Hashish: A Smuggler's Tale (10 page)

I remember a visit he paid us in our house at Obock. Knowing that my wife was there, he had put on his dress uniform. Aublin, who accompanied him, was in shirt-sleeves and perspiring profusely. He sniggered at what he called the ridiculous affectation of his comrade. Our house was very simply arranged, but that did not prevent us from receiving our guests with due honour. It was pathetic to watch how Voiron reacted to an atmosphere of refinement and culture. He seemed to recover instinctively the manners of the class in which he had been born. We discussed literature and art, and evoked memories of France. The poor boy was literally transfigured, and showed a side of his mind which, from fear of ridicule, he had kept hidden from the rough, uneducated men with whom he had chosen to cast in his lot. During this time Aublin, on all fours on the carpet, played bears with my little daughter.

Then we drank a Pernod, real pre-war stuff I had brought from Massawa – the absinthe which for so long reigned supreme in the distant outposts of our colonies. Under its influence, the unfortunate Voiron changed completely. All the coarseness of fifteen years in barracks among vulgar brutes submerged what we had just seen of delicacy and refinement in his soul. He became simply a common N.C.O. with the goggly eyes of a drunkard. It was one of the saddest things I have ever seen. Aublin did not change. He got a little redder in the face, that was all. He slapped Voiron jovially on the back shouting gaily:

‘Ah, Charlie, old man, that’s the stuff. A good Pernod soon makes life rosy.’

Then, turning to me, he added:

‘He’s like that when he has the blues, plays the aristo, but a stiff peg soon puts him all right. He’s a good pal, is Charlie, not a stuck-up bone in his body.’

I felt an immense pity for this poor fellow, destined to go under. I looked at his slim hand with its crested signet-ring; it seemed to implore an impossible help. Too late, too late.

When I reached Obock I learned that twenty-five Somalis had escaped from the boat which was taking them to France, and had been captured on Italian territory. Captain Benoit had received orders to go and fetch them. He was not at all happy at the thought of this perilous expedition. No doubt it was easy for fifty armed men to escort twenty-five poor devils worn out with fatigue and hunger. But the fifty men were Somalis like the prisoners, and that meant that two Europeans, an officer and an N.C.O., would be isolated with sevénty-five Negroes in the middle of a desert where everything reminded them that this was where they were born, while the white men were only intruders.

The day before that fixed for the departure, the captain had a severe bout of fever and was compelled to go to bed. Voiron joyfully agreed to take charge of the expedition. Sergeant Montsacré volunteered to accompany him. They were to leave at three o’clock next morning. Captain Benoit would keep with him a sufficient number of men to guard the post. The men were selected with infinite care; all those belonging to the same tribe as the fugitives were rejected, so as to lessen the danger of a revolt on the way. Voiron decided to take only twenty-five men with him!, and he said that half of that would have been enough. He and
Montsacré were old pals; they had gone through the war together; each knew that he could count on the other to death and beyond, and that was the principal thing.

The camels with the water supply left that evening, so as to be at the halt when the troop should arrive. In the afternoon Voiron came to see me, wildly gay at the idea of escaping at last from the monotony of this post, in which the prudence of Captain Benoit kept them so closely shut up. I gave him some tips about the water-holes and so on. When he was taking his leave, he said:

‘Thank you for bringing back Ahmed Fara, my gazelle hunter. We wouldn’t have bothered about his deserting, if the mess-table had not suffered severely from his absence.’

‘Well, of course,’ I said, suddenly remembering the surly guard we had taken on at Djibouti. ‘I had forgotten all about him, he tucked himself away into such little space. Anyone might have thought he was dumb, too. My sailors tried in vain to get him to eat with them, and not a single word would he utter. Finally they left him alone, concluding he was crazy.’

‘Yes, he’s an odd fellow, a very odd fellow, but a good sort for all that. He must be worried if he has learnt that his brother has deserted, and that is maybe why he is so queer. But it’s a business to know what these devils of niggers are thinking.’

‘Oh, they think much as we do; but if I were you I should steer clear of your gazelle hunter. He doesn’t inspire confidence at all. Beware of men who are small, ugly and taciturn.’

‘Oh, I don’t pay much attention. Anyhow, I am leaving him here, though he would fain be included in the expedition, and says he came back from Djibouti specially for that.’

‘You are maybe wrong not to take him then. You may be sure that if he wants to go and take his brother prisoner, it is not with the idea of helping him, but for some reason that neither you nor I could understand. It is always dangerous to oppose a fixed idea in the head of one of those savages whose brutal and simple logic hits like a sledge-hammer. I tell you that yesterday he gave me the impression of a man off his mental balance.’

‘Oh, if he has gone potty, I’ll clap him into the guard-room. That will calm him. Well, I must be off. Farewell for ever, or so long - I don’t know which it will be, and I don’t care a tinker’s curse.’

His eyes held a strange expression, a look of defiance to Destiny. Once he had gone I regretted my words. Why had I told him it would be prudent to humour the taciturn Somali? By what right had I given him such advice and inspired him with such fears? I reproached myself with vanity, with having wanted to show off my superior understanding of the soul of the natives, a damned stupid thing to do. And yet, when I thought it over, I realized I was unjust to myself, that it was something infinitely deeper, some warning from the depths of my subconscious which had forced me to speak. I would say that I had had a presentiment, only it is so easy to be wise after the event. All the same, I had felt a sort of physical anguish as I shook hands with Voiron. Very likely it was he himself, going as he was to his doom, who transferred this uncomfortable feeling to me. He had felt death hovering over him when he had jokingly said ‘Farewell for ever.’

In the middle of the night I was awakened by the firing of three shots. They came from the Residency, about half a mile away. I distinctly saw a lantern waving about on the esplanade where the soldiers generally drilled. It was just time for the expedition to start, and I thought that someone was firing off shots from sheer exuberance. The men had probably been celebrating their departure by a drink or two, and young soldiers in a god-forsaken post in the bush generally express their joy rather noisily. That a tragedy was being enacted never entered my head. Soon the dawn broke, a dawn like thousands of others. Everything seemed very calm when I went out on the terrace to take my shower. Then I saw Aublin come running into my courtyard, wild-eyed and breathless.

‘Voiron has been murdered,’ he cried as soon as he caught sight of me. ‘This morning when they were about to start one of the guards deliberately fired three shots into him… he is dead… I came to ask if you could take his body to Djibouti at once.’

I asked for details. One of the guards who were to remain at Obock, whose brother, as it happened, was among the deserters, had come up to Voiron when he was inspecting his detachment just before the start. The fellow begged and implored to be taken with them. He wore his field kit, and was armed, all ready, with his rifle in his hand. The reader has already guessed that it was Ahmed Fara, the Somali I had brought with me the day before. Voiron refused his request, and threatened to have him put in prison if he continued to bother him.

‘But I want to see my brother…’

‘You will see him when we come back, as I have already told you.’

‘No; I want to come with you; I am not a woman to be left to guard the house.’

‘Will you go back into barracks and take off all that impedimenta?’ shouted Voiron, suddenly flying into the unbalanced rage of the alcoholic.

At this the Somali lost his head, and in a sudden fit of madness fired on his officer. The shot hit Voiron in the belly, and he fell, with a shout for help.

‘I was standing at the door of the Residency,’ continued Aublin; ‘it was a very dark night and I could see nothing. But when I heard the shot and Voiron’s voice crying for help, I broke into a cold sweat. I went in, flew upstairs, and leaning from a first-floor window, shrieked “Coming, old top,” and at that very moment two other shots rang out.

‘“There’s going to be trouble, Aublin, me lad,” I said to myself, for I thought that the Somalis had mutinied. Then I heard Montsacré bellowing, “Come on, you sons of bitches, get out of your bloody beds.”

‘And he treated us to a blistering volley. I say “us”, for the captain was there too, only his wife had locked the door and forbidden him to stir. Eventually, however, the captain went out in his night-shirt to see what had happened. Voiron, already badly hurt by the first bullet, had been finished off by the other two, one of which had broken his back. Montsacré, who had been at the other end of the line, had made one flying leap to save him, but got to him just in time to lay out the foul murderer with a blow from his rifle-butt. The whole business had taken about eighty seconds, and the entire armed detachment stood there open-mouthed and motionless, stunned by the suddenness of it all. It is true that it was too dark for them to see what was happening.’

