What Became of the White Savage (25 page)

“Pauline, the Empress is eclipsed in your presence,” said Her Majesty teasingly. The lady in question, whom I understood to be Princess Pauline von Metternich, realised Narcisse’s mistake and responded with a peal of laughter, leaving Narcisse nonplussed. I greeted the Princess and a rather stout elderly gentleman sitting in an armchair whom I recognised to be the writer Prosper Mérimée. The Imperial Prince was playing with a hoop under the watchful eye of his governess, Madame Bruat. Two ladies-in-waiting were occupied with their embroidery.

“Viscount,” said Her Majesty, “I am most grateful to you for bringing Monsieur Pelletier here. I thank you for having escorted him back to France from Australia, and for conveying him here to us today in Compiègne.”

“Which of the two journeys, Viscount,” asked the Princess, “have you found the more remarkable?”

I was quite taken by surprise and was unable to utter any but the most dull and foolish of responses.

“It was my duty, Your Highness, to bring him back to France, but to be received in Compiègne with him is both an honour and a great pleasure.”

Perhaps Her Majesty was displeased by my banal and ingratiating response, for she turned her attention away from me and addressed Narcisse.

“Tell me, Monsieur Pelletier, are you happy to be back in France?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

My lessons in etiquette had made a greater impression on Narcisse than had my instruction in the art of conversation.

“Tell us how you filled your days during all those years over there.”

“In the morning, the men hunt or fish. When it gets too hot, everyone sleeps. In the evening, the women prepare the meal. Later, they sing, or else everyone dances. Then at night, everyone sleeps.”

This response, which owed little to Narcisse and much to my invention, had been well rehearsed. Narcisse played the part well: he had learnt his lines and his answer was well received.

“How I should have liked to lead such an existence!” Her Majesty remarked dreamily.

“And what did you eat?” asked the Princess.

“Fish, shellfish, snails, and… and…” he searched around for the word. “An animal that flies, in groups. It’s green.”

“Birds?” suggested the Princess.

“No.”

The Imperial Prince had moved closer to hear the conversation and suddenly exclaimed:

“Mother, I’ll go and get my picture book!”

As the young Prince ran off to find his book, the Princess remarked on his intelligence and presence of mind. Returning with the picture book, he gave it to Narcisse who turned the pages and eventually found the creature in question. The French word came back to him when he saw the illustration: the image had enabled him to remember the word. I alone realised this, the others all mistakenly believing that he was able to read.

“Grasshoppers.”

This was met by an exclamation of surprise and disgust. Monsieur Mérimée made a remark that was both elegant and witty, the precise details of which I cannot recall.

“Was it cold?”

“No, Your Majesty. Only a little bit, between full moons and during the heavy rains.”

“And what sort of clothes did you wear?”

“There were no clothes.”

Her Majesty made sure that the Imperial Prince had not heard this exchange, and indicated with a delicate smile that she did not hold the witness responsible for the improprieties revealed by his frank response.

“How many wives do the men have?”

“One, Your Majesty.”

“Only one? And can they change wives?”

“When the wife starts to get a bit old, you can take another one. You have to continue to feed the first one.”

I was astounded to see Narcisse willingly telling the Empress about life among the savages, when the questions I had asked him a thousand times had remained unanswered. With her natural goodness and simplicity, Her Majesty elicited far more information than had Monsieur Collet-Hespas the previous week.

“An Australian custom that seems to be practised in Court,” sighed Her Majesty.

Judging my penance to have lasted sufficiently long, she turned to me and said:

“Viscount, tell us how you saved this unfortunate man’s life.”

I explained to her how the adventure had begun, stressing the role of chance as well as the part played by the governor of New South Wales.

“We must thank him for that. I shall write a letter to Victoria about this matter.”

One of the ladies-in-waiting, no doubt the lady responsible for the royal correspondence, inclined her head in acknowledgement and wrote a few words in a notebook.

“But were you certain of the truth of the story from the very beginning?” the Princess asked. “Were you not worried that you might have been the victim of a malicious deception?”

