Tropic Moon (7 page)

Just like Europe! And just as he used to in Europe, he frowned for an instant at the thought of having to carry an umbrella. The low sky was a solid dark gray. The downpour seemed to be only minutes away, but the soft, hot radiance of the missing sun was still palpable. It wasn't going to rain. It wasn't going to rain for another six months—Timar was in Gabon. The thought made him smile with resignation, but a little aggressively, too, as he reached for the pitcher.

He hadn't slept well. Several times, half awake, he'd opened his eyes a little and seen the milky form of the woman beside him, against him, her head resting on one bent arm.

Had Adèle slept? Twice she'd made him shift position; he'd been lying on his right side and having trouble breathing. When he'd opened his eyes yet again it was daylight. Adèle was standing by the door, looking for hairpins she might have dropped during the night.

Timar blew his nose and wiped it. He looked at his tired face in the mirror. Something was bothering him, but he didn't want to think about it because he was too inexperienced with women to solve it. Last night Adèle had given herself for sure, but somehow it seemed like she'd given too much. She'd done it for him, not for herself.

He was almost certain she hadn't slept or even closed her eyes, that she'd spent the whole night against him, her head resting on her folded arm, staring straight ahead into blackness. What was that about?

Timar was sick of worrying. He'd come to a decision as he washed: leave it to chance and let things turn out the way they would.

He went downstairs and realized that the heavy sky was making it even hotter. After taking a few steps he was sweating. He pushed open the door to the café. Adèle was there, behind the counter, the tip of a pencil between her lips. He didn't know what to do, so he stuck out his hand.

“Good morning.”

She batted her eyelashes in reply. Then, licking the point of her pencil, she returned to her accounts.

“Boy! Mr. Timar's breakfast!”

Twice he caught her studying him, but perhaps she wasn't aware of it herself.

“Not too tired?”

“I'm okay.”

She shut the register, put away the papers on the counter, and came to sit at the table where Timar was eating. It was the first time she'd done anything like that. Before speaking, she looked him over once again. There was a hint of indecision in her eyes.

“Are you on very good terms with your uncle?”

That was about the most unexpected thing she could have said! So she was also interested in his famous uncle?

“Yes, very good. He's my godfather—I went to say my farewells before I left.”

“Is he on the right or left?”

“He belongs to a party called the Popular Democrats—something like that.”

“I suppose you know that
SACOVA
is bankrupt, or close to it.”

Stunned, Timar drank his coffee. He wondered if he'd really slept with this woman who was now carefully weighing her every word. But then was she so different from the Adèle he'd taken in his arms?

This was when the atmosphere of the house was somehow at its most intimate—cleaning time, the time for small domestic tasks. You could make out the low hum of the native market even though it was some four hundred yards away. Women walked by, their waists draped with cloth, carrying jars or food wrapped in banana leaves on their heads.

Adèle was pale. Her skin must have always been like that—matte, even-toned, smooth. It looked like it had never been touched by the sun. Did she have the same finely creased eyelids when she was younger?

When Timar was six, he'd experienced a great love—the memory still haunted him. It had been his teacher. At the time he lived in a village where the children were all taught together until high school.

Like Adèle, the teacher always dressed in black, and her expression was a similar mix of severity and tenderness. Above all, she displayed the same calm, so alien to Timar's character.

Right now, for instance, he wanted to take Adèle's hand in his, to say silly things, to whisper reminiscences of the night before. But seeing her with the face of a schoolteacher grading homework, he grew confused and blushed. And yet he wanted her more than ever.

“So you see, there's a good chance you'll return to France empty-handed.”

What she was saying should have grated on him, or been hateful. And yet somehow she managed to make her words almost soothing. She enveloped him in a tenderness all of her own, something that went beyond her actions or words.

The boy was polishing the brass bar. Adèle was contemplating Timar's forehead as if it was far, far away.

“On the other hand, there's a way to make a million in three years.”

Once again, if anyone else had said that, he would have found it intolerable. Now she stood up. She was speaking even more carefully, pacing back and forth across the café. The sound of her high heels on the flagstones gave rhythm to her sentences. Each one stood out, followed by the exact same silence. Adèle's smile suited her strange voice. Maybe it seemed low class to some people, but it was full of personality, sometimes soft, sometimes shrill like cheap music.

What was she saying? It blended in with his other impressions: the black women still filing past outside, the skinny, nervous legs of the boy in his white shorts, the panting of a diesel engine someone somewhere was trying to adjust. And then there were the images her own words evoked. She mentioned loggers and instantly he saw Bouilloux's face lit by the oil lamp in Maria's hut.

“They don't buy the land—the government gives them a three-year concession.”

Why, as he gazed at her, did he see her again the way she'd looked that morning, searching for her hairpins while he pretended to sleep?

She pulled a bottle from a shelf, set two glasses on the table, and filled them with calvados. Was she from Normandy? It was the third time he'd seen her drink apple brandy.

“The first colonists were given concessions for thirty years or more—even a perpetual lease.”

A perpetual lease—the words stuck with him for a long time as she went on talking. He kept trying to think what they reminded him of.

“In principle. Usually the rights revert to the state when the settler dies, but—”

She never wore stockings or underwear and he had seldom seen such white legs. He looked at them because he knew Adèle was looking at him. She seemed to be trying to make up her mind about something once and for all.

A black came in and laid some fish on the counter.

“That's fine! I'll pay you next time.”

She drank the liquor like a medicine, making a face as she swallowed.

