“Berndt made a comment …”
Berndt made a comment about your photo in the album "Tropical Islands":
"Fantastic. Like one layer of reality coming loose..."
To see the comment thread, follow the link below:
http://www.facebook.com/n/?photo.php&pid=1298367&id=674009734
Thanks, The Facebook Team
It is a matter of inventing or discovering … positive modes of existence, which come to meet us with their palm fronds, to greet our hopes and aspirations, or our problematic speculations, in order to gather them in and comfort them. All other research is a metaphysical famine.
Etienne Souriau
Tropical Islands Resort is located in a hangar which sits like the carapace of an insect on the flat snow-covered plains of Brandenburg, south of Berlin. As you approach on the bus that has picked you up from the station, you notice it is surrounded by old WW2 bunkers, some converted into workshops or offices, the other falling into ruin. The shell of the building, one of the largest by volume in the world at 5.5 million m³, is some 360m by 210m. It is large enough to contain a tropical rainforest, a sandy beach 200 meters long fronting the ‘beach’ (‘Südsee’) another lagoon, spas, waterslides, villages with restaurants. The atmospheric temperature is 28º with 48% humidity; the water is kept at a steady 31º, all year round, 365 days a year. You can live there, I guess, since tents can be rented for the night.
When you pay your entrance fee, you are issued with an electronic key which you wear like a wrist-watch. It has the number of your locker stamped on it. So after we found our lockers, we could store our clothes and valuables, and use the key to get through turnstiles. We could buy lunch with it, pay to go on the waterslide or get a massage. We had passed the frontier into a paradise of consumer liberty, for you could never know how much you had spent until the time came to go back through the turnstiles at the end of your holiday. Spend like there is no tomorrow, and the Dow Jones just went down another 5 points.
We installed ourselves on deck-chairs at Südsee, the winter sun shone through the plastic roof of the building onto us, it seemed, but the warmth was pervasive, undirected, we wondered if there were heaters on the ceiling. The restaurant was handy, only 3 meters away. The beach a few steps down. Outside it was 5º below zero, but that information was not flashed up on the electronic screen to our left. The outside was the reality we were supposed to forget, but we could see it through the side windows; snow and ice, bunkers.
“Like one layer of reality coming loose..."
says my Facebook Friend Berndt Sellheim, way over in Sydney. And he’s right, reality is what this is all about. Where is reality? What is it? Who cares? P!nk is playing over the sound system, not too loud, but she is still screaming
So, so what?
I’m still a rock star
I got my rock moves
And I don’t need you.
And guess what
I’m having more fun…
I order another drink, Sebastian gives me that disapproving look; he goes off to the water slide again. I gaze out over the Südsee, to the horizon, about 30 meters away. Above it rises a nicely painted backdrop of blue sky with attractive fluffy clouds. It almost joins the edge of the pool, so that it looks uncannily like the horizon that Jim Carey ran into in The Truman Show.
Patience and I take a walk, through the rainforest where the turtles and goldfish seem to be enjoying the pools. In the tropical village we pass a grass hut café where there is a man in a working on his laptop, just like he was taking his holiday in Thailand. Coming back along the Südsee, there is a tramp at the far end. The place is not too crowded, so he is on his own occupying two deck chairs. Undisturbed, he sits and sorts though all his junk that he has removed from his bags: dirty rags, bottles, instant coffee and powdered milk (he has his mug) books, newspapers. I’m thinking this guy is not going to be going swimming, but how long has he been here?
I find out the heat is directed up the walls by blowers, so that condensation does not form on the ceiling. They had to make this modification, because earlier on there would be little spontaneous rain showers, inspired by the high humidity and the presence of the 30, 000 trees in 500 different species.
