by Hugo Wilcken
That day, Sabir has hauled up a whole case of rum for Carpette to dispose of. He’s sure the commandant has no idea how much he drinks, wouldn’t necessarily miss the case, wouldn’t investigate if he did. And yet the commandant must have realised by now that all sorts of things have gone missing from the house. He could hardly be that stupid or absentminded. If so, then he must also realise that Sabir is the culprit. Because no one else has the kind of access to the house that he has. And the fact that the commandant’s done nothing about it has merely emboldened Sabir even further.
Now that he’s moved to the folly, Sabir’s meetings with the commandant sometimes extend into the night. Sabir accepts the commandant’s rum and wine as well, but is careful to remain sober. The commandant, on the other hand, drinks too much. And when he does, his talk grows ever more grandiose.
‘The trouble is administrators don’t stay here long enough,’ he says one night. ‘They see this as a cursed post to escape from as fast as possible, with as much loot as possible. Well, I’m different. I plan on staying. And damn the rest of the Colony. I have my own little kingdom here. I’ll organise it as I see fit. I’ll continue building on the avenue. I’ll get the convicts out of the barracks. I’ll give them concessions. I’ll let them farm the land, earn an honest living, open up the Colony. Forge a new country. The English managed it in Australia, why can’t we do it here? I’ll build a settlement to rival Saint-Laurent. A new city. Built on republican virtues, of justice and equality before the law.’
Justice? Equality? Back now in the darkness of his folly, Sabir muses briefly on the commandant’s words before sleep overcomes him. Sabir, for one, has never expected or asked for life to be just or equal. These ideas are a luxury that only certain people can afford. People like the commandant. For Sabir and those like him, life is a perpetual struggle, one which leaves little room for such abstraction. And when not engaged in this struggle for survival, Sabir would be consumed with the usual desires, for companionship, intoxication, sex; his free moments would be spent assuaging these desires as best he could. That’s how things had been, until his arrest at least.
In his time, he’s come across those agitators for change – the communists, fascists, anarchists. The pamphleteers. On the factory floor, in the bars he’d drink at. He’s never paid them much heed. The only long stretches of time he ever had for proper thinking was at the front. Even then, the goal of thinking was to achieve the peace of not having to think any more. And the commandant’s books are almost the first he’s read since that time.
Sabir’s mind now wanders back hypnotically to the years of freedom, between demob and the prison gates. In those days, Paris felt dark and oppressive. The city’s monolithic buildings, immense avenues, gold domes and sumptuous façades could lock you into a state of powerless awe. Not that it struck him like that at the time. It’s only once you’ve lost something that you can make sense of it. But no, he now realises, he has no great nostalgia for his native city. No desire to find himself back there, even if it were possible. Now is the moment to escape into a different dream.
The commandant’s shipment of orchids is due. Standing on the riverbank the following day, Sabir glimpses funnels poking out over the trees as the ship twists its way through the forest. While he waits, fretting over what to do with the orchids when they arrive, one of the Boni ferrymen sidles up to him, taking him by surprise. ‘Friend of Carpette? Friend of Carpette?’ Sabir glances about: a couple of guards are lounging by the river drinking, but they’re some distance away.
With a mixture of gesticulation, broken Dutch and French, the ferryman makes Sabir understand that he’s the one who’s selling the boat to Carpette, Edouard and himself. That they’ll have it late next week. That he’ll sink it and secure it with stones in one of the creeks downstream, but he won’t tell them which one and where until he gets the money, all of it. Throughout, he punctuates his disjointed speech with a staccato laugh.
Sabir nods. ‘I understand.’
At that, the man wanders off to his canoe. Sabir notices the ritual scarring he has on his back – horizontal and vertical lines which look almost like a Christian cross. He climbs into his canoe and paddles his way across the river to the Dutch side – shrinking until he’s nothing but a black spot against the brutal green of the trees on the far bank. Finally he melts into the backdrop.
