Traversée de la Mangrove

Le soleil s'était levé tout content, généreux. Le ciel était du bleu des promesses qui vont être tenues (1).

It was with great pleasure that I plunged into the intrigue of Maryse Condé's Traversée de la Mangrove. Set in the small community of Rivière au Sel in Basse Terre, Francis Sancher is a foreigner with unknown origins and uncertain intentions. The story actually begins with Sancher's death, and during the wake each inhabitant reflects on his or her own life. There is a aspect of a polar (or detective novel) in Traversée de la Mangrove, since the reader is obliged to discover the identity and the story of Francis Sancher through the testimonies of the other characters. Each character reveals only what they know and so, even at the very end of the book, much remains unanswered. Ultimately, however, the real identity of Francis Sancher is of minor importance. What is important is that his arrival, and subsequent death, rouse the inhabitants out of their torpor.

The story is wonderfully dense, and the characters live and breath on each page. Condé is generous in details and each character seems substantial enough to be protagonists in books of their very own. There is a real risk for a story to unravel and fray when an author employs multiple narrators, especially when each has such complicated histories. Condé's deft writing keeps the storyline tight, and the stories makes constant progress. There are no leisurely tangents and then a race to the finish.

Only those who have lived within the four walls of a small community know its meanness and its fear of the stranger (3).

If the relationships between characters provoke a sense of claustrophobia, it is not unintentional. The difficulties of relating, concentrated through isolation, seem ready to destroy the characters. This isolation is two-fold. As in all Caribbean writing, there is the isolation of living on an island. But, more immediate is the isolation of the small village, bordered by the dense vegetation of Basse Terre. Therefore as a group, the characters are isolated from the rest of the world. There is also racial/cultural isolation. There are the Lameaulenes, descendants of white plantation owners, or the Ramsarans, descendants of Indian indentured laborers, and the rest, various métis of black white, brown and yellow. Sancher embodies the stranger physically (he is assumed to come from some Spanish-speaking country), but also culturally. His appearance in Rivière au Sel disturbs the isolation. His life in Rivière au Sel brings agitation; his death becomes the catalyst for change.

It really is a wonderful book, and Condé is one of the few Antillais authors to be translated into English.





(1)The sun rose, happy, generous. The sky was blue of promises that would be kept.

(2)
Condé, Maryse. Traversée de la Mangrove. Paris: Mercure de France, 1989.





(3) Seul celui qui a vécu entre les quatre murs d'une petite communauté connaît sa mechanceté et sa peur de l'étranger.