What Became of the White Savage (34 page)

He thinks about death at midday, when everything dissolves in a haze as the crushing heat rains down from above. The vague trees, the outlines that shimmer in the baking air, this difficulty in breathing, the flickering thoughts that drift randomly around in his head, this oppressive weight of the body, inert and ineffectual. Isn’t this what it feels like in the next world? Or in those last moments, leaving this life, when everything gradually fades to nothing and all the senses shut down one by one, like the gunports of a fighting ship as the cannons are withdrawn.

He thinks about death at night, for hours on end, as he lies curled up in a hollow in the sand, not moving.

He thinks about death in the morning when another day of unceasing emptiness and loneliness looms over him, every day the same as the one before, crushing him. What reason is there to hold on? What is the point of bearing it day after day?

And again at midday. And again in the evening.

And if death persists in sending him welcoming signs but still refuses to come to him, must he seek it out? He does not know if he has the strength to go in search of death, nor how to go about it. To stop eating or drinking demands courage that he does not possess. He dreams of a rapid journey, a voyage of no return.

He could climb to the top of a tree, or find a rock high enough to throw himself off, head first into the void. Yes, he can picture it: he steps lightly like a dancer and launches himself, arms outstretched to embrace the sky. Let the old woman try and put the pieces back together then with one of her potions! Let her try and understand the smile on his face as she gazes in surprise at his wide-open laughing eyes, eyes that will never again look into hers!

But what if he misjudges the height? What if the ground is too soft? What if his efforts fail and he has to spend the rest of his wretched days a cripple, dragging himself around, limping along behind the tribe.

No, he’d have to do it right. A plant with poisonous sap, a fish with a lethal barb? He doesn’t know of any yet, but he will find them. Eventually he’ll learn to identify the plants they take away from careless children. And when the right moment comes, he’ll make himself the sweetest of all desserts.

But why wait so long? He could sit down under a tree, open the veins in his wrists with the small bluish mussel he’s learnt to use for slicing fish open. A small cut at the base of the palm, just below his right hand, then the left, and his life would flow slowly out onto the sand. He would go to sleep; he might feel a bit cold, and that would be it. So long as they didn’t find him, the savages would assume he’d fled.

Or perhaps his destiny was to die at sea after all. He could walk into the sea, just as he’s done so many times before, give a friendly wave to Waiakh, walk until he was out of his depth, move his arms and legs about like a dog heading out to sea, feel first one wave and then another break over his head, and go proudly forward towards the shadowy outline of the schooner, its two masts just visible at the entrance to the bay.

La Rochelle, 13th December 1867

Monsieur le Président,

I fear I do not have the fortitude to bear the realisation that these last ten years of my life have led only to the bitter certainty of failure, that all my travels have been in vain.

I have striven to put in order my thoughts on what I have termed Adamology and perceive that it was naïve, nay, imprudent of me to inform you of its provenance. I have read widely, written extensively and cast much into the fire. A thousand theoretical and practical difficulties confronted me, and I felt that I was seeking to scale a mountain of great height, my way barred by raging torrents and impenetrable glaciers.

From the terrace at Vallombrun, as I contemplate the mountains on the horizon, the rudiments of Adamology seem to me no more accessible than those inviolate peaks.

My first error was to misjudge my own character. I am not a man at ease with ordered systems. I have not succeeded in converting my intuitions and enthusiasms into solidly supported scientific certainties. I leave it to others to take up that mantle and find the paths to conquest and success.

Can I hope at least to be remembered as the man who elucidated the mystery of Narcisse Pelletier? Alas, no.

In continuing the research that you had commissioned on similar cases, I uncovered a few other forgotten dramas, not of castaways from shipwrecks, for which your records proved to be complete, but of individuals kidnapped on dry land, seized by raiding parties. In the plains of Patagonia and of North America there are a number of white men who have been taken in this way and who have lived among the natives. In a few cases, those abducted as young children have adopted Indian ways completely, having lost all memory of their life with their parents. Others have kept alive the memory of our civilisation throughout their sufferings in captivity, until the longed for day of their deliverance.