“Like one layer of reality coming loose...” The businessman on holiday and the urban tramp have found their way here, paid their 25 Euros to get in for the day, and are as real as all the rest, but we expect this reality to be less real, totally fake. In the eighties, cultural theorists Jean Baudrillard and Umberto Eco were enthused about simulacra and hyperreality. A simulacrum like Disney World collapses time and space. It doesn’t matter where this environment is, or when. Disney is also Euro-Disney; it is still a ‘small small (Yanqui!) world’, wherever it is, and it never changes. And the hyperreal was about the scandal of the fake, but that depended on the idea that some solid origin existed somewhere, say in Europe, and that was before the killer critique that was delivered to European modernity by the capitalization of the erstwhile developing world. At that very instant, those origins are not so original any more, the philosophical ground shifted with the instance of the tectonic shifts of the sliding movements of global capital. The Malaysian Tanjong company bought this little piece of Germany for €17.5 million in 2003. The hangar was originally commissioned by Cargolifter AG to build a useful cargo airship, the CL160, but the company folded.
‘But what if it is not a matter of two orders,’ I’m saying to Patience as we paddle in the Tropical Lagoon (31.4º), ‘you know the real and the hyperreal, as if there are primary and secondary orders of the real? Like is a resort at Phuket in Thailand all that different? And this place is owned by some kind of Malaysian consortium isn’t it? Post-colonial revenge on the Europeans? But why only two levels of reality? Why not exfoliating layers, or chains of mediations coming in and intersecting in the place’?
We have lunch, I treat myself to a glass of red, and Seb treats himself to another moralizing glance.
After a while I find myself drifting off in my deckchair, but before long my granddaughter is tugging at my sleeve (do I have a sleeve?) saying, ‘Look Grandpa! It’s the tramp!’ And there is The Tramp, looking remarkably like Charlie Chaplin, with the big shoes, being chased by bunch of security guards with truncheons, dropping his belongings as he disappears into the rainforest. I knew he couldn’t last long in this controlled environment. Thank goodness, now I can sleep the sleep of the security-enhanced.
But it seems we have stayed for the evening performance. The lights go down, the music, a lovely Schubert lieder rises, and the spotlight follows a man dressed simply in a business suit onto the stage, which is set in the sea just beyond the beach, huts on two sides. He stands silently for a few moments centre stage.
‘Ladies and Gentlemen,’ he then begins, ‘I know that tonight you were expecting the usual native dances and magic show. I regret to inform you that the Samoan troop we contracted for this winter season has declined to appear tonight as they renegotiate their contract. Likewise with the magicians, our negotiators were not able to pull anything out of the hat at the last minute. ‘Money doesn’t grow on trees,’ they said, or rather that is what I said. My name by the way is Celuc Sayyid, I am CEO of he consortium that owns Tropical Islands; I am here on holiday myself! Isn’t it great!’
‘Anyway, I thought I might entertain you with another kind of story, perhaps as strange and as magical as the performances you have not seen. The Dow Jones went down another five percentage points this afternoon, putting the US officially into a recession. Our consortium has investments largely in East Asia, so we are also extremely concerned about the shrinkage of the overall value of another Tropical Island, Singapore, as you know, the financial capital of Asia. It is all fantasy paper money! You know, like that money we burn at funerals. I’ve been thinking a lot about that lately; I keep seeing images of burning money. Let me tell you have we tried to make something real here. Tropical Islands is based on real tourist experiences, and a good part of that reality is fantasy. Real fantasies and desires, converted with our labour into real comforts and pleasures. People will pay good money for that, and why not?’
