Atlantida by Pierre Benoît (free ebook reader txt) 📖

"I saw them all in contrast to myself when the diligence passed them. They were terrible. Under the hideous searchlight their eyes shone with a sombre fire in their pale and shaven faces. The burning dust strangled their raucous voices in their throats. A frightful sadness took possession of me.

"When the diligence had left this fearful nightmare behind, I regained my self-control.

"'Further, much further South,' I exclaimed to myself, 'to the places untouched by this miserable bilgewater of civilization.'

"When I am weary, when I have a moment of anguish and longing to turn back on the road that I have chosen, I think of the prisoners of Berroughia, and then I am glad to continue on my way.

"But what a reward, when I am in one of those places where the poor animals never think of fleeing because they have never seen man, where the desert stretches out around me so widely that the old world could crumble, and never a single ripple on the dune, a single cloud in the white sky come to warn me.

"'It is true,' I murmured. 'I, too, once, in the middle of the desert, at Tidi-Kelt, I felt that way.'"

Up to that time I had let him enjoy his exaltations without interruption. I understood too late the error that I had made in pronouncing that unfortunate sentence.

His mocking nervous laughter began anew.

"Ah! Indeed, at Tidi-Kelt? I beg you, old man, in your own interest, if you don't want to make an ass of yourself, avoid that species of reminiscence. Honestly, you make me think of Fromentin, or that poor Maupassant, who talked of the desert because he had been to Djelfa, two days' journey from the street of Bab-Azound and the Government buildings, four days from the Avenue de l'Opera;—and who, because he saw a poor devil of a camel dying near Bou-Saada, believed himself in the heart of the desert, on the old route of the caravans.... Tidi-Kelt, the desert!"

"It seems to me, however, that In-Salah—" I said, a little vexed.

"In-Salah? Tidi-Kelt! But, my poor friend, the last time that I passed that way there were as many old newspapers and empty sardine boxes as if it had been Sunday in the Wood of Vincennes."

Such a determined, such an evident desire to annoy me made me forget my reserve.

"Evidently," I replied resentfully, "I have never been to—"

I stopped myself, but it was already too late.

He looked at me, squarely in the face.

"To where?" he said with good humor.

I did not answer.

"To where?" he repeated.

And, as I remained strangled in my muteness:

"To Wadi Tarhit, do you mean?"

It was on the east bank of Wadi Tarhit, a hundred and twenty kilometers from Timissao, at 25.5 degrees north latitude, according to the official report, that Captain Morhange was buried.

"André," I cried stupidly, "I swear to you—"

"What do you swear to me?"

"That I never meant—"

"To speak of Wadi Tarhit? Why? Why should you not speak to me of Wadi Tarhit?"

In answer to my supplicating silence, he merely shrugged his shoulders.

"Idiot," was all he said.

And he left me before I could think of even one word to say.

So much humility on my part had, however, not disarmed him. I had the proof of it the next day, and the way he showed his humor was even marked by an exhibition of wretchedly poor taste.

I was just out of bed when he came into my room.

"Can you tell me what is the meaning of this?" he demanded.

He had in his hand one of the official registers. In his nervous crises he always began sorting them over, in the hope of finding some pretext for making himself militarily insupportable.

This time chance had favored him.

He opened the register. I blushed violently at seeing the poor proof of a photograph that I knew well.

"What is that?" he repeated disdainfully.

Too often I had surprised him in the act of regarding, none too kindly, the portrait of Mlle. de C. which hung in my room not to be convinced at that moment that he was trying to pick a quarrel with me.

I controlled myself, however, and placed the poor little print in the drawer.

But my calmness did not pacify him.

"Henceforth," he said, "take care, I beg you, not to mix mementoes of your gallantry with the official papers."

He added, with a smile that spoke insult:

"It isn't necessary to furnish objects of excitation to Gourrut."

"André," I said, and I was white, "I demand—"

He stood up to the full height of his stature.

"Well what is it? A gallantry, nothing more. I have authorized you to speak of Wadi Halfa, haven't I? Then I have the right, I should think—"

"André!"

Now he was looking maliciously at the wall, at the little portrait the replica of which I had just subjected to this painful scene.

"There, there, I say, you aren't angry, are you? But between ourselves you will admit, will you not, that she is a little thin?"

And before I could find time to answer him, he had removed himself, humming the shameful refrain of the previous night: