Dear Editor,
“When the best has left us and there is nothing that remains but the worst in a life that is so stupid we can cry, we must know how to still smile. We must know how to hold fast to our dignity in spite of all, and, no matter what it may cost us, walk away without looking back.
“Faced with destiny that is disarming us and happiness that is eluding us, we must know how to hide our tears. When there is no more love being served, we must know how to leave the table without hanging on looking pitiful and without being quarrelsome or loud … .” (Charles Aznavour, Il Faut Savoir, 1961).
This is my abridged rendition of the first four stanzas of Charles Aznavour’s hit song, Il Faut Savoir (We Must Know). The esteemed French crooner died two years ago on October 1, 2018, leaving the world a treasure chest of beautiful lyrics, of splendid song-poems. He was in his mid-30s when he wrote and recorded Il Faut Savoir in 1961.
I have always elected to ignore the dramatic ending of the song because it negates everything that precedes it in the lyrics. In its surprising ending, emotions, feelings override reason; there is no more “love being served,” but the heartbroken protagonist cannot bring himself to “leave the table,” he “cannot” practice what he preaches.
I heard a recording of Il Faut Savoir on the radio a year or so after it was released in France. In the 1950s and early ’60s, it took a while for all such things to reach Saint Martin by way of Guadeloupe or Martinique; the calypsos, meringues and American hits got to the island much faster. 1962 and 1963 were turning point periods in my life and, as the research of the late Daniella Jeffry suggests, they are also landmark years in the modern history of Saint Martin.
I was not experiencing any romantic issues during that period – they came later! I do not know why the lyrics of this song spoke to me the way they did back then, apart from the fact that my father, who was abroad and seriously ill for a long time, died during this period. From 1962 onward, Il Faut Savoir has helped me to cope with many of the difficulties I have faced. I have often relied – as I am doing today – on the first four stanzas of this song.
Time flies, indeed, and much has changed in the 40 years or so since I started this scribbling of mine. Several of my relatives and friends have departed; there is no use lamenting their absence; no way of filling the void their passing has opened up in me. In his Salt from My Attic, Professor John A. Shedd (1859-1928) remarks: “A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” Indeed, ships are made to sail the seas. For the last nine months or so, we have been confined to our place of residence and (legally) obliged to wear a mask everywhere else except when outside, in open air and at some distance away from others.
These very last weeks of this most challenging year COVID-19 continues to spread hardship, sickness and death worldwide. We are like ships roped up in harbor during a storm, but this is not what we were wired for; we are social beings designed to live connected, interdependent – inextricably linked. Hopefully, the various vaccines that have been developed will soon enable us to get back to the way we were made to function, to live. And maybe the virus will have helped us to better appreciate that connection: the link that binds us as human beings.
Looking back at my journey, from the sunny days of my modest childhood and adolescence in Sandy Ground, the old Sandy Ground of the 1950s and 1960s, fast forward to these sunset days in my 70s, I am amazed, truly astonished that I have made it this far in such relatively good shape. It may be a kind of proof that one should never despair, for one never knows what the future has in store. Maybe we must just keep on doing and hoping for the best – the way the fishermen used to do in the Sandy Ground of my youth.
Tooled up with a sense of purpose, shears (a wire cutter), a pair of pliers and a machete, the fisherman worked at “making his fish pots” in the shade of a tree. The “chicken-coop wire” for the enclosure and the “galvanized bracing wire” for the tying were essentials for the making of his fish traps. He usually got these articles on credit from a merchant who “trusted him,” who had confidence that he would settle his account as he worked his fish pots. Other essentials were much easier to obtain: pondside sticks of a certain thickness and length that he would cut and scrape clean of all of their bark.
Like Mr. Eustache Maccow, our master tailor in Saint James, who fitted us in our Sunday best, the fisherman, using his shears, his wire cutter, would carefully cut out, from his precious role of chicken-coop wire, the three sections he needed to make his “fish pot”: two identical regular hexagon-shaped pieces (the top and the bottom of the trap) and a narrower rectangular strip or section to fit around the six-sided regular hexagon-shaped “fish pot”.
But in order to give his “nasse” its local “fish pot” shape, the top and the bottom hexagon-shaped sections had to be amputated, each one of them, of two of their six equilateral triangles; so he would carefully mark and cut out two adjoining equilateral triangles from the top and the bottom hexagon-shaped sections. The two sections that remained – each one consisting of 4 equilateral triangles – was the final shape of the top and bottom sections of his fish pot: masterful geometry!
As I recall, cutting, shaping and installing the “fish entrance” at the apex of the angle that was opened up by the “amputation” was somewhat challenging due to the tricky downward pitch that, seemingly, was required to make the entrance most effective, most welcoming to the fish! It was also very important not to forget to cut out and install a back door, the exit for emptying the catch. A novice fisherman had, reportedly, forgotten to add this door to one of his “fish pots,” an omission from which the poor man could not fully recover!
When all of the sections were cut and assembled and the form of the “fish pot” was achieved, the craftsman/fisherman would attach some of the thicker (stronger) pondside sticks to the outside (top and bottom of the trap) and all around the six-sided fish pot. He would then insert and attach slightly thinner sticks all along the many seams or joints of the assembled chicken-coop wire trap. Now, all that remained to be done was the “bracing”: tying firmly all of the sticks to the chicken-coop wire assemblage.
Working with his pliers and with segments of the stubborn galvanized bracing wire, he would “brace his fish pot,” that is firmly tie the tough pondside sticks to the chicken-coop wire on the top and the bottom of the trap, all around its six sides and all along its joints or seams – everywhere! 100 or more of those strong, tight, solid galvanized stitches! Beautiful craftsmanship! An object of utility and art!
Before taking his “pots” out to set them, he would, sometimes, bait them with roasted lobsters! Yes, such is the absurdity of life. Alone or with a fishing mate, he took them out to sea, one, two or three fish pots at the stern of a small craft. He rowed his boat out of sight, usually down beyond the point of the Bluff, where he dropped his precious traps, or rather where he set them “blindly,” that is without a buoy, a floater or marker, but with near pinpointed crossed (onshore) references. The “joke” among fishermen was some version of a novice pescador using a “thick black cloud hanging over Marigot Hill” with some other land feature as cross references in marking the location of his pots!
In the Sandy Ground of my youth, the fishermen seemed always hopeful that they would trap enough fish to enable them to feed their family and some close friends; to make some money that would allow them to settle their debts and to carry on: to keep “going back out,” revisiting their traps, “pulling their fish pots” and trapping, catching enough fish to get by, to make ends meet.
If the wise and gifted Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) could find his way back among us, I think he would, most likely, concede that poetry – alone – does not, as he opined, “provide the resistance to the pressure of reality …,” but that music (rhythm and melody, particularly); poetry (such as his); curiosity; consensus (democracy) and science – this quintet – and in that order, may very likely offer us vistas toward a sense of wholeness on our way back into the unknown of being, back into our existence.
We are not certain of this, my reader, but it seems that we, you and I, will make it through this most challenging year; for this we can be grateful; for this we must be thankful. I wish you a Merry Christmas and a healthy and Happy New Year (2021). Farewell! Adieu!
Gérard M. Hunt
