THE RED GODS
(_LES DIEUX ROUGES_)
By JEAN D'ESME
A ROMANCE
_Translated from the French by_
MOREBY ACKLOM
NEW YORK
E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
681 FIFTH AVENUE
COPYRIGHT, 1924
BY E. P. DUTTON & COMPANY
_All Rights Reserved_
Printed in the United States of America
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
This extraordinary story undoubtedly had its inception in a peculiar
passage in the Report of a French official mission in Indo-China in
1912, entitled _Les Jungles Moïs_ (The Moï Jungles). The translation of
the passage runs as follows:
"This is not the first time that I have met this strange story of
savage men, dwellers in the forests of the mountains. They have
been reported from the wild region of the Annamite range. According
to the local descriptions these 'savages' must be covered with a
thick mat of red hair. They have been very seldom met with and are
now never seen; but everywhere one still comes upon the traces
which they left behind them."
Romances of the discovery of prehistoric or vanished races are not
uncommon; but I cannot recall any in which the discovery was made the
subject of as splendid a piece of descriptive work, and at the same
time of as poignantly tragic a drama as in this instance. I think even
the most hardened reader of adventure-stories will admit that in _The
Red Gods_ he has got something distinctly out of the common.
M. A.
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE: IN TSEN-TAC'S OPIUM DEN
I. SAIGON
II. UP THE RIVER
III. A FELLOW TRAVELER
IV. POST 32
V. AT THE MISSION
VI. AN ENTHUSIAST DISCOURSES ON PRE-HISTORIC REMAINS
VII. THE SILENT VILLAGE
VIII. LOVE IN THE FOREST
IX. AN INTERVIEW WITH A SORCERESS
X. THE FUGITIVE
XI. A DESPERATE ADVENTURE
XII. THOSE LEFT BEHIND
XIII. THE FUGITIVE'S STORY
XIV. INTO THE UNKNOWN
XV. DEEPENING MYSTERY
XVI. NEAR THE END OF THE JOURNEY
XVII. A FREAK OF NATURE
XVIII. BACK IN THE STONE AGE
XIX. OUTSIDE THE TEMPLE
XX. INSIDE THE TEMPLE
XXI. THE LAW OF GONDWANA
XXII. WANDA TELLS HER STORY
XXIII. A TERRIBLE BARGAIN
XXIV. THE RESCUE
XXV. ESCAPE
XXVI. A MESSAGE FROM JIENG
THE RED GODS
LIST OF PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
_Europeans_
PIERRE DE LURSAC A young administrative official of French Indo-China.
FATHER RAVENNES Priest of the Apostolic Mission to the Banhars.
MICHAEL REDESKI Of the French army: Lieutenant in service in Indo-China.
WANDA His sister.
RABAUD Captain of an up-country river steamer.
JULES BRESSOND The narrator of the story: a boyhood friend of de Lursac's.
_Natives_
JIENG Chief sorceress and high priestess of the Moï tribes.
MAA-WANG "The-Man-who-goes-in-Front."
NGUR }
PÂA } Native guides.
HMON A woman of the Stieng tribe.
_Scene_: The city of Saigon (capital of French Indo-China) and
the unexplored, inaccessible forests surrounding the Pou-Kas, the
principal peak of the Annamite range.
THE RED GODS
PROLOGUE
IN TSEN-TAC'S OPIUM DEN
This is the door, here, in front of me! A heavy door of teak, black and
shiny. However, with my hand on the iron latch, I hesitate, fighting
the subtle uneasiness and irritation which I feel rising in me. At the
back of my mind a question forms: why do I come here, to the bottom
of this hidden alley at night, I, who seldom or never touch the opium
pipe? Hardly at all: perhaps five or six pipes now and again on Sundays
at the hour of siesta! Six little pipes, that's nothing! Any regular
opium-smoker will tell you so. Then, why have I come here tonight? Why?
As a matter of fact I feel that my presence here, behind this back-shop
in the heart of the Chinese town of Cho-lon is silly and without
excuse.... So silly and aimless that already I have withdrawn my hand,
with my mind made up to retrace my steps along the sombre corridor
and back through the sumptuous mart of the worthy Tsen-Tac, who sells
to knowing connoisseurs precious silks and out-of-the-way curiosities
brought by the big-bellied junks from China ... and who in addition
dispenses, with discretion, to a few genuine and carefully chosen
smokers, the priceless calm of opium.
Yes, I shall not stay.... It will be better. The darkling spirit of the
Drug shall not glide through my blood tonight. I am off.... But fate at
this very moment decides otherwise. At my back, in the thick shadows a
raucous voice cries:
"In the name of Confucius, get on there!"
And instinctively, pushing the swing-door, I enter. A puff of acrid
odor, the smell of the wonderful perfume of Shandoo, at once rough and
voluptuous, assails my senses and makes my heart leap!
