Torture Garden Page 7

  Eugène started laughing to himself maliciously.

  “Then again, there’s the secret police … Eh! Perhaps we could find a good place for you there … What about it?”

  In difficult circumstances my mental faculties quickened and sharpened, my energies intensified fantastically and I became overwhelmed and transformed with a promptness of resolve which sometimes astonishes me and has often served me well:

  “Bah!” I cried out … “After all, why can’t I be an embryologist once in my life? What’s at risk? I won’t kill off science. It’s seen worse! Okay, I’ll accept the mission to Ceylon.”

  “Quite right… Bravo!” the Minister applauded, “seeing that embryology – Darwin, Haeckel, Carl Vogt – at root has to be a huge joke! Ah, my fine fellow, you won’t be bored. Ceylon is marvellous. It appears that there are extraordinary women … and beautiful and easy going little lace makers. It’s an earthly paradise! … Come to the Ministry tomorrow. We’ll put the official seal on it. In the meantime, don’t announce it from the rooftops to everyone … because, you, know, I’m really playing a dangerous joke which could backfire on me … Come on!”

  We got up and as I returned to the salon on the Minister’s arm he said with charming irony:

  “Well, just think of it! For all you know, you may discover the cell … Wouldn’t Berthclot4 pull a face?”

  This scheme restored a little fortitude and gaiety to me. Not that I was entirely happy about it. I would have preferred a vague receivership, perhaps, or a well-padded seat in the Council of State to this commission as an illustrious embryologist. But you have to make do. In any event, the adventure didn’t lack amusement. You don’t get transformed, with a wave of the Ministerial wand, from the common vagabond of politics I had been just a moment earlier into an eminent scientist able to unravel mysteries right at the source of life without experiencing a little pretend arrogance and foolish pride.

  An evening that had started in melancholy was ending in joy.

  I accosted Madame G …, still excitedly organising love and bearing adultery from group to group and couple to couple.

  “That charming Romanian countess,” I asked her … “Is she still crazy about me?”

  “Oh yes, my dear …”

  She took my hand. Her feathers had become ruffled, her flowers had withered and her laces had become flattened.

  “Come on then!” she said … “She’s flirting with Princess Onane in Guizot’s salon …”

  “What do you mean – her as well…”

  “But, my dear,” replied this great politician. “At her age and with her poet’s nature … it would be most unfortunate if she didn’t experience everything!”

  4 Marcelin Berthelot (1827-1907) a French theorist of organic chemistry.

  IV

  My preparations were soon done. I was lucky – the Romanian countess was very taken with me and was keen to help with advice as well as, I say not without some shame, her purse.

  Besides, everything went my way.

  My mission augured well. An exceptional breach in the bureaucratic procedures meant that, eight days after that decisive conversation in Madame G …’s salon, I obtained the aforesaid grant without the slightest obstacle or delay. It had been calculated more generously than I dared hope, for I knew how stingy the government was in such matters, and what pathetically small budgets were arbitrarily set aside to satisfy expeditions for real scholars in such a pitiful way. No doubt I owed these unusual liberalities to the fact that, not being a scholar at all, I had a greater need for large resources to enable me to play the part.

  They had provided for two secretaries and two servants as well as the costly purchase of anatomical instruments, microscopes, photographic equipment, collapsible boats, diving-bells, glass bowls for scientific collections and hunting rifles and cages so that captured animals could be brought back alive. The government really does things in style and I have to congratulate it. Needless to say I bought none of these impedimenta and decided to take no one else along but to rely on my own ingenuity to find my way through the untracked forests of science and India.

  I used my free time to learn something about Ceylon, its customs and landscapes, and get an idea about the sort of life I would lead over there under the merciless tropical sun. After discarding the more exaggerated details, boasts and lies of travellers’ tales, what I read enchanted me, especially one detail, reported by a German scholar. In a suburb of Colombo there is a marvellous villa, a bungalow, as they say, in the midst of enchanting gardens by the sea, in which a rich and eccentric Englishman maintains a kind of harem in which perfect female specimens of every Indian race, from the black Tamils to the sinuous Bayaderes of Lahore and devilish bacchantes of Benares, are represented. I promised myself that I would surely find a way to gain an introduction to this amateur polygamist and restrict my studies in comparative embryology to his estate.

