The Children of the Crab

by André Lichtenberger

  Translated by Monsieur Pittagol, the supreme song of the god is welcomed in a spirit of veneration and relief. Ungraspable as its substance is, there is no doubt that it is a song of adieu. That is the essential thing. The white gods have been merciful to the Oyas. They have not inflicted tortures upon them. They have brought them curious aliments, exquisite liquids, and amiable amours. They have been content with a single murder and have not seemed to demand others. It is appropriate to thank them for that.

  So, Manga-Yaponi, swaying his white head, intones delightedly the canticle of gratitude.

  “Redoubtable gods, be blessed for having spared us. We prostrate ourselves before your faces and beg you to take all your magic away with you. We shall continue to honor your signs. Try not to come back, for you make us very afraid and our minds are exhausted by the perpetual apprehension of not understanding you. Nevertheless, whatever you decide, we shall always be submissive to you. We have immediately killed the victim of your choice, and if another is necessary to you, we will kill them similarly, even if it is a hunter in the prime of life or a plump maiden. The important thing is that you go away without anger at your slaves.”

  A unanimous moan confirms the devotion of the tribe.

  Monsieur Pittagol gives evidence of his indefatigable enthusiasm. Deeply moved, the député bows and proclaims, on straightening up: “Vive la République! Vive la France!”

  At that liberating gesture, delight burst forth. The god is not demanding more blood. There is a single howl: “Biba Ulica! Biba Francea!”

  With the masculine voice of the député, who intones the Marseillaise, the voices of all the little spouses who have profited from the patriotic instruction of the sailors join in with touching good will. It is, unfortunately impossible, for want of having made the discovery, to follow it with the national anthem of the Oyas—but when the choirs fall silent, a furious concert of irritated macaques and cockatoos is unleashed in the coconut-palms.

  The session ends.

  One after another, the launches have returned to the ship, with the député, the Commandant, his officers and their escort.

  No one remains ashore except the young couple and Dr. Boujade. They have obtained permission from Monsieur de Kerfaouët for the last boat not to take them back until nightfall.

  On the beach of golden sand, in the glory of the setting sun, a poignant bite grips the young woman and the officer.

  At the moment of quitting the fortunate isle, Laurette weakens, rebels.

  What? Stay? Desert the duty of the civilized that the old family tradition has inculcated within them? Not for a second, any more than in the strict conscience of the young officer, has the thought entered her head. On the plane on which they have lived, their lives are pledged; they will pay.

  On being torn away from this place, however, the grief surpasses what she believed herself to be capable of suffering. How can she live, having broken the new links that have just revealed her to herself, become embodied in her own substance?

  Yes, she was able, once, to drag out the days, alone, astray, abandoned in horror.

  She cannot do that any longer.

  Here, she has not only lived heart to heart with the man she loves, but their being has been enlarged, magnified beyond terrestrial infirmity in a prodigious communion.

  They are not only beloved with all the poor tenderness of the hearts of a man and a woman; it is the entire race of which they are the issue that is beloved in them, that has ornamented their love with all that exists of aspiration toward the best, of hatred for evil and ugliness.

  They are loved with all the humanitarian idealism of the Uncle of the Crabs, with all the innocence that palpitates in infantile souls, with all the desire for happiness of a creature seeking desperately to surpass the fatalities that grip it.

  Raised above themselves, extracted from their individualism and from the universal carnage, they have, in the bosom of the fortunate isle, participated in the rhythm of a finer, superior, broader existence, as fraternal as the two savage children who foresaw their coming, who were waiting for them, who have recognized them, and have provided their bonds of union with immense Nature.

  Break with all that? But that is as criminal as breaking with the old fatherland would be on the other plane. To desert the island and to desert France: equal impossibilities...

  What to do, then?

  Huddled at the young woman’s feet, Raramémé watch her curiously, collecting on their brown fingers and licking off, on by one, the salty pearls that trickle down her cheeks.

  Laurette wrings her hands and indicates the children.

  “Help me, Doctor. Have pity. We can’t abandon them.”

  Monsieur Boujade shrugs his shoulders, and grumbles, hiding his emotion behind a joke: “Nothing simpler than to take them aboard. Two marmosets more or less... For them, the cage, the asphalt of our streets, costumes from Belle Jardinière, bronchitis, the comfort of the hospital and the dissecting-table…fine gifts. Not much fun.”

  Laurette weeps.

  Hugues murmurs in her ear: “Don’t we have to be sensible, darling? The Uncle…we’ll be leaving our dear bronze children in the embalmed atmosphere where they’ve flourished, among familiar spirits, in the perfumed light where life is sweet, memory without anguish, death without terror. They’ll wait for us…and when the war is over, we’ll come back...”

  Through the mist of her tears, Laurette looks at him. “We’ll come back!”

  He jests, tenderly. Yes, Laurette; when one is of the crab, one does not break oneself in two forever. They have found one another once, although it was not easy. They will find one another again, somewhere…in time...

  Somewhere? In Time? Vague formulas, but still too precise...

  Perhaps, rather, outside of space and time? Who knows? Questions out of place... They will find one another. Yes, Laurette’s anguished heart wants that, and cries out for it.

  She caresses the children’s hair and explains to them: “We’re going to go, but we’ll come back.”

  They look at her with indecisive smiles. Certainly, they have an intuition that the white gods are going to disappear. That is in conformity with all the traditions. But it is also in the order of things that those who are of the same blood do not part. How can these things be reconciled?

  There is a difficulty in this that confounds their intelligence. Undoubtedly, the magic of the white gods will be able to cut through it.

  Curious, Rara asks: “Will you come back tomorrow?”

  Laurette shakes her head. Perhaps not tomorrow, or the next day, but after that.

  After that?

  It is vertiginous to envisage such distant perspectives. But since the divine sister accepts it, it must be for the best. However, in order to be entirely tranquil, it is necessary that the two gods be solemnly bound.

  Rara is cunning. He knows the trick. He places his diaphanous palm on his breast and says, his voice coaxing: “Say like this: ‘I promise Kroum. We will come back.’”

  Docile, Laurette repeats after him: “I promise Kroum; we will come back.”

  Then Raramémé are quite content, and clap their hands. Getting up on tiptoe, they brush the white cheek with their dark red lips, with the pleasurable gesture that they did not know before, which the gods have taught them.

  Laurette embraces them, hugging them fervently to her heart.

  On Mémé’s temple Rara points to the spot where the young woman’s lips have just been placed. “Me, for you. Here. Tomorrow.”

  And Mémé, touching Rara’s forehead, confirms: “Me. Tomorrow. There, for you.”

  Then they fall silent again. Since the divine sister—so pale, oh so pale!”—has spoken thus, all is well. Even so, their little hearts are beating irregularly. They huddle closer to the young woman, and, to reassure themselves, affirm politely: “You will come back? You have promised Kroum.”

  She returns their caresses and repeats, in a low voice: “I have promised Kroum. Y
ou can call him one last time.”

  The children intone:

  Tick, tock,

  Shock, crock...

  One more time, the capricious song. One more time, from all the mysterious pools, all the dark holes in the coral, all the caverns in which they reside, the blue crabs stretch out their feet. The phalanx with the metallic back emerges, and advances noisily toward the young people at its oblique trot.

  Rara digs his fingernails into Laurette’s wrist.

  “Say it to them too...”

  Above the swarming mass, the young woman solemnly extends her excessively pale hand. “I have promised Kroum. We will come back.”

  One after another, pincers are raised and close with a click like castanets, reopen and close again.

  Kroum has recorded the promise. At the supreme cry of “Kroum is alive!” the limping crabs move off again, clicking and clocking, going back to the waves and sinking thereinto.

  Behind them, the gilded beach reappears, empty. Beyond the cape, the sun is sinking. The mountain is fuming redly. The bats are whistling and zigzagging.

  A lugubrious clamor rises into the air: the call of the siren bellowing aboard the warship.

  Cap in hand, the quartermaster Lancosme approaches.

  “It’s the ship, Captain...”

  The Captain steadies his voice. “Let’s go, Laurette. Be brave.”

  She makes no reply. She gets up, presses the two children to her bosom again, bursts into sobs, and allows herself to be drawn away.

  Raramémé trot alongside without speaking. In the same way, one heart-rending day of their childhood, a lost dog trotted alongside them, accompanying them as far as the door of the old house, where it was necessary to abandon it to its destiny, to its solitude. It was only a dog...

  Laurette clenches her teeth, leans on an extended arm, collapses on a bench, hides her face in her hands...

  Her shoulders quiver. An order. The dinghy oscillates, glides away under the vigorous pressure of the oars.

  In the stern, biting her handkerchief, the young woman raises her head and watches the two little bronze statues diminish, never ceasing to wave their little hands toward her, whose gilt fades away.

  They quickly disappear, alas, melting into the thickening shadow. A shrill cry is sill audible, like the call of a seagull.

  Lancosme mutters: “Poor kids!”

  There is nothing more.

  When the boat has sunk into the grayness for them, Raramémé have resumed crouching on the strand. They are very close together, but not close enough. The little warm thing that is beneath Mémé’s left breast is palpitating, quivering.

  Rara leans his cheek upon the spot, listens, and murmurs: “Oh, how your heart is hurting me!”

  In a mechanical voice, Mémé stammers: “They will come back. They said so to Kroum.”

  He repeats: “She said so to Kroum. They will come back.”

  A heavy tread approaching does not make them turn around.

  In recent days, Kouang has kept apart from the brown children and their friends. Has he suffered because of that intimacy, from which he feels partly-excluded? Is it a strange discretion that, for several days, has kept him in the woods and, just now, caused him to contemplate the departure at a distance, hidden on the edge of the coconut-palms?

  Now that the children are alone again, and are in pain, he comes to them. Beneath his hairy torso palpitates that which is best in human consciousness. Many nights have passed since the children have abandoned he seaweed grotto for the threshold of the white gods. Today, perhaps they need to be protected again.

  The monster places his enormous paw on the boy’s shoulder, trying to draw him to him—but with a simultaneous start, the children push him back and turn away. “Go away!”

  All night long they remain crouching, facing the sea over which the white gods are. That way, there are fewer barriers between them. Who knows where, by chance, something might yet emerge from the darkness? Over the water, a little star has lit up that the children do not know. It is shining where the whale-mountain is floating. They gaze at it avidly for a long time—a long time—until their eyelids close.

  In the pale dawn they wake up, shivering. They do not speak. They watch. Slowly, the morning mist thins out, breaks up, dissipates, disappears...

  The sea is empty. Far, far away, on the horizon, barely perceptible, there is a wisp of smoke—the last breath of the gods who are going away.

  Where are they?

  An unfathomable enigma. Are they wandering the seas, unattainably, in the mountain-pirogue? Or have they been absorbed already into the obscure diffuse entity from which Rahuo kneaded the world?

  An unfathomable enigma against which there is only one recourse.

  Religiously, Mémé weighs in her memory the magic words that fell from their lips: “They will come back.”

  And Rara repeats after her, looking out at the empty horizon: “They will come back.”

  And then, putting their little arms around one another, in order to warm themselves up and console one another, they sob, so closely united that there is now only one dolorous and tremulous creature of bronze.

  VI. THE BLACK FLOWER

  Through the vast swell of the Pacific, the violent blues of the Indian Ocean and the torrid Red Sea, the Citoyen pursues her course. She has only made two or three pauses at ports of call. As soon as she has taken aboard supplies of coal and water, she has resumed her rapid journey.

