Timbuktu

     The boulevard was a teeming river of life in the golden dust of the setting sun. The entire sky was a blinding red, and behind the Madeleine a huge swarm threw a huge slanted shower of fire into the long avenue, shimmering like the cloud from a blaze.

     The happy crowd, palpitating, went beneath this fiery mist and seemed to be in the middle of a finale. The faces were golden, the black hats and the frocks had flashes of purple, and the shoe polish reflected flames onto the asphalt of the pavements.

    Before the cafés, groups of men were drinking shining drinks of all different colours that one would have considered precious stones melted into the glass.

    In the middle of the consumers with light clothes that were slightly darkened, two officers in full uniform made everyone lower their eyes due to the blinding light reflecting from the golden items in their clothes. They were chatting, joyous without reason, in this glory of life, in the radiant rays of the evening, and they watched in the opposite direction of the crowd, the slow men and the hurrying women who left behind them a delightful and moving aroma.

    Suddenly an enormous black man, dressed in black, big-bellied, decorated with trinkets on a drill vest, with a gleaming face as if it had bee polished, walked past them with an air of triumph. He laughed at the crowd, he laughed at the newspaper vendors, he laughed at the bursting sky, he laughed at the whole of Paris. He was so tall that he stood way above everyone else, and behind him the crowd turned round to gawk at him.

    But suddenly he saw the officers and stumbling through the drinkers he rushed forward to them. When he was before their table he set his gleaming and happy eyes on them and the corners of his mouth were raised all the way up to his ears, uncovering his white teeth, as clear as a crescent moon against a dark sky. The two men, baffled, regarded this ebony giant without understanding his gaiety.

    "Hello, Lieutenant," he shouted in a voice that made all the other tables laugh. One of the two was in charge of a battalion, the other a colonel.

    "I don't know who you are, monsieur, and I don't know what you want from me," said the former.

     "I liked you a lot Lieutenant Védié, I know you from HQ at Bézi, lots of grapes, looked for me."

    The officer, completely stunned, looked directly at the man, searching the darkest recesses of his memory, but suddenly he shouted. "Timbuktu?"

    The black man, radiant, clapped him on the thigh while laughing an impossibly violent laugh and bellowed. "Yes, yes, there we go, Lieutenant, you recognize Timbuktu, good day."

    The Lieutenant held out his hand, himself laughing now. Then Timbuktu became serious once more. He shook the officer’s hand and, too quickly for the other to do anything about it, kissed him, as is the black and Arab way. Confused, the military man told him off with a severe tone. "Come come, Timbuktu we're not in Africa. Sit down and tell me how you've ended up here."

    Timbuktu stretched his belly and mumbled because he was speaking so quickly. "Won lots of money, lots, big restaurant, good eatings, Prussians, me stole a lot, a lot, french cuisine, Timbuktu, cook for the Emperor, two hundred thousand francs for me, ha ha ha ha!" And he laughed, contorted he was laughing so much, shouting with a crazed happiness of life.

    When the officer--who understood his strange way of speaking--had interrogated him for a while, he said to him, "All right then, I'll see you again soon, Timbuktu."

     The black man immediately got up and shook, this time, the hand that was offered to him and departed laughing all the while. "Good day, Lieutenant, good day!"

    He left so happy that he was gesticulating while walking and people thought he was mad.

    "Who was that brute?" the colonel asked.

    The commander replied, "A brave chap and a brave soldier. I'll tell you what I know of him; it's rather funny."

    Well, you know that at the start of the war in 1870 I was posted to Béziers, or as the black guy called it, Bézi. We weren't at all under siege, but more blocked off. The Prussian lines surrounded us from all sides, out of range of the cannons, and they didn't fire at us either. Instead, they were starving us, little by little.

    At the time I was a Lieutenant. Our garrison was composed of troops of all sorts: the remnants of other decimated regiments; runaways; people who had been separated from the rest of the army. Anyway, we had all sorts, even eleven Turks who arrived at the garrison one night, God knows how, or from where.  They arrived at the gates looking tired, ragged, starved and drunk.

