Jacques Roumain was born in Port-au-Prince in 1907 and came from an old and wealthy Haitian family. He received his early education in Port-au-Prince and, as was expected of the elite Haitian class, went to Europe to complete his education. He returned to Haiti from Europe when he was twenty years old to immediately become involved in the country's national politics. It was an involvement that was to characterize Roumain's life and result, at one point, in exile from Haiti for many years before being allowed to return. While a prolific and outspoken writer, it is Masters of the Dew for which he will be chiefly remembered. In this book, based around the peasant life of Haiti, Roumain is able to bring to world literature the voice and concerns of his people while, at the same time, creating a masterful work of revolutionary art. "The End and the Beginning" is the final chapter in this marvelous story of folklore, folk culture, and the coming of age of a peoples. Roumain himself died suddenly in 1944.
Bienaime dozed under the calabash tree. The little dog lay in front of the kitchen, his head between his paws. From time to time he opened one eye to snap at a fly. Delira was mending a dress. She held the material close to her eyes, for her sight was getting bad. The sub went its rounds, high in the sky, and the day ran through all the others.
Things had fallen back into the old routine, they'd returned to the beaten path. Each week, Delira went to sell charcoal at the market. Laurelien chopped the wood and prepared the charcoal pit for her. He was a good boy, Laurelien.
Bienaime had changed so you wouldn't recognize him. Formerly the slightest contradiction used to make him boil. He was always on the verge of anger and irritation, always ready with a retort. A real gamecock! Now, a spring had broken inside him. He said, "Oui " to everything like a child. Just, "Yes" and "All right."
Delira had caught him several times in Manuel's room, his hand patting the empty place in the bed and tears streaming into his white beard. Every morning he went to the grave at the edge of the thorn acacias. They had sheltered it under a little arbor of palm leaves. He squatted down near it and smoked his pipe, his gauze vague and distant. He would stay there for hours if Delira didn't come looking for him to take him to the shade of the calabash tree. He'd follow her docilely. He slept a lot and at any time of the day. Antoine was right, he was like a man struck by lightning.
From afar the wind brought a squall of voices and an untiring drumbeat. For more than a month, the peasants had been working at a coumbite. They'd dug a canal, a deep gully from the spring to Fonds Rouge, across the narrow plain through the acacia trees, and they'd joined it to their fields by small ditches.
Rage almost strangled Hilarion. Ah, you can imagine how furious he became. And now Florentine nagged from morning till night, as if it were his fault, brow-beating him with all kinds of reproaches. Could he have foreseen that Manuel was going to die? Naturally, he should have arrested him in time, for they could have made him tell where the spring was located -- they had ways of making them talk. The lieutenant could hear her harsh voice all over Fonds Rouge. When he had had enough, Hilarion would make her feel the weight of his heavy copper beltbuckle. That calmed her down more or less, the bitch!
Perhaps, he thought, perhaps I could ask Judge Sainville, the Communal Magistrate, to put a tax on that water. I'd get my share and lay it aside. We'll see about that.
But would the peasants stand for it? They had been working lately right by the spring itself, at the very head of the water. They had followed Manuel's instructions point by point. He was dead, Manuel, but he was still guiding them.
Someone entered Delira's yard, a tall Negresse, a beautiful Negresse. It was Annaise. The old woman saw her coming and her heart was glad.
"Bonjour , mama," said Annaise.
"Eh, bonjour , daughter," Delira replied.
"You're going to ruin your eyes," said Annaise. "Let me mend that dress for you."
"It's simply that it keeps me occupied, daughter. I sew, I sew -- and I stitch the old days and the new. If only we could mend life, Anna, and catch up the broken threads! Oh, God! We can't!"
"Manuel said -- I can still hear him, as though it were yesterday -- he said to me, 'Life is a thread that doesn't break, that is never lost, and do you know why? Because every man ties a knot in it during his lifetime with the work he has done. That's what keeps life going through the centuries -- man's work on this earth.'"
"My boy was a Negro who thought deep," said Delira proudly.
