Suzanna smiled periodically; a pearly spark mingled with the electric light of her vast, enigmatic, vaguely sensual eyes, full of boldness and defiance. Louise, more serious and intense, exuded the seduction of dark-haired races, along with their mysterious and despotic voluptuousness.
“We’ll soon be able to see clearly enough to read a book, Monsieur,” said the Grafina to Frédéric. She drew him gradually to one side and, when they were some distance from the group, she said: “I’d prefer to learn how to throw a grenade tonight.”
“You think the danger’s imminent, then?”
“In reality, no—but my duty is to act as if I thought it was. Haven’t I my guests to think of—and also my servants?” She spoke in the tone of leaders for whom authority is a right, but also a servitude.
They had moved on ahead; behind them, Suzanna and Corisande were two silvery blurs. Having rounded a clump of bushes, they found themselves in front of a quadrangular building closed by a sturdy door. The Grafina opened it and flicked a switch; a stone hall appeared, deep and high-ceilinged.
“Here are some empty grenades. Others will soon arrive, charged.”
She listened to Frédéric’s explanations, and demonstrated that she understood them marvelously. Then, imitating the young man, she threw an uncharged grenade several times, with the skill of a javelin-thrower.
“You’ve already mastered it!” said Frédéric. “There’s almost nothing to teach you.”
They went back, in the gleam of the night-lights eternally illuminated in the boundless ocean. The night, gentle and implacable, saturated with perfumes and buzzing with insects, was ardent with life and charged with death. In the depths of the Ages, Frédéric perceived a similar night, when the same pale form had appeared, bringing an immortal promise, symbolizing the desirable agitation that fills the guests of a blade of grass and the guests of a forest with joy.
Corisande and Suzanna had already reappeared.
“Where did you go?” asked Suzanna, as they drew nearer.
“To try out weapons.”
The Dutch woman laughed lightly—a laugh reminiscent of April and lilies of the valley. Frédéric thought that the velvet moment, the perfumes, the light breeze and the stars themselves were all feminine in that austral night. Then, with a shiver, aware of the strange beings roaming that savage land, he turned a gaze full of anxious affection toward Corisande.
She was the charming center of his life and his perpetual tenderness, the memory of which went back to a time when everything dissolved in limbo. Protector and protégé at the same time, he felt that he was ready to die for her; he willingly followed her advice, the intuitive wisdom of which he was well aware. “What did our hostess want?” she asked.
He never lied when she questioned him. “To try out weapons.”
“At this late hour! What is she afraid of?”
“She isn’t afraid of anything, but she wants to guard against the unexpected. She’s a leader, Corisande!”
“A leader of what?” she murmured, slightly annoyed.
“I mean that she was born to command, as others are born to serve. She’s a great person.”
“Do you think so?”
“I’m sure of it.”
“I fear that she might be narrow and intolerant—a Huguenot of the olden times. She makes me keenly aware of having been born in the other camp.”
Corisande’s tone surprised the young man. “One would think that you don’t like her.”
“She doesn’t seem likeable to me—but I haven’t forgotten that she probably saved our lives yesterday.”
“Why don’t you like her?” he asked, almost naively.
“I’ve just told you.”
“That’s hardly sufficient.”
“Yesterday, I would have thought the same. Now, for indefinable causes, it’s enough for me. I understand the past.”
“So you’re still mystically inclined!”
“Perhaps without being aware of it—and there’s also the painting. Oh, how sharply I feel the presence of our ancestors!”
Had he not perceived that too? Yes, but in another way, as an enemy of the family but a subject of the woman, submissive to that primitive attraction which, throughout the ages, has amalgamated the flesh of victors and the vanquished. He did not persist. Through the mosquito-curtains, they saw a shooting star; a nocturnal bird was singing plaintively in the garden; the calm was so profound that he might have believed himself in a deserted wilderness.
