The Enchanted City

  The Enchanted City

  A Journey to Lake Tanganyika

  by

  Eugène Hennebert

  translated, annotated and introduced by

  Brian Stableford

  A Black Coat Press Book

  Introduction

  La Ville enchantée, voyage au Lac Tanganyika, here translated as The Enchanted City: A Journey to Lake Tanganyika, was published in Tours by Alfred Mame et fils in 1885 under the pseudonym “M. Prévost-Duclos,” and was reprinted several times, including further Mame editions in 1888, 1890 and 1893 and a feuilleton version in La Science Illustrée in 1894. According to the website of Le Club Verne, an affiliate of the Association des Amis du Roman Populaire, its author, Lieutenant-Colonel Eugène Hennebert (1826-1896), had originally penned a version of it under the title Un drame au centre de l’Afrique, signed with the pseudonym Léopold Robert, and had sent a copy to Jules Verne in 1880; he then rewrote it in accordance with Verne’s suggestions. The “Léopold Robert” version was not published, and Hennebert does not appear to have published anything under that name.

  Hennebert had previously supplied Alfred Mame with another, more pedestrian, African adventure story under the Prévost-Duclos name (which he improvised by combining the surnames of two famous 18th century novelists), Une Aventure à Tombouctou [An Adventure in Timbuktu] (1882). A third short novel printed under a version of the same pseudonym (omitting the hyphen, thus making “Prévost” resemble a forename), “Les Pirates du désert” [The Pirates of the Desert], appeared as a 22-part feuilleton in the Journal des Voyages (1886), but was not reprinted in book form. The writing of these various works of fiction must have seemed to Hennebert to be a matter of relaxation from his more serious employments as a professional soldier and military theorist, but as jeux d’esprit go, they are by no means devoid of seriousness of purpose and attitude, and they are compiled methodically, with the kind of discipline one might expect from a strategist, as well as a breezy spirit of amusement.

  Although La Ville enchantée might have been Hennebert’s most widely read work, he was far more famous during his lifetime, and is now primarily remembered, as a military historian and commentator. His most important historical document consists of his accounts of the siege of Paris in 1870-71 and the Commune of 1871, written from the viewpoint of an officer in the Army of Versailles, which eventually overthrew the Communards; they were initially signed “Major H. de Sarrepont” but were reprinted under his own name when he was no longer on active service. His studies of the military potential of torpedoes, including Les Torpilles [Torpedoes] (1874 as Sarrepont; revised 1888 under his own name) and Art militaire sous-aquatique [The Art of Subaquatic Warfare] (1880 as Sarrepont) are also notable, as are his conscientious account of L’Art militaire et science: le matériel de guerre moderne [Military Art and Science: The Equipment of Modern Warfare] (1888) and his ominously-titled La Guerre imminente: la défense du territoire [The Imminent War: The Defense of Territory] (1890). Those of his non-fiction books most closely related to the subject matter of La Ville enchantée are, however, the ones dealing with ancient warfare rather than modern and future warfare, most notably Histoire Militaire des animaux [A Military History of Animals] (1893).

  The decision by the editor of La Science Illustrée, Louis Figuier, to reprint a novel in his roman scientifique feuilleton slot that was currently in print, and had been continuously in print for nearly a decade, is a curious one, but might reflect the difficulty he was having in finding Vernian fictions with a hint of the scientifique about them, even though the most obvious rival market for that kind of work, the Journal des Voyages, preferred straightforward adventure stories. In spite of its outré setting, La Ville enchantée is no more unlikely than many of the serials published in the Journal des Voyages, and it does have the advantages of seeming solidly researched and of paying homage to many of the heroes of the heroic age of African exploration, which must have appealed to Figuier, who was always interested in the didactic aspects of the fiction he published. La Ville enchantée also gives the impression of having benefited from Verne’s input, maintaining a buoyant tone and a hectic narrative pace throughout its action-packed plot, cruising at a melodramatic pitch that many supposedly Vernian novels failed to reach, let alone sustain for long.