The little girl is tugging at my sleeve again. ‘Look Grandpa! It’s the Tramp again!’ And I look to where she is pointing. There is Charlie rising triumphantly in the Angelus Novus balloon, waving and smiling to the frustrated cops underneath. Before I can decide if this is part of the performance, I am drawn back in fascination to the fact that Sayyid has now put up a spreadsheet and is explaining in detail the various intersecting financial costings. That figure for heating the place, I think a lot of us were wondering about that; I glance at Patience, she and the rest of the audience are riveted. And there is a history to the Brandenburg city’s State investments in the form of tax breaks and various in-kinds. That guy who was working on his lap-lap, I mean lap-top, in Thai Village earlier, has it out again, and seems to be making notes. We are getting a financial history of a company going down, or rather ‘belly up’ as they say, exposing its exploding metaphorical guts as it were. There are all these tricks for keeping it afloat, like the elevation trick in the show we didn’t see. How do they hide the wires or props? How much hiding of the wires can go on before the financial fantasy breaks through into the real-world economy? Sayyid is being remarkably frank; to the point that some other suits sitting at a table by the bar seem agitated. He has told us about why the Samoans wouldn’t take a pay-cut for performing their routines; he has told us that what he stands personally to lose is both his bonus and his investments, but his bottom line is that he can retire to a few houses in a resort village on Malaysia’s west coast, where he can have quality time with his family. Tropical Islands. What he really loses is the part he plays striding the global stage as the CEO of a major corporation, no small thing; “I have a lot of emotional investment there,” he admits. In a performance! And he takes a bow, strides off stage left.
Applause! The audience loves it, not because he has peeled away a layer of artifice to reveal the financial workings, no: we love these financial workings because of their own reality, no, not as basic boring spreadsheets, but because he has made the story connect with the here and now, and his act is just as vulnerable as the rest.
When Walter Benjamin talks about montage, he is thinking of Brechtian performances, with the interruptions of the action as qualifying as epic, always working against the audience falling into illusion. Reality, in this is not two-fold, it can be of an indeterminate number of layers, the first layer (or strike, or link, call it what you like) being the one you begin with, your contingent moment, it doesn’t matter when or where you being, but it will often be with a surprise that marks reality’s entrance. Benjamin says we need to make the theatre work by treating ‘elements of reality as if they were elements of an experimental set-up […The spectator] recognizes them as real, not as with the theatre of naturalism as complacency, but with astonishment. Epic theatre does not reproduce conditions; rather it discloses, it uncovers them’.
Something is nudging me and I awake to the realization that I have no granddaughter, she was the surprise guest, she got in for free on the oeneric layer, and was enthralled by the hide-and-seek tactics of the tramp. Patience is suggesting we make a move, not to be too late getting home. I say, no, I don’t mind missing the evening performance. So we have a last swim, shower and go back to the lockers. Then a trip to the shops so Sebastian can get a dry T-shirt, and we check out and wait for the bus. The excursion to the tropics ends with a fifteen-minute wait on the platform of Brand Hauptbahnhof, out there in the bitter sub-zero of the Brandenburg plains.
Monday, January 26, 2009
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
Fostering Education
A community outreach project I have in mind, Fostering Education, will endeavour to place Indigenous students in city families for the period of their high-school education. The temporary foster parents will contract with the communities and families of origin to assist talented and/or at-risk children in obtaining the best possible education. To work, this community-based scheme would have to be patronised by Indigenous and non-Indigenous leaders, as well as institutions of various sorts.
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Paul and Virginia
This is my version of the Paul and Virginia romance, first published in the J. of Mauritian Studies, Vol. 3, No. 1, 2006:
Paul and Virginia
Stephen Muecke
When I was doing fieldwork in Port Louis, Mauritius in 1998, I was rummaging in an old photography studio cum museum, and came across a couple of old reel-to-reel audio tapes. I asked the proprietor what was on them and he didn’t know. I said I had a machine at home that could play them. Who knows, I said, they might be something interesting. So he let me take them away on the promise of keeping him informed.
And I did, coming back excitedly the next day with the machine and we sat down and listened to an old creole man tell the story of Paul and Virginia, in his own vernacular style, that is, in Mauritian Creole. Paul and Virginia, as you know, is the classic novel of Mauritius, a bestselling romance from Bernardin de St Pierre, published in France in 1788. As far as Jean Baladin (that was the proprietor of the photo shop) and I were concerned, this more contemporary version was a literary gold-mine. Someone, we didn’t know who (in the nineteen fifties, judging from the age of the tapes) had had the foresight to record on old man who must have been renowned for his abilities in recounting epic oral narratives. My grasp of Mauritian French creole was far from perfect, but it was one of the languages Jean had grown up with. So in the end, between us, we were able to prepare two versions, a creole transcription and my English translation.
