Tropic Moon - Georges Simenon’s first novel set outside Europe, one of what the author termed his romans durs, hard novels, but with Tropic Moon, not only is the story tough on the main character but also tough on the entire French colonial system, or more precisely, brutally tough on the French colonialists in Africa.
It’s 1933 and we’re in Gabon, West Africa, right along the equator in the ramshackle coast town of Liberville. We follow Joseph Timar, age 24, full of courage and enthusiasm, recently arrived from France to take up a post in the large timber company, a position he secured through his influential uncle.
Timar learns his job overseeing the cutting of timber ten days boat journey upriver will be postponed for at least a month since the company barge's damaged hull needs serious repair.
Timar resigns himself to booking a room at the one and only Liberville hotel and hanging out in the main room on the first floor that serves as lounge, bar and restaurant where all the European bachelors take their meals. Timar drinks his first shot of whisky.
All this is new to Timar - he was never accustomed to washing in a basin the size of a soup plate and going outside to squat behind a tree when he needed to take a dump. Nor had he ever shared his room with swarms of flies, mosquitoes, scorpions, spiders and other noxious insects.
And the suffocating heat and humidity. Damn! Timar wakes up completely naked the next morning in his cocoon of mosquito netting. Oh, yes, since he was drenched in sweat last night he took off his pajamas.
Suddenly, there's an attractive woman in her thirties beside his bed asking him if he would like coffee, tea or chocolate. Turns out, a husband and wife own the hotel and the woman is wife Adèle. Timar is aroused by Adèle's sensual, soft, yielding body. They have sex.
Since he had nothing to do outside the hotel, Timar remained inside, drinking whiskey, reading the newspaper and taking practice shots at the pool table. Man, the heat - all you had to do was raise an arm and you started sweating. Adèle acted a bartender and her big, fat husband Eugène occasionally made an appearance.
Then the big "gala" night had come, the entertainer, Manuelo, a female impersonator and dancer. Many European men and women fill the main room; in the darkness, hundreds of blacks peer in through the door and windows. Champagne and whiskey all round. Timar overhears an older European explaining to a young, vulgar guy how to horsewhip a black man without leaving any marks.
Just then Timar catches a glimpse of Adèle in the kitchen punching one of her employees, a black named Thomas. Thomas doesn't flinch or budge; he simply takes the blows.
Sometime thereafter, having imbibed much liquor, Timar leaves the hotel through the back door for a stroll out by an open field. Everything is pitch dark and someone comes rushing toward him. Ah, Adèle! "Get out of my way, you fool!" she tells him.
Back in the main room, having taken a seat and drinking a nightcap, Timar watches as the party winds up when two events occur in rapid succession: prior to trudging upstairs to his bed, Eugène tells Adèle to call a doctor since he has the blackwater again and this time it means he's a goner. Secondly, a group of blacks run toward the door; one of the timber traders translates their message: they found Thomas in a field, shot dead with a revolver.
Thus Simenon concludes his first chapter, creating the foundation for a series of events propelling the tale's drama. I purposely focused on the author's setup in some detail for the following reasons:
1) Simenon places Joseph Timar at the story's center and three things overwhelm Timar in French Equatorial Africa: the oppressive heat, his continual drinking and Adèle;
2) Simenon writes here about the French imperialists in action, how these French men and women are reduced to their most basic animal appetites in the sweltering heat. The novel's atmosphere counts for so much;
3) Beginning in the second chapter, Simenon's intriguing page-turner takes a number of unexpected twists and gyrations. As reviewer, I wouldn't want to divulge too much so as to spoil for a reader.
Reflect on Georges Simenon writing all those many Inspector Maigret novels. One reality stands out above all others: the need to work toward a sense of justice - if someone commits a crime, by law the criminal must be punished.
But did Simenon encounter such a sense of justice when he traveled through French Equatorial Africa? Or, rather, did these white French colonialists strongarm the native blacks into submitting to one fiercely maintained ironclad rule: whites can do whatever they want to blacks.
Sound harsh? Sound brutal? Sound like Thomas Hobbes? Young Joseph Timor voices his verdict.
I encourage you to read Tropic Moon in the New York Review Books edition where Norman Rush writes an insightful introductory essay or African Trio - the three novels included: Talatala, Tropic Moon and Aboard the Aquitaine, brilliant translation of Tropic Moon complements of Stuart Gilbert.
Young Georges Simenon around age 30 in 1933, the year of publication of Tropic Moon
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