Behind me the closed door swings open roughly, and the man who
addressed me stumbles into the room. Pushing by me, he advances to
the "boy" who has run up to meet him. For a second I follow him with
my eyes. His form is broken and bent, very tall, and so thin that it
accentuates the fullness of the white linen clothes which flap about
his limbs and at moments soften the jagged outline of his bones. A
curious figure, like that of an old man, skeletonized and moribund; and
the more surprising, in that certain signs reveal the strange contrast
of an undeniable youthfulness in him. Sure signs: his step, rapid and
full of strength; his movements, quick and jerky, peculiar to those who
are under the domination of the Drug, when the brown hour of the smoke
has arrived. But what do I care about this unknown man? He hurries on
toward the bottom of the room and disappears. Without knowing why, I
sigh with relief, and in my turn step forward. The "boy," as I come,
smiles, showing his black enamelled teeth, and points out to me the
bed which lies along the wall, the great plank platform on which the
smokers lie and dream their strange dreams, while about them watches
and drifts the spirit of the opium.
With a nod, I assent and give my order.
"Bamboo: small pipe."
And, heavily, my body weary, I fling myself down on the bare wood
polished with use, the coolness of which, through the cloth of my coat,
penetrates deliciously to my flesh....
* * * * *
The time drifts away.... How many hours? I do not know, I do not care
to know. Stretched out on my side, with my eyes fixed on the little
crystal lamp topped with its conical globe in which the flame, like a
living tongue, points upward, steady and reddish, I watch the movements
of the "boy" plunging the steel needle into the sticky Shandoo, turning
it over the lamp and rolling it on the brown bowl of the pipe.
With my lips glued to the bamboo tube, blackened by opium and soaked
with its deadly taste, I breathe in slowly, taking the long inhalations
of the practiced smoker. Then, with my head thrown back on the pillow
of smooth hollowed-out wood, I fix my eyes on the acrid smoke which
trickles from my expanded nostrils, and of which the clouds, circling
in spirals, rise slowly to the beams of the ceiling. All is silence.
The only sound besides the bubbling of the cooked pills of opium is the
scratching of the needles on the pipe bowls. Across the room a divine
happiness floats, filling with dreams the warm dusk which the light of
the great silken Chinese lanterns does not disturb,--just as it should
be!
Indescribable smell of opium smoke! I no longer think of anything else!
It is the whole universe for me now; and my whole life flows in the
great sweetness which drifts through my veins, lulling my senses and
making the very marrow of my bones and the fibres of my muscles weak
with pleasure!...
Eighth or tenth pipe? What does it matter! The curtains are drawn, the
air is still and pleasant, the light is faint, as it ought to be, too
faint for any eyes but those of the smokers. Here and there along the
platform the little lamps burn, like will-o-the-wisps dancing on the
dark and sleeping surface of the wood, and the stretched-out bodies lie
along the wall, the bamboo tubes in their mouths, while the "boy" bends
over and puts fresh opium in the empty pipes.
Slowly, very slowly,--for what is the good of hurrying--are not dreams
everlasting?--I raise my hand. My lips, stiff, clumsy, manage to form
the single word:
"Tea."
Silently the Annamese goes off, and I smile with satisfaction that he
has been able to understand me without having made me go through the
effort of explaining myself. Decidedly Tsen-Tac is a worthy proprietor,
whose servants have been trained by practiced opium-smokers. I let my
eyes close. Under my neck I feel the wood of the pillow like a cool and
comforting hand, and in my brain, which has become clear and subtle,
all sorts of strange things appear and move about,--apparitions which
may be souvenirs of another life or visions of another world,--things
reserved for the initiates of opium,--at any rate things which are
strangely alive in the recesses of my brain and which one day without
doubt will come into my human thoughts ... unless, when the effects of
the opium have passed away I forget them--which is quite possible. For
everything is possible! Everything! Except the one thing: that anyone
should touch or interfere with a smoker who is dreaming over his pipe.
I lift my lids and turn my head slightly towards the hand which has
just dropped on my shoulder and committed this most inexcusable
offence. My glance steals upwards, full of disgust, along the wrist and
the arm, up to the face of the man who does not even know that one must
pay absolute respect to the intoxication of the opium-smoker. At first
with disgust, then in astonishment. It seems to me, indeed, that I know
the face bent towards me. Where have I seen that expression before ...
and when? It was a long time ago, certainly, a very long time. The eyes
are deep and black and despairing, eyes which one does not quickly
forget.
Now the man speaks in a hoarse, muffled voice. Calling me by my name,
he says:
"Good evening, Jacques. I see that you are always sensible, as usual.
You have had only ten pipes and here you are waiting for the green tea
of Yun-nan which the boy is making for you. Only ten pipes, and already
you are disgusted at me!"
He has sat himself down in the attitude of one of those Lao-ese idols,
with his legs crossed, his hands flat on his thighs, and he smiles upon
me with a faint baffling smile.
"Yes, I see this surprises you. But I understood your look at once when
you raised your head towards me. Yes, I saw your scorn at the bottom
of your eyes; exactly as I recognized you at once, when you came to
stretch yourself out beside me, without noticing, and I said to myself:
Here is he with whom I spent my childhood, and who does not know
me,--_because I have aged so much_,--I have aged too soon, much too
soon for other men to know me, even when they have been my childhood
friends."
He bends over me and looks at me strangely. He has something ironical
and yet almost tender in his expression that I observe with curiosity.
Then he lifts his head and speaks out loud the very thought which has
just crossed my mind.
"No. I am neither drunk nor mad! Scarcely twenty-five pipes. At this
moment I have had my exact dose. Just enough to make me extraordinarily
subtle and clairvoyant; and it is because of that I am speaking to
you. I admit I hesitated a long time ... or a short one, I do not know
which. What do you think of it? Is it worth the trouble?
