Chapter I: Saigon

On the threshold of the office Pierre de Lursac stopped.

Behind him the beaded hanging rustled as it fell into place. Carefully he folded up the paper of instructions that had been handed to him a few minutes earlier by the Director of Personnel, and as he thought over the orders which he had just received he crossed the veranda.

Below the balustrade of the porch lay stretched the tropical vegetation of the gardens of Government House. Walks, shining and carefully tended, wound about the clumps of rhododendrons and the green lawns over which the flame-trees and tamarinds flung round patches of shade.

When he came to the foot of the main staircase of gray stone which led to the park, Pierre ordered the _linh_ who was on guard a few steps away:

"My rickshaw."

The rifleman immediately barked a short order, and a light vehicle appeared from one of the side avenues. Following the lively and cadenced jog-trot of its coolie, it described a semicircle and drew up, shafts on the ground, in front of the young man.

Jumping nimbly into it, Pierre lay back on the cushions cased in white coverings, and then, as the runner, ready to start, looked up at him with a questioning face expecting directions, Lursac signed to the _linh_ to come closer.

"I don't speak Annamese well enough to make myself understood. Tell him I want to go back to the hotel."

The rifleman gave an elaborate salute, and this military gesture, usually sharp and formal, seemed astonishing when performed by this little puny soldier who looked like a mixture of a toy and a warrior out of a comic operetta.

He acknowledged the order:

"_Gia bam qua lon._"[2]

[Footnote 2: Very well, sir.]

And he immediately launched forth into verbose explanations to the coolie, the nasal syllables echoing strangely in the sonorous silences of the park. The coolie nodded and started off with a supple and rhythmic gait; while Pierre, lying spread out against the back of the little car, watched the naked back of the runner, down which great drops of sweat were already beginning to roll. As soon as they left the shady alleys of the park, and while they were crossing the square which stretches in front of the Government offices, a wave of heat enveloped them. It was nearly four o'clock. From the burning ground the hot air rose in waves, while above the trees, flooded with dazzling light, the lifeless and quivering atmosphere vibrated in the heat. Although he wore a cork helmet and was clothed in the lightest of white linen, Pierre experienced a feeling of prostration at the touch of this fiery breath. When the rickshaw at last entered the shade of the avenue of lofty tamarinds, he sighed with relief. A little coolness caused by the rapidity of their progress caressed his face, relaxed the feeling of depression in his temples, spread along his body and refreshed him with a sensation of well-being. He flung himself back, stretched out his legs, and shut his eyes, giving himself up to the swaying of the light vehicle whose rubber-tired wheels rode softly on the dust of the roadway.

As the running coolie slowed down a little in consequence of a block in the traffic, Lursac heard a voice calling to him.

"Hullo! Pierre!"

Surprised, he turned his head and shot a quick glance along the edge of the street. On the sidewalk, smiling and waving to attract his attention, a lieutenant of colonial infantry was standing and calling to him:

"Come here!"

Lursac recognized him immediately.

"Jacques!"

Touching the shoulder of the coolie with his walking stick, he cried:

"Toi.... Toi...."

It was the one word which he had so far succeeded in remembering of the Annamese language since his arrival in Saigon.

Prodded from behind, the runner had immediately stopped, and Pierre, jumping out of the rickshaw, hurried toward the officer who came to meet him. They greeted each other with the light of pleasure in their eyes: then Jacques Bressond, drawing back a couple of steps, looked his friend up and down. Lursac, upright in the middle of the sidewalk, drew himself up to his full height so that his white tunic clung tightly to his figure and threw into relief his splendid chest, the free swing of his shoulders and the harmonious strength which showed itself in his erect carriage and the spring of his legs. In fact, a fine figure of a man, whose strong, talented face was set off by two brilliant dark eyes deeply set. Jacques took him by the arm.

"I found your message when I got back from my trip this morning; I immediately ran off to your hotel, where I shouted till the whole place rang!... The service boy, after bowing and scraping, gibbered at me: 'M. Lursac been gone, two o'clock.' It was enough for me to understand what he meant.... What luck to meet you like this!... What are you doing?"

