Silk Read online

  Hervé Joncour crossed the room, waited for a sign from his host, and sat down opposite him. A servant arrived, imperceptibly, and placed before them two cups of tea. Then he vanished. Hara Kei began to speak, in his own language, in a sing-song voice that melted into a sort of irritating artificial falsetto. Hervé Joncour listened. He kept his eyes fixed on those of Hara Kei and only for an instant, almost without realising it, lowered them to the face of the woman.

  It was the face of a girl.

  He raised them again.

  Hara Kei paused, picked up one of the cups of tea, brought it to his lips, let some moments pass and said

  ‘Try to tell me who you are.’

  He said it in French, drawing out the vowels, in a hoarse voice but true.

  14.

  TO the most invincible man in Japan, the master of all that the world might take away from that island, Hervé Joncour tried to explain who he was. He did it in his own language, speaking slowly, without knowing precisely if Hara Kei was able to understand. Instinctively he rejected prudence, reporting simply, without inventions and without omissions, everything that was true. He set forth small details and crucial events in the same tone, and with barely visible gestures, imitating the hypnotic pace, melancholy and neutral, of a catalogue of objects rescued from a fire. Hara Kei listened, and not a shadow of an expression discomposed the features of his face. He kept his eyes fixed on Hervé Joncour’s lips, as if they were the last lines of a farewell letter. The room was so silent and still that what happened unexpectedly seemed a huge event and yet was nothing.

  Suddenly,

  without moving at all,

  that girl

  opened her eyes.

  Hervé Joncour did not pause but instinctively lowered his gaze to her, and what he saw, without pausing, was that those eyes did not have an Oriental shape, and that they were fixed, with a disconcerting intensity, on him: as if from the start, from under the eyelids, they had done nothing else. Hervé Joncour turned his gaze elsewhere, as naturally as he could, trying to continue his story with no perceptible difference in his voice. He stopped only when his eyes fell on the cup of tea, placed on the floor, in front of him. He took it in one hand, brought it to his lips, and drank slowly. He began to speak again as he set it down in front of him.

  15.

  FRANCE, the ocean voyages, the scent of the mulberry trees in Lavilledieu, the steam trains, Hélène’s voice. Hervé Joncour continued to tell his story, as he had never in his life done. The girl continued to stare at him, with a violence that wrenched from every word the obligation to be memorable. The room seemed to have slipped into an irreversible stillness when suddenly, and in utter silence, she stuck one hand outside her robe and slid it along the mat in front of her. Hervé Joncour saw that pale spot reach the edge of his field of vision, saw it touch Hara Kei’s cup of tea and then, absurdly, continue to slide until, without hesitation, it grasped the other cup, which was inexorably the cup he had drunk from, raised it lightly, and carried it away. Not for an instant had Hara Kei stopped staring expressionlessly at Hervé Joncour’s lips.

  The girl lifted her head slightly.

  For the first time she took her eyes off Hervé Joncour and rested them on the cup.

  Slowly, she rotated it until she had her lips at the exact point where he had drunk.

  Half-closing her eyes, she took a sip of tea.

  She removed the cup from her lips.

  She slid it back to where she had picked it up.

  Her hand vanished under her robe.

  She rested her head again on Hara Kei’s lap.

  Eyes open, fixed on those of Hervé Joncour.

  16.

  HERVÉ Joncour spoke again at length. He stopped only when Hara Kei took his eyes off him and nodded his head slightly.

  Silence.

  In French, drawing out the vowels, in a hoarse voice but true, Hara Kei said

  ‘If you are willing, I would like to see you return.’

  For the first time he smiled.

  ‘The eggs you have with you are fish eggs, worth little more than nothing.’

  Hervé Joncour lowered his gaze. There was his cup of tea, in front of him. He picked it up and began to revolve it, and to observe it, as if he were searching for something on the painted line of the rim. When he found what he was looking for, he placed his lips there and drank. Then he put the cup down in front of him and said

  ‘I know.’

