The Fourth Centurytells of the quest by young Mathieu Beluse to discover the lost history of his country, Martinique. Aware that the officially recorded version he learned in school omits and distorts, he turns to aquimboiseurnamed Papa Longoue. This old man of the forest, a healer, seer, and storyteller, knows the oral tradition and its relation to the powers of the land and the forces of nature. He tells of the love-hate relationship between the Longoue and Beluse families, whose ancestors were brought as slaves to Martinique. Upon arrival, Longoue immediately escaped and went to live in the hills as a maroon. Beluse remained in slavery. The intense relationship that had formed between the two men in Africa continued and came to encompass the relations between their masters, or, in the case of Longoue, his would-be master, and their descendants.The Fourth Centurycloses the gap between the families as Papa Longoue, last of his line, conveys the history to Mathieu Beluse, who becomes his heir.

Édouard Glissant is one of the foundational figures of Francophone literature. Along with other writers from the French West Indies, he inaugurated a radical interrogation of the French literary canon from the margins of the traditionally Paris-centered literary world. His books include Black Salt: Poems and Poetics of Relation, which was also translated by Betsy Wing.

At La Pointe des Sables

1

(123)

Roche Carree

123

(72)

Dry Season at La Touffaille

195

(58)

Croix-Mission

253

(42)

Timelines

295

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Chapter One

"All this wind," said Papa Longoué, "all this wind about to come up, nothing you can do, you wait for it to come up to your hands, then your mouth, your eyes, your head. As if a man was only there to wait for the wind, to drown, yes, you understand, to drown himself for good in all this wind like the endless ocean ..."

--And one can't say, he went on thinking (on his haunches in front of the child), one can't say there is no obligation in life, even though here I am a helpless old body just mulling over things already done-and-gone, the land with its stories for ages and ages, yes me here so I can have this child in front of me, and look, Longoué, you call him the kid, but look he has Béluse eyes a Béluse head. That's a race determined not to die. A tag end that just won't end. You figure that's just being a child--but that already is strength, that's tomorrow. This one won't do like the others, he's a Béluse, but he is like a Longoué, something will come of him, Longoué I'm telling you something will come of him, you don't know what, but still the Béluses have changed over time; and if not well then why would he come, why does he come here and not talk never talk Papa Longoué you understand, why all alone with you if there is no obligation, some malfini in the sky the eagle pulling strings, don't pull Longoué don't pull the strings, you just repeat yourself, you say: "Truth shot by like lightning," you are an old body Longoué, all that is left is memory, so OK, it would be better to puff on your pipe go no further, except why old devil why? ...

Not a straw stirred on the roof of the hut. It was like a hunk of mud and grass stuck in the middle of the open ground--a site where the surface had been scored by water into bristling blades one had best avoid, where streams of runoff had stacked the earth along their edges and then the drought had dried it hard into sharp ridges--yes, it was all burnt to a cinder but through some miracle of heat it rustled in the morning like a dark tree. And all around (whenever one of the two people there turned toward the ferns and bamboo surrounding the place and tried to catch a breath of air, to catch the secret of this half-rotting, half-consumed wealth, that, even more than the passions of its sap, made the vegetation proliferate) bursts of a fragrance so burning and persistent that it really seemed to leap from this crackling hut, as if these bursts shot from a blaze whose rigid beating heart was the hut. And yet these two men, the old man and the child, merely let their gaze skim lightly over the curtain of trees surrounding the open space, far less to reassure themselves of the sight they were long in the habit of seeing (behind the first line of shadowy and silent bamboo, the ferns' thousand splinters, bright and deep, and still farther the tragic clarity of the plain showing through the space between the leaves) than to give themselves time to suspend the demands of this meditation, and take a rest from the silent dialogue that was their lot, and perhaps also to defer the moment when one of them would have to "think aloud" some word, some sentence, a word that would mark a new step along the way (for example Papa Longoué saying quietly and courteously, hiding the turmoil stirring inside, "No really, this time it was a Longoué who was not accursed"); to put off, in short, the need to broach another confidence: because words call for words.

