The Year 5865, page 35
I followed him without anxiety, however, curious to see the interior of a monument that displayed the remains of such artistic richness externally. Alas, there was nothing to be seen inside for a lover of the fine arts.
The monument served as the abode of the principal chiefs of the Cosaques, who had appropriated it for their service—which is to say that they had despoiled it utterly. They had established an upper floor there. The ground floor was for them and their mounts; the upper floor served as a granary, where they stored the results of their foraging, their crops and objects designated for trade.
In the French tribe, people travel by means of aerostats; among the Cosaques, the Moroccans and the other peoples of the region, they make use of red deer and reindeer, which they domesticate with a great deal of patience and skill. Bulls and cows serve for heavy haulage, as among us.
Johan introduced himself into the abode of the Cosaque chiefs with all the familiarity of a regular visitor. We were received with great cordiality, but my entire person was inspected minutely. A brief discussion, in a language I did not understand, was established between them, after which, each of them smiled at me in amity—which gave me to understand that I had been its subject.
One of the chiefs detached himself from the little circle then and, coming to stand in front of me, bowed his head profoundly. He was the supreme chief. His costume was similar to that of the others, his supremacy only being indicated by the three horses’ tails that were attached to the back of his head-dress. Some of the other chiefs sported two, others only one, according to their rank; those who were not ranked had none.
The head-dresses worn by all those men are round and made of animal-hide, thus resembling a perfectly-rounded toque. The most ornate are bordered by a little strip of fur, variable according to taste. The edging of the chiefs is always made from brightly-colored feathers interwoven with sufficient artistry not to be unpleasant to the eyes, even of a foreigner. That edging is forbidden to all the other members of the tribe.
Their upper body is covered by a small mantle with broad sleeves, tightened at the wrist. The rest of the body is clad in trousers, intensively creased about the legs, at the bottom of which it is tightened by a hem. The garment comes up to the armpits, where they are fastened by two straps that serve as braces.
The costume of the women is slightly different; the trousers only come up to the waist and the mantle is replaced by a long and broad piece of cloth, in which they envelop themselves rather gracefully. On their heads they wear tall pointed bonnets, which they decorate with flowers, leaves, tree-branches or even herbs, according to the season and their caprices.
That, at least, is what I learned from Johan, for I did not have the good luck to see any women at close range. I didn’t see any at all in the chiefs’ dwelling; they had probably been sent away—which proved to me that we were expected, as I strongly suspected, and that our visit was significant, for it appears that the people of the West have a habit of sending their women away when there is serious business to conduct.
All of that seemed so trivial to me that I did not seek to get to be bottom of it at the time. I was fully occupied mourning the profanation of the beautiful monument that I had just entered, while trying to discover some architectural beauty that the devastation had neglected.
Meanwhile, Johan was examining me very attentively; my preoccupation seemed to please him. So he invited me, in the name of his hosts, to visit all the parts of the monument without any hindrance. I did so, in their company, but I saw nothing, or almost nothing, but stables full of animals, granaries filled with hay and dry leaves and lodgings little better than the stables. The architecture was fractured and disfigured, and what appeared to remain was hidden under straw and household utensils.
My visit did not last long. It was slightly prolonged, however, when we reached the extremity of the building, for I took a great deal of pleasure in what I saw there. There was a small platform that had not been soiled by the ineptitude of the Cosaques; perhaps that was because they needed it to remain as it was. The debris of some marble statues was heaped up in one corner, where it served as a point of support for wooden beams, which propped up a few stones in danger of falling. Those items of debris were still beautiful, and above all, very visible. They were near what were evidently tombs, for the little monuments there had the form that ancient history tells us. Portions of funerary inscriptions could still be seen on the stone. As they were fairly well conserved, The Cosaques had found it convenient to store the grains of their harvest therein.
These precious relics being of no interest to my cicerone, he left me to my admiring inspection in order to go further on and engage in a very animated conversation with our hosts. When I glanced in that direction momentarily I perceived Johan disappearing gradually, as if he were descending into a cellar.
My curiosity was keenly excited, so, abandoning my statues and my tombs, I went toward him. He was indeed going down; there was a cellar ahead of him, but a very deep cellar, into which I followed him.
Johan immediately turned to face me, without being surprised by my presence—which, on the contrary, he seemed to desire. The Cosaque chiefs were also looking at me with a hint of anxiety. And yet, there was nothing extraordinary there. Personally, I could only see what seemed to me to be a few remains of tombs, and remains devoid of sufficient splendor to make anything vibrate in my heart but the philosophical fiber.
“What individuals are sleeping here?” I asked myself, and asked Johan. “Were they kings, powerful and rich men, benefactors of society, scholars or proud men, heroes of crime and titled ignoramuses?”
Johan could not say.
O humankind! This is where your vanity ends: in oblivion, in forgetfulness. The tombs had surely not been constructed with such an objective.
Were the Cosaques and Moroccans of the early days capable of building such mausolea? I wondered.
I did not have time to resolve that question because, while I was meditating most profoundly, Johan and the Cosaque chiefs suddenly lifted a curtain that hung in front of us and hid the greater part of the cellar’s depth, which I had not suspected until then.
