Transcript

5.7.26 · Smithsonian Magazine

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Speaker 1: Welcome. This is Rebecca Shore for Radio Eye, and today
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I will be reading the Smithsonian Magazine dated April May
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twenty twenty six. As a reminder, RADIOI is a reading
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service intended for people who are blind or have other
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disabilities that make it difficult to read printed material. Please
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join me now for the first part of the article
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titled to Finance their Lifestyle. A young French couple went
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to Cambodia to steal antiquities. They did almost everything wrong.
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Clara and Andre Malrou conspired to loot the pink Temple
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of Bante Sree, but their failure started a battle of
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reclamation by Joshua Hammer. One morning in November nineteen twenty three,
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a young French couple stopped by the headquarters of the
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Eco Francaise dextrem orient E FEO, the French School for
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the Far East, a stuccoed ochre painted villa shaded by
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phrongipani and banyan trees in Hanoi, the capital of Vietnam.
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The pair had just arrived by boat and were soaking
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up the atmosphere of Southeast Asia. The soup cellar at
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the corner of the street. Squatting beside his little bamboo stove,
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bussing over the embers on which the fish soup will simmer.
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Clara Mairou, the wife, would write later recalling the sights
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of the city, the rickshaw driver running barefoot, panting between
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the wooden shafts of his car. Passing through a stately portico,
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the couple entered a reception room where they introduced themselves
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to the school's acting director, Leonard Russo. They had come
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to Indochina, they explained, on a research trip. They planned
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to trek into the Cambodian jungle to explore remnants of
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the Royal Road, the main highway of the Khmer Empire,
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which had ruled much of the Southeast Asia for six
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hundred years until its collapse in the fifteenth century. Further,
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they had already obtained the endorsement of the Colonial Office
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in Paris for their research, which would include making drawings
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of Khmer antiquities, but before venturing into the wilderness, they
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needed to have their lass passe validated by the e FEO.
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Examining their credentials, Oroso warned them that the region where
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they were heading was dangerous. Two e f EO scholars
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had recently been killed there by local armed groups they
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brushed off the admonition. He also told them that any
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objects they found must be left in situ or excavated
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solely on behalf of the school. Too many had been
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appropriated by archaeologists and others who had flocked to Cambodia
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in recent decades since the French naturalist Henri Muho brought
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the ruins of Ancor, the ancient Khmer capital, to the
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attention of Europeans in eighteen sixty. Having received their passes,
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they met Henri Parmentier, the e f EO's Paris born
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head of archaeology, who was tasked with documenting, safeguarding, and
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restoring the monuments of Cambodia and southern Vietnam. Parmentier, whom
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the frenchwoman later described as a somewhat stramping old Bohemian,
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was charmed by the couple's evident interest in Khmer art
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and culture, and he offered to meet them in Pennan
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Penn and escort them upriver to Siam rep the gateway
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to Ancor. But the couple were not researchers and the
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field work they described was a ruse. The Frenchman Andre
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Malrou would become one of the twentieth century's cultural giants.
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He later fought with the Republican Army in the Spanish
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Civil War, joined the French Resistance during World War War II.
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Wrote such celebrated novels as Man's Fate, a sweeping tale
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of self sacrifice and betrayal set during the Chinese Revolution.
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Received close to one hundred nominations for the Nobel Prize
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for Literature, became a confidant of John and Jacqueline Kennedy,
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Joan Lai, and Richard Nixon, and served as France's influential
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Minister of Cultural Affairs under President Charles de gaul. But
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even today, Moulreux remains an ambiguous figure, heroic, an duplicitus,
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a genius and a rogue, and a foe of colonialism,
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whose legacy remains tarnished by one impetuous act deep in
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the Cambodian jungle. That episode not only altered his life
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and that of his wife, it was an early flashpoint
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in coming disputes over Asia's ownership of its cultural heritage
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and the legitimacy of colonial authority. The French had dreamed
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of carving a colonial empire out of Indochina for generations.
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French missionaries arrived in Vietnam in the seventeenth century and
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began converting much of the population to Catholicism. In eighteen
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fifty eight, the French government, joined by its Spanish allies,
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used the pretexts of protecting Catholics to dispatch warships and
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three thousand troops to Southeast Asia, and within months they
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had captured Saigon. The French were also eyeing Cambodia. Muho,
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with the backing of Great Britain's Royal Geographic Society and
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the Zoological Society of London, sailed for Indochina in eighteen
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fifty eight on an expedition to collect flora and fauna.
