Torture Garden Page 10

  “Clara! Clara!” I implored.

  She sharply tapped the deck of the ship: “You don’t know me yet,” she said. “You don’t know who I am, and you already want to leave. What is it you’re so afraid of? Are you such a coward?”

  “I just can’t live without you! Without you all that’s left for me is to die!”

  “Well don’t tremble. Stop crying … and come with me!”

  A gleam passed across the green in her pupils. She spoke in a low, almost hoarse, voice:

  “I’ll show you terrific things … divine things. You’ll finally find out what love is! I promise that you’ll descend with me into the depths of the mystery of love … and death!”

  And with a red-hot smile which caused a shiver through my bones, she said: “Poor baby! You think you’re a great debauchee, a great rebel. Ah, all that remorse of yours – don’t you remember? And now your soul is more timid than a little boy’s!”

  It was true! I had vaunted my attitude on the fact of my being an uncompromising swine, believing myself above all moral prejudice, yet I still sometimes listened to a voice of duty and honour which, at times of nervous depression, arose from the troubled depths of my consciousness … Whose honour? What duty? What an abyss of madness is man’s mind! And in what way was my honour (my honour!) compromised? How would I be deserting my duty if I continued my journey on to China rather than languish in Ceylon? Had I really so entered into the skin of a scholar as to imagine I would ‘study the sea slime’, or ‘discover the cell’ by diving into the gulfs off the Sinhalese coast? The quite ludicrous idea of taking my mission as an embryologist seriously soon brought me back to the reality of my situation … How! Luck, or a miracle, had decreed that I would encounter a divinely beautiful, rich and exceptional woman who I loved and who loved me, who was offering me an extraordinary life: pleasures a-plenty, unique sensations, libertine adventures, sumptuous patronage, salvation at last … and more than salvation – joy! And I’d let all that slip away! Once more the imp of perversity (that stupid demon to whom – by stupid obedience – I owed all my misfortunes) intervened again to advise hypocritical resistance to an unhoped-for event, the materialisation of a fairy-tale that would never again be encountered and which I ardently desired in the depths of my heart, would be realised? No, when it came to it, it was all too stupid!

  “You’re right …” I told Clara, placing accent on the fact that my defeat in love was due solely to a submission which also contained all my instincts of laziness and debauchery, “… you’re right. I wouldn’t be worthy of your eyes, your mouth, your soul … of the whole of that Heaven and Hell which is you … if I continued to hesitate. And then, I couldn’t … I couldn’t lose you … I could conceive of anything but that … You’re right. I’m yours. Take me wherever you like. To suffer, or to die. Who cares? Since you are – you who I don’t yet know – my destiny!”

  “Oh, baby, baby, baby!” said Clara in a singular tone whose true meaning I was unable to disentangle – was it joy, irony or pity?

  Then, almost maternal, she recommended: “Now don’t worry about anything but being happy. Stay there, have a look around that marvellous island. I’ll arrange your new situation on board with the purser.”

  “Clara.”

  “Don’t be afraid. I know what to say …”

  And as I was about to object:

  “Shh! Aren’t you my baby, dearest heart? You must obey. And then, you don’t know …”

  And she vanished, blending into the crowd of passengers massed on deck, many of whom were already carrying their suitcases and hand luggage.

  It had been decided we would spend the two days we had free in Colombo visiting the town and its suburbs where my friend had stayed and which she knew marvellously well. The heat was torrid, so torrid that the (comparatively) cool places – in this atrocious land where scholars located the Earthly Paradise – such as the gardens on the banks of the shore, seemed to me stifling sweat rooms. Most of our travelling companions dared not confront this fiery temperature, which removed their slightest inclination to go out and even their vaguest desire to move. I still see them in the hotel foyer, ridiculous and moaning, wrapped in moistened, steaming towels – an elegant apparel renewed every quarter of an hour – which transformed the noblest part of their anatomy into a chimney stack crowned with a tuft of smoke. Stretched out in rocking chairs under the punka fan, with brains liquefied and lungs congested, they drank iced drinks prepared for them by boys who, by their skin colour and the structure of their body, recalled the naive gingerbread men of our Parisian fairs, while other boys of similar appearance and form kept the mosquitos away from them with great sweeps of their fans.