But none has twice undertaken the voyage from one world to another as Narcisse Pelletier has done.

I have observed much, but what, if anything, have I understood? The enigma remains as impenetrable as on that first day. What began in Sydney has now ended in La Rochelle. Should I have spoken to him differently during those days in Sydney? Should I have found another way to approach him upon our return to France? At what cost did I persist in the face of his silence? How heavily did my words weigh on that silence?

It is my duty to bring to an end this narrative and I must now tell you of our last encounter.

Having received the final report of the four expeditions conducted in Australia by Mr. Wilton-Smith in search of Charles and Eugénie Pelletier, a copy of which I have submitted to our Society’s archives, I decided to make a comparison between the findings of the report and the recollections of Narcisse Pelletier, its principal subject.

I made the journey to La Rochelle, whither the subdivisional engineer was kind enough to summon his lighthouse storekeeper, thus sparing me the rigours of the winter storms of the Ile de Ré. At the appointed hour, Narcisse came to my hotel from his temporary lodgings at the naval barracks. I showed him the maps of Wilton-Smith’s expeditions and repeated to him the explorers’ tales from their various forays. I wondered if talk of that landscape, the mangroves and sand dunes, the islets along the coast, the vast flat colourless forests would inspire him to reveal any confidences. Would the tales of bivouacs, of encounters and occasional exchanges with savages arouse any emotion in him? Alas, no. He listened politely and uttered nothing in response. I cannot deny that I was scarcely surprised at this.

Narcisse Pelletier’s refusal to speak of his years in Australia remains absolute. The silence he keeps is as impenetrable as it was when we first met in Sydney in 1861.

The next day, I summoned him again. This time I had my Australian notebooks with me and tried another approach: I told him his own story.

“You were in the gardens of the governor’s residence, you were dressed in a loincloth, guarded by two soldiers. A group of gentlemen came to observe you and speak to you in different languages…”

As I read him the account of those events, which I reported to you at the time, embellishing it with all the details I could recall, he was as if transfixed. He remained absolutely still, listening with inexpressible attentiveness, almost frightening in its intensity, a pearl of sweat on his forehead. I finished telling him about that first day and continued:

“Before that. You were on the
John Bell
, you were terrified, crouched against the guardrail, for ten days, refusing to eat anything…”

Silently, I gave thanks to that scoundrel Captain Rowland, whose account given in the office of the Governor of New South Wales enabled me to evoke for Narcisse those first days at sea.

“Before that. You were sitting in the dinghy. The dinghy was rowed out to the ship, you climbed up on a rope ladder…”

Narcisse had begun to cry and was looking at me imploringly. I carried on mercilessly.

“Before that. You were collecting shellfish with the tribe on the beach, a day like any other. Your children were beside you. You saw the
John Bell
sailing into the bay. The sailors came up to you and you felt no fear…”

Narcisse was in a state of utter confusion and despondency. Only the stoniest of hearts would not have been moved by his suffering and tears. Undaunted, I persevered: “Before that, Narcisse?”

I could see that my question filled him with terror. What was going on in his head? He made no attempt to leave the room, but begged me by his mute silence to put an end to this torture. I persisted regardless. There would be time later to console him.

“Before all that, Narcisse? What happened?”

He stood there, wringing his hands, ashen-faced. And as I stared at him insistently, driving home the question with my searching look, it was as if all our previous conversations, all my failed attempts to make him speak had led to this moment.

“Before… before. That was not Narcisse…” he muttered in a heartrending voice. What did he mean by this strange confession? In an effort to get to the heart of the matter I went back to the day when he was lost, November 5th 1843.

“That was not Narcisse, before? Tell me then, what happened the day that Captain Porteret sent you to look for water, when you lost your way and did not get back to the
Saint-Paul
? What happened after that?”

This continuing torture made him tremble in every fibre of his being, and I thought he would surely faint.

