IV
TOWARDS LATITUDE 25
"You see," said Captain Morhange to me fifteen days later, "you aremuch better informed about the ancient routes through the Sahara thanyou have been willing to let me suppose, since you know of theexistence of the two Tadekkas. But the one of which you have justspoken is the Tadekka of Ibn-Batoutah, located by this historianseventy days from Touat, and placed by Schirmer, very plausibly, inthe unexplored territory of the Aouelimmiden. This is the Tadekka bywhich the Sonrhai caravans passed every year, travelling by Egypt.
"My Tadekka is different, the capital of the veiled people, placed byIbn-Khaldoun twenty days south of Wargla, which he calls Tadmekka. Itis towards this Tadmekka that I am headed. I must establish Tadmekkain the ruins of Es-Souk. The commercial trade route, which in theninth century bound the Tunisian Djerid to the bend the Niger makes atBourroum, passed by Es-Souk. It is to study the possibility ofreestablishing this ancient thoroughfare that the Ministries gave methis mission, which has given me the pleasure of your companionship."
"You are probably in for a disappointment," I said. "Everythingindicates that the commerce there is very slight."
"Well, I shall see," he answered composedly.
This was while we were following the unicolored banks of a salt lake.The great saline stretch shone pale-blue, under the rising sun. Thelegs of our five mehara cast on it their moving shadows of a darkerblue. For a moment the only inhabitant of these solitudes, a bird, akind of indeterminate heron, rose and hung in the air, as ifsuspended from a thread, only to sink back to rest as soon as we hadpassed.
I led the way, selecting the route, Morhange followed. Enveloped in abernous, his head covered with the straight _chechia_ of the Spahis, agreat chaplet of alternate red and white beads, ending in a cross,around his neck, he realized perfectly the ideal of Father Lavigerie'sWhite Fathers.
After a two-days' halt at Temassinin we had just left the roadfollowed by Flatters, and taken an oblique course to the south. I havethe honor of having antedated Fourcau in demonstrating the importanceof Temassinin as a geometrical point for the passage of caravans, andof selecting the place where Captain Pein has just now constructed afort. The junction for the roads that lead to Touat from Fezzan andTibesti, Temassinin is the future seat of a marvellous IntelligenceDepartment. What I had collected there in two days about thedisposition of our Senoussis enemies was of importance. I noticed thatMorhange let me proceed with my inquiries with complete indifference.
These two days he had passed in conversation with the old Negroguardian of the turbet, which preserves, under its plaster dome, theremains of the venerated Sidi-Moussa. The confidences they exchanged,I am sorry to say that I have forgotten. But from the Negro's amazedadmiration, I realized the ignorance in which I stood to the mysteriesof the desert, and how familiar they were to my companion.
And if you want to get any idea of the extraordinary originality whichMorhange introduced into such surroundings, you who, after all, have acertain familiarity with the tropics, listen to this. It was exactlytwo hundred kilometers from here, in the vicinity of the Great Dune,in that horrible stretch of six days without water. We had just enoughfor two days before reaching the next well, and you know these wells;as Flatters wrote to his wife, "you have to work for hours before youcan clean them out and succeed in watering beasts and men." By chancewe met a caravan there, which was going east towards Rhadames, and hadcome too far north. The camels' humps, shrunken and shaking, bespokethe sufferings of the troop. Behind came a little gray ass, a pitifulburrow, interfering at every step, and lightened of its pack becausethe merchants knew that it was going to die. Instinctively, with itslast strength, it followed, knowing that when it could stagger nolonger, the end would come and the flutter of the bald vultures'wings. I love animals, which I have solid reasons for preferring tomen. But never should I have thought of doing what Morhange did then.I tell you that our water skins were almost dry, and that our owncamels, without which one is lost in the empty desert, had not beenwatered for many hours. Morhange made his kneel, uncocked a skin, andmade the little ass drink. I certainly felt gratification at seeingthe poor bare flanks of the miserable beast pant with satisfaction. Butthe responsibility was mine. Also I had seen Bou-Djema's aghastexpression, and the disapproval of the thirsty members of the caravan.I remarked on it. How it was received! "What have I given," repliedMorhange, "was my own. We will reach El-Biodh to-morrow evening, aboutsix o'clock. Between here and there I know that I shall not bethirsty." And that in a tone, in which for the first time he allowedthe authority of a Captain to speak. "That is easy to say," I thought,ill-humoredly. "He knows that when he wants them, my water-skin, andBou-Djema's, are at his service." But I did not yet know Morhange verywell, and it is true that until the evening of the next day when wereached El-Biodh, refusing our offers with smiling determination, hedrank nothing.
