It was no different in Paris, where I could silence entire rooms simply by entering them. The Paris we encountered was not the modern city of wide boulevards, train stations and gas lighting but a dark, damp, gothic place. This was the old Paris, the Paris of the last King of the French, a more intimate Paris, where the poor lived above the rich, where barefoot children thronged at every corner, where rats roamed the streets, and where rivulets of sewage trickled down twisting alleys. Nights were lit by candles and the stars and moon above. Misery was on constant public display and opulence hid behind the high walls of hôtels particuliers. When it rained, the streets would flood and Parisians would retreat into the arcades to inspect the shop windows. On Sundays after church, all over the city, people would gather around a guitar to sing and dance. At such times I was happy, for I remembered how, at the Desire plantation, my people would gather around a banjo on Sunday afternoons, singing and dancing to their own songs, and I felt connected to them, even though so far away.
I was a beautiful young woman of sixteen, and I immediately found myself beset by men. The most gifted among them – ambitious dreamers and schemers, professional and amateur plotters, devourers of words and ideas – had grown up on tales of Napoleonic adventure only to enter, in their maturity, a society that discouraged novelty. Their nostalgia for imperial glories extended to a fashion for dark-skinned beauties. They did not wish to marry me, but considered me an ideal mistress to share among themselves. My admirers helped us find lodgings in a respectable rooming house, paid for my visits to couturiers, milliners and bootmakers, and for lessons in deportment, singing and acting. I made progress in every art but one: I could never learn to read or write. These were skills that did not cross from one body to the next. No matter how hard I tried, those black marks dancing upon the page never stilled long enough to allow me to interpret them.
When, four years after arriving in Paris, I first met Charles, we were both at the height of our powers. I was leading a life of ease as the mistress of Gaspard Tournachon, who later came to be known simply as Nadar, doubly famous as a photographer and hot air balloon enthusiast. He was among the most turbulent and magnetic men I’d ever known and thoroughly incapable of containing himself to just one woman. Other than this elegant flaw, he was unfailingly charming and respectful. He had, in a few short months, already begun to tire of me. In readiness, I was looking out for my next benefactor.
I was engaged in a drama troupe at a theatre by the Porte Saint-Antoine, going by the stage name Berthe, in honour of my poor mother, who had never recovered from our emigration and had died of loneliness. I was playing a slave girl in a farce designed to amuse and be forgotten as soon as the curtain fell. Afterward, Gaspard came to see me backstage, with Charles trailing in his wake like a raincloud. The three of us went to a tavern on Rue des Lampes. I said little, half-listening to the conversation of the men. I noticed Charles was trying to find a way to impress me. He had a high forehead, a weak chin and eyes like two drops of coffee. What little handsomeness he had was spoiled somewhat by his woundedness, which betrayed itself in his eyes and lips. His face flickered with all kinds of grimaces and his gait was jerky. He spent lavishly on clothes of the finest quality: polished boots, black trousers, a blue workman’s blouse that was the fashion at the time, bright, unstarched linen, a red cravat, rose-coloured gloves, and a long scarlet boa in chenille, the kind working-class women like to wear. He refused to wear hats, which all men wore as a matter of course, and instead wore his dark hair long, with a faint moustache under his nose and a wisp of beard. To be beautiful and shocking at once was his aim, the aim of every dandy, and Charles was among the finest, most shocking dandies in Paris.
I noticed that he was looking at me with a fascination bordering on the uncouth. Eventually, after he and Gaspard had spoken for a time, he asked me where I was from.
‘There’s no point asking,’ said Gaspard, ‘she won’t tell you. She never reveals anything about herself.’
‘A woman of intrigue,’ said Charles, a smile curling on his lips. The beam of his gaze narrowed on me. I felt it in my stomach. ‘But you’re not from around here, are you? I can hear it in your accent.’
‘No,’ I conceded, ‘I’m not from around here.’
‘So where are you from?’ he asked. I had never told a soul who I really was or where I was really from. It was better to let their imaginations run wild. ‘Come now,’ he cajoled, ‘why the secrecy? Or would you prefer that I guess? I’m very good at guessing such things. I’m never wrong.’