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Two years later, he followed the tributaries of the Meikang,
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and deep in the jungle came upon Encor. Other westerners
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had seen the ancient capital, but none had described or
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drawn it as vividly as Muho. There are ruins of
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such grandeur. He wrote that at the first view, one
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is filled with profounded admiration, and cannot but ask what
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has become of this powerful race, so civilized, so enlightened.
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The authors of these gigantic works He rhapsodized about the
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largest temple, angkar Watt, a rival to that of Solomon
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and erected by some ancient Michelangelo, and the Bayone, a
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Buddhist temple with stone towers adorned with two hundred enigmatically
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smiling faces. In eighteen sixty three, the French, citing threats
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from the king of neighboring Siam, pressured the Cambodian ruler,
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King Norodome into a treaty of protection, which allowed troops
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to enter the country. Ten years after that, the French
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governor General marched into the royal palace and forced Norodome
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to seede control of his country. French administrators quickly set
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up sugar plantations and put the peasantry to work at
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low pay under harsh conditions. Soldiers and government officials grabbed
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whatever chimer antiquities they could. One naval officer, Louis Delaport,
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removed seventy sculptures, lentils, and bas reliefs from Angcor and
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other sites and shipped them to the Guimeis Museum in Paris.
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He argued that he was saving them from destruction. Khmer Art,
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Delaport wrote, has remained the most beautiful expression of human
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genius in this vast part of Asia. In the wake
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of Delaporte's looting spree, colonial authorities declared all relics state
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property and forbade their export, but many temples remained unguarded. Malroe,
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born in nineteen o one in Paris, fell under the
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spell of Indochina as a young man, the son of
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a swaggering but failing stockbroker who would die by suicide
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in nineteen He grew up after his parents divorce, with
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his mother aunt and Italian grandmother, a small time grocer
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and a Paris excerb dropping out of school at seventeen,
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he dreamed of literary fame. Malroux liked to think of
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himself as an accursed poet of genius, wrote his biographer
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Olive Todd in two thousand two. He could see himself
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not only in Hugo, but in Baudelaire, Verlaine and Rimbaud.
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For a while, malrou scratched out a living buying and
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selling antiquarian books, including pornography, while writing essays on Cubist
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and Dadaist art for avant garde magazines. In the evenings,
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he frequented the bohemian cafes of montmart sporting a fedora,
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a cane, a silk poplin's shirt and a fake pearl pin,
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a cigarette cocked between his lips. He had a dark
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beauty and a magnetism. Todd, who met him in the
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nineteen forties, wrote about the young dandy. Malroe's friend, the
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writer Pascalpia, observed that a love of art and a
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taste for travel tormented him from his youth. In nineteen
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twenty one, another friend introduced Malroe to Clara Goldschmidt, a
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writer editor for the influential modernist Paris magazine Action and
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the daughter of prosperous German Jews. Four years older than Malrou,
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Goldschmidt wrote Todd was effervescent and cosmopolitan, five foot nothing,
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gray eyes, dark brown hair, a rather long nose, and
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a determined chin. After a whirlwind courtship of tango dancing
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and gabaret go going, they married that October. Shortly afterward,
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the couple hatched a plot modest collectors of Asian art.
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They had visited Parisian auction houses and become aware of
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the soaring prices being paid for Cambodian's statuary. Nineteen twenty three,
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after reversals in the Paris stock Exchange wiped out much
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of their savings, Malro proposed that they had for Indo China,
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from Siam to Cambodia along the Royal Route. There are
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large temples, those that were identified and described in the
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government inventory, but there are certainly others, smaller ones still
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unknown today. Malro told his wife, according to her memoir
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Our twenty years, he said that they should go to
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some small temple, take a few statues, sell them in America,
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and live comfortably for two or three years. To prepare
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for the journey, the couple spent hours in the National
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Library and at the Guimei Museum studying Parmentier's surveys. According
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to Walter Langlois, who wrote a nineteen sixty six study
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of the couple's time in Indochina, they were also careful
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to read up on the laws of Cambodian archaeological sites,
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and they believed that they had discovered a loop. Some
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newfound temples might not yet have fallen under government protection.
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The most prominent was a Hindu temple complex in the
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Greater Ankar region called Bante Sri, built in a d
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nine sixty seven by a reverend guru to two Khaimer kings.
