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Technology of the medieval and early modern worlds
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A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
Library of Congress Cataloging- in-Publication Data
Names: Jones, Lori (Medical historian), editor.
Title: Disease and the environment in the medieval and early modern worlds / edited by Lori Jones.
Description: Abingdon, Oxon ; New York, NY : Routledge, 2022. | Series: Themes in environmental history | Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2021060024 (print) | LCCN 2021060025 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367151737 (hardback) | ISBN 9780367151720 (paperback) | ISBN 9780429055478 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Environmentally induced diseases—History. | Environmental health—History. | Medical climatology—History. | Public health—History. | Medicine, Medieval.
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060024
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2021060025
ISBN: 978- 0-367-15173-7 ( hbk)
ISBN: 978- 0-367-15172- 0 ( pbk)
ISBN: 978- 0- 429- 05547- 8 (ebk)
DOI: 10.4324/9780429055478
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4 “ Turkey is Almost a Perpetual Seminary of the Plague ”: Relocating Pathogenic Plague Environments 67
LORI JONES
5 Managing Disaster and Understanding Disease and the Environment in the Early Eighteenth Century
6 “Hot Climates” and Disease: Early Modern European Views of Tropical Environments
7
8 The Rise and Fall of a Historical Plague Reservoir: The Case of Ottoman Anatolia
NÜKHET VARLIK
9 Survival in the Context of Urbanization and Environmental Change in Medieval and Early Modern London, England
SHARON N. DEWITTE
Contributors
Abigail Agresta i s Assistant Professor of History at George Washington University. She specializes in medieval European and Mediterranean history, with an emphasis on environmental history, urban history, and history of public health. Her book The Keys to Bread and Wine: Faith, Nature, and Infrastructure in Late Medieval Valencia will be published by Cornell University Press in 2022.
Lucy C. Barnhouse has been Assistant Professor of History at Arkansas State University since autumn 2020, having previously held visiting positions at the College of Wooster and Wartburg College. Her forthcoming monograph, Houses of God, Places for the Sick , examines hospitals in the religious and social networks of late medieval cities. She has edited and translated leprosy examination letters for punctum’s Medieval Disability Sourcebook: Western Europe and contributed to the collection Leprosy and Identity in the Middle Ages: From England to the Mediterranean . She teaches courses in premodern and medical history and is a founding member of the Footnoting History podcast.
Gérard L. Chouin i s an Associate Professor of African History in the Harrison Ruffin Tyler Department of History at William & Mary, which he joined in 2014 after spending twenty years in Ghana, Nigeria, and The Gambia. His research interests include medieval to modern African history and archaeology, landscape, urbanization and environmental studies, global health, and the social and natural histories of diseases. He is currently the co- d irector of the Ife- Su ngbo Archaeological Project that focuses on social, political, and environmental change in southwestern Nigeria, before and after the opening of the Atlantic trade.
Sharon N. DeWitte i s a Professor of Anthropology at the University of South Carolina, Columbia. Her research specialties are bioarchaeology, palaeoepidemiology, and palaeodemography. She engages in the reconstruction of life, health, disease, and demography in the past using data from human skeletal remains, and is ultimately interested in the ways in which research on past populations informs our understanding of and
L ist of Contributors
promotes health among living people. For the last fifteen years, her research has primarily centred around the Black Death (c. 1346–53), one of the most devastating and influential pandemics in human history.
Cindy Ermus i s Assistant Professor of History at the University of Texas at San Antonio. She has published on catastrophe and crisis management in eighteenth- century Europe and the Atlantic, as well as on digital history and the future of the historical profession. She is also the editor of a volume entitled Environmental Disaster in the Gulf South: Two Centuries of Catastrophe, Risk and Resilience ( Baton Rouge, 2018). Her current book project is a transnational study of the Plague of Provence of 1720 (“Great Plague of Marseille”), one of the last outbreaks of plague in Western Europe. Beyond the classroom, she is a co-founder, executive editor, and contributor for the digital academic publication, Age of Revolutions (www. ageofrevolutions.com).
Lori Jones i s a historian of medieval and early modern medicine at Carleton University and the University of Ottawa. After receiving her PhD in history at the University of Ottawa, she held consecutive post- doctoral fellowships at Carleton University funded by the Associated Medical Services and Nova Scotia Health Research Foundation and by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. Her research focuses on plague texts and images and on early modern medical manuscripts. She is the author of Patterns of Plague: Changing Ideas about Plague in England and France, 1348–1750 ( Montreal, 2022) and co- editor of Death and Disease in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Perspectives From Across the Mediterranean and Beyond (York, 2022) with Nükhet Varlık. She has also published several book chapters and journal articles on plague treatises and images.
Courtney Krolikowski i s a PhD candidate in the Department of History and Classical Studies at McGill University in Montreal, Quebec, working under the supervision of Dr. Faith Wallis. Her current research explores the status of lepers in Bologna, Italy, in the High Middle Ages with a focus on the interaction of the social, religious, and medical aspects of the disease as well as arguing for the inclusion of leprosy in the cadre of medieval disabilities. She co- organized the “L eprosy and the ‘L eper’ Reconsidered” Conference in 2018 at McGill University with Anna Peterson.
Guillaume Linte h as a PhD in history from the University of Paris-E st. His thesis focused on naval medicine and health issues related to transoceanic travel in France during the early modern period. He is currently a Swiss National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Researcher at the Institute for Ethics, History, and the Humanities (i EH2) at the University of Geneva. His research interests include the history of health, science, and colonization. He is the author of several articles and book chapters dealing with the history of medicine in France and its Empire during the early modern period, and the Portuguese expeditions to Africa in the fifteenth century.
List of Contributors xv
Anna M. Peterson earned her PhD in medieval history from the University of St Andrews in 2017, was awarded a Mellon Fellowship at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies ( Toronto) from 2018 to 2019, and is currently an adjunct at the Universidad Europea Miguel de Cervantes. Her research has focused on assistive institutions in France and Italy, especially on their relationship with religious and secular bodies as well as responses to corruption. She is the co-founder of “Leprosy and the ‘Leper’ Reconsidered” along with Courtney Krolikoski. Currently, she is a member of the project Hermenéutica del Cuerpo Visible: Conceptualizaciones y Prácticas en la Medicina Medieval de Tradición Latina/Hermeneutics of the Visible Body: Conceptualisations and Practices in Medieval Medicine in the Latin Tradition (PID2019–107671GB-I00).
Nükhet Varlık i s Associate Professor of History at Rutgers University –Newark. She is a historian of the Ottoman Empire interested in disease, medicine, and public health. She is the author of Plague and Empire in the Early Modern Mediterranean World: The Ottoman Experience, 1347–1600 (Cambridge, 2015), editor of Plague and Contagion in the Islamic Mediterranean ( Kalamazoo, 2017), and co- editor of Death and Disease in the Medieval and Early Modern World: Perspectives From Across the Mediterranean and Beyond (York, 2022) with Lori Jones. Her new book project, Empire, Ecology, and Plague: Rethinking the Second Pandemic (ca.1340s– ca. 1940s), examines the 600-year- old Ottoman plague experience in a global ecological context. She is involved in the Black Death Digital Archive and contributes to multidisciplinary research projects that incorporate perspectives from palaeogenetics, bioarchaeology, disease ecology, and climate science into historical inquiry.
Introduction Diseases in Historical Environments
Lori Jones
This volume offers an interdisciplinary examination of the intertwined rel ationships between humans, the natural and manmade environments, and disease in the medieval and early modern worlds. Recognizing the inherent value of studies that offer a more holistic view of the past and that generate new insights, it brings together environmental and human perspectives and engages with both historians and scientists. Being mindful that pre-modern environments and disease clearly recognized no boundaries – just as they do not today – the volume includes studies that touch on Europe, the wider Mediterranean world, Asia, Africa, and the Americas. People throughout western Eurasia, North Africa, and around the Mediterranean basin lived in similar disease and mortality environments and imposed their thinking about what constituted a healthy environment onto regions further away; what we thus learn by stepping beyond Europe’s borders helps us to better understand that “European” history of disease and the environment cannot be understood in a vacuum. The volume’s longue durée time frame, stretching from the High Middle Ages to the dawn of the modern era, also bypasses traditional periodization, since environmental challenges and peoples’ responses to them did not suddenly shift gears once an imaginary timeline was crossed.
In the twenty-f irst century, we are facing and attempting to manage accelerating climate change, environmental encroachment and degradation, and unprecedented extinction of species and loss of biodiversity – together with what sometimes seems to be a growing flood of emerging and re- emerging diseases. More than fifty serious outbreaks of emerging (i.e., newly recognized) or re- emerging (i.e., resurging after a period of quiet, appearing in new locations, or of drug-resistant variants) infectious diseases have been recorded since 1998 ( Public Health England 2019). Urgency gives us a new sense that we need a longer view of human responses and interactions with the airs, waters, and places in which we live, and a greater understanding of the activities and attitudes that have led us to today. The salient questions explored in the volume are, what are the deeper patterns in thinking about disease and the environment? What can we know about the environmental and ecological parameters of emergent human diseases over a longer period
2 Lori Jones
of time – aspects of disease that persons at the time were not in a position to
know or understand in the way that we do today?