"Who am I? Bah!... I already told you: your best friend, he with whom
you lived for years side by side, who shared your games, your pleasures
and your sorrows of childhood. Don't you remember? Well, I am not
surprised. I always thought that you had a mediocre brain. Unlucky that
the Drug itself has not succeeded in improving it."
He interrupts himself for a second to shrug his shoulders with a yawn
of pity. His silence seems to expect an answer, yet nothing in me
protests against the impertinence, at once brutal and kindly, of this
unknown. The opium has permeated my soul with wisdom, kindliness and
peace. Indifferent to his questions, I let my eyes wander over the
panels inlaid with mother-of-pearl; the red hangings, embroidered with
yellow characters, which cover the walls of the smoke-room; the faint
white-clad forms, which move fitfully from time to time on the long
vista of the platform, sighing heavily. But already the harsh voice of
the stranger is beginning again:
"Really, don't you remember Dinard? The beach at Port Blanc, blazing
in the sunshine; the green water of the little bay in which we bathed
every day in July? Don't you remember the house where we spent our
vacations, covered all over with wild vine, its two little doorways
of green wood, the spindle trees in line along the railings, and the
clumps of hydrangeas on which the sun, striking through the trees,
flung splashes of gold in which the blackbirds used to come and
scold?...
"And then later, don't you remember our school, the dear old Colonial
School of the Avenue d'Observation, and the Luxembourg,--the old Luco
where we used to leave our 'box' on autumn evenings and go to gaze at
the falling dusk and the first yellow leaves which the breeze drove
fluttering down from the trees and rolled gaily round the white statues
on their gray pedestals?...
"What! You don't? You remember nothing?... Doesn't that recall anything
to you? Poor brute!..."
Again he has bent over me, and he smiles with his face close to mine.
But in vain I seek in my past and dig among the recollections of dead
days in the corners of my memory. I cannot manage to recognize this man
who pretends to have been the play-fellow of my youth. However, Yes!...
I feel that everything that he has just reminded me of is right, and
that these scenes that he has revived were formerly the background of
my life! But what about him? I fling down my eyes with weariness and
even with irritation.
Nevertheless, his voice goes on, sadder and more confidential than ever.
"No! I won't insist on it, but nevertheless open your eyes and look.
Yes, that's right. Look at me long and carefully. Well? Is my poor face
ugly enough, with its white hair, its wan gray skin withered by fever,
washed by the rain, torn by the thorns? Is it terrible enough, with its
bones that stick out all over it, with all these wrinkles which make it
look like an old tragic mask from some Chinese theatre?
"Disgusting face, isn't it? Well! I have just come out of hospital
after four months in bed--four months in bed--and before that, four
months more of suffering, weariness, and ghastly terror, of daily fear
and deadly companionship! That changes a man, I tell you; and I forgive
you for not knowing me, since even I myself at times have recoiled with
fright before the unknown image that the looking-glass shows me!"
He lifts his head. A twitch, a sort of intermittent cramp of his lip
drags his mouth to one side violently, changing and deforming the
face, which becomes livid, while in his staring eyes a sudden terrible
light shines for an instant and passes away. He lifts his arms in a
gesture of despair and weariness; then in a low voice, as if it were to
himself, with a little dry laugh which comes and goes in jerks:
"Just a rag! This is what one year in this country has made of me. Yes,
this healthy and vigorous body and this willing brain which I brought
here a few months ago are nothing now but rags and tatters, used up and
withered, in which my soul and youth, though still alive, flutter and
are slowly dying. And soon I shall be nothing but a vague memory which
will gradually fade out day by day in the hearts of those who love me.
Then soon,--so quickly--yes, so quickly--I shall have gone altogether.
Then, who in this vile life will think of Pierre de Lursac?"
"--_Pierre!_"
I must have spoken too loud. Upon the sleeping-platform two or three
smokers, like white spectres, begin to move and grumble at the intruder
who is disturbing the serenity of the place.... What does that matter
to me! With my arms stretched out, I repeat, my voice trembling:--
"--_Pierre! Pierre!_"
He bends towards me and with his two hands gripping my shoulders he
holds me down.
"Quiet ... yes ... it is I.... But quiet. I am satisfied.... Don't
move. There is nothing important enough to allow of your disturbing
your opium trance, and nothing is worse than getting excited when you
have just finished smoking your dose.... Don't trouble to talk."
He falls silent, his expression grave and thoughtful. On my part, while
anxiously watching him, I dream of my childhood days and my youth.
_Lursac!_... Is it really he whom I have before me? Once more I see him
in my mind coming ashore at Saigon some few months after his graduation
from college, scarcely a year ago.... I recall his enthusiasm, his
ardor, his thirst for adventure, and the air of strength and manliness,
of youth and good looks, which glowed in him. And now I look at him
feverishly again. He is right ... a rag ... a miserable rag....
"But why? Why?... What can have happened?"
With a sombre eye he stares at me in silence. Slowly he changes his
attitude of a Buddhist statue and stretches himself on his side, his
hollowed face turned towards my lamp. Without words and without a
wasted movement, he takes up the pipe that I have laid down. His long
hands, fleshless and transparent, busy themselves in the prescribed
motions, always the same. With eyes closed he smokes.
