The Gobi Desert (17 page)

Fortunately, hunger is a better counsellor than anger. At about noon Kublai quietened down, having made himself hoarse from so much roaring. He confined himself to saying a couple of words to the enormous side of congealed yak meat which Youen, not greatly reassured, passed to him in his cage, putting into operation for the first time the much talked-about mechanism of the internal partition. In addition, by nightfall there was no longer a single one of our animals which had deserted us which had not agreed to let itself be recaptured. We dined with a better appetite that evening. Our joie de vivre regained its rightful place. Everyone boasted that he was likely to come away unharmed from such a dreadful adventure, since we were now about to set off on the journey home, at daybreak, the following morning.

*

‘Is everything ready?' I asked Nain-Sain, with whom I had just agreed the itinerary for our first day's march.

‘Everything's ready' replied the Mongolian, looking at me with his slanting eyes. ‘But there is one detail however. That little Kiss . . . ‘

‘What about him?'

‘Youen let him escape again. He was hoping he would come back. He hasn't dared say anything about it.'

I shrugged my shoulders. ‘We won't waste our time looking for him. It's too bad for him! As far as I'm concerned, I don't really care.'

I showed him my injured finger.

Nain-Sain continued to look at me, and shook his head, smiling.

‘Of course, I won't miss him either. There was nothing especially nice about him. But there was something about him which you can't deny.'

‘Which was?'

‘That that sort of creature is not just a dumb animal.'

‘Dumb animal? What do you mean?'

‘I mean – oh, it's nothing! – but sometimes they have an intuition, you could say they almost have ideas . . . This one for example might have been the only one of us to have guessed why the pulley, just for a moment, didn't work.'

Isn't it always like that? You're only sensitive to the trials of others when you have had to endure something similar yourself. To understand what Sanders must have felt on the quay side at Fouzan, when he saw his beloved Mikado suspended between heaven and earth, at the mercy of the slightest false move, I had to wait until I found myself in an identical situation. That was what I discovered when, trembling and pale with anxiety, at the end of the main jetty in the port of Tsing-Tao, I watched the formidable mass of the crate swaying at the end of a steel cable, seemingly as thin as a gossamer thread, the crate which now contained all my own hopes, in the form of a tiger whose whiteness was as dazzling as the mountain peaks of the land from which he came.

Instructed by experience, and anxious to leave nothing to chance, I was intent on taking all the necessary precautions in advance. The facilities at the port of Tsing-Tao are probably no better than those at Fouzan. In any case, I was careful to give instructions beforehand, and on the due day I had at hand all the necessary equipment and all the necessary personnel. Although I was absolutely certain that nothing had been overlooked, it was only after I had seen my animal well and truly installed in the prow of the ship which was going to transport the two of us, that I allowed myself to heave a sigh of relief.

Forty-two days had already elapsed since the death of Sanders, forty-two days during which the return journey was even more eventful than the outward journey, encumbered as we were with our cargo, although in fact it didn't cause us half as much trouble as we had the right to expect. Kublai, to give him his due, had taken to his new existence philosophically enough. But we certainly couldn't rely too much on his apparent resignation. He had a way of watching you, under his large, half-closed eyelids, and of gently tucking his paw under his huge body, like a spring being wound up! . . . . Well, at that moment, in all honesty you felt something run down your spine which made you want to discontinue any further conversation with him.

It was at Kalgan that our caravan began to split up, for the simple reason that this was the first town that we came across that had, amongst other conveniences and attractions, a British consul. This honourable gentleman carried out the two formalities of recording the decease of Sanders, and of reading his will. I hadn't thought it was my responsibility to announce earlier to my companions what the intentions of our late leader had been, such as he himself had revealed them to me, and I must say it was with some apprehension that I saw the moment of this essential ceremony approaching. But in reality I had nothing to fear. There was no bad feeling, no unpleasant surprise, when the consul declared that I was to be both Sanders' executor and the sole beneficiary of his will. Kailar, Neratov, Welowski, and the others, all thought it was quite natural and reasonable that such a flattering and lucrative expression of friendship should be made in my favour. It was only me, despite the repugnance which I felt deep down inside, for something which I couldn't help thinking was a bit like a comedy, who had to try to appear surprised at treatment which was so far in excess of what I deserved, and to show some confusion as a result. Even for the good and naïve fellows for whom they were intended, my protestations did not perhaps carry all the conviction and sincerity that I might have wished. But to be honest I didn't bother about that for very long. When all was said and done, what was the point of worrying about what they might think of me? We weren't going to spend the rest of our lives together, were we?

