The Gobi Desert

by The Gobi Desert (epub)

  Once again I opened a drawer. I took out an envelope which I half-opened. In it was the piece of lipstick, the sheets of good-quality, half-burnt paper, the two or three hairpins, which I had gathered up in our sad little room at the Pension Domestici five months ago, after Alzire had left. Now in a few moments when she would be here, I would not say anything, but simply confine myself to placing these dear mementoes in her hands. From now on I understood that it would not be me who would have to ask her for explanations, and that I had only one thing to do, which was to excuse myself and seek her forgiveness, if she wanted to grant it to me.

  Twenty past ten! . . . . What if she was going to be early, if she managed to get away from the ball a bit earlier! There would always be somebody to escort her here. But what if she didn’t find me on the gangway waiting for her! Hastily I ran back up on deck.

  Twenty-five past ten! . . . . . In the glow of an electric lamp, around which there was a swarm of enormous butterflies and miniscule bats, I re-read her letter once again. Her style and tone were perfect. And it was on nice paper too! With a telephone number, the name of a villa, and even a Latin motto: ‘Hodie tibi, cras mihi!’ This was no longer irony, was it? No doubt it was the notepaper of her old lover. And why not, what’s surprising about that, after all? She was trying to prove to me that she was still resourceful and had her wits about her! Even so, from the tips she earned at the casino in Khabarovsk, and the house in Vladivostock, what a journey she had made! When you realised the class prejudices of the English, and that she had managed to get herself invited this evening, good heavens, mixing with the blushing young misses of the gentry! But so what? What good was I doing tormenting myself like this? This success, this elevation, however considerable they may be, she didn’t hesitate for one moment to abandon them and come and find me here!

  Would she be able to slip away at least? She would have certain obligations of course. I would never be party to making things difficult for her in any way, the poor child! Ten to eleven! . . Five to eleven! . . . . . From that moment on, I can say that I was no longer alive. Eleven o’clock! Now she was going to be late. Seven minutes past eleven! What was that soft noise, that unsteady light in the darkness? A car, a taxi, my God! It stopped just in front of the gangway. A slight figure, wrapped in silk, emerged. Such happiness, it was her! Promptly she paid and dismissed the driver.

  ‘Is it you my darling? Is it you at last?’

  ‘It’s me!’

  *

  We looked at each other, neither daring to say a word. One can change a lot in six months, of course. There is always something in each of us which can seem different to the other. But of course that would not prevent a smile, would not prevent us from being happy . . . . .

  ‘You are so beautiful!’ I whispered.

  ‘And you,’ she said, clapping her hands and looking delightedly all around her, ‘how happy I am to see you again, and so nicely set up here as well. I congratulate you!’

  Not one of the details around her had escaped her attention, from the moment when she slipped off her cloak, and threw it onto the bed.

  Beautiful, yes, of course she was beautiful! But then she had always adored dressing up like this. This evening she was dressed as a Manchurian princess: golden brown shoes with exceptionally high heels which seemed to have the sole purpose of raising her sweet head to my lips; trousers made of blue-tinted satin; a piece of jade in her hair; a crimson silk tunic with a high neck, lined down the left-hand side with beautiful little crystal flowers; and that wonderful, almost dull, golden embroidery, which I could feel pressing deliciously into my skin, as I held her closer to me.

  ‘We have the whole day tomorrow to talk,’ she said, thereby making it impossible for me to ask any inopportune question, in the unlikely case that I would have had the poor taste to do so. ‘Tonight, I am all yours. You saw that I sent the taxi away.’

  Simultaneously, with her long, thin fingers on which two enormous rubies sparkled, she began to unfasten the pearl necklace from around her neck, a necklace the like of which I had never seen. Ah! You couldn’t say she had wasted her time over the past six months! She also had been hunting big game as well!

  ‘Are you a little bit happy at least?’ I murmured with a sort of sob in my voice.

  As a reply she took my head in her hands and kissed me.