‘Is that so?’ I asked, feigning interest. ‘Please, do try.’
‘Be careful what you wish for,’ said Gaspard. ‘Charles is quite the traveller.’
‘Is that right?’ I said.
‘Indeed,’ he continued, turning towards Charles. ‘You should tell her one of your splendid stories.’
Charles wasn’t listening. His attention was entirely fixed on me. ‘Let me guess.’
‘By all means,’ I replied.
‘But if I guess, you must admit it.’ I smiled and nodded. He narrowed his eyes and studied me for some time. ‘There are a number of possibilities – Araby, Sumatra, Haiti, Pondicherry, even Mexico, at a pinch, although perhaps your hair is too wavy for a Mexican.’
‘I have known Mexicans with wavy hair,’ Gaspard chimed in.
‘It is known to happen,’ said Charles, ‘but I don’t think any of these is quite right. I think I know exactly where you are from.’
‘Do tell,’ I said.
‘You’re from Mauritius.’
‘Where’s that?’
‘It’s an island off the east coast of Africa. Until recently it was called Isle de France.’ I smiled sadly at the memory of it – it was where I’d seen you last. I hadn’t known its name had changed. ‘You give yourself away!’ he exclaimed. ‘Are you impressed?’
‘I could not be more impressed. How did you guess?’
‘I was there recently,’ he said, ‘and as soon as I saw you I was reminded of that island colony. How long did you live there?’
‘Oh, I left when I was very young. I remember almost nothing.’
‘Tell her that story you told the Hashish Smokers’ Club at the Pimodan,’ said Gaspard. He turned to me and winked, as if what I was about to hear was a rare privilege.
‘It is rather long,’ said Charles.
‘Go ahead,’ I said, relieved that the attention had finally turned away from me. ‘If it is as good a story as Gaspard says, I would be delighted to hear it.’
‘Very well.’ He cleared his throat as if preparing to launch into a well-rehearsed discourse. ‘My stepfather, a military man, intended me to pursue a career in law or to follow him into the foreign service,’ he began. ‘But I was an unhappy child, overly prone to solitude and jealous of my mother’s love for him. I read insatiably, devouring any and every book I found, but especially literature: novels, short stories, poetry, essays, everything. Around the age of twelve, I began to read a book by Hugo, which a schoolfriend had lent me. I think it was The Last Day of a Condemned Man; and then in quick succession I read everything I could find of his: Les Orientales, Notre-Dame de Paris, Lucrezia Borgia. I read anything I could find that Hugo had written. And suddenly I decided that I wished to do nothing with my life other than write. Though I wasn’t exactly sure what I wanted to write.
‘I’m sure my dear father, were he still alive, would have been proud of my decision, but my stepfather was against it. You’ll end up poor, bitter and mad, he predicted. To cure me of my folly, he decided to send me to India. This plan had twin advantages: having got rid of me, he would secure the full attention of my beloved mother, for one thing, and for another it would toughen me up and make a man of me – or so he thought. He bought me a passage to Pondicherry on a ship captained by a friend of his, and organised a clerk’s position with the colonial administration to be made available for me upon my arrival, despite my complete lack of training and aptitude for such work. I was sti
ll young enough to wish to please my stepfather, so I went along with his plans.
‘I was seasick the entire way. During one particular storm, as we were rounding the Cape of Good Hope, I was so ill and miserable I contemplated throwing myself over the bulwark and into the roiling maelstrom of the sea. But at that instant I thought of my stepfather, and I realised that he would undoubtedly be gladdened by my death. And so I tightened my grip on the bulwark and survived the storm.
‘When we arrived in Port Louis, it was the rainy season. The storm had left our ship damaged and in need of repairs, and I was told that our stay in Mauritius might last two or three weeks. At first I took a room in a decrepit inn near the waterside frequented only by Hindus, Cantonese and Creoles, but the conditions were so hot and humid, and the state of the hotel so foul, that very soon I determined to go into the hills for respite. Leaving my luggage in the hotel, I packed some bread and wine and Lamartine’s Voyage en Orient, and set off walking along a road that seemed to lead in the direction of the mountainous hinterland, which in that season is permanently covered in mist and cloud.