Pipe follows pipe. A great silence weighs upon the human beings who
stagnate in this hall filled with the oppressive perfume of the Drug. A
silence only broken now and again for a moment by the distant striking
of a gong, which marks the swallowing up of one hour after another
in eternity ... and, from time to time, unreal and without echo in
this house of nothingness, a woman's nervous laugh sends a spasm of
discomfort through the calm.
Then, in my turn I take up the pipe again....
* * * * *
Then, suddenly, Lursac is talking. I watch him with vague curiosity. He
is stretched out on his back. The pupils of his wide-open eyes, dilated
and black, stare out, immobile and sightless, like two dead beasts.
He speaks. My brain, soaked in the bitter smoke, picks its way among
the aimless swarming of thoughts which rise up, melt away, and vanish
without leaving any trace....
One after the other, the smokers get up and go. They have the
staggering and hesitating gait of drunkards. Their linen clothes make
patches of ghostly white against the red hangings of the hall.... The
dull slam of the door signals the departure of each in turn....
Lursac is still talking....
Each one of his words falls into my brain and is engraved there so
indelibly that I am sure that the next time I smoke opium and become
entranced as I am now, I shall be able to reproduce them all, from
the first to the last, without omitting a single one.... Yes.... I am
absolutely certain of that.
However, tonight I do not feel able to distinguish whether all this is
not a silly dream--the recollection of some life I have lived before in
some other world....
Yes, I'm drunk with opium, drunk ... drunk ... drunk, to such a point
that I am unable to recognize this long pale thing,--this hand that he
is playing with and caressing ... this thing which looks like a
hand ... a woman's.... Idiot! What is it?... Pshaw!... Let's go to
sleep....
* * * * *
Time flows on.... Seconds and minutes, parted one by one from the
present, plunge themselves inevitably into the shadowy ocean of the
always growing past.... On the walls the red hangings begin to get
paler. They become pink, then mauve, under the gentle fingers of the
dawn which steals bluely through the window panes and between the
shutters into the smoke-clouded opium hall. The last words of Lursac
penetrate to my ears in a vague murmur.
"There you are, I'm finished.... Now, you know ... and nobody but you
will know.... Nobody!... But I am glad to have told all this to you
whom chance has placed at the last mile-stone of my journey. It would
have worried me that you might have thought me mad, judging me by the
gossip of some commonplace incident, or have supposed me crazed by the
Drug and fever; as there will be those who will not fail to cry it
aloud in their miserable papers!!! One lunatic the less! ... a quick
and easy epitaph, but one which fits me well...."
There is a long untroubled silence. Then a violent explosion seems to
tear my brain apart. What is the fool playing at--?... Warm, heavy
drops are falling on my hand ... and as I half open my eyes I spring
up, staring and haggard. Pierre is lying beside me ... bent double,
like a useless, broken toy. From his face, disfigured by a gaping hole,
blood rolls, covering my cheek, my forehead, my clothes. And I sit
there stupefied, without understanding. Only after the first minutes of
disturbance and agitation, and while they are carrying away his great
bony body, do I see at the end of the arm, hanging down and swaying
as the carriers stagger along with their terrible burden, the shining
steel of a revolver, round which his fingers are still clenched.
* * * * *
Eight days ... that was eight days ago!...
And every evening since--because my nerves were torn to pieces and
because the Shandoo, as I had foreseen, allowed all the details of my
friend's story to rise from the bottom of my memory,--every evening
since then, I have written, bit by bit, faithfully, the strange story
that he told me before killing himself. I have not written it for
myself, _who know_, but for others--for the people here, for the people
in France; in a word, for all those unbelievers who in the darkness of
their blindness think they know everything, although they are beset
with ignorance, and believe that they have dislodged the Unknown from
the last shadowy haunt in which it is hiding. Although they have no
suspicion, even, of the mystery which is here, there, everywhere, close
to them, and which I am the only one to hold under my hands.... The
only one!...
* * * * *
... There, I have finished.... I have left out nothing:--not a single
particular, not a word. Everything has been reproduced exactly.
In any case I could not forget anything, because of this woman's
hand,--this long pale hand so perfectly embalmed that one would swear
it was alive and ready to move any minute. There it is: the signet on
its ring-finger bears the following charge: _Dexter, argent, a lion
sable--Sinister, azure, a chevron or_ ... and now, out through the
window, open to the sweet and placid night of Annam, I am going to
fling it, so that I may be no longer haunted by it, may no longer have
to see it there....
There it goes, _splash_!
It must have fallen in the canal. And there the black mud will soon
cover it for ever....
... And I shall never smoke opium again, never!... But that has nothing
to do with this....
And here is the story that he told me[1]....
[Footnote 1: Captain Jacques Bressond fell on the French front, July
28, 1917, in the attack on the Chemin des Dames. At the bottom of
his dispatch case among the personal souvenirs which he had asked me
to send to his family if he was killed, there lay a large yellow,
commercial-looking envelope with the inscription "For Jean." In the
envelope there were the pages that follow, accompanied by a roll of
parchment covered with unknown characters, probably in the Banhar
language. My sole care has been to see to the publication of Bressond's
text with a mixed feeling of respect and tenderness for his heroic
death and friendship for the man himself. Although the names given by
Bressond are real ones I have not changed a single word of his story,
for the correctness of which I take full responsibility.