  For myself, though, I recovered (a bit too soon, perhaps) all my gaiety and bantering gusto. My scruples had vanished. My poetic mood had passed. Freed from my worries and sure about the future I once more became the man I had been on leaving Marseilles – the stupid and fault-finding Parisian who ‘can’t be conned’, the ‘man about town’ who ‘doesn’t let himself be fooled’ and who is able to talk about how he understands nature … even in the Tropics!

  Colombo seemed to me a tiresome and ridiculous city, neither picturesque nor mysterious. Half-protestant, half-Buddhist, it was as tired-out as a bonze and as gloomy as a pastor, and I inwardly congratulated myself on having miraculously escaped from the profound boredom of these straight streets, the motionless sky and austerely ordered cleared vegetation … And I made witty remarks about the coconut trees which I never failed to compare to dreadful stripped feather-dusters, while I taxed the great plants with being cut out by unscrupulous manufacturers from sheet-metal and polished zinc. Walking to Slave-Island (its Bois de Boulogne) and to Pettah (its Mouffetard), we encountered only appalling English people straight out of an operetta, got up in light clothes of carnival effect which were half-Hindu and half-European. The Sinhalese were even more awful than the English – at twelve they were as wrinkled as prunes, twisted like venerable vine-plants, caved-in like wrecked straw mattresses, and had gums with bleeding wounds, lips burned by areca-nuts and teeth the colour of old pipes. I sought in vain the sensual women, the negresses with expert love techniques and the sprightly little lacemakers that lying Eugène had told me about with eyes leering so significantly. And my heart bled for the poor scholars who were sent here with the questionable mission of uncovering the secret of life.

  But I realised that Clara did not appreciate these facile and coarse jokes and I thought it was prudent to moderate them, wishing neither to offend her fervent cult of nature nor diminish myself in her eyes. I noticed repeatedly that she listened to me with uneasy amazement.

  “Why are you so cheerful?” she asked me. “I don’t like you to be cheerful, dearest. It hurts me. When you’re cheerful, its because you don’t love me. Love is a serious thing, sad and profound …”

  Which did not prevent her from bursting into laughter on any pretext or even on no pretext at all.

  It was because of this that she enthusiastically encouraged me in a practical joke I thought up.

  Among the letters of introduction I had brought from Paris, one was to a certain Sir Oscar Terwick who, among his other scientific titles, was the President of the Association of Tropical Embryology and British Entomology at Colombo. From enquiries at the hotel, I learned that Sir Oscar Terwick was quite a man – the author of well-known works, a very great scholar, in a word. I decided to visit him. Such a visit could no longer be dangerous to me, and it would not displease me to get to know a real embryologist. He lived some distance out in a suburb called Kolpetty which is, so to speak, the Passy of Colombo. There, in the midst of luxuriant gardens, ornamented with the inevitable coconut-trees, in spacious and bizarre villas, lived the rich merchants and notable civil servants of the city. Clara wanted to come with me. She waited in the carriage, not far from the scholar’s house, in a sort of small square shaded by immense teaks.

  Sir Oscar Terwick received me politely – no
more than that.

  He was a very tall, very thin, very dry, very red-faced man whose white beard fell to his navel and was cut square like a pony-tail. He wore ample trousers of yellow silk and his hairy torso was enveloped in a sort of shawl of light wool. He gravely read the letter I gave him and, after examining me from the corner of his eye with a suspicious air (whether he was suspicious of me or of himself I wasn’t sure), he asked me: “Vô eté embryologist?”

  I nodded.

  “All right!” he chuckled.

  And making a gesture of drawing a thread over the sea, he continued: “Vô … eté … embryologist? Yes? Vô, comme ça … in the sea … fish, little fish?”

  “Little fish … exactly, little fish,” I stressed, repeating the scholar’s imitative gestures.

  “Dans la mer?”

  “Yes! Yes!”

  “Très intéressant! Très joli, très curieux! Yes.”