Shades of St. Francis of Assisi! Umbrian hills, so pure under therising sun! It was in the light of a like sunrise, by the border of apale stream leaping in full cascades from a crescent-shaped niche ofthe gray rocks of Egere, that Morhange stopped. The unlooked forwaters rolled upon the sand, and we saw, in the light which mirroredthem, little black fish. Fish in the middle of the Sahara! All threeof us were mute before this paradox of Nature. One of them had strayedinto a little channel of sand. He had to stay there, struggling invain, his little white belly exposed to the air.... Morhange pickedhim up, looked at him for a moment, and put him back into the littlestream. Shades of St. Francis. Umbrian hills.... But I have sworn notto break the thread of the story by these untimely digressions.
* * * * *
"You see," Captain Morhange said to me a week later, "that I was rightin advising you to go farther south before making for Shikh-Salah.Something told me that this highland of Egere was not interesting fromyour point of view. While here you have only to stoop to pick uppebbles which will allow you to establish the volcanic origin of thisregion much more certainly than Bou-Derba, des Cloizeaux, and DoctorMarres have done."
This was while we were following the western pass of the TidifestMountains, about the 25th degree of northern latitude.
"I should indeed be ungrateful not to thank you," I said.
I shall always remember that instant. We had left our camels and werecollecting fragments of the most characteristic rocks. Morhangeemployed himself with a discernment which spoke worlds for hisknowledge of geology, a science he had often professed completeignorance of.
Then I asked him the following question:
"May I prove my gratitude by making you a confession?"
He raised his head and looked at me.
"Well then, I don't see the practical value of this trip you haveundertaken."
He smiled.
"Why not? To explore the old caravan route, to demonstrate that aconnection has existed from the most ancient times between theMediterranean world, and the country of the Blacks, that seems nothingin your eyes? The hope of settling once for all the secular disputeswhich have divided so many keen minds; d'Anville, Heeren, Berlioux,Quatremere on the one hand,--on the other Gosselin, Walckenaer,Tissit, Vivien, de saint-Martin; you think that that is devoid ofinterest? A plague upon you for being hard to please."
"I spoke of practical value," I said. "You won't deny that thiscontroversy is only the affair of cabinet geographers and officeexplorers."
Morhange kept on smiling.
"Dear friend, don't wither me. Deign to recall that your mission wasconfided to you by the Ministry of War, while I hold mine on behalf ofthe Ministry of Public Instruction. A different origin justifies ourdifferent aims. It certainly explains, I readily concede that to you,why what I am in search of has no practical value."
"You are also authorized by the Ministry of Commerce," I replied,playing my next card. "By this chief you are instructed to study thepossibility of restoring the old trade route of the ninth century. Buton this point don't attempt to mislead me; with your kno
wledge of thehistory and geography of the Sahara, your mind must have been made upbefore you left Paris. The road from Djerid to the Niger is dead,stone dead. You knew that no important traffic would pass by thisroute before you undertook to study the possibility of restoring it."
Morhange looked me full in the face.
"And if that should be so," he said with the most charming attitude,"if I had before leaving the conviction you say, what do you concludefrom that?"
"I should prefer to have you tell me."
"Simply, my dear boy, that I had less skill than you in finding thepretext for my voyage, that I furnished less good reasons for the truemotives that brought me here."
"A pretext? I don't see...."
"Be sincere in your turn, if you please. I am sure that you have thegreatest desire to inform the Arabian Office about the practices ofthe Senoussis. But admit that the information that you will obtain isnot the sole and innermost aim of your excursion. You are a geologist,my friend. You have found a chance to gratify your taste in this trip.No one would think of blaming you because you have known how toreconcile what is useful to your country and agreeable to yourself.But, for the love of God, don't deny it; I need no other proof thanyour presence here on this side of the Tidifest, a very curious placefrom a mineralogical point of view, but some hundred and fiftykilometers south of your official route."
It was not possible to have countered me with a better grace. Iparried by attacking.
