There are, layered up against the islands, the beautiful green waves of water and silence. There is the purity of salt in and about the Antilles. There is before my eyes the pretty Place de Pétionville, planted with pines and hibiscus. There is my island, Martinique, and its fresh necklace of clouds puffed up by Mount Pelée. There are the highest plateaus of Haiti, where a horse dies, lightning-struck by the secularly murderous storm at Hinche. Nearby, his master contemplates the country he thought to be solid and expansive. He doesn’t yet know that he is participating in the islands’ lack of equilibrium. But this stroke of terrestrial insanity enlightens his heart: he begins to think about the other Antilles, about their volcanoes, their earthquakes, their hurricanes.