For the method of transcription I borrowed the techniques I had used for the narratives of Paddy Roe, from Broome, not that far away on another Indian Ocean shore. There I had found that oral narratives are formed more naturally in phrases rather than the proper sentences of written languages, and that the narrator’s pace is physically governed by the body, by lung capacity. So a line is often a phrase, punctuated by a pause at the end where the narrator takes a breath. In my translation I found myself falling in to the patterns of Paddy Roe’s style. I hope he would have been able to accept it as a compliment that the beauty of his technique could only be imitated, somewhat poorly here, by his old editor and pupil, for this first version of a vernacular Paul and Virginia, transcribed and translated here without any embellishments.
[tape begins as two men are talking, one in standard French (he is probably a planter or a visitor to the island), and the other voice is that of an old man talking creole]
…yes, of course. When you are ready.
[coughing]
-You are ready now? This thing is on is it?
-Yes
-Oh! [laughs] Oh, OK, then…
Well, these two mothers gave birth the same day,
at a place called Pamplemousse
Just up here in the hills, you know.
And the old ladies helping them came up there.
Oh, they weren’t old, but they were young,
Malagasy women, from over there,
friends of the two young mothers,
and they were French, but poor,
oh, very poor those French mothers were.
But they knew what to do, the midwives, you know.
they didn’t have too many doctors in those days.
Only one, for the planters really.
You could hear them crying out
at the same time, these two mothers,
from their huts on both sides of that clearing,
up there in the hills,
around Pamplemousse.
And then, around four in the afternoon,
everyone heard the two babies crying,
first one side then the other: waaa … waaa.
Two babies born, then.
‘Oh good!’ everyone said.
All the people was happy.
So, the two midwives brought the babies out,
all wrapped up, a boy and a girl, they said,
a beautiful boy and beautiful girl.
Put them to sleep side by side in the same crib,
while their mothers had a sleep too.
Ah well, after that those two kids started to grow,
growing up together in that place.
The mothers had two helpers, like slaves,
but not really, more like friends.
Domingo, I think the man’s name was,
and his wife was Mary, she was one of those mid-wives.
He married her after Paul and Virginia were born.
Oh the old people used to talk about that wedding too
Old Tjamba was playing music, plenty of rum.
And dancing all night, right through the night,
down on the beach at Black River.
So all together they made a farm,
up at Pamplemousse.
Domingo was a good farmer, while Mary looked after the poultry.
She took the produce down to the market in Port Louis.
On the fertile ground Domingo sowed wheat,
and on the poor ground maize.
Rice too, in the marshy areas.
Pumpkins and cucumbers grew well at the foot of rocks,
sugar-cane in the clayey soil;
cotton-tree and coffee in the high spots.
Oh he knew what he was doing, that old fella.
And Paul used to follow him around when he was little.
After he grew up he helped the old man.
Oh, Domingo and Mary they loved those two kids,
they was always playin’ around with them.
So one day come, Paul and Virginia were getting big now
Virginia was a woman really now, so pretty, you know
and embarrassed, she hid away in the house,
hiding away because she was shy, lil’ bit.
Poor Paul didn’t know what to do, he’d lost his playmate.
So Domingo took him hunting, out in the bush
they might find birds, or an old Dodo egg.
things like that you could sell in town.
oh good price you get too, for those Dodo eggs
no matter if it is broken, you can patch it up, no worries.
So one day come, Domingo is working in the garden
and he’s looking, rubs his eye and looks again
oh! something there, in the pumpkin patch, he keeps looking.
Like a pumpkin, only moving, up and down
you know…[laughter]
Mus’ be … oh can’t be! Someone’s bottom!
That Domingo took off! back to his hut,
running, and he’s panting and asks Mary, where Paul?
I dunno, where Virginia?...Oh, you’d better come, he said.
So they both crept back, have a look,
from around the side of a tree, you know, two heads
and they were laughing little bit, giggling.
