Adam Gould (22 page)

Uncle Hubert gave in. Potent loyalties kept him in Brussels where Zouave veterans, gathering like starlings, were blackening each other’s skies with chatter about the misadventures, schemes, deaths, and in one or two cases, amazing good fortune of former friends and comrades. As most of them these days were mercenaries of a sort, their life spans were apt to be short. This drew survivors close, which was why Uncle Hubert might well, thanks to their networks and connections, have landed a splendid appointment. If he had, it was a piece of sheer, unearned luck. For he had not – his niece guessed – come here to intrigue, but rather to join in the bittersweet hobnobbing which he and his fellows had not enjoyed for twenty-two years. Where and on what pretext could they have met? Papal Rome no longer existed. Republican Paris was uncongenial. Besides, the years had scattered them. Some had signed up to fight in the Americas, some in Africa. One or two had married landed widows and settled down. But working with a Catholic king to fight Arab slavers and possibly make their own fortunes in the process –
there
was an exhilarating goal. Like old hunting dogs sniffing a gamey breeze, they had found a new lease of life.

Danièle needn’t worry. Uncle Hubert was in his element.

So here she now was, almost carefree, in the wet, glittery garden of the
maison de santé
, fingering her commemorative neck thread and feeling contrite about having slipped too quickly from her uncle’s embrace at the Brussels railway station. She had dreaded some sort of display. But he, to his credit, had managed to appear unruffled. Both, she hoped, would in time be glad of the oblivion to which the small episode could be consigned, like an unusable trousseau to a cupboard. What Uncle Hubert wanted of her could not be right.

His ferment, though, had affected her. If he, aged forty-two, was admitting to having once wasted his chances, what about her? Women could hardly wait to be forty-two to find their element. Arguments against Danièle’s seeking hers could be summed up by the name Philibert. But concern about him was mixed with impatience. A recent letter from her elder brother showed that he felt the same way. Gérard did not plan to marry until he was in a position to settle down. To do so would not, he explained, be fair to his fiancée. Perhaps, thought his sister, he had forgotten to whom he was writing.

We wait too long in our family, it struck her. We think we’re wild, but we’re as thrifty as petty shopkeepers – only what we save up are our lives. Again she fingered the vivid thread on her neck. Saving up your life was like saving bread: it could grow stale before you enjoyed it.

Bright drops hung from the wrought-iron railings by the garden steps. The gate on the other side of the house – also wrought-iron – on which Uncle Hubert had got stuck was, according to Father de Latour, an example of the purest eighteenth-century craftsmanship. Chatting on the train journey here, the priest had talked about the
maison de santé
where he had lately taken to visiting Monseigneur de Belcastel, about its past, its architecture and what he had been told about Maupassant’s attacks of
autoscopie
. Odd, wasn’t it, he marvelled, that seeing
himself
should cause a man so much horror? Did self-sightings materialize the act of examining one’s conscience?

It struck Danièle that this busy chit-chat must be designed to throw her off some scent. Which one? Hadn’t Uncle Hubert mentioned rumours of trouble in the Congo? A blink of fear passed through her.

‘Please, Father, has there been news?’

Latour told her that the last batch of letters had been so delayed by events that their news was quite out of date when they arrived. Word was, though, that a fresh consignment had reached the White Fathers’ mother house in Paris where they would be kept until the information in them could be pooled.

Delayed by what events? What had happened?

Latour promised to go straight to the mother house on reaching Paris. If there were letters there from the Upper Congo, where the Force Publique was now thought to be, he would bring them to luncheon at the
maison de santé
. Whoever was bound for home was entrusted with letters. But she mustn’t be too hopeful. Often, he warned, those from outlying stations had to wait so long for such a courier that when they reached their destination, the sender was dead. Communications with the Independent State of the Congo had grown harder since King Leopold started discouraging French missionaries.

‘He got the pope to agree that if enough Belgian priests could be found, we should hand over to them. Leopold fears French influence and may even be wary of Cardinal Lavigerie’s anti-slavery campaign. I seem to remember,’ the priest said slyly, ‘that your uncle’s family is part-Belgian?’

Danièle was disconcerted. Uncle Hubert called Latour
le Père Tartuffe
.