Interactions between humans and their environments in the past have af-
fected the environment that we now live in; indeed, many of our current
challenges can be better understood through a thorough knowledge and un-
derstanding of what transpired in the past At the same time, we must rec-
ognize that humans and human societies have never stood apart from the
environments in which they existed. Humans have significantly altered dis-
parate landscapes – and to an extent the entire planet – for more than 40,000
years, likely over 100,000. We are patch disturbers. And human decisions
and human actions have contributed to today ’ s global climate crisis, of that
there is no doubt. Yet it is not solely human agency that drives environmental
change over time, and stepping beyond the anthropocentric gaze that has so
long dominated our thinking allows us to see humans as actors in an envi-
ronment over which they do not always have control
Environmental history scholarship in the French tradition – notably the
Annales school with its emphasis on the longue durée – paid significant atten-
tion to geography, the environment, and the climate as historical influenc-
ers Pioneering work by Fernand Braudel (1972–73, 1949) focused explicitly
on how slow, at times imperceptible, changes in the environment impacted
social organization and culture. Braudel’ s Annales successor, Emmanuel Le
Roy Ladurie, also explored in some detail the impact of long-term shifts in
the environment on the human condition, intertwining them with political,
cultural, economic, and social change (Le Roy Ladurie 2004–2009, 1967); he
was also among the first to specifically explore the environmental globaliza-
tion of disease (Le Roy Ladurie 1981) The early Anglo-American tradition –
led in the 1960s and 1970s by Hubert H Lamb (1977, 1966) and Clarence
G
lacken (1967), among others – tended instead to look at humans and their
interactions with the environment, exploring climatic and landscape change
over time within familiar European historical temporal and spatial frame-
works (McNeill, 2010a, 2003) Despite Le Roy Ladurie ’ s earlier broaching
of the topic, it wasn ’t really until Alfred W Crosby ’ s works appeared – The
Columbian Exchange: Biological and Cultural Consequences of 1492 (1972) and
Ecological Imperialism: The Biological Expansion of Europe, 900–1900 (1986) –
that diseases of plants, animals, and humans were systematically pulled into
the broader temporal/spatial narratives of human and environmental history.
Crosby examined the ecological underpinnings and impacts of a European
expansion and colonialism endeavour that substantially altered environmen-
tal and disease landscapes along with their human populations in Europe,
Asia, and the Americas Subsequent scholars adapted the scope of Crosby ’ s
take on history-through-ecology and disease to explore Africa (Curtin 1998),
China (Elvin and Ts ’ ui-jung 1998; Marks 1998), the Indian Ocean (Arnold
1991), and England (Dobson 1997), among other places
Over the past twenty years, much additional scholarship has followed, as
historians and other scholars have explored environment–disease links in p y g y p g
Introduction 3
specific pre-modern geographical regions, including China ( Marks 2017), Egypt ( Borsch 2005; Derr 2019; Mikhail 2012), the Mediterranean littoral ( Davis 2007; Gratien 2017; Tabak 2009), Africa (Akyeampong 2006), Eurasia (Campbell 2016; Green 2018), and the American and Indian colonies (Sivaramakrishnan 2011; Wear 2011). Cross- cultural approaches to the topic have also appeared recently ( Bretelle-E stablet et al. 2019). The impact of disease on entire ancient civilizations, such as Neolithic societies or the Roman Empire, has likewise received attention ( Harper 2016; 2017; Little 2007; Rascovan et al. 2019; Selassie 2011). Others have examined how, in the very act of creating civilization – which inherently required environmental transformation – a nd then revising, expanding, and transferring that civilization to new regions of the globe, human beings have constantly altered their surroundings and created conditions suitable for the emergence and spread of disease ( Barrett and Armelagos 2013; Kenny 2021; King et al. 2017). Further studies have explored the role of climate change(s), natural disasters, as well as human intervention in the environment, among other factors, on the creation, evolution, and maintenance of actual or perceived pre-modern disease ecologies or regimes around the globe (Cagle 2015; Campbell 2016; Dey 2018; McCandless 2011; McNeill 2010b; Sallares 2002; 2006; Varlık 2015; Warren 2020; Webster 2021; White 2010; Ziegler 2016b). Recent work has, moreover, taken Crosby and Le Roy Ladurie’s ideas even further back in time to explore the deep-in-time historical globalization of infectious disease (Green 2017).
Humans have not, however, always behaved or thought themselves at the mercy of unmanageable environmental threats, including diseases. Instead, they have actively sought to manage them. By identifying and distinguishing between healthy and unhealthy landscapes and climates, the original Hippocratic Airs, Waters, and Places (fifth century BCE) instructed itinerant healers how to deflect dis- ease onto the local environment and underlay medieval and early modern understanding of the relationship between environments and the generation of disease ( Wear 2008). The resultant attempts to manage potentially diseased environments – what we might consider to be the origins of public health – h ave become another rich field of study in recent years (Ciecieznski 2013; Coomans 2021; Fay 2015; Geltner 2013; 2019; Jørgensen 2013; Rawcliffe 2013; Rawcliffe and Weeda 2019; Zaneri and Geltner 2020). Victorian portrayals of medieval and early modern cities and towns as rubbish- strewn dung heaps inhabited by mangy dogs, poxy livestock, and humans too ignorant and apathetic to improve them have largely been dispelled. Indeed, it has been established beyond doubt that medieval and early modern city governments and their inhabitants were concerned about hygiene and managing the spread of disease. Many pre-modern cities left much to be desired when judged by modern sensitivities, yet by taking account of contemporary worldviews to understand the impetuses that lay behind the broad range of public works, regulations, and policies enacted to improve local environments, we can better piece together how pre-modern peoples perceived the relationship between their environments and disease.
Human agency cannot explain everything in the environment, just as historical studies alone cannot answer all the questions that new analytical technologies are bringing to the study of the environment proper: the determinants of a plague outbreak, for example, or the causes of the Little Ice Age. We thus see scholarly advances on multiple fronts. Recognition of the innate relationship between environment and disease, for example, led to the development of landscape epidemiology, a methodology that uses the “ landscape as a frame for understanding” the emergence, persistence, and transmission of disease in the environment (Ziegler 2016a, 99; see also Lambin et al. 2010 and Reisen 2010). Those diseases that have been transmitted to humans from animals, that require an insect or other living creature for their transmission, or that arise from contaminated water or food are best understood as diseases of the environment. In each case, a microbe that lives naturally in a specific environment – whether a bacterium, a virus, a fungus, or a protozoa –enters the bodies of people and causes disease. The transmission of disease is thus linked to particular landscapes, and often to human encroachment into them, disruption of them, or, in some cases, the very creation of them (think of mosquito- borne diseases increasing in areas where humans have created ideal conditions for mosquitoes: standing pools of water in discarded tires, for example).
While descriptive studies of premodern landscapes, including changes to human- dominated spaces, have much explanatory value, it has increasingly been recognized that studying, and attempting to understand, interrelationships between the environment and disease in the past requires information far beyond that left behind by human activities and studied by historians. Scientific fields, such as archaeology, palaeogenetics, bio- and medical anthropology, climatology, and more, have much to offer and allow us to think much more broadly, forcing us, in some cases, to revisit our texts and documentary evidence with new questions. Advances in the palaeosciences, for example, have allowed the legacy of Crosby’s scope to be narrowed to the level of microscopic pathogens, showing how (or at least, asking how) the environment enabled the emergence, spread, and, eventually, “settling in” of longstanding s ylvatic – or wild animal – d iseases into new hosts, humans. Plague is at the forefront of these new studies, and efforts to reconstruct an environmental history of the pathogen itself, rather than simply its appearance in human populations, is well underway ( Eroshenko et al. 2017; Kausrud et al. 2010). So too are explorations into whether (and again how) plague, initially a rodent disease of Central Asia, became endemic in parts of Europe for centuries before mysteriously disappearing once again ( Bos et al. 2016; Carmichael 2014; Morozova et al. 2020; Siefert et al. 2016; Spyrou et al. 2019). Studies of other pathogens are following suit to show how, for example, diseases changed genetically as they spread across and through different environments (Green 2017; Green and Jones 2020).
Bioarchaeologists too are uncovering the health impacts of climatic and environmental change on skeletal remains. Their work not only highlights
how changes in the environment affected disease patterns but also demonstrates the increased risk that the urban environment posed to the health of humans in the past, regardless of where in the world they lived ( Betsinger and DeWitte 2020; Robbins Schug 2020; Walter and DeWitte 2017). The role played by historical climates and climate change in disease generation, spread, and persistence in the past are likewise gaining attention among historians and other scholars, not only for creating the environments that are conducive to human-to-human transmission and the survival and replication of disease vectors such as insects but also for upending those environments and creating the conditions that lead to the spill over of zoonotic (animal) diseases into human populations ( Ben Ari et al. 2011; Brooke 2014; Campbell and Ludlow 2020; Green 2018; Luterbacher et al. 2020; McMichael 2017; Newfield 2016; Webb 2018).
This volume was conceived with all of this f ast-moving scholarship in m ind, and each chapter highlights some of the critical changes that have subtly (or not so subtly) been taking place in the history of pre-modern disease and the environment in recent years. Taken together, they address themes that resonate strongly today, including tensions between competing interests in how the environment is to be shaped or utilized (and, thus, its tendency towards healthiness or unhealthiness), synergies between distantly located environments, and changing ideas about what “the environment” itself entails.
The volume is organized into three overlapping sections. Section 1, “Cleansing and Managing Local Airs, Waters, and Places,” includes three chapters that explore how pre-modern people in different regions of medieval Europe perceived and responded to local threats of disease by attempting to manage their surroundings. In a sense, these chapters follow the traditional approach to humans as directors and managers who tamed and governed their environments. Yet each offers a novel approach to the documentary evidence, showing that a distinctive pre-modern environmentalism was informed by medical notions of healthscaping: policy decisions and infrastructure projects undertaken by municipal governments to create and maintain healthy environments, or alternatively to mitigate the environments that they considered to be health-h arming, throughout and beyond their cities (Geltner 2013; 2020). More than economic development or environmentalism in the modern sense, these chapters reveal wider meanings of health, environment, and civic responsibility than we see today. Taken together, they demonstrate how a shared culture of healthscaping was adapted to meet locally specific environmental challenges.
In Chapter 1, Anna M. Peterson and Courtney Krolikowski take us to t he pre-Black Death northern Italian cities of Bologna and Siena. Each city was both a powerful commercial hub and an important religious centre, in addition to developing strong municipal legislative bodies governed by comprehensive law codes. Here, we can see medieval urban environmental policy management at work. Yet, we also see here that health, disease, and even the environment in this context had much wider meanings than
they do today: morally and spiritually clean environments were as important in the urban context as was one clear of detritus and foul- smelling industrial by-products. By diving into the cities’ respective archival records to see how healthscaping policies and practices were conceived and enacted, and focusing, in particular, on the management of food, water, and assistive (i.e., charitable) institutions in the built environment, Peterson and Krolikowski demonstrate how various aspects of civic life were impacted by a desire to keep the urban environment clean, disease-free, and respectable.
