The next day the shining sun had returned, lighting one of the last pure, translucent days that every year precede the coming of winter. Wanting to take advantage of the calm afternoon that perhaps marked the last fine weather of the year, Seil-kor gaily suggested to Nina a long walk in the forest.
The girl, burning with fever but convinced she was suffering only from a passing cold, accepted her friend’s offer and set off at his side. Seil-kor carried a copious snack in a large basket dangling from his arm.
After an hour’s walk in the deep woods, the two children found themselves before an inextricable tangle of trees, marking the beginning of a vast, unexplored thicket that the locals called “the Maze.” The name was justified by an extraordinary mesh of branches and vines; no one could venture into the Maze without the risk of becoming lost forever.
Until that day, during their escapades, Seil-kor and the girl had wisely skirted around the fearsome border. But, enticed by the unknown, they’d promised each other to someday attempt a bold expedition to the heart of that mysterious region. This seemed a good opportunity for them to accomplish their project.
Seil-kor, with foresight, decided to mark the return path in the manner of Tom Thumb. He opened his basket of provisions, but, recalling the famous hero’s misadventure, did not tear his bread into crumbs. Instead he chose a Swiss cheese of dazzling whiteness, whose particles, undigestible to bird’s stomachs, would stand out clearly against the dark background of moss and briar.
The reconnaissance began; every five steps, Seil-kor poked the cheese with the tip of his knife and tossed a small fragment to the ground.
For half an hour, the two heedless children plunged into the Maze without finding the other end; daylight began to wane, and Seil-kor, suddenly worried, gave the signal for retreat.
For a while, the boy found his way, which he had marked continually. But soon the trail ended; some famished animal, fox or wolf, sniffing out the appetizing markers, had licked up the particles of cheese, severing the two wanderers’ lifeline.
Little by little the sky had darkened and the night grew opaque.
Terror-stricken, Seil-kor persisted for a long time in trying to find a way out of the Maze, but in vain. Nina, exhausted and shivering with fever, followed him with great difficulty, at every moment feeling her strength about to fail her. Finally, the poor child, faltering despite herself and letting out a cry of distress, lay down on a bed of moss at her feet; Seil-kor approached, anxious and discouraged.
Nina fell into a morbid sleep; it was now dark night and the cold was bitter. Advent had just begun, and a feeling of winter floated in the damp, glacial atmosphere. Seil-kor, frantic, removed his jacket to cover the girl, whom he didn’t dare wake from a rest she so desperately needed.
After a long doze fraught with restless dreams, Nina awoke and stood up, ready to resume her walk.
The stars shone with their brightest light in the clear sky. Nina, who knew how to orient herself, pointed to the North Star, and the two children, now following an invariable direction, reached the edge of the Maze after an hour. A final leg brought them to the château, where the girl fell into the arms of her parents, who were ashen with fright and anxiety.
The next day, still wishing to deny the illness that was now progressing rapidly, Nina awoke as usual and went to the study room, where Seil-kor was writing some French composition that Laubé had assigned.
Since returning from Africa, the young girl had been taking catechism at the village church; that morning, she was to finish her own composition, due to be handed in the next day.
A half hour of concentrated work was all she needed to finish her task and reach her final resolution.
Having written these first words: “I resolve…” she turned to Seil-kor to ask his advice about the rest, when a terrible coughing fit shook her entire body, provoking deep, painful rattles in her chest.
Horrified, Seil-kor approached the sick girl, who between two spasms told him everything: the shivers she’d felt when coming out of the shed—and the fever that, not having lowered since the day before, had certainly grown worse during her dangerous nap on the bed of moss.
Nina’s parents were immediately notified, and the girl was put back to bed without further ado.
Alas! Neither the resources of science nor the many attentions of a passionately devoted entourage could triumph over this terrible malady, which in less than a week removed the poor child from the worshipful affection of her kin.