  When I went to bid the Minister goodbye he approved all my plans and cheerfully praised my thrifty virtue. Upon leaving, he spoke with such moving eloquence that it caused me, under the surge of his words, to feel affection, a pure, refreshing and sublime affection for an honourable man:

  “Leave, my friend, and return fortified … return to us a new man and a glorious scholar. I don’t doubt that you will use your exile to achieve great things and replenish your energies for future struggles. It will replenish them to the very sources of life, in the cradle of humanity that, of humanity which … Depart … and if, when you return, you still find (though I can’t believe you will), that bad memories persist and you face difficulties … hostility … an obstacle to your legitimate ambitions – remind yourself that you possess enough bits and pieces about those in government to easily triumph from it … Sursum corda! … Count on me, as well. While you’re away, a courageous soldier of progress, a soldier of science, while you’re probing the gulfs and examining mysterious atolls for France, for our dear old France … I’ll not forget you, believe me … Cleverly, progressively, in the Agence Havas5 and in my papers I will be able to create excitement about our upcoming young embryologist. I’ll think up marvellous and moving headlines about ‘Our Great Embryologist’! … ‘We have received from our young and illustrious scholar, whose embryological discoveries, etc …’ ‘While he was studying a hitherto unknown holothurian under twenty fathoms of water, our indefatigable embryologist was very nearly borne off by a shark … There was a terrible struggle, etc …’ Go, go, my friend … Work fearlessly for the glory of the nation. Today, it is not only arms that make a people great, but especially its arts, and its sciences … The quiet conquests made by science serve civilisation more than conquests and so on … Cedent arma sapientiae …”

  I wept with joy, pride, satisfaction and exaltation – the exaltation of my whole being towards something boundless, boundlessly attractive. Projected outside my ego, I didn’t know where, in that moment, I had another soul, an almost divine soul, a soul of creation and sacrifice, the soul of a sublime hero in whom the supreme confidence of the Nation and all the crucial hopes of humanity lie.

  At the same time the Minister, that bandit Eugène, could also barely contain his emotion. There was genuine enthusiasm in his look, a sincere trembling to his voice. Two small tears ran from his eyes … He took my hand so strongly that he might have broken it.

  For a few moments, we were both the unconscious and ludicrous playthings of our own deception …

  Ah, when I think about it!

  5 a press agency in Paris in the 19th Century.

  V

  Furnished with letters of recommendation to the Ceylon ‘authorities’, I finally embarked one fine afternoon at Marseilles on the Saghalien.

  As soon as I had placed my foot on the steamer I immediately realised how useful it was to have an official title and how its prestige can enable a fallen man, as I then was, to grow in the estimation of strangers and people passing by, and consequently in his own. The captain, who ‘knew my excellent wor
ks’, was especially attentive to me, almost honouring me. The most comfortable cabin had been reserved for me, as had the best place at table. As news that an illustrious scholar was aboard soon spread among the passengers, everyone went out of their way to offer me their respects. They all had a glow of admiration on their faces. Women revealed their curiosity and indulgence; some discreetly, others more daringly. One of them in particular drew my intense curiosity. She was a marvellous creature, with thick red hair and green eyes grained with gold, like those of wild beasts. She was travelling with three maids, one a Chinese. I asked the captain about her.

  “She’s English,” he told me. “They call her Miss Clara … the most extraordinary woman imaginable. Although she is only twenty-eight she has already been all around the world. At present she lives in China. It’s the fourth time I’ve seen her on board.”

  “Rich?”

  “Oh, very rich! Her father, who died a long time ago, was, I’m told, an opium dealer in Canton, which is where she was born. I think she’s a bit cracked … but charming!”

  “Married?”

  “No …”

  “And yet …”

  The emphasis I placed on this implied a whole series of intimate and even impertinent questions.

  The captain smiled.

  “That I wouldn’t know … I don’t think so. I’ve never noticed anything … here.”