In Chapter 2, Abigail Agresta turns our attention to late medieval Valenc ia, in south- eastern Spain. While urban environmental health threats in Valencia largely mirrored those faced in other medieval cities, here we find one additional key issue: water management. While a network of canals irrigated the land surrounding the city and made it one of the richest agricultural areas around the Mediterranean, not all water was created equal. Clean running water was vital to the city’s population – for drinking, turning the mill wheels that ground the city’s flour, and irrigating the crops that fed and enriched the city; but stagnant water, such as that used to flood rice fields or that settled in poorly managed canals, was believed to cause infections, illness, and death. Managing health and keeping the urban environment disease-free therefore required city officials to constantly calibrate and oversee the city’s waterways. And, as Agresta demonstrates, these very actions sometimes led to conflict between local residents when their personal interests were affected.
In contrast to northern Italy and southeastern Iberia, Lucy C. Barnhouse’s Chapter 3 on cities in the Upper Rhineland’s prosperous trading zone showcases how the promotion of moral and physical well-being in medieval towns did not necessarily require centralized governance and infrastructure or topdown control. Mainz, Worms, and Speyer each had their own set of customs and laws determining how matters of public health were negotiated. By examining each city’s legal codes, penitentiary records, business agreements, and, most interestingly, records of disputes, Barnhouse reveals that despite their lack of centralized government, municipal authorities were neither indifferent to concerns with healthful environmental management nor powerless to enact relevant legislation when necessary. Instead, public health regulation and environmental management were incorporated into each city’s customs and adapted as needed to accommodate the rights of individual citizens. Barnhouse gives us insight into the types of unhealthy or potentially diseased environments that gave rise to disputes between neighbours, including blocked wastewater channels, undesirable clientele in bathhouses, bad or offensive behaviour, and conflict over access to and proper management of wells and public latrines. Here, as in the previous chapters, we see that medieval ideas of health and disease in the urban environment were broadly conceived.
The thinking behind, and actions associated with, medieval healthscapi ng and managing the environment continued well into the early modern era. Especially during recurrent outbreaks of plague and, later, other diseases, municipal authorities across Europe stepped up their efforts to keep
their streets clean of foul- smelling, disease-inducing waste and to control the movement of people assumed to generate or carry disease, notably the poor, the criminal, and the immoral. However, these longstanding efforts also failed to control plague, and gradually eroded Europeans’ commitment to the shared cultural and religious bases of environmental responsibility that had marked the medieval era. An accumulation of disruptions to their shared sense of purpose and meaning in local healthscaping coincided with an age of exploration and colonialism that took Europeans farther afield into new, unfamiliar environments seemingly full of novel disease threats. And, as new medical and scientific thinking took hold, old ways of thinking about disease and its place in the environment started to crumble, giving rise to vigorous debate and new approaches to disease containment and management.
Three chapters in Section 2, “Recalibrating Airs, Waters, and Places: New Environments, New Mentalities,” explore how early modern Europeans began to reconsider the environmental causes of disease. Here, we see writers attempting to understand and explain the unusual environments, unfamiliar climates, and novel diseases that they faced in Africa, Asia, and the Americas. They did so, in part, by comparing them with what was familiar, ultimately deeming foreign landscapes to be unhealthy and d isease-r idden in contrast to their own purportedly healthy homelands. Here, too, we see Europeans gradually shifting the geographical and environmental origins of plague to foreign sources and foreign environments. The Plague of Provence (1720–22), in some ways, marks the culmination of these attempts: in that epidemic it is possible to trace a significant change in mentality about contagion, environment, and disease management.
As Lori Jones discusses in Chapter 4, when the Black Death struck med ieval Eurasia, the Hippocratic Airs, Waters, and Places tradition was easily incorporated into medical writers’ attempts to explain the origin and cause of plague. Plague tract authors pointed to domestic environments, including ubiquitous swamps, marshes, and foul- smelling urban industries, to explain local outbreaks. Mitigation efforts, in turn, focused on cleaning up these local sites of disease. Yet, as Jones’s analysis of English and French plague treatises reveals, although the overall environment– d isease relationship remained largely intact in these texts across the centuries, changing medical norms and contemporary socio- c ultural and political considerations ultimately shifted the location of places that tract writers associated with plague. Before the early eighteenth century and the great outbreak in southern France, plagued environments were re-located from localized European spaces to definitively foreign sites. The Ottoman Empire – long stereotyped as a despotic, violent, terror-inducing regime, and its people as immoral and religiously suspect –became the plaguescape par excellence, its crowded streets and stagnant swamps blamed for outbreaks that reached European cities. As outbreaks continued there with force after they appeared to have declined in the West, the assumption that plague had always come from the diseased environments of the eastern Mediterranean became entrenched in modern historiography.
Cindy Ermus maintains our focus on the Plague of Provence (1720–22) in Chapter 5, arguing that it is here where we can start to see that the management of disasters, including disease outbreaks, was predicated on different methods and based on different understandings of the relationship between contagion and the environment. Although the Lisbon earthquake of 1755 is often credited with instigating new intellectual inquiry into the nature of environmental disasters, Ermus shows that we should look instead to the Plague of Provence for the origins of this change in mentality. What sets the response to this large outbreak apart from those of previous eras is less the street-level actions taken to manage the disease than its highly centralized nature – w ith the regent in Paris deploying military commanders with unlimited authority to manage the crisis under martial law, thereby bypassing and overruling municipal efforts – and underlying thought processes about the nature of contagion. This was an era of vociferous debate between those who continued to believe that diseases arose in polluted environments that gave rise to corrupted air, called miasma, and those who believed more stridently in contagion and the possibility that disease was transmitted from person to person. The contagionists ultimately won the day, and their push for centralized trade embargoes, sanitary lines, and quarantines marked a distinctive shift in how disease outbreaks were managed in the decades and centuries to come.
In Chapter 6, Guillaume Linte further explores the theme of foreign disease environments by examining the early modern development of medical literature on exotic diseases, a key concern of which was the health of Europeans living in hot countries or climates. From the sixteenth century, overseas voyages to the south and east required travelling through the so- called Torrid Zone, located between the Tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. Not only did explorers pass through the region, but colonies and trading posts, meant for the spice and slave trades, were also established within it. A variety of environments – the West African coasts, the Caribbean islands, and the Indian peninsula – then witnessed a growing European presence over the following centuries. Yet this tropical region embodied difficult living conditions, and it logically ensued that the health of those who travelled or settled there would be negatively affected. At the crossroads of medicine and geography, literature on exotic diseases, produced primarily by physicians and surgeons who served aboard ships or in the colonies, provided key inputs for contemporary understanding of intertropical environments – and particular the rain that was deemed to be especially disease-inducing.
Recurrent plague was one of the many reasons traditional environmental notions frayed across the centuries, and it affected how contemporary European writers perceived diseased spaces elsewhere. Modern study of those recurrent outbreaks, in turn, gave rise to another dramatic intellectual reversal in the twentieth century: prominent medievalists and early modernists up to the end of the 1990s who had argued that Yersinia pestis (the pathogen that causes plague) could not have caused the massive and recurrent epidemics
Introduction 9 in Europe were proven incorrect. Their arguments were based largely on the apparently different manifestations (seasonality, mortality, speed of transmission) of the disease in the European past and the more recent (i.e., late nineteenth century) Asian outbreaks, as well as the fact that no sizeable epidemics had occurred in Europe since the 1700s (for a summary, see Green 2014 and Little 2011). The ideas invented in the early modern era (Chapters 4 and 5) that plague was repeatedly imported from the East and that new ideas of public health control (Chapter 5) – in contrast to longstanding medieval healthscaping efforts (Chapters 1–3) – f inally freed Europeans of this menace, remained popular among historians until very recently. So too were ideas that foreign environments were especially unhealthy (Chapters 4 and 6). Many of these ideas are now being discarded, with modern science in many respects furnishing new information that enables us to revisit historical “ facts.” Jones ended Chapter 4, for example, with the recognition, emerging from recent studies, that local environments most likely did figure prominently in the generation of recurrent plague outbreaks across medieval and early modern Eurasia. Wild animal reservoirs of Y. pestis plausibly became established in a variety of regions, each comprising a different animal species suited to a locally specific environment. Furthermore, diverse local ecologies and climates both generated new strains of plague and caused it to behave differently from one place to another (Green 2020).
This turn to modern science leads us into Section 3, “ Science Meets Historical Disease Environments.” The three chapters in this final section address the “now what?” predicament – how do we need to think about the past and its dramatic pestilences now that we know with certainty that Y. pestis was involved in large- scale outbreaks? How do we need to think about the relationship between other diseases and the environment in the past? We return to the urgency, not just because the technologies and possibilities for scientific analysis are amazing, but because we now are ourselves held down by a tenacious pandemic.
Gérard Chouin’s work in Chapter 7 acts as a bridge between all three sections of this volume. It first considers the origins and persistence of a longstanding narrative that entwines Africa, diseased environments, and death. He begins by revisiting European travelogues about the early modern Atlantic world, probing them as historical sources and reflecting critically on their contribution to the deeply rooted perception that tropical Africa represented the world’s most dangerous environment. Early modern travellers’ accounts are full of horrendous stories about the deadly or debilitating illnesses that awaited Europeans in Atlantic Africa. By unpacking the travellers’ accounts, however, Chouin dismantles what he calls the narrative “smokescreen” and points towards a much more complex picture than that offered by a superficial reading of the socially and culturally constructed seventeenth- century travel stories. He then flips the narrative on its head and takes an anthropological perspective to explore how Africans themselves conceptualized and managed their own environment and its diseases before the nineteenth century.
