March, 1940
(In which we read about Hercule’s first meeting with the beautiful new madam of the plantation, Sylvie; he kills a chimp, she saves one; Hercule does inspections on animals he’s killed that might prove detrimental to his health (we’ll find out later if there is such a thing as divine justice); our hero is ordered to lie about killing the elephants on Palm Deux; Sylvie has her first dinner party on the plantation, where we meet a cast of odd characters; a young orphan elephant gets named after our hero – ironically; and our heroine makes a visit to the native village and reads palms.)
Palm Deux
2 March 1940
11 (1042 lbs.)
I have finally met her, although it happened in the strangest circumstances.
For the past week, a chimpanzee has been causing havoc in the native village. During its attacks, it has toppled cooking pots, rummaged through their possessions, pulled leaves from hut roofs, and frightened the children. The natives have been at their wits’ end, for it usually turns up in the morning or early afternoon, when they are at work and can do nothing about it. The few times they have had a chance to kill it, they were reluctant to do so. I found this curious, especially when you consider that, next to the core of an elephant’s trunk, barbecued monkey tail is their most favored delicacy.
The offending chimp was a big one, weighed at least eighty pounds, and was as tall as a small man if it stood on its hind legs. Its shouts and actions were terribly human too. Some of the natives believed its size and ferocity came from a malicious spirit. Mohammed, who has no time for these beliefs, joked that the animal’s most ‘spirited’ behavior occurred after bingeing on bangui it had found fermenting in a hollowed-out palm tree!
I only noticed the workers’ agitation a few days ago. On the way through Zone B, I found some of the men absentmindedly making huge incisions in trees that were too young, while others digging a trench appeared quite distracted from their task. At the Coconut Shed, Mohammed and I had to help the women douse a huge fire that left at least a thousand head of fruit burnt to cinders. The women were beside themselves. Only after that did Mohammed suggest it might be the chimp keeping them so preoccupied.
Though the natives wouldn’t kill the animal themselves, they were quite happy for me to do it. They even insisted I should. Normally I would have been elated, but I wasn’t. Monkey is much like fox and hare, a cinch to shoot. My one chance in Palm Deux to hunt an animal other than an elephant and it turns out to be something simple.
Mohammed and I planted a pile of figs near the village. Monkeys can’t resist them. Today we were driving down Route Douze when word came that the marauder was ensconced on the fruit and wasn’t in any hurry to leave. By the time we arrived, it was bloated already, looking quite ridiculous on its pulpy throne. The shot was so easy that I handed the gun, my smallest bore, a .300 Magnum, to Mohammed. He seldom gets to clean up after me when we go after the elephants, so I give him every chance I can.
He weighed the gun in his hands, a habit he has picked up from me, then took particular care aiming, his arms at their formal position, elbows out, the way he learnt in the army. The shot went clear through the monkey’s head, but the animal didn’t immediately fall over or stop eating. When it realized something had happened, it let out a series of short high-pitched squeaks, and then, holding its chest with one hand, lay down like a tired old woman. It was all quite dramatic.
We then carried out a cursory examination. As is our routine on all kills, especially on the elephants, we inspect the animals for any open wounds or signs of disease. I’m not sure what we are looking for, or whether we’d know if we found it, but Monsieur V-C insists.
The animal, we discovered, was a female – unusual considering her size, although it is usually the females who go off and scavenge for food. We prodded gums, eyes, belly, anus, hands and feet, the most obvious places for some malady. Besides a tendency to violence and unprovoked raids on native villages, though, she seemed just fine.
We were about to leave when we heard a rustling of leaves from the base of a nearby tree. At first I thought it might be a bushbaby or a hyrax, but then a baby chimp strolled out, as casually as a precocious child in the playground of Borely Park in Marseilles. At the same time an excited yell rose behind me. I instinctively grabbed my gun and turned back to the corpse, only to discover it was not the chimpanzee that had suddenly come to life, but was an enthusiastic old native woman who had also spied the new arrival. If there is anything better than the tail of monkey, it is a grilled youngster.
