by Josep Pla
It had been barely two hours since our departure from Collioure when Torres de Castell Rosselló appeared high above the autumnal green and, on the beach, the first signs of what would later be the town of Canet. Oh, if only it had been sunny, and the air hadn’t draped a haze over that distant prospect, it would have been such a pleasant sail! The coast passed quickly before my eyes, but with just enough stillness for me to follow the many sights of the plain of Roussillon. Amid the flaxen-green vegetation I glimpsed a spire, a tower, the white patch of a farmhouse, a clump of houses, the smoke from a train…But it was a gray day with a low, overcast sky.
Suddenly Salanca appeared, and Barcarès de Sant Llorenç. Pairs of oxen stood on land in front of squat houses the color of the sand. It was a desolate, empty, inhospitable sight, a landscape devoured by a huge expanse of sand. Barcarès made me think of some Van Gogh paintings of maritime Provence. Every expanse of sandy beach in the Gulf of Lion, under the harsh light of summer, brings to mind Van Gogh.
We also left Salanca behind and gradually the sandbank of the Salses Ponds came into view. Behind the strip of sand, which seemed muddier and darker than the sand on dry land, the haze seemed to thicken as it slumbered. The pond water was almost white, a faint blue. Meanwhile, the purple barren rocks of the Corbères gradually emerged. The Corbères obstructed the landscape to our west and north and tended to descend slowly over the sea; the mountains gradually lost height over the ponds, covering them with the point of their scythe. Finally Cape Leucate appeared, its whiteness melding into the damp, murky atmosphere. Seen from afar, surrounded by low-lying land, Leucate looked like an island, which it probably once was. The horizontal panorama suggested ancient attitudes.
As we sailed by the sandbar, the pond narrowed and shrank. The town of Salses and the old frontier fortress stood out against the stony, brownish earth, dotted with mallow, of the Corbères. Salses is the advance guard of the Roussillon, the frontier of historic Catalonia. Leucate is the advance guard of the French. Between those two extremes you could see a handful of houses or Cabanes de Fitó, which they write as Fitou, in other words, la fita, the boundary.
I would like to have taken my time contemplating that landscape charged with history, an extraordinarily harsh, mysteriously waterlogged terrain, but the time had come to end our journey; we couldn’t continue on the sandbar, which extended as far as the cape. Baldiri had moored the Mestral; we heard the waves splashing the blue-black, slanting beach. Saldet suddenly held out his arm and pointed to the breach in the sandbar. That was the way through. He reckoned it was under a mile away. The man from Prona Cove had gotten it right. We lowered the flat sail and started the engine. The northeasterly we really needed in order to make it through the channel was not there. You just can’t have everything in this world. When we reached the waters around the entrance, Baldiri didn’t hesitate for a moment: he tried a risky maneuver, telling Saldet to put the engine on full and head for the center of the breach. We held on so we wouldn’t be tossed about like dolls if we hit a sandbank, but we hit no obstacles and sped into the still water of the pond. Baldiri slowed the engine to the minimum. Saldet and I kept testing the depths with the poles from Collioure. There was little in the way of water, and the pond was packed in places with weeds and reeds.
Baldiri seemed to disappear. It was work requiring enormous patience. We had to find the path – a path none of us knew – which had to be established yard by yard. The Mestral got stuck several times on mud and sandbanks. We had to reverse, we had to move forward…We entered the pond at one o’clock, at two we had advanced two hundred yards toward Leucate. We persisted for another hour and a half. But eventually the pond decided enough was enough. The pole gave us only a yard. It was impossible to progress any farther. Meanwhile, the reeds had grown dense, which must have convinced Baldiri not to go any farther. Those yellow feathery plants made a perfect hideout for our craft.
“Cast the two anchors to our stern in a V…” the skipper instructed Saldet. “I’m afraid of the north wind, and we must make sure we can make our escape…Cast out both of the anchors from the prow. It will be dead calm within the hour…”
Three yards from where we’d anchored, we found a boat, flat bottomed and painted black like a coffin, tied to a stake. We imagined it must be the lair of some passing bird hunter. The presence of that funereal cask felt odd in the porous, blue-black haze of twilight. We pulled it toward us with a hook and Baldiri stepped aboard. As we didn’t have oars, he grabbed the poles from Collioure. Then we watched him squeeze between the reeds until he was out of sight. In the meantime Saldet lit a fire and started to prepare to fry fish. It was four p.m., and the light was very dim. The light in the air had turned gray.
When the fish was fried, Saldet and I ate in silence. We left the skipper’s helping by the side of the fire for when he got back. After we’d downed three or four glasses of wine, Saldet declared: “This is a very strange spot, and a miserable rat trap.”
“If a north wind blows up, what do you advise?”
“We should make our escape. Go back to the breach and scarper…”
The wind never came. There was an eerie silence. The water was totally still. The Mestral made not the slightest movement. The air weighed heavy. It was as if we were part of a still life. Saldet lit a lamp and hung it from the yard of the lateen sail.
“So Baldiri can see us when he comes back…”
That was a good idea.
It was past eight o’clock when the skipper returned. He said he’d reached dry land. Three or four hundred yards farther on, at the end of the pond, there was a small harbor with very shallow water, made from stakes that had been driven into the earth. That was the exact spot where, tomorrow, Saturday, he had to meet punctually the fellow who was bringing him the goods. I felt he seemed lifted by the results of his exploration.
“It was a foul trick to force me to come to this place,” he went on, “but though it’s horrible, we’ll probably survive. That black boat is a jewel…It will come in very handy tomorrow, unless the hunter comes to claim it.”
He then added that he’d almost gone to Leucate, but had decided against it as a precautionary measure, so they didn’t begin to be suspicious of a foreigner.
He ate his fish with gusto. Drank copiously. Then downed two or three coffees he fortified with liquor. He was jolly. I suddenly realized he was actually a bag of nerves. We each retired to our respective corners. Before doing so, Baldiri ordered Saldet to hoist the jib with two strong sheets, the best ropes he could find.
I struggled to get to sleep. All of a sudden I heard the rain drumming down on the timbers that were my ceiling. I went on deck. It had begun to rain, a steady autumnal stream. The air was warm and still. Saldet was talking in his sleep. I heard him say: “The olive grove…the vineyard…” Baldiri had stretched out under the passageway, facing the sky, his hands on his neck. It was very dark, but I thought his eyes were open.
* * *
—
The next morning when I stuck my head out, it was just brightening. Day was dawning painfully. To the east there was a purple streak on the horizon; above that, a dark-red streak faded into the pallor of the sky’s gloomy, gray vault. It had been raining almost the whole night, everything was sopping, stifling and wretched. There was an oppressive muteness in the air.
“If you like, we can make a canopy…” I heard Saldet suggest.
“You’ll do nothing of the sort…” replied the skipper curtly.
“Where are we going to have breakfast then?”
“Wherever. Right here.”
Saldet carried the stove down the passage and boiled up coffee in the bilge in a cloud of smoke.
I’d been looking forward to spending those idle hours visiting Salses and the castle. This was now out of the question. After I’d drunk my coffee, I returned to my den, where I spent the morning nodding off and reading a book by c
andlelight. It rained, then stopped, and there was a long period when nothing happened. The skipper and Saldet had donned their waterproofs, and I heard them coming to and from the bridge, without saying a word.
As the day went on, the showers lessened. Daylight seemed to gather strength within the opaque sky. We ate a cold breakfast: a slice of bread and a slice of sausage. Baldiri ate mechanically. He was obsessed with the weather. He stared at the horizon to the north, at the depression accumulating between the final buttresses of the Corbères and the white Leucate promontory, toward Narbonne and Languedoc. For a moment a bright clearing seemed to open up at the back of this vista, where sky and earth intersected, like an arc of light from a bridge, and a livid, bright-green ray filtered through that arc. Baldiri snarled at this apparition and said: “Where we come from, that would be a north wind…”
For hours the skipper had been convinced we were heading toward such a finale, but I was surprised to see how conjecture was now turning to reality, potential depression giving way to firmness and calm.
