--"_Pauv ma pauv!_ I knew it all before you came, Yé. I can tell you
what to do; but I am afraid it will be no use--you will never be able to
do it! Your gluttony is going to be the ruin of you, poor Yé! Still, you
can try. Now listen well to what I am going to tell you. First of all,
you must not eat anything before you get home. Then when your wife has
the children's dinner ready, and you see the Devil getting up, you must
cry out:--'_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!_' Then the Devil will drop down dead.
Don't forget not to eat anything--_ou tanne?_"...
Yé promised to remember all he was told, and not to eat anything on his
way down;--then he said good-bye to the Bon-Dié (_bien conm y faut_),
and started. All the way he kept repeating the words the Good-God had
told him: "_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!"--"tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"--over and
over again.
--But before reaching home he had to cross a little stream; and on both
banks he saw wild guava-bushes growing, with plenty of sour guavas
upon them;--for it was not yet time for guavas to be ripe. Poor Yé was
hungry! He did all he could to resist the temptation, but it proved too
much for him. He broke all his promises to the Bon-Dié: he ate and ate
and ate till there were no more guavas left,--and then he began to eat
_zicaques_ and green plums, and all sorts of nasty sour things, till he
could not eat any more.
--By the time he got to the cabin his teeth were so on edge that he
could scarcely speak distinctly enough to tell his wife to get the
supper ready.
And so while everybody was happy, thinking that they were going to be
freed from their trouble, Yé was really in no condition to do anything.
The moment the supper was ready, the Devil got up from his corner as
usual, and approached the table. Then Yé tried to speak; but his teeth
were so on edge that instead of saying,--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé_," he
could only stammer out:---"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan_."
This had no effect on the Devil at all: he seemed to be used to it! He
blew his breath on them all, sent them to sleep, ate up all the supper,
filled the empty dishes with filth, awoke Yé and his family, and ordered
them as usual;--
--"_Gobe-moin ça!_" And they had to gobble it up,--every bit of it.
The family nearly died of hunger and disgust. Twice more Yé climbed the
Montagne Pelée; twice more he climbed the Morne de la Croix; twice more
he disturbed the poor Bon-Dié, all for nothing!--since each time on his
way down he would fill his paunch with all sorts of nasty sour things,
so that he could not speak right. The Devil remained in the house night
and day;--the poor mother threw herself down on the ground, and pulled
out her hair,--so unhappy she was!
But luckily for the poor woman, she had one child as cunning as a
rat,[57]--a boy called Ti Fonté (little Impudent), who bore his name well.
When he saw his mother crying so much, he said to her:--
--"Mamma, send papa just once more to see the Good-God: I know something
to do!"
The mother knew how cunning her boy was: she felt sure he meant
something by his words;--she sent old Yé for the last time to see the
Bon-Dié.
Yé used always to wear one of those big long coats they call
_lavalasses_;--whether it was hot or cool, wet or dry, he never went
out without it. There were two very big pockets in it--one on each side.
When Ti Fonté saw his father getting ready to go, he jumped _floup!_
into one of the pockets and hid himself there. Yé climbed all the way
to the top of the Morne de la Croix without suspecting anything. When he
got there the little boy put one of his ears out of Yé's pocket,--so as
to hear everything the Good-God would say.
This time he was very angry,--the Bon-Dié: he spoke very crossly; he
scolded Yé a great deal. But he was so kind for all that,--he was so
generous to good-for-nothing Yé, that he took the pains to repeat the
words over and over again for him:--"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé_."... And
this time the Bon-Dié was not talking to no purpose: there was somebody
there well able to remember what he said. Ti Fonté made the most of his
chance;--he sharpened that little tongue of his; he thought of his mamma
and all his little brothers and sisters dying of hunger down below. As
for his father, Yé did as he had done before--stuffed himself with all
the green fruit he could find.
The moment Yé got home and took off his coat, Ti Fonté jumped out,
_plapp!_--and ran to his mamma, and whispered:--
--"Mamma, get ready a nice, big dinner!--we are going to have it all to
ourselves to-day: the Good-God didn't talk for nothing,--I heard every
word he said!"
