Journey to the End of the Night (17 page)

He went to Vichy for the cure every year, and he never read anything but the
Official
Gazette
. A number of the civil servants cherished the hope that he'd sleep with their wives some day, but the Governor didn't care for women. He didn't care for anything. He survived each new epidemic of yellow fever like a charm, while so many of the men who'd have liked to bury him died like flies at the first whiff of fever.

There was a story that one Fourteenth of July, as he was reviewing the troops of the Residency, caracoling up ahead of his Spahi guards who were carrying a flag as big as a house, some sergeant, delirious with fever no doubt, rushed out in front of him, shouting:

"Get back, you jerk!" It seems the Governor was very much upset by this outrage which, as it happened, was never satisfactorily explained.

It is hard to get a faithful look at people and things in the tropics because of the colors that emanate from them. In the tropics colors and things are in a turmoil. To the eye, a small sardine can lying upon the road at midday can take on the dimensions of an accident. You've got to watch out. It's not just the people who are hysterical down there, objects are the same way. Life only becomes tolerable at nightfall, but then almost immediately the darkness is taken over by swarms of mosquitoes. Not one or two or a hundred, but billions of them. Survival under those conditions is quite an achievement. A carnival by day, a colander by night, a quiet war.

When the hut you sleep in has filled at last with silence and the air is almost fit to breathe, the termites, those loathsome beasts eternally engaged in eating away the uprights of your cabin, get to work. The day a tornado hits this treacherous filigree, whole streets will go up in dust.

The town of Fort-Gono where I'd landed, the capital of Bragamance, was perched precariously between sea and jungle, but supplied, adorned, so to speak, with enough banks, brothels, cafés, café terraces, and even a recruiting office, to make it a small metropolis. There was even a Place Faidherbe and a Boulevard Bugeaud,[45] in case you wanted to take a walk. The whole was a clump of gleaming edifices surrounded by jagged rocks, riddled with larvae, trampled by generations of soldiers and officials. At about five o'clock the military element would grouse and gripe over their
apéritifs
, the price of which, as it happened, had just gone up when I arrived. A delegation of consumers was about to petition the Governor to issue a decree enjoining the cafe owners from playing fast and loose with the prices of absinthe and cassis. If some of the regulars were to be believed, the very foundations of colonization were threatened by ice. Indeed it cannot be denied that the introduction of ice into the colonies has sparked off a process of devirilization. Riveted by force of habit to his iced
apéritif
, the colonial could no longer hope to dominate the climate by stoicism alone. The Faidherbes, the Stanleys, the Marchands,[46] be it noted in passing, had nothing but good to say of the tepid, muddy beer, wine, and water they drank for years without complaining. There you have it. That's how colonies are lost.

I learned plenty more in the shade of the palm trees which, all along those avenues of precarious dwellings, throve in provocative contrast. It was only that garish raw greenery which prevented the place from looking exactly like La Garenne-Bezons. At nightf all the native hookers came out in strength, wending their way between clouds of hungry mosquitoes armed with yellow fever. There were Sudanese girls as well, offering the passerby the treasures under their loincloths. For extremely moderate prices you could treat yourself to a whole family for an hour or two. I'd have liked to flit from twat to vagina, but necessity obliged me to look for work.

The director of the Compagnie Pordurière[47] du Petit Congo, so I heard, was looking for an inexperienced man to take charge of one of the trading posts in the bush. I went without delay to offer my incompetent but enthusiastic services. The director's reception of me was not exactly friendly. That lunatic ?I may as well call a spade a spade?lived not far from the Government House in a spacious straw bungalow built on piles. Before even looking at me, he fired several questions about my past, then, somewhat appeased by my naive answers, his contempt took a more indulgent turn. Still, he did not yet see fit to offer me a seat.

"To judge by your papers, you know something about medicine?" he observed. I replied that I had indeed studied for a time in that field.

"It'll come in handy," he said. "How about some whisky?" I told him I didn't drink. "Smoke?" Again I declined. Such abstinence surprised him. In fact he scowled.

