Chapter 20: The Circle Is Complete

At the foot of the valley of the Mia, at the place where the jackal had cried the night Saint-Avit told me he had killed Morhange, another jackal, or perhaps the same one, howled again.

Immediately I had a feeling that this night would see the irremediable fulfilled.

We were seated that evening, as before, on the poor veranda improvised outside our dining-room. The floor was of plaster, the balustrade of twisted branches; four posts supported a thatched roof.

I have already said that from the veranda one could look far out over the desert. As he finished speaking, Saint-Avit rose and stood leaning his elbows on the railing. I followed him.

“And then...” I said.

He looked at me.

“And then what? Surely you know what all the newspapers told--how, in the country of the Awellimiden, I was found dying of hunger and thirst by an expedition under the command of Captain Aymard, and taken to Timbuctoo. I was delirious for a month afterward. I have never known what I may have said during those spells of burning fever. You may be sure the officers of the Timbuctoo Club did not feel it incumbent upon them to tell me. When I told them of my adventures, as they are related in the report of the Morhange--Saint-Avit Expedition, I could see well enough from the cold politeness with which they received my explanations, that the official version which I gave them differed at certain points from the fragments which had escaped me in my delirium.

“They did not press the matter. It remains understood that Captain Morhange died from a sunstroke and that I buried him on the border of the Tarhit watercourse, three marches from Timissao. Everybody can detect that there are things missing in my story. Doubtless they guess at some mysterious drama. But proofs are another matter. Because of the impossibility of collecting them, they prefer to smother what could only become a silly scandal. But now you know all the details as well as I.”

“And--she?” I asked timidly.

He smiled triumphantly. It was triumph at having led me to think no longer of Morhange, or of his crime, the triumph of feeling that he had succeeded in imbuing me with his own madness.

“Yes,” he said. “She! For six years I have learned nothing more about her. But I see her, I talk with her. I am thinking now how I shall reenter her presence. I shall throw myself at her feet and say simply, ‘Forgive me. I rebelled against your law. I did not know. But now I know; and you see that, like Lieutenant Ghiberti, I have come back.’

“‘Family, honor, country, ‘ said old Le Mesge, ‘you will forget all for her.’ Old Le Mesge is a stupid man, but he speaks from experience. He knows, he who has seen broken before Antinea the wills of the fifty ghosts in the red marble hall.

“And now, will you, in your turn, ask me ‘What is this woman?’ Do I know myself? And besides, what difference does it make? What does her past and the mystery of her origin matter to me; what does it matter whether she is the true descendant of the god of the sea and the sublime Lagides or the bastard of a Polish drunkard and a harlot of the Marbeuf quarter?

“At the time when I was foolish enough to be jealous of Morhange, these questions might have made some difference to the ridiculous self-esteem that civilized people mix up with passion. But I have held Antinea’s body in my arms. I no longer wish to know any other, nor if the fields are in blossom, nor what will become of the human spirit...

“I do not wish to know. Or, rather, it is because I have too exact a vision of that future, that I pretend to destroy myself in the only destiny that is worth while: a nature unfathomed and virgin, a mysterious love.

“A nature unfathomed and virgin. I must explain myself. One winter day, in a large city all streaked with the soot that falls from black chimneys of factories and of those horrible houses in the suburbs, I attended a funeral.

“We followed the hearse in the mud. The church was new, damp and poor. Aside from two or three people, relatives struck down by a dull sorrow, everyone had just one idea: to find some pretext to get away. Those who went as far as the cemetery were those who did not find an excuse. I see the gray walls and the cypresses, those trees of sun and shade, so beautiful in the country of southern France against the low purple hills. I see the horrible undertaker’s men in greasy jackets and shiny top hats. I see ... No, I’ll stop; it’s too horrible.

“Near the wall, in a remote plot, a grave had been dug in frightful yellow pebbly clay. It was there that they left the dead man whose name I no longer remember.

“While they were lowering the casket, I looked at my hands, those hands which in that strangely lighted country had pressed the hands of Antinea. A great pity for my body seized me, a great fear of what threatened it in these cities of mud. ‘So, ‘ I said to myself, ‘it may be that this body, this dear body, will come to such an end! No, no, my body, precious above all other treasures, I swear to you that I will spare you that ignominy; you shall not rot under a registered number in the filth of a suburban cemetery. Your brothers in love, the fifty knights of orichalch, await you, mute and grave, in the red marble hall. I shall take you back to them.’