‘What is hashish worth at the moment?’
He started violently and looked wildly round, but calmed down when he saw there was nobody near us. His eyes sparkled; he supposed I was in the business, for if I had been a police spy he would have known me.
‘That depends on the quality,’ he replied.
And he began a long dissertation on this subject, his tongue loosened by a succession of drinks. In one hour I had learned that everybody in the canal, electricians, pilots, and so on, did a little clandestine trading in hashish on the side. The method was simple and always the same. An oiled packet was thrown from a liner at an agreed point, and picked up by somebody in the know, generally the captain of a dredger. It was then passed on to one or other of the rapscallion Greeks I had seen in the cafés. The projectors are also useful for this sort of business, and there are a thousand other little tricks known to all smugglers in all countries in the world. But smuggling went on also on the high seas. This was on a much bigger scale, and the coastguards or the lighthouse-keepers were in on it fifty-fifty. The rotundities of the great sea-buoys marking the neighbourhood of the roads cried out for employment, and the coasting captains, customers of Caravan and his fellows, had not been long in finding a use for them. The Greek ship arriving from the Piraeus has only to stop at night at the buoy chosen beforehand. Half-way up the conical wall there is a little oval door, closing what is called the man-hole. This door is generally bolted and screwed down, but this particular one is held by carefully greased screw-nuts which can be unscrewed in a twinkling. Two hundred and fifty or three hundred kilograms of hashish can then be put in this floating warehouse, and nothing indicates its presence. When the ship has deposited her precious cargo, she can enter the harbour with a clear conscience.
The next morning would happen to be the day when certain buoys were brought into the dockyard to be examined and overhauled. This one, you may be sure, would be included. It would be taken in tow and trailed majestically across the harbour. The waves churned up by its passage caused boats crowded with customs officers to dance on the water. It would be taken to the dockyard where metal parts were repaired, and there in private its precious contents would be removed. I began to understand why the buoys round about Port Said were continually being repainted. All these stories of smuggling interested me from one point of view only, inasmuch as they showed that all the hashish smuggled into Egypt came in from the north. So I had had a good idea in planning to bring it in from the south, for this had never been done.
THIRTEEN
The Death of Lieutenant Voiron
Although I had nothing to fear legally, I began to be assailed by qualms, as the ship neared Djibouti, that there would be some hitch in transhipping my cases. As soon as I landed I went to see the manager of the customs and explained my difficulty. I told him that this liemp blossom’ might as well be called hashish, for that was what it was.
‘Yes, I know,’ he replied. ‘You have the right to transship this merchandise. I am not here as a moral censor, but simply to see that the regulations are carried out. All the same, if this hashish was to be smuggled into the colony and consumed here, I could not take the responsibility of letting such a cargo pass.’
‘As far as that goes,’ I replied, ‘I give my word of honour that not a single ounce of it will remain in Somaliland.’
‘All right, make your declaration, and you will be given an escort as far as the frontier, but once you are out of French waters, you can only re-enter them at your own risk.’
I left the chief’s office with a light heart, leaving all my worries behind me. Of all the ships I had had, only the faithful Fat-el-Rahman was left. She was a stout vessel who had weathered more than one storm, and I backed her with confidence to fight through the thirteen hundred miles against the wind which were in store for us. It was now the beginning of June, the hottest and most disagreeable month because of the damp, and the most dangerous because of the sudden tempests produced by the accumulation of storm-clouds in the mountains. I had the entire ship overhauled and the rigging renewed, since the nature of our cargo would prevent us from putting in at any port during this long voyage. I increased the number of my crew to twelve, in case of illness or other unexpected trouble. Abdi, Mohammed Moussa, Ali Omar, Aden, Salah and Firan, now grown-up, formed half of it; the other six were Dankalis I had had with me on previous voyages. The eight cases were stowed in the bottom of the hold; I had passed the customs and complied with all the other formalities; we were ready to start. The first half of my scheme had been carried through successfully.
