The Crystal World. Robert MacFarlane
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at Libreville. In the hotel register.’
‘The medical school,’ Dr. Sanders said. ‘To put your curiosity at rest, if that’s possible, I’m simply here on holiday. What about you?’
In a quieter voice, after a confirmatory glance at Sanders, she said: ‘I’m a journalist. I work freelance for a bureau that sells material to the French illustrated weeklies.’
‘A journalist?’ Sanders looked at her with more interest. During their brief conversation he had avoided looking at her, put off partly by her sun-glasses, which seemed to emphasize the strange contrasts of light and dark in Port Matarre, and partly by her echoes of Suzanne Clair. ‘I didn’t realize … I’m sorry I was off-hand, but I’ve been getting nowhere today. Can you tell me about this emergency – I’ll accept your term for it.’
The young woman pointed to a bar at the next corner. ‘We’ll go there, it’s quieter – I’ve been making a nuisance of myself all week with the police.’
As they settled themselves in a booth by the window she introduced herself as Louise Peret. Although prepared to accept Dr. Sanders as a fellow-conspirator, she still wore her sun-glasses, screening off some inner sanctum of herself. Her masked face and cool manner seemed to Sanders as typical in their way of Port Matarre as Ventress’s strange garb, but already he sensed from the slight movement of her hands across the table towards him that she was searching for some point of contact.
‘They’re expecting a physicist from the University,’ she said. ‘A Dr. Tatlin, I think, though it’s difficult to check from here. To begin with I thought you might be Tatlin.’
‘A physicist …? That doesn’t make sense. According to the police captain these affected areas of the forest are suffering from a new virus disease. Have you been trying to get to Mont Royal all week?’
‘Not exactly. I came here with a man from the bureau, an American called Anderson. When we left the boat he went off to Mont Royal in a hire car to take photographs. I was to wait here so I could get a story out quickly.’
‘Did he see anything?’
‘Well, four days ago I spoke to him on the telephone, but the line was bad, I could hardly hear a thing. All he said was something about the forest being full of jewels, but it was meant as a joke you know …’ She gestured in the air.
‘A figure of speech?’
‘Exactly. If he had seen a new diamond field he would have said so definitely. Anyway, the next day the telephone line was broken, and they’re still trying to repair it – even the police can’t get through.’
Sanders ordered two brandies. Accepting a cigarette from Louise, he looked out through the window at the jetties along the river. The last of the cargo was being loaded aboard the steamer, and the passengers stood at the rail or sat passively on their luggage, looking down at the deck.
‘It’s difficult to know how seriously to take this,’ Sanders said. ‘Obviously something is going on, but it could be anything under the sun.’
‘Then what about the police and the army convoys? And the customs men out there this morning?’
Dr. Sanders shrugged. ‘Officialdom – if the telephone lines are down they probably know as little as we do. What I can’t understand is why you and this American came here in the first place. By all accounts Mont Royal is even more dead than Port Matarre.’
‘Anderson had a tip that there was some kind of trouble near the mines – he wouldn’t tell me what, it was really his story, you see – but we knew the army had sent in reserves. Tell me, Doctor, are you still going to Mont Royal? To your friends?’
‘If I can. There must be some way. After all, it’s only fifty miles, at a pinch one could walk it.’
Louise laughed. ‘Not me.’ Just then a black-garbed figure strode past the window, heading off towards the market. ‘Father Balthus,’ Louise said. ‘His mission is near Mont Royal. I checked up on him too. There’s a travelling companion for you.’
‘I doubt it.’ Dr. Sanders watched the priest walk briskly away from them, his thin face lifted as he crossed the road. His head and shoulders were held stiffly, but behind him his hands moved and twisted with a life of their own. ‘Father Balthus is not one to make a penitential progress – I think he has other problems on his mind.’ Sanders stood up, finishing his brandy. ‘However, it’s a point. I think I’ll have a word with the good Father. I’ll see you back at the hotel – perhaps we can have dinner together?’
‘Of course.’ She waved to him as he went out and then sat back against the window, her face motionless and without expression.
A hundred yards away, Sanders caught sight of the priest. Balthus had reached the outskirts of the native market and was moving among the first of the stalls, turning from left to right as if looking for someone. Dr. Sanders followed at a distance. The market was almost empty and he decided to keep the priest under observation for a few minutes before approaching him. Now and then, when Father Balthus glanced about, Sanders saw his lean face, the thin nose raised critically as he peered above the heads of the native women.
Dr. Sanders glanced down at the stalls, pausing to examine the carved statuettes and curios. The small local industry had made full use of the waste products of the mines at Mont Royal, and many of the teak and ivory carvings were decorated with fragments of calcite and fluorspar picked from the refuse heaps, ingeniously worked into the statuettes to form miniature crowns and necklaces. Many of the carvings were made from lumps of impure jade and amber, and the sculptors had abandoned all pretence to Christian imagery and produced squatting idols with pendulous abdomens and grimacing faces.
Still keeping Father Balthus under scrutiny, Dr. Sanders examined a large statuette of a native deity in which two crystals of calcium fluoride formed the eyes, the mineral phosphorescing in the sunlight. Nodding to the stallholder, he complimented her on the piece. Making the most of her opportunity, she gave him a wide smile and then drew back a strip of faded calico that covered the rear of the stall.
‘My, that is a beauty!’ Sanders reached forward to take the ornament she had exposed, but the woman held back his hands. Glittering below her in the sunlight was what appeared to be an immense crystalline orchid carved from some quartz-like mineral. The entire structure of the flower had been reproduced and then embedded within the crystal base, almost as if a living specimen had been conjured into the centre of a huge cut-glass pendant. The internal faces of the quartz had been cut with remarkable skill, so that a dozen images of the orchid were refracted, one upon the other, as if seen through a maze of prisms. As Dr. Sanders moved his head a continuous fount of light poured from the jewel.
Sanders reached into his pocket for his wallet, and the woman smiled again and drew the cover back to expose several more of the ornaments. Next to the orchid was a spray of leaves attached to a twig, carved from a translucent jade-like stone. Each of the leaves had been reproduced with exquisite craftsmanship, the veins forming a pale lattice beneath the crystal. The spray of seven leaves, faithfully rendered down to the axillary buds and the faint warping of the twig, seemed characteristic more of some medieval Japanese jeweller’s art than of the crude massive sculpture of Africa.
Next to the spray was an even more bizarre piece, a carved tree-fungus that resembled a huge jewelled sponge. Both this and the spray of leaves shone with a dozen images of themselves refracted through the faces of the surrounding mount. Bending forward, Sanders placed himself between the ornaments and the sun, but the light within them sparkled as if coming from some interior source.
Before he could open his wallet there was a shout in the distance. A disturbance had broken out near one of the stalls. The stall-holders ran about in all directions, and a woman’s voice cried out. In the centre of this scene stood Father Balthus, arms raised above his head as he held something in his hands, black robes lifted like the wings of a revenging bird.
‘Wait for me!’ Sanders called over his shoulder to the stall-owner, but she had covered up her display, sliding the tray out of sight