THE RED MARK
Even now n.o.body can tell his name, though doubtless it was a grand and a proud one. Perhaps you could find it in the files of the Bordeaux press twenty years ago, when they sentenced him to transportation for life for five proved murders. Since then it has been officially forgotten. But the man himself has lived on. He lives and he continues to develop his capabilities--as we are all expected to do here in New Caledonia.
M. de Nou, we call him. He is our only convict official. Ordinarily, you comprehend, our jailers do not admit convicts to the administration. We are citizens, if you like, in this criminal commonwealth. We are the populace of this outlaw colony at the far navel of the earth. We are artisans, workmen, domestics: we are masons, cooks, farmers: we are even landholders and concessionaires--enjoying the high privilege of forced labor, the lofty civic t.i.tle of cattle in a bull-pen. It is all very philanthropic: but we have not yet risen to fill posts under the government. Except one of us. He has been raised because they could find no other, convict or free, to perform the peculiar duties of the position. That is M. de Nou. We hate him. There is not a creature of us from Balade to Noumea, from the nickel mines of Thio to the forests of Baie du Sud, that does not hate and fear him as some other people hate and fear sin. The very Canaques flee at the whisper of his coming and invoke their own dark G.o.ds against this white demon in the flesh. Eight thousand felons bear the thought of him in daily bitterness. We have been thieves, a.s.sa.s.sins, poisoners: we have been set aside in a sort of infected rubbish-box, the sweepings of the prisons: but the last of us, perishing from thirst, would turn back a cup that had been polluted by the touch of M. de Nou. When M. de Nou comes to die the devil will have to dig a deeper pit. h.e.l.l is too good for M. de Nou.
He is the executioner. He operates the guillotine. Not for any pay or profit nor for the rank it gives him: but from choice. It is his capability! It is the thing he likes to do.
Me, I am even with him. I am even with him against all time. Should it be my fate to pa.s.s through his hands some day, should he stand to perform his last dreadful offices for me, still am I even with him. I would grin from under the slide itself and I would say to him--"M. de Nou, I am even with you!" But I would not tell him how. I would turn silent from those haunted yellow eyes, half-understanding and ravening at me, and I would die content to leave him to his d.a.m.nation. No, I would not tell!... Only I am telling you, truly, so that perhaps this tale may reach some of our friends who have escaped from New Caledonia into the world again. They will remember, and they will rejoice to hear how I evened the score on M. de Nou. Listen:
It was soon after my release from the Collective--when I was considered to be properly chastened by residence in the cells--that I had the ill-luck to meet this individual.
You can see for yourself I was never built for rude labor. But I have a certain deftness of my fingers and perhaps also--well, a certain polish--what?... Monsieur agrees? Too kind! Your servant, Monsieur....
Anyway, it was quite natural I should find employment with Maitre Sergeo, he who keeps the barber shop in the Rue des Fleurs.
Maitre Sergeo is a worthy man, a libere, which means he was formerly a life convict himself, you understand, though since restored to certain rights within the colony limits. Requiring an a.s.sistant at his lathery trade he applied to the penitentiary on Ile de Nou.
"Here is a brisk fellow," said the sub-commandant, leading me out like a horse at a fair. "Number 7897. Docile and clever. Condemned for eight years. Having served his Collective with a clear record. If you are ever dull about your place he will sing you the latest operas. He has all the polite accomplishments."
"A duke in trouble," suggested Maitre Sergeo, regarding me with his sober twinkle. "What romance!... Perhaps he is the Red Mark himself!"
Strange he should have said that. Strange, too, that I should have heard the term then and there for the first time in my life. Afterwards I found it common enough, a kind of by-word among people who affect to share the inner mysteries of police and crime. And later still I had good reason to remember it.
Meanwhile the sub-commandant was encouraging no unofficial illusions on my account.
"I said nothing about a duke," he returned. "But this is a superior type. He has been a student in his day and even has taken prizes."
"I hope he has not the habit of taking them from the till," said Maitre Sergeo, like a prudent patron. "What was his little affair?"
The sub-commandant consulted my ticket.
"An argument with a knife, it appears. A favorable case. Only his enemy was so ill-conditioned as to die."
"I shall employ him," decided Maitre Sergeo. "A man who is handy with a knife should also qualify with a razor."
That is how I came, as Bibi-Ri always said, to be sc.r.a.ping throats instead of cutting them. Myself, I considered the jest rather poor taste and Bibi-Ri a good deal of a chattering monkey. But what would you? n.o.body could be angry with that mad fellow. He was privileged.
Also, as it happened, Bibi-Ri himself was my single client on this particular afternoon of which I speak. I recall it with an authentic clearness: one of those days made in paradise for a reproach upon us poor wretches in purgatory: the air sweet and mellow, spiced with tropic blossoms: the sky a blue ravishment: the sunlight tawny in the street outside as if seen through a gla.s.s of rich wine.
