Читать книгу Fort in the Jungle - Percival Christopher Wren - Страница 13

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It was at about this time that I had the good or bad fortune to come in contact with the famous Captain Deleuze, doyen of the Military Intelligence Service in Indo-China....

One day I was talking to my Annamese friend, the Doi Linh Nghi, at the door of his hut, in the street of the village of Houi-Bap, that had grown up in the vicinity of the Fort of the same name. The Doi was seated cross-legged on the ground.

Suddenly he sprang to his feet and saluted, as a shadow passed across us. Looking round, I saw that an officer, in Legion khaki, somewhat stained, was standing, apparently listening to our conversation.

He was a small, dark, rather sallow-faced man, about whom there was nothing remarkable—with the exception of his eyes. These were extraordinarily bright, clear, and piercing; save when, deliberately, he made them appear dull and lifeless, a thing that, apparently, he could do at will.

What it was about his eyes that gave this impression and expression of alertness, watchfulness and penetration, I do not know; but it was probably partly due to the fact that the iris was curiously pale, varying from a kind of Cambridge blue to an indescribable light hue that was scarcely any colour at all.

When he spoke, one noticed another peculiarity, his voice being extraordinarily soft, low, and quiet, but at the same time perfectly audible. I believe that I never failed to hear what he said to me, and yet it seemed that he always whispered.

Save for these two slight peculiarities, he was in appearance most ordinary and insignificant, a man to whom one would not give a second glance or second thought, unless it were to wonder how so completely commonplace a person, one so lacking in presence, distinction and soldierly appearance and carriage, should have been an officer at all.

But not only was Captain Deleuze an officer, he was a very fine one indeed, one of the best in the French army of his day, and worth almost a Brigade to the General commanding the army of Indo-China.

I sprang to attention and saluted him.

“Ah!” he whispered in French with a quiet smile, “plotting great things with a Sergeant of Annamese Tirailleurs, are you? What language were you talking?”

“His, mon Capitaine.”

“So I thought; and that is as it should be. Why shouldn’t every soldier of France, serving in Tonking, learn the language and talk it to les indigènes instead of letting them grunt horrible ‘pidgin’ French at them? I suppose you never allow the Sergeant to talk French to you, do you?”

“Oui, mon Capitaine, I do. It is part of the bargain. He teaches me Annamese, and I’m teaching him French.”

“Ah! There’s some sense in that. Teaching him proper, grammatical, French, are you? And he is teaching you proper, grammatical, Annamese?”

“Oui, mon Capitaine. That is how it goes. He wishes to qualify as an Interpreter.”

Captain Deleuze smiled.

“Oh. He does, does he?”

I did not then know that the Doi was a very valuable agent, assistant and spy in the service of Captain Deleuze.

“And are you learning to use the honorific as well as the ordinary? Can you handle the tao and toi properly?” he asked.

“I am learning, mon Capitaine, though it’s a difficult language, as, apparently, there is no grammar, not to mention an alphabet.”

Captain Deleuze smiled again.

“I know,” he said.

So did I, for, until recently, I had been very dissatisfied with my progress, finding the Annamese language infinitely more difficult than Arabic. This is not remarkable, inasmuch as it is, like Chinese, made up of an enormous number of small noises, groups of which contain sounds so like each other that it takes not only training, but very careful attention, to distinguish any difference between them.

Time after time, for example, Doi Linh Nghi would say to me,

“No, I didn’t say binh. Listen; I said binh,” apparently making precisely the same sound. Or,

“No, you are saying adhow di, whereas you mean adhow di,” or,

“If you mean ‘peasant’, ‘countryman’, the word is nhaque not nhaque. Understand?”

No, I didn’t understand. I simply could not hear any difference, and at times I despaired of ever speaking Annamese correctly.

This very day, just before Captain Deleuze had spoken to me, Doi Linh Nghi had just insisted that if I thought I was using the word ‘home,’ I had better say phteah, and not make the barbarous noise, something like phteah, which I had just uttered....

“Tell me. Of what nationality are you?” asked Captain Deleuze, addressing me in Annamese, and properly referring to himself as tao, the form appropriate to a superior addressing an inferior.

“Give me some account of your life up to the time you joined the Legion,” he continued in Annamese.

I replied to the best of my ability in the same language, and using the toi self-reference which is correct when an inferior addresses a superior.

“Why, that’s pretty good. That marches,” he said, when I had finished. “Positively fluent. Are you a student of languages?”

