the soul of st barts

7/28/2019 The Soul of St Barts

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The Soul of St. BartsThe French island can be a bubble of champagne, celebrities, andnaked swims in the moonlight. But when visitors search for its innerdepths, writes Janine di Giovanni, St. Barts can become an island of

wisdom.

JULIEN CAPMEIL

Anse de Grande Saline takes its name from the large salt pond nearby. The beach is a favoriteof nudists (who turn right) and gay visitors (who turn left), but everybody takes time out for lunchat Le Grain de Sel.ByJANINE DI GIOVANNI

JUNE 2010 ISSUEGEOTAGS

IslandsSt. BarthsFeatures

CaribbeanFrench West Indies

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At various turning points in my life, I have run away and washed up on St. Barts like a wornpiece of beach glass. There was the time I hid from a mad Italian boyfriend in a hillside villa nearLuri. There was the Easter Sunday I spent with my best friend on Anse des Flamands,
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heartbroken, eating conch salad. There was also the time I went to St. Barts madly in love withmy husband, Bruno, and our two-month-old baby, stressed out to the point of madness, theresult of late motherhood after too many years reporting on too many wars.

For me, the island has never been a place, like Mustique or Harbour Island, where chicfashionistas get dressed up to go to the beach. On vacation, I'd just as soon not run into Elle

MacPherson or see Princess Caroline filling an Herms tote bag with courgette blossoms at thelocal market. I want to be invisible, peaceful, low-key. And over the years, I have discovered aparallel, private universe on St. Barts, a completely different world from the one you seesplashed all over the pages of magazines.

In early May of last year, at the start of low season, I came back with my husband and thatnewborn, who was now five and just learning to swim. The trip did not start well. Our toy planelanded, but the bags didn't. Apparently, they had decided to stay behind and vacation on thetarmac in Guadeloupe. The pilot told us, reassuringly, "We can't carry luggage. Too heavy. Lastweek we crashed a plane." Normally, I would have had a heart attack and shouted, but instead I

just smiled. I did a quick mental inventory: I had a comb and a toothbrush in my bag; my soncould swim in his underpants; my husband could grow a beard. Tant pis, who cares, no bigdeal. We left the airport on the cusp of a tropical storm, the air slightly metallic, and ate dinnerthat night in our twenty-four-hour-crumpled clothes on St. Jean Beachthe AWOL luggage, theoverdraft, the real world, all lulled away by the sound of the waves and a rum punch or three.

The next day, I had a meeting with the vice president of St. Barts's territorial council, YvesGreaux, and our conversation inevitably turned to the impact that the economic crisisor, asthe French prefer to call it, la crisehas had on the island. "We have absorbed it," he told mewith perfect Gallic equanimity, and in fact the 2009 budget showed a surplus of more than $27million. Then we moved on to the really big news. As of January 2009, St. Barts is no longera dpartementthe equivalent of an American stateattached to Guadeloupe; it is nowa collective, allowing it to report directly to the Ministry of Overseas in Paris. St. Barts seemed tobe taking pride in this new sense of autonomy, expanding an existing program that transformssalt water into drinking water and embarking on a new project: getting the houses numbered.

Greaux doubles as the local mathematics teacher, and his logical Cartesian heart was clearlyinto this. "It wasn't a big deal before," he said with a shrug. "We didn't have numbers on thehouses. Everybody knew where everyone lived. The mail got delivered. But things change, andnow we need"his eyes light up"les numeros."

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Heading down to Anse de Petit Cul de Sac not to be confused with the pas de tout grand Grand Cul de Sac, justnext door.

