The Bridge of Beyond – Simone Schwarz-Bart (1972)

Translated from French by Barbara Bray

I bought The Bridge of Beyond on something of a whim, while looking for interesting things to read for Women in translation month that would fill gaps in my A century of Books. I then persuaded my very small book group to read it, we meet early in September to discuss it. I am so looking forward to hearing what they all thought. It’s an extraordinary novel – I loved it. In her introduction to this edition, Jamaica Kincaid calls it…

“a seminal work of literature that cannot be contained within the usual confines of ‘the novel’ or ‘a work of fiction.’”
(Jamaica Kincaid)

It is a novel of mothers and daughters, of love and the legacy of slavery on the French Antillean island of Guadeloupe. Telumee narrates the story of her life, paying tribute to the strong line of wonderful Lougandor women who came before her. It is a narration rich in description, slow rhythmic prose which I found completely hypnotic.

“A man’s country may be cramped or vast according to the size of his heart. I’ve never found my country to be too small. Though that isn’t to say my heart is great. And if I could choose it’s here in Guadeloupe that I’d be born again, suffer and die. Yet not long back my ancestors were slaves on this volcanic, hurricane-swept mosquito-ridden, nasty minded island. But I didn’t come into the world to weigh the world’s woe. I prefer to dream, on and on, standing in my garden, just like any other old woman of my age, till death comes and takes me as I dream, me and all my joy.”

Telumee is the granddaughter of Toussine, a woman who became known in her village of Fond-Zombi as Queen without a Name. The stories of her life in L’Abandonnee, where she lived with her great love have reached legendary status even during her life time. In her heart, Toussine still carries Jeremiah with her through to old age. With the memory of her one great love – she carries the knowledge of pain, the ability to survive and the wisdom imparted by her old friend Ma Cia.

Toussine’s daughter Victory is Telumee’s mother, Telumee the second of her daughters. Victory; a laundress, is abandoned by one man and bereaved of another. So, when she has the chance of a new life with a man from Dominica she sends the ten-year-old Toussine to her grandmother who lives across the Bridge of Beyond in the village of Fond-Zombi. The bridge is very much a symbol, crossing it brings change – things not yet known, a different world.

“Life at Fond-Zombi was lived with doors and windows open: night had eyes, and the wind long ears, and no one could ever have enough of other people. As soon as I arrived in the village I knew who was aggressor and who was victim, who still held his soul high and who was on the road to ruin, who poached in waters belonging to his friend or brother, who was suffering, who was dying. But the more I learned the more it seemed that the main thing escaped me, slipped between my fingers like an eel.”

Telumee grows up sheltered and tutored by the love and wisdom of Queen without a Name. There are many things she needs to learn, including matters of the heart. Elie comes into her life, the son of Old Abel who keeps a shop and bar in a shack in the village. She crosses the bridge of beyond to go and work at Belle-Feuille, for Madame Desaragne, but returns to set up home with her love. Elie turns out to be not such a catch after all – and Queen is ageing and needing care in her final years. Telumee begins spending more and more time with Ma Cia. Telumee, like her mother and grandmother before lives in a patriarchal society, yet here, it is the women who shine. Their strength is so empowering they never allow themselves to be oppressed by the difficulties of their community.

Simone Schwatz-Bart’s novel is full of long, hot, slow days, superstition and the cruel, gruelling work of the canefields. Telumee is born into a peasant tradition; tough lives in tiny dwellings on the edge of the forest. Often repeated stories, and long memories, nestle alongside magic and romance on the lush island of Guadeloupe so deliciously described by Schwartz-Bart.

This is a wonderfully tender novel, suffused with hope and the inspiration of three generations of women.