"Nothing," said Pierre, "I am just going back to the hotel."

"All right, then I will take charge of you. We will go and take an aperitif together and then we will make the 'Tour of Inspection' in a carriage."

"Tour of Inspection?"

"Yes, the swagger thing to do, the Avenue des Acacias of Saigon high-life, the fashionable six-to-eight-o'clock affair.... It is curious and instructive, as you will see! You'll come, won't you?"

Lursac agreed.

"With pleasure. I have been here for three days now, and already I am beginning to feel my loneliness weighing on me. They told me that you were going to be absent for another fortnight."

He threw some change to the rickshaw coolie, who made himself scarce.

"Yes, but I had to turn in here to get new instructions before continuing my journey of official inspection."

They had resumed their walk side by side down the Rue Catinat. Under the sun which beat down from a sky of hard, cloudless blue that glowed like a metal dome, the life of the town stagnated, prostrated by the heat.

In the shops, which the lowered shades protected with a zone of shadow, the customers seated at their ease bargained casually over the precious knick-knacks in lacquer, ivory, and mother-of-pearl which every now and then gave off a vivid sparkle of light. On their haunches at their benches behind the glass of the shop front the native jewelers, clad only in the soft _cai-ao_ of fine linen, hammered out complicated and original designs on the gold or silver of an umbrella handle which would eventually be the prized possession of some coarse western barbarian!

The interior of the shops, guessed at rather than seen through the opening of the drawn curtains, seemed like oases of shade and coolness, and attracted with some subtle charm.

As they went along Jacques explained:

"Since I found on my table this morning all your letters from France announcing your arrival here I have been thinking of nothing but Paris. I have been living in the midst of the recollections which you have brought to life again.... Do you remember when we used to start off for the Valley de Chevreuse on Saturdays?"

They crossed the square, at the bottom of which the municipal theatre reared its ornate façade in imitation of a Greek temple, opposite the wide semicircle from which the Boulevard Charner could be seen blazing with light and baking in the sun.

When they had arrived on the pavement opposite, Jacques Bressond, pointing out the café which occupied the angle between the Square and the Rue Catinat, said:

"Let us stop here. We will take a seat on the terrace. For you who are new to Saigon the sight will be worth while. This is exactly the right moment, the exquisite moment, for now, at the slight pretence of coolness that the evening breeze brings with it, the fashionable people of the town gather to suck iced drinks through straws--milky absinthe shot with iridescent colors, emerald crème de menthe and the entire gamut of cocktails, dark and light and rainbow-hued."

Pierre smiled, and seating himself he asked:

"Do you like the country?"

"Well, like every other place, it has its good side and its bad side. However, it seems to me that the pleasures are more numerous than the troubles. And then, why shouldn't I like Saigon? Of the last six months I have spent four or five exploring the bush, in climbing sandy hills, wandering through the impenetrable confusion of the forests of Annam and upper Tonkin, and in floundering about in the green mud of the canals and the creeks of Laos...."

"Do you know Laos, then?"

"Pretty well. I have made two trips there on geodetic surveys."

"Splendid. You can give me some information then. Here, see where the chief is sending me."

He pulled out of his pocket the paper of instructions that he had been given earlier in the day and extended it to Bressond.

The boy, clothed in a long tunic of white linen and with his head wound in a turban of linen set down before them on the bamboo table a tray heaped with bottles of many colors. While he measured and mixed with the precision of habit the liquids and ingredients of an oyster cocktail in the glasses filled with cracked ice, Jacques Bressond ran over the paper which Lursac had handed him.

The boy, having completed the mixture, placed the glasses before the young men and disappeared.

Bressond passed back the paper of instructions to Lursac.

"Post 32? Don't know it. Haven't they given you any other details?"

"No.... Oh, yes, wait a minute, ... yes. The Chief of Personnel told me that the post was at the foot of the Pou-Kas."

Jacques Bressond raised his head.

"Ah, wait.... Pou-Kas? Isn't the post on the bank of the canal?"

