AT THAT POINT IN his narration, Seil-kor stopped to catch his breath, then broached certain more intimate details concerning the emperor’s private life.
At the beginning of his reign, Talou VII had married a young, ideally beautiful Ponukelean named Rul.
Utterly smitten, the emperor refused to choose other brides, despite the customs of his land where polygamy was the norm.
One stormy day, Talou and Rul, then three months pregnant, were walking arm in arm along the beach of Ejur to admire the sublime spectacle of the furious waves, when they saw out at sea a ship in distress that, after smashing against a reef, foundered straight to the bottom before their eyes.
Speechless with horror, the couple stood there for a long time, watching the fatal area where bits of wreckage had started bobbing to the surface.
Soon the corpse of a young white woman, evidently from the sunken ship, floated toward the strand, tossed about by the waves. The passenger, lying flat with her face to the sky, wore a Swiss costume composed of a dark-colored skirt, an apron with multicolored embroidery, and a red velvet corset that, stretching only down to her waist, encased an unbuttoned white blouse with wide, puffy sleeves. Through the transparent waters, they could see behind her head the glint of long golden hairpins, arranged in a star around a solidly braided chignon.
Rul, who was mad about finery, immediately became entranced by that red corset and those golden pins, and dreamed only of how they would look on her. Yielding to her pleas, the emperor sent a slave who climbed into a dugout canoe and headed out with orders to retrieve the drowned woman’s body.
But the foul weather made the task difficult, and Rul, whose morbid desire was only whetted further by the obstacles in its path, anxiously followed, with a mix of hope and discouragement, the perilous maneuvers of the slave whose prey kept eluding him.
After an hour of unrelieved battle against the elements, the slave finally reached the cadaver, which he managed to hoist into his boat; it was then that they discovered the corpse of a two-year-old child strapped to the dead woman’s back, her neck convulsively encircled by two feeble arms still clinging tight. The poor toddler was probably the drowned woman’s nursling, whom she had tried to save at the last instant by swimming for safety with her precious burden.
The nurse and child were carried to Ejur, and soon Rul took possession of the gold pins, which she arranged in a circle in her hair, and of the red corset, which she coquettishly fastened above the loincloth encircling her hips. From that moment on those adornments became her pride and joy and never left her body; as her pregnancy advanced she simply loosened the laces, which slid easily through the fine metal grommets of the eyelets.
For a long time following the disaster, the sea continued to toss ashore wreckage of all kinds, including numerous chests filled with a wide variety of items that were carefully gathered. Amid the debris, they found a sailor’s cap bearing the word Sylvander, the name of the ill-fated vessel.
Six months after the storm, Rul gave birth to a daughter whom they named Sirdah.
The hour of anxiety that the young mother had spent before the Swiss woman’s body was brought ashore had left its mark: the child, in all other respects healthy and well formed, bore on her forehead a peculiarly shaped red birthmark, from which radiated long yellow lines arranged like the famous golden pins.
The first time Sirdah opened her eyes, they noticed that she was severely wall-eyed; her mother, very proud of her own beauty, was humiliated at having produced an ugly duckling and developed an aversion to this child who offended her vanity. On the other hand, the emperor, who had so keenly desired a daughter, felt only deep love for the poor innocent, whom he showered with care and tenderness.
At that time, Talou’s adviser was a certain Mossem, a Negro tall of stature, at once a sorcerer, medicine man, and scholar, who served as the emperor’s prime minister.
Mossem had fallen for the alluring Rul, who for her part fell under the sway of the seductive adviser, admiring his majestic bearing and great learning.
The affair followed its inevitable course, and Rul, one year after Sirdah’s birth, delivered a son who was the spit and image of Mossem.
Fortunately, Talou did not notice the fatal resemblance. Still, this son never quite entered his heart, where Sirdah still had pride of place.
Following a law Suann had instituted, each deceased sovereign was succeeded by the firstborn child, no matter the sex. Twice already, in each of the rival branches, girls had been called to rule; but in every case their premature deaths had transmitted to their brothers the right of supreme leadership.
Mossem and Rul hatched a despicable plot to do away with Sirdah so that one day their son could become emperor.
While this was happening, Talou, prey to his bellicose impulses, left for a long campaign and entrusted the throne to Mossem, who during the monarch’s absence would exert absolute authority.
The two accomplices seized upon the opportunity, so favorable to the realization of their plan.
To the northeast of Ejur stretched the Vorrh, an immense forest primeval where none dared venture because of a certain legend that the shade of its trees was populated with evil spirits. All they had to do was abandon Sirdah there, where her body, protected by superstition, would not be found by any search parties.
One night, Mossem went off carrying Sirdah in his arms; the following evening, after a long day’s walk, he reached the edge of the Vorrh and, too intelligent to believe in wives’ tales, fearlessly penetrated among the haunted trees before him. Reaching a wide clearing, he laid the sleeping infant Sirdah on the moss, then headed back to the plain by the same path he had just forged through the thick branches and vines.
Twenty-four hours later, he entered Ejur under cover of night; no one had witnessed his departure or his return.
During his absence, Rul had posted herself at the door of the imperial hut to forbid all access. Sirdah was dangerously ill, she said, and Mossem was remaining at the child’s side to treat her. After her accomplice’s return, she announced that poor Sirdah had succumbed, and the next day they simulated a ceremonious funeral.
