Chapter 7 AT THE CAFé

Whether it be due to the incessant cold and dry winds, that parch the more genial humours, or to some other cause, there is certainly a tone of exacerbation, at this moment, among the European residents at Gafsa. I noticed it very clearly yesterday evening in the little French café-a soul-withering resort, furnished with a few cast-iron tables and uncomfortable chairs that repose on a flooring of chill cement tiles-where, in sheer desperation, two or three of us, muffled up to our ears, congregate before dinner to exchange gossip and imbibe the pre-prandial absinthe.

I announced my intention of leaving shortly for Tozeur.

"So you have not yet taken your fill of dirt and discomfort in Tunisia, Monsieur?" asked one of the clients. He is a wizened old nondescript with satyr-like beard, a kind of Thersites, who is understood to have established, from the days of Abdelkader and "for certain reasons," his headquarters at Gafsa, where he sips absinthes past all computation, exercising his wit upon everybody and everything with a fluent and rather diverting pessimism. "You will probably perish on the road to Tozeur, in a sandstorm."

"Ah, those sandstorms: they interest me. Have you ever been to Tozeur?"

"God forbid! Gafsa is quite bad enough for me. Or you may be strangled by the Arabs; such things occur every day. You smile? Read the papers! At some places, like Sfax, there are regular organized bands of assassins, the police being doubtless in their pay. Be sure to hold your revolver in readiness-better carry it in your jacket pocket, like this.... No revolver! (To the company at large) He has no revolver! In that case, don't dream of going out after sunset, here or anywhere else in this country. And read the papers."

It was always "read the papers."

I mentioned that I had walked home, at midnight on the previous evening, from the station.

"Then don't do it again, if you value your life. Not long ago a lieutenant was attacked on that very road, and almost beaten to death. He managed to crawl back to barracks, and is now a wreck, incapacitated from further service. By a miracle he was able to identify one of his assailants. They gave him-what do you think?-two years' imprisonment! Why not the Legion d'Honneur while we are about it? Then there was the Italian-a respectable Italian, for a wonder-who went out for a walk and was never heard of again. The country was scoured for two months, but not so much as a button was ever found-not a button! They had buried his body in the sand. That's their usual system, cheap and effective. And the guide-books say that Tunisia is as safe as the heart of France-ha, ha, ha! I wonder how much they are paid for making that statement, and who pays it?"

"The hotel proprietors, with an occasional subsidy from the Government." This from a bloodthirsty young extremist in gaiters and riding-breeches, who had once been a colon, a farmer, but had given it up in disgust. "We cherish these savages," he went on, "as if they were our uncles and aunts; everywhere, that is, save in those districts which are still under military rule. There you should see the natives stand up and salute you! I am anti-military myself; but I maintain that this salute should be kept up, as demonstrating the gulf that exists between ourselves and them. But the moment you leave that zone the gulf is systematically bridged over, to make it more pleasant for the poor, misused Arab. Let me tell you what I think. I think that the Sicilians would have managed things better than we have done. And I also think that our controlleurs, they are not Frenchmen, but Arabs."

"Voyons, voyons!" said a clear voice from another table-a new-comer, apparently. "These are the criticisms to which we are exposed, because we introduce an enlightened and progressive policy."

"Progressive policy be damned! We have held Gafsa for the last thirty years, and what have we done to improve the place? Nothing."

"Pardon me! We have planted twenty-seven pepper trees. Tunisia exists for needy people in search of work. If you can't make it pay, leave it alone. You have every facility for buying land, for importing this and that-why don't you settle down and make yourselves at home? A colony, my friend, is not an orchid."

