Colony. Hugo Wilcken
is elsewhere. He drifts back to his favourite subject, the reform of the Colony: ‘I’m not interested in setting up just another logging camp, where we slowly work the men to death. What’s the point of that? How will it benefit the Colony? How will it benefit France? Logging would be a good idea, if we had professional loggers with proper equipment exporting the wood to Europe. That doesn’t happen here. We have convicts with rusty, clapped-out axes. The timber ends up being used for fuel in Saint-Laurent. The bagne feeds the bagne. It’s slowly consuming itself.
‘Once the building work’s finished, I’m going to open up that flat land to the north, by the river. We’ve got no livestock here to feed the bagne, let alone the rest of the Colony. All that meat has to be imported. It’s costing us a fortune! We have fresh water in abundance and all we need to do is open up suitable grazing land.’
But Sabir has switched off. He’s heard this about the livestock before. According to Bébert, one of the country lads Sabir works with on the garden, this plan to carve grasslands out of the forest is doomed to failure. Once the trees are cleared, the topsoil’s quickly washed away and it’s impossible to maintain any kind of pasture. You just end up with huge expanses of mud. Bébert’s been here six years, has tried to escape twice. Now, he appears to be resigned to his fate and spends his money gambling. ‘He hasn’t been here long enough,’ he said about the commandant, ‘but he’ll learn. He’ll learn.’
Nonetheless, through sheer enthusiasm and willpower, the commandant has achieved an awful lot in a short space of time. There’s the land cleared up by the main camp, the buildings there and the avenue; and then there’s this grand house by the river, already nearing completion, and the garden Sabir is in charge of creating. Rumour has it that the commandant is a very wealthy man, that his house and garden are being built at his own cost – albeit with free convict labour. Perhaps it’s true. The things Sabir has managed to sneak out of the house over the past week and hide in the undergrowth – bottles of burgundy, silver spoons, a jambon de Bayonne – suggest someone who’s made no concession to colonial life, regardless of cost. Despite this, the commandant appears to be a man of ascetic habits. It’s a paradox. Sabir’s even seen him lunching off dry bread and broth – convict rations, in other words.
The commandant’s still talking; Sabir slowly tunes back in. ‘You’re a good man,’ he’s saying, ‘you’re doing a fine job with this garden. My wife will be so pleased. I know she’ll like you.’
Past eleven now and the boat still hasn’t arrived. The commandant can wait no longer; he has business up at the main camp. Sabir is left on his own. There’s a guard and a dozen men working down by the river, but they’re too far away to see what he’s up to. For once, there’s no one in the vicinity, and he has the perfect right to be in the house – he can take a good look around without fear of being caught out.
Upstairs, two rooms are finished; the rest of the floor is in a skeletal state. Sabir pushes the door to one of the rooms. The first thing he notices is the full-length looking glass. It’s a shock to catch sight of himself like that. While he sees his fiancée’s face everywhere, his own has been a blank all these weeks and months. There are no mirrors out here, none that a convict can use, in any case. You can stare into your dinner tin, and it gives you a blurred, distorted image. Other than that, there’s imagination and memory. Which are always wrong. Always telling you what you want to hear, that you’re the same as when you were arrested, that the months of imprisonment have had no effect, nor will the years to come in this scorched colony. The person that now stares out at Sabir seems to be someone else. The shaved head, the leathery, sun-hardened skin and the gaunt features give his face the skull appearance that he’s noticed in others. He’s been here such a brief time, and yet the transformation has already happened.
In the room there’s a bed, a chest of drawers, a chair and table, a few other pieces of furniture. Sabir jerks open one of the drawers; there’s nothing in it. This is to be the wife’s bedroom, evidently. The curtains are frilly, feminine. The sole other decoration is a framed photograph sitting on the bedside table. It’s of a house by a river. Sabir does a double take: the house looks just like the one he’s in right now, built at the same angle to the river, with the same garden layout. He takes a closer look at the photograph. No, actually it’s a different river, with European trees and vegetation. A different house. Nonetheless, the similarity is striking.
The other bedroom’s clearly occupied. The bed’s unmade, there are clothes on the chair and piles of books on the floor. Downstairs is a similar mess of books, paper, food, clothes, cutlery. It’s what makes it so easy to steal from here: what Sabir takes, the commandant will assume is lost somewhere. Or he simply won’t care. He shows little interest in possessions. It’s occasionally the way with the rich, Sabir has noticed. Those who’ve never had to struggle to own anything.
He picks up one of the books: The Principles of Hydro-Engineering: An Introduction. He flicks through it – it’s full of notes. Most of the other books have some practical slant as well. The man’s a self-starter, a Robinson Crusoe. On top of one of these piles of books, there’s an album crammed with photographs. Some have been stuck in, others just jammed between the pages, so they spill out when Sabir opens the album. He bends down to collect the ones he’s dropped, shuffles through them. There’s one of the commandant as a boy, in a sailor suit. Another of a frowning man in a top hat, beside a matronly woman in a voluminous dress. Several photos of the house – that same house from the picture in the wife’s bedroom. And several more of an attractive, dark-haired woman in her mid to late twenties. The commandant’s wife, Sabir supposes. There’s something odd about her, although Sabir can’t immediately put his finger on it. Her face is completely expressionless in each image – like that of a saint, or of a dead body. There’s just one image of her smiling, at the beach. She’s wearing a swimming costume, revealing the curve of her hips and breasts. Sabir slips this photo into his pocket.
Before lock-up he has another rendezvous with Carpette, down by the edge of the forest. Sabir has some more stolen goods for him. This time, Carpette has specifically asked for paper and ink. Very easy to spirit away from the commandant’s desk: he’s one of those men who’s always firing off a mess of ideas, and that’s what his desk looks like. In general, it’s not the thieving that’s so difficult, it’s hiding the stuff and then getting it up to the main camp. The endless trips he has to make down an indistinct path running parallel to the main one, to avoid the guards …
It seems, though, that he’s managed to allay Carpette’s suspicions of him. And so far, Carpette’s been as good as his word: he’s fenced the things Sabir’s brought him and paid up promptly. No doubt Carpette’s swindling him – the silver spoons he’d stolen are probably worth ten times what Carpette gave him. And yet Sabir couldn’t care less – he’s at least getting some proper money, for the first time since his arrival. That immediately makes him feel better, less vulnerable. The first payment went to buying a plan and a knife. Since then he’s been saving. And buying food to supplement his rations: above all, it’s important to stay in decent health.
The dealings between the two have until now been furtive, brief. But this afternoon there’s more time, and as they exchange goods and money, Carpette asks Sabir if he has any plans.
‘I’m getting out, of course,’ Sabir says, ‘as soon as I’ve got the dough.’
Carpette shakes his head. ‘You’ll need a lot more than that.’
‘I know.’
He offers Carpette one of the cigarettes he’s just stolen from the commandant; together, they smoke in silence. A bloated sun hovers over the green horizon. Never before has it looked so huge, so near. Back in France, Sabir didn’t know what the sun was really like. Out here, it’s the true fire. It penetrates your body like a knife. And burns with an intensity that reduces a whole life to a mere moment.
‘Edouard says I can trust you. So I’ll tell you that we’re getting out, too.’ Carpette says nothing further, and neither does Sabir. It’s such a pleasure to smoke a real cigarette. Carpette exhales languidly; he doesn’t gulp down the smoke like most convicts. The sun nudges the horizon now;