And they immediately looked down at the ground in front of them with its sharp parallel striations evenly tilted by the wind toward the door built from a wooden crate; they contemplated only the red earth, fearing perhaps that all this vegetable upheaval around them would distract them from their conversation. More bound up in their silent search than they would have liked to admit, the one thing they feared above all was the irreversible power of words spoken out loud--as for everything else they went back to ruminating together over the dark, dense things of the past.

They looked at the fire in front of them, the three blackened stones, the charcoal burning beneath its ash, the live coals, the sudden puffs of smoke when the wind, ever so light and imperceptible, finally came through the trellis of bamboo. And only the stillness of everything--the clearing, the earth that was furrowed but dry and burning, the hut, the fire in front of the hut, the two statues crouched near the fire--gave the lazy smoke in the air some semblance of speed in contrast. And even the charcoal's crackling seemed only a weak echo, an intimate rustling reflection of the shouting and blazing sun already high in the sky at this time of day.

Mathieu Béluse had come, as he did rather often, very early in the morning--though when he came that way there was no guessing his intention or how he would make his approach. And as always, he would remain of course until nightfall, facing the old man, awaiting with a sort of savage indifference the rare moments when the latter would finally continue the calm and amazing story of the great-grandparents. A black cooking-pot already filled with green bananas, water, and coarse salt had been put on the fire. Implacable splendor of sky, of earth, of humble things.

--No one can say he wasn't born clever, acts like he doesn't know beans, but Papa Longoué is even cleverer, my son; you want to know a story you know already, yes, otherwise you wouldn't have come here with an old devil like me, and here you came without any money and not for a consultation: no illness, no enemy, no love no troubles--you just want to know if a Béluse and a Longoué amount to the same, but Lord how can this little boy know either end or beginning, yesterday has been dead so long, nobody remembers yesterday, it's been so long, Masterdanight, so long, and here comes a young sprout, sprung up just yesterday, he wants to map the course of night, so you have to talk, Longoué, you have to, soon you will be dead and gone and even the mangy dogs will have none of you....

He poked the fire in front of him, blew on a bit of coal, which he skillfully tossed into his clay pipe, and then went back to smoking. In places his black skin was tinged with streaks of purple where it stretched tight over his bones. His ash-gray hair was still thick. In pants frayed at the bottom and a dirty jersey stuck to his body from years of continuous wear, he looked like a black mummy stripped of half his shroud. Yes. But his eyes were unbearable, from having located both the subterfuges of the present and the grave mysteries of bygone days at the same time. As for the future, his position as quimboiseur was sufficient evidence that Papa Longoué was its master. And as for words, he rarely used them: "Is there anything uttered anywhere in the world we see, any single crying word, that can make us know anything?"

--But what if by beginning everything came? Longoué, ho! At the end of your life there's a childhood. You see it, he is it; youth. He is thin perhaps, but he has the eyes. Yes, the power. He can do things. His eyes speak for him, I saw them. Because this one is a Béluse but he is like a Longoué, yes. He sits there two hours, stock still. He has patience. So, what if you do have to speak, you Longoué?