  Like numerous other items that Figuier published under the roman scientifique rubric, La Ville enchantée is not speculative fiction, and does not, therefore, qualify as “proto-science fiction,” but it is thoroughly impregnated with scientific materials, not merely in terms of the various informational materials on which its widely-read scientist Professor Cornelius draws, but in the propensity of all the characters to problem-solving. In their long conflict with the vast army that lays siege to Kisimbasimba, the eponymous “enchanted city,” all the characters, including the enterprising cook who tends to scramble the random items of factual information he has at his disposal in an absurd manner, think in scientific terms, both theoretically and practically, because that is the very essence of their civilization, as opposed to their enemies’ barbarity.

  It is true that Hennebert’s fictitious ambassadors of science and civilization receive help that seems uncanny, if not frankly supernatural, from the various animal and human inhabitants of the “enchanted” city, without which their scientific expertise would be impotent to counter the vast numerical advantage of the barbarian horde, but their ingenuity and technology play a major role nevertheless. As the plot unfolds, it always seems likely that the mercurial city-dwellers might have every reason to thank their civilized collaborators for their assistance in staving off disaster, if disaster is ultimately to be avoided even partly, in what is bound to be a desperately difficult contest.

  There is much in the novel that now seems rather naïve, although it must have seemed rather advanced and daring in its own day, and much that now seems uncomfortably racist, although it is considerably less so than the vast majority of contemporary works of popular fiction. The heroic age of African exploration inevitably appears to be very distant indeed in the post-colonial era, but that seeming naivety is compensated by the fact that it lends novels celebrating the achievements of the era a definite nostalgia value. La Ville enchantée, when it was eventually published, was exactly contemporary with H. Rider Haggard’s King Solomon’s Mines, billed in London at the time as “the most amazing book ever written.” The latter founded an entire subgenre of African adventures, in which it was only ever outshone by the same author’s monumental She (1887), and it makes Hennebert’s novel look a trifle staid in spite of its narrative pace and flamboyance.

  La Ville enchantée nevertheless makes an interesting comparison with Haggard’s classic, not only because of certain points of coincidental similarity, but also because of a marked contrast in attitude, which forbids the conscientious Hennebert to make use of some of the melodramatic narrative moves of which Haggard made so much, even though many of them are set up and foreshadowed within his plot. Whereas the treasure of the legendary mines remains a key object of the plot’s focus throughout Haggard’s novel, even though the rewards actually distributed to various members of the cast are quite different, material concerns are never an issue in Hennerbert’s novel; when the characters stumble across gold nuggets, they simply disregard them as a complete irrelevance. Even the intriguing mysteries of Kisimbasimba’s ancient past are set aside; Professor Cornelius is strangely uninterested in the more Romantic implications of the city’s existence—an indifference that cannot be entirely excused by the hectic pace of the life-threatening events in which he is caught up—and there is a stubborn practicality about Hennebert’s manner of dealing with exotic subject matter that is quite unlike Haggard’s ever-readiness to marvel. r />
  It is hardly surprising, given the plotting opportunities that Hennebert so conscientiously set aide, that Haggard, who never missed such tricks, went on to cultivate a worldwide fame in the adventure story genre, matched only by Jules Verne’s, while “M. Prévost-Duclos” vanished into obscurity after his one moderate success. La Ville enchantée is an intriguing novel nevertheless, by no means unworthy of a significant place in the canon of African adventure fiction, by virtue of its narrative quality as well as its status as a pioneer. In spite of its occasional pretentiousness and didactic fervor, it is essentially an item of what would nowadays be thought of as “pulp fiction,” but in terms of the artistry of that unjustly-slandered medium, it made a worthy contribution to the evolution of its subgenre, and it remains very readable today, in spite of the sophistication of narrative technique that has taken place in the long interim.