The hot, moist night seemed to be crushing the sea under its heavy torpor. The deck and tackle were dripping with dew, a sticky, salt-saturated dew. The men fell limply on the deck with sprawling limbs, and slept naked where they lay. They looked like a heap of corpses, so utterly still were the twisted bodies. The air was like steam. I lay, just as exhausted, on the quarter-deck, but was unable to close an eye. The physical anguish induced by this stifling climate was partly responsible for this, but it was chiefly the thought of the adventure before me that kept me awake. I reflected that I had not had very much difficulty in arriving at the point of having six hundred kilos of hashish in my hold, and that all the danger and difficulty were yet to come. And yet on that day at Port Vendres when I had crossed the narrow plank to go on board the little Greek steamer, if anyone had told me that in so short a time I should be on board the Fat-el-Rahman with these eight cases safely stowed in the hold, I should have been in the seventh heaven. Instead of which I was more worried than ever. I dared not congratulate myself; I felt that any demonstrations of joy on my part might irritate the powers of evil. I dared not be happy, for all my life I have had to pay with sorrow for every bit of happiness I have known. That is a fundamental law of the destiny of men, but happy are those who do not know it. To take thought for the morrow is to renounce all joy, for it is to foresee misfortune. One can plan the happiness of others, never one’s own.
Shortly before dawn, a warm breeze rose from the west; this was the saba, the local wind corresponding to the great south-west monsoon in the Indian Ocean. It starts in the depths of the Gulf of Tajura, and throws itself with extreme violence over the Gulf of Aden as far as Cape Gardafui. Greenish shivers ran through the phosphorescence of the sleeping sea under the caress of this burning wind. It was time to be off if we wanted to be out of the roads before the sea got too stormy. As the first pulls on the halyard tackle were awaking creaking groans from the badly oiled pulleys, a man hailed us from the jetty. He was a native soldier in uniform, and I thought it was for some tiresome, last-minute formality, so I sent the pirogue ashore to see what he wanted. He returned in it.
‘What do you want? Have you a paper for me?’ I asked.
‘No; I simply want to go as far as Obock with you.’
He was a Somali of about twenty-five, so ugly that it hurt to look at him. In addition, he had strange, unseeing eyes like those of a madman, which gave one the creeps. I was on the point of having him sent back ashore, or more simply of having him thrown overboard, since all Somalis swim like fishes, when it occurred to me that by taking him I might be rendering a service to the captain of the military post at Obock, with whom I wanted to keep on good terms. He immediately collapsed in a corner and remained motionless. I was too busy directing the manoeuvres to give him another thought until we were just entering the roads of Obock. I had decided to remain there two days, to finish the overhauling of my vessel, and make a complete new set of sails.
The post of Obock was commanded by a Captain Benoit. He was an insignificant little fellow, barely forty, but fat and pursy. He might have been a country lawyer or a tax-collector, or even a stationmaster. He always looked as if he had put on his uniform for a fancy-dress ball. I don’t remember his wife very well. She had the reputation of being a lady with an abnormally large heart, but that is probably a calumny, in any case it is not very interesting.
Two lieutenants complet
ed the staff. One was a certain Aublin, who had risen from the ranks like so many others during the war. He was a man of humble origin, simple and very proud of his rank, and as fond of showing off as a child. A good fellow, all the same, who would not have harmed a fly, and who would really have been more at home pushing a coster’s barrow than following a martial destiny. After three years in the trenches, he had been thankful when the formation of this Somali battalion by Lieutenant Depuis gave him a nice cushy job at Obock, far from shot and shell.
The other was Lieutenant Voiron. Tall, well-built and good-looking, he was obviously a man of birth and breeding. Everything about him proclaimed it, yet there was something lacking, all the same. One felt he had not received the education suitable for a man of his class. He had enlisted in the colonial army at the age of nineteen. Violent, enthusiastic and madly courageous, he had not found an outlet in a tame garrison life for these dangerous qualities. As a result, wine and women had already worked ravages, both moral and physical, but he was still an attractive fellow; one felt an instinctive liking for him. One sensed the struggle that went on in this nature which had so much that was fine and even noble in it, but which was too weak to resist the evil influences of the circumstances in which he found himself.
