A very relaxed translation of Guy Maupassant’s “La Main”.
Not yet done. Will it ever be done? I don’t know. I think so.
The old judge with a small round head, and tiny beak nose, and buggy, wrinkly eye-crater eyes looked something like a tortoise. Yes, like a tortoise!–for his shoulders had rounded and humped a little over his neck, which vultured down beneath into the perpetual stoop that had gradually taken him over. And let’s not forget that “eye-crater eyes” is really just another way of saying “tortoise eyes”. To that add in the soft, wrinkly paleness dotted with light brown hash-mark age-spots, and his smiley, relaxed, settling-into-my-shell affable way. Taken as a whole, the old judge–once known as a fiery barrister and something of a dandy (his hands were still small and strangely–for he’d never been heavy–plump)–had actually transformed–at least in a literary, metaphoric way–into a tortoise merrily doggedly craning its neck, beaking a leaf, pulling with squinty-eyes shut until the shrub gave the leaf up, shuddering under the impact of the sudden victory, and with a blinking smile chewing his dinner.
The old judge sat at his wide desk in his mahogany chambers. Three young women (lovers of the law) sat on thick wooden chairs with red velvet seats and backs and lion-leg armrests. Sat up tall and poised in dark pencil skirts, light blouses, white gloves, and colorful thin-wicker hats. The four had just been discussing the particulars of a most unusual case–a crime so apparently perfect that one would’ve said it couldn’t have been committed–were it not for the corpse lain out by the ball of an old fashioned pistol (which pistol naturally had never been located).
One of the ladies, in her melodic flowing-water Caribbean voice, said that if one didn’t know better, one would think the murderer had been a spirit or some other otherworldly vigilante–for though from a physics point of view the crime seemed an impossible one, there were many motives for it, the victim having been pretty much unanimously loathed.
Here the old man’s bushy white tufted eyebrows leaped up and together: “Oh ladies, ladies, ladies! Don’t let’s even hint! Let’s not be so vain as to suppose that merely because we several gathered humans can’t think our way to a scientific solution, one doesn’t exist!” The young woman–with a small flat nose and cheeks that seemed a tad chipmunky beneath her large wide-set eyes but then curved rapidly almost frantically down around a smallish mouth and small, rounded chin–said that of course she meant no such thing. The judge nodded absentmindedly, with his thin lips a little forward and open, his eyes looking thoughtfully up beneath a knitted brow: “Reminds me of another time when I was almost tempted to credit a murder to a ghost.”
Of course the women insisted that he tell the tale, and of course, though it meant postponing a pleasant lunch on the veranda of nearby middle-priced French restaurant (been going there for years–a great place! Do stupendous things with eggs, really stupendous …) he agreed the tale required immediate telling–since the slightest movement might break him out of its spell and so mar it’s telling (not his idea, but his guests’ idea, to which he’d readily agreed with a look of solemn admiration in his old bachelor eyes–not that he’d ever dream!, well, OK, one dreams, one can’t help that, but there’s a difference between that kind of dream and actually dreaming, which wouldn’t be decent or in anyway helpful; may as well dream of being 25 again, but this time not such an idiot–).