  Such was the response of the worthy sailor, who I felt knew much more than he was prepared to say. I didn’t insist, but inwardly told myself in an intimate and elliptical way, “You, my little one … you’re just what I’m looking for.”

  The first passengers I got to know were two Chinese from the Embassy in London and a man from Normandy on his way to Tonkin. The latter was very keen to immediately tell me all about his business … He was a passionate hunter.

  “I’m getting away from France,” he declared. “I do so whenever I can … From the time we became a Republic, France was lost. There are too many poachers – they’re the masters. Can you believe that I can no longer keep game at home! The poachers kill it for me and the courts support them. It’s a bit much! And then the few that are left die from one epidemic or another. So I’m off to Tonkin – an excellent land for hunting! It will be the fourth time, my dear sir, that I’ve been to Tonkin …”

  “Ah! … really.”

  “Yes! In Tonkin there’s game a plenty … but especially peacocks. What shooting, sir! Anyway, it’s a dangerous sport … You need to have the knack for it.”

  “They must be ferocious peacocks …”

  “Good heavens, no … But the thing is that where there are deer, there are tigers … and where there are tigers there are … peacocks!”

  “An aphorism?”

  “You’re starting to get the idea … Listen carefully. The tiger eats the deer and …”

  “The peacock eats the tiger …” I gravely suggested.

  “Exactly … That is … the thing is … When the tiger is replete with deer, he falls asleep. When he wakes up he relieves himself and goes on his way. What does the peacock do? Perched in the surrounding trees, he descends to the ground and eats up the tiger’s excrement. And that’s the moment you surprise him …”

  And with both arms held out as though he held a gun, he aimed at an imaginary peacock:

  “Ah, what peacocks! You can’t have the slightest idea. What you take for peacocks are not even turkey cocks. That’s nothing … My dear sir, I’ve killed everything … I have even killed men … Well! never has a rifle shot given me such a bracing emotion as when shooting peacocks … Peacocks, sir … how can I put it? They’re magnificent to kill.”

  After a silence, he concluded: “Travel, that’s the thing … On your travels you see extraordinary things that make you think.”

  “No doubt,” I agreed … “But one must be a great observer like you.”

  “That’s true. I’ve observed such a lot …” The fine fellow was starting to put on airs. “Well, of all the lands I’ve travelled through (Japan, China, Madagascar, Haiti and part of Australia) there’s none more diverting than Tonkin … Perhaps you think you’ve seen hens?”

  “Yes, I think so.”

  “A mistake, my dear sir. You have never seen hens. You need to go to Tonkin for that. And then you still won’t see them. They’re in the forests and hide in the trees. You never see them. Only, I have a trick … I go upstream in a sampan, taking a cock in a cage. I stop at the edge of the forest, and hang the cage at the end of the branch … The cock crows. And from the depths of the woods come the hens … and they continue to come. In innumerable bands. And I kill them! Once I killed around twelve hundred in a single day!”

  “Remarkable!” I exclaimed with enthusiasm.

  “Yes, it was. But not as much so as peacocks … Ah, peacocks!”

  But his interests were not confined to hunting. He was also a gambler. Well before we were in sight of Naples, the two Chinese, the peacock-killer and myself had established a lively poker party. Thanks to my special knowledge of the game, by the time we reached Port-Saïd, I had relieved these matchless characters of their money, so tripling the capital I had brought to the delights of the Tropics and the unknown quantity of fabled Embryology.

  VI

  At that time I would have been quite incapable of the slightest poetic description, lyricism having come to me later, through love. Certainly, like everyone else, I enjoyed the beauties of nature, but they didn’t overwhelm me. I enjoyed them in my own way, that is as a moderate republican. And I told myself:

  Nature, seen from the window of a train or a ship’s porthole always retains, wherever it may be, its own characteristics. It is notable mainly for lacking chance improvisation. It constantly repeats itself, having only a minimal number of forms, combinations and aspects which are encountered, here and there, in almost the same form. In its immense and sultry monotony it is differentiated through barely perceptible nuances which only interest people who train small animals (something which I don’t, even if I am an embryologist) and those who split hairs. In short, when you’ve travelled through a hundred square miles of countryside (it doesn’t matter where) you’ve seen everything. And that little creep Eugène had promised: “You’ll see nature . .. trees, flowers!” Trees always get on my nerves and I tolerate flowers only in modistes’ shops and on hats … As far as tropical nature is concerned, Monte-Carlo would have been enough to satisfy my need for aesthetic landscape and dreams of far away travel. I didn’t understand palm trees, coconut trees, banana trees, mangroves, grapefruit and pandanus trees unless able to gather underneath them a few pretty girls nibbling away on something other than betel nut. A coconut tree is a tree for coquetry … I judged trees only by this very Parisian classification.