As we saw with the medieval European cases, African understanding of the “environment” – and of disease causation – was far more extensive than how we think of it today: it embodied not only the physical landscape but also the spiritual and social realms. Managing the multiple spheres that comprised the environment meant that pre-modern Africans had developed a complex variety of disease mitigation techniques, each targeting the suspected origin of disease.
Chouin ends his chapter with an exploration of his working hypothesis about the making, demise, or subsistence of diseases in selected regions of the African continent’s environment. Focussing on malaria and plague in particular, the former first arising in Africa and the latter being an imported disease, Chouin demonstrates how working c ross- d isciplinarily and bringing together evidence from the humanities and the sciences – including research on ancient DNA – allows us to slowly build a clearer picture of the intricate relationship between diseases and the environment in the past.
In Chapter 8, Nükhet Varlık explores these issues further as they apply t o Anatolia, in modern- day Turkey. As elsewhere across Eurasia, plague arrived in Anatolia and its surroundings in the mid-fourteenth century on the heels of political, social, and environmental crises. As the region that hosted the disease for the longest time during the Second Plague Pandemic – a full 600 years – u nderstanding what kept its plague reservoirs continuously active when they appear to have died out in Europe may help us to better comprehend the disease’s long- term rhythms, expansion, and contraction. In short, Varlık asks, what social, economic, and, especially, environmental conditions were conducive to the persistence and later disappearance of plague from this region? As she demonstrates in this chapter that engages with historical and scientific literature, we need to be looking at how reservoirs, and the wild rodent populations that comprised them, expanded and contracted over time in reaction to climatic, environmental, and humaninduced change.
In Chapter 9, Sharon DeWitte returns us to where we began: medieval Europe. Instead of looking at how communities addressed concerns with diseased environments, DeWitte demonstrates what bioarchaeological research can teach us about the impact of i nter-related crises – including dramatic climate and environmental change, plague epidemics, and massive animal die- of fs – on individual and community survivorship and health. That people’s standards of living improved following the Black Death is already well known; however, as DeWitte’s research shows, apparent gains in general health and survival might have been lost as the population and available resources achieved a new environmental equilibrium in the face of increasing urbanization and shifting climatic conditions. These findings demonstrate the dramatic effects that the interaction of natural forces (e.g., climatic conditions and disease epidemics) and anthropogenic factors (e.g., urban environments and socioeconomic disparities) had on human health in past populations.
The longstanding trend towards increasing urbanization and ongoing destruction of the natural habitat across the world means that the unhealthy conditions faced by our ancestors continue to affect us even today, evidenced by the threat posed by diseases breaking out of historically limited geographic regions and by emerging infectious diseases ( Bouchard et al. 2019; DuikWasser et al. 2021; Hassell et al. 2017; Kilpatrick et al. 2017; Mackenstedt et al. 2015; Vanwambeke et al. 2019). These threats are now appearing at a more rapid pace, evidenced by our numerous twenty-first century epidemic disease experiences: SARS (global, 2002–04), H1N1 influenza (global, 2009–10), Ebola ( West Africa, 2014–16), plague ( Democratic Republic of the Congo, 2020; Madagascar, 2014–15, 2017–18), Zika (Americas, 2015–16), yellow fever (Africa, 2016), and now COVID-19 (global, 2019–ongoing).
As we attempt to understand how “our” disease outbreaks happened, exploring the intersection between human culture and practices and naturally occurring phenomena is critical; applying our lens of enquiry to the past is equally critical if we want to understand both how the “environment” was conceived historically and how and why it (and its management) changed over time ( Hoffmann 2014). This includes how and why diseases erupted where they did and from whence they spread (Green 2017).
As the nine chapters in this volume demonstrate, the literal meaning of research – to re- search – allows us to look where we have looked repeatedly, not quite seeing what we once saw. This dialogue with the recent past is especially relevant in our modern pandemic moment, but even more so with the certainty of changing environmental conditions at a planetary scale. We particularly need to understand ourselves as actors and to comprehend the ideas that inform our assumptions and our actions. Our place in the environment is as old as we are as a species, and it is by looking to the past and understanding how our thinking about disease and the environment has changed over time, and with what successes and with what failures, that we might find our way forward into the future.
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1 “ For the Good and Pacific State of the People and the Commune ”
Healthscaping in Bologna and Siena before the Black Death (c. 1100–1348)
Anna
M. Peterson and Courtney Krolikowski
Introduction
Popular culture has conditioned us to imagine the medieval city as a place of crowded, filthy streets and dank alleys where disease ran rampant and death was everywhere.1 While this may make for gritty storytelling, it does not accurately reflect a world that sought to improve and understand its environmental surroundings. This fictionalized landscape is largely a product of the Victorian era, which, amid unrestrained industrialization, was battling its own public health crisis ( Rawcliffe 2013, 17–25). In reality, medieval cities, along with their assistive institutions, sought to maintain a healthy urban environment, both physically and spiritually, through a combination of legislation, urban planning, and charity. This is especially evident in Italy where, between 1000 and 1300 CE, the peninsula’s population increased from approximately 5.2 million to 12.5 million people. It also became one of the most urbanized and commercially successful regions in Europe (Campbell 2016, 61). At a local level, municipalities began to issue and enforce law codes, established bureaucracies, and expanded their authority over urban and the surrounding areas alike. However, these changes also brought new challenges as populations continued to swell and cities expanded rapidly ( Wickham 2016, 121– 69). Comprehensive and effective healthscaping measures were made possible, and necessary, by the changes experienced in cities during the thirteenth century.
Medieval medical literature, religious practices, and civic legislation all show deep concern for cleanliness and contamination ( Rawcliffe 2013, 20). Officials in cities such as Bologna and Siena looked to science and medicine to improve the lives of their people and their urban environments; so too did they desire to prevent corruption, support charitable activities, and promote civic religious life – a ll of which were closely tied to their local identity.
p y g y p g
20 Anna M. Peterson and Courtney Krolikowski
Taken together, these actions were part of a system of practices that can be
categorized as healthscaping, a term that has only recently been applied to
the medieval period Guy Geltner, who spearheaded the use of healthscap-
ing in his study of medieval public health, defines it as “ a physical, social,
legal administrative and political process of providing [urban] environments
with the means to safeguard and improve residents ’ wellbeing ” (Geltner
2013, 396) The flexibility of this term is emblematic of local authorities ’
non-linear approach to the care and protection of their populaces; it also
makes clear that contemporary medical theories and practices impacted how
urban centres approached healthscaping. The extant evidence, however, of-
ten makes it difficult to determine how effective these policies actually were.
This challenge does not make the exploration of healthscaping any less val-
uable for historians seeking to understand how city officials cared for their
populations
This chapter discusses how various healthscaping policies and practices
were conceived and enacted in two northern Italian cities between the
twelfth and mid-fourteenth centuries: Bologna and Siena These two cities
make for fertile comparison since each was both a powerful commercial hub
in its respective region and an important religious centre The political tra-
jectory of the two cities was also similar as each developed strong municipal
legislative bodies in the thirteenth century, including comprehensive law
codes. The healthscaping policies that emerged in Bologna and Siena were
largely shaped by contemporary understandings of health and disease and
demonstrate how various aspects of civic life were impacted by the desire to
keep urban spaces clean and respectable, and to ensure the health of all, no
matter their social class or status The chapter begins with a brief introduc-
tion to medieval medical theories and the governing bodies charged with
public health in each city Next, it explores the built environments, using
food and water to illustrate how healthscaping worked in practice Finally, it
analyses how the charitable practices undertaken by each commune and as-
sistive institution embraced the spiritual aspect of healthscaping A good city
was a healthy city – morally, spiritually, and physically – and both Bologna
and Siena aimed to be just that.
Medieval Medicine and Healthscaping
While the concept of healthscaping is a modern historiographical con-
struct, the model helps historians to contextualize how contemporary
medical theories, even superficially, influenced the ways in which officials
in Bologna and Siena approached the care of their respective populations
During the Twelfth-Century Renaissance, the works of Hippocrates (d
c 370 BCE), Galen (d 216 CE), and other renowned Greek and Arab phy-
sicians were, in a sense, “ rediscovered, ” translated from Arabic to Latin,
and circulated throughout Europe These texts helped to revolutionize
the study and practice of medicine; through them, physicians and scholars came to understand that the maintenance of health depended upon a system of “comprehensive, but essentially simple, holistic principles” ( Rawcliffe 2013, 55). The universe was understood to be comprised of four elements (earth, air, fire, and water) and the human body, as its microcosm, included four humours ( black bile, blood, yellow bile, and phlegm) that each manifested two basic qualities ( hot or cold and wet or dry). In this system, blood was warm and moist, like air; yellow bile was hot and dry, like fire; black bile was cold and dry, like earth; and phlegm was cool and wet, like water. Furthermore, each person had an individual complexion, meaning a unique configuration of the humours that was specific to them ( Demaitre 2013, 16). In a healthy body, the humours were in balance; an excess of any humour was expelled through urine, faeces, hair, or mucus before they could cause harm. Illness or disease meant that the body was suffering from the overproduction, corruption, or retention of one or more humours. This system became known as humouralism, and it remained the dominant theoretical model of health and disease into the nineteenth century.
Unfortunately, the human body rarely remained healthy. According to G alenic theory, the six res non naturales (non-naturals) affected the humoural balance and, thus, a person’s health ( Berryman 2012, 210; García Ballester 1993, 105–15). Non-naturals were the external forces and behavioural factors that influenced the body: air, food and drink, exercise and rest, sleep and wakefulness, secretion and excretion, and mental affections or emotions. Medieval medical science also taught that the absorption of images and scents through the sensory organs significantly impacted the body. Pleasing sights and clean air were beneficial to health, while bad smells from rotting corpses, old foodstuffs, excrement, and stagnant water would infect the air and cause anyone who was exposed to it to suffer from its corruption (Ciecieznski 2013, 92). It was believed, therefore, that through the careful manipulation of the non-naturals and the environment it was possible to mitigate disease (Gil Sotres 1998, 298–314).