Anyway, no more pumpkin there,
but there’s Paul and Virginia walking on the other side
holding hands you know, those two lovely kids.
Domingo and Mary had a good laugh then.
After that Mary always called her old man coco-fesses
But they didn’t tell the mothers,
‘cos they went to church and everything.
So what happened then?
Nature must take its course you know.
Mary talked to Virginia of course
about all that women’s stuff
but mighta been too late, I think.
Soon as she knew…soon as she knew
(must have been that pumpkin I think!)
Well Mary said, ‘we gotta tell your mother’.
The old lady has to know what to do.
She had that same thing too, when she was carrying Virginia
her man just took off, somewhere in France
and she had to go up to Pamplemousse with Paul’s mother
and her husband had died or something.
Oh, they was really cross those old ladies
when they found out
About Virginia and Paul
what they done, ooh, very cross.
And so they had to send the girl away
that’s what those French people do, you know
they think it a big shame.
‘Cos that mother had a auntie in France.
and a boat was leaving in a couple of weeks.
‘We’ll send you there,’ she said.
‘You can help your old Auntie, she’s been asking for you.
And carry a letter with you.’
That’s how it went, you know
Virginia didn’t want to go,
She was crying all the time.
And Paul wanted her to stay
he was just hanging around.
‘Cos those two grew up together,
together they wanted to stay,
on the island, where they grew up.
Now I dunno what happened in France
Paris it might of been, or maybe Rouen
But Virginia stayed there about a year,
with a young girl who went with her,
to keep her company on the ship.
Creole girl, from that family, ah, whatname now?
Can’t remember that family name, doesn’t matter.
After that nobody heard any story, no letter, nothing.
‘What happen to Virginia?’ everyone been askin’.
And Paul hanging about, down by the sea,
just sitting carving a bit of wood, or might be bone.
He was making picture of his girl, you know, how they do.
Like the barhai do, we call ‘em barhai, wood carvers.
scrimshaw English call it, eh? scrimshaw.
Old Pierre in Flic-en-Flac got some of that stuff, you seen it?
So one day come, they got word,
mighta been the governor I think,
said those girls coming back, on the next boat.
Virginia and her girlfriend,
or her helper, or whatever.
Governor himself went up to Pamplemousse
to talk to those mothers.
That old Auntie dead too, in France, he said.
And she gonna leave some money to you lot.
Looks like no more worries.
Everyone got happy then.
‘Cos they really missed their girl
and Paul, like he woke up again after a long sleep.
Started to get everything ready then.
Boat was coming in about a month.
That was the old days then
Sailing boats, very slow, you know all the way from France,
Around past Cape Town, then across to Mauritius, and on to India.
So when they gonna come, one night I think
People was saying, ‘oh! cyclone comin’ up.’
In the morning everyone was down at a place called poussiere d’or,
waiting waiting waiting, watching the sea,
see if they could see that boat,
and they could see the storm coming from the other side.
Soon as that boat got near the shore, crash! the cyclone hit it.
They couldn’t control the boat,
and it was close up on the reef,
You could see the people on the deck,
and then it hit the reef.
And some people got little boats out to help,
get out there to rescue them, you know
Paul was there, yelling out to Virginia
and telling her to jump in.
But she was too frightened.
She didn’t want to jump into the sea.
Boat started to break up then,
with the storm and lightning all around.
It was a big bloody mess they say,
dead body washing up on the beach, you know
and poor Paul, running from one to another,
after the storm, running around.
and looking for his beloved, and he didn’t find her.
Someone else found her, half buried in the sand.
After the storm.
And they took him away and the poor boy lost his mind
After that he couldn’t talk, and just got thinner and thinner.
I think it mighta been a few months after that, he was dead.
So that was the story of Paul and Virginia.
Some bloke made a book out of that, eh?
long long time ago.
[noise of chairs moving around] -----
But that’s not the finish yet, of the story,
‘cos they found that other girl, the creole girl you know.
Someone musta pulled her out of the water,
and she came in on one of those little catamarans.
