The Magic Orange Tree: and Other Haitian Folktales

THE TWO DONKEYS  About the Story: When Willy and I first arrived in Carrefour-Dufort, I was a great curiosity. Within minutes of getting out of the car, a crowd of all ages surrounded me. Willy, who had once lived in the village as an assistant to an anthropology student, saw an old girlfriend and disappeared.   Several years before, when I was working for the parks department in New York City, telling stories to children in Harlem and Bedford-Stuyvesant, I had also from time to time found myself the only white person among a large crowd of black people. Then, the people had immediately asked me who I was and why I had come. Now, no one was speaking; they were staring and pointing and whispering.   I noticed one little girl smiling shyly at me. I bent down and smiled at her. At once her hand darted out. Quickly she touched my hair. (It is blond and fairly straight.) Even more quickly she brought her hand back close to her side. Everyone laughed.   “Bonsoir, messieurs-dames,” I said. A great singsong response echoed: “Bonjour, mademoiselle.”   “No,” someone said, “she’s married, she’s wearing a ring,” I pointed to my ring and nodded and at once the questions began in Creole:       “Do you have children?” “Yes.”       “How many?” “One. A girl.”       “What is her name?” “Rachel.”       “Where is she?” “In Port-au-Prince.”       “Where is your husband?” “In New York.”       “What’s his name?” “Benjamin.”       “What’s your name?” “Diane.”       “How old are you?” “Thirty-one.” (Great consternation!)       “Why don’t you have more children?”   That was enough.   “What’s your name?” I asked a young woman near me. Complete silence. I hadn’t followed the proper order of questioning. I waited. We looked at each other. I waited. It was almost dusk and the odor of the night blew up from the river. “My name is Justine,” a dark, pretty girl offered. At that moment Willy reappeared.   He explained that I told stories and wanted to hear stories and would pay a small sum of money for a good story. Immediately there were shouts: “I’ll tell a story,” “I’ll give a story,” “I have one.”   “Silence!” Willy shouted. “Where shall we go?” he asked. “My house,” Dadi offered. With that, about thirty children and adults trooped off to Dadi’s house.   We didn’t go inside. The houses are not more than ten feet by fifteen feet. In the clearing in front of the house the storytelling began. I took out my notebook and pen, switched on my tape recorder, and listened.   Although my own Creole was halting, I could usually follow the general movement of the plot. But sometimes, especially when the storyteller did not speak clearly, I was lost. I listened instead to the frogs croaking and to the crickets. The Haitian night was very dark and voluptuous.   But when Julien began “The Two Donkeys,” my attention was immediately caught. His gruff voice described the love of the donkeys and his quite masculine body swayed to and fro in the most feminine manner, imitation sensual passion. The others were equally caught by Julien’s antics as he changed his voice and body for the enraptured farmer, the angry farmer, the “good” farmer’s wife, and the ecstatic donkeys. The most wonderful moment of the pantomime came when Julien pulled back the seat of his pants to show us how the woman’s skirt had been pushed out by the growth of her tail. When Julien got to the part where the husband returned home, the audience was so excited one woman beat him to the punchline by calling out: “Didn’t she break every pot and plate in the house?” “Yes,” Julien reassured her, “every pot and plate,” “Good! Good!” she shouted. Julien delivered his last lines to the accompaniment of great applause and laughter.*** There were once two donkeys who were always together. A male donkey and a female donkey. They ate grass on the mountainside, rubbing each other’s long necks with their heads. They rolled on the grass, playfully biting each other’s, frolicking and frisking. Then one year there was a dry season. The worst that anyone had ever known. No rain fell. No plants grew, no shrubs, not even one blade of grass. “We shall both die if this continues,” the male donkey said to his wife. “I have a plan. Let us change ourselves into human beings. I shall become a man and find work with whoever can pay me. You change into a woman and stay wherever you can find work. Then when the rainy season comes again, we shall both change back into donkeys and meet here as we were before.” The female donkey agreed. She changed into a woman and was so beautiful that she was married that evening to a farmer who saw her, fell in love with her, and couldn’t wait. The male donkey changed into a man and also found a place to stay. And the dry season passed. Six months went by. The rains began and moistened the ground. The faded earth was soon filled with life and covered with flowers and grass. The man changed back into a donkey and ran eagerly to the mountain, but his wife was not there. He waited, and when she did not return, he began to travel from town to town, calling her:      Anne, Anne* For that was his wife’s name.      Anne, Anne,     Springtime has come again     Anne— At last one day he came to the town where Anne was living. She was in the kitchen peeling malengas and yams for her husband’s dinner.      Anne, Anne, She dropped the yams and listened.      Springtime has come again     Anne, Anne— Her ears became longer, her two arms began stretching, and from under her skirt a tail started pushing. The farmer, waiting in the fields for his dinner, was getting angry. “I told my wife to bring my dinner by noon. And where is she? What can she be doing at the house all this time?” As the farmer came near his home, ready to give his wife a good beating, he heard a great crash as if a pot had been broken. Pow! The out the kitchen door trotted a female donkey. HEE-huh Hee-huh.  A male donkey who was waiting by the gate rushed up to her and they both stood on their hind legs, braying with pleasure and biting each other’s long ears. HEE-huh! HEE-huh! HEE-huh! Then they turned toward the hills and ran happily out of town to the mountains. The man went into the kitchen and found his wife was gone, and every pot and plate in the kitchen was broken. Every pot and plate. Everything! Well, I tell you this story because I want to point out to you how important it is to have a proper engagement, and how necessary it is to meet your future bride of bridegroom’s relatives—the sisters, brothers, aunts, uncles, cousins, and especially the mother. Otherwise, if you are too hasty, such a thing can happen. It can. And to you.       *If you pronounce Anne as Ahnne, you will join in on the Creole-French pun in which Ahnne (áne) also means donkey.