The influence of Galenic theory can be observed in the healthscaping polic ies issued by the municipalities in Bologna and Siena, as well as elsewhere in Europe. Legislation addressing hygiene and sanitation put medieval medicine into practice (Ciecieznski 2013, 92). Significant effort was put into cleaning streets, waterways, and markets in hopes of preserving the city’s health and beauty ( Bocchi 1990, 72–76; Geltner 2014, 307–11). For example, human and animal waste, refuse from tanneries or butchers, and household trash were all issues that European cities sought to regulate and control (Coomans 2019, 88–93; Geltner 2013, 399– 402; 2014, 311–16; Rawcliffe 2012, 177–95). Anything that hindered the supply or quality of public necessities was of particular interest to both Bologna’s and Siena’s governments. Since it was impossible to eliminate many sources of pollution, as they often went hand in hand with the industries vital to the city’s economy, governments sought to
22 Anna M. Peterson and Courtney Krolikowski
contain their effects as much as possible, often through legislation and penalties if such laws were broken.
Governing Bologna and Siena
The conjuncture of the institutionalization of medieval society, the growth of administrative and governmental bodies, and the rise of healthscaping policies in the thirteenth century was not a coincidence. As towns and cities experienced an influx of people, wealth, and trade and as the role and authority of local officials began to grow, healthscaping became essential ( Wickham 2016, 164). By exerting more control over the regulation and development of the urban environment, municipal bodies were able to directly respond to the needs of their cities, specifically through healthscaping policies. During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, Bologna and Siena each introduced a significant amount of health-related legislation that impacted the use of public spaces and regulated private behaviour. These sanitary laws were not “ hollow threats or hopeless ambitions” because violators were actively punished (Coomans 2019, 86). Before discussing these measures, though, it is important to understand what institutions and administrative frameworks were tasked with creating and enforcing them.
In Bologna, the end of the twelfth century witnessed conflict within the c ity’s oligarchy. This culminated in 1195 when the structure of the commune’s government was changed. Now led by the podestà , a foreign-born man 2 with legal training ( Vigueur 2000), and a council of judges, collaborators, milites ( knights), and notaries, the government aimed to reform the city’s financial offices. The council adopted the name Consiglio di credenza , ultimately growing to include one hundred representatives from the wealthier segments of society. The Consiglio was responsible for electing all communal officials who, in turn, comprised a curia that worked alongside the podestà In 1217, the Consiglio Generale was formed, which allowed representatives of the popular class to be directly involved in the local government. However, by the middle of the thirteenth century, the government structure changed once again. This shift resulted in Bologna being run predominantly by corporate associations and popular societies, namely, guilds and arms societies. Together, they formed the popolo, a political group that aimed to protect the interests of commoners – who, in many cases, were wealthy businessmen and merchants – against the city’s nobility. In 1255, the position of the Capitano del Popolo (captain of the popolo) was officially recognized as the head of the popolo’s political structure. Together, these groups and individuals became tremendously powerful and influential in the city’s operation.
This chapter focuses primarily on the Bolognese Statuti (city statutes) enacted between 1248 and 1335. Statutes regulating the Bolognese Commune were written and collected as early as the twelfth century, addressing the norms issued by the podestà , Capitano del Popolo, and other communal bodies. The Statuti were cohesive, organized, and structured volumes, with the first
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faits de mon existence injuste et stupide. Des perroquets sanglants tombaient dans des arbres, des cerfs bramaient désespérément, des singes pleuraient sur leurs morts, des troupeaux de buffles fuyaient, des hiboux battaient des ailes, des geais bleus palpitaient, un grand œil de tigre saignait. Et moi, le tueur de bêtes, la main étendue, au milieu de ces images extravagantes, je prononçais la formule du serment inique.
Cela ne dura, cela ne put durer assurément que quelques secondes. Mais pendant ce temps rapide, ce temps éternel, mon esprit dédoublé avec une lucidité extraordinaire était fixé sur le visage du juge et suivait les changements de sa physionomie.
Ses petits yeux s’étaient fixés d’abord au hasard et avec indifférence sur un coin de la table qui était devant lui et qu’il tapotait de la main, comme quelqu’un qui attend la fin d’une chose sans importance. L’absence de timbre de ma voix le fit me regarder bien en face en même temps que sa main s’immobilisait. Et pendant que je prononçais la formule, une grande attention cristallisa ses traits, ses yeux minuscules s’allumèrent et je vis, à n’en pas douter, la clarté de la vérité apparaître sur son visage large et le transformer.
J’en fus tellement sûr que j’en éprouvai une sensation de soulagement infini et que je fus tenté de l’interpeller pour lui affirmer que ce qu’il pensait était vrai et que j’étais en train de faire un faux serment.
Ah ! s’il avait tenté de me confondre, de prendre la défense de l’homme sans classe, injustement accusé, je crois que je l’aurais serré sur mon cœur pour cette lumière d’intégrité que j’avais aperçue dans son regard.
Mais c’était un lâche comme les autres et comme moi-même. Avait-on jamais entendu parler d’un juge accusant d’un faux serment un Européen riche et connu pour défendre un vagabond ?
La lumière de justice s’effaça sur le visage du juge. Derrière lui les bêtes disparurent, les Himalayas neigeux redevinrent des murs de tribunal. L’ordre social qui avait un instant failli être troublé par le
mensonge d’un honorable gentleman, l’éclair de perspicacité d’un juge se reconstitua autour de moi avec son impitoyable puissance.
J’entendis une voix indifférente qui prononçait le minimum de la peine que la loi anglaise prescrit pour vol reconnu.
Dans le brouhaha qui suivit je retrouvai mon assurance. Le marchand de chapeaux s’indignait qu’un voleur ne fût condamné qu’à quinze jours de prison, sans la peine corporelle du fouet que l’on inflige, d’ordinaire, dans des cas semblables. Je vis le vieillard du faubourg Choulia s’élancer, au moment où l’accusé allait disparaître par la porte basse. Il tomba plutôt qu’il ne se prosterna et saisissant un pan de la jaquette élimée de l’homme il la baisa religieusement.
Je ne sais pas si le sergent des cipayes me salua quand je sortis. Je traversais la place d’un pas rapide, quand j’entendis quelqu’un qui courait derrière moi. Je me retournai et je vis monsieur Muhcin. Il avait dû assister à la séance du tribunal. Il paraissait très ému. Je lui tendis la main, mais il ne la prit pas, il resta quelques secondes silencieux puis, faisant un effort, d’une voix basse mais résolue, il me dit :
— Il vous est arrivé souvent, avec votre père que j’aimais, et encore maintenant, il vous arrive parfois de vous arrêter dans ma boutique, comme chez un ami. Je vous prie, désormais, de n’en plus rien faire. Vous pourriez rencontrer, quand il sera sorti de prison, le voleur de votre chapeau et je ne voudrais pas l’exposer à cette rencontre.
Monsieur Muhcin parlait avec une fermeté que je ne lui avais jamais connue. Je gardai le silence.
— Les hommes qui sont trop différents les uns des autres, repritil, doivent rester séparés. Je vous serais reconnaissant de considérer désormais que nous ne nous connaissons pas. J’éviterai même de vous dire bonjour si je vous rencontre, et je vous prie de faire de même.
Je continuai à me taire. Alors monsieur Muhcin se tourna brusquement et s’éloigna à petits pas.
LES SAM-SINGS
Il n’y a pas de mystère qui nous soit extérieur. Tout est en nous, et quand une lumière s’allume, c’est d’une façon brusque. Peut-être l’huile de la lampe a-t-elle été versée depuis longtemps, la mèche mouchée à notre insu mais la clarté est soudaine.
Mon cousin, le sot de Goa était de passage à Singapour.
Il n’était pas aussi sot que je l’avais cru. Il ne s’occupait que d’écailles, dont il faisait le commerce. Il n’aimait parler que d’écailles, toucher que des écailles, il les comparait, les évaluait, les achetait avec amour. Mais c’est une solution convenable à la vie que de se spécialiser dans l’étude d’une forme de la matière et d’en chérir les variétés infinies.
Il était mon hôte, et ce fut pour l’obliger, pour lui tenir compagnie, connaître la difficulté qu’il avait à se procurer des écailles jaspées et des écailles de l’Ile de la Réunion que je le suivis, ce soir-là, à travers le quartier pourri du vieux port, sur la bosse du chameau, dans la fumerie où l’on pénètre en passant sous la porte du Tigre.
Inès avait souri d’un étrange sourire chargé d’une satisfaction contenue, quand nous avions exprimé notre intention de sortir sans elle.
— Je sortirai sans doute aussi, avait-elle dit, et je rentrerai peutêtre tard.
Le Chinois saluait, l’escalier était gluant comme lorsque j’avais pénétré là pour la première fois, l’air était opaque et étouffant, les mêmes formes étaient étendues auprès des petites lampes, rien n’était changé dans la fumerie. Je remarquai pourtant dans l’obséquiosité du Chinois en nous indiquant une natte près de la fenêtre, un je ne sais quoi de haineux et de terrifié, une manière
d’éviter de frôler mes vêtements, qu’il n’avait pas eue lors de ma première visite.
Notre entrée avait suscité des chuchotements, et lorsque nous nous fûmes installés à droite et à gauche de la lampe, nos voisins immédiats, des Malais ou des Hindous, que sais-je ? se levèrent silencieusement et allèrent s’étendre un peu plus loin, dans la fumée à travers laquelle nous distinguions des éclairs de regards hostiles.
Mon cousin me le fit remarquer avec une certaine crainte et me demanda s’il n’était pas plus opportun de repartir. Mais je souris en lui montrant ma cravache que j’avais posée à côté de moi.
D’ailleurs, il avait commencé la description de certaines incrustations que des artistes de Delhi font sur des écailles parfaitement blanches dont on fabrique des boîtes de grand prix. Il brûlait de continuer. Il continua en faisant griller avec agilité l’opium sur la lampe, en fumant et en me faisant fumer.
