Colony. Hugo Wilcken
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far away from Europe as possible’. To Sabir, it sounds like the bare bones of some impossibly mysterious story. Perhaps she’s still pining for a lost lover killed in the war. Or she’s committed a crime passionnel and has had to leave the country. Or she’s succumbed to some dark thread of family madness that runs back through generations.
There is nothing tragic or dramatic about Sabir’s fiancée. No story to tell. She’s the hard-nosed type. No doubt she’s already found herself another man. There was just one occasion, Sabir now remembers. One moment of true drama in his relationship with her. Sabir had been flirting – innocently enough – with a girl at a friend’s wedding. His fiancée was furious with him over it. She went off to stay with her mother, and her parting words were: ‘If I ever find out you’ve slept with another woman, I’ll kill you.’ She said it in such a matter-of-fact voice that he knew she meant it quite literally. That night, he spent his wages at a local brothel. It was the first time he’d visited one since the war.
The commandant’s wife now stands before him. She’s slipped out of her dress. Her underwear resembles the swimming costume she wears in the photo. From the house, Sabir can hear the gramophone playing its German songs, resonating through the forest. Sabir’s vision is more intense than anything he’s seen in the jungle camp. Out here, it can be days or even weeks before you catch sight of a woman: the feminine is a country of the imagination. ‘I knew you’d find me,’ she whispers to him. She smiles, puts her arms around him. This is their secret hideaway. This is where they retreat to when she can get away from the commandant. She’s the bored wife of a chilly colonial administrator, cast into a tropical wilderness. She’s hungry for connection, for company, emotion, sex. And he’s the skilful gardener, tending her beloved grove of orchids. Together they talk, exchange histories. Sabir’s banal existence suddenly seems heroic. As a soldier, he fought for his country. As a convict, his country repaid him with exile.
He lights a cigarette from the lamp, puts the photo back into his pocket. The gramophone music has stopped. It’s given way to an aria of frog croaks, insect clicks, monkey howls and other random noises of the night. Sabir stretches out, finishes his cigarette and closes his eyes. Moments later, the dawn light streams in through the shutter lattices. It’s the first proper night’s sleep he’s had in weeks.
Edouard has health problems. He doesn’t see as well with his good eye as he used to. It’s this terrible sun he’s exposed to, out chopping wood every day. All in all, says Carpette as he and Sabir meet one afternoon, it’s best they get out as soon as possible, while Edouard’s still healthy enough to undertake the journey. Carpette’s arranging the purchase of a boat from one of the Boni ferrymen. He needs the money for it very soon. Does Sabir have his share of the money? They want to leave within two weeks. They still need someone to sail the boat. Has Sabir talked to that Basque boy he mentioned the other day? Is Sabir in, or is he out? I’m in, he replies, with sudden desperation. I’m in.
That day, Sabir has hauled up a whole case of rum for Carpette to dispose of. He’s sure the commandant has no idea how much he drinks, wouldn’t necessarily miss the case, wouldn’t investigate if he did. And yet the commandant must have realised by now that all sorts of things have gone missing from the house. He could hardly be that stupid or absentminded. If so, then he must also realise that Sabir is the culprit. Because no one else has the kind of access to the house that he has. And the fact that the commandant’s done nothing about it has merely emboldened Sabir even further.
Now that he’s moved to the folly, Sabir’s meetings with the commandant sometimes extend into the night. Sabir accepts the commandant’s rum and wine as well, but is careful to remain sober. The commandant, on the other hand, drinks too much. And when he does, his talk grows ever more grandiose.
‘The trouble is administrators don’t stay here long enough,’ he says one night. ‘They see this as a cursed post to escape from as fast as possible, with as much loot as possible. Well, I’m different. I plan on staying. And damn the rest of the Colony. I have my own little kingdom here. I’ll organise it as I see fit. I’ll continue building on the avenue. I’ll get the convicts out of the barracks. I’ll give them concessions. I’ll let them farm the land, earn an honest living, open up the Colony. Forge a new country. The English managed it in Australia, why can’t we do it here? I’ll build a settlement to rival Saint-Laurent. A new city. Built on republican virtues, of justice and equality before the law.’
Justice? Equality? Back now in the darkness of his folly, Sabir muses briefly on the commandant’s words before sleep overcomes him. Sabir, for one, has never expected or asked for life to be just or equal. These ideas are a luxury that only certain people can afford. People like the commandant. For Sabir and those like him, life is a perpetual struggle, one which leaves little room for such abstraction. And when not engaged in this struggle for survival, Sabir would be consumed with the usual desires, for companionship, intoxication, sex; his free moments would be spent assuaging these desires as best he could. That’s how things had been, until his arrest at least.
In his time, he’s come across those agitators for change – the communists, fascists, anarchists. The pamphleteers. On the factory floor, in the bars he’d drink at. He’s never paid them much heed. The only long stretches of time he ever had for proper thinking was at the front. Even then, the goal of thinking was to achieve the peace of not having to think any more. And the commandant’s books are almost the first he’s read since that time.
Sabir’s mind now wanders back hypnotically to the years of freedom, between demob and the prison gates. In those days, Paris felt dark and oppressive. The city’s monolithic buildings, immense avenues, gold domes and sumptuous façades could lock you into a state of powerless awe. Not that it struck him like that at the time. It’s only once you’ve lost something that you can make sense of it. But no, he now realises, he has no great nostalgia for his native city. No desire to find himself back there, even if it were possible. Now is the moment to escape into a different dream.
The commandant’s shipment of orchids is due. Standing on the riverbank the following day, Sabir glimpses funnels poking out over the trees as the ship twists its way through the forest. While he waits, fretting over what to do with the orchids when they arrive, one of the Boni ferrymen sidles up to him, taking him by surprise. ‘Friend of Carpette? Friend of Carpette?’ Sabir glances about: a couple of guards are lounging by the river drinking, but they’re some distance away.
With a mixture of gesticulation, broken Dutch and French, the ferryman makes Sabir understand that he’s the one who’s selling the boat to Carpette, Edouard and himself. That they’ll have it late next week. That he’ll sink it and secure it with stones in one of the creeks downstream, but he won’t tell them which one and where until he gets the money, all of it. Throughout, he punctuates his disjointed speech with a staccato laugh.
Sabir nods. ‘I understand.’
At that, the man wanders off to his canoe. Sabir notices the ritual scarring he has on his back – horizontal and vertical lines which look almost like a Christian cross. He climbs into his canoe and paddles his way across the river to the Dutch side – shrinking until he’s nothing but a black spot against the brutal green of the trees on the far bank. Finally he melts into the backdrop.
The escape. That’s what’s important. That morning, Sabir went up to the main camp at dawn – ostensibly to commandeer some convicts to help with the orchid shipment, but actually to see Say-Say, the young Basque from his old barracks. His real name is unpronounceable, and his nickname comes from the terrible stutter he gets when nervous. The Colony is a hive of speech difficulties: Say-Say is hardly the only stutterer, and there are also plenty of lispers, mutes, those with all manner of speech tics. Not to mention the convicts who talk to themselves. Sabir has even caught himself at it, on occasion.
Say-Say wasn’t in the barracks; Sabir tracked him down to the camp’s hospital – a grand word for the row of dirty mattresses