Visions of Isabelle (17 page)

On May 15, he could stand it no longer. He begged them to help him put an end to his pain. They did not quarrel with him; no false sentiment told them to resist. Together they prepared him a mortal dose of chloral hydrate, and by sunset he was dead after a painless sleep.

He left them everything, but even in his will he referred to Isabelle simply as the daughter of Nathalie De Moerder. Was it out of malice that he withheld recognition even at the end? She didn't think so. Probably some obscure principle was involved–perhaps it was part of some compact with her mother, and, perhaps, too, some other man had been responsible for her birth. It didn't matter–Vava had been her father in everything but name–and, she decided, he'd wanted to spare her the sentimental tears he so abhorred. She chose to think this anyway, and when she read a special letter of instructions that accompanied the will, she grinned in the same admiring way she'd done at Bône when he'd ordered her to shoot herself or jump from the terrace wall.

"There should be no ridiculous expenditures," he wrote, "charged to the estate on account of my demise. The simplest pine wood coffin will do perfectly well, and everything should be managed so that the whole affair is cut-rate. For example, my body can be taken to the cemetery in a fourth-class hearse...."

S
he and Augustin began at once to look for ways to liquidate the estate. They advertised the villa for sale, but within a month a representative of the Russian legation arrived with members of the Swiss police. They sealed up the house, informing the heirs that Trophimovsky's will was now in contest. He had a wife and children still alive in Russia, and still resentful at his desertion thirty years before. They'd learned of his death and wanted the property for themselves.

Samuel, the notary from Vernier who had lent so much to Vava in the preceding year, promised to handle the legal aspects of the case, since both Isabelle and Augustin were anxious to go away. They gave him power of attorney and received in turn a thousand francs apiece, enough for Isabelle to get back to Tunis and live awhile until a settlement could be arranged.

She spent her last day in the garden, exhilarated by its wild state. All the neat rows had given way to chaos, indigenous plants were crowding out the tropical exotics, and it was clear that within a year all of Vava's work would be permanently destroyed.

It seemed to her that in its ruin the garden at last had come alive. Nature was reestablishing its order, more real, more beautiful than the compelled order of Vava's deranged mind. And just as the garden at last was free to become itself, so now, she felt, was she.

There was nothing to hold her anymore–no obligations, no sense of guilt to keep her from the life she craved. Physically she'd escaped two years before. Now, with the ruin of her family–the deaths of her mother, Vladimir and Trophimovsky, the disappearances of Nicolas and Young Nathalie, the shriveling up of Augustin–her bondage was broken, and she was free.

There was a trip she'd been planning for over a year. She would make it now, into the Sahara, across the sand.

"If the strangeness of my life were the result of snobbishness or posing then people could say: "Yes, she got what she deserved." But no one has ever lived more from day to day or more by chance than I. It's been an inexorable chain of events that has brought me to where I am–not anything I did myself."

Isabelle Eberhardt

Mes Journaliers
,

February 9,1901

O
n the morning of July 8, 1899, Isabelle Eberhardt, dressed as a young Arab male, made her way to the railway station at Place Mongi Bali in Tunis and boarded a rickety passenger car attached to a troop train bound for Constantine. For hours she stared out the windows, oblivious to the people who moved in and out of her compartment. Sometimes she fastened her eyes onto a hut or a horse or the mosque of a distant town, but mostly she focused on a single spot on the glass, letting the passing countryside blur before her eyes.

She spent two days like this, sometimes slipping into sleep, eating fruit and bread she bought in half somnambulant states from vendors who herded each time the train stopped. At Constantine, where she had to wait two hours for a connection, the station smelled of the smoke of coal. She went to a café outside, drank cup after cup of coffee, furiously smoked cigarettes, and allowed a boy to shine her red leather boots.

The train for Batna did not leave until dark. The seats in the first-class compartment were covered with stained brown velvet, and the kerosene lamps, which hung from a wire, coated the ceiling near their smokestacks with a carbon crust. Every once in a while the train would stop in the middle of nowhere, and she would hear cries, the banging of hammers against the track, and see men walking outside swinging lanterns from their arms.

The next morning she boarded a coach bound for the oasis of Biskra, and began to scribble impressions in her notebook. She arrived late in the afternoon, checked into the Hotel Caid, then went to the Arab Bureau where she requested an interview with the commandant of the region.

When, finally, she was shown into his office, Lieutenant Colonel Fridel met her with a cold and curious stare.

"I have no intention," he said,"of dealing with a servant. If Mademoiselle Eberhardt is serious about wanting to travel farther south, she will have to appear here herself."

"But I am Mademoiselle Eberhardt!"

"You are Mademoiselle Eberhardt?"

She nodded, and when some younger officers in the room began to laugh, Fridel glared about.

"Mademoiselle," he said, "I assume you have your reasons for appearing here in such repulsive garb. I won't ask you what they are. I am sure that no amount of explanation will ever make them explicable to me. But I must have an explanation of your request to travel. This area, as you know, is a military zone."

"I'm a writer, making a study of the local customs."

"A good pretext for a Methodist!"

She squinted with curiosity. "What?"

"One of those spying missionaries. One of those goddamn British troublemakers..."

"Colonel, I'm Russian. Look at my papers. And I happen to be Moslem, too."

The officers exchanged glances, but Fridel did not seem to hear.

"Can't stand Methodists–going to get rid of them all."