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St. Barts may have absorbed la crise, but when I left Greaux's office and wandered through theempty early-morning streets, I could feel that things were calmer, less crowded, the days ofcrazy spending over. Aside from Larry Gagosian's epic stretch of beachfront property, mostbuilding work had halted, temporarily. Which can only be a good thing. But St. Barts has neverallowed itself to be spoiled by overdevelopment. Strict zoning laws are part of the reason, but italso has to do with the mind-set of the locals, who are blessed with innate good sense and tastewhen it comes to the preservation of theirno casinos, no high-rises, not even a movie theater.On my first visit, I fell in love with St. Barts's minuscule scalethe toy plane, the doll-sizehouses, the tiny coves. Even the croissants at the boulangerie seem smaller than the ones inParis. I remember the local vicar, Charles Vere Nicholl, saying years ago that St. Barts wasmore like a village in Provence than an island in the Caribbean, and he was right. Geezersplayingptanque, pastis, baguettes, Jacques Brel on the radio, every Peter Mayle clich, butdelivered without any of the stuffy uptightness of the mainland French. Imagine the laid-back,barefoot, sixties, hippie-ish spirit, what the French calldcontract, served up with just the rightamount of impeccable taste, good food, and ridiculous attention to qualityperfection, non?I know people would laugh out loud if I told them that I find St. Barts spiritual, but I do. AfterSunday Mass and a powerful sermon on wisdom, courage, and love, delivered by my old friendthe vicar, I was blinking back tears behind my dark glasses when he pulled me aside andintroduced me to Trenette Wellesley-Wesley. "This is a true islander," he said. "You two shouldtalk." Trenette, who runs the Thursday-night meditation group at St. Bartholomew's AnglicanChurch, didn't laugh out loud. "Yes, I agree with you. I have always felt there is somethinguniquely healing about this place." We arranged to meet for tea later in the afternoon.


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Trenette's tiny house sits on a cliff overlooking Baie des Flamands. Inside, it was cool and darkand book-lined; outside, you could see Guadeloupe and Saba floating on a sapphire sea in thedistance. Sipping a cup of green tea, she started to talk.

"Electricity only came here in the 1960s," she said. "The first telephone didn't arrive until 1963,there were hardly any cars, no doctor on the island, and no food in the shops except for onions

and cabbages. It took a month to get a lemon from Europe."

A little later, we were joined by her friend Lena Jonsonn, who kissed me twice, la franaise,and handed me a paper she had written on Swedish colonization between 1784 and 1878,when the island was handed back, like a football, to France. I also got a brief history. The firstinhabitants were Arawak, followed by the Caribs, and although Columbus had spotted the islandin 1493 and named it after his brother, Bartolomeo, no Europeans actually landed here until afew French colonists from nearby St. Kitts arrived in 1648. The Caribs responded by killing themall, mounting the victims' heads on poles, and then using the heads to decorate Lorient Beach.About twenty-five years later, a group of astonishingly brave (or foolhardy) Huguenots fromNormandy landed, and this time they survived and prospered. (Interestingly, you can still hearfaint traces of the old Norman dialect in places like Flamands and Corossol.) Scrubby, rocky

terrain and no freshwater made farming impossible

and also explains the lack of a plantationeconomy later onand the island became a way station for French pirates plundering Spanishgalleons. The attractively named Monbars the Exterminator, a famous French buccaneer,reputedly had his headquarters on St. Barts, and some believe, as people will, that his treasureis still hidden among the coves of Anse du Gouverneur or buried in the sands of Saline.

"It was never really a slave island the way Martinique and Guadeloupe were," Lena told me. "Itwas more of a smuggler's and pirate's place. Slavery was abolished in 1813, after the churchesarrived." This was relatively early. In Cuba it wasn't outlawed until 1886, and other colonies, likePuerto Rico, didn't get around to it until the 1870s. The stain of slavery, the sense thatsomething truly evil happened, the seething resentment of injustice, is something you can stillsmell on other Caribbean islands but never on St. Barts. Here, the lingering darkness of historydoes not exist.

And there is little class structure. Even though most islanders are descended from the originalfamilies who came here in the seventeenth centuryVice President Greaux told me that hisfamily tree spreads out on paper for eighteen feetthere is no cachet attached to who arrivedfirst, no Mayflowermentality.

No matter who you are or how many feet wide your family arbre is, there comes a time of theyear when St. Barts belongs to Euro trash and jet-setters. For two weeks, between Christmasand New Year's, the people who like to see and be seen invade the island. Huge boats clog theharbor, Sean "Diddy" Combs cruises in with Queen Latifa and Billy Joel, and RomanAbromovich takes over Maya's restaurant. During the time of the locusts, the locals lay low. "I'velived here forever, and even I can't get a table at a restaurant," says Jean-Philippe Piter, the

editor of Pure St Barth magazine. "It's a good time of the year to stay home." A few of theinvaders return at Easter, but for the rest of the year the island remains what it has alwaysbeena place for libertines, hippies, and people who have inherited that early pirate spirit."Except," noted Piter, "the hippies have grown up and smoke cigars now instead of joints."