"Yes, I have to go there part of the way in an ox-cart and part in a boat.... Do you know it?"

The officer sucked a few drops of his cocktail from the end of his straw and reflected.

Beside him with stretched out legs Pierre watched with curiosity the Rue Catinat, along which people were beginning to appear. Five o'clock struck in the distance with clear metallic strokes. The terrace of the café at once began to fill with patrons in white waistcoats and light dresses. Like a swollen river, the fashionable artery of Saigonese life brimmed with a noisy wave of carriages, of street hawkers and promenaders. From café to café the newsboys ran, slipping from one table to another, yelping the name of a local newspaper; while, opposite, two Chinese with crumpled features got out of a malabar and disappeared into a tailor shop.

The café orchestra suddenly dashed into a waltz. Sharp bursts of music dominated the confused noise which mounted from the pavement, and a languorous tune just imported from Europe was borne aloft on two squeaky violins accompanied by a husky-voiced piano and a shaky mandoline.

Vaguely soothed, Pierre abandoned himself to the pleasure of being there, peacefully situated under the punkahs, with an iced drink in front of him, in the midst of this tumult and heat which surrounded him.

Bressond's voice stirred his placidity:

"The Pou-Kas.... I seem to remember that.... I must have passed it on my last trip but one. I have trekked about the country more than a little. That was certainly one of my roughest trips. Yes ... wait, now I remember.... It is the region which stretches at the foot of the great Annamite mountain-chain, in the middle of the forest, almost on the Burmese frontier ... a ghastly country, my poor old chap! You will never find anything to amuse yourself with there."

Pierre smiled absent-mindedly. His eyes ran along the side of the wall and followed the jerky progress of a _congai_ whose black silk tunic and large white _cai-quan_ appeared and disappeared amongst the throng.

"Bah!" said he, "I didn't come here for amusement. In any case they didn't pretend at the office that the post possessed anything to recommend it."

Bressond sipped his cocktail and shrugged his shoulders.

"Nothing to recommend it? I should say not! To begin with, you will arrive there in the middle of the rainy season. Secondly, you will have to live in the middle of this clump of mountains hardly explored as yet, alone with a dozen native soldiers of the military station, and ... it's a very advanced point, isn't it?"

"Yes, Post 32. Moï territory, it appears."

Bressond started.

"In Moï territory.... Number 32.... By Buddha!... Now I know. It's even worse than I thought. Well, well! You are certainly going strong for a beginner.... But ... what on earth do they want to send a military administrator out there for?"

Pierre, nettled by the tone in which he made this exclamation, looked at him fixedly.

"They are sending me to join a lieutenant who has just been nominated to the post. It is a special appointment. My business will be to inaugurate the civil organization. But what is there unusual about this Post 32?"

Bressond shook his head.

"What is there unusual? I do not know exactly ... and nobody here knows anything more than I do. At any rate it is the worst hole in the whole of Upper Laos! But, of course you know how they speak of it ... 'recently established' ... all humbug, my boy!"

And as Pierre shot a look of interrogation at him he continued:

"Yes, all humbug! As a matter of fact, the post was instituted for the first time at least six or seven years ago. It was Longères who had it. At the end of six months, no Longères, no Post 32. A flood had swept away the settlement and its inhabitants. At least that is the version that the surviving members of the garrison gave of the accident.... One had to be satisfied with that.... However, for three years no one mentioned Post 32. Then one fine day some official or other digging through his papers discovered that for the security of our dominion in Indo-China it was indispensable that the post should be re-established."

A driver, curled up on the seat of his victoria, passed on his way up the street. Bressond broke off to make him a sign. At the same time he threw a coin on the table and as the boy ran up he pushed Pierre de Lursac before him into the carriage, giving a brief order to the coachman.

"The tour of inspection through the Botanical Gardens. You understand?"

"I understand, O Mandarin of two stripes."

At a lively trot the two native ponies, tossing their ruffled manes as they went, drew the carriage down the Rue Catinat, turned to the left and followed the line of the quays, along which in a brown and black medley the sampans showed their masts and the lines of their decks.

