The Mysterious Fluid Page 9

  “By virtue of going further, no longer in Paraguay but into the heart of Bolivia, in a large or small chazot—questions of military headgear are unimportant to me…”

  “Oh, shut up, darling,” said Castagnat, Capdediou, Marius, Onésime Lagriffoul and Isidore Phétu, in chorus.

  “…We had ended up almost at the heart of one of the large branches of the Andean Cordilleras. We had been in a half-Spanish, half-Indian village for three weeks. The poor peasant with whom we were lodging—half-planter and half-trapper, as they say in Canada—had married and Indian woman who had given him three superb midges, as we say in the Cannebière, and the youngest child was a pretty little she-midge, two years old, who was always getting under our feet when we came in to dinner, after which we would rest, smoking not the pipe of peace but the pipe of amity.

  “I remember that the children in question had a coppery complexion and an inexpressible charm.

  “One day, as we—the boss, our host, me and the dogs—were coming back for dinner at a late hour, beneath a leaden sun, after seven hours marching through the undergrowth in search of precious lianas or even simple tree-trunks producing the sought-after gum, we heard our hostess, the worthy Indian woman, uttering heart-rending cries. In two bounds we were in front of the hut, and this is what we saw three meters over our heads: an enormous eagle, which was carrying the youngest child—Magdalena, my poor little favorite she-midge—into the air.

  The mother was wringing her hands in despair. “My daughter! My poor daughter!”

  With a rapid glance the father had seen everything and understood everything—and as he was carrying his rifle, he shouldered it with lighting speed.

  “You’re going to kill her,” said the mother.

  “No,”

  “But she’ll be killed by the fall when it lets her go.”

  “Rather death than knowing that she’s been devoured by those cruel beasts—and then, the eagle’s going to pass over the lake—there’s no danger…”

  He took aim with a sure eye—not the eagle’s, his—but as a father in despair, and the beast fell, its head shattered, along with the child, whom it dropped, in the middle of the lake.

  There was perhaps a hundred meters of water to cross, but the banks were full of grass and mud, and one couldn’t just jump in and swim. The dogs set off like the wind, but didn’t take long to get bogged down and caught in the grass. We unhitched a boat and started paddling feverishly. Well over three minutes had passed, and the child was still floating, with her red dress like a bloodstain on the blue lake, but head down. When her father grabbed her and held to his bosom, rather than in his arms, she was barely breathing.

  “Half an hour later she was undressed and rubbed energetically with a little camphorated alcohol; I carried out a rhythmic traction of the tongue, but nothing came of it, and it didn’t take her long to die in her parents’ arms, before our eyes, without a spasm. We knew that she was dead because of the corpse-like coldness and stiffness of her poor little body…”

  At that moment, all the members of the Club Nautico-Agricole de la Colonisation Pratique, gripped by the story and very emotional, started at the sound of a heart-rending sob, and turned round. It was the wife of the owner of the Hôtel Terminus de Marseilles, who said: “Forgive me, gentlemen—I overheard, and I’m a mother…”

  On that declaration, so simple and poignant, the worthy Marius and I both shed a tear.

  “I’ll continue,” said Gardanne, simply, as if in a dream, hypnotized by that distant vision of the past. “Suddenly, the father, snapping out of his torpor and seizing little Magdalena’s frail body with a frenetic movement, cried: ‘At least she’s here—the filthy mountain beasts won’t have her.’ And, the trigger having been pulled, the poor parents wept for a long time over the body of the she-midge, my dear little friend.”

  “Your story’s very touching,” said Lagriffoul, “but it isn’t set in a colony—pay the forfeit.”

  “Bah—it’s a former Spanish colony.”

  “Pay the forfeit, all the same—but as there are extenuating circumstances, we’ll let you choose it.”

  Immediately, Gardanne shouted: “Waiter, a round of toothpicks for these gentlemen!”

  Everyone burst out laughing, and as soon as the oysters had been opened and an odorous Marseillaise sauce had been prepared, on the wing, the floor was given to Fimbel, a former tax-collector in Cochin-China.