V. The Carabao-Men
The Southern Cross rotated slowly around the eternal clock-face. The island was just about to escape the black gulf and bathe in the abysm of light when the dogs raised their warning voices. The raucous thunder of the mastiffs alternated with the clearer voices of the retrievers and the baying of Malay dogs, akin to the howling of wolves.
Corisande woke up, anxious, and put on a dressing-gown. In the pale moonlight, she saw men gliding under the palm-trees; then the tall figure of the Grafina appeared, soon followed by the squat silhouette of Jan Cats.
Noisy words were spoken, which she did not understand.
Cats said: “Should we release the dogs?”
“Not until I give the signal. The retrievers first.”
Three minutes later, Cats came back with the retrievers; then Corisande saw her brother arrive with Hendrik.
“What’s up?” asked the latter.
“We don’t know yet,” said the Grafina. “Something unfamiliar in the domain.” Leaning toward the dogs, she murmured a few familiar syllables, which would determine their conduct.
They disappeared, followed by Louise and Li-Wang.
“Don’t come now,” Mademoiselle de Gavres had said, to the Dutchman and the Frenchman. “We’re going on reconnaissance…”
Cats remained with the guests and the time, stretched by expectation, went by with excessive slowness.
There were howls, a gunshot, distant shouts…
Corisande, astonished and shivering, looked out. Abruptly, she sensed a presence. Arms folded around her; a bestial, musky and marshy odor, spread through the room.
As she turned round she saw a monstrous head, with eyes as phosphorescent as a leopard’s, a square forehead and canines elongated into tusks. The colossal face was covered with hair the color of iron; one might have thought it a man and a buffalo at the same time.
Corisande looked at this formidable creature, terrified. She tried to fight. She was a vigorous young woman, but in those hairy arms she realized that she was as weak as a child. Besides, the entire structure of the enigmatic individual revealed a power comparable to that of big cats.
He carried the young woman along a long corridor, penetrated by the bluish moonlight. Corisande had called out once already; her voice, enfeebled by fear, was only a raucous murmur. When the initial surprise had passed, the courage of an energetic race awoke once again in the young woman, and she released a piercing scream.
A man emerged at the end of the corridor; she recognized Frédéric.
He leapt forward and fell upon the brute, his fists hammering the giant skull. With a groan, grinding his long canines, the Carabao-Man squared up to his aggressor.
Frédéric was a muscular athlete, agile, and skilled in most sports, but his strength had to be much inferior to that of his antagonist; if the other succeeded in getting a grip on him, defeat was certain—he would be killed in a flash.
The wild beast’s hand went to a jade axe hanging by his side, but before he could succeed in detaching it, two impetuous blows landed on him, one on the chin, the other behind the ear. It would not have needed any more to knock down an ordinary boxer, but they only shook the Hairy Man—who, abandoning the attempt to release the axe, rushed at Frédéric.
A terrible fist nearly reached him, but the young man stepped back, moved sideways, and three times, with mechanical precision, he struck his adversary on the chin and the solar plexus.
The Carabao-Man went down.
; “Bravo! That’s magnificent!” cried an earnest voice—the voice of Hendrik, who had just appeared, preceded by the two retrievers and followed by the Grafina, Jan Cats, Li-Wang and other servants.
Gravely, Louise de Gavres studied the brute extended on the floor. “Tie him up,” she said to her men. Then, turning to Frédéric, she continued, her astonishment tinged with respect: “That’s very good, what you just did!”
“Admirable, even!” added Hendrik, adding, with Dutch sincerity: “I wouldn’t have believed it!”
In spite of the joyful excitement that still gripped him, Frédéric experienced a sort of hectic pride: the sensation of impotence that had humiliated him since the adventure of the tiger vanished; he had ceased to be a useless combatant, paltry and almost despicable.
Corisande, rescued from the hideous peril, contemplated her brother with prideful affection.
