‘Y
OU
mustn’t be afraid of anything.’
Since Baldabiou had made the decision, Hervé Joncour left for Japan on the first of October. He crossed the French border near Metz, travelled through Württemberg and Bavaria, entered Austria, reached Vienna and Budapest by train, and continued to Kiev. On horseback he traversed two thousand kilometres of the Russian steppe, crossed the Urals into Siberia, and travelled for forty days to reach Lake Baikal, which the people of the place called: the devil. He followed the course of the River Amur, skirting the Chinese border, to the Ocean, and when he arrived at the Ocean he stopped in the port of Sabirk for eleven days, until a Dutch smugglers’ ship carried him to Cape Teraya, on the western coast of Japan. On foot, taking secondary roads, he went through the provinces of Ishikawa, Toyama and Niigata, entered Fukushima, reached the city of Shirakawa, and rounded it on the east side; he waited two days for a man in black, who blindfolded him and led him to the village of Hara Kei. When he was able to open his eyes again, he found before him two servants, who took his bags and guided him to the edge of a wood, where they pointed out a path and left him alone. Hervé Joncour began walking in the shade that the trees, around and above him, carved out from the light of day. He stopped only when the foliage opened unexpectedly, for an instant, like a window, beside the path. A lake was visible, thirty yards below. And on the shore of the lake, squatting on the ground, with their backs to him, were Hara Kei and a woman in an orange robe, her hair loose on her shoulders. The instant Hervé Joncour saw her, she turned, slowly, for a moment, just long enough to meet his gaze.
Her eyes did not have an Oriental shape, and her face was the face of a girl.
Hervé Joncour began walking again, in the thick of the wood, and when he came out he was on the edge of the lake. A few steps ahead of him Hara Kei, alone, his back turned, sat motionless, dressed in black. Beside him was the orange robe, abandoned on the ground, and two straw sandals. Hervé Joncour approached. Tiny circular waves deposited the lake water on the shore, as if they had been sent there, from afar.
‘My French friend,’ murmured Hara Kei, without turning.
They spent hours, sitting beside one another, in talk and in silence. Then Hara Kei got up and Hervé Joncour followed him. With an imperceptible gesture, before setting off on the path Hervé Joncour let one of his gloves fall beside the orange robe, abandoned on the shore. It was already evening when they reached the town.
H
ERVÉ
Joncour remained the guest of Hara Kei for four days. It was like living at the court of a king. The whole town existed for him, and there was almost no action, in those hills, that was not carried out in his defence and for his pleasure. Life was seething in an undertone; it moved with a cunning languor, like a hunted animal in its den. The world seemed centuries away.
Hervé Joncour had a house for himself, and five servants who followed him everywhere. He ate alone, in the shade of a brightly flowering tree that he had never seen before. Twice a day they served him tea with a certain solemnity. In the evening, they accompanied him into the largest room of the house, which had a stone floor, and where the ritual of bathing was performed. Three old women, their faces covered by a sort of white greasepaint, ran the water over his body and dried him with warm silk cloths. Their hands were gnarled, but very light.
On the morning of the second day, Hervé Joncour saw a white man arrive in the town: accompanied by two carts filled with large wooden chests. He was English. He wasn’t there to buy. He was there to sell.
‘Weapons,
monsieur
. And you?’
‘I am buying. Silkworms.’
They dined together. The Englishman had many stories to tell: he had been going back and forth between England and Japan for eight years. Hervé Joncour listened, and only at the end did he ask
‘Do you know a woman, young, European I think, white, who lives here?’
The Englishman went on eating, impassive.
‘White women do not exist in Japan. There is not a single white woman in Japan.’
He left the next day, loaded with gold.
H
ERVÉ
Joncour saw Hara Kei again only on the morning of the third day. He realised that the five servants had suddenly disappeared, as if by magic, and after a few moments Hara Kei arrived. The man for whom everyone, in that town, existed always moved within a bubble of emptiness. As if an unspoken rule had instructed the world to let him live alone.
Together they ascended the hillside, until they reached a clearing where the sky was streaked by the flight of dozens of birds with big blue wings.