  VII. Strange deaths. The surprising revelations of explorers.

  From strength to strength, as at Nicolet’s.54

  Twenty minutes in mid-air.

  Without preamble, Fimbel, the former tax-collector in Cochin-China, a short white-haired old man, but with a searching eye and a ferrety face, began as follows:

  “Our friend Gardanne has just related a drama of a minute in mid-air; well, I’ll tell you one that lasted twenty minutes. That’s no small beer, as they say in the damnable North, where there are neither olives nor Arlesian women.”

  “Come on, no insults,” said the President of the Club Nautico-Agricole de la Colonisation Pratique of the Bouches-du-Rhône.”

  “On the Cours Belsunce55 there’s what they call a hydraulic shooting-gallery—because you see an empty egg suspended on top of a powerful jet of water—and you can often see me lost in contemplation for half an hour in front of that egg. Well, I’m going to tell you why!

  “Before I was a tax-collector in the Colonies, when I was a young officer, I found myself in that situation for twenty minutes…”

  “You?”

  “Yes, me—and a hundred meters up in the air as well. I was on a little transport vessel, with a number of marine soldiers as well as the crew, in we were in the middle of the China Sea. It was during the war, if you remember, when we took the Emperor’s summer palace—in 1860, I think…”

  “That’s right—go on.”

  “So, one afternoon, suddenly, in the distance, in the sky above the horizon, a little black dot appeared that the captain—a worthy fellow—had just noticed. After looking at it for a minute or so through his telescope, he said to us: ‘I think we’re in trouble, lads.’

  “‘Why’s that, Captain?’

  “‘Because that black dot will be on us in forty minutes—it’s impossible to flee. That black dot is a typhoon—a tornado, as the Spaniards call it; a cyclone, as we say in Europe, and these diabolical corkscrews, in their gyratory form, dance a waltz from which one rarely emerges alive in the China Seas…or elsewhere. It’s too late to run away; in half an hour we’ll be inside that accursed typhoon’s attractive corkscrew.’

  “An old topman said: ‘Damn—it’ll be every man for himself.’

  “After shaking his head as a sign of incredulity, the captain said: ‘Haul in the sails and close the hatches’—and with admirable self-composure, everyone set to it.

  “We passengers watched the sailors at work. Twenty minutes later, everything was ready, and as the captain had said, the typhoon was tracking us.

  “‘Dead center,’ said the captain, deducing that from the form of the waterspout. ‘We’re well and truly f…’ He didn’t finish; the corkscrew, emptying the sea to a crazy depth as it passed, grabbed us amidships. The ship cracked and made a tremendous leap; we thought we were all doomed. That lasted ten seconds, and when we opened our eyes again we were looking down at the sea, the waves, the giant spindrift, everything. We were a hundred meters up in the air, at the top of the waterspout, the ship waltzing around in a rapid but smooth movement, almost horizontal. We all looked at one another at that supreme moment, and I don’t know what fear or admiration for the power of nature overwhelmed us. You see, my friends, we were exactly like that egg on top of the water jet at the hydraulic shooting-gallery on the Cours Belsunce.”

  “Go on,” said Maius. “Don’t leave us in suspense.”

  “‘So far so good,’ said the captain, ‘but when the waterspout breaks up for some reason, we’re going to fall into the abyss, with the gyratory moveme
nt of the typhoon—and then we’re f…lambé…quite a dish, my friends!’56

  “The first mate wanted us to fire our guns, because three or four cannon-shots, according to him, would break the column and cause us to fall outside the focal point of the typhoon—which is to say the gyratory gulf that might be two hundred meters deep beneath us, since we were already a hundred meters above sea-level.

  “‘That’s true,’ said the captain, calmly, “perhaps it’s the last rotten spar that represents salvation...let’s try it.’ And he had all the cannons aboard loaded to the muzzle.

  “‘All or nothing,’ he said, ‘I’ve never given the order to fire in such circumstances and at such a height. Light up.’

