When she did not come back, I went outside in my turn, but I called in vain in the darkness. No one responded. I found not only the Korean dress but also the mariner’s costume she had worn, which made me think that she had been taken by surprise and abducted just as she was about to exchange one costume for the other.
I ran in all directions. I even obtained from my companions that they would assist me in my search. We were outside the town and its gates were closed. The Koreans that we interrogated did not reply to us. One of them threw stones at us and wounded Omar on the forehead.
We went back inside. That night was the saddest of all.
The next day, the Japanese who knew a little Dutch came to find us. He told us not to occupy ourselves with our companion any longer if we valued our lives. She had been abducted by Sun Yen, who was the king’s uncle and had more power than the Governor. He was the fat Korean who had touched Inès’ breasts the day before. She would become his wife. The Japanese assured us that she would be infinitely happier with him than with us because he was rich and moderately good. The only fault for which he was reputed was lasciviousness—but, he added, with a wink, perhaps she would not complain about that.
Those words and the gold coin he gave each of us, by way of indemnity, made me think that the guards had divulged what had happened the previous night in the prison.
I swore to myself to liberate Inès.
We led a very miserable life. The rice that we had been given was replaced by barley. That barley was stopped. We were obliged to beg in order to live, but the charity of the inhabitants for us was quickly exhausted. We were advised to do what other beggars did, who were not sedentary and who went from town to town, but we did not want to quit the sea shore, which represented for us the hope of escape.
Winter had come and bad weather prevented any attempt for the moment. Our character had become embittered. We had frequent arguments.
Otters and the Arab, in particular, were always on the brink of coming to blows. They only reached an understanding in the evening when we were gathered round the fire in our hut and they talked about Inès. They praised her beauty and boasted about the pleasure they had had with her. They mocked me for not having had it.
To make me suffer, Omar claimed that on the sand dune where he had spent the night with her it was she who, driven by her indecent nature, had woken him from his sleep in order to make advances to him. Otters affirmed that it had been the same for him, and Captain Fingham disparaged her with filthy words. Once I seized a firebrand and threatened to set fire to our hut if they did not stop the flow of their hatred.
One evening, at sunset, four armed Koreans came to fetch us out of our hut rather violently. A closed palanquin was outside the door. We sensed that someone was examining us from the interior. A powerful hand with square fingers passed through the curtain, the wrist of which bore a gold bracelet. Then the palanquin drew away. We were still meditating on that event when the Japanese came to find Otters. He told him that it was on behalf of the governor’s wife, Hiao, Manchu in origin, who dominated her weak husband completely. He added that no harm would come to Otters if he conducted himself cleverly.
The latter departed, full of apprehension, for everything now inspired dread in us because of the weakness that misfortune gives the mind.
He came back the following day quite satisfied, with a sort of superior conceit. He refused to tell us anything, on the pretext of the terrible punishments with which he had been threatened if he talked. We noticed that he had bruises on the right eye and the neck.
He went out during the day, as he had the habit of doing, in order to go and beg. But when we came back in the evening he filled the hut with horrible cries. He had been seized and knocked down by Koreans and one of them had crushed his right foot by dropping a heavy mass of iron on it.
We were in the process of bandaging his foot as best we could when the Japanese came and took Fingham away.
The next day, the latter came back, smiling, in spite of the seeming evidence of a punch that he had on his chin. He had the same superior attitude as Otters the day before, and he observed the same silence, in spite of my questions.
In the day, while I was caring for Otters, I saw Captain Fingham coming back, dragging himself along the ground. The same thing that had happened to Otters had happened to him. Koreans lying in wait for him had crushed his right foot.
Omar and I begged him to tell us what had happened the previous night in order that we could discover whether there as a connection between the employment of the night and the crushing of the foot. He was obstinate in keeping silent. Otters had a fever and there was no point in questioning him again.
We gave the wounded man the cares of which we were capable and the Japanese appeared again when evening came. It was Omar that he came to fetch.
“We are in Allah’s hands,” he said, and followed the Japanese.
I saw him come back, like the others, with a tranquil face and with the same conceit. He apologized for not being able to tell me anything because of the horrible punishment with which he had been threatened in the case of indiscretion. But he assured me that, in his opinion, there could not be any connection between what had happened during the night and the torture to which our companions had been subjected.
One of his eyes was in a very poor state. He resolved not to go out all day.
I absented myself in order to go buy a kind of maize that we cooked and which served us as bread. When I returned, Omar was lying on the ground unconscious. His foot was crushed. I brought him round, bandaged him and spent a sad day.
I thought about running away, but where could I go? I would be rapidly overtaken. Then too, I could not abandon my injured companions. All three had a fever and two were delirious. I could not think of making them say anything that might inform me as to what had happened to them and the manner in which I might be able to preserve my right foot.
Then I meditated profoundly, for wisdom is in the hidden part of ourselves, and I began to see a glimmer of truth.
“Only tell me,” I said to the Japanese, “whether the Governor’s wife has any knowledge of the night that my three companions spent in prison with the Portuguese woman, and the screams that she uttered during that night.”
