What Became of the White Savage (12 page)

The old woman was sitting beside him again, calmly weaving leaves together to make some sort of cage or helmet. Satisfied with her handiwork, she put it over his head like a tent that made no contact with his skin. He was grateful for the protection it gave him from the sun’s heat.

Touching a branch to some embers she’d brought over, she set it aflame and passed the burning leaves over the sick man’s body, humming softly. The flames died and were replaced by palls of thick grey smoke. She held the branch close to his shoulder and let the breeze carry the smoke into her woven construction. He breathed in the hot, acrid smoke as it accumulated inside the helmet. It was bitter and astringent, bringing tears to his eyes. He began to cough, pushed away the smoke trap and lay down again.

The old woman persisted; she put the contraption back in place and brought the smoking branch towards it. Inhaling the fumes, the smell of a forest burning, feeling the heat on his cheeks and nose, he wondered if this could cure him of his fever. He forced himself to go along with it, to let the remedy enter into him.

When she came back, she made him eat some small bits of meat and drink from the gourd. Then she resumed the smoke treatment. No one else came to see him. He tried to get up, but he was no match for the dizziness and shivering that engulfed him. The raging fever prevented him from thinking straight. He remembered vaguely that he had important decisions to make, but moments of lucidity gave way to the desire to surrender completely, to burrow into his bed of leaves and dust, and let himself fall asleep to the rhythm of the waves of fever.

The old woman was making him drink. She was tending to his ear. Smoke was getting into his nostrils. The shivers were beginning to subside. He slept again.

Darkness fell abruptly, with the suddenness of the tropical night that always unnerved him. She offered him a piece of grilled meat: the rest of the tribe must have been sharing the evening meal of the latest kill. He made a herculean effort and managed to swallow a couple of mouthfuls. The meat reeked of burnt grease. He drank some more, closed his eyes and lay back again.

For five days, Narcisse was ill, and for five days the old woman fed him and gave him water to drink. She tended to his wound, covered him with earth and leaves, made him breathe the smoke from the leaves. Dimly, he felt himself getting weaker. Was this how he would end his days, lying here on the ground like a dog, surrounded by savages who would leave his body to be torn apart by wild animals?

On the fourth day, he was shaken by a blast of wind, harsher and more violent than the wind of the night when he was abandoned. Low grey clouds raced across the sky with alarming speed, leaves flew about in all directions, torn from the trees by the powerful gusts. Trees creaked and swayed. A few drops of rain drummed on the ground. Towards evening, the temperature dropped sharply. Narcisse shivered uncontrollably, his body wracked by convulsive shaking as he tried to dig himself into the ground to give the wind as little purchase as possible.

Suddenly, he felt a body next to his. The old woman had lain down right up against him and was wrapping her short arms around him. On his chest, her black wrinkled hand. A naked woman, lying right next to his own naked body. That smell of grease and sweat. A feeling of warmth on his back, his buttocks, his legs, protecting him from the biting wind. Her breath warm on the back of his neck. Two bodies locked in an embrace – where was the whore from the Cape, the vigour and laughter of that night? How obscene, he thought through the fog of the fever, an old black woman and a young white man, embracing.

Then he surrendered to the embrace, and in it, he found refuge.

Sydney, 5th June 1861

Monsieur le Président,

I had initially believed that bringing Narcisse back into our world would be a simple matter: a slow process perhaps, but one in which he would nevertheless progress gradually along an unwavering path. His task would be to climb back up the hill he had already scaled as a child and from which he had descended during the period of his exile.

But the reality has proven to be more complex. Narcisse has a will of his own, and it has become apparent to me that there are some lessons he refuses to learn. I am at a loss to understand why this is so.

My attempts to teach him to write serve as an example. He had surely learnt his letters as a schoolboy – I could scarcely countenance the notion that this sailor was completely illiterate – and I desired to give him back a skill he once possessed.