“No, mon Capitaine,” I replied. “I can pass for an Arab, and have done so in the sacred city of Mecca; and I can speak French quite fluently. I know no other languages.”

“Well, you are on the high road to knowing Annamese, mon enfant; and with English, French, Arabic and Annamese to your credit, I think we could do something with you. Yes. Positively I almost think we could nearly do something with you.... Meet me here at this time to-morrow evening.”

And turning on his heel as I saluted, he passed along on his way to the Fort.

On the following evening, being off duty, I strolled down to Doi Linh Nghi’s reed-thatched caigna for my usual hour’s Annamese conversation-lesson, sitting and chatting while an aged hag (who was not his wife), perhaps his girl-friend and perhaps his mother, cooked his rice, which, with dried fish and green local vegetables, she would bring him on a brass platter, with perhaps a handful of fresh-water prawns on a banana leaf.

This Doi Linh Nghi would eat while we talked, a thing that at first surprised me, as I was under the impression that no “native”, be his religion what it might, cared to sit and eat in the presence of a person of some other race and creed.

Nevertheless, this he would do without the slightest embarrassment, ceasing not to talk as he shovelled the food into his somewhat capacious mouth, a feature whose natural ugliness was not improved by its interior decoration of black-lacquered teeth.

Of all things in the Annamese Heaven above, on the Annamese earth beneath, and in the waters under the earth, we talked, not forgetting local politics, military information and mis-information, and the state of the country.

Fast as we talked, and interested in our subject as we might be, Doi Linh Nghi never forgot to pull me up and correct me when I made a mistake in pronunciation.

When he had finished dinner, the flat-faced, slant-eyed, good-hearted and evil-looking little chap would say,

“Et maintenant nous parlerons Français, Monsieur le Légionnaire Dhysaht. You belong teach me speakee all the same Frenchman. But what good I suppose you do that, when you belong different Nais?”

Thus he would relapse into the horrible broken French which is to that language what the Gold Coast ‘pidgin’ English of Sidi boys and the traders’ house-servants is to the English language.

And his heart was really in his linguistic studies, just in the way that mine was, for he had a great desire to learn the French language thoroughly and to rise in the world. Before long he would, nevertheless, bid his lady-friend, mother or maiden aunt to bring out his sahat, his rice-straw mat, and on this he would stretch himself at full length.

An idea would then occur to him—the same idea at the same moment, every night of his life—and he would ask the aged lady if she could see anything of a wooden tray inside there in the phteah; a tray on which was a lamp, a bowl, a silver skewer, a little box and, in point of fact, what you might call something like an opium pipe. Yes, and probably she might find his pillow knocking around somewhere near the tray.

And always she would find these things exactly as he described them, the pillow being nothing more nor less than a shaped block of blue china-ware—solid, hard, shiny blue china—ornamented, believe me or believe me not, with a neat linen frill tied about it. Later, I saw many of these amazing china pillows, thus enclosed in a frilled pillow-case, their angularities and asperities proclaiming themselves at the corners.

“I think I’ll have a puff or two of the black smoke,” observed Doi Linh Nghi as usual, this evening.

“I’m sure you will,” said I.

And he picked up the opium pipe, a thing some twenty to thirty inches long and a couple of inches thick, one end covered by a silver cap, the other having a jade mouthpiece far too large to go into the mouth, and in the middle of it, a small hole through which the smoke was drawn. A quarter of the way up the stem was the pipe bowl, a large silver receptacle completely covered in, save for a hole, in diameter no bigger than that of a large needle. On top of this hole, the burning pill of opium rested, and through the hole, the smoke was sucked down into the bowl, along the stem, and through the mouth-piece into the mouth and lungs of the consumer.

First, Doi Linh Nghi lit the lamp, opened the silver box, and, taking the little silver skewer, collected on the point of it a small lump of the thick heavy opium, semi-liquid in consistency, and dark brown in colour.

This he passed through the little flame of the lamp so that it bubbled and thickened, when he dipped it again into the box and collected more opium upon it.

Having done this, half a dozen times, he had got enough opium for a pipe-smoke. He then put the pipe into his mouth, warmed the upper surface of the pipe-bowl in the flame, placed the opium over the hole in the bowl-cover and held it above the flame. The opium sizzled and burned, and Doi Linh Nghi sucked strongly at the mouthpiece, inhaling the whole of the smoke so that none escaped even from the bowl, into the circumambient air.

When he could inflate his chest no longer, and must cease to draw, he puffed for a brief space as does an ordinary tobacco-smoker, smoking quickly.

