The Great Train Ride for Bassanda - Ch. 1
Chap 1
PART ONE: From the Bibliotheque to Bassanda
Recruiting with the Colonel and the General, Paris 1906
From an unpublished but full-length manuscript, later donated to the Bassanda Archives at Miskatonic: a memoir by Cécile Lapin (born Normandy c1882): explorer, code-breaker, translator, litteratrice, Bassanda political activist:
J’ai d’abord rencontré les Frères à Paris, aux alentours, je pense que 1906? au cours de mes études de langues d’Asie centrale et l’ethnographie à la Sorbonne… [1]
…Colonel Torres I first met at a café called La Closerie des Lilas at 171 Boulevard du Montparnasse, in the fall of that year—I remember that the leaves on the plane trees and chestnuts were just beginning to turn, which means it must have been late September. I had arrived at Lilas late one forenoon for a pick-me-up with my flat-mate Madeleine Froissart, after a rather dissipated evening we had spent in company with some painters and anarchists I knew in the Sixth Arrondissement. We had scanned the morning’s copy of Le Matin: the latest liberalisms from the new Radical party, reports of the Algeciras conference on the future of Morocco, illustrated features on the aging Degas and the remarkable works of the Russian primitives being exhibited by Diaghilev at Le Petit Palais—all the usual Parisian liberal news and gossip, in other words.
Madeleine saw him first. She was seated across the small wrought-iron table from me, her café-chocolat, with a small almond croissant, in front of her, and was positioned to look past me toward the façade of Lilas. She was a notorious coquette—small, pert, with blonde fine hair which she wore daringly cut short, in the style of the gamines and Bohemian literary sorts with whom she interacted at the Librairie Delamain bookshop—and she had quite an eye for exotic men. At the same time, she was bright, inquisitive, and surprisingly thoughtful: I had seen her, more than once, best a man who failed to live up to her high standards for both intelligence and conduct. At one particular moment, she raised the last of her chocolate to her lips, arching her brows, catching my eye, and then glancing meaningfully at something behind and beyond my shoulder.
I knew that signal of old—it meant a man, and probably a man who appeared to be both interesting and intelligent, as Madeleine had no use for any male who fell short in either arena. I leaned forward to adjust the laces on my high-heeled boots, a recent purchase of which I was inordinately proud; this afforded me the opportunity, as I straightened, to turn and glance briefly back toward the café.
The Westerner sat at a sidewalk table, one in the corner of the terrace commanding a good view of both the shop-front and the boulevard. He was an unusual physical and sartorial type, but ordinarily my interest would have traveled not much further: though I prided myself on the progressivism of my social perspectives in this New Century of the Woman, there was still a bit of the shy provincial in me, during that first academic year at Paris. Madeleine, however, knowing my curiosity, like a true amie brooked no hesitation. She stood and gathered her handbag and the books she had borrowed from the shop, and called aloud to the elderly waiter, “Gaspard, cannot you see that my friend Cécile is nearly famishing, and chilled besides? Please to move her to a table nearer the warmth of the interior, and to bring her petit dejeuner!”
Madeleine had noticed, of course, that the only vacant table still available on the terrace was just next to that of the Westerner. As Gaspard nodded and hastened to comply, she whispered from the corner of her mouth, “I shall expect to hear all about him at the flat tonight!” And, with a wink of one blue eye, she was gone, even as Gaspard gestured me toward the table near the Westerner.
I was not entirely sorry that she had departed. Since coming to Paris, meeting and then taking up lodgings with Madeleine had been possibly the most significant event in helping me adjust to the metropolis: I envied her chic and was grateful for her worldly-wise understanding of how to negotiate finances, neighborhoods, and men. I had, perhaps as a result of these reactions, perhaps taken on a bit too much of her own worldview, and at times I found myself chafing at my own flightiness or superficiality; I would sometimes picture, in my mind’s eye, the imagined responses of my fisherman father and outdoorsman brothers to Madeleine’s round of service work, socializing, and gossip—despite her generosity and good heart.
