The Thibaults (63 page)

“Drop it, my dear! Whom do you take me for? Don’t I love you just as you are?”

He had reddened with annoyance; and he had learned his lesson.

Neither had felt inclined to speak during the interval which was just ending. The film of Africa was announced and the lights went down. The band struck up a Negro melody. Rachel moved to a seat in front of the box.

“Let’s hope they’ve made a good job of it.”

Landscapes began to flicker across the screen. A stagnant river under enormous trees tethered to the soil by a network of lianas. A hippo’s back, like the corpse of a drowned bull, bulged on the surface of the water. Little black monkeys, white-bearded, like ancient mariners, frolicked on the sand. Then came a village: an empty space of beaten soil fissured by the heat, and, in the background, rows of stockaded huts. Next, a compound where some young Peuhl girls, naked to the waist, the muscles of their hips working beneath the loin-cloths, were busily pounding grain in high wooden mortars, surrounded by pickaninnies sprawling in the sun. Then more women, carrying large baskets; then a group of spinners, squatting cross-legged on the ground; each grasped a distaff in her right hand, while the left twirled inside a wooden trough the bobbin, shaped like a peg-top, which took the yarn.

Leaning well forward, Rachel gazed intently at the screen, her elbow resting on her crossed knees, her chin cupped in her hand.

Antoine could hear the rapid intake of her breath. Sometimes, without turning, she spoke to him in a hushed whisper.

“Toine dear! Look! Just look!”

The film ended with a barbaric dance to the sound of tomtoms in a clearing ringed with palm-trees. Night was falling and a crowd of Negroes, their faces tense, their bodies squirming with delight, had formed a circle round a couple of their fellow-tribesmen. The dancers, two jet-black but extremely handsome males, were almost naked; their bodies shone with sweat. They flew at each other, collided, bounded back, and crashed together again, gnashing their teeth, or, now and again, circled in the love-chase, rubbing their bodies together, varying the rhythms of their frenzy as they portrayed the rage of battle or the spasms of sensual desire. Panting, capering with excitement, the dark crowd closed in round the frenzied couple; faster and faster they clapped their hands and faster drummed upon the tomtoms, goading the dancers on and on towards a climax of delirium. The picture-house band had stopped playing; a clapping of hands in the wings kept time with the gestures of the Negroes, restoring a fantastic semblance of life to the dark figures and infecting the audience with something of the fierce pleasure, strung to the pitch of pain, that convulsed the savage faces on the screen… .

The show was over, the audience filing out. Attendants were beginning to sheet the empty seats.

Silent and exhausted, Rachel could hardly bring herself to move. When Antoine, who was already on his feet, held up her evening-cloak she rose and pressed her lips to his. They were the last to go; neither of them spoke. As they left the cinema they found themselves caught in a crowd of people flocking out together from all the amusement places on the boulevards. The warm, soft darkness shimmered with twinkling lights and already some autumn leaves were slowly spinning down. Antoine took her arm, whispering in her ear: “Let’s go back to your place now.”

“Oh, not yet, please,” she protested. “Let’s go somewhere first. I’m thirsty.” Then the posters outside the theatre caught her eye and she swerved aside to examine once more the photograph of the young Negro. “It’s extraordinary,” she remarked, “how he’s like a boy who once came down the Casamance with us. A Wolof boy: Mamadou Dieng.”

“Where shall we go?” he asked, concealing his disappointment.

“Oh, any old place! The Britannic? No, what about Packmell’s? Let’s walk there. That’s it: an iced chartreuse at Packmell’s, and then we’ll go home.” She nestled up to him with a sudden tenderness that seemed like an earnest of better things to come.

“It’s upset me a bit, you know, thinking of poor little Mamadou this evening, just after seeing that film. You remember the photo I showed you, with Hirsch sitting in the stern of the jolly-boat? You said he looked like a Buddha in a sola topee. Well, the boy on whom he’s leaning, a real blackamoor in a little white shift—do you remember?—that’s Mamadou.”

“And how do you know it wasn’t he in the film?” he asked, to humour her.

After a moment’s silence she shuddered slightly.