It seemed that the weight of the silence, the accumulating lightning, the mass of heat that the slow power of the two men crammed into the heat itself--by their motionless, patient confrontation--thus finally made Papa Longoué (more vulnerable this way than his young companion) in a hurry to get it over with as fast as possible; and it seemed that Mathieu thus achieved the task he had undertaken, to make the old man speak (in this language without price, all in how it was said and in repetitions, that nonetheless proceeded reliably toward some knowledge, beyond the words, that Papa Longoué alone could guess; because if he anticipated anything it was not obvious and, to tell the truth, he let himself be guided by the unpredictable consequences of the words; yes, this way of speaking was so right considering the thickness of the day, the weight of the heat, the slow memory). If he spoke it would make the past clear and perhaps explain precisely this passion that he, Mathieu, had for the past. Then gradually Longoué gave in, though he did not realize--did he?--that he was being subjected to the adolescent's law. On the contrary, he thought he was leading the latter (a talented boy, willing to listen to what old people had to say, a boy with a spark in his eye) bit by bit toward the moment when he could understand and possess the magical sequence of events by himself. But Papa Longoué guessed that his young friend had possibilities other than the gift of darkness; Mathieu, for his part, knew that the quimboiseur would be put off by logic and clarity. Consequently, they were both afraid of words and only proceeded very warily in getting to know each other. Both sensed however that no matter what they did they--a Béluse and a Longoué--would meet some time or other (thought Longoué). So the man gave in to the child and began to get his words ready, to follow what he said himself, to organize it, to extend it.

"The past. Tell me about the past, Papa Longoué! Just what is it?"

At that point the quimboiseur was not fooled. He understood perfectly well that he would get completely involved in the question, even in its childish form. And that this form was merely a final concession that Mathieu had wished to grant him, even though the boy could have simply asked: "What is left of the past?" or "Why do we have to go back over the past?" or some other straightforward, clear question without detours. No, he had given some thought as to how to put it. Longoué, for the first time, suspected that this person sitting opposite him was not as young as he seemed. He wanted to look Mathieu in the eye, sound him out more deeply, seeking in those eyes some evidence or denial. But he resisted, fearing perhaps to find there what he dreaded: a different passion--not the one eager for secrets but the beginnings of criticism and judgment; he had the good sense not to but lifted his face instead toward the blazing sky, as if looking for help. The red and black pipe was smoking in his hand. The heat everywhere was so vast and so sweet.

He put the clay pot on the fire, moving abruptly and almost recklessly, yet he was watching Mathieu, hoping that this sudden gesture would make him jump. The boy did not budge: quietly watching the green bananas, the gray scum on the surface of the water.... (This is not a child any more, thought the other somewhat bitterly, this is a man.) The food was already humming on the fire. The sound in the sun, the acrid fragrance of bananas, the dry smell of charcoal, the slow swaying of the trees (because the wind was coming up) was gradually numbing. Mathieu and Longoué remained silent a long while, forgetting the struggle. But it was another struggle to keep their truce, to stay absent.... In the end, the adult spoke softly.

"They are fools down there. They say, `What's gone is gone.' But everything that goes into the woods is kept in the heart of the wood! It is just as well that I walk in the woods and never go down. Because when I look back toward my father my son is gone. When a man says `The past' what he is saying is `Hello my father.' Now, look at life, when a man's son is gone, he can never again say, `Hello my son.' And my son is gone."

"Your son is gone," said Mathieu.

But it wasn't the death so much. His son was dead, OK. In the great war on the other side of the ocean. The Longoués would no longer be able to keep their vigil in the forest: the race was going to die out. For the ancestor begat Melchior and Liberté the son, and Melchior begat Apostrophe and Liberté the daughter, and Apostrophe begat Papa Longoué, and Papa Longoué begat Ti-René who begat sudden death. But it wasn't so much the death. The problem was he had to have a descendant, one he picked, his chosen one. A young sapling to sink your roots into the ground of the future. That was it. To be linked to tomorrow through the forces of youth. But Ti-René died too quickly. The only one left was this Mathieu--a Béluse.

Yes. The first Béluse begat Anne, and he killed Liberté the son. And Anne begat Saint-Yves and Stéfanise, and she was the one who lived with Apostrophe, the son of the brother of the man his father had killed. And Saint-Yves begat Zéphirin. And Zéphirin begat Mathieu, who went to war on the other shore at the same time as Ti-René; but Mathieu came back. He came back and he begat Mathieu the son, who at present was there with Papa Longoué (to ask him endless questions), just the way his own grandson might have been there too (ah! he too!) if Ti-René his son, unattached still and wandering, had not been killed in the great war on the other side of the ocean.