*

I'm saying all of this for only one reason, which is to explain how it was that I didn't feel too despondent when the moment came for us all to part company. In fact I even experienced a sort of relief, at least as far as Nain-Sain was concerned. I had never much liked his silent and reserved ways. Recently, and without knowing why exactly, I had got to the point where I could no longer stand his presence, perhaps because of that business with the pulley. As for himself, before he took his leave of us, he was only waiting to be properly paid what was due to him, firstly under his contract with Sanders, and secondly with any legacy which Sanders might possibly have left to him. He had no reason to be unhappy, since to whatever he received from Sanders, who had arranged everything very handsomely, I thought I should add, in my own name, a tidy sum, although I still don't fully understand why, in view of the sentiments which I have just expressed. In short, we bade each other farewell, with him calling down on my head thousands and thousands of blessings, and with me forming at the bottom of my heart the wish never to meet him again, either in this world, or even less in the next.

Ilichine and Welowski took the train to Peking, where they thought they would live it up a bit to start with, and then as officers in the army of the ‘War Lord',
join the service of Marshal Tchang-Tso-Lin, who was preparing, slowly but surely, to lay siege to that city. Neratov and the Koreans decided that they would come with me as far as Tsing-Tao. From there they would get to Fouzan on a Japanese mail ship, where the Koreans would resume in a short while their family life, and Neratov had the idea of going on a tiger hunt on his own account, in the frozen country of Ussuri. The ship on which they sailed departed several days ahead of the one which was due to take me South. Thus I stayed alone in Tsing-Tao for almost a week. A steamer called in after three days, en route to Singapore. I could easily have embarked on it, and then taken another ship from Singapore to Sydney. Yes, but this ship was of no use to me, since it didn't go anywhere near Macao.

Meanwhile, between Kalgan and Tsing-Tao, and in the best interests of the Sanders company name, which is to say my name, I succeeded in disposing of all our expedition equipment, for which we no longer had any immediate need. In doing so I became quite a businessman. The region which we had just crossed was under the control of a general by the name of Ou-Pei-Fou, who was preparing to march against Marshal Tchang-Tso-Lin. With the help of some bribes judiciously distributed among the officers in his headquarters, it wasn't very difficult for me to sell to him one of my lorries and three of the four cars. An evangelical association in Tsing-Tao bought the rest, all at a price above what Sanders had paid for them when new. That wasn't at all bad for some vehicles which had been sent on quite a journey such as the one we had undertaken in the Gobi Desert. As for the guns and ammunition which I still had, I hardly dare admit the profit I made from them. China has always been the ideal country for this type of operation.

So one can see that all in all I had no reason to regret having met, six months earlier, Jack Sanders on the quayside in Fouzan. The week that I spent in Tsing-Tao allowed me to put all my affairs in order. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of money which I had already accumulated. And all that was nothing compared to what I was going to get from the sale of my tiger, at a price which the people of Sydney would be only too happy to pay. Besides, I was seriously thinking of getting competing bids – why shouldn't I? – from other buyers in the old world and in the new world. It was Sanders who had a moral obligation to the buyers in Sydney. But as for me, I had no reason at all to confuse the question of self-interest with that of sentiment.

Sanders had often told me that without Kublai, I would be well-off, but no more than that; with Kublai, I would get a fortune. Now, here he was, this dear little animal, magnificent and resplendent in white, in the garden overlooking the sea which I had rented especially in order to install his cage, staring with a somnolent and mocking eye at the crowd of privileged people who came to file past him every day. What a superb and terrifying creature! When I looked at him I felt my heart swelling both with pride and with a religious horror. I can say that during that week my happiness would have been complete if I had received a single word, just one, in reply to the seven or eight telegrams which, since returning to civilisation, I had sent to Macao. But it was interesting, however, that I wasn't too worried by this silence. I knew only too well the unreliable way in which the telegraph system worked in that part of the world. Besides, I wasn't sure that I had Alzire's exact address. And the one which I had given to her to reply to me wasn't very precise either. Fortunately all that would soon be cleared up. After all the trials which we had experienced, both she and I, this would only be just one more, that's all!