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It was adorned with friezes depicting scenes from the Ramayana
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and the Mahabrata, the sacred texts of Hinduism. The site
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fell into disuse in the twelfth century after Jayavarman the
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seventh declared Buddhism the state religion. Gradually consumed by jungle,
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It was uncovered again only in nineteen fourteen. Surveying it
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two years later, Parmentier wrote that it was a marvel
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without equal in Cambodia. The high quality pink sandstone quarried
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a few miles from the site made its friezes almost
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impervious to decay, preserving the artworks in remarkable condition, its
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decoration and its refinement. Parmentier went on give it incomparable beauty.
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In her memoir, Clara Malrou described the plan we decided
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to head toward Bante Sri, then lost in the bush.
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Since Parmentier's visit, she wrote, no one had gone there
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to see what had happened to it. Perhaps it had
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collapsed under the vines. Perhaps it had transformed into heartstones,
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because stone is rare in this region. Lea Genoviz an
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expert in French Indochina and a biographer of the Malrose,
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believes that Clara may have been the real instigator of
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the scheme. In her view, the couple was driven by
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both a thirst for adventure and a smug sense of superiority.
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This was an escapade done almost on a dare, and
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they never thought they would get caught. Geneviz told me.
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Their attitude was, people are so dim witted, we'll get
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away with it. In November nineteen twenty three, Andre and
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Clara malrou rendezvous and Saigon with Louis Chevesson, an amiable
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bookseller whom Malroux had known since grammar school. Malroux needed
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Chevesson to do the dirty work, Genevese says, including cutting
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stones and hauling crates. Then they traveled by boat up
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the Mekong River to Pinon Penn, the pearl of the Orient,
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dominated by the pagodas and spires of the nineteenth century
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royal Palace. One of their first encounters in the capital
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was fateful at the Albert serrou Museum, to day the
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National Museum of Cambodia, a stylized Khmer temple with serpent
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like ruthinials they met the institutions founding director and principal architect,
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Georges Groliers, The son of colonial civil servants. Groliers had
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been conceived, born and nurtured in Cambodia, and its essence
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infused his soul, his biographer Kent Davis told me recently.
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Grolier was a painter, the founder of a local art school,
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an expert in Cambodian dance, and a conservator. He believed
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in restoring Khmier art to the Khmer people. He saw
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their artistic past, their greatness, and thought it belonged to Cambodia. Malroe,
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hoping to line up additional support for the Royal Road project,
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tried to charm him. Malroux was a young kid, smart
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and reckless, who used the people he needed, Davis says.
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But as Grolier led the couple through the exhibit halls,
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Malroux kept asking him what certain artworks might fetch in
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Paris galleries, and Grolier sensed that he was up to something.
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The impression that mister Malroux had left on me, Grolier
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would recall bluntly, was unfavorable. On December seventh, Malroux, Clara
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and Chevasson with Parmentier. As their escort arrived in seam
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Reap and checked into the town's sole tourist bungalow. Promentier
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went off to survey a local temple, leaving the trio unsupervised. Meanwhile,
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Francois Cremisie, a local French administrator, helps the group recruit
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a dozen guides and porters, along with six ox cart
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drivers and their two wheeled carts. They then set out
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down a muddy path, the local workers hacking the underbrush
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with knives and sweeping away stinging insects and venomous snakes.
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Something is rotting around us. There is no longer just
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the danger of the vines. There is that of this thick,
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reddish earth, which the horses have trouble getting rid of.
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Clara wrote, There are also the mosquitoes, a curtain of
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angry insects that accompanies us, that we cross, that reforms
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around us, in front of us, behind us. The jungle
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slog lasted two days, with an overnight stop at a
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crude traveler's hut. Meals consist of pork, bread and yams
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cooked inside a large earthen termite mound. Finally, they crossed
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the Siem reap river here a narrow stream, and arrived
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at an ancient paved promenade. The guides led them through
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a broken gate, then down a stone corridor choked with vegetation.