“Poor kid, I saw him eaten alive under my eyes, some days later. He was bathing in a stream. No, it was really Hirsch who … You see, Hirsch bet Mamadou he wouldn’t swim a tributary of the river to get an egret that I’d just brought down—and how often I’ve wished I’d missed it! The boy said he’d have a try, and dived in. We watched him swimming across, when suddenly—! Oh, it was like a nightmare! It all happened in a flash, you know. We saw him suddenly standing up out of the water; he’d been nipped below the waist, you see. I shall never forget his scream. Hirsch always rose to the occasion at such moments. He knew at once that the boy was a goner, and would endure agonies. He brought his gun to his shoulder and— bang!—the child’s head crumpled up like a calabash. The best way out, wasn’t it? But I felt like being sick.”

She paused and pressed herself to Antoine’s shoulder.

“Next day I went to take a snapshot of the place. The water was calm, so calm, you’d never have dreamt …”

Her voice shook. There was a longer pause before she spoke again.

“With Hirsch, you see, one life more or less simply doesn’t count. Still, he liked that boy of his. Well, he didn’t turn a hair. That’s how he was. Even after the accident, he stuck to his idea; he promised an alarm-clock to anyone who’d retrieve my egret. I tried to stop him, but he shut me up. He always insisted on being obeyed. Well, in the end I got it. One of the porters fetched it; he had better luck than the boy.” She was smiling now. “I’ve got it still. I wore it last winter on a little brown velvet toque; a dinky little hat it was, too!”

Antoine made no comment.

“Oh, you old stay-at-home!” she burst out, and petulantly drew away from him. “A trip to Africa’d have been the making of you!”

Then, in swift contrition, she came back and took his arm again.

“Don’t take any notice of me, Toine dear; a show like tonight’s works me up till I’m positively ill. I’m sure I’ve got a touch of fever—haven’t I? One stifles here in France. It’s only over there one can really live. You can’t imagine what it means—the white man’s freedom among all those blacks. Not a soul on this side has the faintest notion how far it goes. No laws, nothing to tie you down! You needn’t even bother what other people think of you. See what I mean? Can you even imagine what it’s like? You have the right to be yourself everywhere and all the time. You’re just as free amongst those black folk as you are at home with only your dog to watch you. And, what’s more, they’re really charming people to live among. You’d never believe how tactful, how quick to understand, they can be. Just fancy having only cheerful, smiling faces round you, and keen young eyes that can read your least desire. Why, I remember … Sure I’m not boring you, dear? I remember one day when we pitched camp out in the desert and Hirsch was chatting with a headman near the spring where the women used to draw water; it was getting dark—that’s the time they always come—and we saw two darling little girls come up, carrying a huge oxhide waterskin between them. ‘They my girls,’ the Cadi explained to us. That was all. But the old fellow had guessed… . That night when I was with Hirsch in the
dar
, the mat slid up without a sound, and lo and behold our two little girls, smiling all over their faces!” She walked a few paces in silence before continuing. “As I said … your least desire. And … yes, I remember, another time—it’s such a relief to have someone to tell about it! At Lomé, it was. At the pictures, too, as it happens; everybody there goes to the pictures in the evening. It’s just a cafe terrace, very brightly lit, with evergreens in tubs all round it. Suddenly the lights go out and the show begins. You sip iced drinks while you watch it—see the idea? The Europeans, dressed up in their white ducks, sit in front, with the light reflected from the screen falling on their faces; behind them it’s pitch-dark, no, blue-dark—you’d never believe how blue—and I’ve never seen the stars so bright anywhere else. That’s where the natives sit and watch, youngsters and girls. You can hardly see their faces for shadows, but their eyes glow like the eyes of cats—such lovely eyes! Well, you needn’t even make a sign. Your eyes just linger on one of the smooth, dark faces, meet his eyes for a second—and that’s all. But it’s enough. A few minutes later you get up and go, without a glance behind, to your hotel; all the doors are left open on purpose. I had a room on the second floor. I’d hardly had time to undress when I heard someone scratching at the shutter. I put out the light and opened the window. There he was! He’d slithered up the wall like a lizard. Without a word he let his one and only garment slide off his little body. I shall never forget it. His mouth was moist and cool so cool!”

“Good God!” Antoine could not help exclaiming to himself. “A nigger—and not even vetted beforehand to make sure!”

