Jean de Fodoas

by Maurice Magre

  I put down my sword and belt, which would not have failed to provoke the astonishment of anyone I encountered. I was in my jerkin. While protesting against my project, Omar Ali wound his own turban around my head in order that my silhouette, in the shadows, would be that of an ordinary man. He recommended that, once on the other side of the pond, I should follow the bank, avoid on the right a caravanserai in which dogs might snap at my heels, descend a sloping street bordered by shops and, after crossing a little bridge, I would find the long avenue along which I had galloped, which led to the Portuguese dwelling.

  One is sometimes led in the most singular fashion, as if an invisible guide had taken you by the hand. I have often been pleased to imagine that I have an invisible protector, and I confess that every time that conviction has been profound and certain in me, I have been protected, and the protection has been mathematically proportionate to my conviction.

  I was serene and tranquil. I knew that I was not to disappear obscurely but to confront the judgment of the Emperor. I traversed the pool in spite to the weeds that I initially mistook for snakes, and which rendered the manipulation of the oars very difficult, especially for someone used to rowing in the running water of the Garonne.

  Hindu cities have a nocturnal animation unknown in the cities of France. In Toulouse I passed for a debauched young man because I took pleasure in living by night. There, the extreme heat gives the most virtuous inhabitants the habits of the young debauchees of Toulouse. There were many shops illuminated. I do not know whether their lights served as points of reference for my invisible guide or whether it was able to steer in complete darkness, but I arrived without difficulty before the burned house, which was indeed the one I supposed.

  The fire was almost extinct and already, the curiosity-seekers that the event had summoned were going home. I had noticed that the conflagrations do not trouble Hindus. They regard them as manifestations of destiny and they expect, ordinarily, that destiny will depart as it has come.

  The courtyard preceding the house was full of people. Two monks were arguing, and almost ready to come to blows. Sometimes they took as witnesses impassive naked men who must have been servants. I understood that a Capuchin and a Jesuit were at odds. The Jesuit was accusing the Capuchin of theft, rapine, lèse-majesté and a crime against God. I heard the name of Yacoub several times. In the end, the Capuchin, who was a thin, pale man and who was affecting a calmness he did not have, said: “You are an envoy of the Devil, then.”

  And to attenuate the gravity of that remark by generalizing it, he turned to the audience and repeated: “The Jesuits are envoys of the Devil.”

  As if that word had the power to make him emerge from the earth, a man appeared in the frame of the door and I recognized Francisco Manoël.

  “The horses will be here in a moment,” he said to someone who was following him, and in whom I recognized by his plumes the Marquis de Barbosa.

  “I’ll bring you up before the Kotoual!” cried the Jesuit. “You’ll be pursued for the abduction of the young woman.”

  “Have you no shame,” interjected another monk. “Before these pagans! You’re dishonoring the religion of Christ.”

  To my great surprise, I saw Francisco Manoël’s eyes fixed on me. In spite of my turban and my modest appearance, he recognized me! He made a semblance of finding my presence normal, and he said to me in a low voice: “Follow me.”

  I raised my head and observed that the rose-bush was no longer on the window where I had seen it.

  “Was there not up there…?” I began.

  But Francisco Manoël laughed and took me into a ground-floor room that had not been touched by the fire.

  “Barbosa’s waiting for me,” he said. “Here’s the best tari in India.” He had just taken from a cupboard an earthenware jar covered in wicker and glasses. “For once, the Jesuits have been rolled over by the Capuchins. It really is a good story. It will oblige me to a pursuit and adventures in order to catch up with the stake in the game. The stake is a beautiful fairy-tale princess. You know something about that!”

  He sniggered and pushed a glass toward me.

  “I never drink,” I said, coldly.

  “Oh, really! But it’s a matter of the best tari in India.”

  He was the image of temptation. I wondered how he had been able to recognize me when I had played the role of Mourad. He emptied a large glass, passed his tongue over his lips and spoke at hazard. I thought that he had drunk a good deal before my rival.