"Am I to conclude from all this that I do not know the real aims ofyour trip, and that they have nothing to do with the officialmotives?"
I had gone a bit too far. I felt it from the seriousness with whichMorhange's reply was delivered.
"No, my dear friend, you must not conclude just that. I should have notaste for a lie which was based on fraud towards the estimableconstitutional bodies which have judged me worthy of their confidenceand their support. The ends that they have assigned to me I shall domy best to attain. But I have no reason for hiding from you that thereis another, quite personal, which is far nearer to my heart. Let ussay, if you will, to use a terminology that is otherwise deplorable,that this is the end while the others are the means."
"Would there be any indiscretion?...."
"None," replied my companion. "Shikh-Salah is only a few days distant.He whose first steps you have guided with such solicitude in thedesert should have nothing hidden from you."
We had halted in the valley of a little dry well where a few sicklyplants were growing. A spring near by was circled by a crown of grayverdure. The camels had been unsaddled for the night, and were seekingvainly, at every stride, to nibble the spiny tufts of _had_. The blackand polished sides of the Tidifest Mountains rose, almost vertically,above our heads. Already the blue smoke of the fire on which Bou-Djemawas cooking dinner rose through the motionless air.
Not a sound, not a breath. The smoke mounted straight, straight andslowly up the pale steps of the firmament.
"Have you ever heard of the _Atlas of Christianity_?" asked Morhange.
"I think so. Isn't it a geographical work published by theBenedictines under the direction of a certain Dom Granger?"
"Your memory is correct," said Morhange. "Even so let me explain alittle more fully some of the things you have not had as much reasonas I to interest yourself in. The _Atlas of Christianity_ proposes toestablish the boundaries of that great tide of Christianity throughall the ages, and for all parts of the globe. An undertaking worthy ofthe Benedictine learning, worthy of such a prodigy of erudition asDom Granger himself."
"And it is these boundaries that you have come to determine here, nodoubt," I murmured.
"Just so," replied my companion.
He was silent, and I respected his silence, prepared by now to beastonished at nothing.
"It is not possible to give confidences by halves, without beingridiculous," he continued after several minutes of meditation,speaking gravely, in a voice which held no suggestion of that flashinghumor which had a month before enchanted the young officers at Wargla."I have begun on mine. I will tell you everything. Trust mydiscretion, however, and do not insist upon certain events of myprivate life. If, four years ago, at the close of these events, Iresolve to enter a monastery, it does not concern you to know myreasons. I can marvel at it myself, that the passage in my life of abeing absolutely devoid of interest should have sufficed to change thecurrent of that life. I can marvel that a creature whose sole meritwas her beauty should have been permitted by the Creator to swing mydestiny to such an unforeseen direction. The monastery at whose doorsI knocked had the most valid reasons for doubting the stability of myvocation. What the world loses in such fashion it often calls back asreadily. In short, I cannot blame the Father Abbot for havingforbidden me to apply for my army discharge. By his instructions, Iasked for, and obtained, permission to be placed on the inactive listfor three years. At the end of those three years of consecration itwould be seen whether the world was definitely dead to your servant.
"The first day of my arrival at the cloister I was assigned to DomGranger, and placed by him at work on the _Atlas of Christianity_. Abrief examination decided him as to what kind of service I was bestfitted to render. This is how I came to enter the studio devoted tothe cartography of Northern Africa. I did not know one word of Arabic,but it happened that in garrison at Lyon I had taken at the _Facultedes Lettres,_ a course with Berlioux,--a very erudite geographer nodoubt, but obsessed by one idea, the influence the Greek and Romancivilizations had exercised on Africa. This detail of my life wasenough for Dom Granger. He provided me straightway with Berbervocabularies by Venture, by Delaporte, by Brosselard; with the_Grammatical Sketch of the Temahaq_ by Stanley Fleeman, and the _Essaide Grammaire de la langue Temachek_ by Major Hanoteau. At the end ofthree months I was able to decipher any inscriptions in Tifinar. Youknow that Tifinar is the national writing of the Tuareg, theexpression of this Temachek language which seems to us the mostcurious protest of the Targui race against its Mohammedan enemies.