J. D'E.]
CHAPTER I
SAIGON
On the threshold of the office Pierre de Lursac stopped.
Behind him the beaded hanging rustled as it fell into place. Carefully
he folded up the paper of instructions that had been handed to him a
few minutes earlier by the Director of Personnel, and as he thought
over the orders which he had just received he crossed the veranda.
Below the balustrade of the porch lay stretched the tropical vegetation
of the gardens of Government House. Walks, shining and carefully
tended, wound about the clumps of rhododendrons and the green lawns
over which the flame-trees and tamarinds flung round patches of shade.
When he came to the foot of the main staircase of gray stone which led
to the park, Pierre ordered the _linh_ who was on guard a few steps
away:
"My rickshaw."
The rifleman immediately barked a short order, and a light vehicle
appeared from one of the side avenues. Following the lively and
cadenced jog-trot of its coolie, it described a semicircle and drew up,
shafts on the ground, in front of the young man.
Jumping nimbly into it, Pierre lay back on the cushions cased in white
coverings, and then, as the runner, ready to start, looked up at him
with a questioning face expecting directions, Lursac signed to the
_linh_ to come closer.
"I don't speak Annamese well enough to make myself understood. Tell him
I want to go back to the hotel."
The rifleman gave an elaborate salute, and this military gesture,
usually sharp and formal, seemed astonishing when performed by this
little puny soldier who looked like a mixture of a toy and a warrior
out of a comic operetta.
He acknowledged the order:
"_Gia bam qua lon._"[2]
[Footnote 2: Very well, sir.]
And he immediately launched forth into verbose explanations to the
coolie, the nasal syllables echoing strangely in the sonorous silences
of the park. The coolie nodded and started off with a supple and
rhythmic gait; while Pierre, lying spread out against the back of the
little car, watched the naked back of the runner, down which great
drops of sweat were already beginning to roll. As soon as they left the
shady alleys of the park, and while they were crossing the square which
stretches in front of the Government offices, a wave of heat enveloped
them. It was nearly four o'clock. From the burning ground the hot air
rose in waves, while above the trees, flooded with dazzling light,
the lifeless and quivering atmosphere vibrated in the heat. Although
he wore a cork helmet and was clothed in the lightest of white linen,
Pierre experienced a feeling of prostration at the touch of this fiery
breath. When the rickshaw at last entered the shade of the avenue of
lofty tamarinds, he sighed with relief. A little coolness caused by
the rapidity of their progress caressed his face, relaxed the feeling
of depression in his temples, spread along his body and refreshed him
with a sensation of well-being. He flung himself back, stretched out
his legs, and shut his eyes, giving himself up to the swaying of the
light vehicle whose rubber-tired wheels rode softly on the dust of the
roadway.
As the running coolie slowed down a little in consequence of a block in
the traffic, Lursac heard a voice calling to him.
"Hullo! Pierre!"
Surprised, he turned his head and shot a quick glance along the edge
of the street. On the sidewalk, smiling and waving to attract his
attention, a lieutenant of colonial infantry was standing and calling
to him:
"Come here!"
Lursac recognized him immediately.
"Jacques!"
Touching the shoulder of the coolie with his walking stick, he cried:
"Toi.... Toi...."
It was the one word which he had so far succeeded in remembering of the
Annamese language since his arrival in Saigon.
Prodded from behind, the runner had immediately stopped, and Pierre,
jumping out of the rickshaw, hurried toward the officer who came to
meet him. They greeted each other with the light of pleasure in their
eyes: then Jacques Bressond, drawing back a couple of steps, looked his
friend up and down. Lursac, upright in the middle of the sidewalk, drew
himself up to his full height so that his white tunic clung tightly to
his figure and threw into relief his splendid chest, the free swing of
his shoulders and the harmonious strength which showed itself in his
erect carriage and the spring of his legs. In fact, a fine figure of a
man, whose strong, talented face was set off by two brilliant dark eyes
deeply set. Jacques took him by the arm.
"I found your message when I got back from my trip this morning; I
immediately ran off to your hotel, where I shouted till the whole place
rang!... The service boy, after bowing and scraping, gibbered at me:
'M. Lursac been gone, two o'clock.' It was enough for me to understand
what he meant.... What luck to meet you like this!... What are you
doing?"
"Nothing," said Pierre, "I am just going back to the hotel."
"All right, then I will take charge of you. We will go and take an
aperitif together and then we will make the 'Tour of Inspection' in a
carriage."
"Tour of Inspection?"
"Yes, the swagger thing to do, the Avenue des Acacias of Saigon
high-life, the fashionable six-to-eight-o'clock affair.... It is
curious and instructive, as you will see! You'll come, won't you?"
Lursac agreed.
"With pleasure. I have been here for three days now, and already I am
beginning to feel my loneliness weighing on me. They told me that you
were going to be absent for another fortnight."
He threw some change to the rickshaw coolie, who made himself scarce.
"Yes, but I had to turn in here to get new instructions before
continuing my journey of official inspection."
