Tropic Moon (17 page)

He knew he was talking nonsense, because there was no train station in Libreville, and he'd been left to go off alone, without anyone to wave a handkerchief after him from the pier. But he liked the word “station” because it put him in mind of departures, the station in La Rochelle, his mother and sister.

He was very tired. Everyone had told him so. That had been after the big fight. Before that, Timar was never known as a troublemaker, especially not a public one. He was a well-brought-up young man, rather retiring by character.

But when Bouilloux had twisted his arm in the middle of that milling throng, he'd known that they were out to get him, and he'd struck out at random. That was what happened. The teeming mass—blacks and whites all mixed up together—had spilled out onto the road, and Timar's face had been scratched. He was bleeding. He'd lost his sun helmet and was sunburned.

He'd seen fights before, but he'd never been in one. He usually did his best to keep his distance, but this time he'd been right at the center. He'd noticed that the blows hurt a lot less than he would have thought and that it didn't take any courage to fight. Everyone was against him? Then he'd strike back against everyone. He'd hit out and kept hitting until, somehow, he'd found himself in the shady interior of the police station.

He recognized the bands of light and shadow, the table where they drank whiskey. He was sitting in a chair and the police chief was standing, giving him a peculiar look. Timar was so astonished that he ran his hand over his forehead and stammered, “I'm sorry. I don't really know what happened. They were out to get me.”

And he smiled a small polite smile. The police chief didn't smile: he looked at him with cold curiosity.

“Thirsty?”

He would have spoken like that to a black or a dog. He gave him some water, nothing else, and went back to pacing the room.

Timar wanted to stand up.

“Stay there!”

“What are we waiting for?”

It was unsettling. A little more and it would be weird.

“Sit down!”

His question hadn't deserved an answer—once again he saw himself as the victim of a plot.

“Come in, doctor. I hope you're doing well. You've heard what happened?”

The police chief indicated Timar with his eyes. The doctor spoke softly.

“What are we going to do?”

“He should be arrested. After committing an outrage like that …”

The doctor snorted. He addressed Timar coldly, just like the chief of police. “So you were the one who caused all the trouble?”

At the same time, he was lifting of Timar's eyelid and lowering it, taking his pulse for a few seconds, and examining him from head to foot.

“Uh-huh,” he growled out.

Then he turned to the police chief. “May I have a brief word with you?”

Out on the veranda, they whispered together. When the chief returned, he scratched his head and shouted to a boy, “Get the governor on the telephone!”

He spoke into the receiver. “Hello! Just as we thought, yes. Shall I bring him? Even if it weren't for this there'd be nothing else to do; the loggers would never stand for it. You'll meet us there?”

He picked up his sun helmet and said to Timar, “Coming?”

And Timar followed, surprised to find himself so docile. He was numb. He'd never imagined such torpor, an emptiness filling his limbs and head. He followed the chief of police into the hospital courtyard without asking why they were taking him there. The governor's car was already parked outside. In a very clean room, much cleaner than the rooms at the hotel, they found the governor. He didn't shake the hand Timar extended.

“I don't know, young man, if you quite realize the significance of what you've done.”

No! Honestly speaking, he didn't and he never would. He'd fought back. He remembered a black man and a black woman who were chanting something in a smotheringly hot room; Adèle looking at him from afar, trying to tell him something.

“Do you have any money?”

“I think there's still some in the bank.”

“In that case, I'm going to give you a bit of advice. There's a boat leaving for France in two days, the
Foucault
. Get on that boat and get out of here.”

Timar started to put up a struggle. He spoke slowly, trying to maintain his dignity. “I want to talk about this business with Adèle.”

“Some other time! Now get in bed!”

They left, the governor and the police chief both equally cold and contemptuous. Timar had slept. He was running a high fever and his head was splitting. He said to the nurse, “It's that nasty little bone, right at the base of the skull.”

Now he was on board the ship. There hadn't been a transition. The police chief had visited him in the hospital twice. Timar wanted to know if he could see Adèle.

“Better not.”

“What's she saying?”

“Nothing.”

“And the doctor? He says I'm crazy, doesn't he?”

That annoyed him. He might look crazy, but he wasn't. He made crazy faces and he acted crazy, and sometimes the thoughts spinning in his head even seemed crazy.

“It doesn't exist!”

No! He was sure of it. The proof was he was completely self-possessed. He'd packed his bags all by himself. He'd noticed that his white suits were missing and had asked for them: he knew that on board everyone wore white until Tenerife.

On the pier at 7
AM
, alone with the porters, he gave a snort as he turned to the red dirt road, its border of palm trees standing out against the sky. He'd said, “It doesn't exist!”

It did exist, obviously, though he knew what he meant. But he knew just as well that this was only a passing condition. That was why he wasn't ashamed.

He took his place in the launch. Suddenly, he buried his face in his hands. “Adèle!”

He ground his teeth. Between his fingers, he could see the blacks smiling. The sea was flat.

Now it was over. Africa was out of sight.

The barman came up.

“What can I get you?”

“An orange soda.”

From their brief exchange of glances Timar could tell that the barman thought he was crazy, too. They must have forewarned the authorities on board.

“It doesn't exist!”

A train … what train? Ah, yes—the train from La Rochelle; his sister, waving a handkerchief.

He brooded, seated in a wicker chair. He was dressed in black because they hadn't found his white colonial suit. Still, it made him feel good to be different from the other passengers. There were a lot of military officers—too many of them.

“Too many stripes,” he muttered.

And too many government officials! Too many children running around on deck!

What did that make him think of? Ah, yes—Adèle. She always wore black, too. Only she didn't have a child and she was naked under her dress. While the black girl had been naked and without a dress!

