Atlantida - Pierre Benoît (good books to read txt) 📗

a way that pained us all very much. I told you that he stayed longer among us than anyone else. We had become used to him. In Antinea's room, on a little Kairouan table, painted in blue and gold, there is a gong with a long silver hammer with an ebony handle, very heavy. Aguida told me about it. When Antinea gave little Kaine his dismissal, smiling as she always does, he stopped in front of her, mute, very pale. She struck the gong for someone to take him away. A Targa slave came. But little Kaine had leapt for the hammer, and the Targa lay on the ground with his skull smashed. Antinea smiled all the time. They led little Kaine to his room. The same night, eluding guards, he jumped out of his window at a height of two hundred feet. The workmen in the embalming room told me that they had the greatest difficulty with his body. But they succeeded very well. You have only to go see for yourself. He occupies niche number 26 in the red marble hall.'

"The old woman drowned her emotion in her glass.

"'Two days before,' she continued, 'I had done his nails, here, for this was his room. On the wall, near the window, he had written something in the stone with his knife. See, it is still here.'

"'Was it not Fate, that on this July midnight....'

"At any other moment, that verse, traced in the stone of the window through which the English officer had hurled himself, would have killed me with overpowering emotion. But just then, another thought was in my heart.

"'Tell me,' I said, controlling my voice as well as I could, 'when Antinea holds one of us in her power, she shuts him up near her, does she not? Nobody sees him any more?'

The old woman shook her head.

"'She is not afraid that he will escape. The mountain is well guarded. Antinea has only to strike her silver gong; he will be brought back to her immediately.'

"'But my companion. I have not see him since she sent for him....'

"The Negress smiled comprehendingly.

"'If you have not seen him, it is because he prefers to remain near her. Antinea does not force him to. Neither does she prevent him.'

"I struck my fist violently upon the table.

"'Get along with you, old fool. And be quick about it!'

"Rosita fled frightened, hardly taking time to collect her little instruments.

"'Was it not Fate, that on this July midnight....'

"I obeyed the Negress's suggestion. Following the corridors, losing my way, set on the right road again by the Reverend Spardek, I pushed open the door of the red marble hall. I entered.

"The freshness of the perfumed crypt did me good. No place can be so sinister that it is not, as it were, purified by the murmur of running water. The cascade, gurgling in the middle hall, comforted me. One day before an attack I was lying with my section in deep grass, waiting for the moment, the blast of the bugle, which would demand that we leap forward into the hail of bullets. A stream was at my feet. I listened to its fresh rippling. I admired the play of light and shade in the transparent water, the little beasts, the little black fish, the green grass, the yellow wrinkled sand.... The mystery of water always has carried me out of myself.

"Here, in this magic hall, my thoughts were held by the dark cascade. It felt friendly. It kept me from faltering in the midst of these rigid evidences of so many monstrous sacrifices.... Number 26. It was he all right. Lieutenant Douglas Kaine, born at Edinburgh, September 21, 1862. Died at Ahaggar, July 16, 1890. Twenty-eight. He wasn't even twenty-eight! His face was thin under the coat of orichalch. His mouth sad and passionate. It was certainly he. Poor youngster.—Edinburgh,—I knew Edinburgh, without ever having been there. From the wall of the castle you can see the Pentland hills. "Look a little lower down," said Stevenson's sweet Miss Flora to Anne of Saint-Yves, "look a little lower down and you will see, in the fold of the hill, a clump of trees and a curl of smoke that rises from among them. That is Swanston Cottage, where my brother and I live with my aunt. If it really pleases you to see it, I shall be glad." When he left for Darfour, Douglas Kaine must surely have left in Edinburgh a Miss Flora, as blonde as Saint-Yves' Flora. But what are these slips of girls beside Antinea! Kaine, however sensible a mortal, however made for this kind of love, had loved otherwise. He was dead. And here was number 27, on account of whom Kaine dashed himself on the rocks of the Sahara, and who, in his turn, is dead also.

"To die, to love. How naturally the word resounded in the red marble hall. How Antinea seemed to tower above that circle of pale statues! Does love, then, need so much death in order that it may be multiplied? Other women, in other parts of the world, are doubtless as beautiful as Antinea, more beautiful perhaps. I hold you to witness that I have not said much about her beauty. Why then, this obsession, this fever, this consumption of all my being? Why am I ready, for the sake of pressing this quivering form within my arms for one instant, to face things that I dare not think of for fear I should tremble before them?

"Here is number 53, the last. Morhange will be 54. I shall be 55. In six months, eight, perhaps,—what difference anyway?—I shall be hoisted into this niche, an image without eyes, a dead soul, a finished body.

"I touched the heights of bliss, of exaltation that can be felt. What a child I was, just now! I lost my temper with a Negro manicure. I was jealous of Morhange, on my word! Why not, since I was at it, be jealous of those here present; then of the others, the absent, who will come, one by one, to fill the black circle of the still empty niches.... Morhange, I know, is at this moment with Antinea, and it is to me a bitter and splendid joy to think of his joy. But some evening, in three months, four perhaps, the embalmers will come here. Niche 54 will receive its prey. Then a Targa slave will advance toward me. I shall shiver with superb ecstasy. He will touch my arm. And it will be my turn to penetrate into eternity by the bleeding door of love.

"When I emerged from my meditation, I found myself back in the library, where the falling night obscured the shadows of the people who were assembled there.

"I recognized M. Le Mesge, the Pastor, the Hetman, Aguida, two Tuareg slaves, still more, all joining in the most animated conference.

"I drew nearer, astonished, even alarmed to see together so many people who ordinarily felt no kind of sympathy for each other.

"An unheard of occurrence had thrown all the people of the mountain into uproar.

"Two Spanish explorers, come from Rio de Oro, had been seen to the West, in Adhar Ahnet.

"As soon as Ceghéir-ben-Cheikh was informed, he had prepared to go to meet them.

"At that instant he had received the order to do nothing.

"Henceforth it was impossible to doubt.

"For the first time, Antinea was in love."

 

 

XV THE LAMENT OF TANIT-ZERGA

 

"Arraôu, arraôu."

I roused myself vaguely from the half sleep to which I had finally succumbed. I half opened my eyes. Immediately I flattened back.

"Arraôu."

Two feet from my face was the muzzle of King Hiram, yellow with a tracery of black. The leopard was helping me to wake up; otherwise he took little interest, for he yawned; his dark red jaws, beautiful gleaming white fangs, opened and closed lazily.

At the same moment I heard a burst of laughter.

It was little Tanit-Zerga. She was crouching on a cushion near the divan where I was stretched out, curiously watching my close interview with the leopard.

"King Hiram was bored," she felt obliged to explain to me. "I brought him."

"How nice," I growled. "Only tell me, could he not have gone somewhere else to be amused?"

"He is all alone now," said the girl. "They have sent him away. He made too much noise when he played."

These words recalled me to the events of the previous evening.

"If you like, I will make him go away," said Tanit-Zerga.

"No, let him alone."

I looked at the leopard with sympathy. Our common misfortune brought us together.

I even caressed his rounded forehead. King Hiram showed his contentment by stretching out at full length and uncurling his great amber claws. The mat on the floor had much to suffer.

"Galé is here, too," said the little girl.

"Galé! Who may he be?"

At the same time, I saw on Tanit-Zerga's knees a strange animal, about the size of a big cat, with flat ears, and a long muzzle. Its pale gray fur was rough.

It was watching me with queer little pink eyes.

"It is my mongoose," explained Tanit-Zerga.

"Come now," I said sharply, "is that all?"

I must have looked so crabbed and ridiculous that Tanit-Zerga began to laugh. I laughed, too.

"Galé is my friend," she said when she was serious again. "I saved her life. It was when she was quite little. I will tell you about it some day. See how good-natured she is."

So saying, she dropped the mongoose on my knees.

"It is very nice of you, Tanit-Zerga," I said, "to come and pay me a visit." I passed my hand slowly over the animal's back. "What time is it now?"

"A little after nine. See, the sun is already high. Let me draw the shade."

The room was in darkness. Galé's eyes grew redder. King Hiram's became green.

"It is very nice of you," I repeated, pursuing my idea. "I see that you are free to-day. You never came so early before."

A shade passed over the girl's forehead.

"Yes, I am free," she said, almost bitterly.

I looked at Tanit-Zerga more closely. For the first time I realized that she was beautiful. Her hair, which she wore falling over her shoulders, was not so much curly as it was gently waving. Her features were of remarkable fineness: the nose very straight, a small mouth with delicate lips, a strong chin. She was not black, but copper colored. Her slender graceful body had nothing in common with the disgusting thick sausages which the carefully cared for bodies of the blacks become.

A large circle of copper made a heavy decoration around her forehead and hair. She had four bracelets, still heavier, on her wrists and anklets, and, for clothing, a green silk tunic, slashed in points, braided with gold. Green, bronze, gold.

"You are a Sonrhaï, Tanit-Zerga?" I asked gently.

She replied with almost ferocious pride:

"I am a Sonrhaï."

"Strange little thing," I thought.

Evidently this was a subject on which Tanit-Zerga did not intend the conversation to turn. I recalled how, almost painfully, she had pronounced that "they," when she had told me how they had driven away King Hiram.

"I am a Sonrhaï," she repeated. "I was born at Gâo, on the Niger, the ancient Sonrhaï capital. My fathers reigned over the great Mandingue Empire. You need not scorn me because I am here as a slave."

In a ray of sunlight, Galé, seated on his little haunches, washed his shining mustaches with his forepaws; and King Hiram, stretched out on the mat, groaned plaintively in his sleep.

"He is dreaming," said Tanit-Zerga, a finger on her lips.

There was a moment of silence. Then she said:

"You must be hungry. And I do not think that you will want to eat with the others."

I did not answer.

"You must eat," she continued. "If you like, I will go get something to eat for you and me. I will bring King Hiram's and Galé's dinner here, too. When you are