Seven Houses in France

III

IN YANGAMBI, IT was said that the cartridges for the Albini-Braendlin rifle were the most prized jewels in Africa, and that on the boats going up and down the river Congo, you were more likely to come across a diamond than a cartridge. It was also said, with less exaggeration, that King Léopold himself kept a count of the cartridges and required his representatives in Léopoldville to justify the use of each and every one, stating when, where and how it had been used. And so, after the Christmas meal, when Captain Lalande Biran named Chrysostome ‘Soldier of the Year’ and presented him with the prize of a box of one hundred cartridges, the seventeen white officers and ten African servants waiting on them could not suppress a sigh — of envy in some cases and astonishment in others.

‘Gentlemen, I give you the Hero of the Year!’ exclaimed Lalande Biran, inviting Chrysostome to take the floor.

‘I started out with twelve cartridges,’ said Chrysostome. ‘And before coming here tonight, I had only four left. Now I have one hundred and four.’

Not a muscle in his face moved, and instead of looking at his comrades or at the beautiful, beaming serving-woman standing next to him, he was gazing into the distance, at the river and the jungle.

Van Thiegel whispered to Lalande Biran: ‘I don’t know why you bother trying to please him, the man wants nothing whatever to do with us.’

Chrysostome’s attitude was not, however, due to arrogance or to feelings of scorn or indifference for his colleagues. At least, not entirely. The truth is that, like many heroes, like the great Achilles himself, Chrysostome had a weak point that prevented him from enjoying his enviable position and explained the tense look on his face. Put briefly and plainly, Chrysostome harboured a terrible fear. It wasn’t the fear of the Congolese rebels felt by the other officers in the Force Publique, nor a fear of lions, cheetahs, crocodiles or black mambas. Nor was he a man easily cowed by natural dangers, as he had demonstrated when they had gone to offer military aid to the post at Kisangani, where he had been seen standing at the very edge of the Stanley Falls, serenely firing at the enemy, as if God himself were whispering in his ear: ‘Fire away, Chrysostome. No poisoned arrow will harm you. You will, of course, have to die some day, but not here.’

Put him near a woman, though, and all that determination and energy melted away. There lay his Achilles heel.

His fear stemmed from an incident that had occurred when he was twelve years old. One day, while playing with friends on the outskirts of the village of Britancourt, he saw a man emerge from the dark mouth of a cave. At first, Chrysostome took the figure for a resurrected corpse, and thought that the suppurating wounds on the man’s face came from having been dead for some time; then, influenced by one of his companions, he thought it must be Jesus himself, in emulation of the recent apparition of the Virgin Mary at Lourdes. Before he was able to reach any conclusion, however, the man started shouting: ‘I still belong to the land of the living, that is my greatest sorrow. If only God would take me to him!’

Chrysostome and his friends asked what had happened to him.

‘I sinned against the sixth commandment,’ answered the man. ‘I was a handsome, blue-eyed man and had my pick of the women, but in the end, they proved to be my undoing.’

His words echoed in the mouth of the cave, and the pestilent stench of his body wafted to them on the breeze.

Later on, at home, he learned that the man in the cave was suffering from an illness called syphilis, and from that moment on, Chrysostome ceased to think of women as mirror images of his mother, still less of the Virgin Mary, and thought of them instead only as the creatures responsible for the unfortunate fate met by that stinking, ulcer-ridden man. The months passed, and the parish priest placed around Chrysostome’s neck a blue ribbon, the very one he was wearing when he arrived in Yangambi. The ribbon represented his purity of heart, a purity as intense as his fear of women.

In normal circumstances, his fear — or his purity of heart — would have worked in his favour in Yangambi, because it saved him from having to go into the jungle in search of women, as the other officers did, and thus from contracting syphilis or some other contagious disease. That same purity should have benefited other aspects of his life, as well as the sexual, leaving him, for example, with plenty of free time; instead, it began to work against him as soon as he became ‘Soldier of the Year’ and the privileged recipient of one hundred cartridges — one hundred golden jewels — that he kept stored away in his hut. We are none of us safe when surrounded by the envious, by snakes, especially when, as with Achilles, we have a vulnerable heel.