"And as for those Sicilians," interposed the faun-like wooer of the Green Fairy, "I think you're all wrong. I admit that they are more flexible than we are, if you like to put it that way. They will do things that no Frenchman can do; they will establish themselves in places where no Frenchman could live; they will eat things which no Frenchman could swallow; they will oust the very Arabs out of the country in course of time, by sheer number of progeny and animal vitality. Oh, yes; it's clear the Sicilians can lower their standard to any extent. But they can never raise it. They are the cancer of Tunisia. Wherever they go, they bring their filth, their mafia, roguery and corruption. Every Sicilian is a potential Arab, the difference between them being merely external; the true African variety wears less clothes and keeps his house cleaner. I know them! A race of sinister buffoons and cut-throats, incapable of any ennobling thought, whose highest virtues are other men's vices, whose only method of reasoning is the knife.... Don't accuse me, Messieurs, of prejudice, when I am trying to state the case impartially."

You will often hear it put as baldly as that. The alien inhabitants of Tunisia are well hated by a certain type of Frenchmen. The country has been compared to a wine-bottle that bears some high-flown label indicative of fine stuff within-the French administration-but is filled, unfortunately, with a poisonous mixture from round the corner, the Jews, Sicilians, Maltese, and Corsicans.

It is as difficult for a tourist to arrive at a just opinion on this subject as for the average Frenchman. The traveller will not find it easy to acquire the necessary first-hand data, while the other is warped by his congenital xenophobia.

In 1900 there were 80,000 Italians, mostly Sicilians, in the Regency, as opposed to 20,000 Frenchmen, one-half of whom were Government servants. This great predominance of a foreign stock scared some good folks, and a "Comité du peuplement fran?ais" was organized, to study ways and means of populating Tunisia with French citizens.

If Sicilians could obtain grants of land under the same conditions as Frenchmen, large tracts, now waste, would be converted into gardens, to the profit of the exchequer. Is it worth while? No, thinks the Government; and with reason. French rule in Northern Africa is a politico-moral experiment on a large scale, with what might be called an idealistic background, such as only a civilized nation can conceive. Italians might improve the land, but they could never improve the Arab; they are themselves not sufficiently wise, or even well-intentioned.

The Anti-Semitic agitation has died a natural death: you may curse the Jews, but you cannot crush them. They make good citizens, and are for ever trying to gain more political influence, which is surely to their credit, though it annoys a certain class in Tunis. As intermediaries between the Arab and the white man they are invaluable, their plasticity allowing them to ascend or descend in either direction, while their broad and active tolerance, fruit of bitter experience in the past, has honeycombed the land with freemasonry and scientific charity and liberalism. So far as I can see, their dirt does not detract from their astuteness-perhaps it aids it, by removing one source of mental preoccupation, cleanliness. The old distinction between Livornese and Tunisian Jews is slowly becoming effaced.

If there is one class of these immigrants whom the ordinary French employé hates more than another it is his own countrymen, the Corsicans. They have the gift of climbing into small but lucrative posts of administration, and there, once established, they sit fast like limpets, to the dismay of competing French office-seekers. Eject them? You might as well propose to uproot Atlas or Ararat. Not only can they never be displaced, but from year to year, by every art, good or evil, they consolidate their position. That done, they begin to send for their relations. One by one new Corsicans arrive from over the sea, each forming a centre in his turn, where he sits tight, with a pertinacious solidarity that borders on the superhuman.

Cave-hunting savages at heart, and enemy to every man save their own blood relations, the Corsicans are the nightmare of the Arabs on account of their irreclaimable avarice and brutality. They would flay the native alive, if they dared, and sell his skin for boot-leather. They can play at being plus arabes que les arabes, and then, if the game goes against them, they invoke their rights of French citizenship in the grand manner. The Frenchman knows it all; he regrets that such creatures should be his own compatriots-regrets, maybe, that he is not possessed of the same primordial pushfulness and insensibility; and shrugs his shoulders in civilized despair.

As for the Maltese, they would be all very well if-if they were not British subjects. But such being the case, you never know! It is disheartening to find such babble in the mouth of respectable officials and writers.