While Aublin was telling this story, we were making our way to the Residency. Voiron had been laid on an
angareb
(native bed made of interlaced strips of leather). Death had put its seal of serenity on the handsome, pale face, set in severe lines, and under the folds of the flag which served as shroud, the body of this poor soldier, this outcast who had so bitterly felt his decadence, lay rigid as the effigy of a knight on a marble tomb, such as one sees in old cathedrals. Perhaps Voiron had something of the soul of those old heroes, but what would a Bayard or a Roland have done in the 22nd Colonial Regiment in this twentieth
century? He would probably have risen to be a sergeant-major… and nothing more. Each age fashions its men.

In spite of myself I felt my emotion rising as I looked at this dead man. For the flag thrown over him, this emblem of our distant country, seemed like a mourning veil thrown on her child by our common mother. For a moment we were all brothers in the face of our dead. I tried desperately to keep back my tears and not make a fool of myself. Aublin was sobbing like a child.

Voiron’s corpse was carried on board my boat. I had accepted this funereal mission without thinking, but I now remembered that I had the eight cases of hashish in my hold and that the customs officer had warned me not to re-enter French waters, once I had left Djibouti. I told Captain Benoit about this, and it was agreed that to avoid any complications he would say that he had commandeered my
boutre.
The coffin was on the after-deck. The murderer, who had now recovered consciousness, lay in the bottom of the hold, his face swollen and bloody, staring sullenly before him like a captive beast. Why had he committed this crime? He had wrapped himself in an obstinate silence, and nobody would ever know what thoughts were passing through his rudimentary brain. We had to keep thinking of what he had done in order not to feel desperately sorry for him, for he was in a terrible state. The other Somalis, who had adored Voiron, had nearly lynched him.

Captain Benoit was in full dress uniform, pompous and important, with his face composed to a seemly gloom. As he disembarked on the quay at Djibouti amid the dignitaries who had been notified by telegram, he was quite the hero of the day. He told his little story with much mournful head-shaking and many dramatic gestures. Just think how useful all this would be for promotion.

The funeral was heart-breakingly sad from sheer ridiculousness. A carriage had been turned into a hearse for the occasion, and most grotesque it looked, drawn by two skinny mules. It bumped prosaically over the ruts in the road, and the somnolent Arab who acted as coachman changed his plug to the other cheek, contemptuously shooting forth a jet of brown saliva across the cords of the pall. After all, it was only a
roumi,
an unbeliever, being thrust into the ground. The procession stopped at the European cemetery, and the coolies unloaded the coffin exactly as if it had been a case of merchandise being unshipped on the quay. Someone uttered a
hypocritical speech, then the procession broke up and left the cemetery in the pleasant disorder of people glad to be through with a tedious duty.

I thought how hideous death was in these circumstances. This cemetery with its high walls and scrubby little monuments was such a contrast to the serene melancholy of the tombs I had often glimpsed at sea as I passed near desert islands, with the wild sea wind whistling round them, and the heads of the saw-fish planted before them gleaming in the sun.

Thanks to the declaration of Captain Benoit that he had been obliged to commandeer my ship as there was no other, I had no trouble with the customs, but as soon as I had played to a finish my role of amateur funeral mute, I set sail, afraid that after all the authorities might change their minds about letting me go off with my hashish.

This unexpected return to Djibouti had been of some use. When I arrived I was told that Monsieur Poilut, a shipping agent, had been wailing about me in all the cafés. He could not think it right for hashish to be transported other than clandestinely. It was so well known to the crews of his company’s ships that hashish smuggling was a profitable business. He declared that my cargo ought to have been confiscated, spirited away, destroyed. Ah, if only his friend Pascal had been there, you would have seen how he snapped his fingers at the law. Just think… six hundred kilos of hashish, nearly a thousand pounds of clear profit. It was a shame and disgrace to let this penniless adventurer de Monfreid make such a fortune. It was only an eccentric like Frangeul who would fail to understand that, and who would persist in carrying out the regulations without trying to get round them. The law in the colony, he said, should be elastic and supple. Justice should be like a strong arm always ready to back up the Governor. These were fundamental principles and it was criminal to forget it.