Atlantida, Pierre Benoît [reading fiction .TXT] 📗
- Author: Pierre Benoît
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"The Sheik had understood. He took a ring from his finger and slipped it onto mine.
"'Sidi Casimir, comrade,' he affirmed. 'You come—find us. Take Sidi Ahmed's ring and show it. Everybody at Ahaggar comrades. Bono Ahaggar, bono.'
"When I came out of the Gare de Lyon, I had the feeling of having perpetrated an excellent joke."
The Hetman of Jitomir was completely drunk. I had had the utmost difficulty in understanding the end of his story, because he interjected, every other moment, couplets from Jacques Offenbach's best score.
Un jeune homme frais et beau,
Sa main tenait une pomme,
Vous voyez d'ici le tableau.
"Who was disagreeably surprised by the fall of Sedan? It was Casimir, poor old Casimir! Five thousand louis to pay by the fifth of September, and not the first sou, no, not the first sou. I take my hat and my courage and go to the Tuileries. No more Emperor there, no! But the Empress was so kind. I found her alone—ah, people scatter quickly under such circumstances!—alone, with a senator, M. Mérimée, the only literary man I have ever known who was at the same time a man of the world. 'Madame,' he was saying to her, 'you must give up all hope. M. Thiers, whom I just met on the Pont Royal, would listen to nothing.'
"'Madame,' I said in my turn, 'Your Majesty always will know where her true friends are.'
"And I kissed her hand.
Out de drôles de façons
Pour enjôler, pour enjôler, pour enjôler les gaâarçons!
"I returned to my home in the Rue de Lille. On the way I encountered the rabble going from the Corps Législatif to the Hotel de Ville. My mind was made up.
"'Madame,' I said to my wife, 'my pistols.'
"'What is the matter?' she asked, frightened.
"'All is lost. But there is still a chance to preserve my honor. I am going to be killed on the barricades.'
"'Ah! Casimir,' she sobbed, falling into my arms. 'I have misjudged you. Will you forgive me?'
"'I forgive you, Aurelie,' I said with dignified emotion. 'I have not always been right myself.'
"I tore myself away from this mad scene. It was six o'clock. On the Rue de Bac, I hailed a cab on its mad career.
"'Twenty francs tip,' I said to the coachman, 'if you get to the Gare de Lyon in time for the Marseilles train, six thirty-seven.'"
The Hetman of Jitomir could say no more. He had rolled over on the cushions and slept with clenched fists.
I walked unsteadily to the great window.
The sun was rising, pale yellow, behind the sharp blue mountains.
XIV HOURS OF WAITING
It was at night that Saint-Avit liked to tell me a little of his enthralling history. He gave it to me in short installments, exact and chronological, never anticipating the episodes of a drama whose tragic outcome I knew already. Not that he wished to obtain more effect that way—I felt that he was far removed from any calculation of that sort! Simply from the extraordinary nervousness into which he was thrown by recalling such memories.
One evening, the mail from France had just arrived. The letters that Chatelain had handed us lay upon the little table, not yet opened. By the light of the lamp, a pale halo in the midst of the great black desert, we were able to recognize the writing of the addresses. Oh! the victorious smile of Saint-Avit when, pushing aside all those letters, I said to him in a trembling voice:
"Go on."
He acquiesced without further words.
"Nothing can give you any idea of the fever I was in from the day when the Hetman of Jitomir told me of his adventures to the day when I found myself in the presence of Antinea. The strangest part was that the thought that I was, in a way, condemned to death, did not enter into this fever. On the contrary, it was stimulated by my desire for the event which would be the signal of my downfall, the summons from Antinea. But this summons was not speedy in coming. And from this delay, arose my unhealthy exasperation.
"Did I have any lucid moments in the course of these hours? I do not think so. I do not recall having even said to myself, 'What, aren't you ashamed? Captive in an unheard of situation, you not only are not trying to escape, but you even bless your servitude and look forward to your ruin.' I did not even color my desire to remain there, to enjoy the next step in the adventure, by the pretext I might have given—unwillingness to escape without Morhange. If I felt a vague uneasiness at not seeing him again, it was not because of a desire to know that he was well and safe.
"Well and safe, I knew him to be, moreover. The Tuareg slaves of Antinea's household were certainly not very communicative. The women were hardly more loquacious. I heard, it is true, from Sydya and Aguida, that my companion liked pomegranates or that he could not endure kouskous of bananas. But if I asked for a different kind of information, they fled, in fright, down the long corridors. With Tanit-Zerga, it was different. This child seemed to have a distaste for mentioning before me anything bearing in any way upon Antinea. Nevertheless, I knew that she was devoted to her mistress with a doglike fidelity. But she maintained an obstinate silence if I pronounced her name or, persisting, the name of Morhange.
"As for the Europeans, I did not care to question these sinister puppets. Besides, all three were difficult of approach. The Hetman of Jitomir was sinking deeper and deeper into alcohol. What intelligence remained to him, he seemed to have dissolved the evening when he had invoked his youth for me. I met him from time to time in the corridors that had become all at once too narrow for him, humming in a thick voice a couplet from the music of La Reine Hortense.
Sois l'époux à l'instant,
Car elle est la plus belle
Et toi, le plus vaillant.
"As for Pastor Spardek, I would cheerfully have killed the old skinflint. And the hideous little man with the decorations, the placid printer of labels for the red marble hall,—how could I meet him without wanting to cry out in his face: 'Eh! eh! Sir Professor, a very curious case of apocope: Tifinar word . Suppression of alpha, of tau and of lambda! I would like to direct your attention to another case as curious: Tifinar word , Clémentine. Apocope of kappa, of lamba, of epsilon and of mu. If Morhange were with us, he would tell you many charming erudite things about it. But, alas! Morhange does not deign to come among us any more. We never see Morhange.'
"My fever for information found a little more favorable reception from Rosita, the old Negress manicure. Never have I had my nails polished so often as during those days of waiting! Now—after six years—she must be dead. I shall not wrong her memory by recording that she was very partial to the bottle. The poor old soul was defenseless against those that I brought her and that I emptied with her, through politeness.
"Unlike the other slaves, who are brought from the South toward Turkey by the merchants of Rhât, she was born in Constantinople and had been brought into Africa by her master when he became kaïmakam of Rhadamès.... But don't let me complicate this already wandering history by the incantations of this manicure.
"'Antinea,' she said to me, 'is the daughter of El-Hadj-Ahmed-ben-Guemâma, Sultan of Ahaggar, and Sheik of the great and noble tribe of Kel-Rhelâ. She was born in the year twelve hundred and eighty-one of the Hegira. She has never wished to marry any one. Her wish has been respected for the will of women is sovereign in this Ahaggar where she rules to-day. She is a cousin of Sidi-el-Senoussi, and, if she speaks the word, Christian blood will flow from Djerid to Touat, and from Tchad to Senegal. If she had wished it, she might have lived beautiful and respected in the land of the Christians. But she prefers to have them come to her.'
"'Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh,' I said, 'do you know him? He is entirely devoted to her?'
"'Nobody here knows Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh very well, because he is continually traveling. It is true that he is entirely devoted to Antinea. Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh is a Senoussi, and Antinea is the cousin of the chief of the Senoussi. Besides, he owes his life to her. He is one of the men who assassinated the great Kébir Flatters. On account of that, Ikenoukhen, amenokol of the Adzjer Tuareg, fearing French reprisals, wanted to deliver Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh to them. When the whole Sahara turned against him, he found asylum with Antinea. Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh will never forget it, for he is brave and observes the law of the Prophet. To thank her, he led to Antinea, who was then twenty years old, three French officers of the first troops of occupation in Tunis. They are the ones who are numbered, in the red marble hall, 1, 2, and 3.'
"'And Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh has always fulfilled his duties successfully?'
"'Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh is well trained, and he knows the vast Sahara as I know my little room at the top of the mountain. At first, he made mistakes. That is how, on his first trips, he brought back old Le Mesge and marabout Spardek.'
"'What did Antinea say when she saw them?'
"'Antinea? She laughed so hard that she spared them. Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh was vexed to see her laugh so. Since then, he has never made a mistake.'
"'He has never made a mistake?'
"'No. I have cared for the hands and feet of all that he has brought here. All were young and handsome. But I think that your comrade, whom they brought to me the other day, after you were here, is the handsomest of all.'
"'Why,' I asked, turning the conversation, 'why, since she spared them their lives, did she not free the pastor and M. Le Mesge?'
"'She has found them useful, it seems,' said the old woman. 'And then, whoever once enters here, can never leave. Otherwise, the French would soon be here and, when they saw the hall of red marble, they would massacre everybody. Besides, of all those whom Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh has brought here, no one, save one, has wished to escape after seeing Antinea.'
"'She keeps them a long time?'
"'That depends upon them and the pleasure that she takes in them. Two months, three months, on the average. It depends. A big Belgian officer, formed like a colossus, didn't last a week. On the other hand, everyone here remembers little Douglas Kaine, an English officer: she kept him almost a year.'
"'And then?'
"'And then, he died,' said the old woman as if astonished at my question.
"'Of what did he die?'
"She used the same phrase as M. Le Mesge:
"'Like all the others: of love.
"'Of love,' she continued. "They all die of love when they see that their time is ended, and that Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh has gone to find others. Several have died quietly with tears in their great eyes. They neither ate nor slept any more. A French naval officer went mad. All night, he sang a sad song of his native country, a song which echoed through the whole mountain. Another, a Spaniard, was as if maddened: he tried to bite. It was necessary to kill him. Many have died of kif, a kif that is more violent than opium. When they no longer have Antinea, they smoke, smoke. Most have died that way ... the happiest. Little Kaine died differently.'
"'How did little Kaine die?'
"'In
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