"I'm suspicious of employees who don't smoke and drink ... Are you a pederast by any chance? ... No? Too bad! ... They don't steal as much ... That's been my experience ... They get attached ... Well," he was kind enough to hedge. "By and large I seem to have noticed that quality, that advantage, in pederasts ... Maybe you'll prove me wrong ..." And changing the subject: "You're hot, aren't you? You'll get used to it. You'll have to. How was your trip?"

"Uncomfortable!" I said.

"Well, my friend, you haven't seen a thing. Come and tell me what you think of this country when you've spent a year in Bikomimbo, the place where I'm sending you to replace that joker ..."

His Negress, squatting beside the table, was fiddling with her feet and scraping them with a little piece of wood.

"Beat it, you slut!" her master flung at her. "Go and call the house boy! And get me some ice while you're at it!"

The boy took his time coming. Infuriated, the Director sprang to his feet and received him with two brutal slaps in the face and the same number of resounding kicks in the gut.

"These people will be the death of me," the Director predicted with a sigh and slumped back into his armchair that was covered with dirty, rumpled, yellow canvas.

"Look, old man," he said, suddenly grown friendly, as though liberated for a while by his access of brutality. "Would you mind handing me my whip and my quinine ... there on the table ... I oughtn't to get so excited ... It's stupid to fly off the handle like that ..." From his house we overlooked the river port, which shimmered through dust so dense, so compact, that we heard the clanking and thumping more clearly than we could see what was going on. On the shore files of black men were busy, encouraged by whips and curses, unloading hold after hold of ships that were never empty, climbing up flimsy, teetering gangplanks with big baskets balanced on their heads?like vertical ants. Through a scarlet haze I saw them coming and going in jerky lines. Some of these working shapes carried an extra black spot on their backs, those were mothers toting their babies along with their sacks of palm cabbage. I wonder if ants can do that.

"Doesn't it always seem like Sunday here?" the Director joked. "So jolly! So colorful! And the females always naked. You've noticed? Good-lookers too, don't you agree? Of course it seems strange when you've just arrived from Paris, I won't deny it. And look at us! Always in white ducks. Like at the seashore! Aren't we a sight for sore eyes? All dressed up for First Communion! It's always a holiday here, take it from me! Day in and day out, just one glorious Fourteenth of July! And it's like this all the way to the Sahara! Think of it!" He stopped talking, sighed, grunted, said "Shit!" two or three times, mopped his forehead, and started in again.

"Out where the Company's sending you, it's deep in the bush. Very damp! ... Ten days'

trip from here ... First by sea ... Then up the river ... The river's all red, you'll see! ... And on the other side it's the Spaniards ... The man you're replacing at the post up there is a rotter ... just between you and me ... He simply won't send us his accounts ... Nothing we can do ... we've sent him letter after letter! ... A man doesn't stay honest long when he's alone! ... You'll see! ... He's written, says he's sick ... Big deal! Sick! I'm sick too! What does he mean sick? We're all sick. You'll be sick yourself before you know it! That's no excuse! What do we care if he's sick! ... The Company comes first! When you get there, take inventory, that's the essential! ... There's food enough for three months and merchandise for at least a year ... You won't run short! ... Don't start at night, whatever you do! ... Be on your guard! ... He's got his own niggers, he'll send them down the river to pick you up, maybe they'll chuck you overboard. I bet he's trained them! They're as rascally as he is! Fact! He's probably dropped a hint to those niggers about you! ... That's the kind of thing they do around here! And be sure to take your quinine with you, your own, get it before you leave! ... He might doctor his, I wouldn't put it past him!" The Director thought he'd given me enough advice and stood up to say good-bye. The tin roof over our heads seemed to weigh at least two thousand tons, it absorbed all the heat of the day and sent it down on us. We were both making faces with the heat. We could just as well have dropped dead.

"Perhaps," he said, "there's no point in our meeting again before you leave, Bardamu!