“After that, you were alone on the beach, the ship had left without you and you did not know if it would return…”

“After… after… that wasn’t Narcisse,” he managed to utter in one gasp.

I took a deep breath to muster the strength to continue, to try and find the smallest crack in the constancy of his refusal, and finally get to the truth.

“After, it wasn’t Narcisse. Before, it wasn’t Narcisse. But in between, when you were over there? All those years? Who were you then?”

And then, like a prisoner begging for mercy, who finally silences his interrogator by revealing the secret that will condemn him, he uttered what sounded like a word of two syllables. It was whispered under the breath, but I thought I heard something that sounded like “Ango”.

“What did you say?”

Without repeating his confession, his secret, he broke down, his head in his hands. But I did not relent.

“In between this before and after? Who were you then?”

He looked up, his shattered face bathed in silent tears, and finally said in a deathly whisper:

“Speaking is like dying.”

I harassed him further – I tormented him cruelly with questions for many long minutes only to be greeted by silence, weeping, or the mysteriously repeated phrase: “Speaking is like dying.”

At length, I took pity on him. At a loss as to how to comfort him, I went to find him a glass of water, intending to calm him and beg him to forgive me for the harsh treatment to which I had subjected him in the name of science.

When I came back into the room he was gone. Sensible of what I understood to be his need for solitude, I decided to leave him in peace for the rest of that day. How mistaken I was.

The next day, he did not appear for our meeting. I sent someone to search for him at the naval barracks only to be told that he had not returned to his lodgings there. He was avoiding me. He had fled. I sent a telegraph to the lighthouse and learned that he had not been seen there, nor had he returned to the little house that had become his home.

Increasingly concerned, I extended my search to the hospital, the prison and the morgue. There was no sign of Narcisse Pelletier. He had vanished, taking with him nothing but the clothes on his back. Where should I look for him?

I informed the police of his disappearance and was required to state my relationship to him. Friend of the family seemed the least false description. The inspector listened to what I had to say and assured me that a search would be conducted. I also alerted the mayor of Saint-Gilles.

I had no clues to follow. And besides, why should I pursue him? To beg his forgiveness? To question him further? To keep him under my control? For science?

It is now one week since he disappeared. Strangely, I am not concerned that he may have ended his days. I know that he is somewhere out there, beyond the reach of all questioning. Neither white savage nor lighthouse storekeeper, he is just another wanderer, a man with no past and no future.

Before leaving La Rochelle to return to Vallombrun, as I waited for news that did not come, I reflected on his attitude.

His agony seemed to begin as soon as I questioned him on those two moments when he had been propelled against his will from one world to the other – and the closer my questions came to that tipping point, the more troubled, torn and broken he had seemed. His mind, his whole body fervently refused to remember. It was not a question of consciously willing. He was in the grip of some unknown force, a state that I had already perceived in 1861 in Australia, and which I had likened, in one of my letters, to a struggle between two distinct characters within him: a sailor in a dungeon who perceives the door to be open a crack, and a demon that prevents him from leaving. That demon, or rather an obscure and overwhelming force has prevailed.

His tears are testimony to the violence of this struggle. The tears he shed that day in London, when I pointed out to him the impossibility of his being the son of an Australian negress, issued from the same source. We must look upon Narcisse as a battlefield. The smoke from the cannons has dissipated, the armies have moved on, and all that remains of the once rich farmland is the mud-strewn plain, studded with ravaged trees. This is Narcisse’s soul.

My only key to unlocking the enigma is the dictum that is perhaps his parting gift: “Speaking is like dying.”

To speak, to put into words all that is indescribable about those days over there, to articulate the memories that I unceasingly solicited, memories stamped forever as forbidden. Responding to my questions would have meant placing himself in mortal peril. Not of death in the physical sense, but of dying to himself and all those other people. Dying of being unable to conceive of the two worlds at one and the same time. Dying because of being unable to be simultaneously both white man and savage.