Et ce fut dans cette nuit, au milieu des évocations de boîtes blanches garnies d’émaux de Delhi, d’éventails dont les tissus viennent de Perse, de peignes dont le travail a d’incomparables spécialistes à Benarès que s’alluma parmi les petites lampes qui jonchaient le sol, parmi les nattes et les coussins de cuir dur, une lampe que mon cousin ne vit pas, qu’ignorèrent les misérables hommes de la fumerie, une lampe invisible, une éclatante lampe intérieure.
Du temps avait passé. Combien d’heures, je ne sais pas. Cela commença par l’envie étrange, monstrueuse, inattendue, de caresser un lézard. Je ressentis au bout de mes doigts l’appétence impérieuse d’une caresse légère sur une petite tête glacée.
Mon cousin aux écailles était en face de moi, mais il tournait le dos à la fenêtre, tandis que j’étais, au contraire, face à elle en sorte que je ne pouvais voir ce qui se passait dans l’intérieur de la pièce, les fumeurs étendus, ceux qui entraient et ceux qui sortaient.
Je vis mon cousin se soulever un peu sur un coude et promener un regard circulaire rempli d’inquiétude sur la région fumeuse qui était derrière moi.
— Nous ne sommes plus en sûreté, me dit-il à voix basse, en se penchant de mon côté.
Je répondis par un léger sifflement musical.
— Pourquoi siffles-tu ? me dit-il surpris.
— C’est avec l’espoir d’apprivoiser un lézard. N’y en a-t-il pas quelques-uns autour de nous ?
— Il s’agit bien de lézards ! répondit mon cousin. Je crois que nous nous sommes fourvoyés au milieu d’une bande de Sam-Sings.
Singapour était terrorisé, à cette époque, par une société secrète chinoise que l’on appelait la société des Sam-Sings. C’est à elle que l’on attribuait tous les vols et tous les crimes qui se commettaient non seulement dans l’île, mais dans toute la Malaisie.
Il y a près de la porte, reprit mon cousin, un conciliabule de gens de mauvaise mine que je reconnais pour des Sam-Sings et le Chinois, tenancier de cette maison, vient de nous désigner à eux par un signe de tête épouvantable.
J’avais beaucoup fumé et j’éprouvais, sous l’influence de l’opium, une béatitude physique délicieuse, un optimisme parfait, en même temps qu’un désir d’immobilité. Toutes les choses me paraissaient harmonieuses autour de moi et il ne me manquait que la présence d’un de ces petits lézards si fréquents dans les maisons de Malaisie.
Je rassurai mon cousin de mon mieux. Nous étions entourés de gens excellents. Je connaissais le Chinois tenancier de la porte du Tigre. D’ailleurs personne à Singapour n’oserait attaquer un homme tel que moi. Puis j’étais décidé à ne faire aucun mouvement.
Je n’avais même pas tourné la tête. Un petit lézard venait d’apparaître dans le rayon de mon regard. Il était sur le rebord de la fenêtre et je le vis qui glissait obliquement le long du mur.
Mais mon cousin posa la pipe qu’il tenait à la main et je vis ses yeux anxieusement fixés par-dessus moi, dans les ténèbres de la
fumerie.
— Tu as fait condamner, il y a quelque temps, m’as-tu dit, un voleur à la prison. Il doit faire partie, comme tous les voleurs, de l’association des Sam-Sings dont quelques membres doivent être les habitués de cette maison louche. Il est vraisemblable qu’ils méditent une vengeance contre toi et par conséquent contre moi qui t’accompagne.
Je fis un geste négatif. Je lui recommandai de ne pas bouger pour ne pas effrayer le lézard qui était maintenant tout près de lui et je recommençai à siffler.
Mais mon cousin qui, contrairement à ce que j’avais pensé un instant, n’était qu’un sot et un sot timoré, se dressa à demi en m’adjurant, toujours à voix basse, de me mettre en défense, car il venait de voir l’éclair d’une lame nue.
Son mouvement fit disparaître le lézard dans quelque fente du plancher.
— Il est vrai, dis-je, que les Malais excellent à lancer le kriss. Ils le font avec une rapidité déconcertante. J’ai vu des kriss enfoncés dans du bois de teck, qui est très dur, si profondément qu’on avait de la peine à les retirer.
Et je continuais à rester immobile.
J’avais prononcé ces paroles peu rassurantes pour punir mon cousin d’avoir fait fuir le lézard par la brusquerie de son mouvement. Je ne songeais pas le moins du monde à me retourner pour voir le conciliabule redoutable. Je me trouvais bien dans la position où j’étais. Je ne bougeai pas la tête d’une ligne, mais je dis machinalement, comme si ces paroles m’étaient dictées par quelqu’un, cette phrase entendue dans ce lieu même, lors de ma première visite, cette phrase qui revenait mystérieusement à ma mémoire :
— Les hommes sont d’autant plus malheureux qu’ils éprouvent plus de haine, d’autant plus heureux qu’ils aiment davantage.
Je m’étonnai moi-même de prononcer de tels mots et je vis que mon cousin partageait ma surprise car ces paroles ne correspondaient nullement à ma personnalité et aux idées que j’exprimais habituellement. Mais il avait un sujet d’intérêt plus grave et il ne releva pas ce que je venais de dire.
Il regardait toujours l’autre extrémité de la pièce pendant qu’en proie à une indifférence totale pour la sécurité ou le danger, la vie ou la mort, je respirais largement et paisiblement. Ma tranquillité était si complète que je prêtais l’oreille pour entendre si un kriss n’allait pas siffler par-dessus les têtes. Je désignai même mentalement un point du plancher où la lame, m’ayant manqué, s’enfoncerait en vibrant. Il serait grand temps, alors, de se lever et d’aviser.
Nulle lame de kriss ne vibra. Le visage de mon cousin devint peu à peu plus calme et l’expression de terreur qu’il y avait sur ses traits finit par disparaître.
— Nous l’avons échappé belle, me dit-il. Je crois que nous ne devons notre salut qu’à l’arrivée inattendue d’un homme au type indéfinissable, misérablement habillé à l’européenne avec des pantalons trop courts, qui a calmé d’un geste cette bande de forcenés.
Je voyais, à la façon dont il me regardait, que mon cousin considérait que parmi les dangers planant sur sa tête, il y avait la perte de raison de son compagnon. Aussi m’exhorta-t-il à un prompt départ. Et il ajouta :
— Ils sont tous partis maintenant.
Un immense besoin de sincérité était en moi et me poussa irrésistiblement à lui dire que je l’avais toujours considéré comme un sot, puis que je l’avais jugé moins sot, mais qu’en ce moment, j’étais revenu à ma première opinion.
Il se contenta de hocher la tête, attribuant ces paroles aux effets de l’opium et, d’une voix suppliante, il me demanda de l’accompagner pour sortir. Il était persuadé que s’il descendait l’escalier et s’il franchissait seul la porte du Tigre, sans l’égide de son compagnon, il serait à coup sûr assassiné.
Il ajoutait, mais comme une chose de moindre importance, qu’il y avait aussi péril de mort pour moi à demeurer à cette place.
Il invoqua pour vaincre mon désir d’immobilité le nom de sa mère qui l’attendait à Goa et comme je n’étais pas touché par l’image de ma vertueuse tante, que j’avais toujours jugée encore plus sotte que son fils, il nomma ma propre mère, cette sainte venue du Portugal, dont on n’a jamais prononcé en vain le nom devant moi.
Je me levai aussitôt. La fumerie était déserte. Je passai le premier. Nous sortîmes sans encombre.
LA CHANSON DU ROHI-ROHI
Je m’aperçus, avec surprise, le long du port, que pour la première fois de ma vie j’avais oublié ma cravache.
— J’irai la chercher demain, dis-je.
Mon désir d’immobilité était remplacé par une envie de course légère, de promenade indéfinie à travers l’air transparent de la nuit.
Comme mon cousin, maintenant rassuré, commençait à m’expliquer l’utilité des pattes de tortues pour la fabrication de l’écaille fondue, je profitai de l’attention qu’il portait à son sujet et d’un tournant de rue pour me mettre brusquement à courir dans une direction inverse à la sienne. Je le perdis sans difficulté.
Je franchis comme en rêve la série de ponts jetés sur les étangs qui entourent le port, je longeai les jardins de M. Whampoa, je pris la route bordant la rivière, je m’enfonçai dans l’intérieur de l’île.
J’étais possédé par une singulière allégresse. Je voyais à la clarté des étoiles pâlissantes les bungalows accrochés au flanc des collines, les jardins entourés de haies d’héliotropes sauvages et d’aloès, les avenues hâtivement taillées dans la forêt.
Il y avait sur mon passage, dans les branches des arbres, des bruits d’ailes, de vols d’oiseaux nocturnes que je mettais en fuite. Le sentiment que des créatures légères pouvaient se soulever dans l’air délicieux de la nuit, traverser les vapeurs flottantes, s’élever plus haut que la cime des arbres, me donnait un curieux sentiment d’envie, un désir de voler comme elles dans l’espace et je me surpris à ouvrir mes bras tout en courant et à les agiter comme si j’étais un homme, porteur d’ailes.
Je gravissais maintenant la pointe de Bukit-Timah afin de découvrir à son sommet la rade, le détroit, l’horizon des mers.
J’avais dépassé l’établissement des jésuites quand le pressentiment de l’aurore se répandit mystérieusement autour de moi en une confuse blancheur.
La route se terminait au sommet de la pointe par une vaste clairière et au milieu de cette clairière, dominant la masse des nopals, des aréquiers, des bambous, des banians, jaillissait, comme un balai dominateur, un prodigieux cocotier
Et à la minute où j’atteignis la clairière un rohi-rohi, oiseau minuscule, perché sur la plus haute branche de ce cocotier, commença son chant régulier, annonciateur du soleil levant.
Ma première pensée, une inexplicable pensée, telle que je n’en avais jamais eue de semblable, fut de gravir le cocotier et de chanter avec le rohi-rohi. Mais cette tentative eût été vaine vu la hauteur de l’arbre. Du reste l’oiseau se serait enfui.
