# Pierre Loti, sa vie et son œuvre/Appendices/03
### APPENDICE III
#### I

… It was a beautiful spring day when that order to embark came like a thunderstroke, breaking up everything, — fond ties of home, all the hopes and projects for the coming summer.
There was war in Tonkin. It was necessary to start immediately without even so much as looking back; — to leave everything, fatherland, family, love, and the delicious spring-time of France; — to leave everything, and hasten to embark at Brest, where the armaments were hurriedly assembling.
Never had I beheld it so sunlit before, that great dismal city of Brest, — a place replete for me with so many memories, with so many inexpressible impressions of all my previous departures and of all my returns; — never had I seen so fair a spring there. It was May; the harbour was blue; there were flowers and a warm sunlight upon shore; there was unusual gayety in the streets, and a great tumult of sailors…
And in this city of Brest, in those last days, even at the eve of departure, a love episode, perilous, unexpected, made of chance and springtime, made feverish the nights, — those short nights of May, which vanish at 4 o’clock in the morning with the first awakening chatter of the swallows. And I plunged recklessly into that love-adventure, as if the one might enable me momentarily to forget the other, — the true, — from which this exile had separated me.
And then, the farewell afternoon passed at Toulven, with that dear little godson of mine, in the same little granite house which poor Yves had also been obliged to leave, — having sailed several days before me for that great furnace of Asia… What rare and splendid weather it was that day! — the woods already so green, — May blossoms everywhere in profusion, — early pink fox-gloves here and there, and the first catchflies opening in all the shady roads… How keenly I felt the charm of Brittany at the moment of bidding it adieu — perhaps for ever!… What a strange sinking of the heart I felt when I kissed little Pierre that evening, that evening of spring, — just ere the vehicle started and bore me away!…
At last came the great day of departure, after an exciting week of preparation and of farewells. Under the still unbroken luminosity of May, our corvette moved off slowly at first, to the sound of music cheering our going. All the marines and sailors stood on the deck; and while France, still visible, commenced to retreat from our gaze, the solemn roll-call of departure was made. We counted each other, we examined each others’ faces — newly made comrades by hazard, all launched forth in the same adventurous expedition… And the corvette, moving steadily, left the Passes de Brest, and the Breton coasts fled away from us, far into the infinitudes of the immense sea. Then all suddenly, I felt the sinking at my heart again; — it was all over; — I knew that I was bound for far-distant Asia, — and there came to me a presentiment that I should never return…

#### II.

… Then the sea became more blue, the sky more limpid, the sun more warm; — and Algeria appeared, and thrilled me as it had ever done.
I do not know how to describe the charm of that city of Algiers; it is full of memories for me, — memories of a certain spring which was the most radiant of all my adult life; — and then the very country itself, those odors, that Arab life, — all fill one with a delicious intoxication, unlike that produced by any other part of the world.
It was a little unexpected, this halt, — so brief, so fugitive, — on our way to that yellow hell… Delightful lounging under the white arcades, with Si-Mohammed, the old-time friend, whom I found again. The first evening we passed in the very highest portion of the old Arab quarter, resounding with plaintive music of flutes and tambours, and the noisy dances of a band of nomads who had come from the confines of the desert… O those Kasbah nights, with their scents of orange and odors of strange incense, and the great painted eyes of the Mauresque women !…
The last morning, Si-Mohammed and Si-Abdellah came on board for me, to take me to breakfast with them at the “pêcherie”, on the beach of the Mediterranean. And I never saw such resplendence of light, such a great sun-joy as that morning. On our way back, about midday, as we were crossing the great white Place d’Alger under the extreme heat, Si-Abdellah said to me: “I have been in your country, — in France; it is very fine and very warm there in summer: but I think you never have so much light there as this”. And then both of them began to question me about those far-away lands of Asia to which I was going, and which to them seemed lands of dream.
They accompanied me on board, — my two Arab friends. And at 1 o’clock, our corvette got under way, to traverse the warm blue Mediterranean to Egypt.