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In his nineteen thirty novel The Royal Way, about two
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French adventurers seeking treasures in Cambodia, Malroe presented a version
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of the scene. Before one character lay a chaos of
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fallen stones, some of them lying flat, but most of
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them upended. It looked like a mason's yard invaded by
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the jungle. The novel's larger story was fictional, but the
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description of the heist, according to Malroe's biographers and witnesses
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to the crime, was largely accurate. One of the fortune
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seekers straddled a stone block that had tumbled from a
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wall and began to cut away a bas relief. The
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tool bit into the sandstone with the shrill, rasping sound,
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Moulroe wrote, at his fifth stroke, it skidded. When he
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drew it from the fissure, he found that all its
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teeth were gone. Undeterred, the accomplices clambered over banyan tree
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roots and broken stones, and approached three miniature temples or
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pressat standing side by side. The upper parts had collapsed,
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but several perfectly preserved friezes of buxom scantily clad deities
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known as devatas, framed by geometric and floral patterns, covered
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the six foot high stumps. Surmising that the dancing girls
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might together fetch them five hundred thousand francs or more
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tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars to day,
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the men attacked the stones with chisels and hammers. Suddenly
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the blows were sounding differently. Molroe wrote the stone had
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split sunlike sparkled on the break. The sculptured frontage had
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split off clean and was lying on the ground like
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a newly severed head. In real life, Malreux, Chevalsson and
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Clara placed their stolen prizes into seven grates marked chemical products,
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a bounty including five goddesses and two votive tablets featuring
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a male guardian and a bearded acetic, plus four friezes
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carved with elaborate head dresses. Then they turned around and
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plodded back through the jungle to avoid Siam reap. They
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carted the load toward the tonlay Sap Lake, sixteen miles
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south of the town, where they boarded a steamboat and
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stashed the crates in the hold. Malroux intended to transport
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the friezes across the lake to the tone Lay Sap River,
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a tributary of the Mekang, and then sailed down stream
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two hundred and seventy miles to Saigon. There they would
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put the precious cargo on a ship to Europe. But
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things did not go according to plan. Kram Rasi, the
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French administrator, had been suspicious of malrou from the start,
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and he planted spies among the porterors and guides. Tipped off.
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He telegraphed Grolier, who his own suspicions confirmed, obtained a
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search warrant from the state prosecutor. Then Grolier raced up
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the road to the port of Campong Chenang, near where
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the lake meets the river, to stop the thieves before
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they could abscond to Saigon. Grolier arrived while the ship
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was still moored at the dock. The museum director boarded
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the vessel, opened the crates and directed the captain to
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keep Malroux and his accomplices on board. Then he telegraphed
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ahead to the police and Pennam Penn fifty five miles
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down river, through which the boat would pass on its
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way to Saigon. Late on Christmas Eve nineteen twenty three,
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as church bells tooled across penom Pen, the ship arrived
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at the port. Two inspectors from the Surati French law
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enforcement boarded the steamer. A local journalist reported and after
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indicating to two passengers Malroux and Chevasson, that they had
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been ordered to search their baggage, had the latter opened
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and found some pieces of statuary from the anchor ruins.
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Police detained the trio at the Grand Manolie, a comfortable
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hotel opposite the police headquarters. On January fifth, nineteen twenty four,
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Lecau du Comboge, the country's largest newspaper, reported that Malraux
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and his accomplices had been arrested for committing an act
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of pillage, which bespeaks an unbelievable audacity and special knowledge
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of the value of the sculptures that were stolen. In
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her memoir, Clara tried to minimize the crime. I was
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not going to be upset because they had found in
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our crates fragments of a nearly collapsed temple, she wrote,
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to which for years so little attention had been paid
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that it could have collapsed, torn apart by the roots
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of the Banyan trees, or demolished by a peasant's tools.
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Clara's illusions melted away three months later when the prosecutor
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handed down a felony indictment and set a trial date
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in July. Clara, still in custody at the Grand Man Ali,
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had a nervous breakdown That evening. Malroux wrote to the
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High Commissioner from the hotel, my wife poisoned herself with verinal,
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a barbituate used to treat insomnia. She recovered at a
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local hospital. Malroe, in a less than heroic fashion, persuaded
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Chavassan to take the rap, arguing that if Malreaux were acquitted,
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he could travel to France to file an appeal on
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his friend's behalf. He has admitted acting entirely alone. Malrou
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wrote in the same letter, while I await judgment with
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some impatience, I do so without any anxiety. Weeks later,
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deciding that she was too fragile to withstand a trial,
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authorities released Clara Melroe from custody and she returned to France.