Tradition demanded that a death certificate be drawn up for every deceased member of the ruling family, detailing the circumstances of the demise. Mossem, who had an in-depth knowledge of Ponukelean writing, assumed the chore and drafted on parchment an invented account of Sirdah’s last days.
Great was the emperor’s grief upon his return, when he learned of his daughter’s passing.
But nothing could make him suspect the plot against Sirdah; the two accomplices, giddy with joy, thus saw their odious machinations to bring their son to the throne succeed just as they had wished.
Two years passed during which Rul did not conceive another child. Annoyed by this sterility, Talou, without renouncing the woman whom he still believed faithful, finally decided to take other wives, in hopes of having a second daughter whose features would remind him of his beloved Sirdah. But his hopes were disappointed: he sired only sons, none of whom could make him forget the dear departed.
Only warfare distracted him from his sorrows; he launched new campaigns constantly, pushing ever farther the boundaries of his vast realm and attaching numerous spoils to the sycamores around Trophy Square.
Endowed with a poet’s sensitivity, he had begun a vast epic, each verse of which celebrated one of his great military exploits. The work was called the “Jeroukka,” a Ponukelean word that evoked triumphant heroism. Filled with ambition and pride, the emperor had vowed to eclipse in personality all other princes of his race and to transmit to future generations a poetic narrative of his reign, which he wished to portray as dominant and glorious.
Every time he finished a section of the “Jeroukka,” he taught it to his warriors, who, in unison, sang it in chorus on a kind of slow, monotonous recitative.
The years passed without bringing the slightest cloud between Mossem and Rul, who continued their love affair in secret.
One day, however, the emperor was informed of their relations by one of his younger wives.
Unable to lend credence to what he took for bald-faced slander, Talou gleefully recounted the gossip to Rul, recommending she beware the jealous hatred that her superior beauty inspired in her rivals.
Although reassured by the emperor’s jovial tone, Rul sensed danger and vowed to double her precautions.
She pleaded with Mossem to publicly take a mistress, whom he would conspicuously lavish with honors and gifts to allay whatever suspicions the monarch may have had.
Mossem agreed to the plan, which seemed to him, as to Rul, of the utmost urgency. He set his sights on a young beauty named Jizme, whose intoxicating smile revealed dazzlingly white teeth in an ebony countenance.
Jizme soon grew accustomed to the privileges of her elevated status; Mossem, intent on playing his part well, satisfied her every whim, and with a word the young woman obtained the most undeserved favors for her own sycophants.
This credit soon earned the minister’s favorite a swarm of solicitors who hastened to beg an audience. Jizme, pleased and flattered, was soon forced to regulate this onrush.
At her request, Mossem cut from several sheets of parchment a certain number of thin, supple rectangles, on each of which he finely traced the name “Jizme,” then depicted in one corner, with a rudimentary sketch, three different phases of the moon.
These were, in short, visiting cards, which, distributed in great number, indicated to interested parties the three days in each four-week period in which the all-powerful intermediary was available to receive visitors.
Jizme took great enjoyment in playing queen. Whenever one of the appointed dates occurred, she adorned herself magnificently and received the crowd of petitioners, granting her support to some and refusing it to others, confident that her decisions would be completely ratified by Mossem.
Still, there was one thing missing from Rul’s happiness. Beautiful, passionate, and full of youthful exuberance, she burned with feverish desire.
But Mossem, faithful to Rul, had never given even the slightest kiss to she who passed in everyone’s eyes for his idolized lover.
Aware of her role as front, Jizme resolved to give herself entirely and without reservations to whoever could understand and appreciate her.
During each of her audiences, she had noticed, in the front row of petitioners, a young black named Nair, who seemed never to speak to her without emotion or shyness.
Several times she thought she saw Nair hiding behind some bush, spying on her during her daily walk in hopes of catching a momentary glimpse.
Soon she had no doubts about the passion she had inspired in the young man. She took Nair into her personal service and abandoned herself unrestrainedly to her gentle suitor, whose ardent feelings she soon came to share.
A perfectly plausible pretext explained in Mossem’s mind the new page’s assiduousness vis-à-vis his favorite.
At that time, Ejur was infested by a legion of mosquitoes whose bite carried fever. As it happened, Nair knew how to make little traps that caught the dangerous insects without fail.
He had discovered a red flower he used as bait, its very sharp scent attracting the creatures from a great distance. Certain fruit husks provided him with extremely delicate filaments, with which he himself wove a tissue finer than spiders’ webs, but sufficiently resistant to stop mosquitoes cold. This latter task required great precision, and Nair could accomplish it only with the help of a long recipe that, recited by heart, reminded him step by step of each movement to make and each knot to form.
Like a child, Jizme derived an endlessly renewed pleasure from watching her lover’s fingers as they industriously wove together the strands.
Nair’s presence could thus be explained by the powerful entertainment that this highly inventive and subtle talent procured for Jizme.
An artist in several respects, Nair knew how to draw, and would relax from the painstaking production of his traps by sketching portraits and landscapes of a strange and primitive character. One day, he gave Jizme a curious white mattress, which he had patiently decorated with a quantity of small sketches depicting a wide variety of subjects. With this gift, he meant to watch over his beloved’s sleep, who from then on rested each night on the soft bedding, a constant reminder of her lover’s tender and attentive solicitude.
The young couple thus lived in peace and contentment, when an imprudence on Nair’s part suddenly lifted the scales from Mossem’s eyes.
Some of the chests the sea had washed up after the wreck of the Sylvander contained articles of clothing that had so far gone unclaimed. Jizme, with Mossem’s authorization, drew from that reserve an abundance of baubles that perfectly suited her light, insouciant frivolity.
A pair of long suede gloves in particular amused the gleeful child, who, at every slightly formal occasion, enjoyed imprisoning her hands and arms in these supple sheaths.
During her explorations of this plentiful, heterogeneous inventory, Jizme had discovered a bowler hat that Nair had put on with intense pleasure. From then on, the young Negro went nowhere without the stiff headgear, which made him easily recognizable from a distance.
To the southeast of Ejur, not far from the right bank of the Tez, was an immense and magnificent park called the Behuliphruen, which a host of slaves maintained in a state of unparalleled luxuriousness. Talou, like a true poet, adored flowers and composed the stanzas of his epic beneath the delightful shade trees of this grandiose garden.
In the center of the Behuliphruen stretched a kind of elevated plateau, painstakingly arranged as a terrace, which was covered in admirable vegetation. From there, one could look down on the entire vast garden, and the emperor loved spending long hours of leisure sitting near the balustrade of branches and foliage that bordered this delightfully cool spot. Often, in the evening, he went to dream alongside Rul in a certain corner of the plateau, from where the view was particularly splendid.
Unable to appreciate this serene contemplation, which to her seemed rather tedious, Rul one day invited Mossem to come enliven the imperial tête-à-tête. Blind and trusting as ever, Talou had no objections to granting this whim; the presence of Jizme, moreover, would remove any unwelcome suspicions from his mind.
Nair, who every evening had a rendezvous with his love, was vexed to hear of the event that would keep them from enjoying each other’s company. Resolved to be near Jizme all the same, he conceived a bold exploit that would make him the unseen fifth member of the Behuliphruen party.
But since Jizme was granting audience to the usual flood of solicitors that day, and had already begun receiving, Nair could not have with her the long private conversation needed in order to explain his complicated plan.
A writer as well as an artist, Nair knew Ponukelean script, which he had taught to Jizme during their long and frequent hours together. He decided to set down for his paramour all the urgent recommendations he could not detail for her face to face.
The letter was written out on parchment, then, in the midst of the tumult, handed nimbly from Nair to Jizme, who slid it deftly into her wrap.
But Mossem, who was wandering among the crowd, had noticed the clandestine maneuver. Moments later, putting his arm around Jizme, who was used to receiving such displays of affection from him in public, he made away with the epistle, which he went off to decipher in private.
As a header, Nair had drawn the five principal actors in that evening’s scenario arranged in single file: to the right, Talou walked alone; behind him, making mocking gestures, were Mossem and Rul, themselves ridiculed by Nair and Jizme who were next in line.
The text contained the following instructions:
Once she was sitting in the corner of the cool terrace, Jizme would look out for Nair, who would come up silently by a certain predetermined path. In the shadows, the young Negro’s silhouette would be easily recognizable thanks to the bowler hat he’d be sure to wear. The spot Talou chose for his absorbing reveries was surrounded by almost sheer drops; nonetheless, by clinging to the roots and shrubs with all his might, Nair could hoist himself cautiously to the level of the casual group. Jizme would let her hand dangle over the flowered balustrade; then, having ascertained the visitor’s identity by carefully touching his hat, she would extend this hand for a kiss from her lover, who could remain suspended for a moment by the strength of his arms.
After committing to memory all the details he’d just intercepted, Mossem went back to Jizme and, under pretext of more caresses, slipped the note back into the favorite’s wrap.
Wounded in his pride and furious at the thought of having long become a public laughingstock, Mossem sought a way to obtain flagrant proof against the two accomplices, whom he vowed to punish severely.
He devised a plan and went to see Seil-kor, who at that time had already been serving the emperor for several years and could, at night, look like Nair thanks to their similar age and bearing.
This was Mossem’s plan:
Wearing the bowler hat that was meant to allay suspicion, Seil-kor would go to Jizme along the path clearly designated in the note. Before starting his ascent, the false Nair would inscribe on the hat, with a fresh, sticky substance, certain predetermined letters. Jizme, following her compulsive habit, would surely be wearing her gloves for an evening with the emperor; by making the prudent gesture that, as the letter instructed, should precede the kiss, the favorite would give herself away by imprinting on the suede one of the revelatory characters.
Seil-kor accepted the mission. In any case, it was impossible to refuse, for the all-powerful Mossem could have made this request into an order.
The first crucial step was to intercept Nair on his nocturnal expedition. Fearing an indiscretion that could spell the failure of his plot, Mossem wished to avoid using any outside help.
Forced to act alone, Seil-kor remembered the nooselike collars with which hunters captured game animals in the forests of the Pyrenees. Using ropes gathered from the distant wreck of the Sylvander, he went to set his snare in the middle of Nair’s intended path. With this ruse, Seil-kor was sure to overcome an adversary half paralyzed by insidious fetters.
This task accomplished, Seil-kor placed at the foot of the cliff he was later to scale a certain mixture, rapidly composed, of chalkstones and water.
When evening fell, he went to hide not far from the snare he’d set.
Nair appeared and his foot was soon caught in the adroitly placed trap. A moment later, the imprudent one was bound and gagged by Seil-kor, who had leapt upon him in one bound.
Pleased with his discreet and silent victory, Seil-kor donned the victim’s hat and headed to the rendezvous.
From afar he spied Jizme, who was furtively watching for him while making conversation with the royal couple and Mossem.
