Journey to the End of the Night (24 page)

Lower down, in the musty undergrowth, big heavy butterflies, bordered like death notices, quivered with the effort of opening their wings, and lower still it was us, sloshing through the yellow mud. We had trouble getting ahead, especially because the blacks were carrying me in a litter made of sacks sewn end to end. They could easily have tossed me in the drink while we were crossing a stream. Why didn't they? I found out later. Or they could have eaten me, since that was one of their customs.

Now and then I'd question them with my thick tongue, and every time they answered: Yes, yes. Always glad to oblige. Good fellows. Whenever my diarrhea let me go for a while, the fever took hold. You wouldn't believe how sick I was. I couldn't see things clearly anymore, or rather, everything was beginning to look green. After nightfall all the animals of creation surrounded our camp. We'd make a fire. But here and there, even so, a cry would pierce the great black awning that stifled us. Despite its horror of men and fire, a wounded, dying animal would manage to complain to us, seeing we were right there. After the fourth day I stopped even trying to distinguish reality from the absurd fever images that went chasing one another through my head along with fragments of people and endless tatters of resolutions and disappointments.

Even so, I tell myself today when I think about it that the bearded white man we met one morning on a stony promontory near the meeting of two rivers must have been real. A cataract nearby was making a hellish din. He was a sergeant, something like Alcide, except this one was Spanish. Worrying along from trail to trail, we'd ended up in the colony of Rio del Rio, an ancient possession of the Crown of Castile. That poor Spanish soldier also had a shack. I seem to remember that he laughed when I told him about my misadventures and what I'd done with my shack! His, I have to admit, looked a little better, but not much. His special cross was the red ants. On their annual migration those little bitches had elected to pass straight through his shack, and they'd been at it for going on two months. They took up practically all the space; you could hardly turn around, and if you got in their way, they pinched you hard.

He was overjoyed when I gave him some of my cassoulet, because he'd been living on tomatoes for the last three years. I couldn't better that. All by himself, he told me, he had downed more than three thousand cans. Tired of preparing the tomatoes in different ways, he had taken to sucking the cans like eggs, through two little holes in the lid. When the red ants discovered that a new variety of canned goods had arrived, they mounted guard around the cassoulet. It wouldn't have been advisable to leave a freshly opened can standing; they'd have summoned the whole nation of red ants to the shack. There are no bigger communists anywhere. And they'd have eaten up the Spaniard too. My host informed me that the capital of Rio del Rio was called San Tapeta,[54] a seaport famous all along the coast for its transoceanic galleys.

It so happened that the track we were on ended there, we would just have to go straight ahead for three days and three nights. I was good and sick of my delirium, so I asked the Spaniard if he knew of some good native medicine that would straighten me out. My head was acting up something terrible. But he wouldn't hear of any such mumbo jumbo. For a Spanish colonial he was strangely Africanophobic, so much so that when he went to the toilet he refused to use banana leaves and kept a whole sheaf of the
Boletín de Asturias
, cut up in little pieces for that express purpose. And he didn't read the paper . . ? same as Alcide. For three years he'd been living there alone with the ants, a few little kinks, and his old newspapers. What with his awful Spanish accent, which was so strong it was like having somebody else in the room, it was hard to get him stirred up about anything. When he chewed out his natives, it was like a tempest. For loudness of mouth, Alcide couldn't hold a candle to him. I took such a liking to that Spaniard that in the end I gave him all my cassoulet. Out of gratitude he made me a lovely passport on grainy paper stamped with the arms of Castile, with a signature so elaborate, so finicky, that it took him at least ten minutes to get it right.

He'd told the truth, you couldn't miss the road to San Tapeta, you only had to follow your nose. I don't remember the trip, but of one thing I'm sure, that as soon as we got there they handed me over to a priest who was so gaga that having him beside me gave me a kind of comparative self-confidence. But not for long.

The town of San Tapeta was plunked down on the side of a rock, directly facing the sea. It was hard to believe how green the place was. A magnificent spectacle no doubt, seen from the roadstead, splendid from a distance ... On the spot, though, there was nothing to admire but the same overworked carcasses as in Fort-Gono, everlastingly sweating and pustulating. In a lucid moment I dismissed the blacks of my little caravan. They'd crossed a long stretch of jungle and feared for their lives going back, so they said. In leaving me, they wept in advance at the thought of the journey, but 1 hadn't the strength to feel sorry for them. I had suffered and sweated too much. And I was still at it.