  “I took out my watch, we had been dancing madly on top of the giant column of water for exactly twenty minutes, a hundred meters up in the air. There was a frightful discharge, a similar fall, and that was all. I felt as if I were falling into the depths of the sea, and I fainted.

  “When I came round, how long after I don’t know, I was alone in the open sea and the tempest was easing. The typhoon was far away. Thanks to the instinct of self-preservation—for I was no longer thinking rationally, being brutalized and a little crazy—I grabbed a wooden beam that was fortunately close at hand.

  “An hour later I was picked up by a Spanish collier that was returning to the Philippines with a cargo of Japanese coal. I was finally able to produce a few swords, and told my story. The boat searched the locale for an hour but didn’t find anything. The ship had completely disappeared into the depths of the sea, with more than a hundred men aboard.

  “How I came to be saved, I don’t know, but I still can’t look at an empty egg on a jet of water at a hydraulic shooting-gallery without shivering and crying like a baby.”

  “Bravo, Fimbel!” cried the assembly.

  “And now, to conclude,” said the president, “the floor is given to Fougasse, former owner and trainer of wooden horses57 in Sidi-Bel-Abbès…and I the meantime, let’s drink to the health of our last story-teller!”

  “Hurrah!”

  VIII. Strange deaths. The Surprising revelations of explorers.

  The ill-protected woman…in the tent.

  Without wasting any time, Fougasse began:

  “The day after the fall of the Commune, in which I had taken part as a lieutenant—me, a simple machine-fitter!—I was obliged to flee to escape the fire of the Versailles platoon. Once I had arrived in Canada, a country still French in terms of language, having accumulated a some savings, I fitted out and equipped a modest carousel factory; it made a fortune, for I soon had savings of fifty thousand francs, but when the amnesty was declared I hastened to abandon my Canadian friends and their excellent county, which was too cold for me, and came to set up my business, on a slightly larger scale, in Sidi-Bel-Abbès, in a sunny climate, in the midst of Arab poetry.

  “There, I didn’t take long to forge ties with many children of the desert. They knew that I liked them, and that I respected their liberty above all else, and that was enough to make me many devoted lifelong friends. Do the members of that loyal race not consider hospitality sacred, whether you eat at their table or they at yours?

  “Thus, one day when I had been able to travel to a considerable distance to an Arab’s tent, in order to stay there for a week and hunt amid the surrounding clumps of esparto-grass, and he offered to tell me something about the customs of his country, I accepted gladly.

  “‘That’s agreed, then—this evening, when the women have retired to their own quarters in the tent and gone to bed, I’ll come to fetch you…’

  “At the appointed hour, while smoking placidly with the smiling calm of the Arab, in front of his little cup of coffee, half-recumbent on the carpet, he began thus:

  “‘You Europeans, who only see the superficial lives of Arabs, and the way we protect our women, who only go out into the street veiled and in numbers, naively suppose that there are no passionate dramas among us, and that husbands here are never deceived. You are certainly mistaken. Most of our women are faithful, as much out of love as fear; that does not, however, prevent dramas of jealousy, love and passion occurring from time to time—more terrible violent and more colorful than among you, permit me to tell you.

  “‘Firstly, among us, in tents in the desert, an amorous man is certainly much more audacious than in Europe, at least according to everything I have heard. So, if he loves a young woman who is lodged in another tent, with her husband, it’s a matter of penetrating by night and getting into bed with her, next to her old husband, without waking him—and that’s the delicate part of the enterprise.

  “‘The dogs know him, though, and don’t stir. Then, he penetrates silently, a knife between his teeth with which to defend himself, but without clothes—stark naked—in order not to offer any purchase and not to be recognized. Thus, in the most absolute silence, stifling their sighs, the lovers succeed in deceiving the sleeping husband in the same tent.

  “‘Wives are funny creatures, you know—but things don’t always go that way; the lover isn’t always as brave and the husband isn’t always old. Then, to achieve their end, when a wife is absolutely determined to betray her husband and pledge her love to her good friend, this is how she goes about it: by night, at an agreed hour, on the side of the tent where she lies—in consequence, on the side opposite her husband, she evades the surveillance of the latter and deceives him by only putting half of her body outside the tent.