The opium being all consumed, he laid the pipe down upon his mat and gently and slowly exhaled the black smoke from his lungs.

Watching it float upwards, dark, heavy and opaque, he heaved a tremendous sigh of utter content and grunted,

“Biet! Meh! Biet! ... Ah, that is good.”

And a great peace and silence fell upon him.

The silence was broken by the sound of a foot-step, and looking up, I saw a dirty little Annamese nhaque approaching, wearing on his chignon a little turban surmounted by a lacquered sakalo, a round flat hat made of bamboo, and shaped somewhat like an inverted plate, but coming to a point in the centre. He also wore a dirty cotton vest and short trousers or long knickerbockers, such as are worn by the Muong tribesmen.

This strange little man, shuffling near, stood and stared at the opium-drugged Doi Linh Nghi with lacklustre eyes, his half-open mouth exposing teeth apparently carved from polished ebony.

“Kamm môk phdâl!” he murmured, and subconsciously I repeated his observation in the common Arabic phrase Mektoub rebib—It is written and will come to pass. “He must follow his Fate and act according to his Karma.”

“Opium!” he added. “Smoking opium. Now he’s happy. But he will die of smoking opium.”

“Sday er chéat mûy,” I observed sapiently. “One can only die once.”

“Kamm môk phdâl,” countered the coolie, who seemed to have no other conversational gambit; and the Doi snubbing him and showing off, repeated this in unexpectedly accurate French.

“Le Karma se réalise.”

“He’s wandering in his mind already,” observed the coolie censoriously.

“And who might you be, fellow, that you speak to a white soldier and to a Sergeant of Tirailleurs Tonkinois?” I said, speaking de haut en bas, further to practise my Annamese.

The nhaque grinned foolishly.

“Me?” he said. “Me? I am a plainsman.”

“Well, I can see that, you black-toothed yokel,” I replied politely. “And hear it too, for your voice is as ugly as that of the rain-bird—or of a horn-bill, for that matter. Do you suppose I take you for a tho?”

Again the man grinned foolishly.

“I am a plainsman,” said he.

“You don’t say!” said I.

“Oh yes I am, and the Lu Thuong of Phulang-Nguyen sent me here to see if the linhtap lanxa had gone away yet.”

“Oh, the Headman of Phulang-Nguyen sent you to see whether the French soldiers had gone away, did he? Why does he want to know?”

“Fruit and vegetables,” was the reply. “He’s not going to send us down here with them if the Ong-quang-Ba,^[1] the Lord of Three Stripes, has taken the linhtap lanxa away.”

“I see. And has he distilled any choum-choum to sell to the linhtap lanxa?”

“Oh no,” grinned the yokel. “He’d never do that, or the Lord of Three Stripes would give him more than three stripes. He! he!”

And thus we discoursed on high important matters; I discovering that I could understand all the coolie said, and, what was more pleasing, that he obviously understood all I said to him.

By and by, Doi Linh Nghi bestirred himself and prepared another pipe.

Watching him with idle stupid eyes, his face vacant, his mouth hanging open, the peasant was deeply interested and apparently envious.

Again we talked.

Again Doi Linh Nghi prepared a pipe and smoked it.

And several times again.

Whereafter, remarking in perfect English,

“Well, if that lad has another, I’ll say he’s doing himself too well, in the opium line,” the coolie rose to his feet.

“Not at all bad, Dysart,” he continued. “Not at all bad—for both of us. You didn’t spot me, did you?”

“No, Sir, I certainly didn’t,” I replied, nearly as open-mouthed as the late coolie, now Captain Deleuze, had himself but recently been. It was a wonderful piece of acting and a marvellous make-up, for not only had it deceived me, but had completely taken in the experienced and oft-deceived Sergeant Linh Nghi of the Tirailleurs Tonkinois—himself a tho mountaineer from the Tam-Dao highlands of Thai-Nguyen in the west.

This was the beginning of my connection with Captain Deleuze, for, from this day, started my long and absorbingly interesting service under this remarkable man.

Among his other great abilities, gifts and accomplishments was a very high degree of skill in the art of military topography, for every form of sketching, surveying and map-making was as easy to him as the writing of a report. And not only had he a wonderful eye and artistic gift, but his draughtsmanship was that of a professional, being as accurate as it was neat.

In this extremely useful art, he later trained me with great care, taking me out on reconnoitring expeditions, and each time showing me how to make a topo, both of the journey and of its objective.

But here I am running ahead too fast, as it was some time before I was seconded, nominally as his batman, and lent to him for Intelligence work.

[1]

Captain.