  ‘You are kind!’ she said. ‘I’ll explain. But I already know that you will understand. I was sure that you would not blame me for trying to escape from what was just a vulgar house of prostitution. Alas! I must admit that you told me so in Fouzan. You were right!’

  She went back to unfastening her necklace. And then suddenly, she stopped.

  ‘Oh!’ she said.

  Without another word she stared, with a look suddenly full of surprise, of covetousness, of understanding.

  ‘It’s him, isn’t it?’

  ‘Yes, it’s him!’

  Standing on a pedestal table was a large photograph of Kublai, the best of all the photographs which had been taken of him on the journey from Tsing-Tao to Hong Kong.

  She put her hand on my arm, and I felt her hand trembling.

  ‘We’ll go and see him tomorrow morning if you want,’ I stammered, disconcerted and nervous for some reason which I couldn’t quite understand.

  ‘Tomorrow! Why tomorrow? Why not right now?’ she said.

  ‘Right now? At this hour?’

  ‘Why not?’

  There was nothing more to say! I felt that she would not come back to me until I had granted her this satisfaction.

  ‘All right then, if you insist. Let’s go!’

  *

  ‘Perhaps I shall see you here or there,’ Otto Streep had said some hours earlier. I was sure of it now, I was absolutely sure. He was watching us; he could see us.

  ‘This way’ I whispered.

  It was unpleasantly warm, and the air was heavy with humidity. Pale sheets of sulphurous green lightning suddenly lit up the sea all around. We felt our way along the deck, stepping over piles of rope and sleeping natives.

  At last we reached the gigantic cage. I knew where to find the switches which at any hour of the night would light it all up. I turned on one, then a second, then a third. I wanted to do the best for Alzire! She just kept her hands together.

  Kublai appeared, wonderful in his whiteness under the light which was almost blue. He stretched lazily, yawned, and growled softly.

  ‘My God!’ said Alzire.

  I noticed that she was smiling ecstatically as she looked at Kublai.

  ‘What are you doing?’ I cried. ‘Are you mad?’

  I tried to hold her back by the arm. Had she forgotten what had happened with the Mikado in Fouzan?

  ‘Alzire!’

  ‘Leave me alone!’ she said sharply.

  One or two details are necessary to give an idea of this extraordinary scene. After nightfall, for most of the time Otto Streep kept Kublai in the rear part of his cage. The front part, thus empty, remained open. Ignoring my pleas, Alzire just stepped into this part. She and the tiger stared at each other. The dear figure, standing there like a slender ghost in red and gold, was only two paces away from the magnificent white monster.

  ‘Alzire!’ I stammered again.

  In vain! Alzire motioned me to be quiet, putting a finger to her lips, a finger of her left hand, wasn’t it? and she slid her other hand between the bars, and it was this hand, her right hand, that was being licked by the enormous animal.

  *

  ‘Let’s go now if you want’ she said.

  Kublai watched us leave, his eyes hardly visible between the cracks of his eyelids, like rays of emerald glowing in a hearth, lit up from the inside like a child’s magic toy. When we switched off the lights we could still see, trained on us, the twin beams of phosphorescent green light.

  Once again Alzire turned round, her fingers to her lips as if to send a last kiss to the monster.

  ‘I won’t be gone for long,’ she seemed to say.
‘Don’t worry, wait for me!’

  XX

  I didn’t know what time it was. Two o’clock in the morning, or perhaps it was three. But what did it matter! I had a right to rest, to relax and to forget. And as for her! It occurred to me that this was the first time that we were sleeping together without being afraid that the door might slowly open and let in some sort of god of Vengeance or Death. There had always been that fear! It had started on the first night. In Khabarovsk, in Vladivostock, in Fouzan, it had never stopped once. So wasn’t it now our turn to enjoy a bit of calm, and a bit of peace? Peace and calm! . . . . . I had often heard it said that it would bring misfortune to true Russians to wish for those two things.

