The Day the World Ended, page 21
The latest figures of the dead were summarized in seven lines under the heading “The Dead.” The flooded Roxelane was reported under “The Flooding of the Roxelane,” and contained this piece of dubious deduction: “The rise was caused solely by the heavy rains on the heights. The water holds, in suspension, all the ashes it amasses on its way, and it is therefore very dark. At the river’s mouth great quantities of dead fish were found.” There was no mention of the corpses that still drifted down through that mouth. Other paragraphs dismissed the tragedy of Le Prêcheur, a story that was in any case four days old. Another story, tucked away at the bottom of the front page, was headed: “Panic in St. Pierre.” The twenty-four-line item began by reviewing the panic and exodus from the town, and ended with these words: “We confess that we cannot understand the panic. Where could one be better off than in St. Pierre? Do those who are invading Fort-de-France imagine that they would be safer there than here in case of earthquake? This is a foolish mistake, and it is necessary to put the people on their guard against it. We hope the opinion expressed by M. Landes in the interview we publish will be convincing to those who are most afraid.”
This was an extraordinary thing to write, ignoring Pelée and proposing an earthquake as the real threat. In an earthquake it is quite likely that people would not be any safer in Fort-de-France than in St. Pierre, but with Pelée threatening to erupt, there can be no doubt that Fort-de-France, fifteen miles from the crater, was a far safer place.
All these stories only paved the way for the Landes “interview:”
“M. Landes, the distinguished professor of the Lycée, was kind enough to give us an interview yesterday on the subject of the volcanic eruption of Mount Pelée, and of the phenomena which preceded the catastrophe at the Guérin factory. This is what I gathered from our conversation: At five o’clock in the morning, M. Landes saw torrents of smoke escaping from the upper section of the mountain at the spot known as Terre Fendue. He noticed that the Blanche River was swelling to a volume five times greater than that of its greatest known rising, and that it was carrying down great blocks of rock, some of which must have weighed as much as fifty tons. M. Landes, who was then in the Perrinelle settlement, went to Étang Sec at ten minutes before one o’clock. There he saw a whitish mass descend the mountain slope with the rapidity of an express train and enter the river valley, marking its passage with a thick cloud of white smoke. It was not lava but a mass of mud that submerged the Guérin factory. Later on, it appeared to M. Landes that a new opening existed at the foot of Morne Lenard, and this might be ejecting lava.
“The phenomenon of Monday M. Landes regards as unique in the history of volcanoes. It is true, he says, that muddy lavas form very quickly, but the catastrophe at the Guérin factory was due to an avalanche rather than to a lava flow. The valley below has received the contents of Étang Sec, which broke its dike, dropping mud-thickened waters from a height of two thousand feet. If there was no quaking of the earth under the shock of this enormous fall, it was because the sea acted as a stopper, a plug, or pad.
“According to observations of M. Landes yesterday morning, it would seem that the central orifice of the volcano, situated in the higher fissures, was emitting dusty masses of a black and yellow substance in larger quantities than ever, albeit intermittently. It would be safer to leave the lower valleys and to live at a higher elevation if one wished to be sure of escaping the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and not be submerged by muddy lava. ‘But,’ adds M. Landes, ‘Vesuvius has never had many victims. Pompeii was evacuated in time, and few bodies have ever been found in the buried cities.’ Conclusion: Mount Pelée is no more to be feared by St. Pierre than Vesuvius is feared by Naples.”
Andréus Hurard could be well pleased with his work. There would be few who would challenge this detailed explanation or its suggestion that St. Pierre was in no danger from Pelée. He could rely heavily on his attention to detail: “five o’clock in the morning,” “ten minutes before one o’clock,” “fifty tons,” to give credence to the “interview.”