Something resembling coolness floated down the bed of the river; the light began to soften, melting its violent golds into shades of mauve. The dying day threw over the white town some of its purple splendor. And under the hoofs of the horses a slight dust rose like a delicate honey-colored cloud.

Pierre had put his hand on his friend's arm.

"And then?" he asked.

Bressond turned to look at him.

"Then what?... Ah! yes.... Post 32! Well! they re-established it, as I told you. And this time it was Dorcel who took charge. For a year everything went all right. And then suddenly the news burst like a bomb in the newspapers: all over with Post 32 again! But, as it had been rebuilt on a spur of the mountain, this time it wasn't a flood, but a fire, that had destroyed it. As for Dorcel, he just managed to arrive at the hospital and died without being able to throw the slightest light on this second accident to the celebrated Post 32...."

The victoria, now having caught up with the procession of carriages which was defiling along the promenade, slackened speed and took its turn.... In the opposite direction another line of vehicles was passing at a foot pace--buggies with thin wheels, high-seated tilburys, gigs drawn by horses driven tandem, shining victorias whose cushions were rich with bright dresses and brilliant umbrellas.

Bressond's hand was ever at his military cap in the salute, while here and there he shot a smile or a nod to acquaintances or ladies whom he knew.

Leaning against the backboard of the carriage, Pierre de Lursac amused himself by contemplating this long row of colonial fashion. Before his unaccustomed eyes, Saigon society lay spread, offering its celebrities and its peculiarities for his inspection.

Bressond meanwhile, a guide as willing as thoroughly informed, explained and made comments. In a few quick picturesque words, he drew a portrait, sketched a caricature, made an imputation and gave the whole story of the person at the bar.

When they had arrived at the end of the promenade, they turned and went back by the way they had come, still followed and preceded by the other carriages. The daylight faded softly. From each side of the long dusty reddish road the flooded rice-fields stretched away like swampy checker-boards, on which the docile black buffaloes driven by ragged youngsters slowly plodded along with their enormous curved horns silhouetted against the pale sky in the shape of widely rounded lyres. With shrill cries a flock of herons floated down over a clump of palms, in the shade of which was a huddle of huts.

The countryside, which was gradually dropping to rest in the peace of the dying day, was archaic, oriental and primitive beyond belief.

Pierre remarked upon it, and Bressond, with a shrug, assented:

"It is a beautiful country--beautiful but strange, and not the least like the conventional Far East that is so popular in France!"

He thought a minute and went on:

"After all, that is not so astonishing, for very few people, even here, know Indo-China ... very few...."

"But...."

"No, believe me, it is a country that no one among us really knows, nor will know for a long time yet. It isn't enough, in order to understand it, to have traveled through it, not even to have spent two years, three years or more in it.... No; neither you nor I, who come here with our European souls and with the mentality of conquerors, neither you nor I, nor the others of our kind, will ever be able to understand this race!... For instance, look at the stupidity, the ignorance, of this official who for the third time has re-established a military post in an unknown region in the middle of a country not yet conquered, and which no one has been able to explore and not even to penetrate ... no one! and on the top of that they send out an administrator!... To administrate what? ... and above all to administrate whom? Well, anyway, you will have the chance of meeting Redeski there.... And that's that."

Pierre turned to him.

"Redeski?"

"Yes, he is the man who commands the fort there.... Jacques-Boleslas-Michael Redeski, of an old Polish family; a real count, but as poor as Job of biblical memory. A naturalized Frenchman, educated in Paris, graduated from St. Cyr: Morocco, the Soudan, Indo-China, everywhere, in fact, where war and adventure can still be had. A balanced mind but an emotional nature, at once sympathetic and sceptical. To sum up, most amusing and original, and the best of friends. For nearly two years we patrolled the forests together on the frontier of China.

"There now, you know him. And anyway you couldn't have started out with a better comrade, especially in a hole like that...."

He interrupted himself to look at his watch.

"Oh, damn! Half past seven!... We have just time to get back."