‘It was raining. Before long I was drenched, as was my book, and I began to reconsider my foray into nature, for which, at any rate, I have no great affection. A short time later I was overtaken by a donkey pulling a cart, and was grateful when it stopped and the driver, sitting under a canvas tarpaulin that was keeping him dry enough to smoke a pipe, asked me what I was doing walking on this road alone in the rain. I was astonished to hear myself being addressed in a perfect, if antique, French, punctuated with old-fashioned pronunciations that would be ridiculed now in France, and tinged with a Provençal accent, even though the old man was tanned the same colour as the Creoles. I told him I was marooned on the island and was bound for the mountains to escape the heat of the township. He told me he was travelling into the hills and invited me to ride alongside him.
‘I boarded the cart and sat beside the old man. He had a haggard visage, so ancient he resembled one of those tortoises that are said to live seven thousand years. Long wisps of white hair crowned his otherwise bald head. From his jaw grew a long grey beard that reached his navel. The natives of Port Louis were dressed with greater civility than he: his ragged trousers were torn at the knee and his shirt was sleeveless. On his bare shoulder I noticed an old blue-green tattoo of an unblinking eye that had dulled over the years. For all his wildness, the old man spilled over with kindness and bonhomie. I will never forget the sparkle of his eyes. He told me his name was Roblet. He said he’d been born in Marseille. When I asked him his age he said he didn’t know what year it was, but he remembered having been born in 1762. I told him it was 1841, and he was therefore seventy-nine years old. He shook his head in disbelief. “So it has been half a century,” he said, more to himself than to me.’
Thankfully Charles was too engrossed in his storytelling to notice the look of astonishment my face must have betrayed at this revelation, despite my prodigious capacity to mask my feelings. I said nothing, but never have I listened with such close attention to anything anyone has ever told me as I did to the remainder of his tale.
‘At first we continued into the hills in near silence, my companion puffing on the sweet-smelling tobacco in the bowl of his pipe, which he told me was mixed with hashish. Eventually he asked me how it was I had been stranded on this island, and I told him my tale: I was nineteen years old and bound reluctantly for the French East Indies. I then asked Roblet how he had come to live on this tropical island.
‘“My friend,” he said, “my tale is scarcely believable and, if you allow me to tell it, you will no doubt consider me to have taken leave of my senses.” I denied this, promising him I was a most sympathetic audience. The old man paused and looked at me out of the corner of his eye for a moment, as if taking stock of me. Finally, as the donkey pulled the cart that carried us on the narrow and bumpy path into the mountains, he launched into his chronicle. “Young man,” he said, “you who seem so well read, so cultured, so thirsty for knowledge, you are perhaps familiar with the notion of metempsychosis?” I told him I believed it referred to the Oriental belief of the rebirth of the soul after death. He paused and looked somewhere in front of him, although nowhere in particular, as if in a profound meditation. “Yes,” he said finally, “that is the Oriental point of view. But it would appear there is another kind of metempsychosis that is not described by the Oriental sages. It is the metempsychosis of the living. I have come across it only once, and according to what you have just told me I now know it to be exactly fifty years ago. I am a surgeon by training, and in my youth I plied my trade in the merchant navy. The incident I am about to relate occurred while sailing the ocean the mapmakers call the Pacific, although it is anything but that. Our ship, the Solide, discovered a previously unknown island. The natives of this isle called it Oaeetee. They practised a strange kind of metempsychosis of the living, if you will, which they called crossing. It is done simply enough, requiring only that two people gaze into each other’s eyes for several minutes. While on this island, I looked into the eyes of a boy scarcely younger than you in an effort to discover this rare phenomenon for myself. Afterward, I had no memory of it, other than in my dreams – but what dreams! I should rather call them nightmares. Such were my terrors that I became a pariah on board any ship I sailed. But I was too far changed to return to France, so I decided instead to settle here and dedicate myself to the welfare of the natives and Creoles.”