  This translation has been made from the copy of the 1893 reprint of the Mame edition reproduced on the Bibliothèque Nationale’s gallica website. The translation was difficult, not only because of the number of African terms, many of which are rendered by the author in an orthography that is no longer current, but also because one of the major characters spices his speech with mangled Latin and another with awkward Arabic, while the ubiquitous Isidore frequently indulges in untranslatable wordplay, and accidentally gives rise to other jokes with his mistaken juxtapositions of historical characters and events. I have retained the author’s spelling of most African names, retaining his use of ou in many instances where modern spelling prefers u, but have substituted modern equivalents when the latter are likely to be familiar to the reader—using Zulu rather than Zoulou, for instance. I have done my best to preserve the flavor of the original and not to burden the text with too many explanatory footnotes, although some readers might feel that I have not had much success in the latter task.

  Brian Stableford

  THE ENCHANTED CITY

  Chapter I

  The Demons of the Lake

  On 13 March 1877, in the heart of equatorial Africa, the first rays of dawn illuminated the prelude to one of those dramas that the journals of great voyagers only insert in terms full of fear.

  The scene was about to unfold not far from Cape Nyonngo, whose white point, like the prow of a ship, cuts neatly into the waters of Lake Tanganyika at 27°30 east longitude and 3°23 south latitude.

  A confused mass of tortuous and profoundly-ravined ridges, the bulk of the cape is dominated by a vast plateau, the arid soil of which nourishes only a single tree, but a giant of the kind. It is a baobab whose leafy crown measures no less than a hundred and fifty meters in circumference, and which, under that immense mass of branches, could easily shelter an entire regiment from the rain. The trunk of that sovereign among vegetables is bizarrely carved around its perimeter. Guided by the spirit of whimsy that presides over the execution of infantile works, temeritous hands have sculpted a number of monsters with human faces there, in the thickness of the bark, with an artistry that bears no resemblance to that if our master woodcarvers. Those images, unpleasant to behold, are framed by hideous realities: chaplets of freshly severed heads, festoons of tresses scalped from enemies and garlands of skulls that time has polished like ivory.

  Thus, on the thirteenth of March, at daybreak, three prisoners had just been attached to the foot of the baobab on the plateau of Nyonngo, solidly tied with the aid of ropes of aloe fiber mixed with tiger grass. One of those unfortunates was white, another of Semitic blood with a negro tint, and the third a mulatto.

  The white man seemed to be about twenty-eight years of age. Of medium height and robust constitution, he had a high forehead, brown eyes and a Grecian nose following the principles of esthetics. His lips were a trifle thin, but did not advertise any malevolence. His mouth even sketched an excellent smile—a sad smile, but still proud, which allowed a glimpse of two rows of dazzling pearly white teeth. A crow’s wing beard, smooth and bushy, set off his sun-tanned complexion advantageously. Coiffed in a hat made of reed stems, clad in a tunic and trousers in grey wool, he wore a buffalo hide belt around his waist.

  The black man, who seemed to be about thirty, was tall and respectably plump; his hands were delicate and chubby. He had a broad forehead, fleshy cheeks, a double chin and beautiful long-lashed eyes with a tender and profound gaze. His face radiated calm and placidity. His costume did not differ much from that of Algerian Arabs; he wore a red skullcap on his head with a silken h’aik and a black camel-hide brima. Two or three burnooses were superimposed on his body; on his legs, red morocco boots each affected the form of the trunk of a banana tree. A chaplet of large beads hung around his neck, descending to the middle of his chest.

  The mulatto was a tall lanky fellow, thin and stiff, with a slightly arched back. The uncommon length of his legs gave his gait some analogy with that of the wading bird known as a secretary bird. His head, rather broad at the height of his cheekbones, took on the shape of a quadrangular pyramid in the cranial region, gently rounded at the summit. His ears were gigantic; his eyes presented the particular obliquity typical of the natives of the Congo; his lower jaw was equipped with long and pointed teeth. His physiognomy was suggestive of a humble and timid character. As for his mode of dress, it was absolutely grotesque.

