Papa Droissart

Dominion, Volume 25, Issue 69, 15 December 1931, Page 27 (Supplement)

Papa Droissart

CONVICT AND HERO

A Romantic Life.

For two years I superintended mining works in Surinam, Dutch Guiana, with headquarters at Moengo Hill, on the Cottica River, writes A. G. Barnett in “The Nation." This is a region always infested with escaped convicts from the adjoining French penal colony. My friend Droissart was one of these. The gaunt refugees would float to Moengo camp on makeshift rafts or come staggering over trails cut through the jungle by our geologists. From this constant flow of human refuse we salvaged the strongest, prodding the unfit azvay—to die elsewhere.

Edmond droissart was a little, almost burnt-out cinder of humanity. Seventy-five years of buffeting had reduced him to a rickety skeleton, with a parched and wrinkled hide, and sparkling eyes. His mind was clear and quick as summer lightning. The morning of his arrival he lay wide awake on the verandah of the superintendent’s house. He was worn out, sopping wet, and shivering with fever. , Four similar derelicts slept

noisily beside him. The five had reached Moengo during the night. Strong backs were needed just then to throw up a dyke, and when the doctor had pronounced the four younger Frenchmen physically fit to push spades, they were signed on as workmen. But Droissart proved full of undesirable germs and was too weak for the labour gangs. “No, old man, nothing doing,” the superintendent told him. “I reckon you gotta push on down-river.” . “I spik English | pretty goot,” the Frenchman countered; “an’ I inek all ■kin’ of t’ings you want. You want chair, I mek it; you want sofa, I mek you goot one; you want picture of dis camp, I paint him; you want sculpture of yourself, dat too I mek. Ev-re-t’ing I mek. I surprise you. Mais oui, mes camarades will gif me food.” The very next morning Droissart hobbled over to see the superintendent with a bundle wrapped in old newspapers.

“For you,” he announced. “One lil "if ’’ The superintendent shook out two hunting horns beautifully decorated with carved wild beasts, huntsmen, and dogs. The old rip had chipped away all night long. “Well, I’ll bg doggoned I” exclaimed the superintendent. “You make these? Honest?” He blew a long blast. “Great day! That sure would bring all the coon dogs in four counties a-run-ning if we were up in old No’th Ca’lina. B’lieve I need a sofy, come to think about It. Oh, Henre-e-e-e! Go fetch a week’s rations for Papa Droissart.” In a short time the sofa was produced. The full length of it was caned with strips of finely split “bush rope.” There was a comfortable roll to the head part. “How’d you get those legs carved like that?” “Oh, I mek me one lil fine saw.” “What did you make it out of?” “Oh, I fin’ me one hoop from ol’ barrel, an’ cut out thin piece, an’ file lil

teeth in ’im. Not cut too good, dough. Mos’ one night I work on jus’ dem leg.” “Don’t you ever sleep?” “Sometime, yes, I sleep. Forty wink. Mos’ time jus’ smoke two, Free cigarette an’ res’ lil while. Dat jus’ so goot like sleep w’en ol’ brain go roun’, roun’, t’ink, fink.” - “Well, that’s a nifty sofy, all right,” said the superintendent. “And now I’m going to give you a steady job. You gotta keep the grounds cleaned up, see? Everything always neat.” Immediately the landscape began to Improve. Droissart carted away all the loose stones and laid out pathways and planted beds of roses. He constructed rustic seats around tree trunks, and built a thatched pergola where visitors could sit in the shade. He made a little tin windmill and painted it red. Barand helped him plant a CO-foot pole with the windmill atop it. “What’s that for?” inquired the superintendent. . “Oh, jus’ for fun,” the old man replied. “Ah ... dat lil play mash-ine will buz-z-z-z more longer dan dis ol’ mash-ine you call Papa Droissart.” The superintendent got into the habit of stopping to talk: “They toll me you wore a kid officer along with .Toffre back in 1870; that so?” _ “Dey talk too much, no? B_ut yes, dat is true.” “Who’s goin’ to win this war?” “France. The Allies.” “How they come to send you to Cayenne?” “Oh . . . wickedness.” “Eh? How’s that?” “Wickedness: wine, women, lying, cheating, always nicking trouble. I t'ing I love wickedness.” “That sofa is tiptop. flow'd you

come to think of making a scroll saw out of a barrel hoop?” “Oh, if I need somet’ing always I mek it. Ha! Firs’ time Igo to Senegal dose native dey will not trade me boat to go ’way. Dey no want blanket, shirt, boot. Dey say money—not’ing else. So I re-main two, free day in dat nigger town; pick up all de ol’ tin can; melt out de solder; an’ mek me plenty nice money for buy one fine boat. Oh, I am one ver’ bad ol’ man. La, la, la, la!” When word came that the United States had got into the World War

the deportes at Moengo took the day off. There were sixty of them; and they drank wine and sang songs and paraded, and ultimately took to chasing the black Dutchmen from end to end of the camp clearing because these unenlightened fellows persisted in remaining neutral. At this celebration Droissart became appropriately intoxicated. He leaned against his windmill pole and saluted. “France ’ave cas’ me out,” he declaimed. “To-day I cas’ out France. To-day I tek my stan’ un’er de Stars an’ Stripe. Vive I’Amerique! Vive le President Weelson! Vive Tetty Rosefelt! . . . Voila. I am one American. Soon after this demonstration the old man began to slip. One morning after preparing early coffee for his mates, he flopped back into his hammock; and there he stayed. We packed him off to

our infirmary, but he sneaked out and returned to his corner of the loggia. “Dat ’ospital is like prison. Too many year’ ave I spen’ in prison. I stay ’ere, eh? My fr'en will ’elp me.” But finally we carried him out and shipped him off to the Catholic hospital in Paramaribo. There the sisters worked over him for a month or so. The whole camp was anxious about his condition. “Miste’ Sup-tendent, Ah only Inte’cede to make inquiry how is po’ Papa Drawsa’t?” inquired a corpulent black washerwoman. “Oh, he’s coming along fine, I hear.” “That is good news, sir. Papa is a noble ol’ gentleman. Three nights togethe’, sir, he set up with my younges’ whilst she was drawin’ her firs’ teeth.” “Ach, yess, how goes it yet wit’ Boppa?” inquired Nelins, the Dutch timber

clerk. Even the naked bush negroes dropped in to talk about the gentle old man. About tlie end of June he came back to Moengo, looking fine—for him. lie was in fine fettle all that day, greeting his friends and joking and visiting. “To-morrow I go to work!” But Papa did not show up at the new shack the next day. He was sick, in his hammock. The second morning the superintendent came, to see him;, he was sicker. The Frenchman slowly raised up on his elbow. All his newly acquired energy had melted away. He was only an old, old man, facing in a foreign land the bitter last hours of a life that had somehow gone awry.

And then, surprisingly, he raised up ' again, voice steady. ! “ W’at-I-teli-you-’bout-dat-lil-win’mill, ■ eli?” i He was dying on the night before le quatorze Juillet. He sent Mila to bring the superintendent. “One time I tell you one damn big lie —I say I cas’ out France—Dat is not —true —Foreffer —I am Fr-rench !” Then after a longer pause, he raised up a grey finger and began: “Aliens, enfants de la—” His comrades took up the song. Forty outcast Frenchmen thundered the words of the Marseillaise. And while they were singing, Papa 'Droissart died. Among his things they found, wrapped in silk, a signed photograph of a great Frenchman: “To my dear friend Droissart—Zola.”