  Cackling on like this and with both of us continuing to drag our chimerical nets ‘into the sea’, the eminent scholar showed me a bamboo console on which three plaster busts were displayed crowned with artificial lotuses. Pointing them out in succession, he showed me, in a tone of such comical gravity that I almost burst into laughter:

  “Mister Darwin! Très grand nat’raliste, très, très grand! Yes!”

  I bowed deeply.

  “Mister Haeckel … très grand nat’raliste … Pas si que loui, no! Mais, très grand! Mister Haeckel ici … comme ça … loui … dans la mer … little fish.”

  I bowed again. And in a louder voice, he cried out, as he placed his hand, as red as a crab, on the third Bust: “Mister Coqueline! très grand nat’raliste … du miouséum … comment applez? … du miouséum Grévin … Yes! … Grévine! Très joli … très curieux!”

  “Very interesting,” I confirmed.

  “Yes!” And so saying, he dismissed me.

  I gave Clara a detailed account of this strange audience whilst miming the scene out. She laughed like a madwoman.

  “Oh baby, baby, baby … how funny you are, dear little rascal!”

  This was the only scientific incident of my mission. But at least I did learn what embryology was!

  The following morning, after a wild night of loving, we set sail again, en route for China.

  SECOND PART

  THE TORTURE GARDEN

  I

  “Why have you said nothing about our dear Annie? Didn’t you tell her about my arrival? Is she not coming round? Is she still as beautiful as ever?”

  “What? You didn’t know? But Annie is dead, dearest …”

  “Dead?” I cried. “It’s not possible. You’re teasing me.”

  I looked at Clara. Divinely calm and pretty, naked beneath a transparent yellow tunic, she was indolently lying on a tiger skin. Her head supported by cushions, her hands, which were laden with rings, toyed with a long lock of her unfurled hair. A dog from Laos with red fur slept next to her, its muzzle on her thigh and one paw on her breast.

  “What?” answered Clara. “You didn’t know? How odd!”

  And, all smiles, she stretched out like a supple animal as she explained:

  “It was quite horrible, dear! Annie died of leprosy, that frightful sort of leprosy known as elephantitis – because everything here is frightful … love, sickness, death … and flowers! Believe me, I’ve never wept so much … I loved her so much, so much! And she was so beautiful, so strangely beautiful!”

  She added, in a long and graceful sigh: “Never more will we know the bitter taste of her kisses! It’s a great pity.”

  “Then … it’s true!” I stammered. “But how did it happen?”

  “I don’t know … There are so many mysteries here, so many things we don’t understand. Each evening we both went out on the river … I have to tell you about a boat of flowers … and a Benares dancing girl, a bewildering creature, dear, to whom priests had taught accursed rituals of the old Brahmanic cults. Perhaps it was that … or something else. One night as we were returning from the river, Annie complained of piercing pains in her head and kidneys. The following day, her body was covered all over in small purple spots. Her skin, pinker and finer than the pulp of the althaea flower, hardened, thickened, swelled and became ashy grey with large tumours as mysterious tubercles swelled up. It was something frightful. And the disease, which first attacked her legs, overcame her thighs, stomach, breasts, face … Oh, her face! Her face! Can you imagine an enormous pouch, a revolting goatskin, completely grey and streaked with brown blood … and which hung and swayed whenever the sick girl moved. Her eyes – oh, her eyes, dear love! – all you could see of them was a thin gash, reddish and sweating. I still wonder if it really could have happened!”

  She coiled the golden lock of hair around her fingers. In one movement, the paw of the sleeping dog, having slipped along the silk, entirely uncovered the globe of her breast, stiffening her nipple which was as pink as a young flower as it did so.

  “Yes, I still sometimes wonder if I didn’t dream it,” she said.

  “Clara … Clara!” I pleaded, wild with horror. “Don’t tell me any more … I’d like the image of our divine Annie to remain intact in my memory. How can I banish this nightmare from my mind? Ah Clara, don’t tell me anything more, or talk about Annie when she was so beautiful, when she was too beautiful!”