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The proceedings against Andre Malroux and Chevasson opened on July
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sixteenth at the criminal court of Pennon, Penn, a neoclassical
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villa with the red tile roof across the road from
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the Royal Palace. For two days, the judge took testimony
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from Cremazie, the Cambodian guides and ox drivers, Malroux and Chevasson,
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and Parmentier in hot water with his E F E
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O bosses for failing to protect Bantier Sree. The French
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archaeologists downplayed the crime, even praising the care the thieves
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had taken with their chisels. The defense attorney argued that
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Bante Srix had not been under official protection and denounced
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what he called the state's desire to mercilessly punish two
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young people guilty of removing a few stones from a
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virtually abandoned monument. Malrou's strategy to blame Chevasson crumbled. The
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proceedings show that Chevalsson did not have the intelligence to
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engineer an elaborate plan genevise, the Malroux biographer told me
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on Monday, July twenty first, the judge found both men
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guilty of theft and sentenced them to among the harshest
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penalties allowed by BAW for Malroux three years in prison
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and a five year prohibition of residence Indochina for Chevasson
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eighteen months. Both petitioned for a hearing before the Court
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of Appeals in Saigon and were released until the court
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could weigh in. In France, the press was divided. Gentlemen
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Fop sentenced to three years in prison, declared Le Mattie
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with derision. Le Journal reported that Malau had not hesitated
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to completely sack a temple and make off with the
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ton of booty, but other newspapers, praising Malrou's literary promise,
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called the sentence a travesty. In Paris, meanwhile, Clara Malroe
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rallied some of France's most influential letterati behind her husband,
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repeating the argument that the temple had been abandoned and
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the objects were largely worthless. Andrea Guide, Andre Breton and
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other French authors petitioned France's Ministry of Justice to suspend
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the sentences. In October nineteen twenty four, the Saigon Court
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of Appeal, while striking down the verdict, still found the
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men guilty of damaging a protected site, but it reduced
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the sentences to a year for Malrou and six months
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for Chevassan. Nevertheless, the French government immediately suspended the sentences
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for those close to the crime. The absence of a
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punishment did not go down well. Jean Le Luba, a
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writer and the wife of Parmentier, described Malrou and Clara
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in a letter as two unpleasant pretensions and ill mannered scoundrels.
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Groliers would dismiss Malroe as le petit voulieur, the little thief,
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and remained furious that he had stayed out of prison.
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The secretive little so and so, he wrote to a friend,
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had hidden from us that he was a decadent man
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of letters in order to pass himself off in our
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eyes as a well informed archaeologist. In nineteen twenty six,
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the appeals court issued its final judgment, reaffirming the men's guilt,
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but by then the matter was moot. Malrou would never
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apologize for what he had done, yet the enforced sojourn
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in Panampen and later in Saigon while awaiting his appeal
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seemed to shake him out of his apolitical self absorption.
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Genovise says Malaux had spent months observing the French colonial
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systems under belly, the theft of antiquities by corrupt officials,
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the casual racism and cruelty, heavy handed attempts to stifle
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anti French pro tests and the press. Only months after
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his return to France in late nineteen twenty four, he
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and Clara traveled back to Saigon, where he founded a
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pro independence newspaper called Lindushin and joined the Young Annam movement,
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which opposed the French presence in the region. Malrou moved
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from political indifference to political commitment, wrote the French scholar
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Raoul Jennaar in How Malroux Became Malrou published in twenty fifteen,
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The Looter of Cambodia's patrimony had morphed into an agitator
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for the anti colonial cause. Vietnam also served as a
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jumping off point for Malrou's next adventures. In nineteen twenty five,
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on a trip to Hong Kong to buy linotype for
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his newspaper, which was later squeezed out of business by
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French authorities, he took an excursion up the Pearl River
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to Canton. Clashes were breaking out between communist workers and
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the right wing Kuomintang government led by Shang Kai Shehek.
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In nineteen twenty eight, Malro published The Conquerors, a novel
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about the Canton uprising, and it gave the author what
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he had long craved, recognition as a major literary voice
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in man's fate. His masterpiece, published five years later, Malro
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chronicled the heroics of a failed communist uprising in Shanghai
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and a massacre of sympathizers by the Kiomintang. All that
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men are willing to die for beyond self interest tends
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to justify that fate by giving it a foundation in dignity,
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he wrote. Malrou regarded communism as a powerful force against injustice,
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and he romanticized armed struggle. It was some observed as
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if he needed to redeem himself after the courts had
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branded him a criminal. This concludes readings from the Smithsonian
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Magazine for today. Your reader has been Rebecca Shore. Thank
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you for listening, and have a great day.