*

Apart from this light cloud which no doubt would soon clear, I had to admit that I was very lucky. The ship which was going to take me to Singapore was an excellent French vessel, the
Paul-Lecat
of the maritime freight service, under the command of a charming officer called Captain Rozoor, who in addition to his nautical abilities played the violin delightfully. The two luxury cabins were vacant. I was quick to reserve both of them, since I had good reason to hope that on leaving Macao, the
Paul-Lecat
would have another passenger, a female passenger to be precise. You must believe me when I say that this was a completely different type of organisation to the miserable
Bendigo,
where the few minutes that I spent in Alzire's sparse cabin were enough for me to get a glimpse of rats as big as rabbits, and cockroaches as fat and as chubby as rats.

As for Kublai, he was enjoying his almost princely position at the prow of the ship. He liked the fresh sea air, which was important for an animal who was at great risk to the contrast between the terrible heat of the China Sea and the glacial climate of the Gobi. Everybody, including the crew, was prohibited from crossing a barrier which the ship's carpenter had put up to protect him from the curious. He seemed well aware of the attention which he was getting, and as far as Singapore at least, he behaved with almost perfect correctness and good manners. Every now and then he allowed himself a discreet growl, intended, I'm sure, to drown out the sirens on board the ship, when they all seemed to sound at the same time.

The incomprehensible wish that I had to split up with my travelling companions as soon as possible, this desire which I have already talked about, perhaps led me to make a mistake. I could certainly, without having to insist on it, have got one of them to remain in my service, so as to give my tiger all the care which he needed. Youen, for example, would have been ideal for that. Now I had to leave it to the sailors, who no doubt did their best, but who failed completely to give me the peace of mind which I wanted. I lived with a vague fear that there would be some accident. I would have been astonished if someone had told me the name of the person who would remove this care from me. And this person himself could hardly have foreseen, when we met for the first time, such a bizarre succession of events.

There were only two ports of call – Shanghai and Hong Kong – before Macao. If I had had the slightest bit of imagination I think I would have died from happiness and vanity in each of these great cities. But I can say that I became intoxicated with my celebrity status. My photograph was in all the papers, with my biography full of flattering and inaccurate details. The
Paul-Lecat
had not even dropped anchor when it was besieged by a swarm of journalists. I wish that the hero of the day could have been my tiger. But it was me, rather than him, who was invited to lunch and to dinner by all the local dignitaries. Already Sydney Zoo had been alerted and was cabling its congratulations. Hagenbeck in Hamburg didn't remain quiet, nor did all the Barnums of America or Europe. Dear Kublai, I shed a few tears when I thought of everything that I owed to him! Never had he been on such good form, and so beautiful, than under that infernal tropical sun, which for his sake I had worried about so much. He was as white as the snow of his native country, with a whiteness that was clean and shiny, but where suddenly, when the light played in a certain way, the long, underlying stripes shone through, in the same way that you can see the watermark in a sheet of high-quality paper, or the gleaming ripples on the surface of the coat of the black panther of Java.

At first I was worried that he would be bothered by this endless crowd of admirers, respectfully proceeding one after the other in front of his cage. But not a bit of it! On the contrary, it was wonderful to see how pleasantly he adapted to it. One could even have said that he felt more than a little bit flattered by this type of compliment. So for example he seemed to take a great pleasure in letting himself be photographed, winking and sticking out his magnificent pink tongue. The women were especially wild about him. It was all one could do to prevent them from getting too close to the bars of the cage. The men were equally enthusiastic, but perhaps listened a bit more closely to the voice of reason.

*

‘My dear sir, what do you want me to say? It is true that we engaged this lady. That goes back to more than six months ago. Here is her contract. It is nonetheless also true, unfortunately, that we have never seen her again since then. I use the term
unfortunately
because M. Van Frikh, our manager, had the kindness to agree to quite a substantial advance for her. It goes without saying that he hasn't allowed himself such generosity since then, even in the case of deserving artists. It's the same everywhere. The good always pay for the bad.'

M. Van Frikh, the director and proprietor of the Macao casino, was away when I presented myself at his office, less than an hour after the
Paul-Lecat
tied up in the dock. It was his secretary, a young Portuguese man, all scented and powdered, who was relating this to me. He could see my confusion.

‘I am very sorry, sir. For people such as yourself we would like to convey only good news. One can see straightaway who one is dealing with, isn't that so? But if it is your intention to spend a few days in Macao, I am sure that you will become a client of our house, and then . . ‘Kindness, charm, and a good education', that is the motto of M. Van Frikh, when it comes to recruiting his artistic staff. What is surprising with these principles . . . . But please, do take a seat!'