J’écoutai le chant du rohi-rohi et je lui trouvai une beauté inconnue qui me remplit d’émotion. Il me sembla que je comprenais le sens profond de cette matinale harmonie. Le rohi-rohi célébrait le changement des ténèbres en clarté. Il s’était perché au sommet de l’étonnant cocotier pour contempler de ce poste vertigineux, l’apparition du soleil dans la mer de Chine et glorifier cette apparition.
Mais ce qui me troublait profondément, c’était la correspondance que j’établissais entre le chant de l’oiseau et mon propre désir intérieur de voir la lumière. Moi aussi, je sentais que le soleil levant était proche, que les ombres du mal allaient se dissiper dans la forêt de mes pensées et j’aurais voulu pouvoir regarder, du haut d’un cocotier poussé en plein ciel de l’âme, la naissance de mon soleil.
Et il y avait aussi dans le chant du rohi-rohi quelque chose que je n’avais jamais entendu et dont le sens demeurait pour moi plein de mystère. J’entendais distinctement à peu près ceci : — Nous naissons les uns des autres, nous sommes tous frères. Du sein des bêtes, l’homme a tiré sa forme. Je suis avec mon plumage et mon bec le fils du cocotier qui m’abrite et le cocotier ensoleillé tire lui-même sa substance de la terre originelle. Gloire au
soleil qui se lève pour éclairer la famille des êtres vivants ! Car nous naissons les uns des autres, nous sommes tous frères.
Je me mis sur la pointe des pieds et je tendis le cou pour distinguer le contour de l’oiseau.
Très haut, dans le ciel blanchissant, je crus voir, comme un point animé, le rohi-rohi minuscule, le miraculeux chanteur auquel j’aurais aimé être pareil. Il devait habiter sous une feuille de cet arbre azuréen et recommencer chaque matin son chant d’allégresse.
Et soudain, je fus atteint, comme par une flèche, d’une affreuse idée. Les jésuites qui habitaient un peu plus loin et dont je pouvais, de l’endroit où j’étais, distinguer la chapelle, se flattaient d’être d’habiles chasseurs. Ils mangeaient des oiseaux pour leurs repas et un vieux père, particulièrement vénéré pour sa charité, que j’avais rencontré quelques jours auparavant, m’avait dit :
— Venez donc nous voir un matin à Bukit-Timah, nous vous ferons manger un salmis de rohi-rohi.
Le merveilleux oiseau était exposé à tomber sous le plomb des pieux jésuites, des charitables pères mangeurs d’animaux. Je fus tenté d’abord de courir à la porte d’entrée de l’établissement, de la heurter de mon poing, de m’élancer dans la chapelle où l’on devait célébrer certains offices matinaux et d’intimer aux jésuites l’ordre de ne plus tuer de rohi-rohi sous peine d’avoir affaire à moi. J’avais dompté des bêtes fauves, je saurais bien dompter des jésuites.
J’avais déjà fait quelques pas quand je réfléchis et je m’arrêtai. Qui étais-je pour agir ainsi ? N’étais-je pas le tueur d’animaux par excellence, le grand chasseur des forêts de Malaisie, l’acheteur et le collectionneur des bêtes en même temps que leur bourreau ? S’il avait connu ma présence, l’inoffensif rohi-rohi aurait préféré traverser l’immense mer de Chine avec ses petites ailes plutôt que de chanter à mes côtés.
Il ne m’avait pas vu, mais il pouvait me voir et me reconnaître en vertu de ces étranges signalements d’hommes que les bêtes, même celles qui appartiennent aux espèces les moins intelligentes, se transmettent dans leur langage. Ce que j’avais de mieux à faire,
pour ne pas troubler le musicien aérien, c’était de m’éloigner doucement.
A petits pas je redescendis la route que j’avais gravie. Ma joie de naguère avait disparu. Je marchais la tête basse, sans hâte et à cause de cela je remarquai sur le sol une fourmi qui traînait avec peine une énorme brindille de bois, vers une fourmilière où d’autres fourmis vaquaient déjà à leurs étonnants travaux souterrains. Je pris la brindille et je la posai à l’entrée de la fourmilière. La fourmi laborieuse ne montra ni reconnaissance ni étonnement de l’intervention bienveillante d’un géant, mais reprit sa tâche comme si rien n’était arrivé.
Au même instant, un bruit se fit parmi les feuilles. J’aperçus la tête d’un roufsa, cerf aux cornes repliées et à longue barbe. Je vis une seconde ses yeux graves, puis j’entendis son galop précipité. Mais je n’eus pas le regret, que j’aurais éprouvé la veille, de ne pas avoir de fusil pour le tuer. J’aurais aimé, au contraire, caresser sa tête craintive, tirer sa barbe avec amitié.
Je m’étonnai moi-même d’un tel sentiment. C’était un homme nouveau qui descendait la hauteur de Bukit-Timah.
Cet homme nouveau remonta tout à coup en courant. Il tourna sans s’arrêter sur sa droite, il fit un immense détour pour s’en revenir vers Singapour, en regardant fréquemment et avec effroi derrière lui pour voir si personne ne le poursuivait.
J’avais pris, pour redescendre, la route en bordure de la rivière où j’étais passé avec Jéhovah et je venais de reconnaître l’endroit où je lui avais donné la mort. Au pied d’un nagah couvert de fleurs blanches, la trompe basse, fixant de mon côté ses petits yeux remplis de tristesse fidèle, j’avais cru voir l’éléphant couleur de cendres, qui s’était donné si entièrement à moi et que j’avais tué.
— Quel mystère que notre âme, me disais-je à moi-même en marchant dans les rues de Singapour.
Ce fut seulement devant ma porte que je pensai à Inès qui devait être inquiète de mon absence. Et je me dis à voix basse une autre parole entendue jadis dans la fumerie :
— Par l’opium l’homme est mis sur la voie où il découvre sa parenté avec l’espèce animale.
LE DÉPART D’INÈS
Je n’allai jamais chercher ma cravache. J’oubliai même jusqu’à son existence. Je ne serais pas étonné si elle se trouvait en ce moment dans un musée d’histoire naturelle de Shanghaï ou de Canton avec mon nom écrit en lettres d’or sur une banderole rouge.
Inès ne s’était montrée nullement inquiète de mon absence nocturne. Rentrée tard, comme elle l’avait dit, elle s’était couchée paisiblement, s’était réveillée dans une humeur délicieuse et était allée, en chantonnant un refrain de France, faire un tour au milieu de mes animaux. C’est alors, sans qu’on pût s’en expliquer la cause, qu’elle reçut une gifle d’un des cynocéphales buveurs de vin.
Elle poussa de grands cris et donna à Ali le Macassar l’ordre de tuer la bête à coups de revolver. Celui-ci qui connaît le prix des animaux s’y refusa. Une discussion s’ensuivit et j’arrivai sur ces entrefaites.
A peine m’en eut-on exposé les motifs que je pris la parole et en termes très vifs, je déclarai que les seuls coupables étaient ceux qui avaient assez de méchanceté pour donner du vin à des singes et je promis de les punir d’une façon exemplaire.
Je n’ignorais nullement, en parlant ainsi, que j’étais le seul à avoir fait cet apport de vin, mais j’étais pourtant sincère car je me promettais de me punir moi-même. Je donnai raison à Ali de n’avoir pas voulu tuer une bête inoffensive.
Inès ne me pardonna jamais de l’avoir laissée sans vengeance et ce fut à partir de ce jour qu’elle s’efforça quotidiennement de m’humilier en me rappelant quelle différence il y avait entre une femme de la noble famille des Almeida et un simple dompteur hollandais. Ce fut à partir de ce jour que ses sorties devinrent de
plus en plus fréquentes, ses paroles plus amères, ses demandes d’argent plus nombreuses.
Mon caractère changea. Je m’enfonçai dans de profondes méditations qui ne m’étaient pas habituelles. Je cessai de dompter les fauves. Je condamnai la porte de la galerie des animaux empaillés dont la vue m’était devenue insupportable.
Les cynocéphales n’avaient plus à boire que de l’eau. Mais à ma grande surprise ils ne retrouvèrent pas leur intelligence et continuèrent à montrer les signes de l’ivresse, à tituber, à accomplir mille actions déraisonnables.
Ce n’est qu’en faisant un retour sur moi-même, en constatant le changement apporté dans mon âme par la chanson du rohi-rohi sur la pointe de Bukit-Timah que je compris la portée secrète de certaines modifications intérieures et que, chez les hommes comme chez les singes, il y a des ivresses qui ne passent pas.
Mon cousin de Goa avait une affaire d’écailles à traiter à Batavia. Il devait repasser par Singapour avant de rentrer à Goa. Il consentit, sur mes pressantes instances à perdre les cinq ou six jours nécessaires pour aller de Batavia à Samarang et de là à l’indigoterie de Monsieur Varoga. J’attendis son retour avec une fébrile impatience. Mais bien insensé est celui qui charge un sot d’une enquête délicate !
Mon cousin était plus jeune que moi, mais il faisait partie de ces gens qui sont nés importants, qui se croient investis de la mission d’être les porte-parole de ce qui est raisonnable et moyen et qui répandent de sages conseils comme les bananiers répandent des bananes.
Je marchais depuis des heures de long en large sur le port, quand accosta le trois-mâts qui fait le service de Java à Singapour. Mon cousin débarqua le dernier. Tout de suite il me tapa sur l’épaule d’un ton protecteur et quand je l’eus fait monter en voiture et que je l’interrogeai anxieusement, il commença par me résumer les affaires
d’écailles qu’il venait de conclure. Il eut l’air de se rappeler ensuite une mission de peu d’importance dont je l’avais chargé.
