The Lepers

by Henri de Montherlant

  And then I shall lie back again and say to you: 'More! I'm not cured yet.'

  I'm closing the envelope of this letter quickly. I no longer wish to know what I have written to you.

  My happiness deserves some punishment. I inflict upon myself that of not writing to you before next Saturday.

  A.

  This letter was filed away by the recipient, unopened. However, the stamp not having been cancelled by the post office, M. Costals removed it.

  PART TWO

  12

  'How did that happen?' he asked.

  'The heat.'

  'The heat! In February, in the Atlas, with snow all around! And when even in this heated room you can see the vapour coming out of our mouths!'

  'At noon, the sun is hot.'

  There were neither shutters nor curtains on the window (if that small aperture deserved the name) of Costals' room in this old military post of Tighremt which was now a shabby fondouk [An Arab inn (Translator's note).] run by a retired sergeant-major. Costals had draped his big travelling coat over the pane (a window-pane in the Atlas, wonder of wonders!), through which there came an icy blast. And they raised it now to look outside.

  Three hundred yards below them, the bushes were ablaze; a belt of fire, some fifty yards wide, beleaguered the village, with its houses of pale mud, in tiers, like giant steps mounting to an altar. At the edges it was gaining ground, advancing like a wild beast, with the same life-like appearance as the clouds yesterday on these slopes, as Costals watched them crossing the track a few yards away from him, skimming along the ground with the speed of a car. From the extremity of the cordon, the smoke was rising to an absurd height, veiling the flotillas of stars, until finally it was absorbed by the vast absence of light that created a void in the upper sky. Above the snow-capped peaks the sky was lighter, as though a halo emanated from the snow.

  'Is your house outside the kasba?'

  'Yes, over there.'

  'Do you think it's in danger?'

  'Oh, no!'

  ('If I had to save Rhadidja from the flames at the risk of my life, would I do it? Answer: "Yes".')

  She was draped to the calves in two lengths of grey wool, tied at the waist by a girdle of blue wool and fastened at the level of her 'salt-cellars' by two heavy brooches of wrought silver. Her neck, bare from the throat, and her arms, bare almost from the armpits, emerged freely from it. Costals smelt her spicy odour, that odour of another race which had greeted him, spellbound, on the quay at Alexandria the first time he had landed in Africa. He would have liked to sink his teeth into the dense heart of that odour, like a mad dog into the dense heart of a jet of water.

  And all the words he addressed to her in solitude, but which, when she was there, she rendered stillborn by her silence and inertia.... Thus, he would have liked to tell her what the cordon of fire reminded him of. He remembered that other cordon of fire he had faced one day in 1924: Abd-el-Krim's men firing. He was blazing away with the French. A civilian, he had followed them into the front line, as Peter, on the Mount of Olives, had followed the soldiers taking Jesus away, 'to see the end' (Matthew VII, 58). And he had taken a gun simply because a gun is man's second membrum virile. In fact, he did not give a damn for the French. Nor for the Moroccans either. He was more on the side of France because he understood the French language, and life was therefore easier and pleasanter for him in that country than in another. Now, at moments, he wanted to talk about that time to Rhadidja, and about the feelings he had had. Then he realized that it was pointless. Words are pointless, and the Rhadidjas of this world are right to remind one of the fact.

  She let the overcoat fall, and sat down again on the only chair in the room. Costals poked the wood fire, which responded by hurling itself at him, like an animal provoked, in the shape of a billow of smoke that enveloped the room. Then he sat down on the bed. Rhadidja snuffled continuously, like a child. 'Got a cold?' 'Yes.' She blew her nose; he saw that it was bleeding.

  She was a girl of sixteen and a half who looked nineteen or twenty. Her complexion was light, her eyes slightly slit, her nose small and rather flat, her mouth fleshy: a face with pure and regular features, more Indo-Chinese than Moroccan. She had left on the bed the red and green scarf with which she covered her hair; this was light-brown, very fine and silky: altogether European. Although they exchanged few words, Costals was wont to prolong this expectation of pleasure. Nothing in the world would have persuaded him to fail in this courtesy, just as Rhadidja herself, when she had dressed after leaving the bed, never failed to sit down again. Indeed, one of the reasons why he loved her was that he did not feel obliged to carry on a high-flown conversation with her. He had a cast-iron belief that all conversation is futile. And especially high-flown conversation.

  He had met Rhadidja four years before in Casablanca, where she was then living with one of her uncles. She had sat down beside Costals on a beach in Lyautey Park. At first he had not dreamt of desiring her, but she began picking a tooth with a safety-pin, he saw her tongue, and that was it. White-skinned and rather skinny, he had defined her as 'a chicken wing in a cheap restaurant'. Her pale complexion and hieratic features suggested Asia, the subtle smile of the bodhisattvas. He had taken her; she was a virgin. Thereafter, having acquired the taste, she gave herself right and left - or at least such was the rumour that reached Costals - provided the man was a European. Mademoiselle had always professed highly non-conformist opinions in front of Costals: to wit, that she did not like the Arabs, that she did not respect her parents, and that she did not believe in God. At first he had thought all this (leaving aside the Casablanca 'atmosphere') was simply a way of making up to a Frenchman, but gossip confirmed Rhadidja's dissident attitude: for instance, it was said that she delighted in making love during the forbidden hours of Ramadan. But in other ways her behaviour never deviated from the tact and decorum which are characteristic of the Moslems in these matters. With Costals she was always reserved, keeping her place, perfectly brought up, if one can say such a thing of someone who has not been brought up at all; a full moon of calm, dignity and deliberation. Incontestably un-Arab in her discretion, her gentleness, her immobility (hardly a gesture), her punctuality, not to mention her physiognomy: a stranger among her people. Often it is stupidity which gives a woman a hieratic look; but she was intelligent, though it was an intelligence without glitter; having taught herself to speak French, which she did very well, and to read it, and even, gradually, to write it sufficiently well to make herself understood. Of more than modest birth, and a courtesan, she had none of the reactions, nor the coarseness, that might have been expected of her station. Nor, needless to say, did she have the comportment of a cultivated Arab. She belonged to a region somewhere in between, a no-man's-land similar to that which (according to Costals) must have been occupied by the Greek demi-gods and the Hindu djinns. Having got over her puberty when she had given herself for the first time, she had spared Costals the agony of witnessing the change, the paroxysms, he would doubtless have seen in her had she been a European. Equanimity and permanence, as in semi-divine creatures. And their security. Rhadidja's motto was: calm and security.

  And her absolute honesty. And her extraordinary disinterestedness. For four years Rhadidja had taken the money that Costals pressed into her hand without ever glancing at it. Even if he had given her only a five-franc piece she would not have complained, he was sure of it. She never asked a favour, never asked for money, never even asked for an 'advance'. There was never that unbearable glance of the European courtesan at the man's wallet whenever he opens it. Once she had even said: 'You spend too much money on me.' (But she never thanked him. Or rather she thanked him if he handed her a pencil or a pin. But never thanked him if it was a tidy sum.) Such was Rhadidja. No affectation, no clinging, no Christianity, no greed. And it had lasted for four years.

  What was the nature of their tie?

  A man to whom a woman has once said 'It does me a world of good' is really hooked. Our pleasure
is the pleasure of the other person. Rhadidja had never said anything of the kind to Costals, nor the bogus equivalent of the phrase ('You make love like no one else', etc.). Nor had she ever made the slightest allusion to her relations with him or with anyone else. But her face, and her famous 'earthquakes', [Cf. Hippogriff: 'Terremoto' (Author's note).] proclaimed her pleasure in the act. Her face lit up instantaneously when one went into her, as, in the telephone booths of some cafés, the electric light switches on automatically when you open the door. Costals travelled over a thousand miles to see her face at that moment.

