they were gone. He slept again. But they left their treasure, gold and more gold. Some of it is found – but the finders never tell, because you see they’d only get one-third then: that’s the law of treasure. They want it all, so never speak of it. Sometimes precious things, or jewels. There’s no end to what they find and sell in secret to some cautious man who weighs and measures, hesitates, asks questions which are not answered, then hands over money in exchange. Everybody knows that gold pieces, treasures, appear in Spanish Town – (here too). In all the islands, from nowhere, from no one knows where. For it is better not to speak of treasure. Better not to tell them.