Aside from the hippies, there are real characters, what the French callpersonnages. Onemorning, a friend suggested I go see Arlette Magras, another true islander. She spotted me atthe gate to her cottage. "Don't think I have any alcohol in the house!" she shouted. "I am aboutto leave on vacation! I can't offer you a drink!" It was nine in the morning, and I assured her I


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could survive without a cocktail, so grumbling, she let me in, putting a plate of meat-and-onion-stuffed dumplings, island specialties, in the oven for us to eat. Arlette has written a book abouther childhood and life on the island, Parfums d'Antan, and her home is a museum to herself.The front room is full of a bizarre mix of objects (it reminded me more of Cuba than St. Barts).There was a shaving brush, fake Limoges china only slightly chipped, Santa Claus dolls, acookie jar shaped like an elephant, an ancient sewing machineMademoiselle Haversham's

spoils, gathered together over a lifetime of collecting. She showed me a photograph of the firstDominican priest on the island: "A handsome young priest, he died of a mysterious skindisease."

Arlette's family has been on the island since the seventeenth century. She is related to most ofthe people here, and like most old-timers, she likes to complain endlessly. "Can you tell me whythey need such big cars?" she said of the tourists who rent huge jeeps. "The old people werecultivated. It's the new. . . ." She waved her hand in disgust. The postman arrived as she was inmid-rant, and she took a letter and immediately dumped it in the trash. "The Europeanelectionswho cares?" She was clearly irritated by the intrusion.

I have to admit that everything Arlette said made perfect sense to me, so I was a bit concerned:

Was that how I'd be at her age? She made me buy her book, pricey at forty dollars, but I had nochoice. Then I was shown to the gate.

The first time I came to St. Barts with Bruno and our newborn son, Luca, we lived in a bubble ofhappiness. Champagne (more bubbles) on the beach; swimming naked in the sea at nightourlife was full of endless joy and hope. Five years later, it was a very different trip. Everything hadchanged, and I knew we were both in dire need of a large dose of the healing quality thatTrenette had talked about outside the church while I was blinking back tears after the sermon.

The vicar's powerful words were not the only reason I was crying. Bruno and I had both beenwar correspondentshe a cameraman/producer, I a journalistwhen we met and fell in love inSarajevo in 1993. We spoke a private language that nobody else understoodhe got me, I gothimand we never had to explain what it was like to be shot at. Avoiding death breeds a

special kind of intimacy. Soon after we married, Bruno was badly wounded in Africa, his backbroken, and shortly thereafter, when he returned to Paris, he was beaten up by the CRS (theFrench security police) at a Tibetan peace rallywhy should they care about his back brace?Then we descended into hell. Post-traumatic stress, too much wine, two years in AA, constantpain, constant shrinkshe was a deeply troubled person.

Early one morning, a few days after we arrived on St. Barts, I woke up and walked out onto theterrace, and there was my husband, on his knees, praying. "I can't do this by myself," hewhispered. He was crying, begging for help. I crouched down, kissed him, and we held on toeach other. Here we were in the most beautiful place on earth, the same place we had traveledto with our baby boy only five years before, and now all his suffering had come bubbling up tothe surfaceforget the champagne, those days were long goneand we had to figure out how

to get through this thing together. Amazingly, we did. With a little help from the island we bothloved. Slowly his despair lifted, and we talked for hours and hours in a way we never did athome, sitting together outside after we had put Luca to bed. On our last Sunday on St. Barts, wewent to churchtwo barefoot lapsed Catholicshaving made our own kind of peace with theworld.

Way back in 1945, before the houses got numbered and the streets were given names, arenegade Dutchman, Rmy de Haenen (whom Jean-Philippe Piter described as "a pirate, anadventurer, a playboy"), landed the first plane here on the grass at La Savane. It was not an


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airstrip. He had to scatter the goats first by flying low to scare them off. A few years later, hebought a chunk of rocky peninsula at St. Jean and built L'Eden Roc, named after the legendaryhotel at Cap d'Antibes on the Cte d'Azur. He got Garbo to come and Robert Mitchum and laterGore Vidal. He was elected mayor in 1962 and soon afterward got the phones and electricityinstalled. He also started the school system. Before that, children from different parts of this tinyisland spoke their own dialect. One of the things I love most about St. Barts is the way the

language weaves and flows with the division of the island. The windward quartiers (St. Jean,L'Orient) express themselves in a kind of Creole. The leeward side (sous le ventplaces likeCorossol and Public) speak patois. David Rockefeller and Edmond de Rothschild built houseshere, Baryshnikov and Gelsey Kirkland came, and later the fashion tribe, led by Calvin Klein andthe photographer Patrick Demarchelier. Four hours from New York, St. Barts became, bydefault, a party island.