  The writer, as we know, had no great desire to be loved, and even preferred not to be loved, because this non-love left his heart, his mind and his time free. With Rhadidja he was well served. She was apathetic in everything that was not sensual pleasure. Costals thought she had no feeling for him. Perhaps an affection born of gratitude, but even then very superficial. And no pretence of tenderness. He found this to his taste, since he hated to be pawed. (As a child, when a little girl wanted to kiss him, he would say: 'All right, then, go ahead. But be quick, and not too hard ...' and he had taken a dislike to his grandmother because she kissed him too much.) Rhadidja was a catalyst; he reacted, and that was enough for him (not forgetting that she too reacted physically). He was, however, perplexed by her apathy, which incidentally extended to everything, for it was so extreme that it seemed to him almost inhuman. It was as if he had picked up a stone and fondled it, decked it with flowers, covered it when it was cold, put it in the open air when it was hot, washed it, smothered it with perfumes. Rhadidja, except in bed, was that stone. And it was perhaps this inhuman quality in her, and in him too, in feeling this attachment for her under such circumstances, that kept the attachment alive. The ways of men are various.

  Attachment. From the second day, trust (she wandered alone round his quarters with every drawer unlocked). From the third day, respect. Then liking. Then something between attachment and affection, where it had settled down. No love, of course, and not the slightest jealousy of his numerous rivals. Was she capable of making him suffer? Yes, but only from the fear that some harm might befall her. This was the only tremor in the stillness of his affection, like the quivering of the sea in a flat calm. He did not love her, but she was the preference of his heart and marrow.

  Of his brain too. She gave Costals what he wanted from women: mutual pleasure, embedded in indifference and remoteness. Wherefore there was something pure in their relationship which it is almost impossible to achieve with a European. It is not the sexual act that is vulgar and impure, it is everything people surround it with. There is less stupidity in a man's flies than in his brain and in his heart.

  'I die at those hands of pale bronze, so pure.' He took them in his, which in comparison seemed like the hands of a labourer. He noticed then, on the ball of one of her thumbs, a brownish patch surrounded by a circle paler than the skin of her hand. 'Syphilis? Since it's taken for granted, according to the medicos, that eighty per cent of the Moroccans of these parts have it. But benign: family syphilis.'

  'You've got a funny spot there.'

  'It's el djem.'

  'What's el djem?'

  'I saw the doctor when he came by. He gave me a bit of paper...'

  From the pocket of her white under-skirt she drew out a wallet, and from the wallet a sort of leather scapular containing a little papyrus on which some Arabic characters were inscribed. She smiled her delicate smile:

  'A marabout gave me that.'

  'You told me you didn't believe in God.'

  'Yes, but he gave it to me.'

  Costals had received the same answer from one of his friends, a notorious unbeliever, when he had expressed surprise at seeing a St Christopher plaque on his car: 'Someone gave it to me.' Universal flabbiness. People talk about 'non-resistance to evil'. There is non-resistance to stupidity, too.

  The scapular also contained a folded piece of paper, which she handed to Costals. He read:

  Name: Rhadidja ben Ali.

  Age: 16 (?)

  Place of birth: Ait Sadem, Tighremt.

  Disease: Leprosy. Haemorrhagic coryza. Macula

  on left thumb.

  Treatment: Specimen nasal mucus taken. Send Rhad. Marrakesh if confirmed.

  Observations: Genl. condit. satis. No sympt. syph.

  Date: 29-1-28

  SIGNED: DR MAYBON

  He re-read the document. His heart began to throb so violently it was as though the wall of his thorax had grown thinner, as though each heart-beat must lift up his ribs like a lizard's.

  'But, Rhadidja, it's a very serious disease! And you never told me....'

  'The doctor said that it could be cured nowadays. He will bring some injections the next time he comes.'

  'And you just sit there as though it was nothing!'