We were about to let them catch it when I heard a voice I least expected: Monsieur V-C’s. He never ventures into the groves, preferring to occupy himself with administrative matters in the coolness of the villa. A new wife, I would think, is also enough reason to stay at home. But he had not come alone. She was there too, standing a short distance behind him. Her face was strained. I don’t know how long they had been standing there, but she had clearly seen enough.
Before I could find out why they had come, Monsieur V-C summoned Mohammed, who immediately went back to the carcass, stepped over it, and grabbed the baby chimp, which was still playing with its lifeless mother. It shrieked at his gruff touch, and he clutched the back of its head, pushing it forward, just in case it tried to bite him. He then made his way toward not Monsieur V-C but his wife. And it was to her that he gave it.
The scene was quite bizarre, her standing there in a modish skirt and blouse, an outfit straight out of a boutique on the Rue de Rivoli, receiving into her hands a wild animal which had barely fallen out of the trees. If she was scared of being hurt, she did not show any sign of it. I thought her very foolish indeed.
The baby struggled at first, and I was sure it would sink its teeth into her. Has she not heard of rabies and septicemia, of how easily infection spreads in this climate? Does she not know we are a hundred miles from a clinic? If Monsieur V-C was at all concerned, he showed no sign of it. In no time at all she had wrapped the chimp in a cloth of sorts. She was very lucky indeed not to be hurt.
“It is wild, madame,” I warned her.
“Thank you,” she replied.
That is all we said. She then turned and headed to their vehicle, the creature for the moment pacified, a loose, long-fingered hand hanging over her shoulder. I had forgotten to introduce myself, even though she must know who I am.
Her name is Sylvie.
* * *
14 March
I have completed a second billiard ball. It’s very rough still, oddly shaped, needs smoothing down. Carving demands patience, especially when you have to ensure the nerve runs down the center of the ball. That gives it balance. Our elephants’ ivory is also very delicate, and it splinters easily. I have lots of time to carve, perhaps too much. The nights seem to get longer and longer. I suppose it would be easier if I drank like the men at the Noix.
Sometimes I get it into my head to leave, just pack my bags, my one bag, and take off. I wonder if I will get back to Europe soon and have a chance to fight. Did I leave France too quickly? Getting out of here now is not that simple, even if I went through the right channels. ‘War personnel,’ that is how I’m classified, even though I see no war, no other personnel. But I am sure an opportunity will present itself to escape. Vridi came along at the right time. I must be content to wait. I must show patience. In the meantime, I carve.
* * *
29 March
28 (2912 lbs).
I have just returned from the most elegant dinner at the villa. Who would ever have imagined such a sumptuous event in this far-off, humid place? But life here has changed since she arrived. Not even the fact that Valery was one of the guests could spoil the evening. He didn’t mention the confrontation with Mohammed and me outside the Noix, so I presume all is forgotten.
Besides several other planteurs and their wives, the chef de canton was there, as was the portly Monsieur Singh, as well as a curious man who sat in a corner most of the evening, his distinctive feature an unruly shock of gray hair. He is a doctor who lives alone in the hills north of Belleville and studies herbal treatments used by the natives, or something equally eccentric. When I tried to talk to him, he answered curtly, apparently preferring to be left alone. The only person who managed to animate him slightly was our hostess.
She has brought a perceptible change to the villa. In the past, I preferred to avoid the huge house, for it was moribund, clean but lifeless. The quiet, gigantic maid Yaaba would keep the place in order and cook Monsieur V-C’s meals, but she added nothing more. Now even the portraits of the Valdez-Cullot ancestors seem less dour, if that is possible. There are also colorful new tapestries, one bearing the words Nôtre Maison Belle Maison. In the kitchen is a huge mural of a lion in a jungle. On viewing it, Valery commented that the only cat in our jungle is a leopard.