It was some time ago now, when I was a young magistrate posted in Ajaccio, right before changing to lawyer and leaving for Paris to make a name for myself, which rash exuberance led me, as you all know, through odd ricochets straight to this great sprawling mess of a city I’ve come to love as my own …
Many years ago–but they dash by quick! You should grab each moment of youth, clutch it to your bosom! The solidity of your bones, the certainty of your muscles, the ecstatic strength of your passions–cherish them all every moment! But that is by the by–one must allow an old man his finger wagging: we scold, partly because we are tiresome and passé, but also partly because in 80 years the shimmering value of life and the moving love it makes possible grows more and more clear, more and more undeniable. But, as I said, that’s by the by …
It was, as I said some time ago, back in Ajaccio, the largest and most important city in Corsica–which means about as much as you’d think it would. Back in Ajaccio then, over a hundred years ago–don’t laugh ladies! as you get older, you’ll understand that time is much weirder than it looks when you’re invincibly young–don’t blush! I know the feeling–but don’t let the fact that a dried old leaf, nearing the final crumble, recalls knowing he’d always be young–don’t let that worry you–too much …
(laughter–he’s sure something, this old M. Bermutier)
Anyway, back then Ajaccio was really just a small town–I hear there’s almost 70,000 people there now!–and me a juge d’instruction–a magistrate responsible for investigating evidence before the trial begins, a dignified bit of bureaucracy that here, our American hopes being more set upon the energy of the pell mell than the safety of the planned-out … But, yes, of course! A balance between the freedom to find your own way and the freedom to not be sloshed into smithereens by chaos and indifference–! … Yes, as you say: in both cases both individual economic and social freedoms are set within something of a safety net–a thing of degrees: we want freedom from tyranny, but great inequality tends towards tyranny and simply living within it is a type of oppression. But, to return:
The town was all aflutter about a new arrival–an Englishman living alone in an old stone villa near that soft blue fluttering gulf that I miss with the sweet hopeless wavering yearning we fools have for tomorrow’s heaven and yesterday’s nostalgia and that, they say and I don’t doubt, the wise have for that blessed sparkling moment called “Now!”, which I fear I miss, though it’s right beneath–and on all sides and through!, if I understand the metaphysics correctly,–my nose. A large, barrel-bodied man of about 40 living alone with a few old domestics he’d hired in Marseille, where the story goes he’d lived a few years before settling with us, a little deeper in the sunlight. … New York–well, here it is cold! But I like where I’m living …
Well this gentleman was a very unusual character: kept to himself; spoke with no one; never came into town–his servant did all the shopping and provided the townspeople with what little information they thought they knew–; was believed to hunt daily in the surrounding nature and to be of humble beginnings but now–at right about his 40th year–in possession of a considerable fortune, the how of which was a complete mystery, and so of course to the village gossips suspicious. I didn’t of course believe the idle speculations, but I did grow curious about this complete stranger who–for now a year or more is elapsed–seemed so determined to remain one to every other inhabitant of our fair isle.
Not knowing any direct route to the recluse, I took to hunting along a rocky grassland overlooking the sea–a choice birding area that he was known to frequent with regularity. It took several months–not wasted time: the view was gorgeous! (in a city like this, one’s mind slowly forgets the spiritual power of truly clean air, but one’s heart always remembers)–but finally I had success: I shot a partridge right over his head and it missed falling on him by about half a foot, which naturally demanded I hurry to him, apologize profusely, and offer him the game. After a momentary head-back gape-mouthed shock, he took it like a stereotypical Englishman and was soon complimenting me on what–judging from where the bird must’ve been and where I must’ve been and the terrain where I would’ve had to take my stand, and the way the sun must’ve shone in my eyes–all mild difficulties which, either by reckless thought or just friendliness, he overestimated (one must remember that in those days men knew how to hunt–I’d trained with a rifle all my life, but was by the standards of that place at that time, merely a fair sportsman)–a tremendously difficult shot. I demurred politely, he would have none of it, and within ten minutes we were fast friends.
As the exchange continued in pleasant banality, I grew more and more incredulous: How could this typical strapping fellow with a love for hearty chit chat that bordered on the blowhard, be our aloof stranger? Surely this was a man that would love to regale the town gentry with tales of his adventures. So why didn’t he talk to anyone? Now that apparent chance had paired him with me, he seemed delighted for the chance to converse–his French was good, too; a little choppy, but on the whole rather eloquent, learned even, though he mostly employed it for discussing hunting: the theory and practice, interspersed with anecdotes from his own remarkably large and varied experience.
His name was John–Sir John, it seems that the humble beginnings tales were inaccurate. I was invited to dinner.
At dinner I carefully turned the topic towards him; if it made him uncomfortable, his long jolly face and tall-toothed English smile was the work of a world-class actor. He said he’d always been an adventurer, had chased game all over the world: Africa, America North and South, India, even been up in Mongolia once looking to take a giant woolly elephant–which he eventually decided must be a myth. Amazing country up there though, he assured me.
Whenever the conversation lulled, I’d turn it back to hunting, and he’d gobble the offering gratefully. He’d had the most amazing adventures hunting elephants, grizzlies, tigers, lions, hippos, giraffes, gorrillas even!