“In Paris,” declared Monsieur Mérimée, “one scarcely dares to do anything nowadays for fear of being duped.”

“The first time I set eyes upon this unfortunate young man in the gardens of the governor’s residence,” I replied, “ he was dressed only in a loincloth. His tattoos all over his body spoke for him.”

“Do sailors not routinely have tattoos?” interjected the Princess.

“That is correct, Your Highness. But these markings, together with the other symbols etched on his skin, are unlike anything previously beheld. Perhaps it would interest you to see them?”

A barely perceptible movement of the royal fan indicated that the offer had been accepted, and I asked Narcisse to remove his jacket and roll his right shirtsleeve up to the shoulder.

A line of scarring begins at the biceps, winding twice around the forearm and ending on the back of his hand. Beneath it is a tattoo, a long check pattern that seems almost to be churned up by the twisting lines of the scarification. In the remaining spaces are broken lines, circles, spirals, arranged in no discernible pattern. The motifs are etched in black pigment, outlined in red on the inner side of his forearm, and are perfectly executed. One has the impression that many, many hours of work were involved in the creation of these markings.

Her Majesty, and all of her entourage, including the officers of the Hussars, gazed in amazement at this entirely novel spectacle. Narcisse, who seemed only too happy to show off the markings on his skin, was slowly rotating his arm, opening and closing his fist to bring the strange designs into relief.

“I want one too, Mother. I want a drawing on my arm too!” exclaimed the young Prince.

Princess Pauline explained to the Imperial Prince that this would involve a thousand pricks with a very long, fat needle and the Prince’s enthusiasm seemed to wane.

I signalled to Narcisse to roll down his shirtsleeve and don his jacket again. I hoped to avert any requests to see his other arm, his back, or perhaps even his legs, with the wound to his thigh. All these marks were merely the outward residue of what Narcisse had endured and I hoped that a new line of questioning would permit him to reveal other aspects of his experiences.

“And what of your family while you were over there?” asked Her Majesty.

Narcisse turned towards me and I replied for him: “His parents, his brother and his sister, all believed him to be dead. They received official notice of his death from the shipowner.”

“Eighteen years…” said Her Majesty pensively before turning to her aide-de-camp: “Captain, make sure that the Minister of the Navy examines why this unfortunate man was abandoned and how it came about that his parents were falsely informed of his death.”

Then, turning back to Narcisse, she asked: “Have you seen your parents again?”

“Yes, Your Majesty. The Viscount took me to Saint-Gilles-sur-Vie.”

“How affecting those reunions must have been!”

I bowed in acknowledgement, not wishing to importune Her Majesty with the details of our visit to the Vendée.

“And while you were in Australia, how did you survive?”

“At first, I was like a child. I didn’t know how to do anything. I didn’t know how to speak, to hunt or to eat. An old woman looked after me. I stayed with her until I grew up.”

“But how old were you when you were cast away on those shores?” asked the Princess.

Seeing that this question was beyond Narcisse and that he was unable to answer, I spoke on his behalf:

“Eighteen and a half years old. I believe that the savages initially looked upon him as a child because he knew nothing of their ways.”

“How curious!” exclaimed Her Majesty. “And the old woman you speak of, my friend?”

“She died.”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. You must have felt alone all over again. And afterwards?”

The question related to any relationships that Narcisse might have formed subsequently, but he interpreted it in quite another manner.

“Afterwards, we left her under her tree. That evening, we left for another part of the forest.”

“How so?”

“When death comes, we leave. It is forbidden to touch the dead person, his arrows, his baskets, his food. You must leave, otherwise, bad things happen. It is forbidden to return to that place.”

How much invaluable information lay concealed in these few sentences! In his desire to please Her Majesty, Narcisse was revealing far more than he had throughout all my vain and persistent efforts to interrogate him. Her Majesty was of course completely unaware of this. I must confess that I was somewhat piqued. I see now that I was wrong to stubbornly persist with my questions, with my method and my principles of enquiry. As I write these lines to you, I begin to understand that Narcisse speaks when and as he pleases.