  Hara Kei laughed in amusement.

  ‘Is that why you paid in false gold?’

  ‘I paid for what I bought.’

  Hara Kei became serious again.

  ‘When you leave here you will have what you want.’

  ‘When I leave this island, alive, you will receive the gold that is due you. You have my word.’

  Hervé Joncour did not expect an answer. He rose, took a few steps backward, and bowed.

  The last thing he saw, before he left, was her eyes, staring into his, perfectly mute.

  17.

  SIX days later Hervé Joncour embarked, at Takaoka, on a Dutch smugglers’ ship, which took him to Sabirk. From there he went back along the Chinese border to Lake Baikal, journeyed over four thousand kilometres of Siberian territory, crossed the Urals, reached Kiev, and by train traversed all Europe, from east to west, until, after three months of travel, he arrived in France. On the first Sunday in April – in time for High Mass – he reached the gates of Lavilledieu. He stopped, thanked God, and entered the town on foot, counting his steps, so that each one should have a name, and so that he would never forget them.

  ‘How is the end of the world?’ asked Baldabiou.

  ‘Invisible.’

  For his wife, Hélène, he brought a silk tunic that she, out of modesty, never wore. If you held it between your fingers, it was like grasping nothing.

  18.

  THE eggs that Hervé Joncour brought from Japan – attached by the hundreds to little strips of mulberry bark – turned out to be perfectly healthy. The production of silk, in the region of Lavilledieu, was extraordinary that year, for quantity and for quality. Two more silk mills were opened, and Baldabiou had a cloister built beside the little church of St Agnes. It’s not clear why, but he had imagined it round, so he entrusted the project to a Spanish architect named Juan Benitez, who enjoyed a certain notoriety in the field of plazas de toros.

  ‘No sand in the middle, naturally, but a garden. And if possible dolphins’ heads, in place of bulls’, at the entrance.’

  ‘Dolphins, señor?’

  ‘Do you know the fish, Benitez?’

  Hervé Joncour did the accounts twice and discovered that he was rich. He acquired thirty acres of land, south of his property, and spent the summer months designing a park where it would be pleasant to walk, and silent. He imagined it being invisible, like the end of the world. Every morning he went to Verdun’s, where he listened to the news of the town and leafed through the papers that arrived from Paris. In the evenings he sat for a long time beside his wife, Hélène, beneath the portico of his house. She read a book, aloud, and this made him happy because he thought there was no voice more beautiful in the world.

  He turned thirty-three on September 4, 1862. His life fell like rain before his eyes, a quiet spectacle.

  19.

  ‘YOU mustn’t be afraid of anything.’

  Since Baldabiou had made the decision, Hervé Joncour left for Japan on the first of October. He crossed the French border near Metz, travelled through Württemberg and Bavaria, entered Austria, reached Vienna and Budapest by train, and continued to Kiev. On horseback he traversed two thousand kilometres of the Russian steppe, crossed the Urals into Siberia, and travelled for forty days to reach Lake Baikal, which the people of the place called: the devil. He followed the course of the River Amur, skirting the Chinese border, to the Ocean, and when he arrived at the Ocean he stopped in the port of Sabirk for eleven days, until a Dutch smugglers’ ship carried him to Cape Teraya, on t
he western coast of Japan. On foot, taking secondary roads, he went through the provinces of Ishikawa, Toyama and Niigata, entered Fukushima, reached the city of Shirakawa, and rounded it on the east side; he waited two days for a man in black, who blindfolded him and led him to the village of Hara Kei. When he was able to open his eyes again, he found before him two servants, who took his bags and guided him to the edge of a wood, where they pointed out a path and left him alone. Hervé Joncour began walking in the shade that the trees, around and above him, carved out from the light of day. He stopped only when the foliage opened unexpectedly, for an instant, like a window, beside the path. A lake was visible, thirty yards below. And on the shore of the lake, squatting on the ground, with their backs to him, were Hara Kei and a woman in an orange robe, her hair loose on her shoulders. The instant Hervé Joncour saw her, she turned, slowly, for a moment, just long enough to meet his gaze.

  Her eyes did not have an Oriental shape, and her face was the face of a girl.

  Hervé Joncour began walking again, in the thick of the wood, and when he came out he was on the edge of the lake. A few steps ahead of him Hara Kei, alone, his back turned, sat motionless, dressed in black. Beside him was the orange robe, abandoned on the ground, and two straw sandals. Hervé Joncour approached. Tiny circular waves deposited the lake water on the shore, as if they had been sent there, from afar.

  ‘My French friend,’ murmured Hara Kei, without turning.

  They spent hours, sitting beside one another, in talk and in silence. Then Hara Kei got up and Hervé Joncour followed him. With an imperceptible gesture, before setting off on the path Hervé Joncour let one of his gloves fall beside the orange robe, abandoned on the shore. It was already evening when they reached the town.

  20.

  HERVÉ Joncour remained the guest of Hara Kei for four days. It was like living at the court of a king. The whole town existed for him, and there was almost no action, in those hills, that was not carried out in his defence and for his pleasure. Life was seething in an undertone; it moved with a cunning languor, like a hunted animal in its den. The world seemed centuries away.

  Hervé Joncour had a house for himself, and five servants who followed him everywhere. He ate alone, in the shade of a brightly flowering tree that he had never seen before. Twice a day they served him tea with a certain solemnity. In the evening, they accompanied him into the largest room of the house, which had a stone floor, and where the ritual of bathing was performed. Three old women, their faces covered by a sort of white greasepaint, ran the water over his body and dried him with warm silk cloths. Their hands were gnarled, but very light.

  On the morning of the second day, Hervé Joncour saw a white man arrive in the town: accompanied by two carts filled with large wooden chests. He was English. He wasn’t there to buy. He was there to sell.

  ‘Weapons, monsieur. And you?’

  ‘I am buying. Silkworms.’

  They dined together. The Englishman had many stories to tell: he had been going back and forth between England and Japan for eight years. Hervé Joncour listened, and only at the end did he ask

  ‘Do you know a woman, young, European I think, white, who lives here?’

  The Englishman went on eating, impassive.

  ‘White women do not exist in Japan. There is not a single white woman in Japan.’

  He left the next day, loaded with gold.

  21.

  HERVÉ Joncour saw Hara Kei again only on the morning of the third day. He realised that the five servants had suddenly disappeared, as if by magic, and after a few moments Hara Kei arrived. The man for whom everyone, in that town, existed always moved within a bubble of emptiness. As if an unspoken rule had instructed the world to let him live alone.

  Together they ascended the hillside, until they reached a clearing where the sky was streaked by the flight of dozens of birds with big blue wings.

  ‘The people here watch them fly and in their flight they read the future.’

  Said Hara Kei.

  ‘When I was a boy my father brought me to a place like this, put his bow in my hands, and ordered me to shoot at one of them. I did, and a great bird, with blue wings, fell to earth, like a stone. Read the flight of your arrow if you want to know your future, my father said to me.’

  The birds flew slowly, rising and falling in the sky, as if they wanted to erase it, very carefully, with their wings.

  They returned to the town in the strange light of an afternoon that seemed evening. Arriving at the house of Hervé Joncour, they said goodbye. Hara Kei turned and began walking slowly, descending along the road that ran beside the river. Hervé Joncour stood on the threshold, watching him: he waited until he was some twenty paces away, then he said

  ‘When will you tell me who that girl is?’

  Hara Kei went on walking, with slow steps that bore no trace of weariness. Around him was the most absolute silence, and emptiness. As if by a special rule, wherever that man went, he went in an unconditional and perfect solitude.

  22.