‘The people here watch them fly and in their flight they read the future.’
Said Hara Kei.
‘When I was a boy my father brought me to a place like this, put his bow in my hands, and ordered me to shoot at one of them. I did, and a great bird, with blue wings, fell to earth, like a stone. Read the flight of your arrow if you want to know your future, my father said to me.’
The birds flew slowly, rising and falling in the sky, as if they wanted to erase it, very carefully, with their wings.
They returned to the town in the strange light of an afternoon that seemed evening. Arriving at the house of Hervé Joncour, they said goodbye. Hara Kei turned and began walking slowly, descending along the road that ran beside the river. Hervé Joncour stood on the threshold, watching him: he waited until he was some twenty paces away, then he said
‘When will you tell me who that girl is?’
Hara Kei went on walking, with slow steps that bore no trace of weariness. Around him was the most absolute silence, and emptiness. As if by a special rule, wherever that man went, he went in an unconditional and perfect solitude.
O
N
the morning of the last day, Hervé Joncour left his house and began to wander through the village. He met men who bowed at his passage and women who, lowering their gaze, smiled at him. He knew he had reached the dwelling of Hara Kei when he saw an immense aviary that held an incredible number of birds, of every type: a spectacle. Hara Kei had told him that he had had them brought from all corners of the earth. Some were worth more than all the silk that Lavilledieu could produce in a year. Hervé Joncour stopped to look at that magnificent folly. He recalled having read in a book that it was the custom for Oriental men to honour the faithfulness of their lovers by giving them not jewels but the most beautiful, elegant birds.
The dwelling of Hara Kei seemed to be drowning in a lake of silence. Hervé Joncour approached and stopped a few feet from the entrance. There were no doors, and on the paper walls shadows appeared and disappeared without a sound. It did not seem like life: if there was a name for all that, it was: theatre. Without knowing why, Hervé Joncour stopped to wait: he stood motionless, a few feet from the house. For the entire time that he conceded to destiny, that extraordinary stage let only shadows and silences filter through. So Hervé Joncour turned back, in the end, and began walking, quickly, towards his house. With his head bent, he stared at his steps, because this helped him not to think.
T
HAT
night Hervé Joncour packed his bags. Then he was led into the vast stone-floored room, for the ritual of bathing. He lay down, closed his eyes, and thought of the grand aviary, a mad token of love. A wet cloth was laid over his eyes. That had never been done before. Instinctively he began to remove it but a hand took his and stopped him. It was not the old hand of an old woman.
Hervé Joncour felt the water flow over his body, over his legs first, and then along his arms, and over his chest. Water like oil. And a strange silence, around him. He felt the lightness of a silk veil descend upon him. And the hands of a woman – of a woman – dried him, caressing his skin, everywhere: those hands, and that fabric woven of nothing. He never moved, not even when he felt the hands rise from his shoulders to his neck, and the fingers – the silk and the fingers – go to his lips, and touch them, once, slowly, and disappear.
Hervé Joncour felt the silk veil lifted up and removed. The last thing was a hand that opened his and placed something in the palm.
He waited for a long time, in the silence, without moving. Then slowly he took the damp cloth from his eyes. The room was almost dark. There was no one around. He got up, took the tunic that was lying folded on the floor, put it over his shoulders, left the room, went through the house, reached his mat, and lay down. He began to observe the tiny flame that quivered in the lantern. And, carefully, he stopped Time, for all the time that he desired.
It was nothing, then, to open his hand and look at the piece of paper. Small. A few ideograms drawn one under the other. Black ink.
T
HE
next day, early in the morning, Hervé Joncour left. Hidden in his baggage he carried thousands of silkworm eggs, that is, the future of Lavilledieu, and work for hundreds of people, and wealth for a tenth of them. Where the road curved to the left, hiding the view of the village forever behind the line of the hill, he stopped, paying no attention to the two men who accompanied him. He got off his horse and stood for a while beside the road, with his gaze fixed on those houses, climbing up the spine of the hill.