It was an arsenal that appeared before us: an arsenal filled with weapons of every sort. There were, in good condition, axes, halberds, scythes of some sort, wooden pikes with iron heads, iron-tipped arrows in vast quantity, bows, slingshots for launching stones; in sum, all the apparatus of war.
“Men who possess all these weapons are invincible,” Johan told me, his eyes sparkling with courage and confidence, “if they are brave men. There are more weapons here than there have ever been in all of Figuig.”
“And why all these weapons?” I asked him, with a dazed smile full of anxiety.
“Why?” he replied. “Don’t far-sighted men create reserves of grain when it’s abundant.”
“But why amass weapons in such large quantity when one is at peace, and nothing suggests that war is imminent?” I asked, persistently.
“Misers hide their treasures, slaves disguise their strength,” he replied, pulling the curtain that prevented me from seeing any more. “Of men of honor,” he added, staring at me, “one does not ask an oath that they have seen nothing.”
And we went out.
XLI. THE SEBOU
My mind was confused by a thousand different thought. What did Johan want of me? Why had he taken me so precipitately to the Cosaque tribe—once an enemy tribe on which he was now fawning? What was I doing there? What trap was the man still trying to set for me? Having not succeeded in killing me, was he trying to get me killed by the laws of his country? Did he want to render me odious to King Rhaman, my host and protector, by giving me all the appearances of a conspirator?
Johan had doubtless achieved his goal, for he testified a desire to leave that place. I was not opposed to that, so, after having bowed most respectfully and as amicably as possible to our hosts, while Johan said a few words to the that I didn’t understand, we returned to our aerostat, into which I climbed, without desiring to see anything more for the moment, and quite ready to return to the Palace of Administration in order to have a discussion with Falster, and the Queen, if possible.
When we were in the balloon, however, Johan said: “You have no desire to see the Cosaque tribe, it seems, Mr. Daghestan, nor the curiosities of their country, so I didn’t want to keep you here any longer. As the weather is fine, though, and as we have plenty of time ahead of us, would you like to take advantage of it to go as far the extremities of the kingdom of New Cosaquia? We can go and come back in a matter of hours, thanks to the agility of our balloon.”
The proposition was tempting; I accepted. I was curious to know what the extent and strength of the country in question might be, and where its soil was covered in ruins, like Figuig.
The aerostat made rapid progress; I did not call any halt. I was meditating more than gazing. I saw nothing during our journey but collapsed houses at intervals—towns in ruins and forests almost everywhere.
“But where are the inhabitants?” I asked Johan. “Cosaquia isn’t deserted, is it?”
“Not entirely,” he replied, “but nearly. You can’t see the inhabitants because they’re lodged in those ruins that you see in every direction, which they’ve appropriated for their own use. Some have built huts, though, like us, in the middle of forests or on the banks of rivers.”
Poor France, I said, silently, leaning my elbows on the rim of the gondola and my head in my hand. This, then, is what you have become! It was well worth the trouble of building your cities with so much luxury, of extending your commerce so far, of amassing so much wealth, of raising yourself up so high, of being so proud of your name, your glory—in sum, to have worked so hard, suffered so much—for such a future! Hardly anyone knows your name today, nor knows any longer where you were; your king, so great and magnificent, are forgotten; your inhabitants, so luxurious and proud, who dreamed of such a sweet repose, there they are…there! Their bones are there, underneath those disgusting ruins; their wealth is there, underneath those rags; their sensuality is there, in that mud…O France, France! But is it really you?
“We’ve arrived,” said Johan suddenly, his voice snatching me from my reverie. “Here are the limits of New Cosaquia.”
“Oh!” I said, looking around, astonished to see the animation of an inhabited country, especially a frontier region. “And what do you call this city?” I asked Johan.
“It’s not a city,” he replied, “it’s a village—a poor village, in fact, although it’s the headquarters of the frontier patrol. It’s Sebou.48
He stopped the balloon then, and we descended to ground level.
We found ourselves on the bank of a river, whose current was very broad and dotted with sandbanks covered with osier-beds and the stout trunks of poplars. The encasement of the bed was split at intervals by profound cracks, which had allowed streams of water to establish themselves at their ease in the vicinity, forming ponds that were often dry, or very nearly, in which detritus of all sorts was fermenting in the damp mud. In consequence, the atmosphere is charged throughout the surrounding area, and even some distance away, with fetid and pestilential odors, which occasionally decimate the frail population that inhabits the banks.
That population, moreover, is not very numerous—and also, it must be said, no more industrious than in all the other corners of the region. The ruins of the city, which appear to have existed in olden times—but when?—serve as their retreat, and they are, in truth, well disposed to spare the pains of those idle and ignorant architects.
I don’t know whether that city descended as far as the banks of the river where we were; reason says yes but no evidence of it remains today. A short distance behind us, on the other hand, everything indicated that a city had existed there, on a hill, whose slope had a truly picturesque appearance, facing the river. The habitations were grouped in the midst of rocks and hillocks of different heights with the help of an admirable savant art.
