What Became of the White Savage (9 page)

He used his knife to scrape off the last bits of flesh clinging to the bone, and with his appetite now somewhat appeased, he turned to the old woman and gestured imperiously to her that he wanted more. If he wasn’t permitted to help himself, if it was up to her to serve him, she could at least be quick about it! She stood up and went over to get him another share of what was left of the shoulder. As the men continued to pile dry branches on the fire, he took more time to savour this second piece. The stars were out, the fire a warm glow. The old woman had lost interest in him again. The men were lying on the ground near the coals, chanting monotonously.

He was appalled by it all. Everything about this primitive gathering filled him with disgust.

For the first time since his trials had begun five days ago, he had eaten his fill. Selecting a tree at a distance from the others, he curled up on the ground and closed his eyes. Exhaustion overcame him and he slipped easily into the deep sleep of the young.

He was shaken roughly awake at dawn. Leaping up at a bound, he found himself surrounded by about ten men, watching him intently, in silence. Narcisse was immediately on his guard, sensing that something of great significance was about to happen. He hadn’t particularly liked the previous evening’s indifference, but it was better than this. They looked as if they were getting ready to attack him. Why now? Why wait till this morning? He was surrounded. He had his knife, but he’d be easily overpowered by so many sturdy assailants.

One of them advanced slowly towards him, coming close enough to touch him. Gingerly, he reached out a hand and brushed the cuff of Narcisse’s grubby cotton shirt, as if to see what it felt like, to assess its texture. Was that all it was? Simple curiosity? A naked savage’s desire to stroke a white man’s clothing? Narcisse clung onto this hope.

“See, old chap, it’s just a shirt. Look, there are two buttons here, and I can roll the sleeves up, like this.”

He demonstrated, and as he did so, the watching native cautiously placed his hand to his chest.

“That’s it, you understand. And there are buttons here at the front too. That’s how you put it on and take it off. Watch.”

He took off his shirt, revealing his muscular physique and the down on his chest where the watching men had none. He placed his shirt down on the ground beside him.

One of the natives made a little speech, nodding his head at regular intervals as the others listened with obvious interest. He ended with a sort of shout and fell silent again. No one had moved.

That was when they jumped on him. He didn’t see it coming and feeling himself seized by so many hands, he thought his last moment had come. Instinctively he struggled, kicking out and trying to escape, but there were too many of them. He was pinned to the ground. He soon realised that they hadn’t hit him, they just wanted to immobilise him. The pain came from the powerful arms restraining him. He carried on struggling, twisting his body, but the overwhelming sense of fear and panic was beginning to subside.

He realised with amazement that the hands imprisoning him were pulling off his trousers. He tried, in vain, to stop them. And then his drawers went the same way; he kicked and writhed but they soon pulled them down to his ankles. Naked now, he carried on struggling and saw the old woman picking up his clothes and walking towards the forest.

It all happened too fast. Why had they woken him up to strip him naked by force? He hadn’t sustained a single blow. Was it some kind of game, a joke in bad taste? He had never been naked in front of anyone, not in the village nor later aboard ship. Only the girls in the bordellos of the ports had seen him naked and then only for an instant in the semi-darkness. Even though there were no women here to witness this scene, and in spite of the fact that his attackers were all naked, he felt embarrassed, humiliated, bruised.

Still held firmly by his captors, he continued his efforts to escape their clutches. If he got away, he’d be able to catch up with the old woman and get his trousers back. And the knife attached to his belt. At the very least, his trousers.

Two hands grabbed him around the temples and pushed his head to the right, holding him firmly face down in the dirt. As he tried to escape the grasp of whoever was holding him, fear overcame him again, breaking over him like a wave. Had they stripped him naked before killing him? Were they going to slit his throat and bleed him, and then devour him?

The pain came so suddenly and with such violence that he almost passed out. There were no hands to restrain him now as he howled in pain and curled up in a ball, clutching his left ear with his hand. Blood was running down his neck. He felt for the spot where the pain was coming from, groping with his finger tips as blades of fire lanced through him. They had cut off his ear, detached the earlobe where he sported the gilt earring he was so fond of.

“I’d have given it to you,” he moaned despairingly through his tears. “All you had to do was ask. I’d have taken it off.”

The savages had moved off. He felt broken inside. Pressing his ripped ear between his fingers to staunch the flow of blood, he carried on talking and sobbing in an effort to bear the pain.

“Why are you doing this to me?” he cried. “Why are you being so cruel? Let me go. Or else kill me now, but don’t torture me like this. I want to go back to my ship. Damn you! Have you no pity? It’s not even a gold earring. What have I done to hurt you?”

He cried like a child for a long time, gulping and sniffing, tears streaming down his face. As waves of searing pain coursed through him, he gave in to despair, not caring any more whether he lived or died. Nothing he had ever experienced could have prepared him for this ordeal. He could make no sense of any of it.

The gilt earring took him back to a year ago, in a narrow street in Bordeaux. He’d just been promoted to able seaman and had joined the crew of a brig shipping barrels of wine to London. On their third voyage, the ship had been caught in a storm in the Bay of Biscay. They’d battled for three days and nights against high seas and icy autumn winds. The captain ordered them to reduce sail, and with gigantic waves crashing all around them, they heaved to and prayed for their lives to the Virgin and all the saints.

On the fourth day, the sun came out, the wind dropped and the sea gradually became calmer. At last the captain set a course for the lighthouse of Cordouan. There were only three wounded men. When they docked, they found out that five ships had gone down in the storm.

When the ship was unloaded and the repairs completed, the captain handed each member of the crew a coin. Without a moment’s delay, Narcisse set off with a shipmate to explore the shops around the port. They both fancied themselves wearing a gold hoop in one ear like some of the old salts on board, and went from stall to stall mulling over their choices. In the end, it was a shop-girl’s smile that decided them. They took turns to have their left ear pierced and walked out of the shop both sporting a gilt ring in one ear. Thus adorned, with the pencil moustache he’d taken to wearing to make himself look a little older, a confident swagger and a quick turn of phrase, he thought he cut a fine figure. And they still had enough cash left after their purchase to go to the tavern and then on to a seamen’s brothel.

He sensed a presence. The old woman was sitting beside him, waiting.

“You too. You’ve come back to torment me too.”

She showed him a greenish paste in the palm of her hand and mimed a gesture several times of putting it on his ear. Eventually, he understood and let her spread her ointment on his wound. The mixture was cooling and gave him some relief; the pain seemed to subside a little.

“You wait till I’m half dead from thirst and starvation to give me something to eat and drink. I build an arrow on the beach and you destroy it. You rip off one of my ears and then you look after me. Are you all mad in this place?”

She held up what looked like a hairy cucumber. Obeying her gestures, he bit into it and found it watery and tasteless but not unpleasant. As he raised his hand to his mouth, he saw the dried blood on his wrist and thought that his neck must be sticky with blood too.

They weren’t going to finish him off today then, or they wouldn’t have sent the old woman to minister to him. He might as well go and wash himself off in the pond. As he got up, his left hand still clutching his ear, he became aware again of his nakedness; he hadn’t thought about it since the pain started.

Instinctively, he covered his groin with his other hand. He would never get used to being exposed like this. Two years before when he’d crossed the Line for the first time, he’d bravely endured the various Old Father Neptune trials. But he’d balked when the old hands, disguised as devils, had ordered the young men to strip and run up and down from one end of the deck to the other, completely naked, while their shipmates made fun of them and hurled buckets of water at them. The ragging hadn’t lasted more than ten seconds but those few moments had been the only part of the whole day’s merry-making that he’d found hard to endure. And now he had to walk around with nothing on among all these naked savages. None of the men covered themselves as he did, none of them walked around with their arm crooked in front of them, their hand on their groin. Their lack of modesty showed just how uncivilised they were. He had no desire to be like them.

He walked across the encampment. No one looked at him or laughed at him. They weren’t interested in him. Who could reproach him for being naked like them, naked because of them? He knelt down at the water’s edge. The touch of the cool water was soothing and he spent a long time splashing water on the back of his neck, his throat and arms. The feeling of the sun on his bare skin so close to the water was surprising and unexpected rather than actually unpleasant. His mutilated ear was still hurting.

One of the men, the one who had given the little speech before they jumped him, came over to him. Narcisse stood up, wondering what new torture they had in store for him. The man stopped a few steps away from him, stretched out his open hand towards Narcisse and said:

“Amglo.”

He pronounced it slowly, enunciating each syllable. “Amglo,” he repeated and pointed with his finger towards the sky. Narcisse wondered what he wanted. What was he saying? The man had spoken calmly, without smiling. His implacable demeanour only served to enrage Narcisse, who erupted:

“Amglo? You’ve torn off half my ear, you brute! Give me back my trousers! And my knife! And give me some food!”

What hope did he have of intimidating with this outburst, standing there with nothing on, a young man with one hand cupped around his injured ear, the other covering his manhood? But the rage in his voice was unequivocal. Narcisse was on the verge of tears. He could take no more. Without stopping to wonder at the wisdom of this attitude, he looked at the man defiantly, wanting to make him pay the price for all that he had suffered on this soil. The savage stepped back and waited until Narcisse had finished. Then, as if he had heard nothing, he held out his hand again, palm turned up towards the sky and said once more: “Amglo.”

Sydney, 8th April 1861

Monsieur le Président,

Upon reading my letter of 17th March you were no doubt persuaded that I had confounded the timing of events, so incoherent was my account of what transpired. I cannot deny that I write without first thinking of what I am going to say, setting down my thoughts on paper as they occur to me each day. And indeed, the progress Narcisse makes is a constant source of surprise. My feelings are akin to those of a father, observing his child grow and develop, although I have not yet had the good fortune to experience that paternal bond. Indeed Narcisse is an adult to whom I have no relationship other than the fact that I have taken him in.

In spite of my efforts to the contrary, this letter begins as inconsistently as my previous ones; I assure you that I shall strive to bring more order to my account in the future.

First to the essential questions. Narcisse has been recovering his tongue for a month now, and I never cease to be amazed by his ability to learn. He still speaks in confused sentences with little regard for syntax, and he is not yet able to distinguish between masculine and feminine articles, but we are on the right path. I cannot but notice that he makes the same mistakes as a child might, although he masters in one week what a child would take six months to absorb. He has a singular way of pronouncing words, lending them a sing-song quality and modulating his voice. At times, he embellishes his words with strange guttural sounds.

One cannot fail to perceive his keen desire to learn. Our lessons take place twice a day, for two hours, and it is never he who wishes to call an end to our tutorial. The rest of his time is spent bathing, sleeping, walking about and silently observing Bill as he goes about his tasks. Occasionally we exchange a few words.

Is he happy? I pondered this as I watched him weaving a basket. It is a question impossible to answer, for he never expresses any emotion and seems to live from one day to the next. Thrust aboard the
John Bell
by chance, thence to the governor’s prison and now in this isolated house, he seems to be passively accepting of his lot. Is this a sign of wisdom, indifference to his fate or merely lack of curiosity or initiative?

I had informed the governor that I wished to speak to the captain of the
John Bell
in order to ascertain from that gentleman himself how they had come upon Narcisse. In accordance with my wishes, the governor sent the dinghy for me as soon as the schooner reappeared in Sydney Bay, and I arrived in Sydney at dusk and hastened to the room that had been reserved for me in that town’s finest establishment. As the evening wore on, I found myself observing the diversions of this routine hotel soirée – gentlemen in evening attire, bare-shouldered ladies in their Paris gowns engaged in polite conversation on the terrace, a convict expertly playing dance airs on the upright piano – and thinking how mundane it all seemed.

How can I explain the unease I felt from the moment I arrived? Throughout dinner, I found it difficult to participate in the fashionable talk and realised with some distress that this was a world in which I was no longer at home; but nor did I long to return to my solitary evenings spent dining alone, served by Bill under the watchful gaze of Narcisse. After supper, I removed myself from the hotel company and its chatter, and wandered aimlessly around the streets of the town and the port. Outside the taverns, seamen and soldiers made merry, girls whom I supposed to be convicts on their arms. Several houses with red lanterns could be seen at almost every street corner. Any comfort here for my troubled mind would be short-lived, transient. Once again I fled the scene.