Snatches of the song reached their ears. It sounded a bit like Hoho Ehhe Ohkoenheho, and the drum was jubilant. It stammered with joy, for Antoine was handling it with more skill than ever.
"Gille told me they were going to turn the water into the canal today. Suppose we went out and looked, mama? It's a great event, oui."
"As you wish, dear."
Delira got up. Her shoulders had bent a bit and she had become even drier than before.
"The sun's hot. I'm going to put on my hat." But already Annaise was running to the hut to get it for her.
"You're obliging, daughter," Delira thanked her. And she smiled that smile that had kept all the gracefulness of youth despite the small scars of sadness with which life marked the corners of her lips.
They went into the woods along the road Manuel had followed the day after his arrival. The acacias smelled like the tepid smoke of the charcoal pits. They walked silently until they came out into a valley inundated by light. The arborescent cactus stood erect with their wide hairy leaves of a dull and dusty green.
"Look!" Annaise exclaimed, "Folks are right to call them 'donkey ears!' They seem so crabby and stubborn and mean, those plants do."
"Plants are like humans -- they come in two classes, good and bad. When you see oranges, all those little suns hanging up in the leaves, you feel a rejoicing. They're nice and they're useful, oranges are. While, take a plant with prickles like that one -- but we mustn't curse anything. The Good Lord created everything."
"And the calabash," said Annaise, "it looks like a man's head and it's wrapped around something white like a brain -- yet it's a stupid fruit. You can't eat it."
"My, you're bright, oui! " Delira cried. "You're going to make old Delira laugh in spite of herself."
They went up toward Fanchon Mound. Delira walked slowly because of her age. Annaise came along behind her. The path was rather steep, but luckily it took a few turns.
"I won't go as far as the plateau," Delira said. "Here's a big rock just made, you might say, for a bench."
The two women sat down. The plain lay at their feet in the burning noon. On their left, they saw the huts of Fond Rouge and the rusty patches of their enclosed fields. The savanna spread below them like an esplanade of violent light. But across the plain the vein of the canal ran toward the thorn acacias which had been cleared along the route for its passage. And if you had good eyes, you could see a line of ditches already prepared in the fields.
"That's where they are," said Annaise, stretching her arm toward a wooded hill. "That's where they're working."
The drum rose exultantly. Its rapid beat echoed over the plain. And the men were singing:
Manuel Jean-Joseph, Oh!
Mighty Negro! Enheho!
"You hear, mama?"
"I hear," Delira said.
Soon this arid plain would be covered with high grass. In the fields banana trees, corn, sweet potatoes, yams, red and white laurel would be growing. And it would be thanks to her son.
The song suddenly stopped.
"What's happening?" Delira asked.
"I don't know, no."
Then an enormous clamor burst out. The women rose. The peasants came into view running from the mountain, throwing their hats into the air. They were dancing and kissing each other.
"Mama," said Annaise, in a strangely weak voice, "there's the water."
A thin thread of water advanced, flowing through the plain, and the peasants went along with it, shouting and singing. Antoine led them proudly beating his drum.
"Oh, Manuel! Manuel! Manuel! Why are you dead?" Delira groaned.
"No," said Annaise. She smiled through her tears, "No, he isn't dead."
She took the old woman's hand and pressed it gently against her belly where the new life was stirring.
Coumbite: A collective agricultural effort in which neighboring farmers help each other at imes such as the harvest, when a task requires more hands than a single peasant family affords.
Negre, Negresse: In the French- and Spanish-speaking Caribbean Islands these words often have a connotation of affection, entirely non-racial inmeaning. Mon Negre, ma petite Negresse, is equivalent to, My dear, my darling, my sweet.
Since the death of his son Manuel, Bienaime has undergone some major changes physically and psychologically. Using the details that Roumain gives us, describe what these changes are and how they have affected Bienaime.
Key words and concepts
Using your dictionary, you are to first define the meaning of the words below. Having done so, you are to then use the word correctly in a single sentence that contains a subject and a verb.