I wrote our names in capital letters on a sheet of paper and followed along with my finger as I read them aloud to him. He understood what I was saying, but made no connection between the words I spoke and the marks on the paper. I wondered what a village schoolmaster would have done. I pointed to my name as I said it again and then handed him the pencil and the sheet of paper. He grasped them and looked at me as if to make sure that he had understood, held the pencil poised, and waited. Very gently I said:

“Now you. Write Narcisse.”

Without further ado, he began to make marks on the paper. Alas, these were no clumsy half-formed letters, but a series of precisely drawn zigzag lines, circles, spirals and dots. Concentrating intensely and drawing rapidly, he gradually filled the page with a series of geometrical shapes in which could be discerned patterns of strange, abstract symmetrical forms. His work was a design of astonishing complexity, similar in style to the tattoos he sports. But yet more extraordinary was the manner in which he completed the design: he did not begin in the centre of the page with the principal figures, but rather he started in the bottom right hand corner, covering the page with a mass of details and ending in the top left hand corner. Not even Raphaël or Poussin could have executed a sketch in this manner. Narcisse never faltered in his composition and must have conceived the entirety of this primitive image in his head before beginning to draw. The curious result of his labours conveyed a mysterious sense of balance. I thought what a sure hand he had, and how well he seemed to understand the principals of design.

In no more than ten minutes, Narcisse had filled the page with his hieroglyphs. Then he put down the pencil and, apparently satisfied with his handiwork, displayed no further interest therein.

In language, he advances more rapidly, rediscovering each day further words of his forgotten vocabulary. His pronunciation too is improving and he now enunciates all the sounds of our language more or less correctly. Gone are the strange hissing noises and clicks of the tongue that marred his speech scarcely one month ago. He continues to lend a rhythmic sing-song quality to his pronouncements, with the result that he sounds like an Italian speaking our language.

One could scarcely describe him as talkative. I wonder if he is laconic by nature, or whether it is difficult for him to find the right words to express what he feels. Or does he simply have nothing to say?

The correct usage of verb tenses still eludes him, and he struggles particularly with the future. “The sun will rise tomorrow,” is a mere conversational nicety for him, since the truth of the statement is self-evident. “Tomorrow, we will go and bathe in the river,” means nothing to him. He understands each of the words, but imagines that we are going immediately to the riverbank.

When he expresses a personal opinion, even on the most anodyne of subjects, he prefaces his remarks with a solemn, “I say.” No doubt, this is a rhetorical element that persists from the language of the savages, or perhaps a form of courtesy in their idiom: “I say: Bill’s dinner is good.”

But now that we can speak to each other with some measure of success, he still refuses to tell me anything about his life among the savages. When I question him on the subject, he seems to understand what I am asking, but no matter the approach I adopt, my attempts to elicit a response are always met by his silence. I know no more today about his experiences than I did on the day I met him.

Without this information from Narcisse, I cannot commence my report on the natives of north-east Australia, and yet it was in the hopes of carrying out such a study that I agreed to burden myself with the responsibility for Narcisse.

Does this mean that I have failed, that I shall not succeed in my project? I cannot say why, but I do not believe this to be the case. Narcisse’s progress bestows other lessons upon me. At present, I can only sense this vaguely and am unable to bring any order to my thoughts on this matter. Perhaps I shall never learn anything about these Australian negroes, but the steps that Narcisse takes along his path convey intimations of another kind to me, and which I believe to be no less significant.

There is yet another possible explanation for these apparent failures. Narcisse has been unsuccessful in learning to write, in conceiving of the future and in recounting his past. When this experiment began, I saw his mind as a blank slate on which my lessons would be engraved, or as malleable wax on which I would make my imprint. But it cannot be denied that there are certain matters he refuses to countenance, and in these I can make no headway. The image I cherished of Narcisse progressing towards our world, emerging from Plato’s cave and walking towards the sunlight of the nineteenth century, is erroneous. There are within him two distinct individuals: a sailor struggling to emerge from the dungeon in which he has been shut away for many years; and a wild creature battling every step of the way to prevent that happening. For the most part, it is the sailor who has the upper hand, but the battle is hard won.