  How blind and dumb I was then! How could I, with such sickening cynicism, blaspheme against the infinite beauty of Form, which passes from man to beast, from beast to plant, from plant to mountain, from mountain to cloud, and from cloud to the pebble that contains in microcosm all of life’s splendour!

  Although it was October, the crossing of the Red Sea was very difficult. The heat was so overpowering, the air so heavy on our European lungs that I frequently thought I should die for want of air. During the day we hardly ever left the bar, where a large Indian punka fan, which was on all the time, gave us a fleeting illusion of a fresh breeze. The nights were spent on deck, although it was no more possible to sleep there than in the cabins. The man from Normandy gasped like a sick ox and never considered telling his Tonkin hunting tales. The most boastful and intrepid were the very ones who became most thoroughly exhausted, their limbs inert and wheezing like foundering beasts. Nothing was more ridiculous than the sight of these people slumped in their multicoloured pyjamas. Only the two Chinese seemed unaffected by the hellish temperature. They adapted neither their behaviour nor their clothing and divided their time between silent walks on deck and playing cards or dice in their cabins.

  We couldn’t conc
entrate on anything. Anyway, nothing distracted us from the tortuous feeling of being slowly and surely cooked like a beef stew. The liner was sailing through the gulf. Above us and around us was nothing but the blueness of sky and sea, a forbidding blueness of heated metal, here and there reflecting the incandescence of the forge on its surface. We could barely make out the Somali coast – a red and distant mass somehow vaporised by mountains of flaming sand where not a tree, not a blade of grass grew and which enclosed this sinister sea like an endlessly blazing brazier that appeared like an immense reservoir of boiling water.

  I must say that I displayed great courage during this crossing and managed to conceal my actual suffering. It was conceit and love that gave me the strength to do so.

  Chance (was it really chance, or the captain?) had given me Clara as table companion. A minor incident while the meal was being served almost immediately offered a pretext for us to become acquainted. In any event, my high scientific post and the curiosity whose object I was, exempted me from the usual conventions of polite behaviour.

  As the captain had told me, Miss Clara was returning to China, after having divided the whole summer between England, for business; Germany, for health; and France, for pleasure. She confided to me that she felt increasingly disgusted by Europe. She couldn’t tolerate its rigid customs, ridiculous habits and chilly landscapes any more. Only in China did she feel happy and free! With a decisive demeanour, an extraordinary presence, she chatted, sometimes randomly, sometimes with a lively feeling for things and with a feverish gaiety that led her to the strange, the sentimental and the philosophical, the ignorant and the learned, the impure and the candid, and the mysterious. In the end her evasions, flights of fancy, incomprehensible whims and terrific will-power, greatly intrigued me even though I knew you have to expect the unexpected from an eccentric English woman. From the first I had no doubt (I who, as far as women were concerned, had only known Parisian floozies and – what’s worse – female politicians and literary figures) that I might easily have got the better of her, and I was looking forward to pleasantly spending the voyage in an unforeseen and charming way. With her red hair and radiant skin, a laugh always about to resound across her fleshy red lips, she really was the joy of the ship, as though she embodied its soul, en route to wild adventure and the idyllic liberty of virgin lands and fiery tropics. The Eve of marvellous paradises, herself a flower – an intoxicating and tasty flower of eternal desire – I perceived her wandering and leaping amidst the flowers and golden fruits of primordial orchards, no longer in that white speckled dress which moulded her pliable waist and heaving breasts with life like a bud, but in the supernatural splendour of her biblical nudity.