May, 1940
(In which we watch Hercule watch Sylvie at the fence to the park, trying to figure out where the animals have gone to; Hercule, toying with the idea of going to fight with the Resistance in France, tries to meet with the spy from Dakar, who is recruiting; while spiriting away some tusks to the ivory cache, Hercule sees something odd inside the park; a caracal appears; Sylvie puts on a death-defying show for some guests from Belleville, which shocks Hercule; and Monsieur V-C announces a wonderful surprise for Hercule.)
Palm Deux
20 May 1940
5 (415 lbs.)
She places bowls at the fence of her park, often just scraps from their meals at the villa. It’s hardly enough to draw the animals out of hiding – if that is her intention. She tries anything she can find, from manioc and roots to leaves and overripe melons. Every morsel is guzzled up, although by whom or what still remains a mystery to me. Not a single animal has shown itself yet.
All this I can see from my quarters. Sometimes I use binoculars, because I don’t want her to notice that I too am curious about the animals’ whereabouts. They must venture out when no one is watching or when darkness falls. It helps them that there is hardly ever a moon at night.
I can see that the absence of creatures worries her. The look on her face as she stares through the fence, it is almost one of anguish. Is this how an animal lover feels when the animals stay away? I can only guess the answer.
My curiosity has got the better of me at least once so far. One afternoon, when everyone had turned in for a doze after lunch, I sneaked into the park. I didn’t wander very far, but far enough to have come across something: broken branches, leaves pulled off trees, traces of dung. But I found nothing. The place is so quiet, you can’t imagine anything at all living there. But somewhere inside that fence, they have found a place to hide and food to eat.
––––––––––––
Oh yes, before I end off I should mention something about the low figures over the last few weeks. I admit that I haven’t been at my best. But at least that means there are fewer carcasses to hide. Even Mohammed has been outshooting me; it is the first time he ever has.
When I took him some extra ammunition the other day, I found him with that young girl who started the fight outside the Noix. At least I think it was her. As I said, I have trouble with their faces. All I know is that she is younger than I thought, very young.
* * *
24 May
3 (225 lbs.)
There is a rumor going around here about a man from Dakar, in Senegal, where there is a bigger military presence. With the war coming so close to us, there are always rumors. But I think this person is real. If so, he could well offer me the escape I’ve been waiting for. He might be able to get me out of here.
* * *
22 June
14 (851 lbs).
News reached us by drum long before it came through on Monsieur V-C’s radio. Yaaba interrupted her usual silence for long enough to tell us what the drum beats meant. The message was convoluted, coming from an African language I didn’t understand, but in the end we found out what we needed to know: that an armistice has been declared.
Now everything from Algiers to La Cité, an area five times the size of France, lies in the hands of Hitler. Some people here are worried, although I can’t think why. We are untouchable. It does not take an engineer to work out that this is the last place on earth the Germans would fight for.
One only has to consider the odds facing them. They would have to cross a desert to Timbuktu and Bamako, face the guerrilla tactics of the Tuaregs, and then the bugs and diseases of a dense jungle. It would be easier to come by sea. But if they did that, they would have to anchor off La Cité and endure the treacherous currents. Thanks to the failure of Vridi, there is no harbor. By not finishing the canal, it seems, I have thwarted the enemy. Anyway, from what we hear, the German interest lies elsewhere in Africa, in more accessible places like Djibouti and Somaliland. Understandably so, too. Those countries lie closer to a more strategic canal, Suez, and the Red Sea.
Meanwhile, my friend Michel has left Kong and fled to the Gold Coast, from where he sent me a brief message. Ever since then, I have been thinking of following him east into British territory, but I will not act immediately. I keep thinking about the rumors of the man recruiting from Dakar. Rather than become a conscript for the British, I could be doing something useful – as a spy, or a sharpshooter even. So I will wait. How many times haven’t I seen that waiting pays off? With the elephants it always does.
My visit to the villa, to hear the latest war news, was my first since she held her splendid dinner. We drank coffee and then talked briefly of what the consequences of armistice might be. Monsieur V-C was full of bravado, speaking of how the people at home would not take defeat at all lightly, that they would resist. He thinks everyone is a hero of the Somme like himself. I have my doubts. There are plenty of people like Valery who would support the Germans at the first opportunity they got.
In a corner of the room where we sat, I saw a series of sketches of animals. They must be hers. So desperate is the animal lover to see some wildlife – nothing has appeared from behind the fence of her park yet – that she creates them on paper. She must copy them from books and pictures, the same way she did in the tapestry of the lion, for most of the sketches were of species one would never see in this part of the world. Poor woman, she has still learned nothing about Africa.
She left the room as soon as we began talking about the war. I suspect she doesn’t like being reminded of France, and how she left in such a hurry, and how her abilities as a nurse could have been used more effectively there. Instead, she chose a lucrative marriage in Africa. No wonder she did not want to hear of people dying.
As she always does, she went outside and sat on the porch with her chimp, Maurice.
* * *
26 June
On my way back to my quarters late this afternoon, I saw her in the midst of a large crowd of native women at the villa’s kitchen entrance. The place has become like a small railway station. The women come to work on a vegetable garden that she has started. Together they were leading the vines up poles and placing nets over bushes to keep off the black flies and tsetses.
Sometimes the women arrive with small, unidentifiable bundles they give to her. I don’t know what they contain, but I suspect they are some kind of payment for her palm readings. I have seen how the women join her occasionally as she sits under her umbrella. La blanche. She holds their hands and then talks, as if she were conspiring with them. You cannot miss her between the women, for she wears a pink scarf tied around her straw hat.
* * *
Belleville
30 June
7 (615 lbs.)
If he has a name, I did not find out what it is. I hardly had any time to drive here either. Monsieur Singh, who was heading south after doing our accounts, mentioned that he’d overheard a stranger at the Noix saying inflammatory things about the Germans.
“He should watch out,” Monsieur Singh said. “Anyone could be listening.”
Suspecting that the stranger was the man from Dakar – or the spy, as I like to think of him – I came to Belleville at once but must have missed him. It is difficult to find out any details either, for you cannot approach just any planteur and presume he will be on your side or pro-German.
While I was waiting, I overheard two men talking about someone they’d never seen before “who is on the lookout for hunters with a particularly good eye.” They were so drunk, they thought he wanted to employ someone to shoot elephants, not Germans. I will wait until I learn more.
* * *
Palm Deux
14 July
15 (917 lbs.)
Bastille Day. It was after work already and I was on my way down to the river when Mohammed caught up with me. He told me about an elephant causing havoc on the eastern edge of Zone B, knocking over trees in a ferocious display of what must have been either anxiety or aggression. Who ever knows why they do these things?
We had finished for the day, but Mohammed thought I would want to know about this one because of his unusually large tusks. As we drove off, we almost collided with several women leaving Madame V-C’s vegetable garden near the villa. I never saw her, but I didn’t think anything of her absence at the time.
When we reached the elephant in question, he had already broken a dozen trees, all of them good tappers. I took him below the left eye, and he fell where he stood. We inspected him, as we always do, then I cut out my tooth. Normally I would have left the tusks for later, but seeing it is weekend tomorrow, when Mohammed brings in the immigrants from the shantytown to clean up the carcasses, I decided we should conceal the ivory without delay.
To get to the hiding place from where we were, it was easiest to drive not along Route Douze but into Zone C and then north. Zone C is still unused and bare, and its vast flatness makes it perfect for driving on.
We had barely left the trees and turned north into the clearing, however, when the vehicle got stuck. In the silence after I’d cut the engine, I heard something quite unusual, a sound I hadn’t heard since my trip several months ago to purchase animals in Belleville. It was the caracal! At last I have confirmation that at least one of the animals I bought is still alive and in the park.
I waited for the growl to come again, but I heard nothing. Then I saw a movement between the trees in the park – the caracal? – then a flash of color. I am sure it was a bright scarlet or even pink. It could have been a parrot, but I instantly thought of her.
My curiosity was immediately offset by the most severe anxiety. Standing in Zone C, we were in full view of anyone in the trees. At once I instructed Mohammed to throw something over the back of the vehicle, to hide the ivory. If she was there, we couldn’t risk her seeing what we’d been up to. So far we have managed to keep the killing of elephants and the ivory a secret. I didn’t want to be found out, and, for that matter, in such a foolish way.
I kept looking toward the trees but saw and heard nothing more. I’m sure I was just imagining it. She could never have reached that far in the park without being mauled or killed. Besides the caracal, the elephant she named after me is in there. No, she never could have survived inside on her own.
Mohammed and I quickly got the vehicle out of the hole, then drove off and hid the tusks before nightfall.
As I sit here now and reflect on what happened today – Bastille Day should be memorable for better things than hiding ivory and running away from some imaginary person – I cannot help feel annoyed. It is because of her that I have to cover my tracks and even feel guilty about what I do. Why should I have to act as if shooting is not natural?
* * *
4 August
28 (1517 lbs.)
On the wide porch of the villa, Yaaba and her women had arranged the tables in a long row. At first I found it curious that we were on the side of the villa that hasn’t got the best view, of the Plantain River, but one of the lawn and, beyond it, the trees inside her park. All the chairs, meanwhile, were on the inner side of the tables, facing outward. I should have suspected something then already.
Guests arrived from early on, all the planteurs jovial and in the mood for a party. Even before I left my quarters, I could hear their children screaming with delight at the antics of Maurice swinging from the roof beams of the porch to the trees and back again.
The whole of Belleville must have been there, the chef de canton and his wife, she looking more bored than the previous time I’d seen her, the Maurys, who live near the shantytown and constantly complain about the noise the natives make when they celebrate late at night, the trader Olivier, who asked me if I had used my .605 yet, Valery and his wife with their five children, the strange doctor, his gray hair still not having seen a brush, and many others whose faces I know from the Noix.
The pleasant mood of the day was briefly interrupted when one of the native women took a seat at the table. She was well dressed, too smart to be one of Yaaba’s helpers, although I thought nothing of her expensive outfit until the incident. Her misfortune was to have taken a place next to Valery, who caused more of a fuss than you’d expect from someone who, as everyone at the Noix knows, has had a mousso almost from the day he arrived in Africa.
Madame V-C quickly intervened and placed the woman next to me. I didn’t mind, for the pasty wife of the chef de canton was about to take that very seat. The native was introduced to me as Eve. Speaking flawless French, she explained that she had been living in Paris until very recently but had fled when the city came under siege, and she had left most of her possessions behind. Who could blame her? It was Africa or the Nazis.
Until her departure she had spent all her time in Paris caring for orphan girls from French Africa. Many of them, she explained, arrived in France with nothing and with nowhere to stay. Some even stowed away on boats in order to get there. It was up to Eve to find them and guard them. Sometimes they were so sick when they arrived that she had to operate on them. I asked what kind of operations she carried out, but she did not elaborate. I wonder if she is the doctor our hostess met in Clignancourt and whether that is how they first came to know one another.
By the time the meal was over, you could see people wanted to get on their feet and move about. Their necks were strained from talking sideways to their neighbors. The children were kicking each other under the tables irritably.
Finally Madame V-C stood and said there would be a small performance. Even then my suspicions weren’t aroused. The children took this as a cue to escape their chairs and run onto the lawn. As our hostess followed them, Yaaba suddenly appeared from the side of the villa with something under her arm. Her limbs are so big that at first I couldn’t make out what it was that she was concealing. But then I saw it was an animal, young and squirming dreadfully, a gazelle of some sort. On spying it, one of Valery’s children screamed in delight. Another helper followed Yaaba, also bearing a creature. Then another, and another behind her, each with something small and young. They were all women I had seen before, working at the Coconut Shed or in the vegetable garden, having their palms read under the umbrella. The woman whose hand Sylvie had fixed that day in the village was there too and had covered her animal’s head to prevent it from biting her.
I didn’t know what to think. Could these have been the contents of the bundles that were brought to the kitchen door? Were these the gifts that were exchanged for palm readings? And if so, where had she been keeping them? I have been so busy shooting and covering my tracks afterward that I have not seen what she’s been up to. Then again, we hardly ever talk.
Most of the guests were curious by now and had wandered down from the porch. The gray-haired doctor and Eve stayed behind. So did Monsieur V-C, talking to the chef de canton, leaning close to him, probably going on about the war. When several children tried to touch the animals, their mothers pulled them back. I couldn’t help wonder what it was they disliked more, the animals or their beautiful young owner.
Madame V-C herself moved toward the park gate and opened it, after which Yaaba and the other natives followed her inside. The children wrestled free of their mothers, rushed to the fence and clung to it, peering through.
I only stayed long enough to see the natives place their live bundles on the ground before I left the table and dashed to my quarters to fetch a rifle. Women were inside the park, and so were the caracal and the elephant that is named after me, Perpignon. I immediately knew something bad was going to happen.
As I was coming back, loading shells as I ran, I heard a woman scream. It could have been a scream of delight, but it made me run faster. I didn’t trust the situation. By the time I reached the lawn, the guests were gathered in a row at the fence, blocking any shot I might need to take. There was a burst of laughter again. Once I was closer, I saw they were all watching Maurice play with the young gazelle, which kept stumbling and going in circles, first one way and then the other, only to find the chimpanzee coming around its other side.
The rest of the animals were gone, disappeared as if by magic. They had probably run for cover the first chance they got. The gazelle did not want to go, and it huddled near Yaaba. She and her mistress were the only women left inside the park.
At last the maid picked up the antelope and, entering the trees, was lost from sight for a moment. She returned empty-handed. Everything after that happened so fast, I hardly had time to think. There was a rustle in the undergrowth, which I mistook for the animals that had recently fled. I should have recognized the noise right away, because it is one I know better than most people. Yaaba immediately took Maurice’s hand and left the park, closing the gate behind her.
By the time I realized the sound came from an elephant, I was already running around the edge of the crowd, taking up a position to shoot. No one had seen me there with a gun – so preoccupied were they with watching what their hostess was up to – and I was not about to declare myself. There was no point in scaring them. That would only antagonize the elephant more.