Fooled by the newcomer’s silhouette and especially his hat, Jizme thought she recognized Nair and draped her arm beyond the balustrade in anticipation.
Reaching the foot of the slope, Seil-kor dipped his finger into the chalky mix and, in a mischievous spirit, traced in capital letters on the black hat the word “PINCHED,” which he already imagined the unfortunate Jizme to be. After this, he began hauling himself up the cliff, grasping laboriously at any branch that might bear his weight.
Reaching the level of the plateau, he stopped and touched the overhanging hand, which, after having brushed the stiff felt hat, dropped lower to receive the promised kiss.
Seil-kor silently pressed his lips against the suede glove that Jizme, on Mossem’s recommendation, had been all too happy to put on.
His task completed, he clambered back to earth without a sound.
On the plateau, Mossem had kept a constant eye on Jizme’s movements. He saw her pull her arm back and discovered at the same time as she a C clearly imprinted on the gray glove, which stretched from the roots of her fingers to the heel of her palm.
Jizme quickly hid her hand, while Mossem inwardly rejoiced at the success of his ruse.
One hour later, Mossem, now alone with Jizme, ripped the stained glove from her and took from the unfortunate’s wrap the damning letter, which he shoved before her eyes.
The next day, Nair and Jizme were arrested and kept under guard by fierce sentinels.
Talou having demanded an explanation for this harsh measure, Mossem seized the occasion to buttress the emperor’s trust, as he still feared suspicions about Rul and himself. He presented as a jealous lover’s vengeance what was really mere anger, due to a ruffling of his pride. He intentionally exaggerated the depth of his resentment and lengthily recounted to the sovereign every detail of the adventure, including specifics regarding the noose, the hat, and the glove. Meanwhile, he was able to keep secret his own affair with Rul by avoiding any mention of the compromising portraits that Nair had drawn at the top of his letter.
Talou approved the punishment that Mossem meted on the guilty pair, who remained in captivity.
Seventeen years had elapsed since Sirdah’s disappearance, and Talou still pined for his daughter as if it were yesterday.
Having kept in memory a very precise image of the child he so faithfully mourned, he tried to recreate in his imagination the young woman she would now have been had death not taken her away.
The features she’d had as a barely weaned girl-child, deeply etched in his mind, served as his basis. He accentuated them while changing nothing of their shape, tending to their gradual development year after year, and thus managed to create for himself alone an eighteen-year-old Sirdah whose clearly delineated ghost accompanied him at all times.
One day, during one of his customary campaigns, Talou came upon an enchanting child named Meisdehl, the sight of whom left him dumbstruck: before him was the living portrait of Sirdah as he pictured her at the age of seven, in the uninterrupted suite of images in his mind.
It was while passing in review several families of prisoners, who had escaped from the flames of a village he’d just put to the torch, that the emperor noticed Meisdehl. He took the girl under his wing and treated her as his own daughter after his return to Ejur.
Among her adoptive brothers, Meisdehl soon noticed a certain Kalj, seven years old like her, who seemed the ideal playmate to share her games.
Kalj was in such delicate health that everyone feared for his life; he lived almost entirely in his head. Advanced for his age, he surpassed most of his brothers in intelligence and sensitivity, but his body was pitiably frail. Aware of his condition, too often he let himself wallow in a deep melancholy that Meisdehl made it her mission to overcome. Filled with mutual tenderness, the two children formed an inseparable couple; seeing the newcomer constantly at his son’s side, Talou, from the abyss of his grief, could sometimes enjoy the illusion that he really had a daughter again.
Not long after the adoption of Meisdehl, several natives arrived from Mihu, a village located near the Vorrh, to tell the citizens of Ejur that a lightning fire had been raging in the southern part of the vast primeval forest since the previous evening.
Talou, riding in a kind of palanquin borne by ten stout runners, traveled to the edge of the Vorrh to witness the dazzling spectacle, which appealed to his poetic soul.
He stepped onto the ground just as night was falling. A strong wind from the northeast scattered the flames nearest him, and he stood motionless, watching as the fire quickly spread.
The entire population of Mihu had gathered so as not to miss this grandiose spectacle.
Two hours after the emperor’s arrival, only about a dozen intact trees remained, forming a thick clump at which the flames began lapping.
Then they saw a young native of eighteen fleeing the thicket, accompanied by a French soldier wearing a Zouave’s uniform and armed with his rifle and cartridge belts.
By the light of the forest fire, Talou distinguished on the young woman’s brow a red birthmark with radiating yellow lines. There could be no mistake: it was his beloved Sirdah who stood before his eyes. She was very different from the imaginary portrait he’d so painstakingly crafted and that Meisdehl so perfectly incarnated, but this mattered little to the emperor who, mad with joy, ran up to his daughter to embrace her.
He then tried to talk to her, but Sirdah, recoiling in fear, did not understand his language.
During the happy father’s effusions, a tree consumed at the base suddenly toppled, violently striking the head of the Zouave, who fell unconscious. Sirdah immediately rushed to the soldier’s aid, her face contorted with anxiety.
Talou didn’t wish to abandon the injured stranger who seemed to inspire such pure affection in his daughter; plus, he was counting on the man’s eyewitness revelations to illuminate the longstanding mystery of Sirdah’s disappearance.
Several moments later, the palanquin, lifted by the runners, headed back to Ejur, carrying the emperor, Sirdah, and the unconscious Zouave.
Talou entered the capital the next day.
