The Enchanted City Read online

  Having piously invoked the demons of Tanganyika, the three magicians prepared to torture the prisoners in accordance with local custom. The troumbachaganga took up the position of someone about to throw in a game of darts. The tattooed harpy pointed her lance like a fencing foil. The kilombe, twirling his blade, took up a stance with his legs braced, ready to leap forward.

  Chapter II

  The Gamble of Those Condemned to Death

  How had the unfortunates who were about to play the part of bloody sacrifices to the Spirits of the Lake come to be lost in the heart of the African continent? The three poor wretches, attached to the service of a great voyager, had, one might say, fallen on the battlefield of fidelity and devotion. For two years they had followed their master, sharing in his good and bad fortune, and now found themselves separated from him for the first time. One day, they had allowed themselves to be taken by surprise and overrun by a dense band of blacks; overwhelmed by the weight of their numbers, they had been captured.

  The white foreigner answered to the name of Isidore Chauvelot—a name that betrayed his nationality. He was, in fact, a Frenchman, and a Frenchman of the Var, a native of Six-Fours, the beautiful eagle’s nest that overlooks the bay of Toulon, coquettishly reflected in the blue waters of Saint Nazaire.

  Isidore was the cook of the dispersed expedition. The senior personnel prized his talents highly, and that was only just. After an initial apprenticeship served at the Hôtel de la Croix-de-Malte in Toulon, and then at the Hôtel des Colonies in Marseilles, he had taken lessons from an eminent professor in Toulouse, who had revealed to him the secrets of the art, particularly the formula for a certain Sinhalese curry that had made him famous. Finally, he had gone to Paris to complete his studies. By dint of hard work, perseverance and genius, he had ended up working at the Grand Hôtel in the capacity of sous-chef. It was there that the Sultan of Zanzibar, wonderstruck by his guinea fowl with Haitian sauce, had attempted to woo him away with the offer of a host of considerable dignities, notably that of director-general of his fishponds, gardens, pheasantries, poultry yards and aviaries.

  The sous-chef, whose success was celebrated by the Parisian press, had declined all those honors—but then, bored and weary of the asphalt horizons of Paris that he had perpetually before his eyes, tormented by the spirit of adventure, he had allowed himself to be collected by voyagers—Frenchmen, those!—who were bravely going to explore the heart of Africa.

  To complete that biography, it is necessary to say that, interrupting the course of his studies one day, the cook had done a stint in the 1st zouaves in the capacity of drummer. History also records that the doctor of sauces was a crack shot with a rifle. The echoes of the Kasbah of Medeah have conserved the memory of the brio that distinguished his manner of beating the reveille and rolling out mortal fire.

  As if those instrumental and culinary talents were not sufficient, nature had also endowed young Isidore with a host of solid qualities. He was, it may be said, an excellent fellow, regular in his conduct, absolutely sober, limiting his pleasure to cigarettes, of which, to tell the truth, he was a heavy smoker. He always seemed cheerful, even something of a joker, always philosophical and full of enthusiasm. Unfortunately, these perfections were eclipsed, more than once a day, by the mists of one intolerable fault: Isidore was prodigiously vain. His vanity, moreover, revealed itself in a singular fashion. He, who had only ever had to go pale beneath the works of the Cuisinière bourgeoise and other technical treatises of the same stripe had—who would have believed it?—immense pretentions in matters of literature and ineradicable pretentions to intuitive science, especially in matters of history, politics and geography.

  His discourse, moreover, testified to an admirably incoherent education. His schoolmaster had taught him a little about everything and very little about anything in particular, all without any method or determined plan, making him read publications of all sorts: stories of voyages, cheap newspapers, novels and poetry, carefully refraining from seasoning his pupil’s reading with any kind of critical observation. Isidore had drunk cheerfully from all these springs; he had furnished his brain with a host of variegated fragments, had made the mountain of Six-Fours into a Parnassus populated with muses who twittered like linnets and reasoned like crows.

