Texaco - Excerpt - Fiction

New Internationalist, Oct, 2001 by Patrick Chamoiseau

Patrick Chamoiseau's novel is an ambitious narrative history of the Caribbean island of Martinique, tracking the growth of a shanty-town named 'Texaco' after a nearby oil depot. Chamoiseau tells the story of the epic struggle of the Creole underclass to carve out of an uncaring and unfair society their own unique place. The story moves backwards and forwards in time, comprising the narrative of radical activist Marie-Sophie Laborieux, her freed-slave father Esternome and his many loves. Straightforward history -- the rise and collapse of the plantation system, the coming of the oil companies, a formal state visit by de Gaulle in the 1960s -- is interwoven with fragments of Creole legend and folk wisdom. The story is told in a variety of voices: in this extract Marie-Sophie is speaking.

Away from time didn't I go by. With City nearby, it was like having the breadfruit tree by the hutch. Getting Social Security, angling for a chance to be a civil servant, all of that school business to save the little ones, wandering through a whole bunch of counters, those keys of a life more and more complicated -- all of that was more easily done there.

City (like certain rich reserves of the august water yam) was the pedestal of the rare things which bettered life, for, in truth, despite everything, life is made to be lived and so then: Syrian shops, terylene cloth, the hair stylists, the lights, the clubs, the merchandise from France -- that no trinket vendor could get from the islands grabbed our attention more than the idea of a shoal of mules passing through crushed shark liver.

We shoved our way about next to City, holding on to it by its thousand survival cracks. But City ignored us. Its activity, glances, the facets of its life (from every day's morning to the beautiful night neon) ignored us. We had vied for its promises, its destiny; we were denied its promises, its destiny. Nothing was given, everything was to be wrung out. We spoke to those who looked like us. We answered their call for help and they answered ours. The old Quarters held hands, going around City, families joined them, exchanges linked them. We wandered around City, going in to draw from it, going around it to live. We saw City from above, but in reality we lived at the bottom of its indifference which was often hostile.

free soil

We from Texaco, last to join the wreath of the old Quarters, we reinvented everything: laws, urban codes, neighborhood relations, settlement and construction rules. In the beginning, around the reservoir tanks there were only logwood brush and wild sage, with (behind the logwood and wild sage) more logwood and wild sage. These plants had proliferated following a rupture in the original balance of the thickets. When we came, we brought the countryside with us: carts of lemon trees, swaying coconut trees, bunches of papaya trees, tufts of sugarcane, tatters of plantains, guavas, peppers, lichees, the blessed breadfruit, the avocado trees and a mixture of this grass and that grass to cure the aches, the heart's sufferings, the soul's wounds, the dreamy flowerings of melancholy.

We behaved according to the Nouteka of the Hills that my Esternome had described to me in detail, in communion with the open spaces right outside the hutch, to the rhythm of the moon's seasons, the rain and the winds. And we wished, confronted with City, to live in the spirit of the Hills, that is: with our single resource, and better: our single knowledge.

On the slope, on my side, in Upper Texaco, the rock pointed its gray head on which we'd built our hutches. Here and there layers of soil appeared; they had only known the frugalities of wild sage and logwood brush, so they were grateful for the sap of fruit trees. It wasn't necessary, like it was in Lower Texaco, to cart in good soil to put over the mangrove swampwater.

Our hutches sat on the soil, espousing its contours, without scraping any ground away, no modifications in the profile of the bank. We were a part of the cliff in Upper Texaco. Sometimes, right beside, almost like a dream, I'd hear the water infiltrate the cliff, crumbling it under the sun and threatening the hutch sitting on the rock. Those on the mangrove swamp felt in their bones marine rumors, murmurings of foam.

Even at the height of the month of June, the sun didn't strangle Upper Texaco. Around four in the afternoon, its rays shifted as they approached the cliff and left us the sweetness of an alize tasting of algae and hibiscus. In the heat of the sun, our hutches' shadows overlapped, thickened each other thus shielding us from scorching sun strikes. What's more, the rooms turned toward the shady cliff kept the blessed airs of a lukewarm spring. Those who had built on the slopes, opposite the sea, got the sun in front, behind the canvas windows. That solar slam could have roasted them, but the constant shower of the alizes would come to refresh them. And we had learned, donkey's years ago, to pay attention to the wind like the Caribs. I reminded (but was it really necessary?) those who came to me before settling in to plan some holes, dormer windows, grids which let in the breezes. But as more hutches piled up, we started lacking fresh wind, a little less so up here in the heights, but too much so in the mangrove swamp.