Brought before her daughter, Rul, terror-stricken and under threat of torture, made a complete confession to the emperor, who immediately ordered Mossem’s arrest.
While searching his minister’s hut for some proof of the abject felony, Talou discovered the love letter that Nair had written to Jizme several months before. Seeing himself ridiculed on the drawing that headed the sheet, the monarch flew into a rage, resolving to torture both Nair, for his brazenness, and Jizme, for the duplicity she’d committed by accepting such a document and not denouncing its author.
Lavished with care in a hut where they had laid him down, the Zouave came to his senses and recounted his odyssey to Seil-kor, who had been charged with learning his story.
Velbar—for so the patient was named—came from Marseille. His father, a decorative painter, had taught him his own trade early on, and the admirably talented youngster had improved his craft by taking free local classes in which he learned drawing and watercolor. At eighteen, Velbar had discovered he had a strong baritone; for days on end, while on his scaffolding painting some shop sign, he lustily belted out many fashionable romances, and passersby stopped to listen, marveling at the charm and purity of his generous voice.
When he reached the age for military service, Velbar was sent to Bougie to join the Fifth Zouaves. After a smooth crossing, the young man, delighted to see new lands, disembarked on African soil one beautiful November morning and was pointed to the military barracks amid a large detachment of conscripts.
The rookie Zouave’s beginnings were difficult and marked by a thousand daily vexations. Rotten luck had placed him under the command of one Lieutenant Lécurou, a ruthless and fastidious martinet who made a boast of his legendary harshness.
At the time, to satisfy the demands of a certain Flora Crinis, a demanding and profligate young woman who was his lover, Lécurou spent long hours in a secret gambling club where a tempting roulette wheel spun continually. As luck had so far smiled on the impetuous gambler, the richly kept Flora appeared in public dripping with jewels and strutted about in a carriage beside the lieutenant down the city’s elegant promenade.
Meanwhile, Velbar pursued his arduous apprenticeship as a soldier.
One day, as the regiment, returning to Bougie after a long march, still found itself in the middle of the countryside, the Zouaves were ordered to strike up a spirited tune to help them forget their road-weariness.
Velbar, who by now was known for his splendid voice, was assigned to sing solo the verses of an interminable lament, to which the entire regiment answered in chorus with an eternally unvarying refrain.
At dusk they crossed through a small wood, in which a lone dreamer, sitting beneath a tree, was jotting onto music paper some melody born of his solitude and reflection.
Hearing Velbar’s voice, which alone carried more loudly than the huge chorus that periodically answered him, the inspired stroller suddenly jumped to his feet and followed the regiment back to town.
The stranger was none other than the composer Faucillon, whose celebrated opera Daedalus, after a brilliant run in France, had just been staged throughout the major cities of Algeria. Accompanied by the performers, Faucillon had only recently arrived in Bougie, the next stop in their triumphant tour.
But since the last performance, the baritone Ardonceau, overwhelmed by the difficult title role and suffering from a tenacious sore throat, had become unable to go on; Faucillon, completely at a loss, had nearly given up finding a replacement for his leading man, when his ear had been struck by the young Zouave singing on the road.
The next day, having made his inquiries, Faucillon went to find Velbar, who jumped at the chance to perform onstage. They easily obtained the colonel’s authorization and, after several days of intense rehearsal under the composer’s direction, the young debutant felt prepared.
The performance was held before a packed house; in the front row of a box, Flora Crinis sat enthroned with Lieutenant Lécurou.
Velbar, magnificent in the role of Daedalus, conveyed like a consummate actor the anxieties and hopes of an artist obsessed with the grandiose designs of his genius. The Greek toga flattered his superb physique, and the ideal timbre of his powerful voice ended each phrase with an abrupt surge of vigor.
Flora could not keep her eyes off of Velbar, training the lenses of her opera glasses on him and feeling within her an irresistible sensation that had begun the moment the young singer had appeared onstage.
In the third act, Velbar triumphed with the principal aria, a kind of hymn to joy and pride in which Daedalus, having completed the construction of the labyrinth and profoundly moved by the sight of his masterpiece, rapturously greeted the realization of his dream.
The admirable interpretation of this rousing passage made the turmoil in Flora’s heart overflow, and the very next day she hatched a subtle plan to get close to Velbar.
Before undertaking any project, the superstitious Flora always consulted Old Angélique, an overfamiliar and talkative busybody who read cards, palms, and horoscopes, loaned money, and, for the right fee, handled all sorts of dubious errands.
Summoned by an urgent missive, Angélique went to see Flora. The old crone looked every bit the fortuneteller, with her filthy gunnysack and large, shapeless cloak that for the past ten years had protected her against the often harsh Algerian winters.
Flora confessed her secret and asked, first and foremost, if her desire had been conceived under an auspicious sign. Angélique immediately took from her gunnysack a celestial planisphere that she pinned to the wall; then, using the previous day’s date as starting point for her horoscope, she sank into a deep meditation, seemingly absorbed in active and complex mental calculations. In the end, she pointed to the constellation Cancer, whose benign influence should preserve Flora’s future love affairs from misfortune.
Once that matter was settled, the main thing was to conduct the affair as secretly as possible, as the lieutenant, a suspicious and jealous man, kept a watchful eye over his mistress’s every movement.
Angélique put the planisphere back in her sack, then pulled from its depths a sheet of cardboard perforated by a certain number of irregularly spaced holes. This device, which cryptographers call a grille cipher, would permit the two lovers to communicate without fear of discovery. A sentence, written in the holes placed over a sheet of blank paper, could then be made unintelligible by filling in the spaces between them with random letters. Only Velbar could reconstruct the meaning of the billet-doux by positioning an identical grille over the coded text.