He considered me with an extreme surprise, nodded his head, and added that he would not have believed that I was so intelligent. He left me at the door of the palace.
A Korean armed with a naked sword conducted me along a long stone corridor. We went past a grille behind which a lion was pacing, which seemed furious. The Korean touched his lips with his finger and mimed pushing me toward the lion. That was the punishment reserved for the talkative, which had frightened my companions so much.
Then we traversed several empty rooms, until we reached a chamber covered with carpets, where he left me. There was no furniture except for a tall lamp and a large bed. After a moment, one of the hangings moved aside and I saw a woman appear of almost immeasurable stature. She was wearing a Chinese robe. She was frightfully ugly and I thought that she was laughing. I saw then that her raised upper lip allowed the sight of her singularly long and yellow teeth.
She looked at me without amenity, gripped my shoulder, turned me around, and suddenly, without warning, punched me in the chest. Surprise caused me to recoil, but she delivered two or three more punches to my face, more forcefully applied. I tried to push her away but she started striking me with all her might. Anger seized me and I riposted. Her eyes lit up with joy and I sensed that she wanted to fight. She was very strong. She was now trying to knock me over on to the bed. I dared not strike her with any serious blows, which meant that she had the upper hand momentarily, and she succeeded, by grabbing my legs, in laying me down on the bed.
She started to laugh; her teeth seemed elongated; she pronounced a few words that I did not understand and made an imperious gesture instructing me not to move. She took off her robe and came to lie down beside me. Her violence had given wa
y to the simulacra of a ridiculous affection. She took her head in my hands and placed her mouth on mine. I perceived the cold of her long teeth on my lips and the detestable odor of her breath. Her skin gave me a sensation of dampness.
Then I thought about the unpardonable imprudence of my companions and wondered how they had had the courage to satisfy that amorous woman who needed the stimulus of a fight to prepare herself for amour and who, once satisfied, would inevitably think of recommencing.
I remained inert by her side without difficulty. Then I detached myself, pretending to be uniquely occupied with the pain that the blows I had received had caused me.
She leapt out of bed and put on her robe again. She spat in my face, and as I went to the door she tried to kick me. I went out and she shouted insults at me from a distance, which I did not understand.
I took the same route that I had followed, hastening my steps when I went past the lion. At the door, the Korean who had accompanied me had the kind of smile one had for someone who has had a stroke of luck.
As the gates of the town were closed until the next day, I could not go back to our habitation and I went to ask the Japanese for hospitality.
“Already,” he said to me, offering me a little rice alcohol. And he questioned me as to whether my foot would suffer the same fate as those of by companions.
I shook my head. In a country where beggars are accustomed not to remain in the same town, I had not rendered myself sufficiently desirable for me to require an infirmity to oblige me to remain forever close at hand and at the disposal of the powerful Hiao.
My companions healed slowly. As I had foreseen, they were recalled two or three times to the home of the Governor’s wife, but the only benefits they obtained from it were the bruises with which she covered their faces.
They suffered cruelly from the jealousy that I inspired in them. When we were together I saw their eyes obstinately fixed on my feet. They could not bear the idea that I had not been subjected to the same torture as them. They were perpetually wondering why.
On evening, on going back to our hut, I noticed an enormous stone near the door hat had not been there in the morning. That put me on the alert. I pretended to be very weary and overtaken by a heavy slumber. My companions got up, limping, went out silently, and I saw them bringing back the stone in order to drop it on my right foot.
I had no difficulty preventing them from doing so. I represented the injustice of their action to them. They made a semblance of renouncing it, but I sensed that they believed in all sincerity that they were the victims of the injustice of fate. The stone remained by the door as evidence of their menacing hatred.
The good weather had returned. I had put off the project of escape by sea because of my hope of rescuing Inès. In addition, my companions’ minds had weakened. They had become pusillanimous, they feared death all the more as their live became more miserable.
I had finally had news of Inès. She got a letter to me via the Japanese, who had been charged with teaching her the Korean language. She told me that after long suffering she was beginning to get accustomed to her existence. She was a prisoner in an immense dwelling, but her husband, Sun Yen, was very good to her and adored her. She had just brought into the world a daughter who would always retain her next to him. She exhorted me not to make any attempt to find her. She sent her adieux and the assurance that she had loved me.
I experienced a great sadness and no longer thought about anything but quitting the land of Korea, whatever the risks it was necessary to run at sea.
My companions, while hating me, obeyed by virtue of the action that my will exerted upon them. Our flight was decided and we agreed that we would embark on a small boat moored in a bay near the town.
We chose a moonless night, for three limping silhouettes were susceptible of identifying us to those who might perceive us. We therefore quit out hut carrying two large pitchers full of water, carefully stoppered, as well as a large quantity of cooked rice and bread made with maize.
As we arrived near the boat, a Korean who must have followed us uttered a cry of alarm behind us. Omar retraced his steps swiftly, his knife in his hand. We hastened to prepare the sails in accordance with Fingham’s instructions, but Omar came back to the boat and assured us that the Korean would not cry out again.