Well, yes, of course! But it wasn’t like that then. In those days, we had an infinite supply of wild animals, and they had no feelings, no trace of consciousness, no divine sense of themselves. They were just mindless savage beasts and killing them was no more cruel than turning of an appliance. Naturally, things are very different now. But rest assured that back then killing large wild animals was not only moral and upstanding, but also remarkably jocular and charming–heroic even, in some cases at least.
Anyway, I said, “All those animals are formidable!”
He smiled, “Oh no, the most dangerous animal by far is man!”
And suddenly he burst out laughing, a deep, wide, booming well-contented English laugh:
“I’ve hunted a lot of men as well.”
He smiled long and thoughtful, his big blue eyes sparkling like the Mediterranean. And then, long rectangular jaw in giant beefsteak fingers, he began to speak pensively, almost plaintively of weapons, and soon we were admiring his vast gun collection.
Black drapery hung by the open windows of his living room, silk drapery embroidered with golden flowers shining like threads of fire in the dark.
He explained: “They’re Japanese drapes–wonderful artisans, the Japanese! A pleasant people–small, but very polite.”
Well, yes, of course–but you see, at that time every individual counted as an example of a racial and cultural type. Now things are of course different and sweeping generalizations unfair and offensive. But in those days reality was quite a bit more blustery and simplified.
C’mon! I’m kidding! I’m making funny jokes and subtle commentary! Ladies! To be sure: A speaker should know his audience, but should an audience not also know its speaker? But, enough hijinks! If I could please continue my faithful recitation of events I did not create and statements I did not make–! Yes, please, let me describe this stone I once dispassionately observed–
Anyway, the room was all wood inlaid panels–like this one here, but much larger. All very fine and impressive–in just that kind of Old World high-class bro way you’d imagine: mounted animal heads, rifles, pistols, sabers, in one corner a full knight’s armor planting a broadsword into its marble stand. You know the genre. But then something shocked my eye: a darkened misshapen something upon a red velvet square atop a white marble museum-style podium–you know: with the grooves. I moved closer to the object; with every step I reconfirmed my first incredible classification: a dark, dehydrated, severed human hand. Ah, but yes it was! And not a skeleton all white and tidy, but a blackened dried-out hand with yellow nails, bits of chord-like musculature showing through the shriveled skin, and dried traces of dirt-brown blood speckling the bone- and muscle-cross-section where–a little ways into the forearm–the hand had been rather roughly severed–as if by a hatchet–from the arm. Around the wrist, a giant iron chain, riveted on either side so that it clamped down crushingly tight, and then, for I suppose good measure, welded into the atrocious limb; and, on the other end, attached to the wall by giant steel ring large and heavy enough to tether an elephant.
I asked: What’s that?
He replied–cool as you like–“He was my worst my worst enemy. An American. I severed it with a curved Tartar sword–in the parlor now, I’ll point it out when you leave–and dried it in the sun for two weeks. The two best weeks of my life!, I can promise you that! Oh, wonderful, wonderful for me, that … victory.”
And he stood there, a great horse of a man in a soft velvet smoking jacket, looking, the back of his pointer finger resting on his large pale lips, wildly at the disgusting stump of some fellow giant (the hand and forearm was even larger than that of my double-vested host) who–I supposed in the wilds of an untamed America–he’d battled and vanquished.
Finally he let his hand fall to his side, and with a pleasant, dignified smile on his Frankenstein face, said “The chain is strong–as it should be! As it must be!”
I wanted to make a joke, to normalize the blackened leathered giant’s hand. I forced a laugh and said that the chain seemed rather superfluous.
“No, it’s always looking to escape–the chain is necessary.”
I shot a glance towards him, trying to read some meaning into those lines delivered so dispassionately, conversationally–with an even-keeled soft voice that you’d think was suggesting that, actually, it is looking a little cloudy outside and it would probably be wise to grab an umbrella. I could read neither agitation nor silliness on his tall broad-jawyed face, with its wide-open baby blues and matter-of-factly clamped lips beneath the then fashionable horse brush mustache.
