Chapter 3 - Fon Bèlè

Eighteen Years Earlier - 1938

Pierre Mourillon arose at 3 o’clock in the morning, lit the kerosene lamp in Fon Bèlè, his remote dwelling place near Penville, the northernmost village in Dominica. None of his eight children stirred as he began tending the stove, emptying it of yesterday’s ashes, restocking it with fresh coconut husks in order to warm up the clothes iron. Had his wife Elmie not died last year, he could have tended to his own tasks. Had she not died, his daughters would have been able to attend school today rather than their schooling be so cruelly curtailed. Elmie would have been at Fon Bèlè to do her own work in their stead. Life had been hard before, but it was much harder now.

Fon Bèlè sat west of the track that snaked from Vielle Case to Lower, and then Upper Penville, within the embrace of a valley that had kept it sheltered from the worst excesses of hurricanes and tropical storms over the decades. Residents of Vielle Case and Penville had traditionally interacted far more with people from the neighbouring Marie Galante and southern Guadeloupe than with the rest of Dominica. Times, however, were changing, thought Pierre. The world was opening up. His children, he determined, would not be like himself, able to speak patois and French and only very rudimentary English. No, his children would grow up speaking English fluently, just as those islanders who lived in town and stuck their noses up in the air did.

Waiting for the heat of the stove to fully seep through to the iron, Pierre took the lamp outside, quickly performed his ablutions, then promptly returned to clean and then polish the shoes. Each of the uniforms he had washed and dried the previous day was then neatly pressed and folded. The Mourillon children would be nothing if not well presented.

‘Your mother’, he had said to each of the children, ‘she was a clean woman’.

A person may have an excuse for being poor, Pierre decreed, but never ever dirty. Nor would his children ever be punished for failing Head Teacher Mr. Sorhaindo’s daily inspection. Some of his children’s shirts he had made himself, having figured out how to do so by reverse engineering one he had previously bought some time ago.

This morning, as on every weekday, the children would go directly south to join the track to Vielle Case, a journey of about three miles. Each child had a slate and pencil, each a uniform neatly wrapped, not to be worn until they had bathed. Torrential rain would not be sufficient excuse to fail uniform inspection, nor flooded rivers. At the Balthazar River, they would bathe and clean their teeth with guava tree twigs. Those who were exalted enough to possess shoes would put them on and neatly lace them up, all in time for 9 o’clock start.

All of the Mourillon children missed their dear departed mother. The ones Pierre worried about most were Lipson, Tio, and the youngest, Emile. All three were varying degrees of mute for weeks after her death. Tio’s breathing problems by now, fortunately, seemed to have subsided, and Pierre was increasingly confident that his family’s numbers would not be further diminished.

Tio smiled so rarely of late. Had he always been this way? Pierre could not remember noticing that before now. He was far too serious for an eight-year-old. It was not good to see such gravity in one so young. People do not like it.

In his own childhood, Pierre had bewailed the fact that his older brother had been educated to the upper standard, leaving him languishing with the task of working the land. Had he not been required to do so and leave school at twelve, who knows to what heights he may have ascended? But Pierre had not complained – well, not very often – and had taken hold of all the resources he had been given. He had graduated from the University of Life and exercised supreme stewardship over this place where there were no neighbours and no friends for miles, finding a way to survive in the place where not so long ago the Europeans could not.

Resourcefulness had been the key. Back in the early days a rusty nail, a bent nail, a tin can, a piece of wire – all had their uses and frequent reuses. The quintessential Dominican quality of trying to make the most of the little that life had handed over was never better manifested than in this man of the mountainous north.

Father Leutens, the parish priest in the neighbouring village of Vielle Case, had once regaled a young Pierre with the story of how God had asked Moses when he was by the burning bush 'What do you have in your hand?', referring to his staff. The reason the Almighty had asked such a question, Father Leutens expounded, was to illustrate that he should use what little he had and would receive help with the rest.

At the heart of this struggle to achieve dominion over the land was the dwelling place Fon Bèlè. Pierre told anyone who would listen to the story of how he had eked out a foothold upon the land on which he now stood. He would tell them how he had not complained, but make no mistake, it had been hard. Now he was the most respected carpenter for many miles around, so much so that men came from the neighbouring islands of Martinique, Marie Galante and Guadeloupe commissioning him to do specialist work they would entrust to no other.

To that end, later that week a Monsieur Galbas would be travelling over from Vanibel in Guadeloupe, having tasked Pierre with crafting a gear and pinion for a new mill. Pierre Mourillon could not read a plan, although Monsieur Galbas may well choose to bring one. No, the end product would be arrived at by lively and animated discussion. He may not be educated, but need that mean that he could not be a scientific man?

And, most importantly, he had placed Monsieur Galbas under firm instructions that under no circumstances should he come without his ‘friend’, by which he meant white rum.