“There's a guy called Truffaut who's been here for twenty-eight years and gone native. He married a black woman and has ten or twelve children with her. He's furious because now that they have boats with outboard motors his concession is only a day's journey from Libreville.”

Their eyes met. Timar knew that she was perfectly aware he wasn't listening, but there was only a flicker of impatience on her face. Unperturbed, she went on, just like his old teacher, who'd continue her lesson to the end even when the children weren't paying attention in the least.

The situation was the same—the same sense of distraction, the same desire to be doing something else, the same resignation. In his mind, Timar pictured Truffaut as a biblical patriarch among his children of color.

“With a hundred thousand francs …”

And he saw himself giving the first thousand of the three thousand francs to the mechanic, who at that very moment was busy repairing the flatboat.

“His oldest son would like to study in Europe.”

Adèle's hand lay on top of his. She seemed to be asking for a moment, just one moment, of serious attention.

“I can supply the money. And you, you'll supply your uncle's support. The Minister of Colonies is a member of the same party. Your uncle can see to it that we're awarded an exemption, and …”

When he looked at her again, she was licking the point of her pencil, as she had at the counter; then she wrote out laboriously:

Timar smiled at the final words. Adèle could hardly know that in his family men weren't especially demonstrative. Certainly no one would take such a familiar tone with Timar's uncle.

The whole time she was writing, he'd been conscious of his superiority to her. He'd even smiled with a tender condescension of his own. Her way of holding herself, of licking the point of her pencil, of spelling out her words with too much care, all betrayed her lack of education and her social class.

“Is that pretty much what you'd have written?”

“More or less, yes. I'd change a word or two.”

“Well, do it!”

And she went back to her counter, where she had something to do. When she returned, he was reading over his revision of the telegram, not quite believing it. Later, he'd be incapable of saying just when the decision had been reached. Had there even been a decision? At any rate, just before noon the boy took the telegram to the post office, and it had been Adèle who, without thinking twice, had taken the money for it from the cash register.

“Now, here's some advice—go pay the governor a visit.”

Timar hadn't been out all day. He jumped at the chance, but not at the idea of going to see the governor. He changed his shirt anyway, since his was soaked through.

The town was even more depressing than usual because of the yellowish-green light and the oppressive heat, something that seemed inexplicable since there was no sun overhead. Timar noticed that even the blacks at the market were sweating heavily.

You waited without thinking for a clap of thunder for days, but no—there were going to be days and weeks of this draining atmosphere before a storm broke, days and weeks without rain or a trickle of water. And you were afraid even to remove your sun helmet to wipe off your forehead!

Timar meant to pass the governor's house looking the other way when the chief of police hailed him from the top of the steps.

“Coming in?”

“What about you?”

“I'm just leaving. But go have a whiskey with the governor. It'll please him; he's told me a lot about you.”

In spite of the oppressive humidity, things were happening fast, too fast. Timar found himself in a large drawing room exactly like a prefect's back in La Rochelle, Nantes, or Moulins. Some leopard skins added an exotic note and clashed with the tapestries and carpets from the rue du Sentier.

“Ah! It's you, young man!”

The governor's wife was summoned, a woman of about forty who wasn't ugly or pretty. A woman trained to make tea and listen to men talk.

“You're from La Rochelle? You must know my brother-in-law, the departmental archivist.”

“He's your brother-in-law?”

Whiskey. The governor sat with his knees slightly apart. He exchanged a look with his wife. Timar understood why the governor was glad to have company. He liked to drink. His wife didn't like him to. When he had a guest, he kept filling his guest's glass so he could fill his own, too.

“Cheers! So, what are you going to do?
SACOVA
is getting worse and worse. I'll tell you this in confidence, but …”

Their chat lasted a quarter of an hour. Not a word about the murdered black or the investigation. Once again Timar's head was thick with drink before lunch. He liked the feeling: his thoughts floated free, avoiding the rough edges.

At the hotel, they looked at him with distinct curiosity—probably because he'd had a drink with the governor. The loggers were in the middle of a conversation: “… so I gave him the hundred francs and a kick in the ass, and he left, happy as can be …”

Timar soon realized they were talking about the tail end of the night in the forest. Maria's husband had shown up, making a fuss —he'd even threatened to hire someone to write to the League of Nations. A hundred francs and a kick in the ass! Everyone handed over twenty francs, except Timar. They were afraid to ask him.

He napped until five and came back downstairs feeling queasy. Two glasses of whiskey restored him.

“Did the governor have anything to say?”

“Nothing of interest.”

“I sent a black to tell Truffaut we're ready to make a deal.”

“But we don't know yet if—”

“We can send him back home if it doesn't work out.”

He looked at her in alarm. And yet she was a woman, a real woman—with soft skin, a good figure, a yielding body.

Just before dinner he walked to the water to check out his half-repaired boat.

“You can leave in two days,” the mechanic told him.

Dusk was subdued, the sea and the sky a poisonous green. Lights came on. Dinner. Billiards and card games with the loggers and the notary clerk with the enormous gut.

Maritain asked Timar, “Do you play chess?”

“Yes … no … not today.”

“Have you come down with something?”

“I don't know.”

He felt bad all over; he didn't know what to do with himself. He didn't feel at home anywhere, and he wondered what was going to happen with Adèle that night.

Would they simply end up in the same room and sleep in the same bed? The whole thing was starting to feel routine, and that horrified Timar, especially since her husband, Eugène, had been sleeping in the same bed only four days ago.

But he suffered when he didn't see Adèle. He suffered when one of customers called her by her first name.