He was mistaken, for I was to perceive, as we drew away from the shore, the plaint of someone dying.
As we embarked the provisions, Otters dropped a heavy crate laden with rice, which nearly broke my foot. I understood that he had done it deliberately, and promised myself to be careful of my security.
The wind was propitious and impelled us all night far from the Korean coast, with the result that at sunrise, we were in the open sea and could consider ourselves safe from any pursuit.
Toward the middle of the day, a sea-spider started running around the bottom of the boat. Omar claimed, without any reason, that the animal brought bad luck. He seized an oar in order to crush it. I only just had time to jump sideways, because he had aimed at my foot and not the spider.
I seized him by the throat and made as if to throw him overboard. The captain and Otters intervened and the former threatened to put me in irons by virtue of his power as captain. I had snatched the Arab’s knife. I replied that I would kill the first man who came near me.
After having been contrary for such a long time, was favorable to us. On the fifth day after our departure we came in sight of land, which we believed to be Japan, and which was the island of Goto. We landed there without difficulty and were greeted by a Dutchman named Guillaume Navi, who had a trading-post. He kept us with him for a few days, enabling us to sleep in beds and nourishing us abundantly. I had given him an account of our adventures and begged him not to confide any heavy object to my companions.
He took us to Nagasaki himself. We arrived on the eighth of October. Our captivity had lasted fifteen months.
The Director of the Dutch Company, who knew my father, offered me hospitality and treated me as his own son. We were the object of general curiosity and the Governor of the city wanted to hear our story from our own mouths.
I spent a month there before embarking on a Dutch three-master that set sail for Batavia. In the meantime I could not go out in Nagasaki without being followed by a few curious people. But every time I heard, at a street corner, an irregular sound of footsteps attesting to the lameness of a passer-by, I turned around swiftly, and ran.
PRISCILLA OF ALEXANDRIA
I. Priscilla, it’s you, Priscilla...
A great rumor filled all the streets leading down to the old port of Kibotos. It was a muffled stamping of feet, and the cries of a furious multitude.
Priscilla, who was playing with her brother Marcus, stopped, thinking that the sea made less noise on stormy nights as it broke on the cliffs of the isle of the Pharos.
Suddenly, she perceived the click of the two enormous battens of the solid cedar-wood door of the palace, which had been closed in haste.
“The demons! The demons are coming!” someone shouted.
Immediately afterwards, a desperate howl rose from the interior courtyard to the room where the children were, and that howl became a regular, frightful lament that seemed to be emerging from the throat of a beast rather than a human throat.
Priscilla leaned out of the window and perceived a slave named Mammoea on all fours on the mosaics with an animal expression on her face. She was a Phrygian renowned for her fasting and the Christian austerity of her life. She was reputed to have once seen the Virgin Mary, but she could not hear the syllables of the word “demon” without falling into a singular crisis in which her voice lost any human intonation, as if the demon had entered into her by virtue of the force of the word.
Marcus burst into idiotic laughter and came to huddle against his sister, touching her arm and her shoulder, as he had a habit of doing every time he was close to her. This time, Priscilla did not think of pushing him away. Footfalls filled the staircase.
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“Throw the pikes out of the window,” ordered a voice.
The door opened and Priscilla saw her grandfather on the threshold. He was simulating calm, and a mocking smile was fixed on his lips. He raised his right hand and waved it, as if to reassure his trembling grandson and a few servants who were waiting his orders in the vestibule and on the steps of the marble stairway. He gave the impression of saying: I’ve seen many others!
Old Diodorus had been twenty years old in the times of the Emperor Julian and he had indeed, as he frequently repeated, seen many others. The pagan populace did not frighten him. At Hamath in Syria he had dispersed with blows of his staff a procession of naked priestesses who were attempting to invade the Church of the Epiphany, to the sound of tambourines, in order to replace a statue of Bacchus therein. He had nearly been stoned alongside Bishop Georgius of Cappadocia.14 He had contributed under Theodosius to the destruction of the temple of Serapis.15 He would not allow himself to be frightened by the cries of hatred of the prostitutes of Rhacotis and the thieves of the embalmers’ quarter. They had been wrong to bring out weapons and close the door. It was, on the contrary, necessary to open it wide. He would appear on the threshold and the crowd would flee before his gaze...
Diodorus the son held him by the arm and held hard. Although he had inherited his father’s piety, he had neither his violence, nor his courage.
“My God! My God! It’s necessary to be careful because of my children...”
Old Diodorus shrugged his shoulders. “Hide them in the cellars if you’re afraid.” And he went downstairs and traversed the courtyard, heading for the door.
Voices were rising from the street now, as lugubrious as the cries of wild beasts in the desert, and the sound of sticks hitting the wood of the door was audible. The porter had fled somewhere in the palace, taking away the heavy key. People searched for him and called to him. That lasted several minutes.
Diodorus the son’s teeth were chattering. He suddenly made a resolution.
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