After this sudden demise, Seil-kor, driven mad with despair, came to loathe the places until then divinely illuminated by his friend’s presence. Sites he’d visited so many times with Nina were made odious by the horrible contrast between his present grief and his lost happiness. On top of which, the cold season horrified the young Negro, who in his heart of hearts felt nostalgic for the African sun. One day, setting on the table a letter for his beloved protector, full of affection, gratitude, and regrets, he fled from the château, taking with him like holy relics the pillbox cap, ruff, and mask that Nina had made.
Working odd jobs at various farms he found along the way, he managed to save up enough to buy passage to Marseille. There, he signed on as stoker on a ship scheduled to skirt the western coast of Africa. During a stopover in Porto Novo, he deserted his post and returned to his native land, where before long his education and intelligence earned him a prominent position beside the emperor.
We had listened in silence to the story told by Seil-kor, who, pausing a moment from the emotions roused by so many poignant memories, soon resumed to tell us about the master he served.
Talou VII, of illustrious ancestry, boasted of having European blood in his veins. At an already distant epoch, his forebear Suann had conquered the throne by sheer force of daring, then had sworn to establish a dynasty. And this is what tradition held on the subject:
A few weeks after Suann’s coronation, a great sailing vessel, driven forward by a storm, had run aground near the shores of Ejur. Two young girls of fifteen, the sole survivors of the catastrophe, clutching onto a loose piece of flotsam, had managed to reach dry land after braving a thousand perils.
The castaways, ravishing twin sisters of Spanish nationality, had such identical faces that no one could tell them apart.
Suann fell in love with the charming adolescents, and, in his impetuous desire for progeny, married both of them that very day, pleased to affirm the supremacy of his race by the admixture of European blood that could strike the fetishistic imagination of his subjects, both then and in times to come.
It was not long afterward, again on the same day and at the same hour, that the two sisters each gave birth to a male child.
Talou and Yaour—for so the infants were named—later caused their father grave concern: caught short by the unexpected advent of two simultaneous births, he did not know which to choose as heir to his throne.
The perfect resemblance of his spouses prevented Suann from decreeing which one had conceived first, the only way to establish one brother’s rights over the other’s.
They tried in vain to elucidate this latter point by questioning the two mothers; using the few native words they had painstakingly learned, each testified firmly on behalf of her own son.
Suann decided he would defer to the Great Spirit.
Under the name “Trophy Square,” he had just built in Ejur a vast quadrilateral esplanade, so as to hang on the trunks of the sycamores planted around its border the spoils won from the enemies who, with fierce determination, had tried to block his path to power. He went to the northern end of the new site and had planted at the same time, in suitably prepared ground, the seed of a palm tree on one side and the seed of a rubber tree on the other. Each tree was associated with one of his sons, previously designated before witnesses; in accordance with divine will, the first tree to sprout from the earth would determine the future sovereign.
Care and watering were impartially lavished on both fecundated spots.
&nb
sp; It was the palm tree, planted at right, that first peeked through the surface of the earth, thus proclaiming Talou’s rights over those of Yaour, whose rubber tree was a full day late.
Scarcely four years after their arrival in Ejur, the twins, overcome by fever, perished at almost the same time, felled by the terrible ordeal of a particularly torrid season. During the shipwreck they had managed to save a certain miniature portrait depicting both of them side by side, coiffed in the national mantilla; Suann preserved this image, a precious document that proved the superior vintage of his race.
Talou and Yaour grew and, with them, so did the two trees planted at their births. The influence of Spanish blood was manifested in the two young brothers only by the slightly lighter complexion of their black skin and a slightly less accentuated thickness of the lips.
Watching as they grew, Suann sometimes worried about the murderous quarrels that might one day break out between them over his succession. Fortunately a new conquest helped allay his fears, by giving him the chance to create a kingdom for Yaour.
