by Hugo Wilcken
Manne put down his pen. The words had come out in a single flow – it was the most he’d written in months, and the effort had exhausted him.
Later, he watched from the window as the commandant finally disappeared in the distance. Even before looking at his watch, he knew it was a quarter to eleven – the commandant’s habits had the dead inevitability of prison life. Downstairs, everything was quiet. Right after the commandant’s departure, the butler always disappeared somewhere as well. Perhaps he had a mistress in the native village.
Across the lawn, then down the little path to the folly – he threw the door open without knocking. She was sitting cross-legged on the ground, and seemed to be knitting or darning something. Whatever it was, she put it aside and got to her feet.
‘What’re you doing here?’
‘I wanted to see you.’
They stood facing each other confrontationally. The woman had her arms crossed beneath her breasts.
‘Well, you’re seeing me. What do you want?’
He took a breath. ‘I can’t stop thinking about you. I can’t concentrate on anything else, I can’t think of anything else.’
The clichés withered on his lips. He moved forward, put his arms around her waist and started to kiss her. She pushed him away.
‘No, no, stop it, stop it!’ The woman was wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. ‘For Christ’s sake!’ Another moment’s silence, then she shook her head. ‘Listen to me. I didn’t ask for your attentions. I don’t hope for your regard. I just wanted you to help me get away from here. If you won’t do that, then please God leave the camp immediately. If you won’t leave, I’ll feel constrained to tell my husband about the situation.’
‘You’ll tell him what happened yesterday?’
‘What happened yesterday was a mistake. It won’t be repeated.’
‘I can’t leave the camp. At least, not until I’ve done my work here.’
‘Your work here?’ She made a dismissive gesture with her hand. ‘I don’t know who you are or why you came here. I don’t believe a word of your story. You may be able to fool my husband, but I’m not taken in.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean I don’t believe you’re a botanist. I don’t believe in your tropical institute or your project. I haven’t a clue what you’re doing here and I don’t care to know, either. That’s what I mean.’
It was as if someone had just kicked him in the stomach and winded him. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’
‘Don’t I?’ She snorted derisively. ‘I’ve known botanists. You don’t look the part. You don’t act the part. You don’t even sound as if you’ve been to Europe since the war – you’re all wrong. Your accent, your behaviour, everything. I could probably guess some of your history if you like.’
He shook his head. ‘You’re a fantasist.’ That was all he could manage for a moment – then he felt a sudden fury at her frontal attack, and a desire to respond in kind. ‘You live here in isolation. You’re lost in your own world. I heard the story about your turning up in Saint-Laurent without a sou to your name. You’re like a naive girl running away from her finishing school. And you want me to help you!’
He stopped; the fury had passed as soon as it had come. He was thinking now about how she’d seen through him so accurately. Yes, he probably did look wrong to someone fresh out of France. The years of exile do something to a person. Back home, language, customs and everything else continue to evolve. Not so for the expatriate. He’s frozen in the moment of departure. To cover up, he adopts a neutrality in appearance, behaviour, accent. As though he came from nowhere. Manne had seen this in countless colonials. And yet it hadn’t occurred to him that others might see it in him.
‘Think what you like,’ said the woman coldly. ‘I really don’t care. I’ll find a way of leaving here.’
‘You think you can run away? What will you do in the end? Go back to France? Go back to your family?’
‘No. France is finished.’
‘Where, then?’
‘I told you. I’ll go to Buenos Aires.’
‘And what then?’
‘Work. I don’t know. Start a business.’
‘And what then?’
‘What then, what then!’she snapped. ‘Isn’t it enough for you? Why do you care?’
He couldn’t explain why; he watched her in silence. Although her hair was heavy and sometimes swept over her face when she was excited, he noticed that she never bothered to pat it back into place.
‘Perhaps it’s not enough,’ she continued tonelessly. ‘Who knows. It must be better than this.’
For a moment he thought she might break down, but she didn’t. She merely stared blankly at the wall behind Manne. She shrugged her shoulders. ‘Anyway. You got what you wanted.’
‘How do you know what I want?’
‘You know what I mean by that.’
‘Spell it out for me.’
She turned to him. ‘Do I really have to? All right, then. You treated me like a prostitute.’
‘What absolute rubbish.’
‘You played your game. Now leave me in peace.’
Manne said nothing. He didn’t move. All he could feel was the hollowness again.
‘You heard me. Leave me in peace. Get out. Get out, get out!’
She was screaming, loud enough for anyone to have heard it back at the house. Still Manne stood there, watching as she bent down, picked up the lamp from the ground and hurled it at him. He made no effort to get out of the way, and its metal edge caught him just above the eye, swinging him back against the wall. The pain was searing. A beautiful spectacle of glass shards filled the air, glistening with oil and the sunlight filtering in through the shutters.
His last image of the folly was of her standing there, openhanded, in shock at what she’d just done. Manne walked back along the path feeling light-headed. He put his hand to his forehead; there was blood, quite a lot of it. His clothes were splashed with oil.
In his bedroom, he took off all his clothes and examined himself in the small mirror above the washbasin. The light-headedness had given way to a dull headache. The cut hurt like hell. He washed the wound clean and tied a towel around his head to stop the bleeding.
There were no other shirts to wear; Guépard had taken them to be laundered. Instead, he put on his dressing gown and lay down on the bed, trying for a moment of lucidity. On the bedside table were Edouard’s drawings of the Vera Cruz orchid. Manne picked one up and stared into it. He remembered his sole encounter with that particular orchid. He’d never seen one in the wild, but his great-uncle had once bought a pair of them, probably at enormous expense. Manne had been fascinated by the fragile filaments that stretched from petal to petal, as though they’d been delicately glued on – fascinated by the way nature could be so unnatural. Like Edouard, Manne’s great-uncle had most likely been experimenting with pollination techniques. Unlike Edouard, he’d no doubt failed.