I remember a visit he paid us in our house at Obock. Knowing that my wife was there, he had put on his dress uniform. Aublin, who accompanied him, was in shirt-sleeves and perspiring profusely. He sniggered at what he called the ridiculous affectation of his comrade. Our house was very simply arranged, but that did not prevent us from receiving our guests with due honour. It was pathetic to watch how Voiron reacted to an atmosphere of refinement and culture. He seemed to recover instinctively the manners of the class in which he had been born. We discussed literature and art, and evoked memories of France. The poor boy was literally transfigured, and showed a side of his mind which, from fear of ridicule, he had kept hidden from the rough, uneducated men with whom he had chosen to cast in his lot. During this time Aublin, on all fours on the carpet, played bears with my little daughter.
Then we drank a Pernod, real pre-war stuff I had brought from Massawa – the absinthe which for so long reigned supreme in the distant outposts of our colonies. Under its influence, the unfortunate Voiron changed completely. All the coarseness of fifteen years in barracks among vulgar brutes submerged what we had just seen of delicacy and refinement in his soul. He became simply a common N.C.O. with the goggly eyes of a drunkard. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Aublin did not change. He got a little redder in the face, that was all. He slapped Voiron jovially on the back shouting gaily:
‘Ah, Charlie, old man, that’s the stuff. A good Pernod soon makes life rosy.’
Then, turning to me, he added:
‘He’s like that when he has the blues, plays the aristo, but a stiff peg soon puts him all right. He’s a good pal, is Charlie, not a stuck-up bone in his body.’
I felt an immense pity for this poor fellow, destined to go under. I looked at his slim hand with its crested signet-ring; it seemed to implore an impossible help. Too late, too late.
When I reached Obock I learned that twenty-five Somalis had escaped from the boat which was taking them to France, and had been captured on Italian territory. Captain Benoit had received orders to go and fetch them. He was not at all happy at the thought of this perilous expedition. No doubt it was easy for fifty armed men to escort twenty-five poor devils worn out with fatigue and hunger. But the fifty men were Somalis like the prisoners, and that meant that two Europeans, an officer and an N.C.O., would be isolated with sevénty-five Negroes in the middle of a desert where everything reminded them that this was where they were born, while the white men were only intruders.
The day before that fixed for the departure, the captain had a severe bout of fever and was compelled to go to bed. Voiron joyfully agreed to take charge of the expedition. Sergeant Montsacré volunteered to accompany him. They were to leave at three o’clock next morning. Captain Benoit would keep with him a sufficient number of men to guard the post. The men were selected with infinite care; all those belonging to the same tribe as the fugitives were rejected, so as to lessen the danger of a revolt on the way. Voiron decided to take only twenty-five men with him!, and he said that half of that would have been enough. He and Montsacré were old pals; they had gone through the war together; each knew that he could count on the other to death and beyond, and that was the principal thing.
The camels with the water supply left that evening, so as to be at the halt when the troop should arrive. In the afternoon Voiron came to see me, wildly gay at the idea of escaping at last from the monotony of this post, in which the prudence of Captain Benoit kept them so closely shut up. I gave him some tips about the water-holes and so on. When he was taking his leave, he said:
‘Thank you for bringing back Ahmed Fara, my gazelle hunter. We wouldn’t have bothered about his deserting, if the mess-table had not suffered severely from his absence.’
‘Well, of course,’ I said, suddenly remembering the surly guard we had taken on at Djibouti. ‘I had forgotten all about him, he tucked himself away into such little space. Anyone might have thought he was dumb, too. My sailors tried in vain to get him to eat with them, and not a single word would he utter. Finally they left him alone, concluding he was crazy.’