#### III.

Port Saïd. — A great capharnaum of all nations, — with Egypt and infinities of sand for a background.
A little Maronite child who is in a boat there when we arrive, has on his hat a ribbon of the “ Triomphante ”, — Yves’ vessel. Immediately I question the people who are with the child. “ The Triomphante? — she left eight days ago —”
I had indulged the hope of meeting him there, poor Yves, — of seeing him, if it were only for a moment, before the war.
Now I must abandon it altogether.
A strange night… a Fellah-woman, beautiful as a Goddess. I had seen her passing by during the day, all darkly enveloped in long sombre blue robes… These women have a special deportment, a certain superb nobility of manner, which indicates their possession of a sort of carnal idealism of a very superior sort — something antique, which we of the Occident have wholly lost…
The first part of our journey across the isthmus, — as far as the Bitter Lakes, — was made under a blinding blaze of-light. By us fled backward swiftly the glistening sands of the country of Moses, — mirages, — long trains of camels on either bank, — little villages, few and far between, smothered in admirable thickets of bay-rose, though in the very centre of the arid desert…
A night at anchor in the Bitter Lakes, half-way to Suez. My night on watch, in company with a poor Arab fireman, hired the evening before at Port-Said. I had known him when he lived in a sort of quasi-splendor at Stamboul; and it was a queer meeting! To have thus found him again, — to hear him address me in that almost forgotten tongue of Islam, — asking me what had become of the Hanum (lady) who was with me at Constantinople, — all this gave me a certain inexpressible pleasure, not unmixed with pain… And what a night was that, in the Bitter Lakes! Bleue water, rose-colored mountains and sand, an argentine moon, and clouds, very very small, like chips of mother-of-pearl. And there were locusts; there were crickets — everywhere, — all over the rigging and the masts; they had taken us by storm — a deafening tumult, with sonorities of crystal in it — (nothing like the noise by our crickets in France); — they sang furiously until morning as if maddened by joy and warmth.
The city of Suez appeared before us on the morning of the second day, in an incredible blaze of light… And then we commenced to descend the Red Sea; and the heat augmented, and the blue of the sky became tarnished with sand-clouds ; and breathing itself became painful… By night the stars changed ; the Southern Cross slowly rose in heaven, and I beheld its rising with the emotion of many old memories…
Of watchnights, the pilot Mohammed, robed in pink, told me stories about his harem at Suez, and his other harem at Aden. We spent the hours of watch almost naked, and when relieved, lay down upon a mat, to slumber under the stars…
During the burning days, a great furnace-breeze, charged with sand and with locusts, urged us from behind; — we remained immobile and helpless with heat, in the shadow of the awnings, — dreaming of the land of France ever growing further and further away from us, and of the Unknown awaiting us in the further East.
I remember that during those torrid hours, the sailors used to chant in a low voice the old Breton song: —
— “ Sur quatre-vingt-dix hommes, — lon la !
Un seul il est resté… Et Digue don ma Doué ? ”
Ever the same song, — never another; it will long recall to me memories of that Red Sea.
Aden — a stay of a day and a half. Then we entered the Indian Ocean with a squall behind us; — the sea ran very high, and for a whole day my cabin was full of water.
The fair weather returned; the engine fires were extinguished; and we commenced to navigate gently under sail, with a steady breeze, in the pure lukewarm weather. This is the true art of seamanship that our fathers knew, — the navigation that gives both repose and new life.
… How quickly one gains strength in this life on board-ship, under my beloved tropical sky ! When I have resumed my white dress and my tanned skin and my fan, — when I find myself again with closely-cropped hair and bare feet, — I seem to become again another man — another who existed ere now, and whom I recognize. Then my French past withdraws further back into a sort of weird distance.
Very busy on board, with my top-men… And besides there are the gymnastic exercises to attend to — boxing, etc., — all those arts which are naturally entrusted always to me. And I practice them with the men ; — I feel a new physical life, and almost cease to think of other things.