Pierre and his friend were indeed good friends, whether at home or amongst acquaintances down in Penville. Life must have its compensation for its unrelenting hardships, he said. A man must be able to enjoy himself once in a while. But after that, as the saying in patois went:

‘Bal fini, violon en sak’

The party was over, and the musician had packed. Time to apply himself to his labours once more.

So, once more Pierre applied himself to his work. Jobs like this were good money and much needed. In time, some of his oldest sons Gabriel and Everton may well become carpenters too, under his tutelage of course. As for the rest, he would see.

Shirts now ironed, he strode softly over to the children.

“Boy. Wake up.”

Pierre prodded Tio, who responded with moans and coughs. Alphonse, thinking the instruction applied to him also, but was quick to settle down when his father placed him back in bed.
He allowed the almost closed eyed Tio to dress in nothing more than his shorts and then led his barely awake eight-year-old son out beyond their modest wooden dwelling. Down they went, into the valley, beyond his coffee plants, still further beyond the lime grove, toward the ocean.

There they drew to a halt. Pierre raised his booming voice, addressing his son in patois.

“Ou saw mwen fanmi – you are my family, so what is mine is also yours. The land here, it is - how you say? – it is your inheritance. It is handed down to my father by his father and from me to you, your brothers and your sisters. You will hand down your portion to son and daughter; they to their son and their daughter.

“You must tend the land, work hard. Grow yam, sweet potato, plantain, banana and mango. I will show you where are the boundaries. You must respect the boundaries. You can see that yours starts at the lime tree and goes down to the two rocks by the stream? After that, the land is your brother's. What is yours, you take care of. What is his, he takes care, not you.
You should not sell the land. If you do, you must sell only to family.

“If a man cannot pay you what he owes, he can come and work for you - one day if he is a carpenter, two days if he is a labourer. Soon Ton Sylvain will come work for me for three days and I will feed him – good food, and plenty, but if I work for him he will pay me more because I am a carpenter.

“You must sell your yam, plantain, banana and mango in town, in Portsmouth, coffee also. Save your money. Pay for education for your children so they will become a teacher, work for the government – an engineer, maybe a doctor, so they work with people who don't even speak Patois. They will look after you when you are too old to plant yam and take it up from the ground.

“See these ears? Français! I have Frenchman's blood in me - from Bayonne. You see? I am not Frenchman. I am not African. I am Dominican! You understand?”

Tio arched his neck and met his father’s gaze.

“Ou saw mwen fanmi, garzon. Tue es ma famille! Copran?”

You are my family. You understand?

Tio was by no means sure he did understand, but thought it wise to nod anyway. Pierre took him by the hand, led him back up the steep slope and into the house for a further hour’s sleep, after which the boy would soon rise.

Outside Fon Bèlè he sat on a wooden stump and lit his clay pipe. His wife, he said to himself, she was a good woman. The best of him. He missed her.

No matter, his friend would console him later.

Sunday morning saw the Mourillon family in the glory of their Sunday finest – Pierre wearing a white cotton suit and sporting a matching trilby, carrying a walking cane, more for effect than support.

The stifling heat had earlier been punctured by a brief cloudburst as midday approached, leaving some cover in its wake and even a little breeze, making today at least tolerable.
Today was a good day. A day of rest from one’s toils, a day to enjoy the fruits of them, even the fruit of his loins, as the priest often put it. His children - good looking - all of them, he said, and often, were also bedecked in white, as they shuffled slowly before him having departed from the Vielle Case parish church shortly after mass.

He bade his children halt. Something or someone by the side of the road caught his eye as his entourage descended the street. Three adolescent girls were sat with boys of a similar age. He could only assume they were walking out together or at least thinking of doing so. Approaching them, he tapped one of the girls on the shoulder with his walking cane.

“These boys,” said Pierre in patois, “You are wasting your time with these boys. You need good, strong Mourillon boys instead.”

Neither the girls nor the accompanying boys replied. Neither did any of them dare to even look up to meet his now intense gaze. The girl to whom he had spoken, Evelyn’s daughter, appeared as if she was pretending to be unable to understand patois, but she understood alright. Why else was he able to see the tear running down her cheek this very moment? Yes, she understood perfectly.

Satisfied that his words had achieved their desired impact, he snorted and turned away from the youngsters, beckoning for his children to continue. The message was to be conveyed to their parents. The girls were merely a conduit, and if the message was a little unpalatable for them in the meantime, so be it.

Just in case the girls’ parents had thought him conveniently tucked away, far from view at Fon Bèlè, Pierre was announcing that he too was a man to be reckoned with. Perhaps not be an educated man, nor a man of great land or immense riches, but surely, he was a man who was making his mark in this world, having started out with so little.

Those boys by the side of the road, thought Pierre as he strode into the distance triumphant, they were not strong and good looking like his boys.

Yes, he thought, today was indeed a good day.