J’avais une épouse belle et charmante et qui de plus était une Almeida, titre honorifique qui se faisait sentir jusque dans la bonne société de Goa, qui lui savait gré à lui personnellement d’être le cousin du mari d’une Almeida. Je devais m’en tenir là et ne plus songer à des chimères. Ces chimères lui avaient fait faire un voyage très fatigant. L’hôtel de Samarang était inhabitable. Le prix de la location des chevaux était exorbitant. Il considérait qu’il avait risqué sa vie en longeant le massif montagneux de Merbarou et de Mérapi, mais il ne le regrettait pas puisqu’il pouvait, grâce à ce voyage, ramener à la raison son cousin.
— Qu’as-tu donc appris au sujet d’Eva ? lui demandai-je pendant que mon cœur battait avec force dans ma poitrine.
— Absolument rien, répondit-il. Et j’ai déployé, pour revenir avec cette absence de nouvelles, une habileté dont tu ne peux avoir aucune idée. Je ne crois pas te faire une trop vive peine en t’annonçant la mort de M. Varoga. Tu le connaissais en somme fort peu. Il a été enterré, à la grande surprise de tous ses amis européens, selon le rite bouddhiste. Il l’avait, paraît-il, demandé avant de mourir.
Les lamas de Kobou-Dalem sont tous venus à son enterrement. Des hommes seulement. D’ailleurs l’existence d’une lamaserie de femmes n’est pas certaine. Les gens des villages que j’ai interrogés ont tous été muets à cet égard. Ils se montrent aussi très réservés en ce qui concerne la disparition d’Eva. Ils semblent considérer celle-ci comme morte. Je dis : ils semblent, parce que l’hypothèse que tu as envisagée a été envisagée par d’autres que par toi.
Mais quelle singulière mentalité que celle des Javanais et comme ils sont mystérieux ! Je n’ai pu d’ailleurs me faire comprendre d’eux que grâce à ma profonde connaissance de l’Hindoustani et surtout du dialecte Malabarais qui a beaucoup de mots communs avec le Jawo.
Mon cousin se frotta les mains avec fierté et ajouta :
— Tu aurais envoyé tout autre messager européen qu’il n’aurait rien pu apprendre de positif.
— Tu as donc appris quelque chose de positif, repris-je.
Il secoua la tête et après un assez long silence calculé, il dit :
— J’ai appris en réfléchissant que les mystères sont dangereux et mauvais parce que ce sont des mystères et que seule la tangible réalité est bonne. Pour toi, la tangible réalité est Inès.
Tu peux toujours te figurer qu’Eva ayant perdu momentanément la raison, soit à cause du caractère redoutable d’un temple et d’une forêt, soit à cause de ta propre attitude — ici mon cousin me jeta de côté en plissant les yeux, un regard empreint de ce libertinage bourgeois qui est plus odieux que la plus basse débauche, — tu peux te figurer qu’Eva a été recueillie dans une lamaserie de femmes et qu’elle y est demeurée. Tu peux te figurer que par une de ces bizarreries auxquelles les femmes sont sujettes, elle s’est plu avec des créatures ascétiques, qu’elle s’est convertie à leur culte, bouddhiste ou autre et qu’elle se promène en ce moment, vêtue d’une robe rouge, entre des murailles de terre battue, dans un des endroits les plus sauvages de la terre.
Elle aurait fait savoir dans ce cas à son père qu’elle était vivante et qu’elle ne voulait plus sortir de sa lamaserie et cela aurait permis à celui-ci de dire à quelqu’un que sa fille était morte « pour lui ».
Nous aurions pu apprendre la vérité par la bouche de M. Varoga. Mais il vient de mourir et pour tout le monde. Ce devait être d’ailleurs un singulier original, puisque, élevé dans la religion catholique, il s’est fait enterrer comme un bouddhiste. Et ceci pourrait être un indice de l’extravagante décision qu’aurait pu prendre sa fille. Il y aurait dans la famille Varoga une singulière folie de culte oriental.
Mais ce ne sont que des hypothèses et du reste à quoi bon les examiner ? Il est beaucoup plus vraisemblable et à peine plus triste de penser que cette jeune fille est morte sous la dent des fauves. La vraisemblance a une grande force. Elle est morte, mais Inès est vivante. Elle t’en veut un peu, je crois, parce qu’elle a été giflée par un singe, mais cela est de peu d’importance. Elle est assez sensible
aux hommages des Français, mais il n’y a guère de Français à Singapour. Crois-moi, le mieux pour toi est de ne plus penser à Eva.
La voiture s’arrêta devant ma maison et je ne pus rien tirer de plus de mon cousin.
Je ne m’étendrai pas sur différentes particularités du caractère d’Inès et sur sa manière de se conduire à mon égard, car elles n’ont pas de rapport avec le motif qui m’a poussé à écrire ces lignes. Je dirai seulement que l’affection que j’avais pour elle se changea en une indifférence hostile à partir du moment où je la vis, un soir de pluie, écraser avec le bout de son ombrelle les inoffensives limaces qui sortaient innocemment de la terre du jardin pour errer avec lenteur, laissant derrière elles un sillage de bave d’argent.
Elle était devenue plus gaie. Elle me parlait souvent et avec une sorte de bravade d’un délicieux Français, de famille noble, qu’elle voyait chez une de ses amies et qui s’appelait de Bourbon. Je ne lui fis jamais remarquer, pour ne pas être accusé de jalousie, que ce nom avait un caractère trop français et trop historique pour être véritable.
C’est alors que je sentis qu’elle s’était totalement détachée de moi. Et c’est juste à la même époque que commencèrent de curieuses disparitions d’objets.
Le coffret où elle mettait ses bijoux partit le premier. C’était un joli coffret persan avec une miniature sur le couvercle. Je remarquai ensuite qu’Inès ne jetait plus le soir sur ses épaules un châle des Indes en soie de Calcutta qu’elle aimait beaucoup. Je trouvai vide un tiroir où il y avait d’ordinaire des éventails et une collection de foulards multicolores.
Je croisai, un après-midi, sur la porte un matelot chargé d’un énorme paquet soigneusement emballé. Comme Inès avait l’air de veiller au départ de ce paquet, je lui demandai ce qu’il contenait. Elle me répondit avec une feinte négligence qu’elle faisait raccommoder
quelques chemises et que sa lingère avait envoyé, pour les prendre, son mari qui était matelot.
— C’était là, ajouta-t-elle, de petites choses qui ne regardaient pas les hommes.
Je me contentai de répondre en considérant l’énormité du paquet sous lequel ployait le dos robuste du mari de la lingère :
— Quelle quantité de chemises !
Je ne sais comment Inès put trouver un prétexte valable pour prononcer le nom de l’Étoile d’Argent, un superbe trois-mâts qui était en ce moment dans le port de Singapour et qui devait mettre à la voile le lendemain pour Zanzibar.
Entre tous les navires, celui-là était le seul au sujet duquel ses lèvres auraient dû rester muettes. Mais Inès appartenait à cette catégorie de femmes qui ont en elles un génie intérieur qui les oblige à dire tout ce que leur raison leur défend de dire et qu’elles ont intérêt à ne pas dire.
J’appris donc que le capitaine de l’Étoile d’Argent était un noble Français, appelé de Bourbon, qu’Inès avait eu l’occasion de rencontrer chez une de ses amies.
Et tout de suite après, comme Inès était allée faire à six heures sa promenade habituelle sur l’avenue royale, un domestique vint m’annoncer qu’il y avait dans le salon un visiteur qui n’avait pas dit son nom.
J’ai parfois des intuitions singulières. Je sus aussitôt par intuition que le visiteur qui voulait me parler était le délicieux Français d’une très ancienne famille, capitaine de l’Étoile d’Argent.
Je me rendis au salon et dès que j’en ouvris la porte je m’aperçus que je m’étais trompé. J’avais devant moi cet Italien, second de navire, que j’avais connu à Batavia et de la chambre duquel j’avais vu Eva sortir par une échelle.
Il n’avait pas vieilli. Sa moustache était retroussée et noire d’une teinture récente. Il semblait plus velu qu’auparavant et il avait ce je
ne sais quoi d’animé et de satisfait que le succès donne à certains hommes.
Il entama la conversation avec une gaîté primesautière que je ne lui avais pas connue.
Il ne m’en avait jamais voulu. La vie est une succession d’événements sans suite logique. On se perd, on se retrouve. Le monde, vaste en apparence, est quand même tout petit.
Il était heureux de m’annoncer la prospérité de ses affaires. Un groupe d’armateurs considérables avaient enfin reconnu ses capacités nautiques. Il avait le commandement de l’Étoile d’Argent et il faisait voile le lendemain pour Zanzibar. C’est à ce sujet qu’il était venu me trouver Ses armateurs étaient à Pondichéry et il ne connaissait personne à Singapour, ou presque personne.
Or, il avait besoin d’une somme liquide de cinq mille roupies pour certains frais personnels qu’il aurait à faire en arrivant à Zanzibar. Il venait me les demander. Il savait ma fortune et le peu de cas que je faisais de l’argent. Il comptait me rembourser par traites de trois mois en trois mois. Le nom de ses armateurs, la situation qu’il venait d’obtenir répondaient pour lui.
J’avais éprouvé, en ouvrant la porte du salon, une sensation désagréable lorsque j’avais constaté que mon intuition était fausse. Cette sensation désagréable avait été suivie d’une sensation agréable lorsque je m’étais aperçu que l’intuition était juste et que l’Italien que je connaissais ne faisait qu’un avec le soi-disant Français nommé de Bourbon. Car je me suis toujours enorgueilli de ce don intuitif. Et j’eus une nouvelle intuition.
L’homme en présence duquel j’étais, le commandant de l’Étoile d’Argent n’avait pu songer à moi pour le prêt d’une somme de cinq mille roupies que parce qu’Inès, ma femme, lui avait conseillé de venir me trouver. Elle seule avait pu lui dire l’incapacité dans laquelle j’étais de résister aux emprunts. Elle m’avait souvent reproché ma facilité à donner de l’argent, sauf dans les cas où elle m’en demandait elle-même. Il y avait eu entre eux une sorte de complot. Et mon intuition s’agrandissait.