Her skirt brushed and broke off the rain-soaked heads of some delicately pleated red poppies. Gathering up the least damaged, she tried to recall what Uncle Hubert had said about the king’s having collaborated with Arab traders until Cardinal Lavigerie’s influence made this difficult. It was confusing. How
could
the king collaborate with slave-traders while promising to stop that trade? Well, it seemed he no longer could, but that changing allies had left some of his officers perilously exposed. Two who had been residing at the headquarters of one of the Arab leaders had – what? Nobody knew. It was while trying to reassure her about this that Uncle Hubert first became emotional.

The cousin with whom they had been staying in Brussels thought the talk of bringing civilization to Africans had one aim only: to boost the sales of Congo Loan premium bonds. What was more, the Congo didn’t even belong to Belgium! It was the king’s. A private fief. Run for profit. The cousin was critical.

‘Some,’ he mocked, ‘see it as “a testing ground for gallantry”,
et patatati et patata
. Such phrases fly around. “Free from the canker of money” is another. Recruiting-officer’s patter. You may think me cynical, Hubert, but, if you will forgive my saying so, a little cynicism would do
you
no harm!’ The cousin had flashed a mollifying smile at Uncle Hubert, then taken a moment to fill his pipe. ‘We all admire your
élan
and courage,’ he said, without looking at him, and struck a match. ‘You’re one of the ornaments of our family, and we’d hate you to be disappointed by our revered monarch. It could happen! Things go in threes, don’t they say?’ The pipe was now alight and the cousin looked steadily at Uncle Hubert. ‘All your life you wanted a king to serve. First you fought for one who was too spiritual to hold on to his temporal kingdom. Next you championed an heir to the French throne who was too noble to compromise. You must sometimes have yearned for a leader with a bit of greed. Well, beware of having your wishes granted. It’s true,’ the cousin added quietly, ‘that if you do go to the Congo you’ll have a chance to prove your mettle, collect ivory and rubber, organize river transport, manage slaves ...’

‘Slaves!’ Danièle protested at the slander.

The cousin turned to her innocently. ‘Don’t Philibert’s letters mention them? They’re what this little war is about. Nothing’s known for sure, but the rumour is that our lot simply take them over and use them in new ways. Commerce. Railway building. Who do you think supplies the labour? Best not to even imagine the methods used! A small force has to be ruthless, and there are no more than 120 European officers in the Force Publique. If the Arabs weren’t totally disunited ...’

Uncle Hubert’s restraining grip on her wrist reminded Danièle that they were staying with this cousin’s family. Gently does it, Danièle! Mustn’t take umbrage! Whatever one felt about their king, Belgians were ... well, Belgian! A little too straightforward, perhaps! But well-meaning! Best, she had interpreted the grip to mean, to let their truculent relative feel he had carried the day.

There was the gong! She climbed the curving stone perron leading towards the house, paused as a light flashed, and saw a woman who had a thin red gash across her throat as though her head had been severed, then reattached. There were scarlet flowers in her hands. As Danièle opened her mouth to cry out, the woman did too – it was her own image in the swinging pane of a French window.

Her fright broke the ice and provoked little cries of sympathy and amusement, all of which made the luncheon party unusually animated. Adam, who arrived late, had to have it described to him, so that it became an anecdote which could be embellished with remarks about how pale Madame d’Armaillé had been, and how her shock had shocked
them
who were as surprised by her cry and her red neck-thread as she had been by its reflection. The incident drew them close. They had it in common, bickered, laughed, made knowing reference to the ghost of the guillotined princesse de Lamballe and were soon as much at ease with each other as people who have been travelling together or shared the excitement of a game.

Adam and Danièle waited for the rest to drift off, then stood looking at each other.

‘So you’re to work with us after all!’ Flatly. Waiting.

Perhaps he had looked forward too much to seeing her? She was less intimidating than in his memory; there were shadows under her eyes and she had dressed almost like a nun. Might she be in mourning? Surely he would have heard if the crusading husband were dead? Of course he would! Besides, if she were a widow, she would not be here. No, indeed, she would then be free to seek friendships with men of her own station, and
his
moment would not recur. So: ‘I hope,’ he said quite sincerely, ‘that you have had reassuring news of your husband.’