  One might think that the European gulf were drawing her like an imperious magnet, already taking possession of all minds and all hearts. At every hour, the wireless transmits the latest news of the cataclysm. We have taken more prisoners on the Somme, but the offensive has not led to the anticipated breakthrough. Nothing much can be expected of the Russians. Sarrail is remaining in position in Salonika. Torpedo attacks are increasing. President Wilson, in his latest message, is addressing Germany in threatening terms. The Boche radio stations are announcing Islamic Holy War and an uprising in Egypt. At Suez, it is confirmed that there is agitation in Libya and that bands of Turks have appeared in the Sinai.22 While the cruiser makes her way through the trench between the two deserts, her passengers contemplate the improvised trenches, the corrugated iron villages, the wooden barracks where the khaki-clad Australians, Indians of every shade and black camel-riders re encamped and enormous quantities of materiel are piled up. Seaplanes are circling incessantly in the sky.

  The last halt is at Port Said, to fill the bunkers.

  Ever since Oaleya, ceasing to be a tiny gray dot, has sunk into the immense ocean, Hugues de Pionne has lavished all the refinements of desperate tenderness on Laurette de Vesnage. Every day, that tenderness strives to be more enveloping, more fraternal; every day, it battles more vainly against the opaque cloud that has swallowed the young woman.

  On deck, between the gun-turrets, a terrace has been improvised, with a chaise-longue covered by a canvas tent. She spends long hours there, cradled in an impenetrable dream. She only replies with a nod of the head, an inexpressive smile or a few mechanical syllables to the discreet greetings and words of banal amiability that Commandant de Kerfaouët, his officers, Dr. Boujade, the député and Monsieur Pittagol attempt to address to her in passing. One might think that on quitting the embalmed island, she has left behind the strength that she had found there, which had sustained her for a few weeks. As the distance that separates her from it increases, the young woman’s complexion becomes more waxen, her cheeks pinker and more prominent, her coughing more frequent. And while the sources of life are drying up in her body, it seems that her mind is being absorbed, becoming indifferent to everything that surrounds her. She is not in pain, tries meekly to absorb a little nourishment, and smiles, but remains almost mute all day long, her eyes lost. From time to time her lips stir, sketching a remark, an embryonic response to obscure appeals.

  Dr. Boujade has not concealed the seriousness of her condition from Hugues. In any case, the officer is un
der no illusion. He is glad that, in the mists in which she is wrapped, Laurette seems to have lost consciousness. Nevertheless, he would give, not his life—which does not belong to him—but everything else to cause a few supreme rays of joy to pass over her sweet face.

  It is in vain, however, that, glossing over news of the universal nightmare and the anguish of the imminent separation, he tries to tell her how glad he will be to go, personally, when they disembark, to install the young woman in the old family home, in the midst of their shared memories. She lets him speak, approves distractedly, but seems unable to follow a thought that is escaping her...

  Is it impossible, then, to illuminate her decline with a hope, some genteel trinket?

  Facing the immobile scintillating lights of the port, Hugues leans over the livid hand and murmurs: “Laurette, I want to ask you something. As soon as I can get leave, will you marry me?”

  At first she looks at him apathetically. Then a hint of astonishment lights up her gaze, and she replies, in a tone of amicable reprimand: “But Hugues, what would be the point?”

  Since she welcomes the benevolent fiction anyway, it is necessary to maintain it.

  “If only, Laurette, to ensure that conventions are respected when we both return to the fortunate isle to see whether Raramémé have not forgotten us.”

  Raramémé... Forgotten... The young woman’s lips repeat the syllables. She closes her eyes, but opens them again with a glimmer of impish gaiety and puerile impatience: “What folly! It will be necessary to hurry, Hugues, to rush. We promised them, you know...”

  And suddenly she is reanimated. She sits up. Her eyes shine.

  “Hugues, it will be necessary not to take too much luggage. We’ll take the Uncle’s portrait, the illustrations of the crabs…and boxes of candy and chocolate…do you think that Kouang will like them? And Pippi-Kuink?”

  Feverishly, the words press upon her lips. Anxiously, Hugues gazes at the delirious dying woman. He begs her: “Calm down, Laurette...”