Colony. Hugo Wilcken

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       V

      Five forty-five, the morning bell, not quite light. Men lined up in the dull green of the tropical dawn, queuing for breakfast rations: a crust of bread and a splash of coffee. The coolness of the air on Sabir’s body feels good – this hour before daybreak offers the only real respite from the heat. Standing in line next to Sabir is Antillais, the man whose cat has vanished. The night before, Antillais calmly announced to the barracks that his tormentor Masque would be dead within the week. Masque attempted to laugh it off. Surely he’ll kill Antillais now. The tension in the barracks is palpable.

      It’s difficult to tell how old Antillais really is. Not just because of his colour, but because people age more quickly in the Colony. Someone told Sabir, though, that Antillais has been here over thirty years. In other words, since before the twentieth century. What would that be like? But thirty years is perhaps no different from five. When everything else stops, time accelerates towards the horizon. One moment you’re a young man; seconds later you’re old, ready to die. It’s all over. Perhaps, in Antillais’s position, Sabir would also risk his life to avenge the death of a pet. Why not? In some way, the bagne actually lessens your sense of mortality. It’s like during the war, at the front, when you’d find yourself taking incredible risks for the smallest things. An image of Edouard comes to mind, calmly climbing out of the trench to recover a packet of cigarettes.

      This morning, some of the commandant’s wife’s luggage is arriving by boat. It’ll be Sabir’s job to oversee its delivery to the house, make sure nothing’s stolen. Not easy, since he’ll have to watch not only the convicts bringing the crates up to the house, but also the Bonis who’ll ferry them to the riverbank in their canoes. The Bonis live in tribes up and down the river, but they’re not Indians, they’re the descendants of runaway slaves. They’re incorrigible thieves (a convict told Sabir he’d once come across a whole village of them dressed in striped convict shirts), but expert boatsmen as well. They make their living ferrying goods and people across the river. And sometimes they supply convicts with the boats they need for their escapes. But they’re ruthless businessmen and the boats never come cheap.

      The commandant is generally up at the main camp during the day, but this morning he’s stayed down by the river to await the arrival of the ship. He seems excited about it and his eyes have a glow to them. Perhaps he’s already started on the rum; Sabir has noticed that he’s a bit of a drinker. Not that it’s anything unusual here. The commandant might even pass as fairly abstemious, compared with the guards.

      It’s impossible to know exactly when the boat will get in, since there’s no direct communication with Saint-Laurent. No telegraph or phone lines. There used to be, and there probably will be again, but something always happens to the cables. They’re too easy to cut and it’s always in somebody’s interests to cut them. So now the camp is as isolated as a medieval village. The commandant has invited Sabir into his house while they wait, ostensibly to talk about progress on the garden, but his mind is elsewhere. He drifts back to his favourite subject, the reform of the Colony: ‘I’m not interested in setting up just another logging camp, where we slowly work the men to death. What’s the point of that? How will it benefit the Colony? How will it benefit France? Logging would be a good idea, if we had professional loggers with proper equipment exporting the wood to Europe. That doesn’t happen here. We have convicts with rusty, clapped-out axes. The timber ends up being used for fuel in Saint-Laurent. The bagne feeds the bagne. It’s slowly consuming itself.

      ‘Once the building work’s finished, I’m going to open up that flat land to the north, by the river. We’ve got no livestock here to feed the bagne, let alone the rest of the Colony. All that meat has to be imported. It’s costing us a fortune! We have fresh water in abundance and all we need to do is open up suitable grazing land.’

      But Sabir has switched off. He’s heard this about the livestock before. According to Bébert, one of the country lads Sabir works with on the garden, this plan to carve grasslands out of the forest is doomed to failure. Once the trees are cleared, the topsoil’s quickly washed away and it’s impossible to maintain any kind of pasture. You just end up with huge expanses of mud. Bébert’s been here six years, has tried to escape twice. Now, he appears to be resigned to his fate and spends his money gambling. ‘He hasn’t been here long enough,’ he said about the commandant, ‘but he’ll learn. He’ll learn.’

      Nonetheless, through sheer enthusiasm and willpower, the commandant has achieved an awful lot in a short space of time. There’s the land cleared up by the main camp, the buildings there and the avenue; and then there’s this grand house by the river, already nearing completion, and the garden Sabir is in charge of creating. Rumour has it that the commandant is a very wealthy man, that his house and garden are being built at his own cost – albeit with free convict labour. Perhaps it’s true. The things Sabir has managed to sneak out of the house over the past week and hide in the undergrowth – bottles of burgundy, silver spoons, a jambon de Bayonne – suggest someone who’s made no concession to colonial life, regardless of cost. Despite this, the commandant appears to be a man of ascetic habits. It’s a paradox. Sabir’s even seen him lunching off dry bread and broth – convict rations, in other words.

      The commandant’s still talking; Sabir slowly tunes back in. ‘You’re a good man,’ he’s saying, ‘you’re doing a fine job with this garden. My wife will be so pleased. I know she’ll like you.’

      Past eleven now and the boat still hasn’t arrived. The commandant can wait no longer; he has business up at the main camp. Sabir is left on his own. There’s a guard and a dozen men working down by the river, but they’re too far away to see what he’s up to. For once, there’s no one in the vicinity, and he has the perfect right to be in the house – he can take a good look around without fear of being caught out.

      Upstairs, two rooms are finished; the rest of the floor is in a skeletal state. Sabir pushes the door to one of the rooms. The first thing he notices is the full-length looking glass. It’s a shock to catch sight of himself like that. While he sees his fiancée’s face everywhere, his own has been a blank all these weeks and months. There are no mirrors out here, none that a convict can use, in any case. You can stare into your dinner tin, and it gives you a blurred, distorted image. Other than that, there’s imagination and memory. Which are always wrong. Always telling you what you want to hear, that you’re the same as when you were arrested, that the months of imprisonment have had no effect, nor will the years to come in this scorched colony. The person that now stares out at Sabir seems to be someone else. The shaved head, the leathery, sun-hardened skin and the gaunt features give his face the skull appearance that he’s noticed in others. He’s been here such a brief time, and yet the transformation has already happened.

      In the room there’s a bed, a chest of drawers, a chair and table, a few other pieces of furniture. Sabir jerks open one of the drawers; there’s nothing in it. This is to be the wife’s bedroom, evidently. The curtains are frilly, feminine. The sole other decoration is a framed photograph sitting on the bedside table. It’s of a house by a river. Sabir does a double take: СКАЧАТЬ