We moved on into the kitchen and the servant served us warm lager and cucumber sandwhiches–Sir John’s staples, as he explained while we ate our repast at a small round wooden table in the kitchen, overlooking the sea. I had the conceit he would soon poison me, hack off my arm for a trophy, and keep the rest of me buried somewhere beneath the floorboards. But somehow in that moment my understanding of reality buckled and gave way, and I couldn’t really differentiate between that creepy death and simply taking off to stroll back home in the generous Mediterranean sunlight, relax with a bit of light reading, and then meet my fiance for a pleasant evening promenade along a pristine stream beneath the arms of bright-barked trees with pale-green leaves. How very odd it still is to me when I recall that moment! I suppose a fly too exhausted to struggle in a spider’s web and a mouse in the jaws of an adder experience something similar, but I’d never experienced the like before and I hope to never ever–still I have nightmares about that moment when I lost the sense to fear!–know again.
On the other hand, it appears that it was not I, but this invincible Englishman, who had something to fear. After a pleasant meal, the frightful premonition of my imminent demise melted away into a few good-natured beer-burps, not reviving even as, on the way out, I passed three loaded revolvers, each resting on a separate piece of luxurious furniture. No, I walked past the deadly phallics, the sun glinted on the barrels, and my premonition was reborn, but morphed into a clearer, calmer insight: the fellow lived in constant fear of attack, and the worry played cruelly in his genteel sangfroid, cracking him a little, but not dangerously, not for those who knew enough to approach in daylight and to knock loudly and wait for his short, round, lush-tongued manservant to ceremoniously announce and parade one into the home. I returned for several visits. After a time I stopped visiting. We all became accustomed to his presence and forgot him, the way you might forget an old shoe that was still serviceable, but no longer particularly fashionable or comfortable.
The years passed until one morning,end of November, my servant woke me up six in the morning, whispering–with the strange, ineffective politeness that tends to accompany emergency awakenings–that Sir John Rowell had been murdered in the night.
There we all were 6:30 AM of an overcast drizzly morn: the commissioner, chief of police, and myself in our beige trench coats and fedoras, stepping brisk and businesslike into the Englisman’s little bungalow on a hill overlooking the gray bay–a hill decorated with dropping soft-needled pines, sharp-leaved scrub brush, olive-colored exploding-star yuccas, and, on the far side and to the back, a lumpy sprawl of smooth yellow granite. His plumped-prune little valet, disoriented and desperate, balled like helpless child in front of the sturdy castle-door (of oak planks, with an arching top, an iron lattice decoration set in a rectangular frame towards the top and a heavy ironring knocker a bit below that). In the beginning–I don’t know how, since he had the physical strength and cunning of a ball of soft pastel-yellow yarn–I suspected the valet. But he was, of course, as innocent as weakness can be. Who here’s noticed that weakness, like all sins of omission, invariably shares the guilt in this interconnected world’s evils? A show of hands perhaps?
Forgive me, forgive me! Teasing you as I pause the story: a double tease! Malevolent!
We never found the murderer.
Entering Sir John’s tidy, sparse living room, I immediately perceived his large frame, leopard sleeping robe slightly ajar at the bare ankles, lying belly-up in the center of the Egyptian rug. Beautiful rug. Kind of strange, an Egyptian man with a sphinx-like headdress floating a little above a zig-zagging dark line (like a the serrated edge of a saw) and holding hands with his own shadow–which is a dark outline of his own shape, attached to him at the feet, but bent up so it can stand facing him. Sir John had explained it to me once: The dark zig-zag line represents Nu, the dark watery chaos existing since before the before; Atum, the first God–the guy with the headdress in the rug–created himself out of the chaotic void and realized there was no one else there. Out of loneliness he seizes his own shadow and mates with it, and of that unorthodox union come Shu, god of air, and Tefnut, goddess of moisture. The kids wander off to explore the void and Atum sends his messenger the Eye of Ra–not sure how he came to be–to find them. They all return and the first humans are Atum’s tears, shed out of heavenly gladness. The rug doesn’t show all that–just Atum approaching his shadow.