#### IV.

… Beneath a veranda under the shelter of immense trees. Torrential rain.
This is India!…
Above the splendid vault of green there is such a thickness of clouds that one is imprisoned, so to speak, in a kind of night. The earth is strewn with leaves and with blossoms that have fallen from those trees. The passers-by — they are very few ! — have very large eyes, like those of the Hindoo idols, and long hair tied up at the back like those of women. They walk along gravely under the shower, and pull up very high over their yellow legs their pagnes, which are ornamented with Cashmerian designs. Not far from me, a serpent-charmer makes a great cobra dance to the sound of a sort of reed-flute; — it holds itself almost perfectly erect, with tongue protruded, and neck curved swan-wise. One can smell very strongly the odor of India — which is musky, very exciting…
Ten o’clock p. m.. — The city of Colombo slumbers. I have come back, under the same veranda, to finish by lamp-light some letters for the next French mail. Two beings are squatting beside me, who resemble the Blue God; — crouching down upon their heels, with their hands resting upon their feet, as apes sit, — two young men with eyes like those of an amorous cat, and wearing their hair long like women: — a strange ambiguity of sex. Half-dozing they await the moment when I shall have finished and be ready to depart, in order to close up the place and put out the lights.
It has rained in torrents all day long; — the huge vault of trees above us streams with water; the ground beneath is literally heaped with leaves and flowers. The odor of musk is everywhere, — more persistent and irritating than during the day. Huge clouds, heavy and somber, still hang in the sky; — the night is absolutely black. A last chant comes from afar, half-drowsily, — from some Buddhist temple. Fireflies flash hither and thither, like sparks of green fire.
July 12. — Still in the Indies: — we remain until to-morrow morning… Returned on board very late, after an evening of adventures… A rout of Indian bayaderes, —— plant-odors that intoxicate… Intoxicated even more by those great velvety eyes which all the women of this country have, — even the most abandoned, — intoxicated by the pleasure of the companionship of creatures belonging to this admirable race, perhaps the most beautiful and voluptuous of all human races. — Returned on board very late, bedraggled by all manner of escapades, — having been compelled to fight my way out, like a sailor in a tavern-row ; and finally escaping, to run out into the night like a criminal.

#### V.

July 13. — At early morning our vessel makes for the open sea; in very rough weather ; there is a vast breeze and a black sky… Later everything calms down; and the blue reappears.
Then comes the great pacification of the sea, all-effacing; we recommence the healthful, restful seafaring life of other days, under full sail, without smoke or steam, after the fashion of the mariners of long ago.
The great island of Ceylon is already far behind us; — it is now only a souvenir — a confused memory…
O those nights of India, so dark and warm, — the earth all humid after the great rains, — the pale-yellow hibiscus-blossoms strewing all the ways, — even as in the far-off island of Rarahu ! And the fire-flies passing like sparks through the perfume-saturated air… And the black gaze of those Indian eyes…
Now we are crossing the Bay of Bengal, — driven by the monsoon from the S. W. And day after day we have the same marvelously-pure sky, the same soft wind, the same infinite blueness of sea.
One night, at 1 o’clock in the morning, the helmsman had orders to awake me, although it was not indeed my turn on watch that night. And I went on deck to lean, all alone, over the netting, and gaze into the bluish remoteness of night and sea… It was the same point at which, nineteen years before, my brother had been buried. — The sea was very calm that night, the moon thinly-veiled the horizon vastly-deep toward the south. But northward, on the other hand, toward the resting-place of the dead, clouds, hugely-sombre, seemed to weigh down the waters.
Some days later, at the sunset hour, — the point of Sumatra, of the Kingdom of Atcheen, appeared betore us, splendidly green under the great light of gold; — then we descended the Straits of Malacca… The first junks passed us by, their sails all pleated like the wings of bats. We were nearing the extremities of Asia; — we were entering the mouth of the Yellow Hell.
And at Singapore the vast and odious swarming of Chinese life began to eddy all around us.