  As for any slightly rational enchainment of ideas, he scarcely paid any heed to it, intrepidly coupling, at the risk of making them howl, words that made a natural contrast, committing to memory prodigious anachronisms, making stews of the most disparate morsels. Knowing a little about a great many disparate things, he firmly believed that he knew everything; he was intent on passing for a superior man and never ceased to complain about the ill luck that prevented him from emerging from obscurity.

  The pretentious ignoramus annoyed his masters by professing incredible enormities in a loud voice, and his comrades by heaping them with disdain. How many times had he not treated as simpletons the poor companions now attached, as he was, to a baobab?

  The black man to the right of the arrogant cook was named Mimoun-ben-Abdallah. He was an Algerian Arab. Born in El Kseur in the south, he had served in the Senegal spahis. With regard to the commander of the expedition Mimoun served the functions of hunter; with remarkable skill, he regularly brought venison to the camp. He was a zealous Muslim, always calm, absorbed in contemplation, resigned to the will of Allah, only opening his mouth to emit verses from the Koran.

  The mulatto placed to Isidore’s left had been baptized Choka, a name that the facetious cook had rapidly transformed into Chocolat. The son of a native woman from Saint Paul de Loanda,1 Chocolat had been brought up by a Portuguese missionary, but the fruits of that distinguished education were reduced to a few fragments of Latin with which he enameled his speech and his practices of puerile devotion at San José de Cacuaco.2 Forgetting the reverend’s serious lessons, in the school of the bush, the eccentric had not taken long to mold himself on the model of the Bohemian that one encounters in all the ports on the African coast, and whom the English call by the generic denomination of Jack-Jack.

  Ordinarily, having no other domicile than the harbor steps, jack-jacks exercise, in turn or simultaneously, a host of different professions, according to the weather, fortune or opportunity. They are, as the whim takes them, street porters, domestic servants, messengers, criers, sailors, and chiefs of pagazis or baggage porters. It was thus that Chocolat had been picked up on the dock at Saint Paul and enrolled in the capacity of laborer. As often as not, Isidore took possession of him to pluck fowl, peel vegetables, wash the saucepans or turn the handle of the coffee grinder.

  The excellent jack-jack lent himself readily to everything that was asked of him, for he was naturally obliging, mild and timid; but he also had good reasons for being obliging in the functions of scullion, the accomplishment of which was always worth a few meager rewards of scraps and leftovers. The poor fellow was afflicted by the malady known as hunger sickness; he ate incessantly, but incessantly thought that he was on the point of starvation.

  In the course of the preparations for their torture, the three designated victims adopted different attitudes.

  Chocolat, dying of hunger, was on the point of falling unconscious, sighing as he cast his gaze toward the zenith, where he perceived, oscillating over his head, the beautiful fruits of the baobab, which measure no less than thirty centimeters in length, and are known as “monkey-bread.”3 He was weeping, and scarcely had the strength to invoke San José de Cacuaco in bad Latin.

  Mimoun, more than ever confided to resignation, never ceased to murmur: “Allahu Akbar!”—God is great.

  As for Isidore, he muttered to himself, not without arrogance: “Oh, these savages…! These savages who want my skin are beasts…my God, are they beasts! There’s not one of them who seems to understand! Oh, it’s more than a crime they’re going to commit here; it’s a sin, as Buffon said—for, after all, I’m not just anyone. To think that they’re going to put an end to a man like me!”

 
Then these gusts of pride in extremis were chased away by fits of sinister laughter. “They’re going to devour us, of course,” Isidore added, “but to want to eat me, a cook…that’s too much! And you, Chocolat, you great simpleton, who can’t do anything but cry famine, wait a little…they’re going to invite you to dinner! Don’t worry, we’re going to be served…to these Messieurs of the Black Band…!”

  It was at the moment that these strangled words emerged from Isidore’s mouth that the sacrificers were about to strike their victims. The harpy, brandishing her lance, was making abominable grimaces at Mimoun’s beard, when the strident sound of a horn rang out.

  Then the scene changed

  The entire audience, sorceress and gangas included, fell face down on the ground, as if moved by a spring. There was no longer anything around the baobab but humbly prostrated people, their arms extended at right angles to their bodies, uttering howls like distressed dogs.