"Dom Granger, in fact, believed that the Tuareg are Christians, datingfrom a period which it was necessary to ascertain, but which coincidedno doubt with the splendor of the church of Hippon. Even better thanI, you know that the cross is with them the symbol of fate indecoration. Duveyrier has claimed that it figures in their alphabet,on their arms, among the designs of their clothes. The only tattooingthat they wear on the forehead, on the back of the hand, is a crosswith four equal branches; the pummels of their saddles, the handles oftheir sabres, of their poignards, are cross-shaped. And is itnecessary to remind you that, although Islam forbids bells as a signof Christianity, the harness of Tuareg camels are trimmed with bells?
"Neither Dom Granger nor I attach an exaggerated importance to suchproofs, which resemble too much those which make such a display in the_Genius of Christianity._ But it is indeed impossible to refuse allcredence to certain theological arguments. Amanai, the God of theTuareg, unquestionably the Adonai of the Bible, is unique. They have ahell, 'Timsi-tan-elekhaft,' the last fire, where reigns Iblis, ourLucifer. Their Paradise, where they are rewarded for good deeds, isinhabited by 'andjelousen,' our angels. And do not urge theresemblance of this theology to the Koran, for I will meet you withhistoric arguments and remind you that the Tuareg have struggled allthrough the ages at the cost of partial extermination, to maintaintheir faith against the encroachments of Mohammedan fanaticism.
"Many times I have studied with Dom Granger that formidable epoch whenthe aborigines opposed the conquering Arabs. With him I have seen howthe army of Sidi-Okba, one of the companions of the Prophet, invadedthis desert to reduce the Tuareg tribes and impose on them Mussulmanrules. These tribes were then rich and prosperous. They were theIhbggaren, the Imededren, the Ouadelen, the Kel-Gueress, the Kel-Air.But internal quarrels sapped their strength. Still, it was not untilafter a long and cruel war that the Arabians succeeded in gettingpossession of the capital of the Berbers, which had proved such aredoubtable stronghold. They destroyed
it after they had massacred theinhabitants. On the ruins Okba constructed a new city. This city isEs-Souk. The one that Sidi-Okba destroyed was the Berber Tadmekka.What Dom Granger asked of me was precisely that I should try to exhumefrom the ruins of the Mussulman Es-Souk the ruins of Tadmekka, whichwas Berber, and perhaps Christian."
"I understand," I murmured.
"So far, so good," said Morhange. "But what you must grasp now is thepractical sense of these religious men, my masters. You remember that,even after three years of monastic life, they preserved their doubtsas to the stability of my vocation. They found at the same time meansof testing it once for all, and of adapting official facilities totheir particular purposes. One morning I was called before the FatherAbbot, and this is what he said to me, in the presence of Dom Granger,who expressed silent approval.
"'Your term of inactive service expires in fifteen days. You willreturn to Paris, and apply at the Ministry to be reinstated. With whatyou have learned here, and the relationships we have been able tomaintain at Headquarters, you will have no difficulty in beingattached to the Geographical Staff of the army. When you reach the ruede Grenelle you will receive our instructions.'
"I was astonished at their confidence in my knowledge. When I wasreestablished as Captain again in the Geographical Service Iunderstood. At the monastery, the daily association with Dom Grangerand his pupils had kept me constantly convinced of the inferiority ofmy knowledge. When I came in contact with my military brethren Irealized the superiority of the instruction I had received. I did nothave to concern myself with the details of my mission. The Ministriesinvited me to undertake it. My initiative asserted itself on only oneoccasion. When I learned that you were going to leave Wargla on thepresent expedition, having reason to distrust my practicalqualifications as an explorer, I did my best to retard your departure,so that I might join you. I hope that you have forgiven me by now."
* * * * *
The light in the west was fading, where the sun had already sunk intoa matchless luxury of violet draperies. We were alone in thisimmensity, at the feet of the rigid black rocks. Nothing butourselves. Nothing, nothing but ourselves.
I held out my hand to Morhange, and he pressed it. Then he said:
"If they still seem infinitely long to me, the several thousandkilometers which separate me from the instant when, my taskaccomplished, I shall at last find oblivion in the cloister for thethings for which I was not made, let me tell you this;--the severalhundred kilometers which still separate us from Shikh-Salah seem to meinfinitely short to traverse in your company."
On the pale water of the little pool, motionless and fixed like asilver nail, a star had just been born.
"Shikh-Salah," I murmured, my heart full of an indefinable sadness."Patience, we are not there yet."
In truth, we never were to be there.