#### VI.

Nine o’clock in the evenings… In a café… Dirty-white walls, decorated with chromolithographs representing Queen Victoria and family. Filthy table, stinking, with spilt brandy. — An English proxenet turns the crank of a hurdy-gurdy, — whence issues a polka-air that gives one the headache.
Through the widely open front the eye can range along two or three miles of straight street, with an incessant current of vehicles, thousands of lanterns, — a rolling torrent of humanity; recalling a momentary fancy of the Parisian boulevards when most thickly thronged.
— But as one gazes on the scene one becomes astonished to find that it is all one vast, strange, and unclean, Chinese swarming. Many are absolutely naked — ugly yellow backs with long pendant queues; — others are attired after the fashion of Chinese grotesques in porcelain, — infecting the air with mingled odors of musk and opium. Half of the vehicles, at least, are drawn by men in harness — footrunners in lieu of horses: those who draw them are Chinese, naked men, with queues fastened up in a knot at the back of the head, — with hats in the form of lamp-shades; — those who ride in the vehicles are likewise Chinese, — with loose-flowing queues, affectedly fanning themselves with fans. The shops are Chinese; — the pained lanterns are Chinese; — Chinese also the voices, the clamors, the disputes. All this life is yellow, hurried, rapacious, apeisk, and obscene. — There is a heavy heat, — a smell of yellow sweat, of unclean eatables spread upon the ground, of burning incense and of filth; — and the stench of musk dominating all other odors. — irritating, sickening, unbearable.
… And yet, only half an hour before; and only a few yards away from this crowd, I was in the great silent court of a Hindoo pagoda. It was moonlight; — one of those equatorial moonlight nights that are like vast and rose-colored days. And the pagoda lifted up into that light its multiple domes, — which are made of rows and of pyramids of Gods. A remarkably handsome young Indian priest ~ was my guide; and we went to visit a certain very ancient God, — who had been relegated to the further end of the great court, in a low dim chamber. He was a six-armed God, with a very lofty headdress, and huge eyes of enamel; — his expression was weird and ferocious; his attitude animated, contorted, distressed. He was there all alone, in company with a tiny lamp which they had lighted under his nose by way of deference. A huge dish lay on the ground before him, filled with white flowers which had been strung into wreaths, and smelled like jasmine-blossoms.
… And this country has also left me the ineffaceable souvenir of a midnight promenade in the open country — in the midst of verdure. How strangely beautiful that night was!…
Trees which mock the forms of our oaks, of our poplars, of our magnolias, — but upon a colossal scale unfamiliar to Western eyes, and full of blossoms, of vast odorous blossoms.
And the ferns, and the palms… palms assuming all forms, and glittering under the moon like a leafwork of metal; — first the cocoa-palms with their huge and majestic green leaves; — then the cabbage-palms with their little feathery bouquets curling at the termination of reedy stalks so long, so frail, so fine, that one cannot understand how they can stand upright. And the strangest of all; — the fan-banana trees (arbres-du-voyageur) with their great green leaves symmetrically unfolded all upon one general plan, — just like the outspread tail of a turkey-cock, — suggesting farcies of big Chinese screens standing here and there among the woods. And so green is the verdure, that even by night, under this pink moonlight, it still remains admirably green.
Until one o’clock that night, I wandered all alone through those paths, under the vault-work of the trees, and the soft sweet light. What silence, what splendor! — what music of crickets, smells of rich earth, aromatics and flowers! — and everywhere the irritating odor of musk, dominating all others, even in the woods.
Everything in this Malay land is musky, even the rats, that cross the paths before me very swiftly, with sudden cries of kwic ! kwic ! kwic ! uttered in a little joyous voice like that of a bird, — leaving behind them in the heavy air the musk trail of their odor…
… Rapidly we ascended the Chinese Sea, impelled by the monsoon of the S. W…
Two men overboard, one August morning. One of them, — one of my poor topmen, was drowned under my eyes, having been wounded in his fall and unable to swim by reason of his injuries. Vainly he called for help — the first one of us who will never see France again… He was a sailor only twenty-one years old, who had left in the little hamlet of Binic, Lower Brittany, a mother, a young wife, a little child two months old.
Having in charge the gymnastic exercises on board, and the training of the topmen, — the two duties which pleased me most, finding a new life in this physical activity under the great warm sky, — I was proceeding gaily, almost without a thought of care, toward the Yellow Inferno, when one day the fever came, — a burning and unnatural, fever… They said: “It is a simple case of sunstroke; — he had to have his turn like every seaman who goes bareheaded; — it will not be serious.” And I was put to bed…
Delirium came, with a sensation like fire playing about my temples, — and the following morning I was at the point of death…
