Torture Garden
Page 8
It didn’t take me long to realise the error of my ardent diagnosis and that Miss Clara, contrary to what I had too vainly conjectured, was of an unassailable integrity. Far from being disappointed by this realisation, she consequently appeared to me even prettier and I formed a real pride in the fact that, pure and virtuous as she was, she had welcomed me – vile and debauched as I was – with such simple and gracious confidence. I refused to listen to my inner voices which cried out to me: “This woman is lying … this woman is mocking you. Look into those eyes, idiot, they’re eyes which have seen everything; that mouth has kissed everything; those hands have caressed everything; that flesh has too often trembled with every pleasure and in every possible embrace! Pure? Ha! With those knowing gestures? With that softness and suppleness, those bodily inflexions retaining all the features of the embrace? And that swollen bust, like a seed-pod of a flower surfeited with pollen?” No, to tell the truth, I didn’t listen … I felt a deliciously chaste sensation filled with compassion, recognition and pride – a feeling of moral regeneration, each day entering further into intimacy with a beautiful and virtuous person, who I decided in advance would never be anything for me … but a soul! This idea exalted me and rehabilitated me in my own eyes. Thanks to this pure daily contact, I gained – yes, I gained – self-esteem. All the filth of the past was transformed into luminous azure … and I contemplated the future through the tranquil, limpid emerald shade of steady happiness. Oh, how far away were Eugène Mortain, Madame G … and their ilk! Those faces of grinning phantoms dissolved by the minute under the celestial gaze of this lustral creature, who revealed me to myself as a new man, with such generosity, tenderness and warmth as I had never before known.
Oh, the irony of love’s tenderness! Oh how ludicrous is the enthusiasm lying within the human soul! When I was close to Clara I frequently believed in the reality and magnificence of my mission, and that I had within me the genius to revolutionise the embryology of all the planets in the universe.
We were soon exchanging confidences. With a series of cleverly calculated lies due on the one hand to vanity and on the other to a quite natural wish not to disparage myself in the mind of my friend, everything I revealed served my scholarly role, narrating my biological discoveries, my academic successes, all the hope the most illustrious men of science had entrusted in my method and in my voyage. Then, abandoning such arduous heights, I mingled anecdotes of social life combined with appreciations of literature and art, partly sound and partly perverse, just enough to interest the mind of a woman without disturbing her. And to these frivolous or light conversations I strove to add a witty turn, giving a particular and perhaps unique character to my grave scholarly personality. I managed to conquer Miss Clara during that Red Sea crossing. Subduing my discomfort, I was able to find some ingenious cares and delicate attentions which soothed her sufferings. When the Saghalien put into port to take on coal at Aden, we had become perfect friends, friends whose miraculous friendship was not troubled by a glance, nor was its beautiful transparency tarnished with ambiguous gestures or guilty intentions. And yet the voices continued to cry within me: “Just look at those nostrils as they breathe in the whole of life with a terrible sensuousness … Look at those teeth which have so often bitten into the blood-stained fruit of sin.” Heroically I silenced them.
There was great joy when we entered the Indian Ocean. After the deadly torturing days spent on the Red Sea, this seemed like a resurrection. A new life, a life of gaiety and activity, resumed possession of the ship. Although it was still very hot, the air was delicious to breathe, like the aroma of a fur just put aside by a woman. A light breeze impregnated, it was said, with every perfume of the tropical flora, refreshed body and mind. Everything around us was dazzling. The sky, with the translucidity of a fairy grotto, was golden-green tinged with pink. The calm sea, pulsing with a powerful rhythm under the breath of the monsoon, stretched out extraordinarily blue, ornamented, here and there, with great emerald-green spirals. The approach of magical continents, those lands of light where, one mysterious day, life had let out its first infantile wail, affected us physically like a lover’s touch. A little of this sky, this sea and this light was reflected on all our faces.
It went without saying that Miss Clara attracted and excited the men. She was always surrounded by a court of passionate admirers. I wasn’t jealous. I was sure she considered them ridiculous and preferred me to everyone else – even to the two Chinese who she often spoke to, but she did look at them (as she did at me) with that strange look in which several times I felt (despite many reservations) I had discerned a moral complicity and some secret correspondence.
Among the most fervent were a French explorer going to the Malayan peninsula to study copper-mines, and an English officer we had taken on board at Aden who was returning to his post in Bombay. In different ways, they were both thick-headed but amusing oafs and Clara loved to make fun of them. The explorer never tired of talking about his recent travels through Central Africa. As for the English officer, a captain in the artillery, he tried to dazzle us with tales of his ballistic inventions.