Most of the officers in Yangambi felt jealous of Chrysostome’s success. They suspected it would not be his last triumph, that there would be more prizes, more cartridges to be collected, and that, given the attitude of Captain Lalande Biran, who appeared to have a particularly soft spot for him, they would all end up in the hands of that novice. And this was not an alluring prospect. It was depressing having to live alongside a person who was worth more than one hundred cartridges; it was like seeing oneself in a mirror that reflected back an image of one’s own military mediocrity.

Nor was this purely a matter of sentiment. There was an important practical aspect to it as well. If Chrysostome were to come across a gorilla in the jungle, for example, he could happily shoot it, whereas the other officers could not. If they were to use a cartridge to kill the gorilla, that would mean having to use the butt of their rifle or their machete as a way of subduing or breaking any uncooperative workers and, worse still, being obliged to tell a lie and report that the missing bullet — which was not theirs, but the property of King Léopold — had remained lodged in the body of the rubber-tapper in question. Fortunately, the high-ups in Léopoldville did not demand to see the whole corpse as proof, being satisfied with a hand or even a finger, small objects which, once smoked, could safely be sent in the post in an ordinary envelope. But it was exasperating having to hold back like that and to lie. It meant that not even the oldest and most experienced soldiers in the Force Publique could go hunting! Their impure hearts allowed them other pleasures — women, children, etc. — but for the officers of the Force Publique, hunting was a necessity. And they could not indulge that need, whereas Chrysostome could.

The problem grew worse with time, and this was partly Chrysostome’s fault. Far from giving or even lending a cartridge to anyone who needed it, he began using them as currency, getting his colleague Lopes, for example, to hand over a gold chain bearing a medal of Our Lady in exchange for twelve cartridges. This precious, pious object immediately took its place alongside the blue ribbon. To make matters worse, he did not always treat Lieutenant Van Thiegel, Cocó, with the necessary tact.

One Sunday, when the palm wine had been flowing freely, the Lieutenant had the idea of organising a shooting match to decide who among the officers deserved the title of the William Tell of Yangambi. He would provide the cartridges, so no one need worry about that.

‘And I will win,’ he boasted to the other officers.

He sounded as if he meant it. Drink brought out the braggart in him and, to use a metaphor, it split his mind in two. On that day, the two halves were most unequal. In the first half, Chrysostome’s achievements were reduced to a minimum, in the second, his own were enlarged and multiplied, especially those relating to his time as a legionnaire.

A few children were brought from a nearby mugini, and the competition began with more than a dozen participants prepared to shoot at the apples that were placed on each child’s head. Not wanting to disappoint the Lieutenant, Lopes and the other officers did not try very hard, but Chrysostome was incapable of pretence and he played fairly and honestly, treating the second highest-ranking officer in Yangambi as if he were just another soldier. He split open five apples with five bullets, while the Lieutenant managed only two.

At first, the Lieutenant seemed to admit defeat in the sporting spirit that often characterises soldiers, and he joked that, as a left-hander, he was somewhat handicapped when it came to shooting. He had been told this often, especially during his days as a legionnaire, but had never really understood until now just how much of a handicap it was.

At that point, Chrysostome could have humoured him, but again he chose to play fair, and to be perhaps too scrupulously honest, and before the Lieutenant had even finished speaking — using his words to dig himself a hole in which to hide his embarrassment — Chrysostome signalled to the African servants to provide him with another target, another boy with an apple on his head, and this time he fired left-handed. The boy swayed slightly, but Chrysostome still managed to split the apple in two.

‘Now I’ve definitely run out of excuses,’ said the Lieutenant.

Chrysostome then made another mistake: he missed the opportunity to remain silent. It would have been easy enough for a man like him to have said nothing, for he rarely uttered more than twenty-five words a day. Instead he chose that moment to speak:

‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant. You shoot pretty well for a man your age.’

Ah, the unwitting cruelty of youth! If he had at least said, ‘Don’t worry, Cocó’, those words could have been interpreted as a remark made to a friend or even as a joke, but that ‘Don’t worry, Lieutenant’ left no room for doubt. And then he had the impudence to judge him, saying that he shot pretty well!

