Creole Sketches/The Creole Character
THE CREOLE CHARACTER[1]
It was not a difficult job to put up a wooden awning about the corner grocery — two stout Irishmen would have done it in twenty-four hours; but the corner grocery man was a Creole, and he hired four Creole carpenters. So they took three weeks to do it, and they have not done it yet. Ce pas baptême katin, travail comme ça; and they did not propose to work themselves to death. Life was too short. We went round the corner to look at them. Beautifully did they saw the boards and with exquisite grace did they hammer the nails — vrais poseurs they were; and then they wiped their brows and sighed, and rolled up cigarettes and went into the grocery to get a light. There they met Aristide and Jules and Albert and Alcée and Alcibiade, and they all took a drink and cracked awful jokes together. Then the carpenters went out again, and climbed upon the half-finished awning, and grinned at a swarthy young woman passing, who had a graceful air of deportment and a complexion like a statue of bronze. Then they laughed at one another; and it began to rain, so they went down and smoked some cigarettes, until it was time for dinner. After dinner they worked very slowly, deliberately, and artistically for ten minutes, until a mad dog came running down the street, which they chased for half a mile with surprising energy and astounding strength of purpose. And when they came back they recounted their heroic deeds to an admiring crowd in the grocery, and to the washerwoman round the corner, and the Italian fruit-woman over the way, and the wife of the rival grocery-keeper on the other side, and the two lazy policemen on the beat, and the cook of the neighboring boarding-house, and the confectioner at the southeast corner, and the shoemaker at the northwest corner, and the butcher at the southwest corner, and the coal woman just round the northeast corner. Then they got ready to work; and commenced to hammer away to the air —
"Madame Caba,
Tiyon vous tombe;
Madame Caba,
Tiyon vous tombe;
Ah, la reine,
Piye la su' moi;
Madame Caba
Piye la su' moi;
Madame Caba
Chandelle 'te teigne," etc.
Then it got dark, and they took another drink and went home. And it was even so next day also, and the next, and so for twenty-three days; and that awning still remains in a wild and savage condition of incompleteness.
- ↑ Item, November 13, 1879.