One evening after dinner we had all gathered on deck around Clara, who was reclining delightfully on a rocking-chair. Some smoked cigarettes, others dreamed … In our hearts we all had the same desire for Clara, and all of us, with the same thought of ardent possession, followed the back and forth motion of her small feet, clad in little pink mules which peeped out of the perfumed calyx of her petticoats like the pistils of flowers as her chair rocked. We said nothing … And the night was of an enchanted sweetness as the boat glided enticingly through the sea as though across silk. Clara addressed the explorer:
“So?” she said in a malicious voice. “It’s not a joke? You really have eaten human flesh?”
“Certainly I have,” he replied proudly in a tone which established an undeniable superiority over us. “We had to … You eat whatever you can.”
“What does it taste like?” she asked, a little disgusted.
He thought for a moment … then, with a vague gesture:
“Heavens!” he said. “How can I explain? Imagine, adorable young lady, imagine pork, slightly marinated in nut oil…”
In a complacently resigned tone he added: “It’s not very good … At any rate you wouldn’t eat it for pleasure. I’d prefer a leg of lamb or a steak.”
“Clearly,” Clara accepted.
And, as though she wanted, through politeness, to minimise the horror of such anthropophagy, she added:
“Doubtless because you only consumed negro flesh!”
“Negro?” he cried with a start. “Ugh! Fortunately, dear lady, I was not reduced to such harsh necessity. We never lacked whites, the Lord be thanked! Out escort was large and mainly composed of Europeans – from Marseilles, Germany, Italy, a bit of everywhere. When we were hungry we slaughtered one of the escort, preferably a German. The German, divine lady, is fatter than other races and provides more meat. And again, as far as we French are concerned, it’s one German less! The Italian is dry and hard, full of nerves…”
“And the Marseillais?” I intervened.
“Well,” the traveller declared, shaking his head. “He’s pretty over-rated. He smells of garlic and also, for some reason, sheep grease. He’s not exactly appetising. Edible, but no more than that…”
Turning to Clara with remonstrating gestures, he made his point emphatically:
“But negroes … Never! I think I’d throw up … I’ve known people who have eaten them and they have become sick. The negro is inedible. Some of them, I can assure you, are even poisonous.”
And, being scrupulous, he corrected himself:
“After all, you need to get to know them, as you do mushrooms. Perhaps Indian negroes allow themselves to be eaten?”
“Certainly not!” affirmed the English officer in a decisively categorical tone, and the resultant laughter brought an end to this culinary discussion which was starting to make me feel sick.
“Perhaps you ate him?” suggested Clara with a laugh.
“No … I was dragged in front of some common or garden judge, who sentenced me to two months in prison and ten thousand francs in damages and interest … For a dirty peasant! And you call that civilisation? Can you believe it! Well, thanks very much – just think if I was sentenced like that in Africa every time I killed a negro, or even a white …”
“So you do kill negroes?” said Clara.
“Most certainly, yes, adorable lady!”
“Why, since you can’t eat them?”
“Well, to civilise them – in other words to take their stocks of ivory and resin … Anyway, what do you expect? Suppose the governments and business houses that entrust us with civilising missions learned that we hadn’t killed anyone … what would they say?”
“That’s right!” the man from Normandy approved. “Besides, negroes are wild beasts … poachers … tigers! …”
“Negroes? You’re mistaken there, sir! They’re sweet and cheerful … they’re like children. Have you ever seen rabbits playing in a meadow at the edge of a wood at eventide?”
“Probably.”
“They frolic joyfully, using their paws to preen their fur as they leap around and roll in the mint. Well, negroes are like those young rabbits … they’re quite charming.”
“Even so, isn’t it well known that they’re cannibals?” persisted the gentleman.
“Negroes?” protested the explorer. “Not at all! The only cannibals in the lands of the blacks are the whites … The negroes eat bananas and graze on lush grass. I know one scholar who even claims that negroes have the stomachs of ruminants. How do you expect them to eat meat, especially human meat?”
“Then why kill them?” I objected, suddenly filled with benevolence and pity.
“But … I just told you – to civilise them. And because it’s great fun! When we reached a negro village after an interminable march they were so frightened! They immediately uttered cries of distress, but instead of fleeing, since they were so afraid, they flung themselves to the ground weeping. We plied them with liquor, for we always kept abundant supplies of alcohol in our baggage, and when they were drunk, we slaughtered them!”
“What a filthy trick!” put in the man from Normandy, not without disgust, no doubt thinking at that moment about the Tonkin forests and the marvellous flight of peacocks.
The night continued to be dazzling. The sky was ablaze. All around us the ocean rocked in great sheets of phosphorescent light. And I was sad: sad about Clara, sad about these vulgar men, sad about myself and about our conversation which was an outrage to Beauty and Silence!