But it is precisely this detail that unmasks the “interview.” At five o’clock on Monday morning Pelée was not emitting smoke as Professor Landes went to join the Commission of Inquiry at the Jardin des Plantes. He never went anywhere near the Blanche River until some time after the Guérin disaster, so he couldn’t possibly have seen rocks, whether they weighed fifty tons or not, being carried down by the river. The Perrinelle settlement lies at the southern foot of Pelée, and was evacuated some time on Friday afternoon, May 2. Étang Sec is a small lake in Pelée’s crater. To send the professor, who by all accounts was anything but an athlete, plunging up the side of Pelée to Étang Sec in conditions which were intolerable was to invest Gaston Landes with the sort of powers given to gods. But even if he had managed to climb nearly four thousand feet in the face of a volcanic eruption, a mud flow, billowing smoke, and hot gas, just to be on hand when the avalanche swept down on the Guérin estate, there is still the question of whether his journey was really necessary. He would have had a better view from the top of Mount Verte with Father Alte Roche.
But, according to the “interview,” having got to the top, and climbed down again—a feat which in normal times was reckoned to take a man the best part of a day—the incredible professor was hot-footing it across five miles of rough terrain to stand at the foot of Morne Lenard, south of the crater, where he saw signs of eruption breaking out there (something that nobody else ever reported).
The whole thing, of course, is fantasy. On the Monday Professor Landes spent the day with the Commission of Inquiry, first in St. Pierre and then in Fort-de-France. He would have found it impossible, even if he had been mad enough to try, to make his way to the deserted Perrinelle settlement. Certainly he could never have ascended to Étang Sec from there.
The point of this fiction emerges only in the last few lines of the story. “It would be safer to leave the lower valleys, and to live at a certain elevation, if one wished to be sure of escaping the fate of Pompeii and Herculaneum, and not be submerged by muddy lava…. Conclusion: Mount Pelée is no more to be feared by St. Pierre than Vesuvius is feared by Naples.”
It was the big lie. But Andréus Hurard had no doubt that it would be believed. He knew that his readers retained a touching faith in the truth of what they read in his newspaper. Placed beside other news items of common knowledge, the “interview” would assume a mantle of truth. For Hurard it was a justifiable gamble. It was unlikely that anybody would actually ask the Professor whether he had made that perilous journey to Étang Sec; even if they did, the editor could assume that the professor would act on the Governor’s behalf, and would not deny the story.
By late in the evening, Pelée had stopped its whistling. In the darkness the people of St. Pierre waited for the next sign. Those who could not get a roof over their heads stood or lay in the streets, silent and dazed, not knowing what to do or where to go.
In the American Residency, Thomas Prentiss had won a victory he had never thought possible. He had persuaded his wife Clara to sail on the Orsolina. With her she would take the letter to the President of the United States. The current issue of Les Colonies listed the Italian ship’s departure as Thursday morning.
In his diary for this night, Thomas Prentiss reveals that “what finally persuaded Clara was my argument that if the American President was aware of the town’s predicament, help would be sent. I persuaded her that it was her duty to insure that my report reached him as speedily as possible.”
In his Presbytery, Father Alte Roche struggled to decide whether he should go to the Governor and make a personal appeal, “on all the evidence available,” for the town to be evacuated.
He had left the Cathedral of Saint Pierre acutely depressed by the Vicar-General’s attitude. Gabriel Parel had made it “resolutely clear” that he would like to keep the Church away from any course that brought it into collision with the State—for as long as possible. After the other priests had left the refectory room, the Jesuit had tried to persuade Gabriel Parel to change his mind, but he had “been adamant” that he would “do nothing until Ascension Day.”
As he had done so many times in the past few days, the priest walked across to the window of his room. He had been standing there for some minutes when he realized just what it was that was different about this evening. The night sky held something he had almost forgotten. Here and there the darkness was speckled with stars.
Bewildered by the turn of events, René Cottrell sat stiffly in the de Jaunville drawing room. Before him stood Colette’s parents.
“It is impossible at this late hour for you to see her,” repeated Mme. de Jaunville. “Besides, she is too upset.”
After Colette had rushed from the drawing room earlier in the evening René had waited for her to return. Forty years later he was to recall his feelings as he had sat on the divan: “I was in love, and though I could not understand her attitude, I was willing to assume full blame for the quarrel. I waited a full hour for Colette to return, but at the end of that time, her personal maid appeared and informed me that her mistress was resting.”