  In fact, the bare-headed and barefooted mulatto wore tight trousers with yellow piping and a huge red jacket, probably plundered from one of Queen Victoria’s horse-guards. The jacket was tightened at the wait by means of a belt—or, rather, a rope—from which was suspended, by a little leather thong, a pocketknife of a study kind. Another rope or strap was passed over the shoulder of the red coat, whose two ends were fixed to a canvas bag like the musettes in which the cavalrymen of French regiments keep their grooming equipment. In sum, the tall fellow was decked out in a fashion resembling, save for his height, one of the monkeys paraded around by organ grinders.

  Around the three prisoners bound to the baobab, a multitude of delirious individuals were stamping their feet, uttering blood-curdling howls. They were black-skinned men of medium height, but of a type very different from the vulgar native with the flat nose, thick lips and curly hair. On the contrary, they had flat hair, long eyelashes, bushy eyebrows, keen eyes profoundly sunk in their orbits, a straight nose, thin lips and small ears. An enormous torso, broad hips and thin legs collaborated in giving them an extremely original appearance.

  Dressed, for the most part, in the skins of big cats, the rest of the body was smeared with white, red and blue, the three colors of war in the regions of central Africa. A few guinea fowl or green pigeon feathers were stuck in the hair. Some of them wore little mantles of bark on their shoulders, with a kind of wolf-skin cape. On their knees and ankles there were bracelets with wooden bells; on their wrists, ivory rings; on their heads, turbans or crowns of wisteria. Finally, a few, aristocratic in their bearing, were clad in white fleecy goatskin skirts and mantles made of hedgehog skin, with their lower legs fringed with brass bells. Their coiffure consisted of fur caps ornamented with glass beads and a red feather. From the center of that headdress emerged a long hank of hair, thrown backwards following the arc of a circle, from which a large bouquet of goat hair was suspended.

  In the first rank of the bloodthirsty blacks, a chain of horrible women was agitating, summarily dressed in small goatskin aprons edged with little bells made with iron hoops. By way of ornament, those harpies had fixed bunched of sun-dried lizards to their heads.

  Bursts of savage music cruelly accompanied the overture of the drama anticipated by the spectators. Applied to the mouths of artistes with robust lungs, long buffalo horns cast sonorous waves to the winds that collided violently. The rhythm of the funeral march was beaten by vigorous hands on leopard-skin war drums, sheet metal bells and leather bucklers. All the instruments of the orchestra combined their effects in accordance with astonishing principles, to which our professors of harmony have doubtless never had the idea of exposing their pupils.

  Sud
denly, in response to an imperceptible signal, the din calmed down.

  An old man, a woman and a young man detached themselves from the furious circle.

  Clad in a long white robe, the old man had a kind of dolman on his shoulders made of human hair; a small copper bell tinkled at the end of each of those carefully combed banks, heightened with glass beads. His head disappeared beneath an enormous tuft of ostrich feathers; his torso was ornamented with chaplets of teeth. In his hand he was holding a large white weapon with several blades, similar to a short-handled halberd. That long-bearded old man was the kilombe, the chief of the national magicians.

  The woman’s only garment was a kind of girdle from which were suspended leather thongs ornamented with shells, teeth and coral. The rest of her body was tattooed with diamond shapes. Every hair on her head was threaded through a number of cylindrical glass beads, somewhat reminiscent of fragments of pipe stem. In her left hand she held a small buckler shaped like a violin; in the right was a lance with a flaxen tuft for a pennon. The hideous virago was an eminent sorceress.

  The young man sported a large pink shell on his forehead and a sheep’s horn at each of his temples; on his breast he wore a bison horn tied with a piece of cord to a zebra hoof. He was carrying a troumbache, a weapon made of black wood, flat in form and pointed at either end. The young man—or, rather, the adolescent—was a simple ganga, a run-of-the-mill magician who, by reason of his special armament, was known as a troumbachaganga.

  There was a profound silence.

  The three individuals marched at a solemn pace toward the baobab, making ostentatious genuflections before the images sculpted in the bark of the tree. Those graffiti represented Loubari, the African Satan; Mgoussa, the evil spirit; and Mousammouira, the spirit of storms.