So there he was: Sir John Rowell, trophy-skin robe still tidily shut, black satin sleeping pants only slightly wrinkled, flat on his back, eyes and tongue popping with shock and fear, as if he’d died in the most horrible state. His neck, punctured with five holes as if jabbed by a poker, was red with dried blood. We waited for the physician. A slight, nervous man with round glasses and an excess of sweat drenching his white dress shirt and the back of his dark slacks, and which he wiped constantly from his small gerbil-like face with a frilly handkerchief that I originally assumed belonged to his missus, until learning that he lived alone and spent his evenings composing male on male romance novellas that no one knew anything about until his death. (Well, you know, in those days, such things simply didn’t happen, so if they happened within one, there was nowhere safe to put it–at least not in our part of Corisca.) Within the first minute, he officially pronounced the cause of death “Strangulation!” in his high, intense, narrow-throated voice. But afterwards followed a good ten minutes, mostly spent in brow-wiping reverie, though punctuated with little investigations, mostly centered around the holes on the neck. Finally, he stood up, wiped his now bloody fingers on the same now salty and wet handkerchief–back then not even doctors worried about blood, yes, I am old!–and said, in a voice slower, deeper, quieter, deliberate like a girl stringing flowers on a thread: “One would say that he’d been strangled by a skeleton.”
A shiver ran through my spine, and slowly, reluctantly, wishing for an excuse to not, I turned to the spot on the wall where the once that blackened, skinned, disgusting hand had hung in stout iron chains. It was no longer there. The black chain, several links shorter, hung–it truly seemed to me at the time–dejected defeat.
Alors je me baissai vers le mort, et je trouvai dans
[15] sa bouche crispée un des doigts de cette main disparue,
coupé ou plutôt scié par les dents juste à la deuxième
phalange.
Puis on procéda aux constatations. On ne découvrit
rien. Aucune porte n’avait été forcée, aucune fenêtre,
[20] aucun meuble. Les deux chiens de garde ne s’étaient pas
réveillés.
oici, en quelques mots, la déposition du domestique:
Depuis un mois, son maître semblait agité. Il avait reçu
beaucoup de lettres, brûlées à mesure.
[25] Souvent, prenant une cravache, dans une colère qui
semblait de la démence, il avait frappé avec fureur cette
main séchée, scellée au mur et enlevée, on ne sait comment,
à l’heure même du crime.
Il se couchait fort tard et s’enfermait avec soin. Il
[30] avait toujours des armes à portée du bras. Souvent, la
nuit, il parlait haut, comme s’il se fût querellé avec quelqu’un.
Cette nuit-là, par hasard, il n’avait fait aucun bruit, et
c’est seulement en venant ouvrir les fenêtres que le serviteur
avait trouvé sir John assassiné. Il ne soupçonnait
personne.
[5] Je communiquai ce que je savais du mort aux magistrats
et aux officiers de la force publique, et on fit dans toute
l’île une enquête minutieuse. On ne découvrit rien.
Or, une nuit, trois mois après le crime, j’eus un affreux
cauchemar. Il me sembla que je voyais la main, l’horrible
[10] main, courir comme un scorpion ou comme une araignée le
long de mes rideaux et de mes murs. Trois fois, je me réveillai,
trois fois je me rendormis, trois fois je revis le
hideux débris galoper autour de ma chambre en remuant
les doigts comme des pattes.
[15] Le lendemain, on me l’apporta, trouvé dans le cimetière,
sur la tombe de sir John Rowell, enterré là; car on
n’avait pu découvrir sa famille. L’index manquait.
Voilà, mesdames, mon histoire.. Je ne sais rien de plus.
LA MAIN
On faisait cercle autour de M. Bermutier, juge d’instruction,
qui donnait son avis sur l’affaire mystérieuse
de Saint-Cloud. Depuis un mois, cet inexplicable crime
affolait Paris. Personne n’y comprenait rien.
[5] M. Bermutier, debout, le dos à la cheminée, parlait,
assemblait les preuves, discutait les diverses opinions,
mais ne concluait pas.
Plusieurs femmes s’étaient levées pour s’approcher et
demeuraient debout, l’oeil fixé sur la bouche rasée du
[10] magistrat d’où sortaient les paroles graves. Elles frissonnaient,
vibraient, crispées par leur peur curieuse, par
l’avide et insatiable besoin d’épouvante qui hante leur
âme, les torture comme une faim.
Une d’elles, plus pâle que les autres, prononça pendant
[15] un silence:
–C’est affreux. Cela touche au «surnaturel.» On ne
saura jamais rien.