In truth, I was a bit bored. Madeleine’s experience and expertise had been welcome, but now I found myself chafing for something more challenging or exotic than the round of socializing, which had become wearying. I harbored a suspicion that my life was descending toward the trivial. My by-chance admission into the Sorbonne’s ethnology program had been a welcome expansion of my world, providing welcome opportunity to engage the intellect, but even that still felt bound by social expectations—this time, those of the university. So I was relieved at Madeleine’s departure, because it left me to make my own surreptitious survey of this Westerner, and to imagine, if only fancifully, how different a life his appearance suggested.
At the new table to which Gaspard conducted, I sipped my fresh café-crème and continued to leaf through the newspaper, occasionally stealing glances at the man who sat diagonally across from me. Even as the café was coming to life around us—waiters on the terrace brushing off tables and laying cloths, shaking out brooms at the curbside, the din of food vendors and auto-taxis rising on the boulevard a few feet away, the regular customers entering with boisterous commotion—he sat nearly immobile, moving only to sip his vin rouge or turn a page in the volume on his lap.
He would have been noticeable, even to a more casual observer than I, because he was so clearly not a Parisian of Le Belle Epoque: massively bearded, in worn and dusty, but good, black clothing, with olive skin deeply tanned, and long graying hair—every element of the man telegraphed the New World. He sat tilted back in his chair, one boot crossed over the other knee, a stack of books on the table and another open on his lap. There was the remnant of a charcuterie on the table, a carafe of the house red, a slouch hat such as might be worn by a guide in the American West…and a good-sized hunting knife stuck point-down in the cheese board. At Lilas it was not uncommon for people to sit over their aperitifs for quite some time, and of course there was no end of flamboyant dandies and general night-people—ticket-of-leave men, out-of-work journalists, actresses looking for new beaux, et cetera—but usually they were not quite so strikingly foreign or martial in their manner.
I found myself more and more curious about the books that were so absorbing his attention, but at that distance, was unable to make out their titles. Eventually my curiosity, about the man and what his literary tastes might reveal, overcame my sense of discretion, and I determined that I would try to catch a closer glimpse.
I had not, however, anticipated a bit of social spillover from the night before. Even as I rose to enter Lilas, order another café-crème, and perhaps investigate the Westerner further, I found myself confronted by the young painter Andreas M, a tall slender fellow to whom I had been introduced at the previous evening’s party. He was of a particular type that some women find “interesting”—pale-faced, tousle-haired, prone to complaint and entitlement—but a sort that I found to be both singularly unattractive and appallingly ubiquitous in Madeleine’s circles of painters and philosophes. He had been over-attentive the previous evening, even to the extent of unwelcome physical contact, but at the same time sufficiently impaired by drink that I had been able to slip away into the crowd of the party. Now, at his reappearance, I realized that perhaps his ego was both more fragile and more readily offended than I might have anticipated.
He took hold of my elbow and slurred, “Where did you go last night? Did you think you could just play with me and then disappear?”
Not bothering to conceal my disdain—not for nothing did I socialize with poets and satirists!—I replied, “You are unattractive, Andreas. And neither last night nor this morning represents even your inadequate best.”
I made to turn away, but his face tightened in anger and he stepped closer. He was swaying a bit and belatedly I realized he was still tipsy from the night before, though I felt no fear, because my brothers had taught me how to stand up to men. Nevertheless I knew that Andreas, though not particularly athletic or vital, was prone to using his height and masculine advantage in intimidating ways. I had heard reports of him striking other women.
I tried to pull my arm away from his grasp. I was not intimidated. Rather, I was offended at being “man-handled,” in this fashion, in a public place. But he did not let go. I realized that I might be forced to even more direct action: my brothers had taught me both how to strike, and how to avoid being struck.
He grasped my wrist and stepped still closer—close enough that I could smell the stale vermouth on his breath—and whispered “You bitch. You cannot act like a whore without bearing the consequences.”
Sudden rage flared inside me, and I slapped him sharply across the face. The sound of the slap was, I imagine, audible to others across the outdoor terrace, although it was more sound than fury: I was capable of much more deadly blows. With a look of shock, he let go my arm and clapped his left hand to his burning cheek, eyes startled and, indeed, for a moment showing a sheen of tears.
But then he took his hand from his cheek and prodded me in the ribs—a sharp poke through the linen and silk of my tight jacket—and, looking down, I was shocked to see a small Derringer pistol in his other hand. I had known he was prone to masculine posturing, but I’d no idea he carried such a weapon, or that his ego was so fragile that he might brandish it at a woman simply because she had embarrassed him.