I am well aware that there is a Sicilian in fabula who is not "mafioso"; that the crude banditism which sits in every Corsican's bones has raised him to the elysium of martyrs and heroes and not, where he ought to have gone, to the gallows; that the Maltese are not merely cantankerous and bigoted (Catholic) Arabs, but also sober, industrious, and economical. I have lived with all these races in their own countries and-apart from a fatal monkey-like apprehensibility which passes for intelligence but, as a matter of fact, precludes it-have found chiefly this to admire in them, that they are prolific and kind to their offspring.

Small praise? Not altogether. The same may apply to cats and dogs, but it does not always apply to civilized races of men. The Scotchman, for instance, can produce children, but is often unkind to them (Read the papers!); the Frenchman is kind to children, but often cannot produce them. It would seem that chiefly in half-cultured people are these two qualities, twin roots of racial and domestic virtues, to be met with side by side.

Whatever may be the cause of it-better food, a different legislation or climate, or contact with other nations-the suggestive fact remains, that the more objectionable idiosyncrasies of the Maltese, Corsicans and Sicilians become diluted on African soil. Can it be the mere change from an island to a continent? There may be some truth in Bourget's "oppression des ?les." Insulani semper mali, says an old Latin proverb....

"Do you know," the gaitered young ex-farmer was saying-"do you know how many French colons there are in the whole regency? Eight or nine hundred, drowned in an ocean of Arabs, who own the land. And that's what we call settling a country. The Americans knew better when they cleared out the redskins! And how do the English manage in India? Why, they shoot them-piff-paff: it's done! That's the way to colonize (looking approvingly at me)-supprimez l'indigène! A nation cannot condescend to the idealistic ravings of an individual."

I observed that I had never heard of that method being actually adopted in

India.

"You say that, Monsieur, because you fear it sounds a little drastic. But we are not in Paris or London just now; we can say what we think. Or better still" (glowing with enthusiasm), "they tie them to the mouth of a big gun, and then-Boum ... houpla!! Biftek à la tartare."

"You are misinformed, my friend," said the voice from the other table.

"That Indian cannon business was merely an administrative experiment."

I looked at the speaker, who was smiling mirthfully to himself. He was a fair-complexioned man of about forty-five, rather carefully dressed, blue-eyed, with a short, well-groomed beard-evidently an old acquaintance of the company.

"It's all right for you," the other retorted, "with your comfortable offices and your fat, ever-increasing salaries. You are not a harassed agriculturist, skulking in fear of his life, or a public servant, starving on four francs a day. Behold!" he went on, extracting a newspaper out of his pocket, "behold the latest portrait of yourself and your colleagues-you have an air of revolting prosperity. And your whole biography, too, in black and white; your wife, your children, your past career ... what it is to be a capitalist!"

"Tiens! I never saw this. And printed in Paris a fortnight ago! But it may be lying somewhere about the house. I only returned at midday, you know. Not exactly a flattering likeness...."

The document was handed round. It was a French journal devoted to mining interests, and contained a long article dealing with the phosphate industry of Metlaoui, near Gafsa, with views of the works and portraits of its principal representatives. Beneath that of the speaker were printed the words-

"PAUL DUFRESNOY,

Ingenieur civil des mines,"

and some other titles.

An odd coincidence, this meeting, on the eve of my departure.

I passed over to his table and mentioned that I possessed an introductory letter to him.

"How? And you are leaving to-morrow for the Djerid? You are not coming to see me?"

I replied that I would gladly give myself that pleasure. His family, he explained, was away just now, but if I could arrange to delay my departure for a little while he would accompany me as far as Metlaoui, which lies on the Tozeur route, and show me over the mines. He was to return to his work there in a week or so. The proposal was too tempting to be refused.

We spoke of the spirit of irritation and discontent that seemed rife among the Europeans in Gafsa.