Then the mother got ready a nice _calalou-crabe_, a _tonton-banane_,
a _matété-cirique_,--several calabashes of _couss-caye_, two
_régimes-figues_ (bunches of small bananas),--in short, a very fine
dinner indeed, with a _chopine_ of tafia to wash it all well down.
The Devil felt as sure of himself that day as he had always felt, and
got up the moment everything was ready. But Ti Fonté got up too, and
yelled out just as loud as he could:---"_Tam ni pou tam ni bé!_"
At once the Devil gave a scream so loud that it could be heard right
down to the bottom of hell,--and he fell dead.
Meanwhile, Yé, like the old fool he was, kept trying to say what the
Bon-Dié had told him, and could only mumble:--
--"_Anni toqué Diabe-là cagnan!_"
He would never have been able to do anything;--and his wife had a great
mind just to send him to bed at once, instead of letting him sit down to
eat all those nice things. But she was a kind-hearted soul; and so she
let Yé stay and eat with the children, though he did not deserve it. And
they all ate and ate, and kept on eating and filling themselves until
daybreak--_pauv piti!_
But during this time the Devil had begun to smell badly and he had
become swollen so big that Yé found he could not move him. Still, they
knew they must get him out of the way somehow. The children had eaten so
much that they were all full of strength--_yo tè plein lafòce_; and Yé
got a rope and tied one end round the Devil's foot; and then he and the
children--all pulling together--managed to drag the Devil out of the
cabin and into the bushes, where they left him just like a dead dog.
They all felt themselves very happy to be rid of that old Devil.
But some days after old good-for-nothing Yé went off to hunt for birds.
He had a whole lot of arrows with him. He suddenly remembered the Devil,
and thought he would like to take one more look at him. And he did.
_Fouinq!_ what a sight! The Devil's belly had swelled up like a morne:
it was yellow and blue and green,--looked as if it was going to burst.
And Yé, like the old fool he always was, shot an arrow up in the air,
so that it fell down and stuck into the Devil's belly. Then he wanted
to get the arrow, and he climbed up on the Devil, and pulled and pulled
till he got the arrow out. Then he put the point of the arrow to his
nose,--just to see what sort of a smell dead Devils had.
The moment he did that, his nose swelled up as big as the refinery-pot
of a sugar-plantation.
Yé could scarcely walk for the weight of his nose; but he had to go and
see the Bon-Dié again. The Bon-Dié said to him:--
--"Ah! Yé, my poor Yé, you will live and die a fool!--you are certainly
the biggest fool in the whole world!... Still, I must try to do
something for you;--I'll help you anyhow to get rid of that nose!...
I'll tell you how to do it. To-morrow morning, very early, get up and
take a big _taya_ [whip], and beat all the bushes well, and drive all
the birds to the Roche de la Caravelle. Then you must tell them that I,
the Bon-Dié, want them to take off their bills and feathers, and take a
good bath in the sea. While they are bathing, you can choose a nose for
yourself out of the heap of bills there."
Poor Yé did just as the Good-God told him; and while the birds were
bathing, he picked out a nose for himself from the heap of beaks,--and
left his own refinery-pot in its place.
The nose he took was the nose of the _coulivicou_.[58] And that is why the
_coulivicou_ always looks so much ashamed of himself even to this day.
[Footnote 54: In the patois, "_yon rafale yche_"--"a whirlwind of
children."]
[Footnote 55: In the original:--"Y té ka monté assous tabe-là, épi y
té ka fai caca adans toutt plats-à, adans toutt zassiett-là."]
[Footnote 56: A peaklet rising above the verge of the ancient crater now
filled with water.]
[Footnote 57: The great field-rat of Martinique is, in Martinique
folklore, the symbol of all cunning, and probably merits its
reputation.]
[Footnote 58: The _coulivicou_, or "Colin Vicou," is a Martinique bird
with a long meagre body, and an enormous bill. It has a very tristful
and taciturn expression.... _Maig conm yon coulivicou_, "thin as a
coulivicou," is a popular comparison for the appearance of anybody much
reduced by sickness.]