Le magistrat se tourna vers elle:
–Oui, madame, il est probable qu’on ne saura jamais
[20] rien. Quant au mot surnaturel que vous venez d’employer,
il n’a rien à faire ici. Nous sommes en présence
d’un crime fort habilement conçu, fort habilement exécuté,
si bien enveloppé de mystère que nous ne pouvons
le dégager des circonstances impénétrables qui l’entourent.
[25] Mais j’ai eu, moi, autrefois, à suivre une affaire o
vraiment semblait se mêler quelque chose de fantastique. Il
a fallu l’abandonner d’ailleurs, faute de moyens de
l’éclaircir.
Plusieurs femmes prononcèrent en même temps, si vite
[5] que leurs voix n’en firent qu’une:
–Oh! dites-nous cela.
M. Bermutier sourit gravement, comme doit sourire un
juge d’instruction. Il reprit:
–N’allez pas croire, au moins, que j’aie pu, même un
[10] instant, supposer en cette aventure quelque chose de
surhumain. Je ne crois qu’aux causes normales. Mais
si, au lieu d’employer le mot «surnaturel» pour exprimer
ce que nous ne comprenons pas, nous nous servions simplement
du mot «inexplicable,» cela vaudrait beaucoup mieux.
[15] En tout cas, dans l’affaire que je vais vous dire, ce sont
surtout les circonstances environnantes, les circonstances
préparatoires qui m’ont ému. Enfin, voici les faits:
J’étais alors juge d’instruction à Ajaccio, une petite
ville blanche, couchée au bord d’un admirable golfe
[20] qu’entourent partout de hautes montagnes.
Ce que j’avais surtout à poursuivre là-bas, c’étaient les
affaires de vendetta. Il y en a de superbes, de dramatiques
au possible, de féroces, d’héroïques. Nous retrouvons là
les plus beaux sujets de vengeance qu’on puisse rêver, les
[25] haines séculaires, apaisées un moment, jamais éteintes,
les ruses abominables, les assassinats devenant des massacres
et presque des actions glorieuses. Depuis deux
ans, je n’entendais parler que du prix du sang, que de ce
terrible préjugé corse qui force à venger toute injure sur
la personne qui l’a faite, sur ses descendants et ses proches.
J’avais vu égorger des vieillards, des enfants, des cousins,
j’avais la tête pleine de ces histoires.
Or, j’appris un jour qu’un Anglais venait de louer pour
plusieurs années une petite villa au fond du golfe. Il
avait amené avec lui un domestique français, pris à Marseille
en passant.
[5] Bientôt tout le monde s’occupa de ce personnage singulier,
qui vivait seul dans sa demeure, ne sortant que pour
chasser et pour pêcher. Il ne parlait à personne, ne venait
jamais à la ville, et, chaque matin, s’exerçait pendant une
heure ou deux, à tirer au pistolet et à la carabine.
[10] Des légendes se firent autour de lui. On prétendit que
c’était un haut personnage fuyant sa patrie pour des
raisons politiques; puis on affirma qu’il se cachait après
avoir commis un crime épouvantable. On citait même
des circonstances particulièrement horribles.
[15] Je voulus, en ma qualité de juge d’instruction, prendre
quelques renseignements sur cet homme; mais il me fut
impossible de rien apprendre. Il se faisait appeler sir
John Rowell.
Je me contentai donc de le surveiller de près; mais on
[20] ne me signalait, en réalité, rien de suspect à son égard.
Cependant, comme les rumeurs sur son compte continuaient,
grossissaient, devenaient générales, je résolus
d’essayer de voir moi-même cet étranger, et je me mis à
chasser régulièrement dans les environs de sa propriété.
[25] J’attendis longtemps une occasion. Elle se présenta
enfin sous la forme d’une perdrix que je tirai et que je tuai
devant le nez de l’Anglais. Mon chien me la rapporta;
mais, prenant aussitôt le gibier, j’allai m’excuser de mon
inconvenance et prier sir John Rowell d’accepter l’oiseau
[30] mort.
C’était un grand homme à cheveux rouges, à barbe
rouge, très haut, très large, une sorte d’hercule placide e
poli. Il n’avait rien de la raideur dite britannique et il
me remercia vivement de ma délicatesse en un français
accentué d’ outre-Manche. Au bout d’un mois, nous
avions causé ensemble cinq ou six fois.