But this subterfuge required some explanation: Velbar and Angélique needed to talk privately. The crone couldn’t go to the barracks without risking a dangerous encounter with the lieutenant, who was fully aware of her close relationship with Flora; on the other hand, summoning Velbar to her home would awaken the young Zouave’s suspicions, as he would see in it only a self-interested bid for a paid consultation. Angélique therefore decided to arrange a rendezvous in a public place, predetermining a sign by which to assure identification, to prevent any mishaps.
In Flora’s presence, the old woman composed an anonymous letter full of seductive promises: Velbar should sit the following evening at a sidewalk table of the Café Leopold and order a mixed plate, called a “Harlequin,” at the precise moment when the Benediction rang in the church of Saint-Jacques; immediately a confidant would approach the young soldier bearing the most gratifying revelations.
The following day at the appointed hour, Angélique was at her post in front of the Café Leopold, not far from a Zouave who was calmly and silently smoking his pipe. The crone, not knowing Velbar and not wishing to commit a faux pas, prudently awaited the agreed signal to deliver her message.
When the sound of church bells suddenly began pealing in the tower of nearby Saint-Jacques, the Zouave asked the waiter a question and then ordered a Harlequin.
Angélique went up and introduced herself, referring to the anonymous letter, just as the waiter placed before Velbar the requested Harlequin, a kind of multicolored assemblage of assorted meats and vegetables piled on the same dish.
The old woman briefly explained the situation, and Velbar, enchanted, received an absolutely perfect double of the grille that Angélique had given Flora.
The two lovers lost no time in beginning a secret, torrid correspondence. Velbar, having received a hefty fee for his performance in Daedalus, devoted a portion of his earnings to renting and furnishing a seductive retreat, where he could receive his mistress without fear of discovery. With the rest of the money he bought Flora a present, choosing, at the finest jeweler in town, a silver chatelaine from which hung a magnificent, finely wrought watch.
Flora let out a squeal of joy as she accepted this charming souvenir, which she immediately pinned to her belt; they agreed that, as far as Lécurou was concerned, she had purchased this extravagance for herself.
Still, in spite of the constellation Cancer, the affair would come to a tragic end.
Lécurou, finding that Flora had begun acting strangely, followed her one day to the apartment Velbar had rented. Hidden around the corner, he waited two long hours and finally saw the lovers emerge, tenderly parting after a few steps.
As of the very next day, Lécurou ceased all relations with Flora and conceived a mortal hatred of Velbar, whom he began persecuting cruelly.
He constantly watched his rival, waiting to catch him out on the slightest pretext and persistently inflicting on him the harshest and most unjust punishments. Folding in the thumb of his raised right hand, he had a way of announcing confinement to the brig with the words “Four days in the cooler!” that made Velbar flush hot with rage and nearly drove him to talk back to his superior officer.
But a terrible example brought home to the young Zouave that he needed to rein in his dangerous rebellious impulses.
One of his comrades, a fellow named Suire, was said to have lived a rather turbulent life between the ages of eighteen and twenty. Frequenting the seediest quarters of Bougie and living among pimps and prostitutes, Suire, before joining the regiment, was a kind of bravo who, gossips said, had committed two as yet unpunished murders for hire.
Fierce and violent by nature, Suire had difficulty bending to the demands of discipline and chafed under Lécurou’s continual reproofs.
One day, the lieutenant, inspecting the barracks, ordered Suire to remake his pack, which was uneven.
Suire, already in a foul mood, didn’t budge.
The lieutenant repeated his order, to which Suire replied with the single word, “No!”
Furious, Lécurou screamed abuse at Suire in his shrill voice, detailing with acrid joy the thirty days of prison that would quite certainly follow this insubordonation; then, before turning to leave, as a final insult he spat in Suire’s face.
Suire lost his head at that moment, and snatching up his bayonet, shoved it full into the chest of the despicable lieutenant, whom they immediately carried off.
Although unconscious and bloody, Lécurou was only slightly wounded by the weapon, which had glanced off a rib.
Suire was nonetheless court-martialed and sentenced to death.
Lécurou, soon recovered, commanded the firing squad, which included Velbar.
When the lieutenant shouted, “Aim!” Velbar, realizing he was about to kill someone, was overcome by uncontrollable trembling.
Suddenly he heard the word “Fire!” and Suire collapsed, struck by twelve rounds.
Velbar would never forget that horrible moment.
Flora now conducted her affair with Velbar openly; but, since Lécurou had abandoned her, the poor girl was racking up debt after debt. Knowing the gambling den that, for a time, had procured the lieutenant his resources, she decided to tempt fate in turn and sat day by day at the roulette table.
But persistent bad luck caused her to lose even her last louis.
She then resorted to Angélique, and the crone, sensing an advantageous prospect, immediately loaned Flora a fairly sizeable sum at usurious rates, using the borrower’s jewelry and furniture—her sole remaining assets—as collateral.
Alas, the wheel soon made away with this new capital as well.
One day, sitting before the green baize, the nervous and agitated Flora risked her very last gold coins. A few throws of the dice were enough to complete her ruin. The wretched woman, seeing in a flash her jewelry sold off and furniture repossessed, was suddenly haunted by thoughts of suicide.