  “One doesn’t get bored with Christian monks. Can you imagine that the Capuchins have stolen the Viceroy of India’s gift from the Jesuits. And what a gift! A pure young woman who has an accursed host between her breasts. They imagine that one arrives at governing men by the intermediary of a woman. What folly! How it happened I have no idea. I’ve been played myself, although I believed myself to be very strong. And I don’t know who set fire to the house ether. Perhaps that Yacoub, perhaps the Capuchins—for it’s to the lord of the city of Almaner that they’ve delivered the pearl originally destined for Mourad.”31

  Francisco Manoël had poured another glass of tari.

  “That Yacoub! I wonder how the Emperor Akbar could have such a companion. They’re not the same family. There are those who hate and the others. Yacoub is one of those who hate. And that poor fool Barbosa imagines that by invoking the name of the Viceroy of Goa he might be able to enter into possession of the lost treasure. Have you ever heard of an owl returning a little bird that it’s in the process of devouring?”

  The voice of the Marquis de Barbosa interrupted him. He was calling Manoël by name. We could hear the whinnying of horses.

  “He hopes that they won’t be able to get far because of the darkness of the night. We scarcely have four men at our disposal. And what weapons!”

  Barbosa appeared in the frame of the window and shouted that it was no time for drinking, but for departing without losing a minute.

  “Do you at least have pistols?” Manoël replied.

  “They’re unnecessary. Those we’re pursuing now belong to the Emperor. I shall speak in the name of the Emperor.”

  Manoël shrugged his shoulders and headed for the door.

  “You know the stake. Come with us. I have an idea that it’s better for you to run over the roads than wait for the Emperor’s arrival.” To Barbosa he said: “We have one man more.”

  But the latter did not look at me, doubtless thinking that the authority of his presence was more than sufficient.

  A Jesuit with graying hair was already in the saddle. “The difficulty,” he said in a low voice, “will be having the northern gate opened. But I know the man in command there. I’ve even cured his daughter. Let me handle it. I hope to succeed.”

  A horse had been brought forward for me. An internal combat was engaged within my soul. We left. I was the last of the troop that we formed.

  I do not know what would have happened if we had taken another road than the one I had followed myself. It was necessary to traverse a part of the city in order to reach the northern gate. When we were going along the little wall of earth that marked the limit of the caravanserai, I perceived the water of the pond vaguely and I thought I could see the contour of a human silhouette on the other side, on the rampart of the fortress.

  It was almost without reflection that I let myself drop from the horse and started running toward the place where my boat ought to be. Perhaps it was the same invisible guide that permitted me to find it immediately. Who knows? Perhaps it had been guarding it in my absence. Who can ever know the power and activity of those guides?

  SINCERITY

  My soul had lost all its customary lightness when it was announced to me that the Emperor had given me an order to appear before him.

  The camp extended beyond the northern gate and the entire city of Ahmednagar was decked with the Emperor’s banners. The city had abruptly changed its appearance when the trumpets of the Mongol advance guard had resonated. Thus
, it appears, other trumpets, before Jericho, destroyed the walls of that ancient city. The rebels had abruptly dissolved. All the inhabitants were unanimous in their love for their Emperor. They formed corteges in the streets, which descended to the camp in order to manifest their fidelity. A triple row of guards was necessary to prevent them from penetrating into the tangle of tents.

  It was an entire city of fabrics, brocades and hides that unfurled in front of me when I emerged from Ahmednagar at sunset behind Omar Ali, who was marching in silence, his head bowed. The streets were delimited by high standards and painted canes surmounted by the tails of yaks. To the left were the bazaars of the merchants who followed the army no matter how rapidly it marched. They were arguing about the emplacements and their cries and demands could be heard in all languages. To the right was the elephant park and that of the camels, and the wind blew a pungent odor of animality toward me. Men were lighting fires with animal dung, of which they were making heaps. Others were unrolling straps to hold up the tents of Omrahs whose importance was recognized by the height of the standards that flew at their summit. The night passed over like a tide. The men posted as nocturnal guards commenced shouting: “Kaberda!”—which is to say “Look out!” The dust fell back like a immense lid, confounded with the impalpable element of the first shadows.