"Yes, the wind," he said; "or perhaps Africa generally. I've often noticed that men, and women too, put on new faces and characters hereabouts. This contact with an inferior race upsets their nervous equilibrium. The lack of comfort and the need of abrupt action makes them discard gentleness and other external husks of civilization. The mildest of us are liable to become brusque; and harsh ones, brutal. Only the native remains resigned."

Thereupon I propounded my hypothesis of the Mektoub or resignation doctrine: the intellectual burnous of the Arabs.

The theory, he thought, was so good that there must be something wrong with it. His work brought him into daily contact with the natives, and, so far as he could judge, Mektoub was only one aspect of their general way of looking at things. It was bound up, for instance, with that idea of impenitence. Unlike ourselves, who approve of self-abasement, the Arab regards repentance as only fit for slaves. He does not hunt for his own sins; he hunts for yours, and hits you on the head when he finds them. There was something in the notion, he thought, for surely remorse was rather a provincial sensation; it implies that a man has really done something wrong, or that he thinks he has; in either case, what was there to boast of? He had little time for studies, nowadays, but it seemed to him that the trend of feeling was in the direction of Old Testamentary ideals. Men were growing tired of offering their other cheek to be smitten; they found it degrading, as do the Arabs. Why not import some of these sterner conceptions into our morality, as we import their peppery curries and kouskous and pilaffs into our cuisine?

He was inclined to say amiable things about the English race. The Anglo-Saxon, he thought, with his "constitutional non-morality," had come nearest to discovering a sensible working system of conduct-as a nation. It is his highest racial virtue to lead the Cosmic Life-to take all he can get, and ask for more. That is why every one, in his heart of hearts, envies and admires him. His chief defect, he thought, was a disdain of a knowledge of general principles, justifiable enough in the times of unsound teleological theorizings, but not nowadays, when we have at last set foot upon earth.

"And what do you say," I asked, "to our so-called national hypocrisy?"

"Well, we others are apt to stand aside and marvel whether you have succeeded by reason of it, or in spite of it. Of course it annoys us beyond words! But there is a form of it which is highly laudable: the Anglo-Saxon, it seems to me, often acts in apparently hypocritical fashion out of consideration for what he conceives to be the opinions of the majority. Profoundly self-respecting, he is equally careful not to impinge upon the feelings of others, however wrong-headed he may think them. In such cases, his hypocrisy is only a proof of civilization and genuine politeness. Hence also that shyness and reserve which I have often noticed in your countrymen-they are not signs of awkwardness or indecision, but of strength systematically controlled."

"That is very gratifying. And what of our snobbishness?"

"The English snobbishness," he replied, "may not be beautiful, but its origins are sufficiently venerable to inspire respect. It testifies to long political stability; it is rooted in Magna Charta. We foreigners, who upset our Governments and annihilate our aristocracies every ten years, will never attain that mellow stage. One may dislike it; one dislikes the by-products of many excellent institutions. Your Government, for example, does extraordinarily little to foster art or literature or research. Taken by itself, that is an evil. But as a by-product of the English cult of the individual-of that avoidance of pestilential State interference in everything which is the curse of continental Europe-it may be gladly endured, if not admired."

He added:

"When one lives out of Europe, Monsieur, one learns to know England better. To see things at their true perspective one must take up a stand at a proper distance from them. England only begins to show its true proportions at a point where other lands cease to be visible. Austria, for instance, can only be examined on the spot. Once you have crossed the insignificant Mediterranean, this immense and fertile country, with its long history of rulers and battles, has already faded into air. ?a n'existe plus. Your Gladstone explained the phenomenon correctly: Austria has never done good to the world."

I gathered that the Metlaoui phosphate company had modelled its principles on those of the "Anglo-Saxon." There is little "pestilential State interference" in its management; the board of directors takes all it can get, and asks for more. It is a paying concern, and consequently the shareholders admire it unreservedly-in the rest of mankind, this feeling is tinctured with a strong dose of envy.