At that moment, a loud bang was heard at the door of the clandestine establishment, and someone rushed in crying, “It’s the police!”
Panic gripped those present, some of whom threw open the windows as if to find an escape route. But four stories separated the balcony from the street, making flight impossible.
Soon the door burst open and a dozen plainclothesmen rushed into the foyer, then into the gaming parlor.
The hysteria around Flora had brought her anxiety to a climax. The prospect of a scandal, added to the specter of indigence, hastened the accomplishment of her fatal plan. In a bound she ran to the balcony and hurled herself to the pavement below.
The next day, learning simultaneously of the drama at the gambling den and his mistress’s disappearance, Velbar felt a sinister foreboding. He went straight to the morgue, where he saw, hanging above the corpse of a woman with a mangled and unrecognizable face, the famous silver chain that he himself had given poor Flora. This clue left no doubt as to the dead woman’s identity, whose funeral service the young Zouave paid for by selling off at rock-bottom prices the furniture he had recently bought with his stage earnings.
Flora’s death did nothing to lessen Lécurou’s hatred, and he abused his rival more than ever with insults and punishments.
One moonless night in May, at a certain halt in a nocturnal march lit only by the stars, Lécurou went up to Velbar, on whom he inflicted a week under police guard for a supposed violation of the dress code. After which the lieutenant began coldly insulting the young Zouave, who, pale with anger, clenched every muscle to remain in control.
In the end, Lécurou reprised the conclusion of his scene with Suire by spitting in Velbar’s face; the latter saw red and, acting purely on instinct, roundly slapped the lieutenant across the face before he knew what he was doing.
Immediately, the terrible consequences of this quasi-involuntary action appeared to him with terrifying clarity, and in a flash he saw the horrible vision of Suire crumbling beneath a hail of bullets. Shoving past the lieutenant and the several officers running up to lend their chief a hand, he plunged straight ahead through the countryside, soon protected from pursuit by the nighttime darkness.
He reached the port of Bougie and hid out in the cargo hold of the Saint Irenaeus, a large packet boat bound for South Africa.
The next day, the Saint Irenaeus lifted anchor; but five days later, disoriented after a storm, it ran aground within sight of Mihu. Counting the Sylvander and the vessel carrying the Spanish twins, it was the third time such a thing had occurred in the region since the long-distant coronation of Suann.
Hastening from his hiding place, Velbar, still in uniform and carrying his rifle and full cartridge belts, went to blend in with the crowd of passengers.
The inhabitants of Mihu, fearsome cannibals, placed the castaways under heavy guard to gorge on their flesh; every day one of the prisoners, after a summary execution, was devoured then and there in the others’ presence. Soon only Velbar remained, having seen his ill-fated companions disappear to the last man.
When the time came for his own agony, he decided to attempt an impossible escape from his killers. As they reached for him, he suddenly began swinging his rifle butt, clearing himself a passage through the crowd, then began fleeing blindly, chased by some twenty natives who bolted after him in hot pursuit.
After an hour of solid running, as his strength was beginning to flag, he saw the edge of the Vorrh and made one last dash in hopes of finding a thicket in the huge forest to hide him.
The flesh-eaters, urging each other on with frantic shouts, managed to close in on the captive, and it was just as they were about to grab him that Velbar dove into the outermost foliage. The chase ended then and there, as the natives dared not follow him into the dark lair of the evil spirits.
Velbar lived peacefully in the safe haven of the Vorrh, never venturing out for fear of being recaptured by the fierce anthropophagi. He fashioned a small hut from branches and lived on fruits and roots, preciously guarding his rifle and cartridges in case of attack by wild beasts.
When he’d given the lieutenant the fatal slap, Velbar had had on his person his box of watercolors and sketchbook. Using water from a stream transported in a concave stone, he managed to dilute his paints and fill his long, solitary days with work. He wanted to summarize in images the somber drama of Bougie, and he marshaled all his talents to accomplish this absorbing task.
Long months passed without bringing any variation to the poor recluse’s routine.
One day, Velbar heard some distant wails cutting through the normally still silence of his vast domain. Nearing the spot from where the noise originated, he discovered Sirdah, whom Mossem had recently abandoned there; he scooped the poor child up in his arms, at which her crying immediately ceased. A few days earlier, he had trapped a pair of wild buffalo, keeping them tethered with strong vines wrapped around their horns and attached to a tree trunk. With the milk from the female he was able to feed his adoptive daughter, and his life, so solitary until then, was now imbued with interest and purpose.
As she grew up, Sirdah, full of grace and charm despite her wall-eye, repaid in affection all the kindnesses her protector showered on her daily. Velbar taught her French and urged her never to set foot outside the Vorrh, fearing she would fall back into the clutches of the fiendish enemies who had so cruelly exposed her to certain death, and who would surely recognize her by the mark on her forehead.
The years passed, and the child was already becoming a woman when a violent forest fire, decimating the Vorrh, expelled the two recluses who, up to the last moment, had hidden under the ever-shrinking canopy of tall trees.
Once outside the retreat where he had hidden for so long, Velbar expected to fall prey once again to the cannibals of Mihu. Fortunately, the emperor’s presence preserved him from that horrible fate.
Talou, when Seil-kor had translated Velbar’s tale for him, promised to richly reward the man who had saved his daughter’s life.
But alas, there was no time to put his generous plan into action, for Velbar did not survive the terrible blow he’d received from the fallen tree. One week after his arrival in Ejur, he breathed his last in the arms of his adoptive daughter, who until the end had bravely and lovingly attended to her devoted benefactor, the only mainstay of her childhood.