By day and by night, to the best of my recollection, a lot of jabberers?they were decidedly in plentiful supply?crowded around my bed, which had been set up for that very purpose in the presbytery, since entertainment was rare in San Tapeta. The priest filled me with
tisanes
, a long gilded crucifix dangled over his belly, and when he came near me a loud clinking of coins rose from the depths of his soutane. Conversation with those people was out of the question. It exhausted me completely just to mumble a word or two. I really thought it was all up with me, and I tried to take a last look at what could be seen of the world through the priest's window. I doubt if I could describe those gardens today without gross and outlandish mistakes. The sun was there, I can vouch for that, always the same, as if somebody had opened a big furnace in your face, and then behind it there was more sun and insane trees, whole avenues of them, those lettuces as big as oaks and those African dandelions, three or four of which would add up to a perfectly good chestnut tree in France. Throw in a toad or two, as hefty as spaniels, waddling furtively from one flowerbed to the next.

People, countries, and objects all end up as smells. I kept my eyes closed because I really couldn't open them anymore, Then from night to night the sharp smell of Africa was blunted. It became harder for me to recapture that heavy mixture of decaying soil, human crotches, and ground saffron.

Time, patches of the past, then more time, and then at a certain moment I felt a series of jolts and twists, and then the jolting became more regular, a swaying, a rocking ... I was still lying down, that was sure, but whatever I was lying on was moving. I let myself go, I vomited, then I woke up again and fell asleep again. I was on the sea. I felt so faint that I barely had the strength to catch the new smell of ropes and tar. It was cool in the heaving niche where I was lying directly under a wide-open porthole. They'd left me alone. Evidently my journey was continuing ... But what journey? I heard steps on the deck, a wooden deck right over my nose, and voices, and the waves lashing and melting against the ship's side.

Life seldom comes back to your deathbed, wherever you may be, except in the form of a low-down trick. The one those people in San Tapeta had played on me filled the bill. Taking advantage of my befuddled state, they'd sold me to the captain of a galley. A fine galley, to be sure, high of hull, well fitted with oars, crowned with beautiful purple sails, gilded figurehead, superbly upholstered officers' quarters, and on the prow a magnificent cod-liver-oil painting of the
Infanta Combitta
[55] dressed for polo. The Infanta, I was told later on, was the ship's sponsor, offering it the protection of her name, her tits, and her royal dignity. It was flattering.

After all, I reflected when I realized what had happened, in San Tapeta I was as sick as a dog, the whole world was spinning, and I'd certainly have died in that presbytery where the natives had left me ... Return to Fort-Gono? ... Those accounts would certainly have got me fifteen years ... Here at least I was moving, and that was ground for hope . . ? Come to think of it, the captain of the
Infanta Combitta
had taken a big chance in buying me, even dirt cheap, from that priest before weighing anchor. It was a risky investment, for that captain could have lost all his money ... He was counting on the brisk sea air to revive me. He deserved a reward and obviously he was winning his bet, for I was already recovering. I could see he was as pleased as Punch. I still raved quite a lot, but with a certain logic ... After I opened my eyes, he often came to see me in my cubbyhole. He was always wearing his plumed hat. That's how I saw him.

It amused him to see me try to raise myself on my pallet in spite of my fever. "All right, shitass!" he'd say. "You'll soon be able to row with the rest of them!" A kindly thought. He roared with laughter, giving me little strokes of his whip, but in a friendly kind of way, on the back of my neck, not on my rear end. He wanted me to laugh too, to share his pleasure at the business acumen he'd shown in acquiring me.

The food on board struck me as quite acceptable. My speech was still muddled. Soon, as the captain had foreseen, I recovered enough strength to join the boys at the oars. But where there were ten oarsmen, I saw a hundred: multiple vision.