“And even if there were a lion, you’d never have time to design it.” When she asked why not, he answered, “Madame, we would have already shot it.” With that, he and the other men laughed raucously.
Monsieur V-C, at the far end of the table, was more distant than usual. I am sure it is the war. It is the one thing on everyone’s mind after the recent defeat near Alsace. All his interests are affected. His stores in La Cité have few products, and they get little passing maritime trade. His boat that used to run down the coast hardly ever sails anymore. As for Palm Deux, even if we could get the produce out, we don’t have what the world wants. Sales of rubber have fallen, and we hear rumors of artificial alternatives being developed in America. It’s only a matter of time before one is found. And demand for palm oil has been flagging for years. The subject of coconuts is avoided, meanwhile, because all the planteurs are vying for the same limited quota from the soap factory in Daloa. If the world wants anything, it is pineapples and bananas. Monsieur V-C has grand plans to plant fruit in Zone C, but it might already be too late to start planting.
I thought tonight might be a good time to ask him about his plans for me. I keep wondering what he has in mind, maybe something like a bridge or a new road. That would take my mind off of the long nights and thoughts of getting out of here. The elephants and billiard balls are not enough anymore. By being simple, my work has become routine. I keep thinking of my friends back home fighting. But Monsieur V-C has said nothing so far. Nor has he mentioned the hunting ground for which I gathered the animals. I suspected the dinner might be an occasion to make an announcement, tell everyone that we would soon be having our very own hunting season. But I was wrong – he never spoke about it once.
For the most part, our hostess kept the table entertained. She had stories about Paris: a funny conversation with a harassed politician on the Place de l’Opera, not once recognizing the man as Daladier; a meeting with a West African doctor in Clignancourt, never thinking at the time that she herself would later move here. Even though she must have left a while ago, and things at home change daily, she bears the freshest news. The random newspapers we get are old and talk only of Hitler. And not even Valery wanted to hear about him tonight. The men were more interested in what the women in Les Halles look like now, and if Marlene Dietrich had come to Paris again. And what of the contentious Hedy Lamarr?
The other wives, Valery’s in particular, were obviously annoyed at the attention our hostess was getting. Compared to them, Madame V-C is young and slim. Looking at the others sunken into the couches, you could see that it is the women who suffer worst in the tropics. After several years, their bodies swell badly, their faces harden. Most of them have lost a child or two, know that their husbands keep moussos in Belleville. Madame V-C, meanwhile, is fresh, full of ideas.
She herself remains a mystery. I have learned nothing about her, where she is from, how she came to be in the Gulf of Guinea and married to Monsieur V-C. At one point before I left, she took me aside. She is slight next to me, and she seemed very young all of a sudden. She said that Maurice was doing well. I had no idea who she was talking about, although it sounded as if she expected me to know. Could Maurice be an aging relative she brought from Europe? A dog? It turns out that Maurice is the name she has decided to give the baby chimpanzee.
* * *
15 April
12 (910 lbs.)
I have to lie about the elephants. At first I thought Monsieur V-C was joking, but he couldn’t have been more serious. And it’s all because of her. He is adamant that she shouldn’t know about the shooting or the ivory cache. She also must not find out that my purpose on Palm Deux is to kill elephants. How crazy it all is. I argued with him, although I don’t know why I bothered. It is his plantation, his profits that will dwindle.
“And what of the rubber and the coconuts?” I asked angrily. “The place will be eaten bare. We will go out of business faster than all our competitors. Besides, you employed me to shoot. What am I supposed to do now?”
He doesn’t understand the day-to-day running of the plantation, lets Monsieur Singh give him the latest statistics, and that keeps him satisfied. He thinks he’s still at La Coupole in Paris. After listening to my arguments, however, he conceded that I had a point. He said I could carry on shooting, but not to let her see or hear anything.
“This is to be between us alone,” he said. “Our secret.”
Having heard this condition, I became even more agitated. Has the man lost all his senses? Where is Monsieur V-C’s mind these days? Clearly, it is with her. Once again, I put up a fight. Did he really think this ruse to be possible? That he could fool her?