He remembered it all very well. Everything! It had been a lot worse than anyone would have ever believed. They wanted to blame the girl's father. Timar had saved him, but they'd banded together to attack him.

Because it was a conspiracy. Everyone was in on it. The governor and the prosecutor and the loggers. And all of them, of course, had slept with Adèle.

People dressed in white paced the deck to kill time.

“Killing? That doesn't exist!”

And suddenly Timar stopped thinking—at least he stopped thinking so fast. His thoughts hung in suspense. He saw himself, dressed in black, his sun helmet dangling from his neck, seated at the bar of a packet boat. He was returning to France.

He must have taken some blows to the head. It was enough to drive him crazy. They thought he was. But it wouldn't last long, he knew. He felt so good that he was just putting off the moment when he'd get better and be entirely back to normal!

It was a little trick he'd taught himself. He thought as hard as he could. He'd close his eyes halfway, letting the images mingle together until they grew distorted as in a dream.

Night fell. Some people at the next table, government officials by the look of them, were playing cards and drinking Pernod. Like in Libreville, at Adèle's! He'd learned how to play those games—it wasn't hard.

Already another night … Yes, it was a couple of weeks later … Just before arriving at the concession … In the flatboat … Yes, an attack of some sort … He'd been in a fight … He'd hit people … They'd put him to bed …

Adèle was lying next to him, naked. They were watching each other. They were both pretending to be asleep, but Timar really did fall asleep. She took advantage of him and ran off. When he woke up—no more Adèle!

The little black girl had been a virgin.

“It doesn't exist!”

People kept walking by, among them a young lieutenant with his sun helmet still on even though the sun had gone down. A captain at the card table said, “Afraid of moonstroke?”

Timar spun around. That was something he'd heard before somewhere, when he was sleeping or out of his mind. They'd said it with the same irony then, which is why he stared hard at the captain, as if he intended to demand an explanation or an apology.

The cardplayers consulted together for a moment in low voices. Then they rose.

“Shall we dress for dinner?”

And Timar, standing on the deck, followed them with a look of contempt.

Alone at his table for dinner, he felt calm and collected. He laughed sarcastically from time to time, since people were glancing at him with a mixture of pity and curiosity. It was on purpose that he kept muttering broken sentences under his breath.

There was a little girl who thought he was funny. Timar liked seeing her hiding behind her napkin and giggling.

It didn't matter. Timar knew that very well. It was like the tides. At a given time, the sea recedes, even if it appears to be in a fury. The whole thing was mathematical.

And in the same way the images were becoming more and more distinct, less jumbled together. Except at night. On two occasions he found himself in tears, sitting up in his bunk and soaked in sweat, his limbs trembling as he felt around for Adèle.

But now things had changed. It was night, and Adèle wasn't there. Or rather she was there but he couldn't touch her, hold her, feel her white breasts.

The black girl was in the bed, too, inert, resigned. That had to be looked into, a decision had to be made. Perhaps go away with Adèle, far off …

Oh God, let it all come to an end! No more Africa! No more Gabon! No more okume logs! Let the blacks have the logs and Constantinesco can go look after himself!

Only Adèle mattered, zebra-striped with light and shadow, between clammy sheets. Then he'd listen carefully: she was downstairs; he heard the boy coming and going as he swept up while she did her accounts at the bar.

It was the ship's doctor who woke him, a stupid young man who felt obliged to go on playacting.

“They tell me we're from the same part of the country, so—”

“Where are you from?”

“La Pallice.”

“That's not the same part of the country!”

A mile and a half off—but a mile and a half is a mile and a half. Not to mention that he looked like an idiot with his huge, bulging eyes. He wanted to know how Timar was feeling. Oh fine—calm and collected.

“Did you sleep well?”

“No—terribly.”

“Clearly you need some medication.”

If only they'd leave him in peace! That was all he asked. He didn't need anyone. He certainly didn't need medication. He was smarter than all the doctors in the world!

A lot smarter, too, than even he had been
before
. Because, now —he had antennas. He was aware of things that were too subtle for most people. He was aware of everything, even the future, even the visit the family doctor was sure to pay in La Rochelle, in the little house on the rue Chef-de-Ville—the family doctor who would also say, with a smile on his face, “So, young man, how are we doing today?”

And his mother and his sister and everyone—all worrying over him. And the doctor in the corridor, whispering as he left, “He needs to rest. It won't last.”

God! And they'd spoil him. They'd be sure to mention his cousin Blanche, from Cognac, who would materialize one Sunday in a new red dress!

Fine! He'd marry her, damn it. Just to have some peace. He'd take the job at the oil refinery they'd told him about, which actually was in La Pallice. In that neighborhood near the sea, where they'd built those hideous houses for workers. His house would be bigger, with a garden, villa-style. And a motorbike. He'd settle down there and be nice as can be. He'd never wanted anything as much as that. Perhaps he'd even agree to have some children.

The people he ran into on deck or in the music room could tell he had antennas. They turned away with a look of shock. They spoke in an undertone.

“And after?”

The best thing, really the best thing of all, had been when the twelve paddles leaped out of the water at once, and for a split second the twelve black paddlers held their breaths, their eyes fixed on the white man, before all going “Hah” in a deep voice.

And the twelve paddles plunged back into the water. Abdominal muscles strained and rippled, and there were fresh pearls of sweat on their skin and pearls of water splashing around the canoe!

No use talking about it. No one would understand.

Certainly not in his office in La Pallice. Certainly not Blanche, who was a pretty girl.

“It doesn't exist!”

He met the amused eyes of the barman, who said, “How's it going, Mr. Timar?”

“Okay.”

“You're going ashore at Cotonou?”

“Ashore? That doesn't exist!”

The barman gave him a complicit smile.

“Can I get you an orange soda?”