  ON the morning of the last day, Hervé Joncour left his house and began to wander through the village. He met men who bowed at his passage and women who, lowering their gaze, smiled at him. He knew he had reached the dwelling of Hara Kei when he saw an immense aviary that held an incredible number of birds, of every type: a spectacle. Hara Kei had told him that he had had them brought from all corners of the earth. Some were worth more than all the silk that Lavilledieu could produce in a year. Hervé Joncour stopped to look at that magnificent folly. He recalled having read in a book that it was the custom for Oriental men to honour the faithfulness of their lovers by giving them not jewels but the most beautiful, elegant birds.

  The dwelling of Hara Kei seemed to be drowning in a lake of silence. Hervé Joncour approached and stopped a few feet from the entrance. There were no doors, and on the paper walls shadows appeared and disappeared without a sound. It did not seem like life: if there was a name for all that, it was: theatre. Without knowing why, Hervé Joncour stopped to wait: he stood motionless, a few feet from the house. For the entire time that he conceded to destiny, that extraordinary stage let only shadows and silences filter through. So Hervé Joncour turned back, in the end, and began walking, quickly, towards his house. With his head bent, he stared at his steps, because this helped him not to think.

  23.

  THAT night Hervé Joncour packed his bags. Then he was led into the vast stone-floored room, for the ritual of bathing. He lay down, closed his eyes, and thought of the grand aviary, a mad token of love. A wet cloth was laid over his eyes. That had never been done before. Instinctively he began to remove it but a hand took his and stopped him. It was not the old hand of an old woman.

  Hervé Joncour felt the water flow over his body, over his legs first, and then along his arms, and over his chest. Water like oil. And a strange silence, around him. He felt the lightness of a silk veil descend upon him. And the hands of a woman – of a woman – dried him, caressing his skin, everywhere: those hands, and that fabric woven of nothing. He never moved, not even when he felt the hands rise from his shoulders to his neck, and the fingers – the silk and the fingers – go to his lips, and touch them, once, slowly, and disappear.

  Hervé Joncour felt the silk veil lifted up and removed. The last thing was a hand that opened his and placed something in the palm.

  He waited for a long time, in the silence, without moving. Then slowly he took the damp cloth from his eyes. The room was almost dark. There was no one around. He got up, took the tunic that was lying folded on the floor, put it over his shoulders, left the room, went through the house, reached his mat, and lay down. He began to observe the tiny flame that quivered in the lantern. And, carefully, he stopped Time, for all the time that he desired.

  It was nothing, then, to open his hand and look at the piece of paper. Small. A few ideograms drawn one under the other. Black ink.

  24.

  THE next day, early in the morning, Hervé
Joncour left. Hidden in his baggage he carried thousands of silkworm eggs, that is, the future of Lavilledieu, and work for hundreds of people, and wealth for a tenth of them. Where the road curved to the left, hiding the view of the village forever behind the line of the hill, he stopped, paying no attention to the two men who accompanied him. He got off his horse and stood for a while beside the road, with his gaze fixed on those houses, climbing up the spine of the hill.

  Six days later, Hervé Joncour embarked, at Takaoka, on a Dutch smugglers’ ship, which took him to Sabirk. From there he went back along the Chinese border to Lake Baikal, journeyed over four thousand kilometres of Siberian territory, crossed the Urals, reached Kiev, and by train traversed all Europe, from east to west, until, after three months of travel, he arrived in France. The first Sunday of April – in time for High Mass – he reached the gates of Lavilledieu. He saw his wife, Hélène, running to meet him, and he smelled the perfume of her skin when he embraced her, and heard the velvet of her voice when she said to him

  ‘You’ve returned.’

  Tenderly.

  ‘You’ve returned.’

  25.

  IN Lavilledieu life ran simply, regulated by a methodical normality. Hervé Joncour let it slide over him for forty-one days. On the forty-second he gave in, opened a drawer in his travel trunk, pulled out a map of Japan, unfolded it, and found the piece of paper he had hidden inside it, months before. A few ideograms drawn one under the other. Black ink. He sat at his desk, and examined them for a long time.