Nothing more remains of all that than a few half-collapsed rooms stacked one above another, retained in mid-air by some unknown magic. It is in there that the inhabitants of that new kind of city have found their niche, which they reach sometimes by climbing and sometimes by long and sinuous circuits.
It seemed, moreover, that the people are hardly encouraged to make their dwelling more elegant, harassed as they are by the other peoples of the region, who, no more laborious than they, gladly devote themselves to raiding and pillaging, in order to make a living that they do not take the trouble to obtain in any other way.
“Are there a few members of your tribe here?” I asked Johan.
“A few,” he replied, “as there are everywhere, even beyond the frontier; but they’re people of our blood, not of the fatherland. If they are pillaged, they also pillage, even their brothers; that barrier makes them enemies.”
I shrugged my shoulders disdainfully.
“Let’s leave it,” I said to Johan. “We have nothing more to see here but the landscape, and these eternal ruins we continually tread beneath our feet. These people are savage, and will probably never be civilized. Let’s look instead at the river, which flows with such majesty, carrying its waters to everyone, even beyond the frontiers of your New Cosaquia, as if to give us all a lesson in benevolence and fraternity.”
Desirous of extracting my guide from the taciturnity into which he had plunged, I continued: “But what was here? Has the Queen told you anything about that?”
“The Queen,” he replied in a tremulous voice. “The Queen…yes, the Queen has told me that there was once a city here, but which has been ruined for centuries, since the invasion of the Cosaques. It was very beautiful, the Queen says, and extended everywhere all around.” Johan indicated both banks of the river. “Look—one can still see the remains of walls on the river bed.”
My guide was right, as I had already noticed; there were considerable ruins under the water. A few paces from the place where we were standing, the piles of a bridge were visible, disposed symmetrically across the river bed. They were still solidly based, and a great quantity of artistically-carved stoned had accumulated around them, which were undoubtedly the remains of the bridge. In the middle, half-hidden by the sand, blocks of stone and the parasitic plants that had grown everywhere, there was a tall column lying on its side.
I examined that column attentively—as attentively as the continual swaying of our balloon permitted, which Johan, skillful as he was, had difficulty maintaining immobile. Although I could not decipher anything, it did have an inscription on its base—or at least the traces of an inscription, for I could no longer see anything but the grooves of the engraver’s chisel.
I had better luck with another block of stone, which did not appear to me to belong to the column, but I wasn’t much further forward. The block seemed to be the pedestal of a statue. I was able to transcribe in my notebook, in the order of their inscription, a few letters that it bore, but they taught me nothing more, in spite of the attention I have since devoted to studying them. Here they are:
Den.. ..pin
Invent…r d. .a va.eur,
Né à Bl..s . . 16.749
I would have given ten years of my life to understand that inscription. Such as it was, though, what could it tell me, with an ignorant guide and memories like those we have of France, its history and its language? I interrogated Johan, I interrogated the river and all the debris it inundated…nothing. I could find out anything—and what saddens me the most is that I still know nothing today.
Even the Queen has not told me anything. Why? Magnetism itself has not wanted to tell me anything more. Why?
Being unable to discover anything, I became as sullen as a sulky child, and no longer wanted to occupy myself with the inscription, nor with science, nor with research. I abandoned myself entirely to the pleasure of the voyager who looks without thinking.
I no longer occupied myself with anything but contemplating the picturesque spectacle that the river Sebou offered at that place. Its waters, impeded by the almost mountainous barrage of the ruins amassed on its bed, climbed magnificently over their back on one side, to fall in a cascade on the other. It was delightful and grandiose.
“It’s beautiful,” I said to Johan, peevishly, “but let’s go. We only have unintelligible ruins to look at here, and everywhere: everywhere, the degradation of people and things, and no key to open the book. Let’s go. I can, at least, say in my memoirs that I’ve seen the frontier of the kingdom of New Cosaquia; I ask for no more today.”
I was mistaken, however, for, in spite of what I said, I was very desirous of seeing more than I had seen. I was only too well aware that there is always much to see and learn on ground as unfortunate as that where we were.
I should have been especially desirous of wandering over the inhabited hills, the rocks that rose up behind us, where I perceived the petrified roots of old giant trees that snaked through the bedrock, foundations of ancient monuments whose remains allowed the divination of a primitive beauty. I should have become even more desirous of touring that picturesque and savage location when Johan had told me that there were more beautiful ruins on the Sebou, the ruins of a palace magical in its position and its decoration, in which the captain of the border guard lived—but nothing retained me, and I suppressed my desires.
Something serious had been on my mind, obsessing me, since our departure from Moskhow. It seemed to me that since then, Johan had become even more thoughtful than usual, and that his reverie was becoming increasingly morose—and that made me anxious.
Without being inappropriately fearful, I nevertheless felt the need to get back to Figuig. A sentiment that I could not define, to which I could attribute no cause, told me that I needed to be there.
“Let’s go,” Johan said to me resolutely, stepping back into the balloon, which we had left momentarily. “Let’s return to Figuig, since that’s what you want.”