The crossing wasn't fatiguing, because most of the time we were under sail. Our conditions between decks were no more nauseating than those of the usual third-class passengers on a Sunday excursion train, and not nearly as perilous as what I'd endured on the
Admiral
Bragueton
coming out. There was always plenty of breeze on this voyage from the east to the west of the Atlantic. The temperature dropped. Nobody complained about that between decks. The only trouble was that the trip seemed to be taking a long time. For my part, I had seen enough seascapes and jungle vistas to last me an eternity.

I'd have liked to ask the captain a few questions about the aim and purpose of this trip, but once I was definitely on the mend, he lost interest in me. Anyway, I was still driveling too much for conversation. From then on I saw him only from a distance, like a real boss. I started looking for Robinson among the galley slaves, and several times in the silence of the night I called him in a loud voice. There was no answer except for a few insults and threats from the other galley slaves.

Still, the more I thought about the details and circumstances of my adventure, the more likely it seemed to me that the same thing must have happened to him in San Tapeta. Except that Robinson must be rowing on some other galley. Those jungle niggers, I thought, must all have a hand in the racket. Why shouldn't they take their turn? They've got to live, haven't they? ... so naturally they sell the things and people they can't eat right away. The natives'

relative kindness to me could be attributed to the most sordid of motives. For weeks and weeks the
Infanta Combitta
sailed over the rolling Atlantic from fit of fever to fit of seasickness, and then one evening all was calm around us. My delirium was gone. We were bobbing at anchor. Waking next day, we realized on opening the portholes that we had reached our destination. And what a sight it was!

Talk of surprises! What we suddenly discovered through the fog was so amazing that at first we refused to believe it, but then, when we were face to face with it, galley slaves or not, we couldn't help laughing, seeing it right there in front of us ... Just imagine, that city was standing absolutely erect. New York was a standing city. Of course we'd seen cities, fine ones too, and magnificent seaports. But in our part of the world cities lie along the seacoast or on rivers, they recline on the landscape, awaiting the traveler, while this American city had nothing languid about her, she stood there as stiff as a board, not seductive at all, terrifyingly stiff.

We laughed like fools. You can't help laughing at a city built straight up and down like that. But we could only laugh from the neck up, because of the cold blowing in from the sea through a gray and pink mist, a brisk sharp wind that attacked our pants and the chinks in that wall, I mean the city streets, which engulfed the wind-borne clouds. Our galley spun its narrow wake just outside the docks, at the end of the shit-colored bay, asplash with schools of rowboats and avid, tooting tugs.

When you're down at heel, it's never much fun landing anywhere, but for a galley slave it's a lot worse, especially in America, because those people don't like the galley slaves that come over from Europe at all. "They're anarchists!" That's what they say. The only people they really welcome are tourists, who bring them dough, because all the currencies of Europe are relatives of the Dollar.

I might have tried what others had succeeded in doing, swimming across the harbor and once on land start shouting: "Long live Dollar! Long live Dollar!" It's a gimmick. A lot of people have landed that way and made a fortune. It's not certain, but so they say. Even worse things happen in dreams. I had a different plan in my head, along with my fever. On board the galley I'd become an expert at counting fleas (not just catching them but adding and subtracting them, in short, compiling statistics), a subtle skill, which looks like nothing at all, but still it's a technique and I thought I'd make use of it. You can say what you like about the Americans, but when it comes to techniques, they're connoisseurs. They'd be crazy about my way of counting fleas, I was sure of that in advance. I was convinced that I couldn't fail.

I was about to offer them my services when suddenly our galley was ordered to its quarantine station, a sheltered cove nearby, within hailing distance of a small village at the end of a quiet bay, two miles east of New York.

There we remained under observation for weeks and weeks, long enough to acquire a daily routine. Every evening after supper, for instance, our water squad would go ashore and make its way to the village. To attain my ends I'd have to go along. My shipmates knew what I had in mind, but the adventure didn't tempt them. "He's mad but harmless," they said. The food wasn't bad on board the
Infanta Combitta
, they got clubbed now and then, but not too badly, and all in all it was bearable. An average sort of job. And it had one sublime advantage, you couldn't be fired from a galley, and the king had even promised them a small pension at the age of sixty-two. That prospect made them happy, it gave them something to dream about, and another thing: they played at voting on Sundays, it gave them a feeling of freedom.