And she had a baby in her arms, little baby
but that wasn’t her baby, no.
this was a little white baby, blond hair, everything.
Nobody knew, where this baby been come from, you know.
But we knew, you know, us creole mob.
that girl musta told her mother after a while,
who that baby belong to, you know.
Virginia musta kept that baby.
somehow she talked to that old auntie, talk her around
and she let her keep the baby,
Virginia wanted to bring it home for her and Paul, you know.
That creole girl kept the baby, with her people in Black River, I think
Nobody worried too much, those days,
plenty o’ lil’ brown kids running around.
So he grew up there, in Black River,
but they knew where he come from, really.
‘cos of Domingo and Mary.
So that’s how that little boy got his nickname,
‘Pumpkin’, they called him, and the old people knew why,
but they kept it to themselfs, my old creole mob.
that little Pumpkin was a happy kid, strong.
but he never knew who his real mummy and daddy were.
that’s the finish now, of that story.
Postscript: This story was inspired by the moment in Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s narrative where he describes the old man who told him the story of Paul and Virginia: “One day, when I was seated at the foot of the cottages, and contemplating their ruins, a man, advanced in years, passed near the spot. He was dressed in the ancient garb of the island, his feet were bare, and he leaned upon a staff of ebony; his hair was white, and the expression of his countenance was dignified and interesting … The old man, after a short silence, during which he leaned his face upon his hands, as if he were trying to recall the images of the past, thus began his narration: ---…”
Paul and Virginia
Stephen Muecke
When I was doing fieldwork in Port Louis, Mauritius in 1998, I was rummaging in an old photography studio cum museum, and came across a couple of old reel-to-reel audio tapes. I asked the proprietor what was on them and he didn’t know. I said I had a machine at home that could play them. Who knows, I said, they might be something interesting. So he let me take them away on the promise of keeping him informed.
And I did, coming back excitedly the next day with the machine and we sat down and listened to an old creole man tell the story of Paul and Virginia, in his own vernacular style, that is, in Mauritian Creole. Paul and Virginia, as you know, is the classic novel of Mauritius, a bestselling romance from Bernardin de St Pierre, published in France in 1788. As far as Jean Baladin (that was the proprietor of the photo shop) and I were concerned, this more contemporary version was a literary gold-mine. Someone, we didn’t know who (in the nineteen fifties, judging from the age of the tapes) had had the foresight to record on old man who must have been renowned for his abilities in recounting epic oral narratives. My grasp of Mauritian French creole was far from perfect, but it was one of the languages Jean had grown up with. So in the end, between us, we were able to prepare two versions, a creole transcription and my English translation.
For the method of transcription I borrowed the techniques I had used for the narratives of Paddy Roe, from Broome, not that far away on another Indian Ocean shore. There I had found that oral narratives are formed more naturally in phrases rather than the proper sentences of written languages, and that the narrator’s pace is physically governed by the body, by lung capacity. So a line is often a phrase, punctuated by a pause at the end where the narrator takes a breath. In my translation I found myself falling in to the patterns of Paddy Roe’s style. I hope he would have been able to accept it as a compliment that the beauty of his technique could only be imitated, somewhat poorly here, by his old editor and pupil, for this first version of a vernacular Paul and Virginia, transcribed and translated here without any embellishments.
[tape begins as two men are talking, one in standard French (he is probably a planter or a visitor to the island), and the other voice is that of an old man talking creole]
…yes, of course. When you are ready.
[coughing]
-You are ready now? This thing is on is it?
-Yes
-Oh! [laughs] Oh, OK, then…
Well, these two mothers gave birth the same day,
at a place called Pamplemousse
Just up here in the hills, you know.
And the old ladies helping them came up there.
Oh, they weren’t old, but they were young,
Malagasy women, from over there,
friends of the two young mothers,
and they were French, but poor,
oh, very poor those French mothers were.
But they knew what to do, the midwives, you know.
they didn’t have too many doctors in those days.
Only one, for the planters really.
