So long as he is breathing, no one is qualified to give an order. He is the precious thread that links the past to the present. For want of him, all the treasure of experience scatters like the beads of a broken necklace. Nothing arises in obscure intelligences but confused suggestions. Tongues stammer, impotently.
For want of anything better, gazes turn to old Haoré. Is he not capable of extracting an opinion from his long experience, of capturing the subtle advice of some marauding demon?
He shakes his fleshless head, spits, closes his eyes, mutters. Finally, his trembling lips enunciate a principle that floats up from the ancestral night. Whoever eats the body of a man he has killed assimilates not only his flesh but his spirit. He acquires his virtues and does not risk being importuned by his soul, since he has swallowed it.
That axiom is welcomed in silence and projected in melancholy. Once, yes, they piously masticated the meat of old men. A respectable custom, but it was not pleasant; it has been abandoned. Today, it offends delicacies—and the unbearable stink that the vanquished men give off renders the prospect of the feast particularly unattractive. Even Pahoa and Mohimé, the two gluttons of the tribe, each capable of swallowing a medium-sized kangaroo in a single meal, feel sick. Visions of frightful indigestion afflict the most robustly courageous.
But every authorized speech falls into consciousness like a stone in water, engendering ripples. Clockwork movements are released and engaged, spreading from neighbor to neighbor. Painful as the envisaged gala might be, by virtue of having been formulated, it will become an obsession, an unavoidable necessity.
Fortunately, among the people of the octopus, tradition does not speak as loudly as among those of other totems. Mao often finds fault with the most firmly-established principles. Usually, Manga-Yaponi refutes his sophisms easily, but Mao benefits in this instance from the sage’s sealed lips. He also benefits from the disgust that is aroused in all stomachs by the doctrine Haoré has enunciated.
In the general disarray, Mao recalls acrimoniously that not all spirits are good to absorb. Some dry out the chest, others swell the belly, others empty the brain. By what sign has Haoré discerned that those of the white gods are not one of those varieties?
Disconcerted by this objection Haoré shakes his head and mutters. His tongue, not being agile, lacks the magic words.
Triumphantly, Mao redoubles his sarcasms. He will certainly not accomplish lightly an action that requires mature deliberation. Besides, the height of the sun counsels the siesta.
Followed by all the children of the octopus, Mao draws away superbly.
Any initiative is assumed to be beneficial by the instinct of imitation and solidarity. Moreover, so many events and so much intellectual effort have numbed brains. Mao’s possibly-reckless words and advice are supported by the certain desire of entrails and universal lassitude. In small groups hand in hand, the indigenes gradually cheer up and quit the bluff. They carry on their shoulders the still-inanimate body of the wise old man, whose limbs hang down to the right and the left.
The immolated gods remain lying there, alone.
But not for long.
The pointed muzzle of Ratari, the burrowing mouse, appears at the entrance to his hole. He takes two steps, pricks up his ears, looks the recumbent forms up and down with his round eyes, and advances in two or three hops. A few minutes later, the entire tribe is at table, fangs in play, disputing the lacerated flesh with shrill whistles.
They do not have it to themselves for long.
Black dots surge forth from all the corners of the sky. They draw nearer, increasing in size, and describe ever-decreasing circles. All kinds of raptors come in the response to the appeal of the cadavers, those from the sea and those from the aeries lodges in the high hills. With a great clatter of wings, enormous albatrosses, voracious seagulls, vultures and eagles descend upon the bluff; they sink their claws into the bodies, tearing bloody strips away with their hooked beaks. Before their assault, Ratari, frightened, is obliged to decamp, his belly half-full.
Already, however, the definitive cleaners are en route: those who are inescapable, who, in a matter of minutes, can make of whatever was still quivering with life a little while before, no matter how strong it was or how big it might be, into a small heap of bones, as white as pebbles.
In the vast subterranean cities of the red ants, between the roots of the great pandanus trees, the subtle call resounds:
Trara my sister,
Do you smell that odor?
Something out there’s dead
Blood has been shed.
Form up, red ants
Move off, advance,
All come this way,
It’s Trara’s day!
It stinks, it lures
Trara endures!
March on, march on!
Trot hard, run, run!
In long, dense somber columns, Trara’s people set forth. They scale the bodies, covering them, submerging them.
Under their mandibles, the flesh collapses and disintegrates. In vain, the birds of prey destroy thousands and thousands of the consumers with beaks and claws. The ants are still arriving, ever more numerous, ever more densely packed, climbing incessantly, rising like a tide. Their bites attack the raptors themselves. The latter renounce the struggle and fly away, with raucous cries of anger.
There is no longer anything on the promontory but a red seething mass. It quivers for several hours. Then, slowly, the ebb-tide draws the sated flood of cleaners back to their lairs.
All day long, Kouang has been ruminating his vengeance. The children have tried in vain to distract him. He has remained indifferent to their caresses and their games. In vain, Mémé has offered him ripe bananas. He is not hungry. In vain she has mixed guava juice and mango juice with coconut milk in a calabash. He is not thirsty. The savor of the murder is sufficient for him.
Toward dusk, however, a sudden hunger grips him. Yes, he has killed, but Koua is still dead. The itch to avenge her further torments him again. Who can tell whether a breath of life remains in the murderer? What if Kouang could kill him again, feel the vertebrae in his neck crack?
By the last rays of twilight, with a groan of desire, Kouang plunges through the foliage, the frightened inhabitants of which scatter, screeching. Pursued by the indignant objurgations of parrots woken from their initial sleep, he emerges from the woods and climbs the bluff again.
At the foot of the sacred mast there are five small heaps of white bones. They no longer have human form. The disconcerted Kouang sniffs them in vain. They no longer have any odor. Where Trara has passed, the work is done well.
Rara and Mémé pick up the polished skulls and stripped tibias curiously, amused by their shapes, and when they have examined them sufficiently they indulge themselves in a jesting simulation of combat. In their brown hands, femurs clash with a noise like castanets, and the festivities end with a general bombardment in which, transformed into inoffensive projectiles, the last debris of the skeletons is scattered.
Pensive and silent, Kouang contemplates them. And his obscure soul bleeds, with what a human would call incurable grief, the desiccating joy of vengeance, a yearning for oblivion and a desperate rebellion against pitiless Nature, who has endowed him with consciousness in order that his miserable rag can be simultaneously tortured by all the regrets of the past, all the horrors of the present and the desolate vision of the future.
IV
A few cables from the verdant isle, of which the gusts of the warm breeze sometimes bring the sweet scents, the light cruiser Citoyen is bobbing lazily at anchor. Everyone is on deck. Telescopes are searching the shore. The large launch is being lowered into the sea.
“You’re intending to carry out a reconnaissance, then, Commandant?”
Commandant Kerfaouët turns the finely-chiseled clean-shaven face of a modern-sea-wolf toward the parliamentarian.
“Monsieur le député,” he says, “as I’ve just had the honor of explaining to you, this r
egion is one of the most inhospitable in the Pacific. Had it not been for the impudence of that Boche fish and the duty that requires everyone to attack the enemy, I would have avoided it like the plague, having the responsibility of your person, not to mention”—he turns to the young woman in question—“that of Madame de Vesnage and Captain de Pionne. Your anticlericalism will excuse me from affirming that it has required a special blessing from Providence, or a singular whim of the Devil, to get us through two thirds of the Murray Bank in a cyclone without leaving our carcasses there. While proceeding with indispensable repairs here, I’m going to see whether the currents might not have cast some trace of our blessed pirate ashore there.
“I imagine that it will be to more disagreeable to you than to me to make it known to the government that the little wooden craft that has the honor of taking you back to France has also had the honor of sending to the bottom the malefactor that was wreaking havoc in this region.”
Monsieur le député Bedeau-Conflans inclines his chin with the reflective authority conferred upon him by his legislative mandate, his title of Vice-President of the Radical-Democratic Party and his functions as extraordinary delegate of the government of the Republic to the Far East.
Not having been included in the last ministerial reshuffle, it has seemed to the new cabinet that there is occasion both to forestall the parliamentary effects of his disappointment and to utilize his civil value by confiding to him one of those propaganda missions that, at a cost of only a few tens of thousands of francs, have the double advantage of making the corridors of the Palais-Bourbon a little healthier and comforting our exotic compatriots in immeasurable proportions.
Accompanied by his secretary, Monsieur Pittagol, a diplomatic interpreter and graduate of the School of Far Eastern Languages, Monsieur le député Bedeau-Conflans has therefore been charged with bringing to our functionaries, our colonists and our indigenous protégés in Indio-China and Oceania the salutations of the motherland, and also studying means of intensifying the production in those regions of cotton, rice and patriotism.
Welcomed everywhere by the enthusiasm of the populations, the honorable delegate has had the old cruiser Citoyen put at his disposal for his return to France. His gallantry has admitted as passengers the young widow of the unfortunate Paul Sajol, whose defects, redeemed by an honorable end, ought not to cause it to be forgotten that he belonged to one of the best families in the Republic. He has also welcomed aboard Captain de Pionne of the Colonial Infantry, returning to the front.
Monsieur Bedeau-Conflans is devoting his leisure time to dictating a report to Monsieur Pittagol, which, delivered from the podium, will rally—with the exception of half the coalition—the applause of the entire Parliament.
The encounter with and probable destruction of the pirates will be a precious supplement to complete the justification of the député for having preferred the listening-post of the Palais-Bourbon and the moral revitalization of the Fatherland to his glory-free and peril-free ambassadorial duties.
Detaching his eyes from his binoculars, he continues his interrogation. “So this is the first time you’ve visited this region?”
“The first time. It is, moreover, quite possible that it has not seen our flag since the epoch when Dumont-d’Urville took possession of it in the name of France.”
Exquisitely pretty, so pale and frail beneath her mourning-veil, Madame de Vesnage asks in her turn: “Oh, Commandant! Are we going to see savages? True savages? That would be delightful!”
Monsieur de Kerfaouët sketches an imprecise gesture. “It’s doubtful. Nothing thus far reveals their presence. If they exist, however, prepare yourself for a few disappointments, for they belong to the lowest level—above the Boche, of course—of our wretched species. Isn’t that so, Doctor?”
Doctor Boujade fashions the thick lips beneath his potato of a nose into a snout. He has dragged his carcass around all the seven seas. Beneath his gray hair, which is still thick, and behind the ludicrously-modeled barrier of his brow, his bilobate brain lodges an ample and composite arsenal of science and paradox, anarchic skepticism and humanitarian enthusiasm. Beneath his bushy eyebrows, still black, he darts the sharp gaze of his green eyes at the young woman—poor child!—and his southern accent rings out:
“It’s certain that this region nourishes the most primitive races of Polynesia. If there are humans living on that reef, we’ll have an unexpected opportunity to verify Jean-Jacques’ theories regarding the noble savage. But is it still inhabited? However lightly the white man has touched it, he has had time to add his defects to those that were already undermining the indigenes...”
With a child-like impulse, Madame de Vesnage puts her hands together in prayer. “Don’t tell me that they no longer exist!”
“I shall prolong them or resuscitate them to please you. All things considered, it’s not entirely impossible that we’ll unearth a few poor—very poor—relatives of Rarahu here.”15
“What joy! And thanks to Monsieur Pittagol, perhaps we’ll be able to converse together!”
Monsieur Pittagol, bows hastily and deeply. The amity of Monsieur Bedeau-Conflans, of whom his father is one of the principal supporters, and his diplomas for the School of Far-Eastern Studies, have saved him the trouble of a long, monotonous and unhealthy sojourn in the trenches. It has been incumbent on him for three months, once the last strains of the Marseillaise have faded away, to translate for the edification of yellow or brown apes the speeches in which Monsieur le député glorifies maternal France and stigmatizes the Boches’ crimes against human rights. There is no doubt, given the applause that welcomes those speeches, either of the perfection of his linguistic skills or of the loyalty of those we administrate.
To that suffrage, however, flattering as it is, how infinitely preferable Monsieur Pittagol, a long-haired and sensitive poet, would find that of the exquisite creature whose fugitive apparition in Saigon has sufficed to fascinate him, whom he has been so excited to find aboard—and whose cry of joy so cruelly ripped his ears when, on seeing Captain de Pionne emerge on to the deck, she held out her arms to him and exclaimed: “You, Hugues! It’s not a dream!”
When the universal cataclysm was unleashed, Laurette de Vesnage yearned, like all French women, to assume her share of the sacrifice. Beneath a white head-dress, her excessively slender silhouette leaned over the beds of our wounded in a cosmopolitan caravanserai converted into a hospital. A few weeks later, it was her who, nailed to her bed, exhausted and feverish, was collecting the paternal grumbles of the old doctor. “You see, my dear child, I warned you that it was madness.”
After three months, she was deemed to have recovered, at least partly. “Sun, chaise-longue and food.” On condition of living like a mollusk, Laurette de Vesnage might continue to survive, idle and solitary, in the worldwide Gehenna.
One dark morning, in the grayness that enveloped her, the news arrived that Paul Sajol, the wretch whose name she no longer bears but who had never ceased to be her legal husband, had attempted, like so many others, to clean away the ordure of life by means of a beautiful death. He had joined the Colonial Infantry. The first privations had reckoned with his carcass, worn out by too many excesses. He was dying in a hospital in Saigon, of one of those maladies that have no mercy but can take any months to liquidate a man. From the hole into which what remained of his soul had withdrawn, an obsession had flowed without respite from his cracked lips and put a fire in his cheeks: “I should like to see Laurette; I should like Laurette to forgive me.”
Thus, Laurette would be able to soothe the supreme anguish of a wretch who was a soldier of France, and her husband. In a matter of minutes, the decision was made.
Who or what can stop her? She is alone and useless. The train carries her to Paris. To her stubborn grace everything yields, including the most retrenched bureaucracies and the most formal orders.
Two months after receiving the dispatch, she crosses the threshold of the military hospital in Saigon wi
th a firm tread. A specter lifts himself up on his meager bed, his eyes widening: “Laurette…it’s you!”
Playing fair for once, death permits Paul Sajol to take another fortnight to die, without suffering, with brief intervals of lucidity, clutching the moist hand of his wife. When the wretch is laid in the ground, Laurette has no option but to leave. There is no time to lose if her remains are not to be swallowed up by the European cemetery beside those of her husband. The tropical climate has sharpened the malady undermining her. Fever takes hold of her every evening. A circle of iron squeezes her temples. Gratefully, she accepts the hospitality that the departing Monsieur Bedeau-Conflans offers her aboard his cruiser.
Yes, undoubtedly, there is a refinement of bitterness in going back, in descending into the inevitable without having received the adieu of the only being with whom a true bond still links her to the earth, and from whom nothing any longer separates her. Is it certain that the phantom of Hugues de Pionne, a soldier at Tonkin, had nothing to do with Laurette’s departure for Saigon? Is it certain that, even beside the death-bed, his image was not floating between the cheeks of the dying man and the lips that murmured forgiveness to him? No matter! Laurette will go away without having seen him again. After all, it’s for the best. A fugitive mirage would not have distracted the officer from his duty for an instant. He would have had the pain of seeing her again only to lose her again. It’s for the best. She will go back without him even knowing that she has come...
She will go back with him.
From the depths of his jungle, Captain de Pionne has come to Saigon render an account of his ongoing operation against the pirates. There he has found the order to embark for the French front solicited many months before. A few hours suffices for him to liquidate everything. The hazard of a dinner has brought him face to face with the omnipotent delegate, who invites him to depart with him without waiting for the next liner...
The Children of the Crab Page 8