Putting this rather sad episode behind us, Her Majesty enquired:

“And me, my friend. Do you know who I am?”

“You are the wife of the big chief.”

“That is not such a bad way of looking at it,” sighed Her Majesty as she turned towards her friend and said in a dreamy voice, absently stroking an embroidered cushion: “Those eyes… never, since I have been Empress, has any man looked at me with such frankness, such force. I could not hold his gaze.”

An awkward silence followed. Narcisse and I waited to be invited once again to participate in the conversation. What could one say after this admission? To break the spell, the Princess clapped her hands like a child and exclaimed:

“Let us play some music. Let us turn to the language everyone understands! Ladies, play something for us.”

Two of the ladies-in-waiting lifted a brocade cover from a piece of furniture to reveal an upright piano standing upon a small platform. The youngest of the ladies drew up a stool upon which she sat and performed two Chopin preludes; she played with much emotion, perhaps a little too much.

Narcisse had already had occasion to hear our music: a trio in a café in Calais, the harmonium in the church in Saint-Gilles, a military band in a bandstand in Paris. I knew that he understood nothing of it and that he neither showed interest in nor derived pleasure from it. He listened politely, sensing that Her Majesty had not yet finished with him.

“Tell me, my friend, when you were in Australia, did you sing?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

“Sing us one of your songs then, a tune from over there. It will make a change from our fashionable ditties.”

I was alarmed by this unforeseen request. I had of course made the same request myself on several occasions, but always to no avail. We had not prepared anything and I did not know how he would respond. He bowed his head, gathered his memories, and began to perform.

How shall I describe the sounds that issued from his mouth? Never before had I heard their like, in the South Pacific or elsewhere. Whining and mewling, staccato repetitions of syllables, clicks of the tongue and teeth, syncopated grunts, whistling sounds, all of these bore no resemblance to anything taught in our conservatoire. No key signature, no arrangement of flats and sharps on the stave could ever convey this monotonous threnody. The strange, pronounced rhythm suggested that he was indeed singing. His voice had taken on a guttural, muted timbre. Something of the harshness of Australia, the solitude of its deserts, the burning heat of the sun on the cracked earth entered into the gardens of Compiègne, and I half expected to see specks of red dust settling imperceptibly on the Empress’s shoulders.

Narcisse stopped abruptly, with no rallentando or cadence to mark the end of his song. A shiver ran through Her Majesty, and to lighten the mood, she said, without managing to smile:

“Well, Pauline, this is doubtless much more astonishing than the latest of Monsieur Wagner’s innovations, of which you speak so highly.”

Princess Pauline rescued the conversation from the lull that threatened to engulf it, and turning towards Narcisse asked:

“And what will you do tomorrow, my friend?”

This innocuous question threw him into profound confusion. I could see from the way he was twiddling his fingers that he was at a loss. He bowed towards the Princess, took a deep breath and ventured:

“Tomorrow, the sun will rise.”

Her Majesty and the Princess went into raptures over the “oriental wisdom” of this response and could not have seen, in Narcisse’s utterance, the evidence of my grammar lessons and my attempts to inculcate in him the very notion of the future.

“That,” said Her Majesty, “ is how I shall henceforth reply to all those who constantly importune me with questions about what the Emperor and I are planning to do.”

I made no attempt to dispel the misunderstanding with regard to his response. It occurs to me as I write these lines that the entire audience was nothing more than one long misunderstanding.

“And do you not have a trade, a situation of some sort?” continued the Princess.

He lowered his gaze.

“And if the Viscount had not taken care of you, would you have starved to death?”

Narcisse was at a loss as to how to answer. Hypothetical reasoning was even more foreign to him than speculation about the future. His silence was taken as a sign of delicacy of feeling.

“Captain,” Her Majesty commanded, “I want someone to find this unfortunate man some employment in government service. You will confer with the Viscount as to what might suit him. I want his years of wandering and suffering to end today.”