At that moment, though, he looked over my shoulder, and I saw his eyes widen in surprise. Ignoring the little pistol, I turned to follow his gaze, noticing that Gaspard the waiter was staring in the same direction.
The Westerner was still at his table a few yards away, no longer sitting now but standing, leaning against the wall behind his chair. He appeared completely unaware of others’ gaze.
He was, instead, completely absorbed in throwing his long knife in mid-air. He would make the slightest motion of the wrist, and the broad blade, polished to a high sheen, spun upward, describing complicated caracoles above his head and down again, before he snatched it out of the air.
After a moment, still absorbed and still flipping the massive weapon as casually as if it were a magician’s coin or a juggler’s Indian club, he pushed off from the wall of the café, and came closer. He showed no awareness of Andreas’s existence. He came to a stop beside me and, as I looked over my shoulder, met my eyes with a smile.
Again, the knife flipped into the air. Again, it described a complex parabola, a good five feet above our heads, arcing, tumbling end-over-end downward. Still smiling into my eyes, without looking at it he caught the knife as it descended, but this time within a few inches in front of Andreas’s face. The latter froze.
As if we were alone, the Westerner addressed himself to me, in a relaxed, strongly accented French which carried some of the tangy flavor of the Caribbean islands:
“Mademoiselle, you strike me as a woman of confidence and self-possession. I can’t believe that you would wish to bandy words with posturing fools who suffer from bad manners. Would I be right about that?”
I turned to stare into Andreas’s eyes. After a moment, without looking away, I said, “No, monsieur, you would be correct. I have no desire to bandy words with fools.”
Ignoring the silent and motionless Andreas, the Westerner answered me: “So I thought. Perhaps you’d like to test the balance on this here Kentucky toothpick.”
And again he flipped the knife. It spun in the air, and this time as well revolved along its axis, so close to Andreas’s head that its edge nicked his ear. Simultaneously, the Westerner twisted the Derringer from his hand, caught the knife by the blade, and offered it to me butt-first. I took it: though of intimidating size, the weapon was so well-balanced that it felt surprisingly light.
There was blood now, trickling down Andreas’s neck into his collar, but he kept still, his eyes on the American. His pale complexion had gone even paler. I looked at Andreas, and held up the knife between our faces. His eyes turned toward me. I saw fear in them and felt a welcome thrill of anger. The thought of striking back was intoxicating.
“Don’t let me hear of you mishandling any other women. Pay for your fun instead. And don’t let me see you again.”
The Westerner said easily, “Mademoiselle, what say we trade weapons, this little Colt for that there toothpick? And then perhaps you’d like to send this character on his way?”
I nodded and handed back the knife, as the American pressed the Derringer into my free hand. Andreas’s hand had crept up to his bloodied ear and collar. He took his fingers away and looked at the stains on them, seemingly dumbfounded.
Stropping the razor-sharp blade on the sleeve of his broadcloth coat, the Western spoke directly to Andreas, for the first time.
“Little thing you might want to learn, soon, mon fils: don’t ever draw down a weapon on a woman. Because, even if you don’t take it serious, you best believe she will.
“If I was you, I’d go. ‘Fact, I’d go now.”
Regarding the Western with a slightly dazed expression, still without replying, Andreas wiped his fingers heedlessly on his velvet jacket. Then he shook his head, backed away, and shambled off the terrace. He seemed drunker than ever.
I turned to look at the American, who was grinning openly. “I wouldn’t worry too much about him, Mademoiselle. There’re those bullies, in this world, who’ll stoke up their anger at being embarrassed, and decide to come back for more. But there’s others, and I’m thinking yonder youngster is that sort, who realize they’re just lucky enough to escape with their hide and their hair. That latter kind’s not near so likely to return.”
With that momentary—and banal and absurd—physical confrontation behind me, I could again focus upon this interesting American. I held out my hand and spoke formally.
“Thank you, Monsieur—I appreciate your assistance.”
Though his palm was rough as sandpaper—obviously a man who had worked extensively with his hands—he grasped mine very lightly and, replied, in that strongly accented French, “De rien, Mademoiselle.”
He smiled at me.
“Besides, if you are interested in books, and interesting people are interested in books, then Paris is a wonderful place to be, n’est pas? Why not join me?”