Manne got up, went to his trousers, which were lying on the floor, and fished out one of the woman’s notes from a pocket. He held it up to the light, along with the orchid drawing. The same watermark. No, he hadn’t been imagining things – they were written on the same expensive, cream writing paper. He turned this coincidence around in his head. Where would a convict have got hold of such paper? He had the impression of pieces that would perfectly slot into place if only he knew the trick to the puzzle. Absurd – in a place as small as Saint-Laurent, there was no doubt only one supplier of quality writing paper. There was no need to read any more into it than that.
He heard someone on the stairs, and went to the door. The butler was loitering on the landing.
‘Charles. Come here a moment.’ The butler walked over, none too quickly. ‘Could you please ask my servant to come up to my room.’
‘I’m afraid I don’t know where he is, monsieur.’
‘He told me you’d given him some task today …’
‘
Non, monsieur.’
‘Well, no matter. I need a change of clothes, but my shirts are being laundered. Could you find something for me to wear, please.’
‘You mean … you’d like to borrow one of the commandant’s shirts?’
‘If need be, yes. There’s another thing. As you can see, I’ve cut my head. I slipped on something, down by the river. I need a bandage to dress the wound, and some disinfectant.’
‘We don’t have anything like that here, monsieur. You’d have to go up to the camp hospital.’
‘I see. Well, go and see about the shirt.’
‘Oui, monsieur.’
Manne shut his bedroom door. Once again he felt angry at the butler, who should have at least offered to fetch the bandages and disinfectant himself. On second thoughts, Manne wasn’t feeling physically too bad, and the walk up might do him some good.
The butler returned with a clean white shirt, London-made, obviously the commandant’s.
‘Wait, Charles. I’ve been talking to the commandant about the state of the garden. My servant has some experience with gardens. I’ve offered his services. Instead of his kitchen duties, I want you to put him to work weeding the plots on the north side of the house. I’ll be drawing up some specifications for the garden when I have time.’
The butler raised an eyebrow. ‘The commandant hasn’t said anything to me about this, monsieur.’
‘Nevertheless, that’s the situation.’
‘I’ll see the commandant about it, monsieur.’
‘As you like.’
Manne wandered along the main avenue of the camp. Today it had a dilapidated, semi-deserted feel to it that reminded Manne of gold rush-era towns he’d passed through in the Brazilian interior. No one showed any interest in him or asked what he was doing, and eventually he had to ask a bagnard to direct him to the ‘hospital’. The man pointed to what appeared to be a converted barracks. A number of convicts were queuing up outside it.
Just inside the entrance, a doctor in a white coat sat on a stool, cursorily examining the men who stood in line, occasionally giving them a pill or bandaging a wound. Beyond him, in the dark, half-naked men lay on grubby mattresses on the dirt floor, immobile, staring up at the ceiling. Only one of them was sitting up: a man counting endlessly on his fingers: ‘27, 28, 29 – 27, 28, 29 – 27, 28, 29 …’ An air of terminal apathy pervaded the room. No one seemed to be paying any attention to the men.
Manne approached the doctor. ‘I’m staying with the commandant. I’ve cut my head. I need it properly bandaged.’
‘Let me see.’ The doctor squinted up. ‘Doesn’t look too serious. Wait for me in the mess hall. I’ll see to it when I’m through with these men.’
‘When will that be?’
‘About an hour.’
Manne walked back out, not unduly bothered that the doctor hadn’t given him precedence over the convicts. He continued slowly up the main avenue, towards the large arch that was under construction. A toy Arc de Triomphe, crowning a toy Champs-Elysées. A breeze blew down from the river; for once it felt cool and refreshing. Manne sat on one of the park benches bizarrely placed on the side of avenue.
The camp was disorientating, the ‘hospital’ depressing, and yet it was a relief to escape from the commandant’s house and the folly. As Manne sat watching the convicts wandering up the avenue, he could feel his mind clearing. He kept thinking about the woman. He wasn’t angry with her. He didn’t know what would happen now, whether she would tell her husband, whether he would leave tomorrow. He felt only a disinterested curiosity about it all.
The hour passed; he made his way to the mess hall. The doctor, a small man with a neat moustache, examined his head. ‘How did you do it?’
‘Fell onto some rocks.’
‘Feel any dizziness?’
‘No. Yes. A little.’
‘Pain? Headache?’
‘It comes and goes.’
The doctor got a roll of bandages from his bag. ‘I’ve used up all the disinfectant I brought with me. Rum’ll do just as well.’
He poured some over the cotton wool and dabbed it on Manne’s forehead, then wound the bandage loosely round his head.
‘Keep it disinfected. Rum or any spirit’ll do. Put some on a few times a day. It’ll probably throb tonight. D’you want something to help you sleep?’
‘Thank you, yes. What do I owe you?’
‘Have a drink with me. That’s all the payment I need.’
‘With pleasure.’
The same desperation to talk to a peer that Manne had seen in the commandant. The doctor poured him a glass. ‘What brings you this way?’
‘I’m doing preliminaries for a botanical expedition here.’ Manne quickly changed the subject. ‘So how long have you been at the camp?’
‘Oh, I’m not based here. I’m at Saint-Laurent. I do a round of the river camps, once every ten days. You’re lucky to catch me.’
‘There’s no doctor here? Who looks after those convicts I saw, at the hospital?’
‘Hospital?’ The doctor laughed sourly. ‘It’s not a hospital. It’s a mouroir. There are convict orderlies. They do the job as well as any doctor could, in the circumstances.’