‘Yes, he’s an odd fellow, a very odd fellow, but a good sort for all that. He must be worried if he has learnt that his brother has deserted, and that is maybe why he is so queer. But it’s a business to know what these devils of niggers are thinking.’
‘Oh, they think much as we do; but if I were you I should steer clear of your gazelle hunter. He doesn’t inspire confidence at all. Beware of men who are small, ugly and taciturn.’
‘Oh, I don’t pay much attention. Anyhow, I am leaving him here, though he would fain be included in the expedition, and says he came back from Djibouti specially for that.’
‘You are maybe wrong not to take him then. You may be sure that if he wants to go and take his brother prisoner, it is not with the idea of helping him, but for some reason that neither you nor I could understand. It is always dangerous to oppose a fixed idea in the head of one of those savages whose brutal and simple logic hits like a sledge-hammer. I tell you that yesterday he gave me the impression of a man off his mental balance.’
‘Oh, if he has gone potty, I’ll clap him into the guard-room. That will calm him. Well, I must be off. Farewell for ever, or so long - I don’t know which it will be, and I don’t care a tinker’s curse.’
His eyes held a strange expression, a look of defiance to Destiny. Once he had gone I regretted my words. Why had I told him it would be prudent to humour the taciturn Somali? By what right had I given him such advice and inspired him with such fears? I reproached myself with vanity, with having wanted to show off my superior understanding of the soul of the natives, a damned stupid thing to do. And yet, when I thought it over, I realized I was unjust to myself, that it was something infinitely deeper, some warning from the depths of my subconscious which had forced me to speak. I would say that I had had a presentiment, only it is so easy to be wise after the event. All the same, I had felt a sort of physical anguish as I shook hands with Voiron. Very likely it was he himself, going as he was to his doom, who transferred this uncomfortable feeling to me. He had felt death hovering over him when he had jokingly said ‘Farewell for ever.’
In the middle of the night I was awakened by the firing of three shots. They came from the Residency, about half a mile away. I distinctly saw a lantern waving about on the esplanade where the soldiers generally drilled. It was just time for the expedition to start, and I thought that someone was firing off shots from sheer exuberance. The men had probably been celebrating their departure by a drink or two, and young soldiers in a god-forsaken post in the bush generally express their joy rather noisily. That a tragedy was being enacted never entered my head. Soon the dawn broke, a dawn like thousands of others.
Everything seemed very calm when I went out on the terrace to take my shower. Then I saw Aublin come running into my courtyard, wild-eyed and breathless.
‘Voiron has been murdered,’ he cried as soon as he caught sight of me. ‘This morning when they were about to start one of the guards deliberately fired three shots into him… he is dead… I came to ask if you could take his body to Djibouti at once.’
I asked for details. One of the guards who were to remain at Obock, whose brother, as it happened, was among the deserters, had come up to Voiron when he was inspecting his detachment just before the start. The fellow begged and implored to be taken with them. He wore his field kit, and was armed, all ready, with his rifle in his hand. The reader has already guessed that it was Ahmed Fara, the Somali I had brought with me the day before. Voiron refused his request, and threatened to have him put in prison if he continued to bother him.
‘But I want to see my brother…’
‘You will see him when we come back, as I have already told you.’
‘No; I want to come with you; I am not a woman to be left to guard the house.’
‘Will you go back into barracks and take off all that impedimenta?’ shouted Voiron, suddenly flying into the unbalanced rage of the alcoholic.
At this the Somali lost his head, and in a sudden fit of madness fired on his officer. The shot hit Voiron in the belly, and he fell, with a shout for help.
‘I was standing at the door of the Residency,’ continued Aublin; ‘it was a very dark night and I could see nothing. But when I heard the shot and Voiron’s voice crying for help, I broke into a cold sweat. I went in, flew upstairs, and leaning from a first-floor window, shrieked “Coming, old top,” and at that very moment two other shots rang out.
Hashish Page 7