The empire of Ponukele, founded by Suann, was bordered to the south by the river named the Tez, the mouth of which was located not far from Ejur.
Beyond the Tez stretched Drelchkaff, a fertile region that Suann, after a successful campaign, managed to place under his dominion.
From the start, Yaour was designated by his father to sit one day upon the throne of Drelchkaff. Compared with the neighboring empire, the privilege seemed rather modest; Suann nonetheless hoped this compensation would calm the jealousy of his disinherited son.
The two brothers were twenty when their father passed away. Things followed their intended course: Talou become emperor of Ponukele, and Yaour king of Drelchkaff.
Talou I and Yaour I—for so they were designated—took many wives and founded two rival houses, always on the verge of entering into war. The house of Yaour demanded the empire, contesting the rights of the house of Talou; and the latter, for its part, emboldened by the divine intervention that had granted it the supreme rank, demanded the crown of Drelchkaff, of which it had been deprived through a mere whim of Suann’s.
One night, Yaour V, king of Drelchkaff, direct and legitimate descendant of Yaour I, crossed the Tez with his army and entered Ejur by surprise.
The emperor Talou IV, Talou I’s great-grandson, had to flee to avoid certain death, and Yaour V, realizing the dream of his ancestors, gathered under a single scepter both Ponukele and Drelchkaff.
By that time, the palm and rubber trees in Trophy Square had reached full maturity.
Yaour V’s first action after claiming the title of emperor was to burn down the palm associated with the abhorred race of Talou and to pull out every root of the cursed tree, whose early emergence from the soil had dispossessed his family.
Yaour V reigned for thirty years and died at the height of his power.
His successor, the cowardly and inept Yaour VI, made himself unpopular by his constant gaffes and his cruelty. Talou IV, leaving the distant exile where he had languished for so long, was then able to surround himself with numerous partisans, who fomented revolt by rousing the discontented populace to their cause.
Terrified, Yaour VI fled before the battle could start and took refuge in his kingdom of Drelchkaff, where he managed to preserve his crown.
Emperor of Ponukele once more, Talou IV planted a new palm seed in the spot Yaour V had desecrated; soon a tree emerged, identical to the first, whose significance it recalled while evoking, like an emblem, the restoration of the legitimate branch.
Since then, everything had proceeded normally, without violent overthrows or problems of succession. It was now Talou VII who reigned over Ponukele, and Yaour IX over Drelchkaff, both perpetuating the traditions of hatred and jealousy that, from time immemorial, had divided their forebears. The mark of European blood, long erased by many purely native unions, no longer left any trace on the persons of the two sovereigns, who resembled their subjects in the shape of their faces and the color of their skin.
On Trophy Square, the palm planted by Talou IV now magnificently outshone the rubber tree, half dead with age, that served as its counterpart.
XI
AT THAT POINT IN his narration, Seil-kor stopped to catch his breath, then broached certain more intimate details concerning the emperor’s private life.
At the beginning of his reign, Talou VII had married a young, ideally beautiful Ponukelean named Rul.
Utterly smitten, the emperor refused to choose other brides, despite the customs of his land where polygamy was the norm.
One stormy day, Talou and Rul, then three months pregnant, were walking arm in arm along the beach of Ejur to admire the sublime spectacle of the furious waves, when they saw out at sea a ship in distress that, after smashing against a reef, foundered straight to the bottom before their eyes.
Speechless with horror, the couple stood there for a long time, watching the fatal area where bits of wreckage had started bobbing to the surface.
Soon the corpse of a young white woman, evidently from the sunken ship, floated toward the strand, tossed about by the waves. The passenger, lying flat with her face to the sky, wore a Swiss costume composed of a dark-colored skirt, an apron with multicolored embroidery, and a red velvet corset that, stretching only down to her waist, encased an unbuttoned white blouse with wide, puffy sleeves. Through the transparent waters, they could see behind her head the glint of long golden hairpins, arranged in a star around a solidly braided chignon.