— Dying! … I will long remember that moment when I found myself face to face with that weird Visitor who began to embrace me… it was so strange a sensation of physical anguish, such a sensation as when a limb is numbed by remaining too long motionless, and appears as if dead; — that very, sensation, — only magnified, oppressing frightful, — gained my whole body, spreading even to the heart… And all the while, complete mental lucidity, full consciousness of the coming end, I wished to speak, to struggle, but no! — it seemed as if the effort had been made too late, my lips remained dead and would not move. And already I was all ridig. The three naval physicians on board stood around me, covering me with cauterizations which I could not feel. There was one, I remember, who pinched me — I suppose very hard, — and asked: “Can you feel that ?” No; — I could feel nothing, — and yet I could not even tell them so.
Then they thought that I could not hear any more: and they spoke freely. One said: “We must try to bend his arms.” My arms had become rigid as iron; — they could not bend them. “The death-hiccough has not come yet”, said another, touching my throat: — “watch for its commencement.” … And all the past my life appeared to me in a fantastic light, — as if in the furthest remoteness of an awful distance. The great pain, I remember, was the thought that I should never see my mother again. But again thought with a sort of strange gladness that all the errors and torments of life were about to pass away forever in one great irrevocable blotting-out, and that the eternal peace was coming…
And then all of a sudden my arms relaxed, my clenched finger unbent, — and I felt the scorching pain of all those burns, and speech returned to me: it was over, — I was saved!
… And yet I had been so calm in that dream of nothingness; — I had traversed the moment of the last agony; — I had reached the further and more restful slope of the way from life to death: why have recalled me, I thought, to passions, to regrets, to all the inextricable complications of the great struggle of life?… Why indeed, — seeing that some day I must again recommence to pass through the same frightful moment that I had already traversed…
— Afterwards I remained four days in a state of extreme weakness, — scarcely able to rise up from the bed without fainting… It was while in this condition that I arrived at Tonkin, in a day of gloomy weather and diluvial rain; — it was early morning; — Sylvestre, watching by me, said: “Captain, we have arrived a Tonkin.” — Our ship was still moving; but through my open starboard port, I could dimly distinguish strange things passing by; gigantic menhirs, fantastic and gray, rising out of the sea like the ruins of a cathedral. There were thousands of them, filing by in vast succession ; — it was like a world of Druidic stones, forming des and circuses and labyrinths ; — I thought that I must still have delirium, that I was viewing only imaginary objects in some Dantesque country.
But no! — it was only the Bay of Halong, a region whose aspect is probably unparalleled elsewhere in the whole world. Next day, I was able to go on deck.
But during that convalescence I suffered from home sickness like a child ; — a nostalgia especially connected with thoughts of my mother, and of a certain spot in the Limoise woods, — the entrance to the woods, under the great oaks. At one time I was actually on the point being compelled to leave my vessel, to take the place of an officer who had just died upon another corvette; — the idea of being obliged to change, of having to leave my comrades on board, threw me into a slight feverish relapse.
Finally, on the eighth day, I was able to resume active duty; — on the tenth, I could take part in the gymnastics. Life and strength returned so quickly, so fully, that the physician was astonished; — I felt like one rejuvenated, reanimated after a thorough rest.
Then we left the Bay of Halong for Tourane and the mouth of the Hué river. Under the crushing heat the campaign was prosecuted with vigorous rapidity. Thuanan was captured ; there were three days of bombardment and battle…
And after all these excitements, the peace of a long stay at Tourane began for us. — A mournful peace, the peace of exile in an almost unknown corner of Annam, for an indefinite time…
This little province of Tourane has been given us to guard, — such will be our obscure role in the war which is going on. We must become acclimated here — must remain here, perhaps, the whole winter… Alas! how strange and distant a burial place!
A great bay, surrounded by lofty and gloomy mountains… In the middle, an wooded island, with an old abandoned pagoda — a shady nook, where, I often go to sleep upon the moss at the foot of the trees… Further away, among the sands, is the mouth of a slender river; and at its first turn, behind the frail bamboos which look like gramineæ, is the village — old, decrepit, changelessly the same since I know not what remote period of Annamese history.
And I know that village so well now; — I have wandered through it so much, visited it so often, rummaged its recesses to study its least details, that it has become for me something tiresomely familiar and common-place. The first feeling of curious interest has passed away; — and I shall never love this land, nor any daughter of this wretched yellow race: it is for me a varitable land of exile — this Annam — where there are no ties to form, no object to charm.
(Translated by Lajcadio Hearn.)