  We had eaten the partridge and we had drunk the wine – of course! – and equally of course we had drunk the champagne, which thank heavens bore no resemblance to the champagne at Mme Domestici’s. Now our room was lit only by a bedside light, and every now and then by the broad sweep of the dazzling searchlights, coming and going in the night, from the nearby warship.

  In that semi-conscious state you see things in a particularly strange way! Your consciousness takes pleasure in grouping together different objects according to weird and wonderful associations. The golden bottlenecks of the champagne bottles looked as if they had come from the embroidery on Alzire’s silk tunic. Her high-heeled shoes, suddenly lit up by the beams of the searchlights, looked like the outline of two tiny junks sailing in convoy together. On a rosewood table, a plateau rising up out of the darkness, a bunch of black and white orchids stood between two photographs framed in a bluish glass, two photographs which seemed to smile with an indefinable smile.

  One was the photograph of Kublai which I spoke about a short while ago. The other was a picture of Alzire, already old, dating from when we were in Khabarovsk, but which I had had enlarged by quite a good photographer in Shanghai. With her large eyes half closed, she had something of mystery about her, which at certain moments merged with the eyes of the tiger. It wasn’t cruelty, it was more like irony. And what about Kublai? What was that I could see around his neck? Good heavens, it was Alzire’s pearl necklace! I opened my eyes wider. I wasn’t dreaming, it really was her necklace! When she took it off just now, she had hung it over the frame of the photograph of the animal for fun. The old fellow seemed quite proud of it! I closed my eyes again.

  . . . . . . Only to reopen them almost immediately. Alzire and the tiger were still observing me. The sixty-four pearls of the necklace were still reflecting sixty-four times in the half-darkness the light from the little bedside lamp. My eyes wandered lazily around the surrounding details, making a mental list of what I saw. I remembered the night in Khabarovsk, the last night, which had preceded my arrest, or rather our arrest. Alzire’s clothes, then as now, lay scattered around the room. Then there had been a gold sequined dress; now there was this costume of a Manchurian princess, and this wolf in dark velvet, with two mysterious holes instead of eyes, which was also staring at me . . . . What a strange and troubling masquerade! There was something which I couldn’t quite see, the gown which she had wrapped around her when she arrived in the taxi. She must have casually dropped it somewhere in a corner of the cabin, after our visit to Kublai. I wasn’t going to tear myself out of this wonderful torpor so as to get up and run off to look for it, was I?

  Apart from that, I could count everything: the golden-brown shoes; the shiny, smoky-blue trousers, shimmering like metal; the two rubies, glowing like red eyes on the bedside table; lastly, covering the back of an armchair, the dark-red silk tunic, laden with gold. Here, amongst all this heavy embroidery, my imagination could give itself full rein. Chrysanthemums, warriors astride dragons, bridges stretching across raging torrents, mountains shrouded in clouds, and here and there, magnificent butterflies extending their wings. The only thing missing was the jade from Alzire’s hair. Where could it be? Ah yes! I remember now, she hadn’t removed it from her hair. I only had to stretch out my hand gently to caress it, as gently as possible, the dear child, so as not to . . . . .

  And then what? What if I did actually wake her up? It wouldn’t be such a big thing, after all!

  ‘Alzire!’

  What was happening? I sat up straight, and now I was wide awake. Where was she? Where could she be? Not by my side, anyway!

  *

  I said I was awake, but was I really? Just then I wasn’t sure. And so I remained for some moments, wanting with all my strength not to be awake. It was insane, unbelievable, what was happening! I admit that I didn’t understand at first. But I leaped to my feet and looked around the cabin. Nothing. Nothing in the bathroom either! Hastily I looked out into the corridor, but there was no sign of her there. She had gone, vanished. There was just a young boy, dozing in a chair. Quickly I went back inside. Again I started my search, looking behind each and every one of the curtains. There was nothing in any of the three rooms. Nothing. The portholes, wide open in the darkness, made me shudder. Petite and slim as she was, she could easily have squeezed through one of them if she had wanted to.