Rul, who was mad about finery, immediately became entranced by that red corset and those golden pins, and dreamed only of how they would look on her. Yielding to her pleas, the emperor sent a slave who climbed into a dugout canoe and headed out with orders to retrieve the drowned woman’s body.
But the foul weather made the task difficult, and Rul, whose morbid desire was only whetted further by the obstacles in its path, anxiously followed, with a mix of hope and discouragement, the perilous maneuvers of the slave whose prey kept eluding him.
After an hour of unrelieved battle against the elements, the slave finally reached the cadaver, which he managed to hoist into his boat; it was then that they discovered the corpse of a two-year-old child strapped to the dead woman’s back, her neck convulsively encircled by two feeble arms still clinging tight. The poor toddler was probably the drowned woman’s nursling, whom she had tried to save at the last instant by swimming for safety with her precious burden.
The nurse and child were carried to Ejur, and soon Rul took possession of the gold pins, which she arranged in a circle in her hair, and of the red corset, which she coquettishly fastened above the loincloth encircling her hips. From that moment on those adornments became her pride and joy and never left her body; as her pregnancy advanced she simply loosened the laces, which slid easily through the fine metal grommets of the eyelets.
For a long time following the disaster, the sea continued to toss ashore wreckage of all kinds, including numerous chests filled with a wide variety of items that were carefully gathered. Amid the debris, they found a sailor’s cap bearing the word Sylvander, the name of the ill-fated vessel.
Six months after the storm, Rul gave birth to a daughter whom they named Sirdah.
The hour of anxiety that the young mother had spent before the Swiss woman’s body was brought ashore had left its mark: the child, in all other respects healthy and well formed, bore on her forehead a peculiarly shaped red birthmark, from which radiated long yellow lines arranged like the famous golden pins.
The first time Sirdah opened her eyes, they noticed that she was severely wall-eyed; her mother, very proud of her own beauty, was humiliated at having produced an ugly duckling and developed an aversion to this child who offended her vanity. On the other hand, the emperor, who had so keenly desired a daughter, felt only deep love for the poor innocent, whom he showered with care and tenderness.
At that time, Talou’s adviser was a certain Mossem, a Negro tall of stature,
at once a sorcerer, medicine man, and scholar, who served as the emperor’s prime minister.
Mossem had fallen for the alluring Rul, who for her part fell under the sway of the seductive adviser, admiring his majestic bearing and great learning.
The affair followed its inevitable course, and Rul, one year after Sirdah’s birth, delivered a son who was the spit and image of Mossem.
Fortunately, Talou did not notice the fatal resemblance. Still, this son never quite entered his heart, where Sirdah still had pride of place.
Following a law Suann had instituted, each deceased sovereign was succeeded by the firstborn child, no matter the sex. Twice already, in each of the rival branches, girls had been called to rule; but in every case their premature deaths had transmitted to their brothers the right of supreme leadership.
Mossem and Rul hatched a despicable plot to do away with Sirdah so that one day their son could become emperor.
While this was happening, Talou, prey to his bellicose impulses, left for a long campaign and entrusted the throne to Mossem, who during the monarch’s absence would exert absolute authority.
The two accomplices seized upon the opportunity, so favorable to the realization of their plan.
To the northeast of Ejur stretched the Vorrh, an immense forest primeval where none dared venture because of a certain legend that the shade of its trees was populated with evil spirits. All they had to do was abandon Sirdah there, where her body, protected by superstition, would not be found by any search parties.
One night, Mossem went off carrying Sirdah in his arms; the following evening, after a long day’s walk, he reached the edge of the Vorrh and, too intelligent to believe in wives’ tales, fearlessly penetrated among the haunted trees before him. Reaching a wide clearing, he laid the sleeping infant Sirdah on the moss, then headed back to the plain by the same path he had just forged through the thick branches and vines.
Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series) Page 16
