Part 16

"I know, I know; I am not trying to excuse things; I am only explaining how they happen. But how explain to others? We always talk of putting ourselves in our neighbours' place; idlest of phrases! since we cannot possibly avoid bringing our personal apparatus to bear on their problems. There is a gulf between man and man. You will hardly believe that I used to take an interest--quite superficial, you know, but none the less real--in all those questions of the day that absorb the ordinary man of ease, in politics and art and whatnot; but nowadays all my interests are centred on one single point. On what point, do you think? On keeping up the external appearance, and the manners, of well-being. I have no energy left for anything else; and even this effort quite exhausts me. Art and politics! What, in the name of heaven, do I care for art and politics, with the knife at my throat? I only utilize these things; yes, I utilize them for conversational purposes, in order to deceive others as to my true, incessant and miserable preoccupations. Laughable, is it not? Why don't you smile, Monsieur--you, who have never known the bitterness?"

We were crossing the broad Oued Baiesh, a stretch of yellow sand and stones. To obviate damage by sudden floods, the French have covered this tract of the road with a coating of asphalt; but the busy life here, the droves of camels and sheep, the Arab folk laughing over their laundry-work in the shallow streamlet that trickles through the waste--all these things were gone for the moment.

But for the torn line of Gafsa palms that confronted us on the other side of the river-bed, we might have been in the veriest wilderness. Although the wind was lulled, petulant little pillars of sand still arose here and there among the boulders, and sank down again, as if exhausted; the descending sun had emerged, a lurid disk, framed in a sulphureous halo that melted imperceptibly into the gold of the west.

It was growing chillier than ever, and the Count, shivering with cold, drew his burnous more closely about him; he had bought one for fifteen francs, probably in imitation of myself, or because I once jokingly called it "a garment for millionaires who need not use their hands." He liked to be taken for a millionaire.

I looked at him awhile, wondering what thoughts were ruling the expression of his perplexed and sorrowful features, and then tried to turn the conversation into other channels.

"Are there interesting people at your Italian restaurant?"

"Well, there is Hirsch, the young German: you know him?"

"The police commissaire was talking to me about his case yesterday."

"Ha, was he? Let me tell you that I have investigated it thoroughly, and find it most instructive. This young fellow is not yet twenty; he ran away from home for no discoverable reason, then signed on a merchant vessel at Marseilles and, disliking the work, slipped out as soon as she touched port at Sfax, and climbed without a ticket into a night-train, thinking to reach Tunis. Instead of that, he woke up in the morning and found himself at Gafsa! Here, you see, are all the elements of wrong-doing, and the authorities have learnt his history from his papers which they seized. As a German and a Jew, the French instinctively dislike him; as a Jew and a foreigner--the Arabs; he is objectionable to look at, dull of wit, and knows not a word of French or Arabic. But he is poor, and therefore--every one loads him with kindness."

"And why not?" I asked.

"Why not, indeed? Your friend the magistrate has given him some money out of his own pocket; the restaurant proprietress refuses to be paid for his food, while another one, near the station, sends word to say that he can have a plate of soup there whenever he likes; a young Arab boy--these Arabs are really incomprehensible--gives him as many cups of tea or coffee as he can drink; a Jewish lawyer has sent him some clothes; a gentleman in your hotel a quantity of linen; the Italian barber shaves him gratis; a certain shopkeeper sends him a bottle of liqueur--of liqueur!--every second day; the commissaire has given him, free of charge, a decent unoccupied bedroom in the prison, where he can go in and out as he pleases; best of all, the Ponts et Chaussées are now employing him at three francs a day--a princely income, they tell me--at some agricultural job: pure kindness, inasmuch as he has never handled a spade or pickaxe in his life. He can have a pleasant time in Gafsa; he can marry an heiress if so disposed; then, when the place begins to bore him, the German Consul in Tunis will repatriate him at his Government's expense. 'He's a poor devil,' they say. Why do I tell you all this? Because--well--I am also poor--"

Always harping on the old theme!

"The cases are not quite parallel, are they?"

"No. He is young, and fit for work, whereas I am past the middle term of life. Old age--another horror! Besides, I am a gentleman----"

"Exactly. We should be ashamed to shave you gratis."

"I suppose you're right, Monsieur. I was only trying to explain--to explain myself--to myself, I mean. Pardon me if I speak too much of my wretched affairs. But I'll tell you what I think. To endure this revolting destitution a man must be an Arab. Now, I cannot pretend to be an Arab; I would not adopt their ideals if I could. And yet, alas! I am beginning to believe in predestination, as they do; to believe that our faults and our virtues are distilled beforehand in the silent laboratory of the past. A sad creed, to think of men born to misfortune; to be obliged to consider yourself--how do you say in English?--a stepchild of nature...."

He was always a good talker, but it is impossible to describe the intensity of feeling in his speech to-day. He seemed to suffer from some imperious need of unburdening himself, even to a chance acquaintance like me; long days of loneliness, maybe, had worked on his nerves and produced a kind of congestion. But in his words and voice I detected lapses into other moods, into some other state of being; they gave me the impression as of two different individuals addressing me. The man did not ring true, altogether; he was mentally disorganized, disharmonious; those meretricious reasonings about justice, for example, struck me disagreeably.

And I could not help contrasting his rambling emotionalism with the logic--the relentless, diamond-like justesse--of the mining engineer. He is the very antithesis of that pellucid and homogeneous character. The sanguine temperament ...

What is a man of this type doing in Gafsa?

Mystery!

The rest of us, the cynical Greek doctor, the artist-sage and lover of Arab institutions, myself (flint-maniac)--to say nothing of men like Dufresnoy--we all contrive to fit, after a fashion, into the place; we have a raison d'etre. But this composite, unadaptive city-dweller: how incongruous a figure against that background of palms and barren mountains!

An enigmatical creature, and yet not wholly unlovable; he may be unsound or even unprincipled, he may be deficient in qualities that go to make men respected and satisfied with the world in general, but he possesses, I think, certain citizen-virtues unintelligible to the self-centred, rustic type of mind. He could be stirred to acts of unworldly enthusiasm; he would share his last crust with some shipwrecked sailor, or shed his blood gaily for a generous idea. And he is plainly in hard case just now.

A stepchild of nature....

"You have a very good English accent, Count."

"We were carefully brought up in languages. Not every one understands Polish, you know."

"By the way, how does it come about that you, being a Pole, should have a Russian family name?"

The question seemed to astonish and perplex him. At last he said:

"Oh, it's about the same thing, isn't it? Nowadays, I mean," he added, with grandiloquent pathos, "ever since the misfortunes of my unhappy country."