    I saw very soon that they were rebelled against any form of discipline, they were always outside and always drunk. I tried the police cells, even tried prison, but nothing worked. My men were disappearing for days at a time, as if they had burried themselves underground, and then they would reappear legless. They didn't have any money. Where did they drink? And how? With what?

    The whole thing was really beginning to intrigue me, even more so because these savages interested me with their eternal laughter and their character like big mischievous children.

    Then I saw that they all obeyed the biggest one religiously, the one who you just met. He was in charge and could make them do whatever he wanted, and it was he who prepared their mysterious outings as an all-powerful and unrivalled leader. I sent for him and interrogated him. Our conversation lasted three hours, since it took a great effort to understand the gobbledegook that came out of his mouth. Him, the poor devil, made unheard of efforts to try and be understood, inventing words, gesticulating, he was sweating from the effort, wiping his forehead, breathing deeply, stopping and starting again suddenly when he thought he was onto a better way of expressing himself.

    I inferred eventually that he was the son of a Chief, a sort of black king from around Timbuktu. I asked him his name. He replied something like Chavaharibouhalikhranafotapolara. It seemed simpler to me to give him the name of his homeland, 'Timbuktu.' And, eight days later, no one in the entire garrison called him anything but that.

    Nevertheless, we were still obsessed to the point of mania with finding out where this African ex-prince found his booze. I stumbled upon the answer in a rather unexpected way.

    One morning I was on the ramparts, scanning the horizon, when I saw something moving in a vine tree. We were nearing the time that the grapes were harvested, and the grapes were ripe. But I didn't think about that at all. I thought that a spy was approaching the town, and I organised an expedition to catch the prowler. I took command of the operation myself, after having been given the general's permission.

    I made three little groups of troops go out in three different directions via three different gates, and these would team up near the site of the suspect vine tree and surround it. In order to be sure of blocking the spy's retreat, I made one of these detachments take a long route round which meant an extra hour's walk at least. A man who had stayed at the observation point gave me a sign from the ramparts that the spy hadn't left the field. We approached silently, crawling, almost lying completely in the ruts of the field. Eventually, we came to the designated point. I motioned to my troops who burst forward, running to the vine tree and finding... Timbuktu, crawling on all fours in the middle of the vines and was eating all the grapes, or rather tearing them from the vines like a dog eating soup; with a full mouth, even biting off bits of the plant when gnashing at the grapes.

    I wanted to get him up, but there wasn't a chance of that happening, and then I understood why he was on the ground like that on his hands and knees. Whenever we stood him up, he swayed a few seconds, held out his arms and fell flat on his face. He was drunk as I'd ever seen any man be drunk.

    We took him back carrying him between two poles. For the entirety of the trip he did not stop laughing, gesticulating madly with his hands and legs all the while.

    It was in that last part that the real mystery existed. My men would eat the grapes down themselves. Then, when they were too drunk to move, they slept where they lay.

    Timbuktu, on the other hand, had a love of the vines that went beyond all belief and all reason. He lived in the vines like the thrushes, who he hated as a jealous rival would hate. "The thrushes have eaten all the grapes, arses!" he would repeat over and over.

    One night, I was called for. You could see on the plain that something was approaching. I hadn't taken my telescope and I couldn't make anything out very well. One would have said it looked like a long snake, or a convoy, what do I know?

    I sent some men ahead of this strange caravan that soon enough made its triumphal entrance.  Timbuktu and nine of his companions had on top of some sort of makeshift altar—made from chairs—eight grimacing, bloody severed heads. The tenth Turk was pulling a horse along whose tail was attached to another horse, and six more were behind that one, joined together in the same way.

    This is what I was told. Having left for the vine trees, my Africans had suddenly seen a Prussian detachment approaching a village. Instead of fleeing, they hid themselves. Then, when the officers had dismounted at an inn for refreshments, the eleven men had ambushed them, chased off the uhlans who thought they were under attack, killed the two sentries, and then the colonel and the five officers that made up his escort.