The escape. That’s what’s important. That morning, Sabir went up to the main camp at dawn – ostensibly to commandeer some convicts to help with the orchid shipment, but actually to see Say-Say, the young Basque from his old barracks. His real name is unpronounceable, and his nickname comes from the terrible stutter he gets when nervous. The Colony is a hive of speech difficulties: Say-Say is hardly the only stutterer, and there are also plenty of lispers, mutes, those with all manner of speech tics. Not to mention the convicts who talk to themselves. Sabir has even caught himself at it, on occasion.
Say-Say wasn’t in the barracks; Sabir tracked him down to the camp’s hospital – a grand word for the row of dirty mattresses in a converted barracks, looked after by a convict orderly. He seemed in a bad state. His jug ears bright red, his eyes shining with a fever that shook his body.
‘Here, roll me a smoke, will you? I can’t do it.’
It was true; his hands were trembling too much. Was there any chance he’d be well enough by the time of the escape? Then again, the thing about fevers is that you never know how they’ll play out. A bad one can carry a man off within hours. But some pass in a day or two, with no real consequences.
As he rolled Say-Say a cigarette, Sabir went through the escape plan he and Carpette had worked out, dropping to a low whisper when he thought one of the other convicts was taking too close an interest. Here in the Colony, Sabir has by now realised, it’s not the guards who are your main enemy, it’s the other convicts. He kept talking as they smoked together – explaining about the boat, the sail, the provisions, the paddle down the river before dawn, the ocean crossing to Trinidad, then along the coast to Colombia. The plan had been formed in bits and pieces over several meetings and, spoken out loud like that in its entirety, it sounded too fantastic. As if Sabir were recounting one of those escape yarns you’d hear from someone who’d heard it from someone else. Like so many of the tales that do the rounds here, you can’t quite bring yourself to believe it.
‘We’re not going to hang about until you’re better, though. Either you’re well enough by next week, or we’ll have to find someone else.’
Say-Say leant towards him, gripped Sabir’s arm. ‘Listen, I’m not as bad as I look. I’ve been smoking quinine.’
Quinine: one of the tricks for shamming sickness. You add it to your tobacco and it puts your temperature up, makes you look as if you’ve got a fever.
‘Why?’
‘Had to get out of barracks. I owe Pierrot. Not that much! But he started threatening me. Now he’s sent word here. I’ve got to get out of camp, too. It’s that or …’
Sabir looked around the hall. Men lying flat, their bodies glistening, staring up into nothing. Only one of them was sitting up: a man counting endlessly on his fingers: ‘27, 28, 29 – 27, 28, 29 – 27, 28, 29 …’ A few mattresses down from him, Sabir noticed Antillais, Masque’s co-murderer. He, too, was shivering away a fever. With him was a kitten, attached to his wrist with a length of twine. So he’d wasted no time in getting another pet. The kitten jumped onto his chest, mistaking his shaking as a desire to play.
Say-Say grabbed at him again. ‘Did I ever tell you what I got done for?’
‘No.’
‘Smuggling. We used to run a fishing boat from Bayonne to San Sebastian.’
‘Really. What did you smuggle?’
‘Oh, all sorts of things. People. And arms. To the fighters.’
‘What fighters?’
Another shaking fit took hold of Say-Say. He was trying to convince Sabir he knew about boats – except that the story was so fanciful as to be unbelievable. Sabir wasn’t
even sure that Say-Say was shamming his fever: if he already had gambling debts, then where would he get the money to buy the quinine? He was one of those nervy convicts who was always making up stories to impress the others. Nonetheless, Sabir remembered the promise he’d made to the country boy Gaspard, that he’d now silently transferred to Say-Say. He’d been swindled out of his money by the forts-à-bras; it wasn’t his fault. He couldn’t survive here. He’d have to get transferred, or escape. And Sabir would help him escape. In some way, it was liberating to help someone else. It was even liberating to feel pity for someone other than himself.
‘I’ll be back up on Monday. If you’re clear of fever, then it’s on. Otherwise …’
‘I’ll be all right. Don’t worry. I can’t go back to barracks, though. Either they let me stay on here, or I’ll have to hide out in the forest.’
‘If it comes to that, make your way down to the river. There’s a trail that runs thirty metres to the right of the main path. Use that. As you approach the house, you’ll see the garden to your right. Track round to the other side of it. You’ll find a path that leads to a small circular building. Go inside, stay put. I’ll come by in the evening. I’ll bring food.’
The Boni ferrymen are unloading crates onto the riverbank. Sabir thought there’d be pots, not crates, and he has no clear idea of what to expect inside them. In the book on orchids he’s borrowed from the commandant’s library, there are careful line drawings of intricate, bizarre flowers, of a sort he’s never seen before. One of them has wavy, drooped petals like hair extending all the way down the stem; another is like a cat with its jaws open; another like a dragon; yet another like a wizened head. Some are repulsive, some lushly sensual, some crudely sexual. Most look like anything but flowers. In fact they are curiously animal-like, and what they remind Sabir of are the thin, fantastical creatures in a picture book his mother gave him as a child. Although the creatures were supposed to be comical, Sabir was frightened of them; in his dreams, they’d emerge from under his bed like grotesque insects. When he finally confided his fear to his mother, she laughed at him. ‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘there’s nothing to be afraid of. There’s nothing living under your bed.’
Foliage peeks out through the slats of the crates. Once they’ve been transported to the nursery, Sabir prises off a lid. What he finds inside is a chaotic jumble of bulbous, gnarled roots, stems, browning leaves, earth … but no flowers. It looks like a box of weeds removed from a flower bed. The plants are all sodden, as well – no doubt the crates were doused with water on board. Perplexed, Sabir stands there staring. What would Edouard do under these circumstances? He’s the real gardener, the real expert. Not for the first time, Sabir feels guilty that it’s he who’s in this relatively exalted position, who’s lied his way to privilege, while his old comrade Edouard’s out there somewhere chopping wood.
One of the convicts on his team says: ‘Well, what’s all this muck, then?’
Another remarks: ‘Whatever they were, they’re all dead now.’
Not quite. Here and there a plant seems to be alive – and then on closer inspection, maybe a good quarter of them are.
‘You’re right,’ answers Sabir, after a minute’s sun-struck silence. ‘Looks like they’re good for nothing.’ They remove the lids from the rest of crates. It occurs to Sabir to put two of the deadest-looking crates aside, to show the commandant when he comes down. ‘We’ll get rid of the rest of them, though. You can dump the lot in the jungle, behind the folly.’
Once his men have gone with the crates, Sabir turns back to the house. Halfway across the garden he has second thoughts. It’s a relief that most of the plants are dead. It’s even more convenient to say that they all are. The commandant won’t be down from the main camp for another hour. Sabir goes back to the two crates the convicts have left behind and carefully sifts through them, pulling out any plants that look as if they’re still alive and tossing them into the river.
Working under the noon sun can produce a kind of delirium. Afterwards, Sabir sits down under a tree with his back to the river, at the point at which the garden reaches the water. Sometimes there’s a breeze here, but not today. This wet heat that permeates everything, that even has its own colour, its own smell. Men in the distance seem hazy, uncertain against the background, like wraiths on the shoreline.
Sabir can hear a low buzz, which at first he takes to be an insect. Then, out of the corner of his eye, he spots something high up in the sky, glistening in the brilliant light. It’s vividly red, like a tiny drop of blood against the blue infinity. A biplane, following the river into the interior. But there’s no airfield at Saint-Laurent. Beyond Saint-Laurent there’s another camp and then nothing – just Boni and Indian villages carved out of the forest, plus various mining camps. Certainly nowhere to land a plane. Sabir watches the red splotch as it continues deeper and deeper into the jungle until it disappears altogether.
Now he’s thinking about the orchids again. With or without them, he realises, the garden is nonetheless taking shape. Gazing out at the shimmering expanse of newly laid lawn, Sabir is seized with a certain proprietorial pleasure. The layout is the same as the one in the photo of the house and garden he’d seen upstairs, in the wife’s bedroom. Ever since that evening when the commandant mentioned his wife, Sabir has been eager to learn more about her. One thing that he’s found out is that her name is Renée. Whether the commandant has named Camp Renée after her or it’s simply a coincidence, he doesn’t know. If the former, then it’s a strange sort of homage to pay, to say the least. Although on several occasions it’s seemed as if the commandant’s on the verge of talking about her again, only once has he actually done so. It was an evening of strangulated monkey howls – no doubt some sort of mating ritual. The commandant had had several rums. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘she was never like any other women. To me, the others are dead. Quite dead! Only she is truly alive.’
Now Sabir’s back in the house. The commandant will return soon, but there’s time enough to look out for any titbits to steal. The office is its usual mess of books, blueprints, papers, empty glasses, full ashtrays. In the corner, under the drinks cabinet, there’s a cupboard. It’s always locked. In fact, it’s the only thing in the house that always is. Sabir has contemplated forcing the lock before, but has so far drawn back from doing so. If the commandant discovered it had been tampered with, he’d have to know it was Sabir. And then what would happen? He might lose all his privileges. And get sent to another camp, where he’d end up chopping trees in the sun, like Edouard. Yet there’s another, more obscure reason for not doing it. To Sabir, locking the cupboard seems to be a message to him from the commandant:take what you want here, anything, except what’s in this cupboard. Spare this and the rest is yours.
It’s the first time he’s seen the key in the cupboard. Sabir pauses, pricked with a sense of guilt that’s gone within the second. Through the window he can see the commandant emerging from the forest, ant-like against the immensity of the trees. He’ll be here in five or six minutes. Sabir turns the key and yanks the cupboard door open. Inside, a few neat piles of papers and letters. He pulls a few out of their envelopes, expecting them to be from the commandant’s wife. Disappointment: they’re not. Some are to do with business affairs, others appear to be from a family member. One envelope has a Swiss stamp. The typed letter inside is on headed paper: Dr Martineau, Eves-les-Bains, near Geneva. Monsieur, I am replying to your letter of 22nd January, 1927, concerning your wife. Sabir pushes the letter back into its envelope and shoves it into his pocket. Beside the piles of letters and papers, a small metal box; inside, a tidy wad of fifty-franc notes. Sabir takes a few of them – best not be too greedy – then shuts the box, locks the cupboard door and slips out of the study.
Minutes later, Sabir watches as the commandant’s face colours with surprise and frustration. ‘What, none of them survived? Not a single one?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Well, I’ll be … damned!
’ The commandant’s on the verge of some explosive rage. He starts to pace about impotently, his struggle to keep calm filling the room. ‘Of course, they did tell me most of them wouldn’t survive. I’ll give them that. But then they promised a good quarter would be all right.’
‘I’m sorry, sir. I’ve left two crates out for you to inspect.’
An unpleasant feeling invades Sabir as they walk out under a terrible sun to where the orchid nursery was to be. It takes him a moment to identify this feeling as remorse; it’s gone almost as soon as it had come. The commandant bends down to inspect the crates and sift through the steaming, sodden plants. Most of them are just a sludgy mess now: decomposition sets in so quickly here. One he holds up to the sun, like a farmer inspecting a stillborn animal. This climate – which doesn’t so much nurture the living, as liquefy it … The commandant sighs, his anger now changed to resignation. ‘I suppose that’s it, then. No point in keeping this stuff.’
The fate of the orchids hangs over the rest of the day. Sabir spends the afternoon digging holes for a boundary fence. The commandant has been most particular about this fence, but whether it’s to keep the jungle out or the garden in, Sabir has no idea. Not long before the end of the workday, the commandant wanders over. He seems muted, deflated. At first he says nothing, looking on as Sabir self-consciously goes about his work.
‘Such a pity about the orchids,’ he murmurs finally. ‘I so much wanted my wife to have them, when she arrived.’
Sabir doesn’t know what to say but momentarily stops what he’s doing, and the commandant places his hand on Sabir’s shoulder as if in commiseration with a son – or even a lover.
‘When will she be arriving, sir?’
‘She’s taken a berth on the Queen Wilhelmina. The boat’s due in at Saint-Laurent early on Thursday morning.’
‘You must be looking forward to it, sir.’