[5] Un soir enfin, comme je passais devant sa porte, je
l’aperçus qui fumait sa pipe, à cheval sur une chaise dans
son jardin. Je le saluai, et il m’invita à entrer pour boire
un verre de bière. Je ne me le fis pas répéter.
Il me reçut avec toute la méticuleuse courtoisie anglaise,
[10] parla avec éloge de la France, de la Corse, déclara qu’il
aimait beaucoup cette pays, et cette rivage.
Alors je lui posai, avec de grandes précautions et sous la
forme d’un intérêt très vif, quelques questions sur sa vie,
sur ses projets. Il répondit sans embarras, me raconta
[15] qu’il avait beaucoup voyagé, en Afrique, dans les Indes,
en Amérique. Il ajouta en riant:
–J’avé eu bôcoup d’aventures, oh! yes.
Puis je me remis à parler chasse, et il me donna des
détails les plus curieux sur la chasse à l’hippopotame, au
[20] tigre, à l’éléphant et même la chasse au gorille.
Je dis:
–Tous ces animaux sont redoutables.
Il sourit:
–Oh! nô, le plus mauvais c’été l’homme.
[25] Il se mit à rire tout à fait, d’un bon rire de gros Anglais
content:
–J’avé beaucoup chassé l’homme aussi.
Puis il parla d’armes, et il m’offrit d’entrer chez lui
pour me montrer des fusils de divers systèmes.
[30] Son salon était tendu de noir, de soie noire brodée d’or.
De grandes fleurs jaunes couraient sur l’étoffe sombre,
brillaient comme du feu
Il annonça:
–C’été une drap japonaise.
Mais, au milieu du plus large panneau, une chose étrange
me tira l’oeil. Sur un carré de velours rouge, un objet
[5] noir se détachait. Je m’approchai: c’était une main, une
main d’homme. Non pas une main de squelette, blanche
et propre, mais une main noire desséchée, avec les ongles
jaunes, les muscles à nu et des traces de sang ancien, de
sang pareil à une crasse, sur les os coupés net, comme
[10] d’un coup de hache, vers le milieu de l’avant-bras.
Autour du poignet, une énorme chaine de fer, rivée,
soudée à ce membre malpropre, l’attachait au mur par
un anneau assez fort pour tenir un éléphant en laisse.
Je demandai:
[15]–Qu’est-ce que cela?
L’Anglais répondit tranquillement:
–C’été ma meilleur ennemi. Il vené d’Amérique. Il
avé été fendu avec le sabre et arraché la peau avec une
caillou coupante, et séché dans le soleil pendant huit
[20] jours. Aoh, très bonne pour moi, cette.
Je touchai ce débris humain qui avait dû appartenir
à un colosse. Les doigts, démesurément longs, étaient
attachés par des tendons énormes que retenaient des
lanières de peau par places. Cette main était affreuse à
[25] voir, écorchée ainsi, elle faisait penser naturellement à
quelque vengeance de sauvage.
Je dis:
–Cet homme devait être très fort.
L’Anglais prononça avec douceur:
[30]–Aoh yes; mais je été plus fort que lui. J’avé mis
cette chaine pour le tenir.
Je crus qu’il plaisantait. Je dis:
–Cette chaine maintenant est bien inutile, la main ne
se sauvera pas.
Sir John Rowell reprit gravement:
–Elle voulé toujours s’en aller. Cette chaine été
[5] nécessaire.
D’un coup d’oeil rapide j’interrogeai son visage, me
demandant:
–Est-ce un fou, ou un mauvais plaisant?
Mais la figure demeurait impénétrable, tranquille et
[10] bienveillante. Je parlai d’autre chose et j’admirai les
fusils.
Je remarquai cependant que trois revolvers chargés
étaient posés sur les meubles, comme si cet homme eût
vécu dans la crainte constante d’une attaque. Je revins
[15] plusieurs fois chez lui. Puis je n’y allai plus. On s’était
accoutumé à sa présence; il était devenu indifférent à tous.
Une année entière s’écoula. Or un matin, vers la fin de
novembre, mon domestique me réveilla en m’annonçant
que sir John Rowell avait été assassiné dans la nuit.