This much could be said: that the Béluse men had always followed the Longoués down through time as if to catch them. Anne Béluse was there to kill Liberté Longoué; the only thing that brought that trouble to an end was when Stéfanise Béluse, as a sort of reparation you might say, chose as her man the nephew of the one her father had killed. There had always been some Béluse on the heels of some Longoué; as if since the moment they had been delivered here after the long sea agony the Béluse men had wanted to extinguish the indomitable violence of the Longoué men by being its equal. So then Mathieu the father had followed Ti-René to the great war; although both had been officially drafted it would be wrong to think Mathieu did not, in fact, follow Ti-René--the government decrees simply corresponded to the requirements of fate, that's all there is to it. But Mathieu returned from that war. And this meant that, no matter what, the Béluse men were catching the Longoués. Not merely because Papa Longoué was half Béluse through his mother Stéfanise who was Apostrophe's woman, but also because the Longoué line would run dry in the person of Papa Longoué himself while Mathieu Béluse the son would live to become a father.

"Where is your strength, Masterdanight, where is your presence? Rip this earth open. Make words come out like filaos !"

Papa Longoué laughed softly because he was thinking of the Longoué men who, right from the beginning, had all left behind names that distinguished them from each other. For example, Liberté the ancestor's second son, who was given that name because his father had refused to crouch in slavery on the Acajou estates; and so on for all the others, there was always some explanation for the names. The names appeared out of the dark, it was just a matter of seeing them and grabbing them. Except, yes, except for the ancestor. What his name was no one knew because he had fled into the woods the very day, one could even say the very hour that he had been set on shore, and once there he named his sons but forgot himself (as he remembered himself). All, therefore, except that first stem who had been the archetypal Longoué and now--stupid, stupid--Papa Longoué himself the last of the succession, whose name even as a child had never been anything other than these two words: Papa Longoué. There was a sort of irony in linking the two words: Papa, which means tenderness and kindness, and Longoué, which is rage and violence. The last Longoué thus rejoined the first in the anonymity of the family name, but one of them had been a creator beyond reproach while the other was no longer anything more than a seer, and just barely a good quimboiseur . Thus the race was going to die out, just as it had begun, with the name of the root alone. Except that the first Longoué did not have time to be a person called "a Longoué" (even if he bore within him all the qualities of the family) and the last would only remain in the memory of mankind as a papa: Papa Longoué. With no other description, with no other dignified distinction; simply as the powerless branch that can be said to have been part of the tree, period. Now the branch lies there on the ground. As if all this forest that made the family, all this forest of men stirred to such excitement by the dry wind, all this wild, thick man-resin that had shuddered in the density of heat and night would now return into the earth, leaving the clear sky and the thundery sky, leaving on the surface of the soil behind them only this pathetic last sprout withered by marks of tenderness and kindness.

The wind began to spring up in the clearing. It felt soft on Mathieu's legs exactly like a savanna where the growth was not too tall, a field of short creeping plants. But this wind was growing; hurtled by its own power into the gully that passed in front of the trees, it gained ground: a weed about to get a purchase on the two men's breasts. Water in the vat of heat rising to where it means to drown the sun.

And the other thing that could be said is this: that the Béluse men and the Longoué men had somehow joined forces in the same sort of wind, with a fury and force that came at first from the Longoués, but then took root in the amazing Béluse patience. And (thought Papa Longoué, the quimboiseur , the man who was in charge of the future and who, in the person of Mathieu, expected to save the future) wasn't this final branch Béluse, with nothing in it that was Longoué? (Otherwise, why would everybody call me Papa Longoue? It's because I'm too mild, yes!) Maybe his mother, Stéfanise, had not really inherited the powers? He had always thought she had, but maybe she remained a Béluse to the end and maybe she passed on to her son this shortcoming of gentleness and weakness.