‘“If you cannot remember your metempsychosis,” I asked, “how can you be sure it ever happened?”
‘“Another sailor, a fellow named Joubert, had the same experience as me. Later, he tried to explain what had happened, but I denied him. It was Joubert who engraved this.” Roblet pointed to his tattoo of the eye on his shoulder. “And while he did so, he told me what had happened. Of course, I am a child of the Enlightenment, a man of science and reason, trusting only the measurable and verifiable. I thought the poor man mad and avoided him. Soon after, we parted company – right here on this very island. I was glad I would never have to see him again, or consider his tidings. It was only later, after many years of nightly torment, that what I had dismissed as Joubert’s lunacy began to assume the dimensions of a truth that beggared belief. And so, for many years now, I have been looking out for Joubert whenever I go into Port Louis for supplies, trusting that he is looking for me. Twice, sometimes thrice a week, I check the lists of names on the registers of the ships. But as I am an old man now, so too must he be, and it is unlikely he is still working the ocean-going vessels. Still, I go to the shipping office and check the registers, waiting patiently.”
‘“Waiting for what?” I asked.
‘“For him to come find me.”
‘Upon hearing the old man’s words, an excited shiver ran along my spine, such as one feels when reading a fine novel – one need not believe it to feel it. I asked Roblet if he had ever attempted to make another such crossing, as he called it. “Oh, I’ve tried,” he said, “but I’ve never been able to convince anyone to look me in the eyes for more than just a brief moment.” I replied that his tale had piqued my curiosity, and told him if the notion was still of interest to him I would be willing to attempt it. Of course, I didn’t lend his notions any credence, but all the same I considered myself in pursuit of a fine lark. Roblet seemed delighted by the prospect, clapping my shoulder as if we were suddenly the best of friends. He said his hut was but another hour or two up the road. If I was willing to continue the journey with him we might venture such an undertaking upon our arrival. “It has none of the luxuries to which a Parisian gentleman would be accustomed, but it is clean, and the roof keeps me dry.”
‘A short while thereafter, with the sun setting, we arrived at a crude thatch hut at the foot of the volcano that dominates the island. Here the donkey pulling the cart came to a stop. It was raining, and the verdant jungle that surrounded us was enveloped in a thick grey mist that hushed all but the patter of rain. The old docto
r alighted from his seat and carried the boxes of supplies he had purchased in Port Louis into the hut, bidding that I follow him. He lit candles and kindled a fire while I found a place to sit on the earthen floor. I sat, legs crossed, with Roblet sitting likewise directly opposite. He poured two cups of rum and we drank a toast to metempsychosis. “Are you ready?” he asked. I nodded, nervous with anticipation. He told me all I needed to do was look into his eyes, without looking away, while he would look into mine.
‘And so we began. At the beginning, there was a sense of unease, such as one feels whenever one is looking directly into the eyes of another person, especially when that person is a stranger, or almost so. This did not last long, however, and soon enough I began to lose all awareness of my surroundings, so that those eyes, although at an arm’s length from me, became the only things I could see. This was followed by a most pleasant sensation, as if the inside of my body was suddenly no longer flesh and blood but a freshly poured glass of champagne, full of bubbles ascending upwards and out the top of my head and into the sky. This feeling continued to grow ever lighter and more pleasant, more so than any intoxicant I have known. Wine, hashish, laudanum, even opium do not compare.’
Charles paused and looked down at his hands, which were lying clasped together on the table between us.
‘When I next opened my eyes, I had been lying on the ground for some time. Roblet was also lying on the ground, not far from me, although I couldn’t remember who he was at first. Nor could I remember where I was, or how I had arrived here. When I leaned over the stranger beside me to check if he was sleeping, I noticed that his eyes were open, and he was breathing rapidly, looking up at the ceiling above him with a look of terror in his eyes. “What happened?” I asked, but instead of answering Roblet simply opened and closed his mouth as if wishing to say something but being unable to do so.
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