  ‘Alzire! Alzire! Where are you?’

  Nothing! My God, where could she be? In any event she couldn’t be far, thank heavens! I sighed with relief, as I became aware of something which couldn’t fail to reassure me: her shoes were still there, right by the bed! She wouldn’t have gone out without them, would she? Nor without her gown, since she hadn’t brought any nightdress with her. And then there were her rings, her necklace, things which a woman does not like to be separated from. Then just as I was forcing myself to regain my courage with this line of reasoning, I suddenly realised something which I had not noticed until then, something which terrified me. My slippers, my own slippers! Where were they? I had bought them in Tsing-Tao. They were the sort of Moroccan leather slippers which could be fitted nicely into your travel luggage. Now they too had gone!

  I couldn’t find them anywhere. Nor could I see the black satin gown which I had just been thinking about. It would have been impossible not to see it if it had been there, now that I had switched on all the electric lamps and the cabin was flooded with light. There was nothing on the bed or on the chairs. Nothing underneath them either! Nothing, anywhere!

  ‘Alzire!’ I cried, in a terrible, desperate cry.

  *

  I thought I heard another cry, even more dreadful, in reply. My hands were shaking as I feverishly tried to get dressed, to throw on whatever clothes I could find. Just then the cabin door opened, and the boy appeared, his face green with terror, his hair stiff and spiky like a hedgehog.

  ‘You idiot,’ I screamed. ‘Didn’t you see her? This is terrible, awful! You were asleep!’

  I grabbed hold of him and shook him by the collar. Then I sent him off, God knows where. I was moaning in blind terror. I knew exactly what had happened. Of course! Beside myself I set off down the corridor, like a madman.

  Now the whole ship seemed to wake up at once. Sirens sounded! Doors opened as people only just awake stumbled out, their eyes all puffy and astonished. I pushed through about half a dozen of them. Just as I got to the end of the deck, I stumbled. A growl could be heard, shaking the whole of the ship down to the tiniest recesses, followed immediately by several seconds of ominous silence; then a roar such as I had never heard, the most terrifying sound since the death of Sanders.

  ‘Ahong! Ahong!. . . ’

  *

  If I hadn’t known which way to run, that dreadful alarm would certainly have been more than sufficient to let me know. The whole of the front part of the ship was already in turmoil. I had to make my way through sombre groups of people, from where there came whispers and exclamations. Finally I managed to pull myself out of the darkness and into the centre of the harsh, dazzling light.

  ‘My dear friend, what a terrible thing. But you, are you all right?’

  It was the captain of the Paul-Lecat. He had come straightaway. He still held his mask in his hand, his gown over his shoulder, the same sort of gown that now . . . .
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  I pushed him aside. ‘Leave me alone, please! Leave me alone! . . . ‘

  At last I stood in front of the cage. At first glance it seemed as if nothing had happened. The dividing grill was pulled across to separate the two parts. The front half was open, as it had been at about midnight, at the time of our visit to the tiger. In the rear half, Kublai was stretched out, his head resting on his paws, and seemed to look at everyone with an air of pleasant surprise, giving the impression that he didn’t understand what all the fuss was about.

  ‘Ah! So there you are! And not before time!’

  Otto Streep! It was him who was shouting at me! He was standing, barefoot, in his shirt sleeves, leaning against the bars of the cage, with a heavy iron bar in his hand.

  ‘You can be proud of what you’ve done! When you have a madwoman with you, you should keep an eye on her more closely!’

  ‘Where is she?’ I cried.

  He seized my arm. ‘Where is she, you ask? Don’t look! It would be better if you didn’t look!’

  Too late, I looked! Oh my God, what did I see? Almost nothing, to tell the truth! At my feet was the black satin gown, which I had been looking for so urgently in my cabin just a moment ago. She had come, completely naked under her gown, to meet her destiny. The gown still just about showed the outline of the sad little thing who had worn it. Two patent leather Moroccan slippers emerged at the bottom. That was all! Nothing more!