Longoué laughed nonetheless; he laughed to think that the sole act of official violence anyone knew of in the history of the two families had been committed by a Béluse, Anne Béluse who was the father of Stéfanise, and therefore unmistakably his own grandfather. What had Anne done? He killed Liberté Longoué. Out of love and jealousy. Ever since that time it had seemed that a deep, hidden violence lay sleeping in the blood. Maybe--who could say?--it was reappearing in Mathieu, despite all his education.

And then Stéfanise, who was born a Béluse, went away a Longoué: there was plenty of proof of that. She had plenty of time to change. Papa Longoué alone (--I, Longoué, whom they call papa--) had no time: he had almost not known his father, who died five years after he was born. And on top of that, he had entirely not known his son Ti-René because of the latter's tendency always to be wandering here and there, and especially because (since the quimboiseur had hoped that after a while his son would come back to the forest in the end), yes, especially because of the great war on the other side of the ocean. And thus Papa Longoué (--I, Longoué, who had no time--) had kept standing all alone, he had never been able to hook anything to anything, neither his father to his son, nor, as a result, the past to the future. He was the caressing surface of the wind but he was not the full-force wind clamoring deep inside itself starting at the base of the trees and rising up to the sun.

"You heard me," Mathieu exclaimed. "You are pretending!"

"Don't grow too fast, young man. I tell you, you are growing too fast."

"What do you mean growing? What did you say, I'm growing? What does that mean, Papa?"

Really the wind was rising. The coals on the fire rekindled in rhythmic bursts but soon went out, consumed by the violent air. The cooking-pot seemed unsteady on the three black stones. The ground itself was moving: you would have said the sharp blades of clay were pitching toward the hut. The wind was not yet as high as a man is tall, but it rose steadily.

"This wind," said Longoué. "Yes! This wind! This is what you are asking for!" He went on proclaiming, which meant he was giving in: "Can anyone measure the strength of this great wind that rises up the hillsides?"

Because today they just hang around in that little spot of theirs, and they can't see! Where is this wind? What direction? Which one?

"They don't even see the boat?"

"The boat that brought them over?"

"The boat that brought them over," said Papa Longoué.

Hundreds and hundreds of boats came. "Do you understand? Why would they have seen that particular boat slip into the fog of their memory with its moldy gangplanks dangling along the hull like arms without hands. That particular one. That came into the harbor one July morning while the rain beat down like mad?"

Behind the swamps on the Point one could barely make out the gray walls of the Fort, distant cliffs crowned with bluish smoke that very rapidly disappeared into the screen of rain. Along the waterfront there were only tumbling masses of some undetermined vegetation to be seen, and here and there the leprous wound of work or storage sites. On the boat, water was scouring the deck, streaming into the holds, drowning the foul cargo. The captain had ordered the hatches opened and the ports uncovered so the water would flow. It was half past nine in the morning, and the sun was shining through the rain.

(The Rose-Marie . She was impatiently awaited; there were not enough hands for the work of this country. It had required everything the ship's commander knew for two-thirds of the slaves taken aboard to arrive "safe and sound." Illness, vermin, suicide, rebellions, and executions had punctuated the crossing with cadavers. But two-thirds was an excellent average. And the captain had escaped the English ships. Quite a remarkable sailor!)

The rain washed down the timbers, the sails, the rigging; it made the black spot marking where they had put the piece of sheet metal even more obvious. You could see the streaks of blackened wood swollen by water where the heated metal had been set up, next to the brazier. You could still see the thick remains of blood that were around it. Because rebels had been made to dance to the rhythm of the fire on the hot metal whenever they refused to walk during the half hour of exercise on deck. And the metal itself was there, twisted, humpbacked, blackened, bloody, and the rainwater striking it with a cheerful patter could not wash away the thickly aggregated soot of burned blood and rust.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from The Fourth Century by Édouard Glissant. Copyright © 2001 by University of Nebraska Press. Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.