    I kissed Timbuktu that day. But I saw that he was walking with a little difficulty. I thought he was injured, he laughed and said, “Me, I provide for my country.”

    The thing was that Timbuktu never went into battle for honour, but for personal gain. Everything that he found, everything that he thought might have any value, especially anything shiny, he put in his pocket! And what a pocket! It was more of a chasm that began at his hips and finished at his ankles. Having learnt the word from his time in his army, he called it his “depth”, and it was his depth in effect.

    For this reason he had hacked off the gold from the Prussian uniforms, the leather from the helmets, the buttons etc. and had thrown all of it into his “depth”, that was so full it was overflowing.

    Every day he threw into it any shining object that caught his eye, bits of tin or coins, which put him in a very happy mood.

    He wanted to take everything back with him to his land of ostriches, which seemed to be almost like a brother to him, this son of a king tortured by the desire to engulf shiny bodies. If he hadn’t had his depth, what would he have done? In that scenario, he would have swallowed everything instead.

    Every morning his pocket was empty. He must have had a shop where he kept all his riches. But where?  I couldn’t find out.

    The general, having been alerted to Timbuktu’s exploits, ordered the bodies that had been left in the village to be quickly buried before anyone discovered that they had been decapitated. The Prussians went back there the next day. The mayor and seven notable locals were executed on the spot as reprisals, for having given away their position.

    The winter came. We were exhausted and demoralized. Now we were fighting every day. The starved men could no longer walk. Only the eight Turks (three had been killed) had retained their weight and were always gleaming, energized and ready to go into battle. Timbuktu was even getting bigger.

    “You lots of hunger, I good meat,” he said to me one day, and he brought me an excellent fillet of meat. But from what animal? We no longer had any cattle, or sheep, or goats, or donkeys, or pigs. It was impossible to procure a horse from anywhere. I thought about all that after I had devoured my meal. Then a horrible thought came to me. These black men were born very close to a country where it was not uncommon to eat human meat! And every day there were plenty of soldiers who died around the town! I asked Timbuktu. He didn’t want to reply. I didn’t press him further, but from then on I refused his gifts.

    He adored me. One night, the snow fell on the outposts without warning. We were sat on the ground. I looked over pityingly at the poor Africans shivering beneath this dusting of white and frozen snow. Since I was also extremely cold, I started coughing. I immediately felt something fall on me, like a great and warm quilt. It was Timbktu’s coat that he had thrown around my shoulders.

    I stood up and gave him back his jacket. “Take this back, old boy; you need it more than I do.”

    “No, Lieutenant, for you, me no need, me warm, warm.” And he looked at me with pleading eyes.

    “Come now; take it back, that’s an order.”

    The African stood up, took out his sword that he could wield like a scythe in one hand, and in the other held the coat that I had refused. “If you no keep the coat, I cut, no one’s coat.”

    He would have done it. I took the coat.

Eight days later we had been defeated. Some of our men had managed to escape. The others were to leave the town and go to over to the victors.

    I was going over to the place d’Armes where we were meant to meet when I was left stunned and silent when I saw a giant black man before me, dressed in white cotton drill and topped with a straw hat. It was Timbuktu. He seemed radiant and was walking with his hands in his pockets past a little boutique where you could see two glasses and two plates.

    “What are you doing?” I asked him.

    “Me no leave. Me good cook, me make colonel eat, me eat Prussians, me steal lots, lots.”

    It was a freezing ten degrees. I was shivering before this African in drill. So he took me by the arm and made me enter, I saw a large sign that he was only going to put on his door after we left because he had some decency.

    And I read this notice, written by the hand of some accomplice:

MONSIEUR TIMBUKTU’S MILITARY CUISINE

PREVIOUS COOK FOR THE EMPEROR

Parisian Artist—Moderate prices

    Despite the heavy heart I had at that time, I couldn’t help but laugh. And I left my African to his new trade.

    Was it better to do that than to be taken away a prisoner?

    You have just seen that the rascal succeeded.

    Béziers, today, belongs to Germany. The Timbuktu restaurant is a backwards start.