Everything wears one out so down here! Well, no, maybe I'll run down to the warehouses before you go and see how you're making out ... You'll hear from us when you get there ... There's a mail every month ... The mail goes out from here ... Well, good luck!" And he vanished into the shadow between his tropical helmet and his jacket. I could clearly see the tendons in the back of his neck, curved like two fingers pressing against his head. He turned around again:

"Don't forget to tell that loafer to come back here in a hurry ... I've got a few things to say to him! ... And not to waste time on the way! Oh, the rat! I only hope he doesn't croak before he gets here! ... That would be a shame! A bleeding shame! Oh, the blackguard!" One of his blacks went ahead of me with a big lantern and took me to the place where I was to live before leaving for the Bikomimbo of my dreams.

We passed through avenues full of people who seemed to have come out for a stroll after dark. The night, hammered by gongs, was all around us, interspersed by brief snatches of song as incoherent as sobs, the big black night of the hot countries, with its brutal tom-tom heart that always beats too fast.

My young guide glided along easily on bare feet. There must have been Europeans in the bushes, you could hear them wandering about, their easily recognizable white men's voices, aggressive and hypocritical. The bats came whirling and weaving through the swarms of insects attracted by our light. Under every leaf of the trees there must have been at least one cricket, to judge by the deafening din.

Halfway up a hill we were stopped at a crossroads by a group of native riflemen arguing around a coffin draped in a big French flag.

It was somebody who had died in the hospital, and they didn't know exactly where to bury him. Their orders were vague. Some wanted to put him in one of the fields down below, some insisted on a garden at the top of the hill. The question had to be decided one way or the other, so the boy and I joined in the discussion.

In the end the pallbearers decided for the lower rather than the upper burial ground, because it was easier to walk downhill. Then we met three young white boys, the kind that in Europe go to rugby matches on Sunday, enthusiastic, noisy, pale-faced spectators. Like myself they were employed by the Societé Pordurière and were kind enough to show me the way to the unfinished shanty where my portable folding bed was temporarily situated. The edifice when we got there was absolutely empty except for a few utensils and my socalled bed. As soon as I lay down on that wobbly filiform object, two dozen bats emerged from the corners and took to whishing back and forth like a volley of fans over my apprehensive repose.

The young black, my guide, came back to offer me his intimate services. Then, disappointed when I told him I wasn't in the mood that evening, he offered to introduce me to his sister. I'd have been curious to know how he expected to find his sister in such darkness.

Not far away the village tom-tom chopped my patience into little bits. Thousands of hardworking mosquitoes took possession of my legs, but I didn't dare set foot on the ground because of the scorpions and snakes which, I assumed, had started on their abominable hunting expeditions. The snakes had plenty of rats to choose from, rats were gnawing away at everything that can be gnawed, I heard them on the wall, on the floor, and quivering, ready to drop, on the ceiling.

Finally the moon rose, and things were a little quieter in the shanty. All things considered, life in the colonies was no great shakes.

Nevertheless, the next day came, a steaming cauldron. An enormous desire to go back to Europe took hold of me body and soul. Only one thing prevented me from clearing out?

lack of money. That was enough. Anyway, I only had another week to spend in Fort-Gono before going to my job in Bikomimbo, which I'd heard described so delightfully. The biggest building in Fort-Gono after the Governor's Palace was the hospital. I ran into it wherever I went; I couldn't walk a hundred yards in the town without coming across one of its pavilions, smelling faintly of carbolic acid. From time to time I ventured down to the docks to watch my anemic young colleagues, whom the Compagnie Pordurière recruited in France by emptying whole settlement houses, at work. They seemed possessed by a bellicose haste to unload freighter after freighter without stopping. "Harbor fees are so dreadfully costly!" they kept saying, sincerely distressed, as if it had been their own money. They belabored the black porters with a will. They were conscientious, you couldn't deny it, and they were also flabby, heartless sons-of-bitches. In other words, they were well chosen, as mindlessly enthusiastic as any employer could dream of. Sons that would have delighted my mother, worshiping their bosses, if only she could have had one all to herself, a son she could have been proud of in the eyes of the world, a real legitimate son. Those half-baked little specimens had come to tropical Africa to offer their flesh, their blood, their lives, their youth to their bosses, martyrs for twenty-two francs a day (minus deductions), and they were happy, yes, happy down to their last red corpuscle, for which ten million mosquitoes were lying in wait.