Suddenly: “Do you know Stanley?” Clara asked the explorer.
“Certainly, yes … I know him,” he replied.
“And what do you think of him?”
“Oh, him,” he said, shaking his head.
And, as though a horrible memory had engulfed his mind, he concluded in a grave voice:
“All the same, he went a bit too far!”
For a while I had sensed that the captain had been wanting to say something. He took advantage of the pause following this confession:
“Me!” he said. “I’ve done much more than that. And your little massacres are nothing compared to those attributed to me. I invented a bullet which is extraordinary. It’s called the Dum-Dum bullet after the little Hindu village in which I had the honour to invent it.”
“It kills a lot of people? More than others?” asked Clara.
“Oh, dear lady, I can’t tell you! It’s so small! Imagine a tiny little thing … what’s it called? … a hazelnut, that’s it! Imagine a very small hazel-nut … it’s delightful!”
“And what a pretty name, captain!” said Clara in admiration.
“Very pretty, indeed!” agreed the captain, visibly flattered. “Very poetic!”
“You’d think, wouldn’t you, that it was the name of a fairy in a play by Shakespeare … The Dum-Dum fairy! How enchanting … A laughing, light and totally blonde fairy skipping around, dancing and bounding amid the heather and sunshine … There she goes, Dum-Dum!”
“There she goes,” repeated the officer. “Absolutely! Besides, she’s a very effective, adorable lady. What is unique about her, I think, is that she has … that it means there are, so to speak, no more wounded …”
“Ah!”
“Only the dead! That’s what makes it so exquisite!”
He turned to me and, with an emphasis of regret in which our mutual patriotism was mingled, sighed: “If only you could have used it in France during that frightful Commune! What a triumph!”
And he abruptly passed to another reverie. “I sometimes wonder if it doesn’t come out of a tale by Edgar Poe or a dream of Thomas de Quincey. But no, since I’ve tried this adorable little Dum-Dum myself, I’ll tell you what happened. I lined up twelve Hindus…”
“Alive?”
“Naturally! It’s the German emperor who tries out ballistic experiments on corpses. You must admit that is both absurd and inconclusive … Personally I operate on people – it’s not enough that they be alive, they must also be of robust constitution and in perfect health … At least then you can see what you’re doing and where you’re going … I’m not a dreamer – I’m a scholar!”
“A thousand pardons, captain … Do go on.”
“So I placed a dozen Hindus, one behind the other in a geometrically straight line and … I fired …”
“And?” interrupted Clara.
“And, my delightful friend! The bullet performed marvellously. Of twelve Hindus not one was left standing! The bullet had passed through twelve bodies which, after the shot, were nothing but heaps of smashed flesh and crushed bones. Quite magical! And I’d never imagined such an fine success.”
“Fine, certainly, and something of a miracle.”
“Isn’t it?”
He was thoughtful and went on only after a few seconds of stirring silence.
“I’m seeking …” he murmured confidentially. “I’m seeking something better … something more definitive. I’m seeking a bullet, a little bullet which will annihilate whatever it hits … Nothing will remain! Nothing at all! Do you understand?”
“How’s that? What do you mean by nothing?”
“Or hardly anything!” explained the officer, “barely a heap of ashes, or even a slight reddish smoke which will immediately dissipate … It’s possible.”
“Automatic incineration, then?”
“Precisely! … Have you considered how many advantages there are in such an invention? In this way I’ll make army surgeons, nurses, ambulances, military hospitals and pensions for the wounded and all that unnecessary. It would be an incalculable saving, a great relief for State budgets … Not to mention for hygiene! What a hygienic conquest!”
“And you could call this bullet the Nib-Nib6 bullet!” I exclaimed.
“Very pretty! Very pretty!” applauded the artillery officer, although he did not have the slightest idea what this idiomatic interruption might mean and he started to laugh loudly – a fine and frank laughter characteristic of soldiers of all ranks and nations …
When he had calmed down, he went on:
&n
bsp; “I foresee,” he said, “that when France learns about this splendid weaponry, it will cease to insult us in its newspapers. And it will be your wildest patriots, those who cry out loudest that never enough millions are spent on war and who talk only about killing and bombardments, they’ll be the ones who will once more consign England to the curses of civilised peoples. But, damn it! We’re just being logical in our condition of universal barbarism. What! They admit that shells are explosive … They’d prefer to ignore the existence of bullets! Why? We live subject to the laws of war … And what constitutes war? It consists of massacring as many people as you can in the shortest possible time. To make it more murderous and expeditious you need to find more and more formidable engines of destruction. It’s a matter of humanity … and modern progress.”