“There will be the bodies lying about, gigantic bodies,” I put it to him. “There will be the tusks. She will roam through Palm Deux sooner or later and will find some evidence. The natives collect the meat every time I shoot, and they will talk. She is bound to hear about it.”
This time he remained firm.
“You are an engineer and a hunter,” he said. “You figure it out.”
The choice he gave me is this: either I shoot and cover up my tracks, or I do not shoot at all.
I gave no answer at the time, but I have since had a chance to reflect. As crazy as it sounds, the cover-up could work. And, oddly enough, it could be the challenge I’ve been looking for. It is not an engineering project exactly, but I could view it as such. Firstly, only Mohammed and I handle the tusks. Secondly, it is just the two of us, along with Monsieur V-C, who know the ivory’s whereabouts. Thirdly, seeing the elephants are accustomed to staying in the north of Zone B, most of our shooting takes place far from the villa and the native village. No one need hear us. If an elephant should wander near the laborers, I will not act immediately. I will stalk it until it is safe to shoot, and no one will see it die.
The hardest thing will be to hide the carcasses from the natives, and to get rid of the meat without them knowing about it. One possibility is to bring in outsiders from the shantytown north of us. Being immigrants from the French Sudan, they don’t mix with our natives. Mohammed can drive them down once a week. It will be difficult, but we might be able to do it.
Even though I left Monsieur V-C’s ultimatum unanswered at the time, I did point out an obvious contradiction. Why forbid me to shoot only elephants, I asked. Why not stop me from killing all the animals? It was then that I finally found my opportunity to bring up the subject of the hunting ground.
“It seems foolish that we should only be able to shoot inside the enclosure, and not outside it.”
As soon as I said that, I noticed his surprise – “A hunting ground!” he cried out – whereupon several things suddenly made sense to me. Why, for instance, Madame V-C had been so confused when I touched on the subject. And why it was that I had received specific instructions, before I left for Belleville, to get not only big animals, but small ones too. Of course! How could I have been so stupid as to think the menagerie I had so painstakingly collected was meant to be shot? Those creatures are not for us hunters at all. They are hers.
Monsieur V-C himself confirmed this, and in doing so he disclosed certain things about his wife and how she came to be here. He told me that he had been communicating with several agencies in Paris for almost two years, ones that introduce prospective spouses. For a long time, he’d received no replies. No one wanted to come to a plantation in Africa, let alone one that was three hundred miles inland from the Gulf of Guinea. Dakar or Lagos or Conakry maybe, but Belleville? None of the women even knew where Belleville was. And not even the war or the promise of a healthy stipend was incentive enough for them to leave a dangerous continent for an unknown one. Of course, there were women who would marry him for a few sous, but he did not want a putain, he said. He wanted someone of his own class.
“And then you helped me get her, Hercule,” he said suddenly.
Me? Imagine my amazement. How did I fit into all of this?
Monsieur V-C, it turns out, had gotten his idea from a trip I made into the jungle south of us shortly after arriving on Palm Deux. It was the only hunting excursion I have been able to go on since coming here, seeing my duties keep me so occupied. What made the expedition so exceptional was that I killed a leopard, and my description of that experience left a deep impression on Monsieur V-C, especially my words about how a leopard makes Africa so special. Little does he realize what I really meant: that I considered not the animal special, but the hunt for the animal.
“I was looking at my search in the wrong way,” he continued. “No woman would be interested in rubber or coconuts, palm oil or a general store in La Cité. She wouldn’t even be attracted by a ship on which she could take a leisurely cruise to Gaboon.
“So I asked myself: What do we have on Palm Deux that a woman would like, something that would capture her heart? Then I realized what it was. Why hadn’t I thought of it before?” He paused, recalling his own cleverness. “The leopard, of course. All the animals! And it was then that I began advertising for … an animal lover.”