“They’ve such wonderful skins,” Rachel went on. “Fine-grained like the rind of a fruit. None of you over here have an idea of what it’s really like. It’s smooth as satin, their skin; dry and sleek as if it had just been dusted with talcum powder, without a single blemish or trace of unevenness or moisture, but hot as fire under the surface; hot, like a feverish arm across a muslin sleeve—see what I mean?— or a bird’s body underneath the feathers. And when you look at it under the glaring African sun and the light’s splashing all over their shoulders, that gold-brown skin of theirs looks like shot silk, speckled with blue flashes—oh, I simply can’t describe it!—like little specks of powdered steel, or a shower of broken moonbeams. Such eyes they have, too! Surely you’ve noticed how their glance hovers over you like a caress; it’s the white of their eyes, you know, a trifle browned, with the pupils swimming about in it, never quite at rest. Then—I can hardly explain it—love-making in those parts isn’t a bit like yours, over here. It’s all done without words—like a sacrament, but the most natural thing in the world. There’s not an atom of thought goes into it. Over here people are bound to keep it more or less dark when they’re out for pleasures of that kind, but there—why, it’s as normal as life itself, and just as sacred as life and love. Do you see what I mean, Toine dear? ‘In Europe,’ Hirsch always said, ‘you have what you deserve. Happily there are other countries for people like ourselves, free-minded people.’ He simply adores the black man.” She started laughing. “Do you know how I first discovered that about him? Surely I’ve told you? No? It was at a restaurant, in Bordeaux. He was sitting opposite me and we were talking. Suddenly I noticed him staring hard at something behind me; it only lasted a second, but there was a curious glitter in his eyes. … It was so striking that I swung round at once. I saw a little Negro, a lad of about fifteen, near a side-table, carrying a bowl of oranges.” In a soft, brooding voice, she added: “It was that day, most likely, I too began to hanker after going over there.”

They took some steps in silence.

“My ambition,” she suddenly exclaimed, “my dream for when I’m old is to—to run a brothel. Don’t look so shocked! There are brothels and brothels, and naturally I’d keep a high-class one. I’d loathe growing old amongst old people. I’d like to be sure of having young folk round me, fine young bodies; free, sensual bodies. Can’t you understand that, dear?”

They were almost at Packmell’s, and Antoine had not answered her. What, indeed, could he have found to say? Rachel was an uncharted land for him, where he encountered nothing but surprises. He felt so alien from her, rooted to the soil of France by his middle-class upbringing, by his work and his ambitions, by the career he had so carefully mapped out. He saw the bonds that held him and had not the faintest wish to break them; but for all that Rachel liked, that alien world of hers, he had the antipathy of a domesticated animal for the prowling denizens of the wild that are a menace to the home.

Nothing in the placid frontage of the carbaret, except the streaks of garish light that filtered past the edges of the crimson curtains, gave any inkling of the cheerful scene behind them. The revolving-door swung round with a groan, launching a gust of purer air into the atmosphere within, fetid with dust and heat and the stale fumes of alcohol.

The place was crowded and dancing was in progress.

Rachel headed for a vacant table near the cloak-room and did not wait to let her cloak drop from her shoulders before ordering a green chartreuse with crushed ice. When the drink appeared she propped her elbows on the table and sat before it motionless, with the twin straws between her lips.

“In the dumps?” Antoine inquired.

Her eyelids flickered and, drinking still, she threw him as gay a smile as she could muster up.

Near them a dark woman was flaunting shamelessly upon the tablecloth a biceps worthy of a boxer, which a Japanese, his childish face belied by an array of small but rusted teeth, squeezed with polite disdain.

“I’d like another drink, please; the same as before.” Rachel pointed to her empty glass.

Antoine felt a light tap on his shoulder.

“I wondered for a moment if it was you,” a cordial voice addressed him. “So you’ve shed your beard!”

Daniel stood before them. The lamplight fell harshly on the faultless oval of his face as he stood there, slim and willowy, twiddling an advertisement-fan between his ungloved hands; bending it into a circle, then letting it spring back, with a provocative smile upon his lips, he called to mind the stripling David, testing his sling.

While Antoine was introducing him to Rachel, Daniel’s taunt came back to him. “I’d have acted just as you did—you humbug!” But now it seemed to him the taunt had lost its sting, and it was with a thrill of pleasure he observed the look the young man, after stooping to kiss Rachel’s hand, cast on her face, lifted towards him, and on her arms and neck, gleaming snow-white against the blush-pink bodice.