She said she had not, but that Father de Latour had brought reports about the situation in the Upper Congo. ‘As you see, he is already here.’ She nodded towards the other side of the drawing room where the priest was talking to Madame Blanche. His birdlike profile moved observantly, keeping the company in view. ‘He is to show them to me after lunch.’

‘And you are seriously going to learn to be a mental nurse?’

‘Why not? It is a useful skill.’

‘Indeed.’ He thought: how curious it was that she should have come to this asylum, then: how curious that anyone should. This was a parenthesis of a place, a limbo. The reflection saddened him. Only in a limbo could he and she come close. With sly temerity, and at a rarely acknowledged depth of himself, he believed the opposite of this, but hedged his hopes for fear of a massive disappointment. His dwindling religion had left him with a residual habit of using small mental tricks and rituals to keep his feelings in control. Judiciously dosed dips into a layer of hidden optimism buoyed him up like a drug.

The reason he was late was that a German doctor had been examining Maupassant. He had not much French, so Adam had been sent to beg him in English to temper his Teutonic thoroughness and join the company at table.

He had found Dr F. in Guy’s apartment, making excitable entries in a notebook. He showed these to Adam. ‘Is the French correct?’ he wanted to know.

Adam read: ‘thick, short nose; low forehead; brutally sensual mouth; brow prominent as in a Cro-Magnon skull. Erotic dementia an early symptom of mental decline.’

‘I need to discuss this with some of the students at the Hospital of the Salpêtrière.’

‘Me-eh-eh ...’

The murmur trickled into inaudibility. Guy, slumped in an armchair in a kind of torpor, must have been sedated. Baron was holding his hand.

‘His are the typical characteristics of a sensualist,’ said the doctor, whose own characteristics were a small, goatish beard, pale eyes and a skull so flat at the back that it looked vertically scalped. Europe, he confided, France to the fore, was sinking into degeneracy, and writers like Maupassant had led the way. A man ‘predisposed towards a cellular deficiency triggered by debauchery’, the patient was now in the throes of leucoencephalitis. ‘Read his work,’ challenged the doctor. ‘Read what he wrote about
smells
. He could write whole paragraphs on a topic which is at best trivial and at worst obscene. Yet he lavished talent on this least noble of the senses and his skill testifies against him. His revelling in morbid sensations points to cerebral exhaustion.’

Guy’s eyelids flickered. Could he see? Or hear? Adam hoped not. He wished, perversely, that Guy would give one of his fierce cries of revolt.

Dr F. adjusted his lorgnette, stared at the comatose patient and shook his head. ‘This,’ he said disdainfully, ‘is a man whom the French public idolized! You’re not French, are you? No. No French blood? Well, you may depend upon it, his disease progressed from the nerves to the white substance of the brain. The decay is a moral one and emblematic of our time. Sensations squeeze out the healthy feelings which keep families and countries together.’

‘The gong has sounded for lunch,’ Adam told him. ‘The doctors will be eager to discuss all this with you.’

But Doctor F. said he could hardly tell Frenchmen that his plan was to write an account of French degeneracy. ‘Sensual excess,’ he kept murmuring in English, as Adam herded him down stairs and corridors to the dining room, ‘and drug abuse played their part. Misogyny too! Yes, young man, libertines are misogynists!’

Merde
, thought Adam, remembering how much poor Guy had hated Prussians. He should not have been exposed to this.

At table, the guests flicked open their napkins and started sniffing the aromas being released from silver covers with a gusto likely to confirm Dr F.’s opinion of French sensual excess.

After the meal Danièle and le Père de Latour disappeared upstairs with Monseigneur de Belcastel. A little later, passing the monsignor’s door, Adam thought he heard sobbing, but was unable to pause as he was still with Dr F. who had asked to be shown the bathroom where some patients, including Maupassant, were given therapeutic showers and baths.

‘There can be no invasion of privacy here,’ Latour told Danièle. ‘Letters from the priests of our order are addressed to our whole community and have no secrets. However, I have folded these in such a way as to cover sections which can be of no interest to you. I shall attempt no censorship, but, for your own sake, you should remember that news from the Congo is rarely reliable, and that if you read something disturbing in one letter, it may well be contradicted by another. The monsignor and I are going for a walk, so that you may read in peace.’