Meanwhile, Louise examined the captive, who had already emerged from his daze; his eyes, surmounted by bushes of stiff hair, shone like the eyes of a lynx, and his open lips displayed two rows of stout teeth the color of jade—which seemed to be their natural color. He had small, pointed ears, and exceedingly short hands—because the fingers were only half as long as an ordinary human’s. Like the face, the hands produced a dense fur.
The Grafina spoke to him, and then tried to make him understand by signs. The man remained vague, distant and bestial.
“They never wanted to understand!” Louise remarked.
“Wanted?” said Frédéric.
“Yes, wanted—for I don’t doubt that they’re skilled in sign language—more skillful than the indigenes, and even more skillful than us. We won’t get anything out of him—and the others are out there, waiting.”
A brief ferocious grimace animated Li-Wang’s inscrutable face.
“Are you going to put him to death?” asked the Grafina.
“Nothing else to do, Mistress!”
Louise de Gavres raised her eyebrows. “Yes, Li-Wang, we can do much better than that. We can set him free.”
“Free!” Cats protested, involuntarily.
Hendrik translated the hostess’s words for Frédéric. “Why?” asked the latter.
“It’s quite simple. If he doesn’t come back, they’re capable of wanting to avenge him. By releasing him, we have a chance—a very small chance, but a chance nevertheless—of inclining them to peace. All the more so since he can report that we’re strong.”
“Wouldn’t it be better to hold him as a hostage?”
“We’d have to be able to negotiate with them—which is impossible.”
The Carabao-Man maintained an apparent impassivity, belied by the glaucous fire in his eyes.
“Is he really human?” murmured Frédéric.
“I’m not sure,” the Grafina said. “In any case, I’d be astonished if his race had any direct relationship to any other human race!”
“You think that they’re not descended from the same ancestors as other men?”
“No. Anyway, if no one has any objection, we’ll release him.”
“Here?”
“No—outside the limits of the plantation proper.”
Mademoiselle de Gavres said a few words to Li-Wang and the Sumatrans. They gathered around the Carabao-Man and took him away, accompanied by the retrievers and the mastiffs.
“I want to see him leave,” said Frédéric.
Frédéric and Corisande followed the group. Eventually, the retrievers, for whom space was a vast reservoir of effluvia, began to show agitation. A few natives emerged from the shadows, with more dogs.
“We’re nearing the boundary,” Hendrik remarked. “The house is almost in the middle of the plantation, which covers 3000 hectares.”
“How can such an extent be defended?”
“The Grafina has 200 servants of a warrior race, and her dogs—and the Carabao-Men don’t attack plantations as rebel Malays do.”
The retrievers growled dully, and the mastiffs barked.
Li-Wang ordered the servants to halt.
“They’re close by, aren’t they?” asked Hendrik.
“Very close,” the Chinese man replied. “We must do as the Mistress ordered now.”
Hendrik agreed. Li-Wang spoke briefly; the Sumatrans stood aside and he pointed to the west for the Carabao-Man’s benefit.
The wild beast, fearful of a trap, remained motionless for some time. Finally, he took a few steps, with an extreme slowness, and, observing that the dogs did not move, retained by the servants, he accelerated his pace, took flight, and bounded toward a clump of ebony-trees mingled with tall ferns, into which he disappeared.
Raucous cries, acclamations or threats, rose up and faded away.
Li-Wang remained inscrutable.
Again, Hendrik asked: “Are they really human?”
In the morning, the Grafina said to Frédéric: “The pigeons have brought a message. Dirk de Ridder will set out tomorrow, with 30 men. We can set out at the same time, if you wish. There’s no sign of the Carabao-Men in the west.
“Won’t they pick up your trail?” asked Suzanna Ruyter.
“Everything’s possible, cousin—but if our dogs, our men and our instruments don’t warn us of the presence of 1000 of them, we’ll know almost certainly that the road is clear…”
Frédéric looked down at Louise de Gavres and Suzanna Ruyter with vague regret; they were the symbol of Possibilities that incessantly appear and disappear on the horizons of our destiny.