It was very quiet and peaceful. From the Place des Cocotiers not far away one heard the band discoursing. Those convict musicians were playing _Perle d"Italie_, as I bring to mind: a faded but graceful melody. One could be almost happy at moments like this, forgetting the shameful canvas uniform and the mockery of one"s freedom on a leash. I even hummed the tune as I listened and kept the measure with stropping my blade.
I waited for Bibi-Ri. By an amiable conceit he never failed each day to get his chin new razored--though in truth it resembled nothing so much as a small onion: as I often told him.
"That is no reason why you should peel it, sacred farceur!" he would sputter. "Please to notice I have only the one skin to my face!"
But this day he was late. I missed the merry rascal. His hour went by and still he did not come. And then, of a sudden, I spied him.
He was pa.s.sing among the market stalls on the opposite pave: unmistakable, his quick, spare figure in the jacket tight-b.u.t.toned to the chin as he always wore it and the convict"s straw hat pulled low on his brow. Bibi-Ri in fact. But he never even glanced to my side. At the pace of a rent collector he hurried by and disappeared.... This is singular, I thought. What game has he started now?
Presently he came hurrying back again, and this trip I discovered he was following a girl. But yes! A market girl. Only a slip of a thing--I could not see her well--a dainty piece she seemed, supple as a kitten, who threaded her way with a basket on her arm. I caught a flash of bare ankle white as milk, the sheen of her hair, smooth like a raven"s wing: and she was gone, with Bibi-Ri at her skirts.
Three times I saw them so, through the drifting chaffering throng.
"The rogue!" I murmured. "He has found a better amus.e.m.e.nt than getting himself flayed by me. Evidently!"
At the very word came a swift clatter of sandals and who should burst into the shop upon me but that same Bibi-Ri. I had a finger lifted to accuse him, but I stopped at sight of his face.
"Dumail!" he cried. "Hide me!"
My faith, he took one"s breath away.
"Hide me and say nothing!" he implored.
Well, then I thought he was simply up to some of his jokes again. You understand there is no actual hiding in a penal settlement, where we all live in the eye of the police. Nevertheless I obeyed, planted him in my chair, flung a cloth about his neck and slapped on a great mask of lather.
I had him well settled under the razor when a shadow edged across the doorway. Glancing over his shoulder, Bibi-Ri made a jump to rise.
"Animal!" I protested. "Will you take care!"
But I saw him staring with a strange fear.
Just outside by the threshold stood a man, an amazingly tall man, looking in at us. The sunlight descended on him there like the flood of a proscenium and he himself might have seemed a player in some stage burlesque. Yes, one might have smiled at first glimpse of him: a travesty of fashion in his long black redingote and varnished high hat of ancient form which added the touch of caricature to his height. One might have smiled, I say ... but the smile would have frozen next instant as a ripple freezes on a street puddle.
His face was a moist and shining white, the white of a corpse under the icy spray of the Morgue. He was old, of reverend years, though still straight and strong as a poplar. And with that mouth of painted pa.s.sion and a great nose curved like a saber and the glittering tiger eyes in the skull of him--I leave you to imagine any one more appalling.
Close behind him came another: a bandy-legged, squat fellow like a little black spider, in attendance.
Even then, before knowing, I shrank from them both. They resembled the bizarre and evil figures of the Guignol that used to haunt my dreams in childhood. Truly. And the tall one was Polichinelle, the image of a gratuitous and uncomprehended wickedness.
"Well done, hireling," he observed, in the voice of a crow. "Well done indeed! You are something of a craftsman too. A good beginning. And a good subject, who is ripe to have the head shaved from his shoulders, I should think.... Pray continue," he said. "Cut again and cut deeper!"
Thereupon I became aware he was addressing me, and with the most pointed, the most sinister interest: and next I found myself still holding the razor over Bibi-Ri"s cheek where he had taken an ugly gash.
That big devil smiled and chuckled in intimate fashion at my red blade.
His eyes shone like topaz. Stupidly I followed their gaze. When I looked up again ... the two outside were gone.
"Name of G.o.d!" I cried. "Who are those?"
Bibi-Ri had fallen back in his chair.
"The vultures!"
Well, I understood fast enough that I had made acquaintance of the terrible M. de Nou. The other would be his aide and familiar, a former Polish anarchist--I had heard--whom even the society of convicts rejected and who bore the fit name: Bombiste. These were the dreaded servants of the guillotine. But now they had pa.s.sed I was bold as the best: I could mock myself.
"Imbeciles!" I laughed. "To be scared by an old bogey like that! The executioner? So be it. We can curse him and let him go.... Though in truth he has a sickly notion of an afternoon call, the lascar! ... Sit still while I plaster that sliced onion of yours."