  “There’s the Agacy,” said Omar Ali. “It’s just been lit.” The agacy is an exceedingly tall mast with a lantern, placed in front of the imperial tent. “May it be a good omen!” But he pronounced the words in a lugubrious tone.

  Omar Ali, as an officer in frequent communication with Mourad, had been summoned immediately by the Emperor in order to give him the details that he knew about his end. He had overheard a few words spoken in my regard and had not drawn favorable conclusions therefrom.

  “Above all, don’t admit to having drunk the tari liquor,” he said to me in a low voice. “Remember Kouli Sultan.”

  The Turkman Kouli Sultan had been condemned to death a year before my arrival in Agra for having brought that same liquor to Danial, Emperor Akbar’s youngest son. Danial had been locked up in a castle in Gujarat with theologians and sages in order to cure him of his mania for absorbing poisons. He took, indifferently, opium, hashish, Arab preparations bought back by pilgrims from Mecca, aphrodisiac mixtures that came from China or Malaysia, plants from the island of Macassar that exasperated the nerves, and also the tari liquor.

  That was the least violent of the poisons. The desire to forget life was so imperious in Danial that he had once swallowed crushed rubies because a charlatan had assured him that he would obtain a certain appeasement therefrom. But the Emperor, who, according to his intimates, absorbed opium in the evening, either aspiring it through a hollow bamboo stem or eating it in pills, had a prejudice against alcohol. He said that the fermentation of plants or fruits engendered hatred, which is an evil liquid known s au-de-vie. He had therefore prescribed the death penalty for anyone who introduced it into the castle of Sourban, which he had filled with tedious and pious old men. He thought that wisdom could be substituted for poisons.

  Danial had simulated a desire to hunt birds on the terrace of the castle and sent his young comrade Kouli Sultan to fetch a choice of rifles from the city of Surat, where there were a number that had come from Holland and Portugal. All would have been well if the young man had bought back rifles of a normal form, but by virtue of zeal, he had bought three weapons with enormous, tapering barrels of a kind never seen in India, which were an object of curiosity. When he entered the castle of Sourban, the governor wanted to handle such strange devices. He had perceived that the barrels served as a receptacle for the forbidden alcohol, Kouli Sultan was imprisoned and only owed his life to the intervention of his grandfather, who spent a fortune in order to contrive his escape.

  Yes, I remembered Kouli Sultan. I had often been told his story. It was present in my mind when we went through a group of Gourzeberdars, cavaliers of tall stature who never quit the Emperor when traveling. I sensed the necessity of lying, in spite of the horror that it has always inspired in me.

  Omar Ali made a gesture that seemed to be that of an eternal adieu and I traversed the line of tents that led to the Emperor’s.

  Contrary to his habit, the Emperor was not seated. He was pacing back and forth, his head bowed. Aboul Fazi was at the extremity of the tent with a visage clad in impassivity. Through a partly-raised door-curtain, I glimpsed as in a dream, in the tent next to the Emperor’s, a catafalque that seemed to me to be enormous and around which mullahs were standing in prayer, as if made of marble. I knew that Mourad’s body had been transported during the day, before it departed for Chapour, where it would be buried.

  As I was about to prostrate myself, the Emperor stopped me with a gesture. He stopped very close to me. I had the strange sensation of having no material weight and that I might be able to fly if I made an intense wish to do so.

  “What is it that made you lose your reason?” he said to me, in a very low voice.

  I had a bizarre sensation of being a stranger to what was happening.

  “Reply,” he said, without impatience. “Were you acting under the influence of opium, hashish or alcohol?”

  The alteration of the truth suddenly seemed to me to be an absolute impossibility.

  “I was acting above all under the influence of alcohol,” I said.

  And, seized by an unexpected facility of narration, I reported the events that had unfolded in Ahmednagar, as a historian might have done who had wanted to depict my soul, but a partial historian, exaggerating my weaknesses and my errors and glossing over that which was meritorious, or even passing over it in silence. In particular, I did not mention the incident of the cannon and other valorous actions.

  The Emperor had to know about them, but he had the appearance of sweeping them aside with a gesture.

  “I know that you’re courageous. But everyone, or almost everyone, is courageous. Have you ever heard mention of one of my soldiers who was not? And I have a million soldiers. There is a courage other than that in war.”

  When I had said everything, I fell silent. I did not pronounce any word of regret. That was not out of pride, but because I sensed that it would be futile. My fate depended on something else. The Emperor’s thinking was above my own sentiments.

  He was looking at me, but it was not me he saw. He saw his son Mourad, and also his other two sons, Selim and Danial, whom he had loved the most in all the world. He was scrutinizing the mystery that had separated them so profoundly, without anyone being able to explain why, from goodness, generosity and all the human virtues. For all three of them had been transformed in the same fashion. They had followed an inexplicable spiritual curve. Until their fifteenth year they had shown elevated qualities, nobility of soul, and above all, they had loved their father. And at fifteen, as if an evil wind had passed over them, they had changed, their virtues had ceased to grow, they had gone bad. That was manifested by abuses of power, injustices, a mysterious appetite for the cessation of thought, for stimulation by alcohol, for plunging into dreams by means of opium.

  But all that would have been lost in the infinite forbearance of Akbar’s heart—except that the three sons, as if they had been subjected to an inhuman influence, had also become detached from their father, had shown him animosity, and then hatred. He had responded to that hatred with untiring forgiveness; but it had been so great that they could not always disguise it. Mourad had taken advantage of a war in the north and the distancing from his father to put himself at the head of a revolt. Selim had done the same.

  Certainly, the Emperor had had no difficulty in reestablishing order. His sons were not of his stature. He would have preferred it had it been more difficult and they had at least demonstrated some grandeur, even in revolt. And when they had come to beg his pardon, they had done so with tight lips, knowing that it was granted in advance. And the third son, to whose love the father had clung desperately, had followed inexorably the same path of
evil transformation.

  Unhappy Emperor! By a curious phenomenon, that infinite misery of a great man only appeared to me in its verity at that moment, when I appeared before him after having enjoyed his confidence. He was gazing at me with a desperate curiosity. I was like the living image of one he loved and whose love he could not attain. I showed him the face of the bad son, and by an inexplicable twist of my nature, or that of hazard, I, who was nothing, was not begging his pardon.

  He was still staring at me, and I understood that he was looking into the past. He was seeing again the time when his children, at a young age, were obliged to love him because they were not yet conscious. He was wondering why that love had died when their intelligence was born: a profound law of destiny, a punishment, the bad advice of their entourage, or simply alcohol and all the poisons that deprive humans of consciousness? Or the corruption of power? He had just given the illusion of it to a man who was standing before him, he had enabled him to play the role of a King, and that actor had lost his reason and had almost overturned the stage that had devolved to him in the drama of life.

  For an instant, I saw passing over his features the wrath that certain excessively accurate portraits produce, the portraits of beloved beings who are far away, that one cannot attain. One sometimes breaks those portraits. Then it disappeared. Wretched play of passions! That thought was in his gaze. Wretched humans! That shadow of anger gave way to a great serenity, a sad serenity in which there was resignation to the incomprehensible laws that direct human destinies.

  From a great distance, from high above, I heard his voice, another voice than his own, murmur: “Go, poor child.”

  I tried to open my mouth. Was it not necessary to stammer a phrase in which there were words of thanks and pardon? I could not do it. Aboul Fazi made a sign that meant that the interview was concluded. Was the Emperor not accustomed to silence and ingratitude?