Just as his skin will be engraved with tattoos to the end of his days, so will his spirit remain marked by all that he has endured. Perhaps he will never free himself completely of those experiences. It is strange indeed to think of a man in whom two opposing warriors struggle for dominion, but I can see no other way of trying to understand it.

I am persuaded that the time has come for us to take to the seas once more. There is nothing to prevent us leaving and I must confess that I was beginning to tire of our life of voluntary seclusion. I have not made another visit to Sydney, for fear of provoking Narcisse into disappearing once more. Our lessons keep me busy and I am gladdened by any progress my pupil makes, but I cannot deny that his company offers me few distractions.

I have written to the governor to inform him that our stay in the colony will be coming to an end, and he has promised us a passage next week on the
Strathmore
, a clipper recently constructed in the shipyards of Bristol. God willing, we shall be in France by mid-August, where I shall make haste to immediately introduce you to my protégé upon our arrival.

I received your letter of the 16th April in which you replied to my first missive. I am much affected by the compliments you pay me, all the more so since I have never viewed my adventure with Narcisse in the manner you describe. Indeed, you are too generous, sir. I have never seen myself as the Good Samaritan on whom you lavish such praise, nor do I desire to be such a one. Narcisse is indeed an endearing young man, and he has endured terrible hardships. But my only motivation is to conduct scientific research. I wish first and foremost to describe as comprehensively as I can the changes undergone by a white man who, having become a savage, returns once again to civilisation.

You have provided me with a list of questions, the importance of which I cannot deny. Alas, Narcisse stubbornly refuses to speak of his time among the natives and I am therefore unable to provide answers to any of your lines of enquiry. When I question him on the subject, he says nothing. He smiles but gives no explanation for his silence. He is similarly mute when asked to speak of the manner of his arrival in Australia, or of his life before the shipwreck. Nor does he speak of his youth. Indeed I cannot even be certain that his name is Narcisse: perhaps there was a misunderstanding and he has accepted this name as a shared convention between the two of us.

I must now tell you of an incident that caused me to reflect deeply on certain matters; I wonder what you will make of my musings.

I had retired to my chamber and was perusing my notes when I heard a woman scream. This was followed by a muffled thump and the sound of hurried footsteps. Recognising the linen maid’s voice I quickly went outside and searched round the house only to behold the astonishing spectacle of Bill and Narcisse fighting. Or rather, of Bill trying to fight Narcisse, assailing him with punches and kicks, none of which attained their target. Narcisse was holding his ground, scarcely moving, evading every blow with a skilful feint and resuming his stance without ceding an inch, leaving Bill with arms and legs flailing in the air. Only an experienced fighter with a sound understanding of wrestling could remain so still, waiting until the very last moment to avoid the blows. I noticed too that he made no attempt to strike Bill, who would have made an easy target, thrown off balance as he was by the failure of his fairground brawler’s punches to strike home.

With a shout I ordered them to desist, placed myself between the two men and made them stand well back from one another. I asked the reason for their altercation. Narcisse did not understand what had happened, and neither Bill nor the linen maid would say anything other than garbled nonsense. I was constrained to remind them that they were convicts and that I could have them clapped in irons again. After interrogating each of them separately, I managed to establish the following account.

Twice a week the dinghy puts in at the landing stage, where it remains for several hours. On this occasion, Bill and the young woman made use of this time for an assignation in my servant’s quarters where they disported themselves in amorous frolicking. That this was not the first time was of little concern to me. No doubt Bill realised that his position was precarious: he had secured the favours of the linen maid with the aid of a few coins, which could only have been procured by illicit means and at my expense. Fearing charges of theft and procurement, and imagining himself felling trees in the terrible penal colony of Port Arthur, Bill confessed all to me and implored me to show mercy.