You could hear them crying out
at the same time, these two mothers,
from their huts on both sides of that clearing,
up there in the hills,
around Pamplemousse.
And then, around four in the afternoon,
everyone heard the two babies crying,
first one side then the other: waaa … waaa.
Two babies born, then.
‘Oh good!’ everyone said.
All the people was happy.
So, the two midwives brought the babies out,
all wrapped up, a boy and a girl, they said,
a beautiful boy and beautiful girl.
Put them to sleep side by side in the same crib,
while their mothers had a sleep too.
Ah well, after that those two kids started to grow,
growing up together in that place.
The mothers had two helpers, like slaves,
but not really, more like friends.
Domingo, I think the man’s name was,
and his wife was Mary, she was one of those mid-wives.
He married her after Paul and Virginia were born.
Oh the old people used to talk about that wedding too
Old Tjamba was playing music, plenty of rum.
And dancing all night, right through the night,
down on the beach at Black River.
So all together they made a farm,
up at Pamplemousse.
Domingo was a good farmer, while Mary looked after the poultry.
She took the produce down to the market in Port Louis.
On the fertile ground Domingo sowed wheat,
and on the poor ground maize.
Rice too, in the marshy areas.
Pumpkins and cucumbers grew well at the foot of rocks,
sugar-cane in the clayey soil;
cotton-tree and coffee in the high spots.
Oh he knew what he was doing, that old fella.
And Paul used to follow him around when he was little.
After he grew up he helped the old man.
Oh, Domingo and Mary they loved those two kids,
they was always playin’ around with them.
So one day come, Paul and Virginia were getting big now
Virginia was a woman really now, so pretty, you know
and embarrassed, she hid away in the house,
hiding away because she was shy, lil’ bit.
Poor Paul didn’t know what to do, he’d lost his playmate.
So Domingo took him hunting, out in the bush
they might find birds, or an old Dodo egg.
things like that you could sell in town.
oh good price you get too, for those Dodo eggs
no matter if it is broken, you can patch it up, no worries.
So one day come, Domingo is working in the garden
and he’s looking, rubs his eye and looks again
oh! something there, in the pumpkin patch, he keeps looking.
Like a pumpkin, only moving, up and down
you know…[laughter]
Mus’ be … oh can’t be! Someone’s bottom!
That Domingo took off! back to his hut,
running, and he’s panting and asks Mary, where Paul?
I dunno, where Virginia?...Oh, you’d better come, he said.
So they both crept back, have a look,
from around the side of a tree, you know, two heads
and they were laughing little bit, giggling.
Anyway, no more pumpkin there,
but there’s Paul and Virginia walking on the other side
holding hands you know, those two lovely kids.
Domingo and Mary had a good laugh then.
After that Mary always called her old man coco-fesses
But they didn’t tell the mothers,
‘cos they went to church and everything.
So what happened then?
Nature must take its course you know.
Mary talked to Virginia of course
about all that women’s stuff
but mighta been too late, I think.
Soon as she knew…soon as she knew
(must have been that pumpkin I think!)
Well Mary said, ‘we gotta tell your mother’.
The old lady has to know what to do.
She had that same thing too, when she was carrying Virginia
her man just took off, somewhere in France
and she had to go up to Pamplemousse with Paul’s mother
and her husband had died or something.
Oh, they was really cross those old ladies
when they found out
About Virginia and Paul
what they done, ooh, very cross.
And so they had to send the girl away
that’s what those French people do, you know
they think it a big shame.
‘Cos that mother had a auntie in France.
and a boat was leaving in a couple of weeks.
‘We’ll send you there,’ she said.
‘You can help your old Auntie, she’s been asking for you.
And carry a letter with you.’
That’s how it went, you know
Virginia didn’t want to go,
She was crying all the time.
And Paul wanted her to stay
he was just hanging around.
‘Cos those two grew up together,
together they wanted to stay,
on the island, where they grew up.
Now I dunno what happened in France
Paris it might of been, or maybe Rouen
But Virginia stayed there about a year,
with a young girl who went with her,
to keep her company on the ship.