They had resumed their walk side by side down the Rue Catinat. Under
the sun which beat down from a sky of hard, cloudless blue that glowed
like a metal dome, the life of the town stagnated, prostrated by the
heat.
In the shops, which the lowered shades protected with a zone of shadow,
the customers seated at their ease bargained casually over the precious
knick-knacks in lacquer, ivory, and mother-of-pearl which every now
and then gave off a vivid sparkle of light. On their haunches at their
benches behind the glass of the shop front the native jewelers, clad
only in the soft _cai-ao_ of fine linen, hammered out complicated and
original designs on the gold or silver of an umbrella handle which
would eventually be the prized possession of some coarse western
barbarian!
The interior of the shops, guessed at rather than seen through the
opening of the drawn curtains, seemed like oases of shade and coolness,
and attracted with some subtle charm.
As they went along Jacques explained:
"Since I found on my table this morning all your letters from France
announcing your arrival here I have been thinking of nothing but Paris.
I have been living in the midst of the recollections which you have
brought to life again.... Do you remember when we used to start off for
the Valley de Chevreuse on Saturdays?"
They crossed the square, at the bottom of which the municipal theatre
reared its ornate façade in imitation of a Greek temple, opposite the
wide semicircle from which the Boulevard Charner could be seen blazing
with light and baking in the sun.
When they had arrived on the pavement opposite, Jacques Bressond,
pointing out the café which occupied the angle between the Square and
the Rue Catinat, said:
"Let us stop here. We will take a seat on the terrace. For you who
are new to Saigon the sight will be worth while. This is exactly the
right moment, the exquisite moment, for now, at the slight pretence of
coolness that the evening breeze brings with it, the fashionable people
of the town gather to suck iced drinks through straws--milky absinthe
shot with iridescent colors, emerald crème de menthe and the entire
gamut of cocktails, dark and light and rainbow-hued."
Pierre smiled, and seating himself he asked:
"Do you like the country?"
"Well, like every other place, it has its good side and its bad side.
However, it seems to me that the pleasures are more numerous than the
troubles. And then, why shouldn't I like Saigon? Of the last six months
I have spent four or five exploring the bush, in climbing sandy hills,
wandering through the impenetrable confusion of the forests of Annam
and upper Tonkin, and in floundering about in the green mud of the
canals and the creeks of Laos...."
"Do you know Laos, then?"
"Pretty well. I have made two trips there on geodetic surveys."
"Splendid. You can give me some information then. Here, see where the
chief is sending me."
He pulled out of his pocket the paper of instructions that he had been
given earlier in the day and extended it to Bressond.
The boy, clothed in a long tunic of white linen and with his head
wound in a turban of linen set down before them on the bamboo table a
tray heaped with bottles of many colors. While he measured and mixed
with the precision of habit the liquids and ingredients of an oyster
cocktail in the glasses filled with cracked ice, Jacques Bressond ran
over the paper which Lursac had handed him.
The boy, having completed the mixture, placed the glasses before the
young men and disappeared.
Bressond passed back the paper of instructions to Lursac.
"Post 32? Don't know it. Haven't they given you any other details?"
"No.... Oh, yes, wait a minute, ... yes. The Chief of Personnel told me
that the post was at the foot of the Pou-Kas."
Jacques Bressond raised his head.
"Ah, wait.... Pou-Kas? Isn't the post on the bank of the canal?"
"Yes, I have to go there part of the way in an ox-cart and part in a
boat.... Do you know it?"
The officer sucked a few drops of his cocktail from the end of his
straw and reflected.
Beside him with stretched out legs Pierre watched with curiosity the
Rue Catinat, along which people were beginning to appear. Five o'clock
struck in the distance with clear metallic strokes. The terrace of the
café at once began to fill with patrons in white waistcoats and light
dresses. Like a swollen river, the fashionable artery of Saigonese
life brimmed with a noisy wave of carriages, of street hawkers and
promenaders. From café to café the newsboys ran, slipping from one
table to another, yelping the name of a local newspaper; while,
opposite, two Chinese with crumpled features got out of a malabar and
disappeared into a tailor shop.
The café orchestra suddenly dashed into a waltz. Sharp bursts of
music dominated the confused noise which mounted from the pavement,
and a languorous tune just imported from Europe was borne aloft on
two squeaky violins accompanied by a husky-voiced piano and a shaky
mandoline.
Vaguely soothed, Pierre abandoned himself to the pleasure of being
there, peacefully situated under the punkahs, with an iced drink in
front of him, in the midst of this tumult and heat which surrounded him.
Bressond's voice stirred his placidity:
"The Pou-Kas.... I seem to remember that.... I must have passed it
on my last trip but one. I have trekked about the country more than
a little. That was certainly one of my roughest trips. Yes ... wait,
now I remember.... It is the region which stretches at the foot of the
great Annamite mountain-chain, in the middle of the forest, almost on
the Burmese frontier ... a ghastly country, my poor old chap! You will
never find anything to amuse yourself with there."
Pierre smiled absent-mindedly. His eyes ran along the side of the wall
and followed the jerky progress of a _congai_ whose black silk tunic
and large white _cai-quan_ appeared and disappeared amongst the throng.
"Bah!" said he, "I didn't come here for amusement. In any case they
didn't pretend at the office that the post possessed anything to
recommend it."
Bressond sipped his cocktail and shrugged his shoulders.
"Nothing to recommend it? I should say not! To begin with, you will
arrive there in the middle of the rainy season. Secondly, you will have
to live in the middle of this clump of mountains hardly explored as
yet, alone with a dozen native soldiers of the military station, and
... it's a very advanced point, isn't it?"
"Yes, Post 32. Moï territory, it appears."
Bressond started.
"In Moï territory.... Number 32.... By Buddha!... Now I know. It's even
worse than I thought. Well, well! You are certainly going strong for
a beginner.... But ... what on earth do they want to send a military
administrator out there for?"
Pierre, nettled by the tone in which he made this exclamation, looked
at him fixedly.
"They are sending me to join a lieutenant who has just been nominated
to the post. It is a special appointment. My business will be to
inaugurate the civil organization. But what is there unusual about this
Post 32?"
Bressond shook his head.
"What is there unusual? I do not know exactly ... and nobody here
knows anything more than I do. At any rate it is the worst hole in the
whole of Upper Laos! But, of course you know how they speak of it ...
'recently established' ... all humbug, my boy!"
And as Pierre shot a look of interrogation at him he continued:
"Yes, all humbug! As a matter of fact, the post was instituted for the
first time at least six or seven years ago. It was Longères who had it.
At the end of six months, no Longères, no Post 32. A flood had swept
away the settlement and its inhabitants. At least that is the version
that the surviving members of the garrison gave of the accident....
One had to be satisfied with that.... However, for three years no one
mentioned Post 32. Then one fine day some official or other digging
through his papers discovered that for the security of our dominion in
Indo-China it was indispensable that the post should be re-established."
A driver, curled up on the seat of his victoria, passed on his way up
the street. Bressond broke off to make him a sign. At the same time
he threw a coin on the table and as the boy ran up he pushed Pierre
de Lursac before him into the carriage, giving a brief order to the
coachman.
"The tour of inspection through the Botanical Gardens. You understand?"
"I understand, O Mandarin of two stripes."
At a lively trot the two native ponies, tossing their ruffled manes as
they went, drew the carriage down the Rue Catinat, turned to the left
and followed the line of the quays, along which in a brown and black
medley the sampans showed their masts and the lines of their decks.
Something resembling coolness floated down the bed of the river; the
light began to soften, melting its violent golds into shades of mauve.
The dying day threw over the white town some of its purple splendor.
And under the hoofs of the horses a slight dust rose like a delicate
honey-colored cloud.
Pierre had put his hand on his friend's arm.
"And then?" he asked.
Bressond turned to look at him.
"Then what?... Ah! yes.... Post 32! Well! they re-established it, as
I told you. And this time it was Dorcel who took charge. For a year
everything went all right. And then suddenly the news burst like a bomb
in the newspapers: all over with Post 32 again! But, as it had been
rebuilt on a spur of the mountain, this time it wasn't a flood, but a
fire, that had destroyed it. As for Dorcel, he just managed to arrive
at the hospital and died without being able to throw the slightest
light on this second accident to the celebrated Post 32...."
The victoria, now having caught up with the procession of carriages
which was defiling along the promenade, slackened speed and took its
turn.... In the opposite direction another line of vehicles was passing
at a foot pace--buggies with thin wheels, high-seated tilburys, gigs
drawn by horses driven tandem, shining victorias whose cushions were
rich with bright dresses and brilliant umbrellas.
Bressond's hand was ever at his military cap in the salute, while here
and there he shot a smile or a nod to acquaintances or ladies whom he
knew.
Leaning against the backboard of the carriage, Pierre de Lursac amused
himself by contemplating this long row of colonial fashion. Before his
unaccustomed eyes, Saigon society lay spread, offering its celebrities
and its peculiarities for his inspection.
Bressond meanwhile, a guide as willing as thoroughly informed,
explained and made comments. In a few quick picturesque words, he drew
a portrait, sketched a caricature, made an imputation and gave the
whole story of the person at the bar.
When they had arrived at the end of the promenade, they turned and
went back by the way they had come, still followed and preceded by
the other carriages. The daylight faded softly. From each side of the
long dusty reddish road the flooded rice-fields stretched away like
swampy checker-boards, on which the docile black buffaloes driven by
ragged youngsters slowly plodded along with their enormous curved horns
silhouetted against the pale sky in the shape of widely rounded lyres.
With shrill cries a flock of herons floated down over a clump of palms,
in the shade of which was a huddle of huts.
The countryside, which was gradually dropping to rest in the peace of
the dying day, was archaic, oriental and primitive beyond belief.
Pierre remarked upon it, and Bressond, with a shrug, assented:
"It is a beautiful country--beautiful but strange, and not the least
like the conventional Far East that is so popular in France!"
He thought a minute and went on:
"After all, that is not so astonishing, for very few people, even here,
know Indo-China ... very few...."
"But...."
"No, believe me, it is a country that no one among us really knows, nor
will know for a long time yet. It isn't enough, in order to understand
it, to have traveled through it, not even to have spent two years,
three years or more in it.... No; neither you nor I, who come here
with our European souls and with the mentality of conquerors, neither
you nor I, nor the others of our kind, will ever be able to understand
this race!... For instance, look at the stupidity, the ignorance, of
this official who for the third time has re-established a military
post in an unknown region in the middle of a country not yet
conquered, and which no one has been able to explore and not even
to penetrate ... no one! and on the top of that they send out
an administrator!... To administrate what? ... and above all to
administrate whom? Well, anyway, you will have the chance of meeting
Redeski there.... And that's that."
Pierre turned to him.
"Redeski?"
"Yes, he is the man who commands the fort there....
Jacques-Boleslas-Michael Redeski, of an old Polish family; a real
count, but as poor as Job of biblical memory. A naturalized Frenchman,
educated in Paris, graduated from St. Cyr: Morocco, the Soudan,
Indo-China, everywhere, in fact, where war and adventure can still
be had. A balanced mind but an emotional nature, at once sympathetic
and sceptical. To sum up, most amusing and original, and the best of
friends. For nearly two years we patrolled the forests together on the
frontier of China.
"There now, you know him. And anyway you couldn't have started out with
a better comrade, especially in a hole like that...."
He interrupted himself to look at his watch.
"Oh, damn! Half past seven!... We have just time to get back."
They had reached the alleys of the Botanical Garden. Getting up, he
touched the back of the driver.
"_Mao ... Mao!_[3]... Stop at the Continental." Turning back to Lursac,
he explained:
"You will excuse me: I am on duty tonight. I have to dine at the club
with the chief engineer of Hong-Hai. An official dinner...."
[Footnote 3: Quick, quick!]
The victoria, extricating itself from the long row of carriages, turned
off into an avenue and the ponies were put to a trot.
Night had fallen. The alleys, over which the branches of the trees met,
looked like long tunnels. Under the arches a warm scent wandered. To
the perfume of opening hibiscus and the purple flame-trees was added
the heavy scent of the sap-filled flowers and the thick rich soil of
Indo-China.
Through the evening peace which had so suddenly fallen about them the
shrill voices of the crickets mingled their chirping with the echoes of
the ponies' hoofs. Then, suddenly breaking from the shadow and silence,
the carriage swung into the full tide of Saigon's restless noise.
Above the streets the electric globes poured down their violent
illumination. A tossing crowd surged through the avenues and jammed the
windows of the brilliantly lighted shops. Autos, with blasts of their
horns, forced themselves a passage through the crowds of rickshaws and
malabars descending the Boulevard Charner. In the cafés the orchestras
played feverishly. The carriage, following the Boulevard, turned to
the right and after having traversed part of the Rue Catinat stopped
opposite the Continental. Pierre jumped out on the sidewalk. Leaning
from the carriage, Bressond took leave of him.
"Good bye, Pierre, and good luck, old man! I would like to have done
more for you, but tomorrow I start out on a mission to Upper Tonkin and
it is very unlikely that I shall be able to see you again here."
Lursac gave him a strong friendly hand clasp.
"Good bye, Jacques! and good luck to you also. I will write you from
Post 32."
"So do, and remember me to Redeski. Now, quick to the club!"
Drawing the whip sharply over the team, the driver started off.
When the victoria had disappeared, lost in the crowd of other vehicles,
Pierre crossed the street towards his hotel, but, just as he got to the
sidewalk he started violently: a guttural voice close to him had flung
out the words:
"_The Pou-Kas is not for white people._"
He turned round suddenly and with a quick glance searched the
surroundings. In front of him the passers-by were hurrying on their
way. Three _congais_ walked arm in arm, chattering and laughing. Two
rickshaws, side by side, were having a race and were already far
past him. A soup-peddler, his two jars suspended at the ends of a
bar balanced on his shoulders, advertised his wares with a clapper
and cried their merits aloud, while, interfering with his trade, a
street-boy with a basket of earth-n
uts on his arm, called out in a
sing-song voice for customers....
Was it he? ... or perhaps this Chinaman, wrapped in a tunic of lavender
silk, who uttered the strange warning?... Or was it not rather this
blind beggar who passed, slow and doubtful, tapping the road with his
staff?
How was he to know?
Already the cry of the nut-vendor was losing itself in the general
hubbub; the variegated crowd continued to roll by, carrying away with
it the three _congais_, the Chinaman, the beggar and the soup-vendor,
whose little stove left a red glow in the darkness. More coolies, more
natives came and passed, all nameless, all alike, with their faces
equally yellow and their expressions equally grinning and ape-like.
In doubt, Pierre stood motionless on the edge of the pavement. Before
him, Saigon, the cosmopolitan meeting place of all races of Europe
and Asia, where the Annamese, the Chinese, the Hindoo, the Malay, the
French, the English, the Japanese, the Russian elbowed each other and
mixed with the confusion--Saigon the Magnificent, the whirlpool of all
religions and all civilizations, the most modern side-by-side with
the most ancient--and lastly, Saigon the French city, in the midst of
tzigane orchestras imported from Europe, awoke and stretched herself
languorously under the warm voluptuous caresses of the Annamese night.
Regardless of this whirlpool of life which flung itself violently at
him, Pierre, overcome by a strange presentiment of ill fortune and a
wave of loneliness, crossed the threshold of his hotel.
Inside the door, two "boys," clad in the conventional white tunic,
received him with the customary three salaams, ... three deep salaams,
of which the outward respectfulness could not hide altogether the
servile insolence.