And her? What was she up to? I felt like shouting at her to get out. How could she be so foolish? Picking up a baby chimp with her bare hands that very first day was nothing compared to the danger she faced now. What does she know about an elephant’s behavior after hanging around outside the fence, staring through it, leaving the animals scraps of food?
She obviously knew there was something out there, because she soon motioned the people to hush. They fell silent at once. It was so still, you could hear the palm vultures cry as far away as the Coconut Shed. Then, as only a forest elephant can, he appeared without breaking a twig. One of the women dropped her glass, she was so surprised. The other guests froze. Even though they live with the daily threat of elephants invading their own plantations or roaming onto the streets of Belleville, knowing that they are out there is very different from seeing one up close.
No one seemed to consider the terrible danger their hostess was in, so enthralled were they by a wild elephant being confronted by a human, a woman at that, and one without a gun. What could they have been thinking? That this was some kind of circus routine which she and the elephant had practiced for them?
I glanced briefly at the porch. Why had Monsieur V-C not put a stop to all of this? Did he not fear for his wife? But I couldn’t see him and, with all the people standing in the way, he probably couldn’t see what was happening either.
The elephant was only a hundred paces away from me now, she in between us. Her back was turned toward me, so she could see neither my gun nor me aiming at him. For the moment, the elephant seemed calm, unbelligerent. He stuck close to the vegetation, scratching his rump against a tree every now and then.
Though young and less than six feet high, he was huge compared to her. The cotton dress she wore made her appear even more fragile, although she stood as erect and rigid as a statue. Under the circumstances, she was following the best course of action – no action at all.
I kept my eye trained more on him than on her. When he stopped scratching himself, he turned toward her and the crowd. His gait remained casual, unthreatening, but I knew to get ready. My finger was on the trigger, a hair’s breadth away from pulling it. I was about to shoot when she, having moved not an inch until then, shifted right into my line of fire. It was as if she knew I was there.
I jumped to the right, my heart racing, my mind filled with the terrible thought that Hercule, the hunter who has managed to kill hundreds of elephants when they invaded the rubber groves, the man with innumerable teeth to prove his success, would not be able to kill the single one that mattered, the one that threatened a human being.
By the time I was kneeling in my new position, the elephant had stopped moving and, quite inexplicably, turned his back on her. Then she started approaching him. I was baffled. Was she mad? Was she trying to be killed? What were the two of them up to? The way the elephant was standing, I couldn’t get a good view of his head or his heart. I just kept hoping that I would be able to shoot him before he got her. When he finally moved again, he was so close to her that he could have crushed her. I brought the gun closer to my eye, but she was still blocking his vital organs.
They faced each other – the animal and the animal lover – and seemed to stand there forever until one of the children screamed in delight, which set off a chain of similar cries, and for the first time the audience seemed to understand the incredible danger she was putting herself in. The children were beside themselves with excitement, jumping up and down. Through it all, though, neither the elephant nor Madame V-C moved. And I realized that I had lost any control over the situation I ever had.
The elephant, meanwhile, could not have shown better timing than if he were a performer in a circus ring. When the people began clapping, he tossed his head, rolled up his trunk and then trumpeted, before retreating into the trees from which he’d come. I looked after him, still baffled by what I’d seen. I was even more amazed than the people around me because I knew something they didn’t know: that it had taken twelve strong natives to capture him.
When we were on the porch again, me feeling both confused and stupid, Madame V-C came over to me. She was still flushed from her confrontation with the elephant, and she looked at that moment more beautiful than ever. It suddenly struck me that I have totally underestimated her. I know neither who she is nor what she is capable of.
“You were very lucky,” I told her.
She smiled but said nothing. If she knew that I had been there with my gun, wanting to shoot, she didn’t let on. I was about to excuse myself when Monsieur V-C rose from his chair. I am convinced that he had not left his place until then, not even when his wife’s very life was threatened. Maybe he has total faith in her when it comes to animals.
He began one of his long, dull speeches about Africa, how wonderful it was to be here, in Belleville, and so forth. We had heard it all before. But then – as if I hadn’t had enough surprises for the day – he started talking about me. He thanked me for all my work on Palm Deux. He didn’t mention what that work entailed and what I’d done to get rid of all the elephants, but I knew that’s what he meant. At first it sounded like he was saying good-bye. Did that mean I was free to go? Leave Palm Deux? Go to war? And fight with whom, the British or the Resistance? At that moment, I felt elated at the thought of leaving, and yet I also felt utterly lost.
You can imagine my shock when he said nothing of the sort. I am not free to go anywhere. On the contrary, he wants more than ever that I should stay. He has at last decided on a new project for me – an engineering project. He wants me to build a canal.
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