Creole girl, from that family, ah, whatname now?
Can’t remember that family name, doesn’t matter.
After that nobody heard any story, no letter, nothing.
‘What happen to Virginia?’ everyone been askin’.
And Paul hanging about, down by the sea,
just sitting carving a bit of wood, or might be bone.
He was making picture of his girl, you know, how they do.
Like the barhai do, we call ‘em barhai, wood carvers.
scrimshaw English call it, eh? scrimshaw.
Old Pierre in Flic-en-Flac got some of that stuff, you seen it?
So one day come, they got word,
mighta been the governor I think,
said those girls coming back, on the next boat.
Virginia and her girlfriend,
or her helper, or whatever.
Governor himself went up to Pamplemousse
to talk to those mothers.
That old Auntie dead too, in France, he said.
And she gonna leave some money to you lot.
Looks like no more worries.
Everyone got happy then.
‘Cos they really missed their girl
and Paul, like he woke up again after a long sleep.
Started to get everything ready then.
Boat was coming in about a month.
That was the old days then
Sailing boats, very slow, you know all the way from France,
Around past Cape Town, then across to Mauritius, and on to India.
So when they gonna come, one night I think
People was saying, ‘oh! cyclone comin’ up.’
In the morning everyone was down at a place called poussiere d’or,
waiting waiting waiting, watching the sea,
see if they could see that boat,
and they could see the storm coming from the other side.
Soon as that boat got near the shore, crash! the cyclone hit it.
They couldn’t control the boat,
and it was close up on the reef,
You could see the people on the deck,
and then it hit the reef.
And some people got little boats out to help,
get out there to rescue them, you know
Paul was there, yelling out to Virginia
and telling her to jump in.
But she was too frightened.
She didn’t want to jump into the sea.
Boat started to break up then,
with the storm and lightning all around.
It was a big bloody mess they say,
dead body washing up on the beach, you know
and poor Paul, running from one to another,
after the storm, running around.
and looking for his beloved, and he didn’t find her.
Someone else found her, half buried in the sand.
After the storm.
And they took him away and the poor boy lost his mind
After that he couldn’t talk, and just got thinner and thinner.
I think it mighta been a few months after that, he was dead.
So that was the story of Paul and Virginia.
Some bloke made a book out of that, eh?
long long time ago.
[noise of chairs moving around] -----
But that’s not the finish yet, of the story,
‘cos they found that other girl, the creole girl you know.
Someone musta pulled her out of the water,
and she came in on one of those little catamarans.
And she had a baby in her arms, little baby
but that wasn’t her baby, no.
this was a little white baby, blond hair, everything.
Nobody knew, where this baby been come from, you know.
But we knew, you know, us creole mob.
that girl musta told her mother after a while,
who that baby belong to, you know.
Virginia musta kept that baby.
somehow she talked to that old auntie, talk her around
and she let her keep the baby,
Virginia wanted to bring it home for her and Paul, you know.
That creole girl kept the baby, with her people in Black River, I think
Nobody worried too much, those days,
plenty o’ lil’ brown kids running around.
So he grew up there, in Black River,
but they knew where he come from, really.
‘cos of Domingo and Mary.
So that’s how that little boy got his nickname,
‘Pumpkin’, they called him, and the old people knew why,
but they kept it to themselfs, my old creole mob.
that little Pumpkin was a happy kid, strong.
but he never knew who his real mummy and daddy were.
that’s the finish now, of that story.
Postscript: This story was inspired by the moment in Bernardin de Saint Pierre’s narrative where he describes the old man who told him the story of Paul and Virginia: “One day, when I was seated at the foot of the cottages, and contemplating their ruins, a man, advanced in years, passed near the spot. He was dressed in the ancient garb of the island, his feet were bare, and he leaned upon a staff of ebony; his hair was white, and the expression of his countenance was dignified and interesting … The old man, after a short silence, during which he leaned his face upon his hands, as if he were trying to recall the images of the past, thus began his narration: ---…”
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