Talou, wishing to render supreme homage to Velbar, told Seil-kor to bury the Zouave’s body with full honors in the middle of the west side of Trophy Square.
Copying the model of French sepulchers, Seil-kor, with the help of several slaves, laid the body to rest in the designated spot, then covered him with a large funeral slab on which he placed his uniform, rifle, and cartridge belts, symmetrically arranged. The autobiographical watercolors found in one of the Zouave’s pockets served to decorate a kind of vertical panel erected behind the tomb and wrapped in dark cloth.
After this loss, which left her in a grief-stricken stupor, Sirdah, a gentle, loving soul, transferred all her affection onto the emperor. Seil-kor had revealed to her in French the secret of her birth, and she wished, through constant attentions, to compensate her father for the long years of separation that an unjust fate had imposed on the two of them.
With Seil-kor’s help, she studied the language of her ancestors, so as to speak fluently with her future subjects.
Each time her steps led her near Velbar’s grave, she piously pressed her lips on the stone slab commemorating the dear departed.
Sirdah’s return did not upset Meisdehl; she still enjoyed the love of the emperor, who, despite recent events, continued to see in her the living image of the unreal phantom he so often used to evoke.
In honor of his old love, Talou decided to spare Rul’s life, and the woman, now numbering among the slaves assigned to cultivate the Behuliphruen, had to spend her days bent low to the ground, hoeing or weeding without respite. The monarch’s vengeance did not extend to her adulterine son, whose likeness to Mossem had only increased with the years. Devastated by Sirdah’s arrival and by the discovery of the distant conspiracy perpetrated for his sake, the unfortunate young man, who had thought himself destined to reign one day under the name Talou VIII, was stricken by a languishing illness and expired after only a few weeks.
Mossem, Nair, and Jizme were slated for grisly tortures, deferred from one day to the next by the emperor, who enjoyed imposing on the guilty trio as further atonement the anguish of a cruel, prolonged wait.
A Negro named Rao, Mossem’s pupil, who had been schooled in his master’s complex knowledge, was appointed to succeed the disgraced minister in the important functions of adviser and overseer.
Meanwhile, Rul, who’d suffered all the humiliation she could stand, had sworn to take her vengeance. Especially furious with Sirdah, whose return had been the cause of these misfortunes, she sought a means to assuage her hatred of the daughter whose very birth she now cursed.
After much reflection, this is what the perfidious mother devised:
A certain illness was ravaging the land in epidemic proportions, manifested by the occurrence of two white and highly contagious blotches that spread over the eyes and grew thicker by the day.
Only the sorcerer Bashkou, a taciturn, solitary old man, knew how to cure the dangerous infection by means of a secret unguent. But the rapid cure could only be effected at a sacred spot in the very bed of the Tez. Immersed with the patient in a certain specific eddy, Bashkou, applying his balm, could then detach the two stigmata, which would immediately follow the current out to sea where their terrible contamination was no longer a threat. Many sufferers immediately recovered their sight after this operation; others, less fortunate, remained forever blind, because the illness, spreading too far, had gradually covered the entire eyeball.
Rul knew how contagious these blotches were. One evening, slipping past the guards dotted throughout the Behuliphruen, she reached the seashore and sailed a dugout to the mouth of the Tez. She knew that Bashkou always worked at nightfall, to offer his newly cured patients a soft and restful twilight. Protected by the crepuscular veil, Rul awaited unseen the arrival of the blotches the sorcerer had removed; she caught one in passing as it drifted by on the current, then regained the shore at her departure point.
In the middle of the night, she stole into Sirdah’s hut, which juxtaposed the emperor’s. Creeping forward cautiously, guided by the light of a single moonbeam, she softly rubbed her sleeping daughter’s eyelids with the hazardous blotches squeezed between her fingers.
But Talou, awakened by Rul’s furtive footfalls, rushed into Sirdah’s hut just in time to witness the heinous act. He immediately grasped the intent of the unnatural mother, whom he brutally dragged outside and put in the hands of three slaves ordered to keep watch over her.
The emperor then returned to Sirdah, who had been wrested from her deep sleep by the noise. The evil was already taking effect, and a veil began spreading over the poor child’s eyes.
By order of Talou, drunk with rage, Rul, condemned to an excruciating death, was imprisoned alongside Mossem, Nair, and Jizme.
By the next day, Sirdah’s illness had made stunning progress; two opaque leucoma, which had formed in mere hours, had left her completely blind.
Wishing to operate immediately, the emperor crossed the Tez with his daughter that very evening and approached the large hut where Bashkou lived.
But the eddy devoted to the magic treatment was located on the right bank of the river, and because of this fact belonged to Drelchkaff.
Now, King Yaour IX, having learned of Rul’s crime and predicting the father’s and daughter’s next move, had hastened to give Bashkou hard and fast instructions.
Accordingly, the sorcerer refused to treat Sirdah by order of Yaour, who, he added, demanded the young girl’s hand in exchange for a cure only he could authorize.
Were there to be such a marriage, Yaour would then be in line to share Talou’s succession with Sirdah, and therefore would one day reunite Ponukele and Drelchkaff under his sole dominion.
Revolted by these terms and by the idea of seeing his estates pass to the enemy bloodline, Talou brought his daughter back to Ejur without deigning to answer.
Since that event, which had occurred only several weeks earlier, the situation remained unchanged and Sirdah was still blind.