Discomfited, René had returned to his uncle’s villa. There he received sensible advice: “Have some food and a glass of wine, and then return and settle the issue before it gets worse.” Without waiting to eat, René hurried back to the de Jaunville estate, to find that the row had escalated to parental level. A servant directed him to the drawing room, where he was left for some time before M. and Mme. de Jaunville came in. M. de Jaunville was a cold, precise man. When René thanked him for the loan of the trousers and shirt, he curtly dismissed it with: “I trust it will not happen again.” Mme. de Jaunville was elegant in that slightly affected way French colonial women often are. The moment that the relationship between René and Colette had been officially confirmed by René’s asking for her hand in marriage, Mme. de Jaunville had set about planning Colette’s trousseau and opening negotiations with René’s parents on the terms of the marriage contract. She planned to have the contract signed as soon as possible after the formal announcement of the marriage at the Ascension Day party. She had no intention of allowing a quarrel to come between the definite advantages that the marriage could bring to both families. But while she had considerable elegance and charm, she also possessed a violently erratic temper, “and somehow I must have presented myself in a way that aroused this temper,” René was to remember.
Possibly it was his understandable request that he should see Colette that aroused Mme. de Jaunville’s ire.
“Besides, the hour is late,” added M. de Jaunville.
“Indeed it is, sir. But I am anxious that the matter be settled.”
“There is only one issue to settle, and that is whether you will take our daughter to the ball or not,” retorted Mme. de Jaunville.
Once more René tried to explain to them, as he had tried to explain to Colette, that he felt the situation in St. Pierre was far too dangerous even to contemplate attending the ball; besides “I argued that if the Mayor had any sense, he would cancel the celebration.” But again he met with no success. The de Jaunvilles, living cloistered lives outside St. Pierre, had no real concept of what was going on in the town. By the time rumors and reports reached them, they had been filtered through a retinue of servants and generally bore little semblance to the truth. The de Jaunvilles had long discounted those stories, so it is unlikely they would have paid much attention to any stories now coming out of St. Pierre. Like many other large estate owners outside the town, they lived lives almost exclusively contained within the boundaries of their plantation, except for the weekly visit to the Cathedral of Saint Pierre. When Colette had attended morning Mass on the previous Sunday, the situation in the town, though grave, had not reached the critical stage which had shocked René. He “recognized that it would be hard for them to understand the situation. What I could not understand was that after I had told them about it, they still seemed incapable of realizing the danger.”
Once more M. de Jaunville interrupted René: “The hour is late.”
“Indeed it is, sir, and more so if you refer to St. Pierre,” replied René.
“Would you also have us cancel the party of Ascension Day?” asked Mme. de Jaunville, her temper rising.
With all the earnestness of a young man aware of danger, but not quite clear how to avoid it, René answered: “That. Madame, is a matter for you and your husband. My own feeling is that it might be best to postpone the celebrations until times are safer.”
M. de Jaunville argued that the family had given a party on Ascension Day for generations and it was unthinkable to postpone it. “I felt as if I had committed a social error as he explained how all the plans had been made. The Governor and his wife were coming, so was the American Consul and Mrs. Prentiss. Everybody who mattered had been invited. Even suggesting that they should postpone the party made me appear to them like an outcast. They would no more willingly do that than they would allow their servants to dine at table with them,” remembered René Cottrell. “All I could do was to explain that Pelée had proved to be no respecter of plans or conventions.”
The atmosphere in the drawing room had become icy during these exchanges; its memory remained with René all his life. For a moment the de Jaunvilles were taken aback by his remarks. Then Mme. de Jaunville replied: “M. Cottrell, I must ask that you leave such matters as the behavior of Pelée to those better qualified to decide. At this time you should be concerned only with the problem of being a good husband for my daughter!”
For René the situation had taken on “the aspect of a farce. All I wished to do was to settle the row between Colette and myself, but instead I had somehow managed to get her parents against me as well! I decided to concentrate on M. de Jaunville, in the hope that he would see the sense of what I was saying and convince his wife of the same. To him I suggested that it would be wise to leave the district until Pelée had calmed down. I told him that a number of people, like M. Clerc, felt this was a sensible course of action to take.”