[20] Une demi-heure plus tard, je pénétrais dans la maison
de l’Anglais avec le commissaire central et le capitaine
de gendarmerie. Le valet, éperdu et désespéré, pleurait
devant la porte. Je soupçonnai d’abord cet homme, mais
il était innocent.
[25] On ne put jamais trouver le coupable.
En entrant dans le salon de sir John, j’aperçus du premier
coup d’oeil le cadavre étendu sur le dos, au milieu
de la pièce.
Le gilet était déchiré, une manche arrachée pendait,
tout annonçait qu’une lutte terrible avait eu lieu
L’Anglais était mort étranglé! Sa figure noire et gonflée,
effrayante, semblait exprimer une épouvante abominable;
il tenait entre ses dents serrées quelque chose; et
le cou, percé de cinq trous qu’on aurait dit faits avec des
[5] pointes de fer, était couvert de sang.
Un médecin nous rejoignit. Il examina longtemps les
traces des doigts dans la chair et prononça ces étranges
paroles:
–On dirait qu’il a été étranglé par un squelette.
[10] Un frisson me passa dans le dos, et je jetai les yeux
sur le mur, à la place où j’avais vu jadis l’horrible main
d’écorché. Elle n’y était plus. La chaine, brisée,
pendait.
Alors je me baissai vers le mort, et je trouvai dans
[15] sa bouche crispée un des doigts de cette main disparue,
coupé ou plutôt scié par les dents juste à la deuxième
phalange.
Puis on procéda aux constatations. On ne découvrit
rien. Aucune porte n’avait été forcée, aucune fenêtre,
[20] aucun meuble. Les deux chiens de garde ne s’étaient pas
réveillés.
Voici, en quelques mots, la déposition du domestique:
Depuis un mois, son maître semblait agité. Il avait reçu
beaucoup de lettres, brûlées à mesure.
[25] Souvent, prenant une cravache, dans une colère qui
semblait de la démence, il avait frappé avec fureur cette
main séchée, scellée au mur et enlevée, on ne sait comment,
à l’heure même du crime.
Il se couchait fort tard et s’enfermait avec soin. Il
[30] avait toujours des armes à portée du bras. Souvent, la
nuit, il parlait haut, comme s’il se fût querellé avec quelqu’un.
Cette nuit-là, par hasard, il n’avait fait aucun bruit, et
c’est seulement en venant ouvrir les fenêtres que le serviteur
avait trouvé sir John assassiné. Il ne soupçonnait
personne.
[5] Je communiquai ce que je savais du mort aux magistrats
et aux officiers de la force publique, et on fit dans toute
l’île une enquête minutieuse. On ne découvrit rien.
Or, une nuit, trois mois après le crime, j’eus un affreux
cauchemar. Il me sembla que je voyais la main, l’horrible
[10] main, courir comme un scorpion ou comme une araignée le
long de mes rideaux et de mes murs. Trois fois, je me réveillai,
trois fois je me rendormis, trois fois je revis le
hideux débris galoper autour de ma chambre en remuant
les doigts comme des pattes.
[15] Le lendemain, on me l’apporta, trouvé dans le cimetière,
sur la tombe de sir John Rowell, enterré là; car on
n’avait pu découvrir sa famille. L’index manquait.
Voilà, mesdames, mon histoire.. Je ne sais rien de plus.
Les femmes, éperdues, étaient pâles, frissonnantes.
[20] Une d’elles s’écria:
–Mais ce n’est pas un dénouement cela, ni une explication!
Nous n’allons pas dormir si vous ne nous dites
pas ce qui s’était passé, selon vous.
Le magistrat sourit avec sévérité:
[25]–Oh! moi, mesdames, je vais gâter, certes, vos rêves
terribles. Je pense tout simplement que le légitime propriétaire
de la main n’était pas mort, qu’il est venu la
chercher avec celle qui lui restait. Mais je n’ai pu savoir
comment il a fait, par exemple. C’est là une sorte de
[30] vendetta.
Une des femmes murmura:
–Non, ça ne doit pas être ainsi.
Et le juge d’instruction, souriant toujours, conclut:
–Je vous avais bien dit que mon explication ne vous
[5] irait pas.