I hardly hesitated. After all, what is the purpose of the gains made for women in this new century of progress if we are not to engage our minds freely in open converse? The man was obviously exceptionally observant and exceptionally interesting. And certainly the unpleasant social confrontation within which he had just assisted me argued that a certain degree of acquaintance could already be presumed to exist between us.
“Yes, monsieur. Paris is a wonderful place for interesting books, and for interesting people as well.”
He replied, “Since you are interested in books and people, why not ask our friend Gaspard to collect your parcels, while you join me in another café-crème and I will show you this volume, and the others?”
Which was done.
It transpired that he was looking at old illustrated volumes, mostly culled from rare-book sellers and library sales on the Left Bank, recounting anthropology and history in travelers’ tales of the mysterious East. As it happened, I had begun exploring these themes in my own amateur painting, under the influence of my reading and translating, of Chinoiserie and the Orientalisms of the Russian Primitives, and that he had a wealth of practical and experiential knowledge, evidently culled from extensive travel in those regions. I recall that we immediately discovered a shared taste for the young Russian mystic painter and archaeologist Nicholas Roerich, at that time still a half-dozen years away from his triumphs designing for Diaghilev and the Ballet Russes, and thus known only to cognoscenti. We sat over those books at Lilas for most of the day, talking of art, music, ethnography, and travel, and dined together for the first time in the evening.
That was the beginning of our friendship, one not perhaps entirely common—how many Western “cowboys” shared literary tastes in Paris with young collegiate females? (although, it being the City, anything is possible)—but, for me, most natural and comfortable. I presumed that he was fifteen to twenty years my elder, and, though May-December liaisons were not at all uncommon in Paris, even in the absence of a mercantile motive, our relationship was always most correct. I might have been receptive to a greater intimacy, but the Colonel, while remarkably frank and “man-to-man” in his conversational mode and topics, never gave any hint of seeking anything other than platonic discourse—I had the sense that there were sorrows and obligations in that area, in his past or perhaps in his present life.
Thus, in the scant hours I was able to spare from my linguistics and ethnography courses at the Sorbonne, together we visited the art museums across the Seine, where he exhibited a tremendous eye for composition and quality, and a remarkable working familiarity with some of the most obscure examples of Central Asian folk art, although he expressly disavowed any formal expertise. Over the next several weeks, as we promenaded, visited galleries, took coffee or vin rouge together, I slowly pieced together a partial framework of his background: I learned that he had served in the Western wars, including that between the North and South in America—which meant that he must have been at least fifteen if not twenty years older than his appearance suggested—but also in various locales in Central America. He likewise had an acute understanding of Central Asian history, a topic to which I myself had dedicated time in my université studies with the adjunct Professor Habjar-Lawrence.
[The Colonel was, moreover, comfortable, accessible, and entertaining in meeting my various circles of acquaintance, from artists to aesthetes to shop-workers to scholars, though I was not aware of his own. He seemed to move through all these Parisian contexts, both those I knew and those he mentioned, like a solitary—albeit engaging, articulate, and surprisingly well-read. He mixed easily with both Madeleine’s au courant friends and with the pale scholars and linguists of my studies at the Sorbonne—though he tactfully avoided much intersection with those latter. I had the sense that he wished to avoid complicating my own social engagements with complicated explanations of his own.]
The Colonel had come to Paris first as a trick-shooter with Buffalo Bill Cody’s Wild West troupe in 1902. He had little use for that show, but admired Cody’s advocacy on behalf of Western nature preserves and fair treatment for the Red Indians, and he shared some colorful past experiences with me. He had subsequently remained in the City of Lights as an informal consultant with the Parisian gendarmerie regarding best practices for policing the street thugs called Les Apaches: when he first told me of this, he had chuckled and said, “Second group of Apaches I’ve had to set up against, though these Paris boys ain’t nearly as formidable as the Mimbreño of my acquaintance.”
Mostly I found him to be engaging, studious, endlessly erudite about sometimes quite obscure topics, and altogether possessing an artistic and intellectual imagination which welcomed my own, and which was not at all in keeping with his rough Westerner’s appearance and mannerisms.
But that was before I saw him in action.
[1] English: “I first met the Brethren in Paris, sometime around, I think, 1906? during my studies of Central Asian languages and ethnography at the Sorbonne….”