Six days later, Hervé Joncour embarked, at Takaoka, on a Dutch smugglers’ ship, which took him to Sabirk. From there he went back along the Chinese border to Lake Baikal, journeyed over four thousand kilometres of Siberian territory, crossed the Urals, reached Kiev, and by train traversed all Europe, from east to west, until, after three months of travel, he arrived in France. The first Sunday of April – in time for High Mass – he reached the gates of Lavilledieu. He saw his wife, Hélène, running to meet him, and he smelled the perfume of her skin when he embraced her, and heard the velvet of her voice when she said to him
‘You’ve returned.’
Tenderly.
‘You’ve returned.’
I
N
Lavilledieu life ran simply, regulated by a methodical normality. Hervé Joncour let it slide over him for forty-one days. On the forty-second he gave in, opened a drawer in his travel trunk, pulled out a map of Japan, unfolded it, and found the piece of paper he had hidden inside it, months before. A few ideograms drawn one under the other. Black ink. He sat at his desk, and examined them for a long time.
He found Baldabiou at Verdun’s, playing billiards. He always played alone, against himself. Strange games. The normal man against the one-armed player, he called them. He made one shot in the usual way, and the next with one hand only. The day the one-armed player wins – he said – I will leave this city. For years, the one-armed player had been losing.
‘Baldabiou, I have to find someone, here, who knows how to read Japanese.’
The one-armed player made a two-cushion draw shot.
‘Ask Hervé Joncour, he knows everything.’
‘I don’t understand anything about it.’
‘You’re the Japanese, here.’
‘But, just the same, I don’t understand anything.’
The normal man leaned over his cue and made a follow shot for six points.
‘Then there is only Madame Blanche. She has a fabric shop, in Nîmes. Above the shop is a bordello. That also belongs to her. She’s wealthy. And she’s Japanese.’
‘Japanese? And how did she get here?’
‘Don’t ask if you want something from her. Shit.’
The one-armed player had just missed a three- cushion for fourteen points.
T
O
his wife, Hélène, Hervé Joncour said that he had to go to Nîmes, on business. And that he would return the same day.
He went up to the first floor, above the fabric shop, at 12 Rue Moscat, and asked for Madame Blanche. He was made to wait a long time. The parlour was decorated as if for a party that had begun years earlier and never ended. The girls were all young and French. There was a pianist who, with a mute, played tunes that had a Russian flavour. At the end of every piece he ran his right hand through his hair and murmured softly
‘
Voilà
.’
H
ERVÉ
Joncour waited for a couple of hours. Then he was led along the hallway, to the last door. He opened it and entered.
Madame Blanche was sitting in a large armchair, beside the window. She was wearing a kimono of a light material: completely white. On her fingers, as if they were rings, she wore little flowers of an intense blue. Shiny black hair, Oriental face, perfect.
‘What makes you think you are rich enough to go to bed with me?’
Hervé Joncour remained standing, in front of her, with his hat in his hand.
‘I need a favour from you. The price doesn’t matter.’
Then he took from the inside pocket of his jacket a small piece of paper, folded in quarters, and held it out to her.
‘I have to know what’s written there.’
Madame Blanche didn’t move an inch. Her lips were slightly parted, they seemed the prehistory of a smile.
‘I beg you,
madame
.’
She had no reason in the world to do it. And yet she took the piece of paper, unfolded it, looked at it. She raised her eyes to Hervé Joncour, lowered them. She folded the piece of paper, slowly. When she held it out, to give it back, the kimono fell open slightly, revealing her chest. Hervé Joncour saw that she had on nothing, underneath, and that her skin was young and white.
‘Return, or I will die.’
She said it in a cold voice, looking Hervé Joncour in the eyes, and betraying not the least expression.
Return, or I will die.
Hervé Joncour put the piece of paper back in the inside pocket of his jacket.
‘Thank you.’
He made a slight bow, then turned, went towards the door, and started to place some bills on the table.
‘Forget about it.’
Hervé Joncour hesitated for a moment.
‘I’m not talking about the money. I’m talking about that woman. Forget about it. She won’t die and you know it.’
Without turning, Hervé Joncour placed the bills on the table, opened the door, and went out.