  Costals knew nothing of leprosy except the commonplace images and schoolboy memories the word conjures up for the man in the street. The flesh coming off in strips, the 'leonine fades', the contagion, the isolation. Also - he remembered from an illustrated book of his childhood - the monstrous devices of the Church a few centuries ago, more monstrous than leprosy itself, which is at least natural: the leper assisting at his own Requiem Mass under a pall, having a spadeful of graveyard earth sprinkled on his head (sometimes in the grave itself), being declared dead to the world and led outside the town after his house had been reduced to ashes.

  'And the doctor didn't tell you to take any precautions?'

  'Yes, not to let my family eat where I have eaten.'

  Costals remembered the famous doctor, the director of a TB centre, who, when he asked him what the centre did for patients who remained at home, had replied, with some embarrassment: 'We give them a spittoon.'

  'What do your parents say?'

  (Emotion was making him idiotic.)

  'Nothing.'

  'Have you any other patches on your body?'

  'No, only this one.'

  'So you've been in contact with lepers?'

  'Our uncle was one. Not the one in Casablanca, one who lived with us. But he died three years ago.'

  'He lived with you! ... No special precautions?'

  'No.'

  'No treatment?'

  'Twice a year he went to the Mosque of Sidi Bennour, in Marrakesh.'

  The eternal instinct of humble people to believe, for preference, the one who lies. Between the Pasteur Institute and the bone-setter, one chooses the bone-setter; if one doesn't actually go to the priest.

  'I'll speak to the doctors at the hospital in Marrakesh, so that you're properly looked after when you arrive there.'

  For the first time, Rhadidja's face, so serene until then, showed alarm.

  'No, don't do that! If they know that you know me, they will tell my father.'

  'The doctors in Marrakesh don't know your father. And I'll ask them to keep it absolutely secret.'

  'No, no!'

  'I won't let you be looked after just anyhow, when a word from me will make them take an interest in you. I want them to do everything they possibly can to cure you, you understand? We'll send you to France if necessary.'

  Still seated, she had bowed her head so low that he could only see her hair. He tried to lift it up again, but she resisted, like a sulky child. Completely indifferent to her horrible disease, but petrified by a non-existent danger. And there is no need to go to the Atlas to see this in a young person... .

  'All right, I won't say anything about you,' he said at last, determined to intervene but anxious to calm her down.

  He looked at the document again. The fate of this beloved creature in the seven letters of a word scribbled in pencil. And perhaps his own fate too. His desire for her had subsided. Not that he felt horror or even disgust for this poisoned body; but he was overwhelmed by his emotion. And perhaps this was a good thing. Perhaps it would be wiser to abstain from intimate contact today, and tomorrow to go to Taoud, four kilometres away, where there was now an infirmary with a nativ
e attendant (for the men who were building a bridge not far from there). At least he would get some idea from the attendant of the degree of contagiousness of leprosy - enough to judge whether or not it would be sensible to risk it tomorrow night.

  He informed her of his plan. The look of terror, which had vanished from Rhadidja's face, reappeared.

  'If you mention leprosy to Haoucine and he knows you are from Tighremt, he is sure to guess that you came about me. And he will tell my father....'

  'Then I won't go.'

  This time he was sincere: Rhadidja's fears seemed justified.

  Well then, he would make love to her. He could not see himself making a journey of four thousand kilometres there and back to meet a woman he was fond of, and not going near her because she had a touch of leprosy. It was not physical desire that prompted him. Nor a sense of duty, towards her or himself. Nor even, strictly speaking, the feeling that it was the 'right' thing to do. It was a feeling that it would be at once pusillanimous and inelegant not to do it. Send her away like that! Besides, any man in his place, unless he were a total wet, would do the same. As for the risk, quite apart from the last war, or the next, in his everyday life, at the mercy of all the fathers and brothers and lovers of his mistresses (mostly minors, to boot), he was perpetually running risks; and he had slept hundreds of times, without any precautions whatsoever, with syphilitics and consumptives. So it was only a risk like all the others, not exactly alluring, but necessary. Another one more or less!

  'Undress, little one. Will you?'

  It gave him such pleasure to say this to her. His heart began beating furiously again, but calmed down after a moment.