His face, now, was creased with rage. He snorted his words and pounded his fist upon the desk.

"This is absurd!"

He stared at her quizzically. "You're not a spy, you say?"

"Absolutely not."

"Very well. I'll consider your request. But, so help me, if I catch one whiff you've been making trouble, if you dare preach one particle of a sermon, then, young lady, you'll be sent back in irons to Constantine with an escort of my most rapacious legionnaires!"

More laughter from the officers as Fridel thumped his desk. Isabelle was dismissed.

A
n hour later at her hotel a boy told her there was a French officer waiting downstairs. She spotted him immediately–one of the captains who'd been lounging around Fridel's office at the end of the day–blond, proud, with a well-trimmed, haughty moustache, and narrow, hooded, demonic eyes.

When he saw her he snapped his heels.

"édouard De Susbielle," he said. "The colonel has signed your permit."

He handed her a paper bearing an angry slashing signature and a red stamp.

"Thank you."

"Not at all, Mademoiselle. And please forgive the colonel. Few European ladies come to these parts. The old man has forgotten how to act with a woman of quality."

"Your function, I gather, is to make his apologies."

"It seemed an appropriate mission."

She didn't like him very much as he stood there eyeing when her, and was wondering how to get rid of him when he grinned again.

"Have you eaten?"

She shook her head.

"Would you care to dine with me?"

"All right."

They moved into the dining room of the hotel.

There came a point during dinner when she was not so certain about her dislike. He treated her with deference, asked her all sorts of questions about the latest happenings in Europe, and confessed that it had been almost a year since he'd dined with a European woman alone. She intrigued him, he told her–there was something forceful in her personality, something adventurous that he could respect.

"My first impression," he said, "was that you were foolish to present yourself in Arab clothes. But I liked the way you stood up to the colonel. He's insane about Methodists, and became rather insulting toward the end."

She waved her hand with scorn.

"I know all about his sort. I've been corresponding for years with a captain who's served here a long time."

"Really? Perhaps I know him. What's his name?"

She was about to say "Eugène Letord" when she stopped herself and smiled.

"The letters were confidential."

"Of course. But you must understand that there are basically two types of officers: the ones who do their duty and represent France in the proper way, and the sniveling ones who fall all over the Arabs, fraternize, even take them as wives."

"I prefer the sniveling ones."

He bowed his head. "
Bien touché
."

He tried various other tactics during the meal, was clearly bent on her seduction. But there was such a divergence of views that no matter in which direction he thrust he could not get close to her heart. Finally he threw up his hands.

"I like you. You're obviously an intelligent woman, and you know who you are, which is more than I can say for most members of your sex."

He twisted a bit in his seat, watching her closely, hoping his compliment might crack her hard defense. But she thought him sly, and was about to tell him so when he struck again.

"I'd like to help you. I'm leading a convoy tomorrow to Touggourt. If you're interested you could ride along. You'd be under my protection, of course. All I ask in return is that you dine with me each evening on the road, so that we can further express our disagreements and continue this evening's stimulating dialogue."

Suddenly she was won. Touggourt! When she'd started from Tunis she'd harbored a vague plan to go as far as Ouargla. But already it was clear she'd miscalculated about the time of year. It was madness to travel the Sahara in July. August would be even hotter, more brutal. She'd come on a hope that she'd somehow fall into something, find some situation where she could fit. Who could have guessed that this stiff and pompous young man, who represented everything she loathed, would take an interest in her, find her notions "stimulating," desire her company?

At least
, she thought,
he's true to his type, and, no matter how tiresome, will lead me two hundred fifty kilometers deeper into the sand
.

Back in the lobby he kissed her hand. She found the gesture amusing though somewhat repulsive. His convoy would leave at sunset the following day. She assured him she would be there with a horse.

The moment De Susbielle was gone she felt relief. She couldn't bear the idea of arriving at a new place, dealing with officials, staying inside her hotel. She must explore, walk the streets, seek out a dark café from which she could observe the life of the oasis. Outside was Biskra. She must feel it, smell it, learn its sounds. She returned to her room to fetch her burnoose, then properly hooded and draped she stepped outside.

The summer moon shined brightly upon the cracked mud walls. Flute music burst from doorways as she made her way across the old quarter filled with people of all the races of the Sahara–Tuaregs, Mozabites, Negroes, Sudanese. The district of the Ouled-Naïls–that strange mountain tribe that sends adolescents of both sexes into prostitution before marriage–gave off an aroma of erotic power. Youths, their bodies supple and fresh, hovered in doorways, silhouettes against fires. As she strode leisurely through this great open-air love market, she felt their eyes upon her, burning, boring, trying to divert her from her path. The girls, bejeweled with silver earrings that dangled to their shoulders, and elaborate necklaces of heavy engraved silver triangles alternating with egg-sized amber beads, tried to lure her to them by rattling the bracelets on their arms.

Finally–a café, one sufficiently dark and secretive from which to observe this Saharan scene. She sat down with two young men, exchanged the usual Moslem greetings:

"Good evening."

"Thanks be to God."

"The night is good."

"God be praised!"

She introduced herself as "Si Mahmoud," a young Tunisian traveling the oases of the Sahara, visiting sacred tombs and monasteries to meet holy men and learn their wisdom. The young men, in turn, introduced themselves as brothers, Saleh and Bou Saadi Chlely Ben Amar, commercial traders, kif dealers and lovers of all women.