  Chapter III

  A Savage’s Good Idea

  Whence came that sudden calm in the ocean of black heads, formerly so stormy? Why was that bloodthirsty crowd no longer thinking of anything but biting the dust? It was because they had heard, not without terror, the blast of the ivory horn, and because the piercing sound of that Oliphant announced to all and sundry the approach of a redoubtable chief, a great Mata Sonapanga.

  A new character did indeed make his entrance onto the stage: a tall young man with a handsome face, but a ferocious expression, then lips and an icy gaze. Following the fashion of Kittara,4 he had had the incisors of his lower jaw removed. His wiry hair was cut very short; he had, however, retained on his head, from the occiput to the sinciput, a dense forest five or six centimeters long. From that fashion of coiffure a caterpillar resulted similar to the crest of a Bavarian helmet—a caterpillar prolonged over the shoulders by the tail of a zebra, forming a mane. That tail was constellated by vulgar glass beads.

  The Sonapanga wore enormous earrings made of beads of opaline porcelain the size of a green pigeon’s egg; a robe of bark beneath an overcoat made of antelope skins; a necklace and bracelets of small glass beads; gaiters of kimaraphamba beads; and a brass wire ring on each of his fingers and each of his toes. In his hand he held a cane of pandana palm, which served him as a scepter; his Oliphant, hanging over his shoulder, was bouncing on his left hip.

  The terrible great chief solemnly picked his way through the flattened crowd. He advanced followed by an immense cortege. Immediately behind him marched women laden with his armor and his offensive weapons. The famous song about Marlborough5 seemed to have been made expressly for those living panoplies, for one of them carried a troumbache, another a koubbeda; yet others were laden with javelins and bucklers. There were also some who were not carrying anything, and the latter were no less beautiful. One might have thought them bronze castings of the Venus de Medici.

  After them came the bodyguards, then the representatives of the sacerdotal caste, the official magicians, preceded by the great fetisher and the chief omen-reader. They were followed by the council of the elders and a multitude of courtiers.

  What was he seeking on the plateau of Nyonngo, that savage chief surrounded by his general staff? Had he come, avid with emotion, to witness the torture of the prisoners? No, for human blood entered into his regime, so to speak; everyday he had a few of his men tortured or put to death. Had he arrived beneath the baobab with the intention of offering even greater sacrifices to Moussammouira, Loubari or Mgoussa? That was scarcely probable; he was in no hurry to bend his knee before the frightful images that represented the demons of the lake.

  His intentions did not take long to become manifest. Instead of proceeding with preliminary ceremonies he headed straight for the tree, scanned the poor fellow condemned to death with a circular glance, and, addressing himself specifically to the white man, he questioned him sharply in good Kiswahili, the original idiom that Max Müller classifies in the eastern group of Bantu languages. It is, at any rate, spoken on the coast of Zanzibar, from which it has spread to the interior of Africa. It is also understood beyond the great equatorial lakes. Fortunately, Isidore knew a few fragments of it, which he seasoned agreeably with locutions borrowed from Algerian Sabir.6 That simple linguistic baggage permitted the former zouave not only to understand the Mata Sonapanga but even, with the aid of gestures to make himself sufficiently understood.

  “Mericani?” said the chief, in a caressing voice.

  “No, no, not Mericani!” protested the condemned man, swiftly. “Make no mistake, Monsieur Mata…me Francis!”

  To understand the commencement of the interrogation that the noble individual was undertaking, it is necessary to know that for the blacks of Central Africa, all white foreigners are Americans. The English of Saint Paul de Loanda, Zanzibar, Albert and Victoria-Nyanza are unceremoniously included in that generic denomination. Concurrently, the Africans attribute to white men the designation mousoungou.”

  “Mousoungou?” the young native continued, in the most honeyed tone.

  “Right, Mousoungou—I prefer that! Yes, I won’t try to hide it; I’m a man with a pale face. So what?”

  “Death! Death!”

  “I’m going to be killed? I suspected as much. Do you think I’m blind?”

  “But you prophet of the god Ouaka.”

  “Impossible! Me, a prophet…! Go on. What do you mean?”