  “‘Look through the open door of your tent—do you see that other tent over there, limned in the moonlight? Well, a horrible drama of his sort happened there. Five years ago, the chief’s wife, young and ardent, betrayed her husband in that fashion. The latter, seeing himself so brutally deceived, understood everything, and, as quick as lightning, seized the long curved sword that was by his side and, seizing a handful of his wife’s black hair, which was streaming over the carpet, while her body, up to the hips, was outside the tent, and cut off her head. There was no scream, scarcely a stifled moan, and the husband scarcely understood that the spasm of love had just changed into that of death, at the exact psychological moment.

  “‘The chief let go of his wife’s head, and the following morning, he stuck it on a pike in front of the tent, to serve as an example. Half of the women of the tribe, on seeing that, fainted with horror, feeling pangs of conscience…for the most part.

  “‘As for the lover, it was only the next morning, on seeing his lover’s head suspended on the end of a pike, that he understood what had occurred, without his being aware of it.

  “‘You see, comrade, that love is sometimes tragic under our beautiful African sky.’

  “And he fell silent.

  “I respected that silence, but asked, abruptly: ‘Was that lover you?’

  “‘Yes,’ he said, simply.”

  IX. Strange deaths. Surprising revelations of explorers.

  How the Spaniards transformed Carib women

  into salted herrings. Horrible details!

  We were still feeling the impact of that terrifying story of love in an Arab tent when, suddenly looking at my watch, I exclaimed: “It’s seven thirty-five—the Paris express leaves at seven forty. I only have five minutes to get away, while thanking you for your cordial welcome and your excellent banquet of friendship…”

  “Not in this life,” said Marius. “You’re going to tell your own little story, and catch the next express at three minutes past eight. You’ll have plenty of time, I think, in twenty minutes, old chap. Get on with it!”

  Thus amicably cornered, there was nothing to do but comply, so, without further delay, I began:

  “Since you’re absolutely forcing me, I’ll tell you how someone died in the Colonies, a long time ago, in America, shortly after its discovery by the Spaniards.

  “I’m going to talk about events whose setting I know well, having visited it and traveled it in every direction—if one can travel a setting—not so very long ago.

 
“So, one day, we left Cap Haitien, in Haiti, the former San Domingue, a dozen friends on horseback—as one does in these new lands—to undertake a little expedition of three or four days into the interior.

  “We began by going to call on the widow of the former president,58 killed so tragically the day after the sacking of Salomon, a large town in the interior on the Grande-Rivière, and to stay overnight there. The next day, at four o’clock in the morning, we left for Dondon, and after a summary meal and a further night’s sleep, we headed on a bright morning toward the Grotte à Minguette,59 a cave especially noted for its thick layers of bat-droppings and the curious heads and faces sculpted in raw stone and granite, disposed by the Caribs, and, trust me, very well preserved.

  “Having made an excellent meal at the entrance to the cave, at the bottom of a wild ravine, which we had reached by making our horses swim—with us on top, of course—we took the same route back to Dondon. This time, near the town, we visited an even more curious cave, with regard to historical memories: the Grotte des dames.60

  We tethered our horses on trees at the foot of the mountain and gained access to the entrance to the cave by means of machetes. This is what happened: we went into the first cave, then, with a ladder, we got into a second on the same level; at the back of that one, by sliding sideways through a narrow opening, gazing our backs and bellies, we penetrated into a third cave.

  “At that very moment, perpetually in the midst of flying bats, with guano and coffee-grains brought by night-birds on the floor, I couldn’t help thinking that the slightest earthquake—so frequent in those Antillean isles—might close that narrow opening forever. Eventually, we came out without difficulty. As all the walls were blackened, as if charred by fire, I asked the brave local general who was showing us around the historical highland caves, why that was. I knew, but I wanted to hear it again and without being begged, he began thus: