Atlantida, Pierre Benoît [reading fiction .TXT] 📗
- Author: Pierre Benoît
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Each time these trips lasted longer. From each he returned in a kind of exaltation which made me watch him with daily increasing disquietude during meal hours, the only time we passed quite alone together.
"Well," I said to myself one day when his remarks had been more lacking in sequence than usual, "it's no fun being aboard a submarine when the captain takes opium. What drug can this fellow be taking, anyway?"
Next day I looked hurriedly through my comrade's drawers. This inspection, which I believed to be my duty, reassured me momentarily. "All very good," I thought, "provided he does not carry with him his capsules and his Pravaz syringe."
I was still in that stage where I could suppose that André's imagination needed artificial stimulants.
Meticulous observation undeceived me. There was nothing suspicious in this respect. Moreover, he rarely drank and almost never smoked.
And nevertheless, there was no means of denying the increase of his disquieting feverishness. He returned from his expeditions each time with his eyes more brilliant. He was paler, more animated, more irritable.
One evening he left the post about six o'clock, at the end of the greatest heat of the day. We waited for him all night. My anxiety was all the stronger because quite recently caravans had brought tidings of bands of robbers in the neighborhood of the post.
At dawn he had not returned. He did not come before midday. His camel collapsed under him, rather than knelt.
He realized that he must excuse himself, but he waited till we were alone at lunch.
"I am so sorry to have caused you any anxiety. But the dunes were so beautiful under the moon! I let myself be carried farther and farther...."
"I have no reproaches to make, dear fellow, you are free, and the chief here. Only allow me to recall to you certain warnings concerning the Chaamba brigands, and the misfortunes that might arise from a Commandant of a post absenting himself too long."
He smiled.
"I don't dislike such evidence of a good memory," he said simply.
He was in excellent, too excellent spirits.
"Don't blame me. I set out for a short ride as usual. Then, the moon rose. And then, I recognized the country. It is just where, twenty years ago next November, Flatters followed the way to his destiny in an exaltation which the certainty of not returning made keener and more intense."
"Strange state of mind for a chief of an expedition," I murmured.
"Say nothing against Flatters. No man ever loved the desert as he did ... even to dying of it."
"Palat and Douls, among many others, have loved it as much," I answered. "But they were alone when they exposed themselves to it. Responsible only for their own lives, they were free. Flatters, on the other hand, was responsible for sixty lives. And you cannot deny that he allowed his whole party to be massacred."
The words were hardly out of my lips before I regretted them, I thought of Chatelain's story, of the officers' club at Sfax, where they avoided like the plague any kind of conversation which might lead their thoughts toward a certain Morhange-Saint-Avit mission.
Happily I observed that my companion was not listening. His brilliant eyes were far away.
"What was your first garrison?" he asked suddenly.
"Auxonne."
He gave an unnatural laugh.
"Auxonne. Province of the Cote d'Or. District of Dijon. Six thousand inhabitants. P.L.M. Railway. Drill school and review. The Colonel's wife receives Thursdays, and the Major's on Saturdays. Leaves every Sunday,—the first of the month to Paris, the three others to Dijon. That explains your Judgment of Flatters.
"For my part, my dear fellow, my first garrison was at Boghar. I arrived there one morning in October, a second lieutenant, aged twenty, of the First African Batallion, the white chevron on my black sleeve.... Sun stripe, as the bagnards say in speaking of their grades. Boghar! Two days before, from the bridge of the steamer, I had begun to see the shores of Africa. I pity all those who, when they see those pale cliffs for the first time, do not feel a great leap at their hearts, at the thought that this land prolongs itself thousands and thousands of leagues.... I was little more than a child, I had plenty of money. I was ahead of schedule. I could have stopped three or four days at Algiers to amuse myself. Instead I took the train that same evening for Berroughia.
"There, scarcely a hundred kilometers from Algiers, the railway stopped. Going in a straight line you won't find another until you get to the Cape. The diligence travels at night on account of the heat. When we came to the hills I got out and walked beside the carriage, straining for the sensation, in this new atmosphere, of the kiss of the outlying desert.
"About midnight, at the Camp of the Zouaves, a humble post on the road embankment, overlooking a dry valley whence rose the feverish perfume of oleander, we changed horses. They had there a troop of convicts and impressed laborers, under escort of riflemen and convoys to the quarries in the South. In part, rogues in uniform, from the jails of Algiers and Douara,—without arms, of course; the others civilians—such civilians! this year's recruits, the young bullies of the Chapelle and the Goutte-d'Or.
"They left before we did. Then the diligence caught up with them. From a distance I saw in a pool of moonlight on the yellow road the black irregular mass of the convoy. Then I heard a weary dirge; the wretches were singing. One, in a sad and gutteral voice, gave the couplet, which trailed dismally through the depths of the blue ravines:
Elle fait le trottoir,
Avec ceux de la bande
A Richard-Lenoir.'
"And the others took up in chorus the horrible refrain:
On aime bien, on aime bien
Nini Peau d'Chien;
Elle est si belle et si gentille
A la Bastille'
"I saw them all in contrast to myself when the diligence passed them. They were terrible. Under the hideous searchlight their eyes shone with a sombre fire in their pale and shaven faces. The burning dust strangled their raucous voices in their throats. A frightful sadness took possession of me.
"When the diligence had left this fearful nightmare behind, I regained my self-control.
"'Further, much further South,' I exclaimed to myself, 'to the places untouched by this miserable bilgewater of civilization.'
"When I am weary, when I have a moment of anguish and longing to turn back on the road that I have chosen, I think of the prisoners of Berroughia, and then I am glad to continue on my way.
"But what a reward, when I am in one of those places where the poor animals never think of fleeing because they have never seen man, where the desert stretches out around me so widely that the old world could crumble, and never a single ripple on the dune, a single cloud in the white sky come to warn me.
"'It is true,' I murmured. 'I, too, once, in the middle of the desert, at Tidi-Kelt, I felt that way.'"
Up to that time I had let him enjoy his exaltations without interruption. I understood too late the error that I had made in pronouncing that unfortunate sentence.
His mocking nervous laughter began anew.
"Ah! Indeed, at Tidi-Kelt? I beg you, old man, in your own interest, if you don't want to make an ass of yourself, avoid that species of reminiscence. Honestly, you make me think of Fromentin, or that poor Maupassant, who talked of the desert because he had been to Djelfa, two days' journey from the street of Bab-Azound and the Government buildings, four days from the Avenue de l'Opera;—and who, because he saw a poor devil of a camel dying near Bou-Saada, believed himself in the heart of the desert, on the old route of the caravans.... Tidi-Kelt, the desert!"
"It seems to me, however, that In-Salah—" I said, a little vexed.
"In-Salah? Tidi-Kelt! But, my poor friend, the last time that I passed that way there were as many old newspapers and empty sardine boxes as if it had been Sunday in the Wood of Vincennes."
Such a determined, such an evident desire to annoy me made me forget my reserve.
"Evidently," I replied resentfully, "I have never been to—"
I stopped myself, but it was already too late.
He looked at me, squarely in the face.
"To where?" he said with good humor.
I did not answer.
"To where?" he repeated.
And, as I remained strangled in my muteness:
"To Wadi Tarhit, do you mean?"
It was on the east bank of Wadi Tarhit, a hundred and twenty kilometers from Timissao, at 25.5 degrees north latitude, according to the official report, that Captain Morhange was buried.
"André," I cried stupidly, "I swear to you—"
"What do you swear to me?"
"That I never meant—"
"To speak of Wadi Tarhit? Why? Why should you not speak to me of Wadi Tarhit?"
In answer to my supplicating silence, he merely shrugged his shoulders.
"Idiot," was all he said.
And he left me before I could think of even one word to say.
So much humility on my part had, however, not disarmed him. I had the proof of it the next day, and the way he showed his humor was even marked by an exhibition of wretchedly poor taste.
I was just out of bed when he came into my room.
"Can you tell me what is the meaning of this?" he demanded.
He had in his hand one of the official registers. In his nervous crises he always began sorting them over, in the hope of finding some pretext for making himself militarily insupportable.
This time chance had favored him.
He opened the register. I blushed violently at seeing the poor proof of a photograph that I knew well.
"What is that?" he repeated disdainfully.
Too often I had surprised him in the act of regarding, none too kindly, the portrait of Mlle. de C. which hung in my room not to be convinced at that moment that he was trying to pick a quarrel with me.
I controlled myself, however, and placed the poor little print in the drawer.
But my calmness did not pacify him.
"Henceforth," he said, "take care, I beg you, not to mix mementoes of your gallantry with the official papers."
He added, with a smile that spoke insult:
"It isn't necessary to furnish objects of excitation to Gourrut."
"André," I said, and I was white, "I demand—"
He stood up to the full height of his stature.
"Well what is it? A gallantry, nothing more. I have authorized you to speak of Wadi Halfa, haven't I? Then I have the right, I should think—"
"André!"
Now he was looking maliciously at the wall, at the little portrait the replica of which I had just subjected to this painful scene.
"There, there, I say, you aren't angry, are you? But between ourselves you will admit, will you not, that she is a little thin?"
And before I could find time to answer him, he had removed himself, humming the shameful refrain of the previous night:
On aime bien, on aime bien,
Nini, Peau de Chien."
For three days neither of us spoke to the other. My exasperation was too deep for words. Was I, then, to be held responsible for his avatars! Was it my fault if, between two phrases, one seemed always some allusion—
"The situation is intolerable," I said to myself. "It cannot last longer."
It was to cease very soon.
One week after the scene of the photograph the courier arrived. I had scarcely glanced at the index of the Zeitschrift, the German review of which I have already spoken, when I started with uncontrollable amazement. I had just read: "Reise und Entdeckungen zwei fronzosischer offiziere, Rittmeisters Morhange und Oberleutnants de Saint-Avit, in westlichen Sahara."
At the same time I
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