Stranger Than Fiction

________________________________________________
Title:     Stranger Than Fiction
Author: Lafcadio Hearn [More Titles by Hearn]

It was a perfect West Indian day. My friend the notary and I were crossing the island by a wonderful road which wound up through tropic forest to the clouds, and thence looped down again, through gold-green slopes of cane, and scenery amazing of violet and blue and ghost-gray peaks, to the roaring coast of the trade winds. All the morning we had been ascending,--walking after our carriage, most of the time, for the sake of the brave little mule;--and the sea had been climbing behind us till it looked like a monstrous wall of blue, pansy-blue, under the ever heightening horizon. The heat was like the heat of a vapor-bath, but the air was good to breathe with its tropical odor,--an odor made up of smells of strange saps, queer spicy scents of mould, exhalations of aromatic decay. Moreover, the views were glimpses of Paradise; and it was a joy to watch the torrents roaring down their gorges under shadows of tree-fern and bamboo.

My friend stopped the carriage before a gateway set into a hedge full of flowers that looked like pink-and-white butterflies. "I have to make a call here," he said;--"come in with me." We dismounted, and he knocked on the gate with the butt of his whip. Within, at the end of a shady garden, I could see the porch of a planter's house; beyond were rows of cocoa palms, and glimpses of yellowing cane. Presently a negro, wearing only a pair of canvas trousers and a great straw hat, came hobbling to open the gate,--followed by a multitude, an astonishing multitude, of chippering chickens. Under the shadow of that huge straw hat I could not see the negro's face; but I noticed that his limbs and body were strangely shrunken,--looked as if withered to the bone. A weirder creature I had never beheld; and I wondered at his following of chickens.

"Eh!" exclaimed the notary, "your chickens are as lively as ever!... I want to see Madame Floran."

"Moin k['e] di," the goblin responded huskily, in his patois; and he limped on before us, all the chickens hopping and cheeping at his withered heels.

"That fellow," my friend observed, "was bitten by a fer-de-lance about eight or nine years ago. He got cured, or at least half-cured, in some extraordinary way; but ever since then he has been a skeleton. See how he limps!"

The skeleton passed out of sight behind the house, and we waited a while at the front porch. Then a m['e]tisse--turbaned in wasp colors, and robed in iris colors, and wonderful to behold--came to tell us that Madame hoped we would rest ourselves in the garden, as the house was very warm. Chairs and a little table were then set for us in a shady place, and the m['e]tisse brought out lemons, sugar-syrup, a bottle of the clear plantation rum that smells like apple juice, and ice-cold water in a dobanne of thick red clay. My friend prepared the refreshments; and then our hostess came to greet us, and to sit with us,--a nice old lady with hair like newly minted silver. I had never seen a smile sweeter than that with which she bade us welcome; and I wondered whether she could ever have been more charming in her Creole girlhood than she now appeared,--with her kindly wrinkles, and argent hair, and frank, black, sparkling eyes....

* * * * *

In the conversation that followed I was not able to take part, as it related only to some question of title. The notary soon arranged whatever there was to arrange; and, after some charmingly spoken words of farewell from the gentle lady, we took our departure. Again the mummified negro hobbled before us, to open the gate,--followed by all his callow rabble of chickens. As we resumed our places in the carriage we could still hear the chippering of the creatures, pursuing after that ancient scarecrow.

"Is it African sorcery?" I queried.... "How does he bewitch those chickens?"

"Queer--is it not?" the notary responded as we drove away. "That negro must now be at least eighty years old; and he may live for twenty years more,--the wretch!"

The tone in which my friend uttered this epithet--le miserable!--somewhat surprised me, as I knew him to be one of the kindliest men in the world, and singularly free from prejudice. I suspected that a story was coming, and I waited for it in silence.

"Listen," said the notary, after a pause, during which we left the plantation well behind us; "that old sorcerer, as you call him, was born upon the estate, a slave. The estate belonged to M. Floran,--the husband of the lady whom we visited; and she was a cousin, and the marriage was a love-match. They had been married about two years when the revolt occurred (fortunately there were no children),--the black revolt of eighteen hundred and forty-eight. Several planters were murdered; and M. Floran was one of the first to be killed. And the old negro whom we saw to-day--the old sorcerer, as you call him--left the plantation, and joined the rising: do you understand?"

"Yes," I said; "but he might have done that through fear of the mob."

"Certainly: the other hands did the same. But it was he that killed M. Floran,--for no reason whatever,--cut him up with a cutlass. M. Floran was riding home when the attack was made,--about a mile below the plantation.... Sober, that negro would not have dared to face M. Floran: the scoundrel was drunk, of course,--raving drunk. Most of the blacks had been drinking tafia, with dead wasps in it, to give themselves courage."

"But," I interrupted, "how does it happen that the fellow is still on the Floran plantation?"

"Wait a moment!... When the military got control of the mob, search was made everywhere for the murderer of M. Floran; but he could not be found. He was lying out in the cane,--in M. Floran's cane!--like a field-rat, like a snake. One morning, while the gendarmes were still looking for him, he rushed into the house, and threw himself down in front of Madame, weeping and screaming, 'A[:i]e-ya[:i]e-ya[:i]e-ya[:i]e!--moin t['e] tchou['e] y! moin t['e] tchou['e] y!--a[:i]e-ya[:i]e-ya[:i]e!' Those were his very words:--'I killed him! I killed him!' And he begged for mercy. When he was asked why he killed M. Floran, he cried out that it was the devil--diabe-['a]--that had made him do it!... Well, Madame forgave him!"

"But how could she?" I queried.

"Oh, she had always been very religious," my friend responded,--"sincerely religious. She only said, 'May God pardon me as I now pardon you!' She made her servants hide the creature and feed him; and they kept him hidden until the excitement was over. Then she sent him back to work; and he has been working for her ever since. Of course he is now too old to be of any use in the field;--he only takes care of the chickens."

"But how," I persisted, "could the relatives allow Madame to forgive him?"

"Well, Madame insisted that he was not mentally responsible,--that he was only a poor fool who had killed without knowing what he was doing; and she argued that if she could forgive him, others could more easily do the same. There was a consultation; and the relatives decided so to arrange matters that Madame could have her own way."

"But why?"

"Because they knew that she found a sort of religious consolation--a kind of religious comfort--in forgiving the wretch. She imagined that it was her duty as a Christian, not only to forgive him, but to take care of him. We thought that she was mistaken,--but we could understand.... Well, there is an example of what religion can do."...

* * * * *

The surprise of a new fact, or the sudden perception of something never before imagined, may cause an involuntary smile. Unconsciously I smiled, while my friend was yet speaking; and the good notary's brow darkened.

"Ah, you laugh!" he exclaimed,--"you laugh! That is wrong!--that is a mistake!... But you do not believe: you do not know what it is,--the true religion,--the real Christianity!"

Earnestly I made answer:--

"Pardon me! I do believe every word of what you have told me. If I laughed unthinkingly, it was only because I could not help wondering" ...

"At what?" he questioned gravely.

"At the marvelous instinct of that negro."

"Ah, yes!" he returned approvingly. "Yes, the cunning of the animal it was,--the instinct of the brute!... She was the only person in the world who could have saved him."

"And he knew it," I ventured to add.

"No--no--no!" my friend emphatically dissented,--"he never could have known it! He only felt it!... Find me an instinct like that, and I will show you a brain incapable of any knowledge, any thinking, any understanding: not the mind of a man, but the brain of a beast!"

[The end]
Lafcadio Hearn's short story: Stranger Than Fiction

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN