Letter from Saint Pierre: To the early Indian inhabitants, it was "the land of flowers"; to the French colonialists it was an a tropical paradise where sugar plantations yielded undreamt of fortunes; to the Africans who worked the plantations, those fortunate enough to have survived the cross of Middle Passage, it was a place of loss and toil and pain.
But Martinique has also always been a place of great natural beauty and of wonderful colour and light, which has drawn to it painters such as Paul Gauguin and writers such as Lafcadio Hearn, the centenary of whose death ends with the arrival of the New Year.
In particular, these artists were attracted to the most wildly beautiful part of the island, the mountainous northern end, which is abundantly carpeted by an undulating ocean of tropical verdure, lavishly decorated with a profusion of flowers. All of this surrounded what was then the loveliest colonial city in the Lesser Antilles, the port city of Saint Pierre, which to the front was caressed by the warm lapping waters of the blue Caribbean.
Here was the perfect canvas for Hearn, the master word-painter, who was fascinated by what he sensed here was a dramatic connection between beauty and decay, between life and death. It was almost as if in the great balance of things that Martinique must pay for the strange original sin of beauty.
Hearn saw that mortal penance in many forms. It was ever-present in the looming menace of the bubbling volcano of Mont Pelee. He saw it in Martinique's deadly yellow viper, the fer-de-lance, or trigo. It was also present in the mosquito-borne diseases that regularly culled the population, once nearly taking Hearn. He saw it too in the pain of the descendants of slaves, for which the white plantation-owners, the bekes, must surely pay.
And pay, the planters did. Hearn's Martinique novelette, Youma: the Story of a West Indian Slave, provides a dramatic account of a bloody 19th century slave rebellion in Saint Pierre.
On May 8th, 1902, Mont Pelee called down its diabolical natural debt. Mercifully, Hearn was gone from his beloved "lemon tinted streets where summer never dies" by the time La Montagne finally did erupt, killing all but three of its 30,000 inhabitants and almost totally destroying its much-vaunted colonial architecture.
Hearn's best-known Martinique work, Two Years in the French West Indies, is in part a beautifully crafted account of the terrible symbiotic twins of beauty and decay. "A paradise this is, but a paradise of fire." The book also brings back to life the place and people prior to the apocalypse.
(The colour and drama of the great tragedy is best captured by writer Patrick Leigh Fermor's delicious The Violins of St Jacques.)
Looking down on a picturesque and tranquil Saint Pierre earlier this year, one had to remind oneself that the innocent-looking elephant's head of a mountain is still a deadly active volcano that could once-again open the gates of hell. Yes, there is an observatory now that keeps a 24-hour watch and they say it could never happen again, but they said that once before.
As the late US historian Will Durant once sagely observed, "Civilisation exists, by geological consent, subject to change without notice."
A consequence of the threat posed by La Montagne is that it is very difficult to get businesses to invest. The only thing that isn't overheating in Saint Pierre these days is the real estate market. Though it has a population of more than 5,000, the authorities have even baulked at building a secondary school.
Up the sharply rising streets and back alleys, most of the colonial houses have gone and new dwellings built on the ruins. Here and there are survivals from the glory days and in places, virgin ruins. Immigrant sharecroppers from Haiti and St Lucia occupy many of the newer houses.
I was more than pleased to find myself on the streets where Lafcadio lived, and to walk the cobbled steps down which he walked at first light every morning on his way to his daily swim. And I too sat on the bridge overlooking the euphonious River Roxelaine where he was inspired by the physical grace of the blancheuses, or washerwomen, to whom he devoted a chapter in Two Years.
But I also had a Lafcadian experience of beauty and death.
One evening I was invited to a homestead high up in the afforested hills behind St Pierre and way off the beaten track. After a delicious guinea-fowl dinner, we moved outside to the gazebo for refreshments and to watch the brilliant embers of sundown burn over the calm Caribbean horizon.
Over the evening, I listened to their stories, while all around butterflies, birds and fireflies flitted, cats chased scuttling lizards, and all to a great forest soundtrack of seething crickets and a million frogs piping the strangest symphony of amphibian flute notes. As the rum and talk flowed, the darkness gathered and under the Southern Cross and a galaxy of stars, it was a joy to be alive.
But a price was to be paid for the sin of beauty.
At a very late stage, my host disappeared for a considerable time. He returned carrying a sombre demeanour and a big long box. After hefting the box onto the large gazebo table, he slowly opened it to reveal a full human skeleton, its hollow eye-sockets staring out in dumb horror into the night.
The couple said they discovered the remains in an old house they had bought. It was - I kid you not - in a wardrobe. The family feared things could be made awkward for them if they brought the skeleton to the attention of the authorities, so they just held on to it. As you do.
But here it must be remembered that in 1902 Saint Pierre was one enormous hecatomb and the bones of some 30,000 skeletons were knocking about the necropolis. So having one in the closet is perhaps not quite the metaphor here that it might be elsewhere.
Meanwhile, as our evening drew on and the rum punch flowed, we began to warm to the presence of the former individual now amongst us, its spectral company now seeming less surreal or macabre and more blackly amusing. We even speculated giddily as to the fate of our new friend in the coffin on the table, and oh how we laughed when once I playfully felt for a pulse.
And so it was in this far-flung outpost of the European Union, that I awoke in the fragile morning after to an echo in my mind of mocking laughter ringing around a remote hilltop homestead in the lush tropical forests behind the lovely Saint Pierre. Then I recalled our little friend with the knowing look and the eternal sardonic smile.