They had reached the alleys of the Botanical Garden. Getting up, he touched the back of the driver.

"_Mao ... Mao!_[3]... Stop at the Continental." Turning back to Lursac, he explained:

"You will excuse me: I am on duty tonight. I have to dine at the club with the chief engineer of Hong-Hai. An official dinner...."

[Footnote 3: Quick, quick!]

The victoria, extricating itself from the long row of carriages, turned off into an avenue and the ponies were put to a trot.

Night had fallen. The alleys, over which the branches of the trees met, looked like long tunnels. Under the arches a warm scent wandered. To the perfume of opening hibiscus and the purple flame-trees was added the heavy scent of the sap-filled flowers and the thick rich soil of Indo-China.

Through the evening peace which had so suddenly fallen about them the shrill voices of the crickets mingled their chirping with the echoes of the ponies' hoofs. Then, suddenly breaking from the shadow and silence, the carriage swung into the full tide of Saigon's restless noise.

Above the streets the electric globes poured down their violent illumination. A tossing crowd surged through the avenues and jammed the windows of the brilliantly lighted shops. Autos, with blasts of their horns, forced themselves a passage through the crowds of rickshaws and malabars descending the Boulevard Charner. In the cafés the orchestras played feverishly. The carriage, following the Boulevard, turned to the right and after having traversed part of the Rue Catinat stopped opposite the Continental. Pierre jumped out on the sidewalk. Leaning from the carriage, Bressond took leave of him.

"Good bye, Pierre, and good luck, old man! I would like to have done more for you, but tomorrow I start out on a mission to Upper Tonkin and it is very unlikely that I shall be able to see you again here."

Lursac gave him a strong friendly hand clasp.

"Good bye, Jacques! and good luck to you also. I will write you from Post 32."

"So do, and remember me to Redeski. Now, quick to the club!"

Drawing the whip sharply over the team, the driver started off.

When the victoria had disappeared, lost in the crowd of other vehicles, Pierre crossed the street towards his hotel, but, just as he got to the sidewalk he started violently: a guttural voice close to him had flung out the words:

"_The Pou-Kas is not for white people._"

He turned round suddenly and with a quick glance searched the surroundings. In front of him the passers-by were hurrying on their way. Three _congais_ walked arm in arm, chattering and laughing. Two rickshaws, side by side, were having a race and were already far past him. A soup-peddler, his two jars suspended at the ends of a bar balanced on his shoulders, advertised his wares with a clapper and cried their merits aloud, while, interfering with his trade, a street-boy with a basket of earth-n uts on his arm, called out in a sing-song voice for customers....

Was it he? ... or perhaps this Chinaman, wrapped in a tunic of lavender silk, who uttered the strange warning?... Or was it not rather this blind beggar who passed, slow and doubtful, tapping the road with his staff?

How was he to know?

Already the cry of the nut-vendor was losing itself in the general hubbub; the variegated crowd continued to roll by, carrying away with it the three _congais_, the Chinaman, the beggar and the soup-vendor, whose little stove left a red glow in the darkness. More coolies, more natives came and passed, all nameless, all alike, with their faces equally yellow and their expressions equally grinning and ape-like.

In doubt, Pierre stood motionless on the edge of the pavement. Before him, Saigon, the cosmopolitan meeting place of all races of Europe and Asia, where the Annamese, the Chinese, the Hindoo, the Malay, the French, the English, the Japanese, the Russian elbowed each other and mixed with the confusion--Saigon the Magnificent, the whirlpool of all religions and all civilizations, the most modern side-by-side with the most ancient--and lastly, Saigon the French city, in the midst of tzigane orchestras imported from Europe, awoke and stretched herself languorously under the warm voluptuous caresses of the Annamese night.

Regardless of this whirlpool of life which flung itself violently at him, Pierre, overcome by a strange presentiment of ill fortune and a wave of loneliness, crossed the threshold of his hotel.

Inside the door, two "boys," clad in the conventional white tunic, received him with the customary three salaams, ... three deep salaams, of which the outward respectfulness could not hide altogether the servile insolence.