“What have you decided?” asked the Grafina.
Frédéric hesitated. “We don’t want to expose you to any further danger,” declared Corisande.
Louise de Gavres shook her head disdainfully. “Danger is everywhere! It’s here every hour of every day. Everything and everyone poses a threat!”
Early the next day, the Grafina received news from all directions. Carabao-Men had been sighted in the south-west, and a small group was heading north; the west was completely clear.
“They’re coming from the south,” the Grafina remarked. “During their last incursion, they never crossed the Groenheuvel, and yet they were much more numerous than now. They’re not great travelers; the area that extends from their marshes to the edge of the domain must be largely sufficient for their aims. We’ll head westwards to start with, then steer northwards. We should meet up with Dirk in three days.”
“What about the domain?” asked Frédéric.
The Grafina smiled coldly. “There’s a telegraphic connection and two pigeon relays. If my presence becomes necessary, I’ll be alerted. The distance the carts will take a day to cover, I can cover in three hours on horseback.”
“What if your men are taken by surprise?”
“There’s no fear of that. The dogs and the scouts are sufficient to prevent any surprise. The servants will always be able to take refuge in the fort—which is impregnable.” She concluded, in a different tone: “Let’s go! A hostess has a duty to her guests!”
VI. The Caravan
That night, they camped in a clearing, which the indigenes kept free of trees and brushwood. Five huge fires surrounded the encampment, dissuading wild animals from approaching. All around was the enormous vegetal region in which humans were still permitted to eke out a primitive existence. The beasts were prowling around as in the time when the tiger, the elephant, the rhinoceros and the great buffalo were the only dominant creatures.
“Would a tiger dare to cross the line of fires?” Frédéric asked.
“It’s improbable,” the Grafina replied. “Audacious as they are, those fires are too hot and there are too many men. The ordinary tigers that live here habitually know our race well enough not to attack a company.”
“What about black tigers?”
“It was only by chance that you encountered one. They’re rare, and don’t usually frequent this region—but even black tigers are afraid of fires. Besides, what does it matter?” Mademoiselle de Gavres had a contented smile. “Our dogs would denoun
ce them.”
Frédéric darted an involuntary glance at the young woman’s rifle. He experienced one of those surges of astonishment that renew the novelty of adventures. The beautiful woman, in the snowy candor of her garments, with her vast black eyes in which flames reverberated, seemed more mysterious. She inspired in him a dread full of charm and, at times, a kind of animosity. Because it was from one woman to another, that animosity was keener in Corisande; it arrived as they exchanged untender glances, broken as courteously on one side as the other.
She doesn’t like us, the young man told himself. Again, he saw the large painting, the handsome Huguenot all bloody, the Marquise who resembled Corisande’s twin sister—and his own image surged forth from the depths of time.
Would he, like those people, have been an implacable enemy of the captive? He found himself transported back in time two centuries, and could see Jacques de Gavres on the pyre, distinctly. The flames were rising up, as they did this evening in the forest; they were enveloping a man. Corisande, in the guise of the Marquise Anne de Tamares, and he, Frédéric, becoming the Chevalier Philippe de Rouveyres again, were watching the torture.
He woke up with a start, and saw the dark eyes that were watching him with an extraordinary intensity; one might have thought that they could see the images unfurling within him quite clearly.
The amber and copper glow beneath the arches of the forest made the branches quiver, and the old earth, bitter, magnificent and malevolent, manifested the ardor of life and the fury of death with equal force.
“It’s horrible!” murmured Corisande.
“And more beautiful than horrible!” retorted the Grafina.
Dogs and scouts had searched the undergrowth before dawn. The pleasant odor of coffee mingled with the effluvia of plants. A Sumatran prepared the conquering beverage with pious care, while another toasted slices of bread over the red embers. The meal brought the humans together in a joy as fresh as the silver morning.
The Givreuse Enigma Page 17