I almost laughed. Animals! What a clever deceit. Everyone else here knows the truth. Almost the only animals that infiltrate the plantations are elephants. But how could an unsuspecting girl from Paris, or Lille, or wherever she’s from have known that? How foolish she is to have been taken in by his story. What could she have been expecting to find out here anyway? Did she think Africa would be full of the animals she is used to? And what would that be? A horde of fluffy dogs? Cute kittens she could keep on her lap? Fifis and Caramels?
While I should feel sorry for her, I am not. She has done what a woman in Africa should not do: she has meddled in the operations of a plantation. Even though I can carry on killing elephants – with plenty of unnecessary subterfuge, that is – she has put a stop to all other hunting. There’s little chance of me ever being able to take on the animals I bought: the sable, the bongo and, of course, the caracal. And what does she plan to do with them anyway? Put them on a leash maybe, lead them around by the nose, perform tricks with them? Will she start a zoo? Already she has Maurice following her around like a dog. Sometimes when I pass the villa, he is playing in the firebird trees, her sitting with a book in the shade below. At night he has taken to sleeping in a cot on the porch. No closer to a dog can you find. Animals in Africa were not made for this.
* * *
17 April
Nil.
We seem destined to dislike each other. My hunting is an offense to her, the same way her coddling of wild animals is to me. The only difference is that I know what her passion is, but she doesn’t know mine. How I should like to tell her, show her all the teeth I have collected. Wouldn’t that shock her? Tonight I took them out to see how many of them there are, to run my hands through them, to let the small ivorylike chips pour through my fingers. Imagine if she could see these. Then she would see who I am.
* * *
20 April
3 (126 lbs.)
It took most of the afternoon to put the youngster away. Monsieur V-C had asked me to find one for the hunting ground. (Oh, I forget, I cannot call it that anymore. It is a park. Her park.) We took down part of the northern fence, which lies adjacent to the open area we call Zone C. Once the young bull saw the trees in her park, he fled into them. Madame V-C was there when we let him go, and she asked how his mother had died. Trust her to ask. I told her that the animal had choked to death on a coconut shard and that we found the youngster wandering near her carcass. It was a ridiculous story but all I could think of at the time. As it turns out, I could have told her anything and she would have believed me. How gullible she is.
Seeing that I had saved the creature, she said, she would name him after me, Perpignon. How funny. I killed the elephant’s mother, and now she has named him after me.
* * *
27 April
6 (916 lbs.)
I saw her walking in the plantation, Yaaba at her side. The large silent maid is with her most of the time, towering over her almost threateningly. I was going in the same direction, so I offered them a lift. I want to discourage her from wandering through the plantation and maybe stumbling onto an elephant carcass. I made an excuse of it being unsafe.
“Not safe?” she exclaimed. “From whom? Animals or humans?”
I’m not sure what she meant by that, but I didn’t think it important.
“There are large creatures about. And you know there is a cat in the park. The caracal. It could get out. And even though it may not be big, it could easily kill you.”
She accepted my offer. Yaaba carried a vanity case that she kept on her lap all the time, covered with her ample arms as if it contained a treasure. When we reached the native village I stayed on, for I was curious to see what the two women were up to.
It being a Saturday, when the men go fishing, there were only women and children about. Understandably, they seemed wary of the white lady. She set herself up under a tree, looking not unlike a sous-chef waiting for people to come and pay their head tax.
One shy child with an ugly lump on his forehead approached her, but a woman grabbed him and pulled him back. Two older women standing alone came up to her and said something quickly, which Yaaba translated. Neither of them seemed particularly eager to be with Madame V-C, especially while the others were watching. Once they had moved away, she explained to me that both of them, after a recent trip to Odienne, had contracted sleeping sickness. She was treating them with arsenic.
I was astounded. She uses poison as a treatment? What does she know of these things, I asked. Cleaning wounds and passing out mild medications is one thing, but dispensing a lethal poison?
“It is already unwise for you to be in the village,” I put it to her. “But what if you should kill one of the natives? There would be an investigation.”