  But Clara wasn’t listening. She continued:

  “Annie shut herself away, confining herself in the house, alone with a Chinese maid who looked after her. She sent away all her women and no longer wanted to see anyone … not even me. She summoned the wisest specialists from England. In vain, you may be sure. The most celebrated sorcerers of Tibet – those who knew magic words and how to resurrect the dead – declared themselves powerless. That disease could never be cured, but you don’t die either. It’s dreadful! So she killed herself … A few drops of poison, and that was the end of the most beautiful of women.”

  Dread sealed up my lips. I stared at Clara, unable to utter a single word.

  “The Chinese woman told me a really odd detail,” Clara continued, “which enchanted me. You know how Annie loved pearls … She had some incomparable ones, the most marvellous in the world, I believe. You may also remember the physical joy, the carnal rapture, she took in adorning herself with them. Well, when she was sick, that passion became a mania with her, a fury – like love! The whole day she loved to touch them, caress them, kiss them. She made cushions, necklaces, capes and cloaks from them. But an extraordinary thing happened: the pearls died on her skin. At first they became dull gradually, gradually fading until their lustre no longer reflected any light and in a few days, as though overcome with the disease, they were transformed into small balls of ash. They had died, died like people, dear heart. Did you know pearls had souls? Personally I find that bewildering and delightful. And ever since I’ve been thinking about it all the time.”

  After a short silence she went on:

  “And that’s not all! Several times Annie said she wanted to be borne to the little Parsee cemetery when she died – over there on Blue Dog Hill. She wanted her body to be torn apart by vultures’ beaks. You know the strange and violent ideas she had about everything! Well, the vultures refused this royal feast she offered them. They flew from her corpse uttering frightful cries. She had to be cremated.”

  “But why didn’t you write to tell me this?” I reproached Clara.

  With slow and charming gestures, Clara smoothed her russet-gold hair, caressed the red fur of the dog, which had woken up, and said negligently:

  “Really? I didn’t write about it? You’re sure? I must have forgotten … Poor Annie!”

  She added: “Since this great misfortune, everything here bores me. I’m all alone. I’d like to have died, I would also like to die … Ah, I assure you! And if you hadn’t returned, I really believe I would be dead already.”

  She threw her head back on the cushions, bared more of her breast, and, with a smile, the strange smile of a child and a whor
e:

  “Do my breasts still please you? Do you still find me beautiful? Then, why were you away for so long? Yes, yes, I know … don’t say anything … don’t reply. I know … You’re a little fool, darling!”

  I would have liked to cry. I couldn’t … I would have liked to speak. I couldn’t do that either …

  And we were in the garden, under the golden pavilion from which the wisteria fell in blue and white clusters and we ended up taking tea. Sparkling scarab beetles swarmed in the leaves, rose-chafers quivered and died in the swooning hearts of roses and, through the open door on the north, we saw the long stalks of yellow irises streaked with purple rise from the pond around which, in the mauve shadow, slept the storks.

  Suddenly Clara asked me:

  “How would you like us to go together to feed the Chinese convicts? It’s an odd thing … very amusing. It’s really the only original and elegant distraction we have in this lost corner of China … Would you like to, little love?”

  I felt weary, my head was heavy, my whole being overwhelmed by the fever of that fearful climate. Besides, hearing about Annie’s death had affected my spirits … And the heat outside was as deadly as poison.

  “I don’t know what you mean, dear Clara … but I haven’t recovered from the long journey through field upon field, forest upon forest. And that sun, which I dreaded more than death! Moreover, I was so looking forward to having you to myself … just for us to be together today …”

  “That’s right! If we were in Europe and I asked you to accompany me to the races or to the theatre, you wouldn’t hesitate. But this is far better than the races.”

  “Be kind! What about tomorrow?”

  “Oh, tomorrow!” replied Clara with an amazed pout and an air of gentle reproach. “Always tomorrow! Don’t you realise that tomorrow is impossible? Tomorrow? It is quite forbidden! The prison-doors are closed … even to me. You can only feed the convicts on Wednesdays. Surely you know that? If we miss today’s visit we’ll have to wait for a whole long week. How boring that would be! A whole week – just think of it! Come, little beloved crybaby … Please come … You can do that much for me.”