  “Life! Life!”

  “We’re not going to be killed? Well, of course, that’s a good idea! In fact, now that I think about it, one doesn’t kill prophets. If one killed them, they wouldn’t prophesy, and as one wants them to prophesy….”

  The Mata Sonapanga was offering to let Isidore live, but he did not hide the fact that he expected good and important services from him.

  He explained to the prisoner, obligingly, that he commanded considerable forces, an entire people marching from the east to the west across the African continent; that the army in question was divided into seven corps of seventy thousand men each; that his power was absolutely irresistible; that Ouaka, the ruler of the sky, had promised to submit all the land in Africa to the domination of the Ormas—that was the name of his people.

  Nevertheless, a disagreeable little cloud that was darkening the horizon opened so splendidly to the conqueror. Three days from the plateau of Nyonngo, where his general quarters were, there was a great fortress or banza on the Tanganyika that had stopped his march dead and prevented him from pushing his conquests any further. That inconvenient banza he had tried hard to take; he had blockaded it narrowly by land and on the water, but in vain. The accursed place opposed an invisible resistance to his efforts. His water-borne flotillas had tightened their moorings in vain; his besieging troops had grown weary without any profit in the lines of Kifoukourou.

  According to the Sonapanga, the impregnable fortress was named Kisimbasimba, the city of lions. No sound escaped from the place; never had the shadow of a human being been glimpsed at any point on its ramparts. It was surely devoid of inhabitants, absolutely deserted. And yet, by night, its walls lit up, and were populated by monsters and by phantoms. Globes of fire emerged therefrom, which snaked through the surrounding area for a long way. Its large and profound ditches were nothing but the lairs of wild beasts; hailstorms of stones fell from its extraordinary battlements, rains of venomous creatures and deluges of improbable grapeshot!

  It was easy to imagine how, in consequence, the troops at the camp of Kifoukourou had been tested, demoralized and discouraged. The men were beginning to claim that the mysterious banza was nothing other than a city haunted by demons, by the Spirits of the Lake. And it was to appease the furious anger of those evil spirits that the army stationed on the plateau of Nyonngo had thought it as well to offer as a holocaust Isidore, Mimoun and Chocolat.

  Having posed the problem, the Sonapanga formulated his conclusions. The chief magician of his general quarters had just revealed to him that the most malign spirits were absolutely impotent against men wit
h pale faces; that the Mericanis, and, in general, all mousoungou, were more malign than the spirits, powerful as they were supposed to be; that they were capable of any undertaking, and any success; that they knew everything, even how to take the banza that was resisting in an indecent manner; that the white prisoner they had in their hands had been providentially sent by Ouaka.

  In sum, the young chief offered the cook life, liberty and fortune if he would take possession of Kisimbasimba.

  “Well,” said Isidore, “word of honor, that’s something I wasn’t expecting!”

  The former drummer in the zouaves, having never doubted himself in the slightest, did not even take the trouble to reflect. He did not have a second of hesitation, and felt without restraint that he was an expert in the art of attacking strongholds.

  “It’s no trouble,” he declared, with magnificent assurance. “No trouble at all. The banzas of Africa I know. This one’s no better than the rest, and I’ll soon settle its hash, even if it is a city of lions. As for the rest, let’s not talk about it—it’s a load of nonsense and your men are seeing things. I promise you than in two days, you’ll be able to smoke your calumet on the boulevards of this enchanted city, for I’ll have cleared out all its spirits and its wild beasts once and for all!”

  At these words, the Sonapanga, arming himself with a small knife, cut the prisoners’ bonds personally. At a signal from his barghoumi, the crowd, still prostrate on the ground, got up briskly. On the orders they received to make a racket, the musicians started to bang their most sonorous metallic instruments with mighty blows of the fist.

  The cook, who had been within two inches of death a few moments before, was solemnly proclaimed ganga-ya-ita—which is to say, Minister of War and Generalissimo.

  “Yes indeed!” he said to himself, with imperturbable seriousness. “That’s a promotion, and no mistake! To pass from the rank of laboratory chef to general in chief is what one might call taking a step forward in life.”