The suggestion was met with frozen silence.
“Leave? Leave to go where?” demanded Mme. de Jaunville.
“To Fort-de-France. M. Clerc says it is safe there.”
“And has he gone there himself? Has he left his plantation, warehouses, and office to hide in Fort-de-France?” asked M. de Jaunville.
“I do not know.”
“Precisely!” replied M. de Jaunville.
It was clear, remembers René, that nothing he said would convince them of the impending danger. Pelée was over six miles away, and to them the ash falls were simply “uncomfortable.”
“There is no more to say on the matter,” said M. de Jaunville finally. “We expect you to escort our daughter to the ball. If you fail to honor your obligation in this matter, I do not see how you can proceed with further plans.”
Without waiting for an answer, he led his wife from the drawing room. For the second time that night René Cottrell had been handed an ultimatum.
A servant came and escorted him from the house. Outside, the stars were starting to disappear behind fresh smoke that rose in a column from Pelée before spreading over the sky. It was a few minutes to midnight.
In St. Pierre, Wednesday, May 7, 1902, began quietly. To the population huddled in their homes or lying in the streets, there was nothing to suggest that this would be their last full day to live.
WEDNESDAY
May 7, 1902
CHAPTER TWENTY
Gabriel’s Angel
SHORTLY AFTER MIDNIGHT, Yvette de Voissous heard the sound of drumming coming from the mulatto quarter. At first she could distinguish no more than the intriguing monotony of drumheads being pounded with bare hands; then, as the noise steadied in its rhythm, she could hear the stick work of the racklers and shuckers, and she felt very frightened. On previous occasions the drumming had presaged trouble.
From a window in her rooms in the Rue du Collage, she could see into the mulatto quarter. As she watched, a torch flared, and the drumming rose in sudden ferocity. Later she was to describe the events that followed: “I knew the thing had begun, and that this was no place for Christian people, especially good Catholics. Another torch was ignited, and it seemed to send the drummers wild. Then from the edge of the mulatto quarter, not more than a hundred yards away from where I watched, came the shout of first one quimboiseur and then another as the voodoo wizards urged their followers on. By now the quarter seemed to be alight with a hundred torches that converged on the ruins of the wrecked Pont Basin. It was a fearful sight, with all these wild creatures running up and down beside the wreckage. They were making what the voodoo people call ‘houses for duppys’: lamenting in the cult’s manner those of their creed who had died in the last few days.
“Even under ordinary circumstances good Catholics would have avoided such pagan scenes. But now the quimboiseurs had chosen to use the occasion to bring into the open their longstanding battle with Christianity. As they shouted out ‘prayers’ for the dead, they also uttered accusations that their deaths had been caused by the behavior of the Catholic Church, a wicked lie that could only bring further troubles to a town that had already suffered greatly. After one particularly long burst of shouting, the voodoo people turned and ran up into the town. To reach it, they had to come down the Rue du Collage. They came, and there was something so evil around them that you could also smell it. Just in front of the drummers were the dancers, men and women. As I watched, a woman broke through their ranks and like an animal, just like that, started to sing and dance at the same time.”
The voodoo chant was like an intoxicating spirit that whipped up the crowd. The drums and the movement of the woman were so close that to the fearful Yvette de Voissous it seemed as if “the drumming was coming from her body.” Down the street they came, led by the dancer, who, in the spluttering light from the torches looked like “a fiend from hell.” Others were joining her, men and women flinging themselves about; when they fell to the ground, they instantly rose to their feet again, swept along by the ever increasing tempo of the music. Drugged by the noise, many of them threw off their clothes. Women were lifted high in the air, their bodies arched until their heads and heels trailed the ground. As they passed Yvette’s lodgings, she saw that many of them were drinking; some were already drunk. In the middle of the throng were three quimboiseurs; one carried a trussed goat, the other two held chickens, and the fear Yvette felt increased, “for these were clearly sacrificial animals.”