But my St. Barts isn't like that at all. The hotels I stay in are small, out-of-the-way places,perfectly clean and rarely more than a hundred dollars a night. I eat at tiny restaurants tuckedaway in the hillslike Santa Fe, where you won't find a single sun-toasted tourist. One Saturdaynight, Luca, Bruno, and I went for pizza at The Hideaway (a.k.a. Chez Andy's, whose motto is"Lousy food, view of the car park"), and we were the only non-locals. Everyone was with their

extended families, shouting, passing baskets of bread and bottles of wine, kissing noisily, andhugging each other. And in the many times I've run away to St. Barts, I've spotted only twocelebritiesperhaps because I am indifferent: Lee Radziwill, cool, elegant, and lifted, in whitechinos, on a small plane from St. Martin; and Naomi Campbell stomping out of the Gustaviapharmacy. ("Naomi angry, just for a change," said Piter with a laugh when I mentioned it.)

One morning, Pierre, the sweet concierge at my hotel, told me to take Luca to the ShellMuseum. "It's great, and the guy who runs it, Ingnu, is really interesting."

We set off in our jeepnot one of the big ones Arlette was ranting aboutand came to asignpost at the crossroads that read CARTIER in one direction and DREAMTIME in the other. Beingmore interested in Dreamtime than in gold watches that tell the real time, we turned left. Themuseum was locked, but we found Ingnu out back. He was born in the village and, at eighty-nine, his face was lined and freckled after a lifetime in the sun. He lives in his museum now,sleeping on a small cot with a blue coverlet, underneath a worn photograph of his late wife. Ifound all of this unbearably sad, but at the same time there is something touching about his totaldevotion to his work, lovingly trading shells with collectors around the world.

His life, I could tell, was hard. His left eye is sightless, the result of a careless local doctorhaving left a piece of cotton in it after surgery, and it looked painful. Luca pulled on my sleeve.He asked why Ingnu couldn't take the plane to Paris and see a good doctor. The old manlaughedhe does not feel sorry for himselfand gave Luca two dried-out, delicate sea horsesas a present. He put them in an old box, and I tucked them into my bag. Ingnu took us throughthe rooms of lavender and rose coral behind dusty glass; enormous langoustine shells; amounted, angry-looking blowfish; and row upon row of sand from beaches all over the world

Coney Island, Barcelona, Ko Chang in Thailand, even English sand from Burnham-on-Sea.

The next day we returned to the Shell Museum. Luca was upset about Ingnu's eye and wantedto give him a presentsome money from his piggy bank so he could take the plane to Paris "tosee a good doctor." That day, Ingnu told me about the past, the grinding poverty, the famines."Sometimes we had no bread. It was la misre noire." Black miserya million miles, but not somany years, away from Diddy's boat, which, when it comes to St. Barts, docks in the harborwithin sight of the Shell Museum.


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On our last day, Trenette told me that I had to go to La Rotisserie and get the white fish cookedwith peppers, but the chicken was just out of the oven, all golden, and I couldn't resist. I boughtcucumber salad with mint, and we took our picnic to Saline Beach, which was windy andcompletely empty. The sky was gray, and it opened up and rained but only for a moment; thenthe sun broke through the clouds. We swam all day, pushing Luca between us in the waves,and by the end of the afternoon he was weaving in and out of the surf confidently without his

floaters. "Mama, Mama, look at me!"

When we'd arrived on St. Barts a week before, I had fantasized about returning to the past, tothat prelapsarian champagne-infused bubble of happiness we had experienced five yearsearlier, but of course we couldn't. The reality was that my husband was a wounded person andmy boy was growing up, yet even if they were both drifting off to another land where I could notnecessarily follow them, I knew that I would never lose them. I wasn't entirely sure what layahead, but I had come to terms with that. And the unadulterated joy and hope of our first triphad, over the years, been tempered by pain. The hope remained, strong as ever, and now somekind of wisdom had replaced the joy, which isn't such a bad deal after all.

the soul of st barts

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