On Holy Thursday he never failed to notify “los Americanos,” as we were often called, not to sound the bell, neither the plantation-bell out-of-doors or dinner-bell in the house, from Thursday night to Saturday morning, as it was in violation of civil as well as ecclesiastical law.
Though devoted to the church and its duties, the jolly old man was not averse to the amusements in which all classes indulged. He was the owner of the best fighting-cocks in the whole neighborhood. As Sundays were the days of fiesta, he prepared his birds for the fray and deposited them, safely secured in the folds of a silk handkerchief, on the church-porch during morning service; and the celerity with which that divine disposed of his sacerdotal vestments after celebrating mass, and hastened with the crowd to the cockpit, was something quite extraordinary!
Such of the coolies as were true to the wholesale christening they received upon arrival in Cuba, and all the negroes, were furnished with codfish in place of tasajo during Holy Week. Numbers of the Africans fasted by abstaining entirely from food on Good-Friday, and by many acts indicated their reverence for the church. At vesperos (evening bell), wherever they might be, and whatever their occupation, the older ones stopped for a moment, uncovered their heads, made the sign of the cross, and repeated a short prayer.
Frequently a woman at the tombo-dances would seat herself beside a small table covered with a white cloth, on which was placed a lighted candle and a cup. Those who felt disposed dropped a coin into the receptacle, and the amount thus collected was sent to the cura to pay for a mass for the repose of the soul of some relative.
There was a strange combination of African superstition and church formula in the attention paid by the negroes to the dying. Two things they were particular about—that their friends should depart from the world naked, and with a lighted candle in the hand.
A blessed candle is kept in every Cuban family, to be placed in the hands of their expiring friends. The same one is used from generation to generation. There is something touching and pathetic in the sentiment that the same lighted emblem, typical of the faith, is placed and held in the hand of grandfather, father, son, and grandson in the supreme moment, to light them through the dark valley of the shadow of death.
Señora Royo was eighty years old when she died of small-pox. Although her body was well sprinkled with quicklime and interred in the village cemetery, the negroes had a superstition that the señora’s ghost visited the garden every night and took its seat on the bench beneath the zapote-tree where she had spent so many hours during her life. The old lady must have been, like many Cuban women, a hard task-mistress, for the negroes who remembered and had served her, were mortally afraid of seeing her again.
The garden was large, and in many places the shade was dense. There were arbors draped with flowering vines; zapote, aguacate, and guava trees—all of which have low-spreading branches—lemon and orange, too, and palms, besides many varieties of shrubs. On one side of the entrance was a parterre devoted to flowers. The beds, arranged in a series of graceful geometrical designs, were inclosed within stone walls kept dazzling with whitewash and raised about two feet above the promenade, thus rendering it convenient for the aged lady to touch and admire her flowers without being compelled to stoop. The garden was surrounded by a dense growth of banana-trees, only broken by the tall, narrow gate which led into the inclosure. Now, the Chinese had never known the awful señora, and so were not afraid of her ghost. They made predatory raids upon the garden, often robbing it of unripe fruit.
One night, seated on the veranda with the children, enjoying the tropical radiance of the moon, I noticed something white moving at the entrance to the garden—moving, moving—in a mysterious will-o’-the-wisp way. Sometimes the tall white figure was in full view, and again in profile. Now and again it vanished, as if to rest on the zapote bench in the dark, but quickly to reappear. Under the waving palms it seemed to bow, courtesy, and even beckon. We all watched the slow-moving, weird, white object with conjectures and surmises. At last I tested Henry’s courage by asking, “Would you dare go to the garden and touch that thing?” After some bantering from the others he went half-way down, and returned to say that it was the tall gate left unfastened and swaying in the evening air. Zell, who was always hovering around after the day’s work was done to hear some of the stories by which I endeavored to entertain the children, at once suggested a plan to play ghost and “skeer dem Chinese, fur dey done got dat bad we can’t get no decent orange outen dat garden now.” So he hastily tucked a sheet under his arm, and, stealthily creeping around the back way, entered the inclosure over the rear wall. When all was ready, I called Ciriaco from the kitchen and ordered him to close the garden-gate. He walked down in the glittering moonlight, utterly fearless. As he placed his hand on the gate, Zell, enveloped in white, rose from the bench under the dark-foliaged tree, and slowly and solemnly bowed. There was one wild, unearthly yell, followed by a succession of piercing shrieks, as Ciriaco fled toward the house with the speed that fear imparts.
Quick as a flash all the other Chinamen appeared. Ciriaco had gained the house, almost paralyzed, when his alarmed countrymen met him. With gasps and groans he told the fearful tale. After a rapid debate among themselves, a few of the bravest agreed to go in a body and investigate the supernatural specter that barred the entrance to those delicious fruit-groves. Zell had retired, to await results. About a score of wary braves proceeded cautiously and slowly toward the spot, peering with keen and anxious eyes as they advanced. When they reached the gate, Zell slowly rose from out the darkness and seemed ten feet in height in that white shroud, as with outstretched arms he made one step forward into the moonlight. The brave band broke ranks and fled with woful yells and shrieks. The fun was too much for Zell. The overwhelming success of the pantomime so convulsed him with laughter that he rolled over and over on the ground, trailing the winding-sheet after him. The nut was cracked with a loud explosion, but the kernel was lost when the good-natured negro’s unmistakable “guffaw” rose above every other sound.