It was a humiliation; and a feeling of resentment, a sediment of hatred, lodged in one of the two halves of the Lieutenant’s mind. As for Chrysostome, it did not even occur to him that this second title — the William Tell of Yangambi — might cause him problems, and he got into the habit of swaggering around with the top three or four buttons of his shirt undone, to show off his blue ribbon and the gold chain. The other officers interpreted this as mere boastfulness, as if he were saying: ‘I may be one of the smaller men in Yangambi as regards physical stature and one of the youngest too, but with my Albini-Braendlin rifle, I’m bigger than all of you.’

The resentment and hatred that now lay in Lieutenant Van Thiegel’s heart began to spread throughout Yangambi.

A few weeks later, Chrysostome had turned up, carrying on his shoulders something that looked, from a distance, like a piece of timber. He passed the huts inhabited by the askaris and the black NCOs, crossed the firing range, walked as far as the centre of the Place du Grand Palmier, and then, instead of continuing on to his hut, he sat down on one of the white benches at the foot of the palm tree. He was clearly eager to show off what he had brought.

The officers in the square gathered round and were joined by some twenty or so askaris, as well as by some of the servants, male and female, who were working in the slaughterhouse or the grainstores. They saw then that the object was a hunting trophy: the horn of a black rhinoceros.

‘I didn’t want to shoot him straight between the eyes because I was afraid I might damage the horn,’ he explained to the curious onlookers. ‘That’s why I had to use three cartridges.’

Everyone stared at the horn. There wasn’t a mark on it. Then all eyes turned to Chrysostome. He had the top three buttons of his shirt undone, and the blue ribbon and Lopes’ gold chain glittered on his chest. His firm, hairless skin gleamed with sweat.

‘He’s not a bad hunter for a poofter,’ someone muttered, and those who heard him stored away that word ‘poofter’, like someone saving a sweet for later. The precise word he used in French was pédé.

It was only a few hours before everyone in Yangambi knew that Chrysostome had killed a rhinoceros, and Captain Lalande Biran summoned him to Government House and gave him a silver watch in exchange for the horn. Everyone was in agreement: the rhinoceros was a rare animal in that part of Upper Congo, as well as being a very difficult creature to hunt. The fact that one man had been able to do so on his own was quite extraordinary. For many days, this was the sole topic of conversation in the Club Royal.

And yet coiled beneath all these conversations, like a baby black mamba beneath the dry leaves on the jungle floor, was that word ‘poofter’. It soon reached every corner of Yangambi, and not an evening passed in the Club Royal without someone mentioning it at one of the tables. One night, Van Thiegel went further, took a step forward:

‘I don’t know what it is with Chrysostome,’ he said in the middle of a game of cards, ‘but he seems to positively avoid the company of women.’

Chrysostome was not in the club at the time, and Van Thiegel did not bother to lower his voice when he made the remark. He found it strange that a man in peak physical condition should have no contact whatsoever with women, especially in a place where, as Richardson used to say, even the feeblest could find fodder for his cannon. His fellow players sniggered, but did not pursue the comment. They were more cautious than the Lieutenant. They were thinking about Chrysostome’s perfect marksmanship and his large supply of cartridges and preferred to keep a low profile.

However, despite these fears and precautions, the die was cast. Like the young of the black mamba, which matures very slowly inside its egg, the word ‘poofter’ would need, firstly, a few months to grow and for its poison to infuse, and, secondly, the right circumstances in which to strike, for strike it would. The snake — the word — would be hurled at Chrysostome with the firm intention of destroying him.

The spring of 1904 was followed by the summer, a particularly beautiful summer that brought a round sun to the south of France, to the whole of the Riviera, to the Côte d’Azur, and, more to the point, to the small peninsula of St-Jean-Cap-Ferrat. Paradoxically, the circumstances that were about to intervene in Chrysostome’s destiny and come to fruition in Africa, in the darkness of the jungle, began to take shape there, in one of the centres of the world, in one of the most luminous, glittering, marvellous places of the Belle Epoque.