Colony. Hugo Wilcken

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       VI

      The commandant sits across from Sabir, behind his heavy brazil-wood desk. It’s littered with a confusion of reports, journals, papers covered in a tiny spider scrawl, piles of books. He picks one up, theatrically lets it drop back onto the desk. ‘If I’d known the climate was as bad as this, I’d never have brought all these books with me. Within a year, they’ll be eaten away by mould. Within three, there’ll be nothing left at all.’

      Sabir remains silent. He stares through the glassless window to the punishment cells opposite. Outside one of them, a prisoner and guard sit handcuffed together. The guard is smoking a cigarette. Every time he lifts the cigarette to his mouth, the prisoner has to lift his hand as well. Why doesn’t the guard change hands?

      ‘Anyway, I’ve had news from Saint-Laurent. My shipment of orchids has arrived there from Florida. There’s a Dutch ship due up from the bauxite mines. The captain will pick up my shipment and deliver it here on the way up to the coast. I imagine it’ll arrive in a couple of days. You’re to stop work on the hedging and start preparing the orchid nursery.’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘The captain-at-arms has already interviewed you?’

      ‘Yes, sir.’

      ‘And you’ve nothing further to add about last night’s … unpleasantness?’ The commandant briefly looks away, as though out of embarrassment.

      ‘No, sir.’

      ‘Very well. You can get started immediately. No need to return to barracks. I’ll send your men down to you.’

      Sabir collects his lunch rations and walks slowly back down through the jungle to the house and garden by the river, buried in thought. He’s ragged from the night’s events, the captain-at-arms’s morning interrogations, and yet almost as agitated by the interview he’s just had with the commandant. He’s to build an orchid nursery now? Sabir has vague images in his head of the flamboyant, strikingly coloured flowers he’s occasionally seen in the fleuristes of Paris. His job as a gardener seems to be moving onto a higher plane. The heavy, brute work is mostly finished with; soon, it’ll be difficult to keep up the pretence. For Sabir, the feeling of being an impostor has always been there. Maybe even for years. Only now it’s as sharp as ever. And yet what a tragedy if he were moved from his position before this escape that Edouard and Carpette are planning.

      When the commandant’s up at the camp, Sabir now has free run of the house. This new status has developed imperceptibly, without anyone commenting on it. The guards who spend the day down here are suspicious of him and suspicious of his relationship with the commandant; but they leave him be, since they don’t know what the commandant has sanctioned and don’t wish to ask him. And when he’s here by himself, Sabir can fall into a sort of fantasy. That it’s his house, his garden, and the guards are under his authority.

      He’s noticed one change since he was here in the commandant’s reception room yesterday. The commandant has chosen a photograph from his photo album upstairs, framed it and placed it on a sideboard. A studio shot of his wife. It reminds Sabir of something. Lately, the visions he has of his fiancée have subtly changed. Her face seems to be replaced with that of a young woman at the beach. She has a curious smile, dark hair and a striped swimming costume.

      Sabir scans the commandant’s library. There actually is a book about orchids here somewhere; he noticed it before. A crinkly paged volume, entitled On the Various Contrivances by Which Orchids are Fertilised by Insects. Sabir pulls it out and turns to the introduction: ‘The Orchidaceae is a broad family of perennial plants, characterised by one fertile stamen and a three-petalled flower.’ There’s a lot more in that vein. But no practical advice on how to care for them. The rest of the book is hopelessly scientific, meaningless. Damn the commandant for not having anything more relevant, less highbrow. Damn his nineteenth-century learning!

      What to do for this nursery he’s to build? The commandant has said nothing specific about it, save where it’s to be located. The only image that comes to mind is that of a greenhouse. Clearly, you don’t build greenhouses in tropical climates. At the back of the house, his men are lounging about near where the hedge is to be planted, smoking, doing nothing. He sets them to work on a low walled enclosure by the pond. He has a notion that the flowers will at least need protection from the harsh sun and beating tropical rain, so he envisages thick poles at each corner, and some sort of palm thatch. Rush matting for the inner walls, to let in the air. Beyond that, he has no particular idea. Then again, is the commandant going to know any better than him?

      Once he’s got the men working, he returns to the house – to think, to sit down, to smoke one of the commandant’s cigarettes. He should be looking for things to steal. And yet he feels emptied by the strain of last night. In a way, it’s been good having to organise the nursery; it’s occupied his mind. Masque’s murder now seems unreal. It’s the dream that lingers after you wake, then follows you around all day. At the same time, it’s impossible to focus on it directly. Instead, Sabir finds himself recalling other deaths. Distant ones. He thinks of his mother. Of his grandmother. Of all sorts of men he knew at the front. Their young faces surprisingly fresh in his mind.

      The commandant doesn’t arrive at his house until a little before dusk. In the early days of the garden, he’d carry out daily inspections of the work; now, he generally invites Sabir into the house to report on the day’s progress. And the first thing he usually does in these meetings is pour himself a rum. Today, for the first time, he offers Sabir a glass as well. This simple act raises their relationship to a different level, if only for the time it takes to drink the rum. There’s something fundamentally social about sharing a drink which makes it impossible to maintain roles of jailer and prisoner, punisher and punished. There’s something perverse about it as well.

      ‘You’ve got them started on the nursery?’

      ‘The men are building the outer wall, sir. I’m using the bricks we ordered for the retaining wall by the jetty. We’ll need around eight dozen more bricks, though, sir. Shall I place an order with the kiln? Or will we have to go to Saint-Laurent?’

      ‘Whatever you think necessary. Write it down and I’ll sign the order tomorrow morning.’

      Sabir has the impression that the commandant knows even less than he does about what’s needed, and that’s a comfort. He can feel the rum moving through his body: a prickling sensation crawling down his arms and legs. He hasn’t had any alcohol since that glass of rum at the store on the way out of Saint-Laurent. It’s easy enough to СКАЧАТЬ