It was then that she told me that she is a nurse. The vanity case, when opened, displayed an array of pills, alcohol, methyalate, numerous bottles of dark liquid, a few tweezers, and several shiny sharp knives. She admitted that her nursing course in France had taught her very little about tropical diseases, but she had been reading whatever she could find. The doctor with gray hair who was at her dinner party and lives north of Belleville had told her things too, including what he knew of such radical treatments as this one.
At that moment a series of shouts broke out in one of the huts. Yaaba suddenly appeared, dragging a woman who was clutching one of her arms to her chest. The screaming native might as well have been on her way to the stake, she was so unwilling to cooperate. But Yaaba is as strong as an ox, and there is no fighting her. The villagers who hadn’t already gathered around Madame V-C were now drawn by the racket. Soon everyone was circled around the white lady. Once in front of her, Yaaba grabbed the struggling woman in such a way that the hand she’d been clutching was visible. It was a mass of blood.
She had apparently wounded herself while sharding at the Coconut Shed, piercing her hand on the end of a metal tripod. She kept screaming at Madame V-C, who got up from her chair and stood right in front of the patient, as unrash a move as it had been taking a baby chimp in her bare hands. The woman spat at her, which made the other natives gasp. Yaaba was about to hit the wounded woman, but Madame V-C intervened and took hold of the patient’s healthy hand, the right one. The woman pulled back, but suddenly seemed to lose all her strength and her desire to escape. It was as if some mysterious power was being exerted over her. Madame V-C turned the hand over, palm upward, and began stroking it. Her gesture soothed the native, who all at once let herself be led into the shade of the tree. The two of them sat there, one opposite the other, Madame V-C talking softly and Yaaba translating. I didn’t hear what she said at first, but then realized that she was reading the woman’s palm.
The villagers were fascinated. They’d never witnessed such magic before. They know native fetishists but not a European one. I heard them call her la blanche, the white one. Madame V-C, in the meantime, was saying something about a desert, a lost husband, a drowning. At different words, the spectators muttered excitedly to each other. Their eyes were wide as saucers. Only later did I learn that Madame V-C had quite correctly recounted the patient’s life.
The woman had lived for several years with a man who was the only immigrant on Palm Deux. He had come down from French Sudan when he was a child. He had died shortly before my arrival in Belleville, when the taxi he was traveling in veered off the road into the Plantain, and he and the ten other passengers drowned. She had been left with three children to care for. She was concerned that if she died now, they would be left alone. Madame V-C told her not to worry, that she would live long enough to marry again.
Her words did the trick. By the time she’d finished talking, the native was as quiet as if she had been sedated. Not even I had noticed that she had in the meantime been coaxed into putting her wounded hand into a bowl of dark curative solution. Once Madame V-C had wrapped the hand with a bandage and said a few more words to her, she closed her bag and stood to leave. Before she could take one step, though, several of the other women moved in and blocked her path. They touched her, as if that would prove she was real. It reminded me of the way the Senegalese merchants in Belleville had poked my caged animals. A few of them stuck out their hands, demanding a palm reading too. Yaaba pushed them back, but her mistress was unbothered by the attention. She even seemed to enjoy it.
On the way back to the villa, I asked her where she’d learned to read palms.
“It is nothing,” she laughed. “A trick I learnt at school.”
I replied that it looked real enough to me.
“I prepare well,” she said.
Before going to the village, she had found out everything she could about the wounded woman. That was why she had gone there in the first place – to treat her hand. Yaaba had told her what she knew of the woman’s background. All Madame V-C had done was to relate the woman’s life back to her.
“A little information can be priceless,” she said conspiratorially. “I just talk to them.”
She couldn’t have possibly carried out a palm reading that convincingly if it had been her very first time. But she clearly didn’t want to tell me any more than that. Then she turned to me.
“Would you like me to read your palm?
I immediately declined.
She laughed. “Are you afraid?”
Yes, I felt like answering the animal lover, I’m afraid you might see the traces of cordite.
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