“We should make our escape,” Baldiri said calmly, weighing his words. “It’s dangerous and there’s no shelter. But I gave my word I’d be there this afternoon at a set time and I intend to keep my pledge. If this man shows up, we’ll wind up our trip successfully. If he doesn’t…for whatever reason…our voyage will have been a waste of time, and we’ll be slightly poorer than when we started out.”
Saldet listened as if he were an oracle. I was smoking. It had stopped raining. The sky was still very low cast and misty, but the light wasn’t so murky. The air was fresher even though it was so still. The sea was white and placid. The stillness in the air seemed to spread a strange anxiety everywhere.
“So then,” said Baldiri, after a pause, as calm as ever, “I intend to be in the agreed place at the agreed time, whatever the weather and however dangerous it may be. If the fellow I’m expecting keeps to his word, we’ll be done straightaway. Then it will be time to load up, come back on board and flee this place…If he doesn’t appear, I intend to wait for an hour. When that hour has gone by, if he still hasn’t shown up, I’ll come back, but I do intend to wait that hour for him, even though we might lose the Mestral…You’ll say it’s all very risky. That’s true, but in this business your word is sacred…”
In the lull that followed, he looked down and then summed up, calmer than ever: “This is the situation: as Saldet is in a sorry state, I expect he won’t want to leave the boat. Now, you can do what you want. If you like, I’ll take you to the shore. You can go to Port-Vendres and I’ll come and pick you up some day next week. I don’t want to force you to suffer what’s coming, which will be most unpleasant…So what…”
“Baldiri, I trust you, but I also trust the Mestral…”
“Yes, she was a good buy, no denying that…And now we know what’s what, we can’t waste a moment. Saldet, organize things on board. Put everything in their proper place and secure them tight. Lower the quarter sails, cover the boat. Not a drop of water must fall down below. Put a tarpaulin over the stern quarter. We must keep the engine dry. Furl the sail and tie it to the yard. You’ll have more than enough with the jib sail…If the anchors strain too much when the north wind starts to blow, run the Mestral onto the first sandbank. When I get back, we’ll see if we can use a piece…”
Baldiri hauled in the black flat boat and made for land. It must have been half an hour later when the mistral set in with all its grandiose ferocity.
A person who hasn’t experienced a northwesterly gale in the area of the Corbères massif and the Salses Ponds can’t claim to know what that astonishing phenomenon is like. When the Corbères reach the sea, they are low flung and bare. They seem like a small obstacle put there to arouse the fury of the wind. The immense watery expanse of the ponds is an invitation to gust uncontrollably. The terrain is mysterious and gloomy, even under a summer sun, as ends of frontiers usually are, and that helps give the spectacle a sinister touch. And so this invasive wind, which penetrates the most hermetically sealed openings, whose gusts can only be stopped by a swath of masts and rigging, finds here the ideal territory to display itself with complete freedom.
The wind blew up suddenly, without a single warning gust. It may have been preceded by a drop in temperature and a dryness in the air. When Saldet felt it lash his face, he shouted: “That’s it!” and ran to the stern, clinging to the rail like a cat in order to keep an eye on our anchors. The Mestral slightly heaved over on her starboard side, but the anchors resisted, and straightening her back to the wind, the ship returned to her natural position. When I saw that first sign, I lay down on deck up against the side of the boat, because it would have been a waste of energy trying to stay vertical in that wind. The first gusts were accompanied by a deep, heavy roar, like a dull, distant thunderclap, and streams of spray whistling through the air. The reeds surrounding the boat began to whip the hull above the waterline, creating a chaotic din. The water began to bubble and fizz frantically. Meanwhile, from my relative haven, I began to observe the rapid changes all around us; the sky cleared, a dense cloud of white vapor formed over the pond’s surface that soon placed a floating wall of mist between the Corbères, the plain and our spot, blocking our view of anything in the distance.
Half an hour after the wind had settled in, the previous rain’s thick, low-cast haze dispersed. Part of the mist over the sky was reabsorbed in space; blue-green, sometimes faint-pink or purple patches began to appear in the early twilight burnished by an icy chill; the wind blew away another section of clouds extraordinarily quickly. Meanwhile, the air went on drying out, and small, black clouds, jagged, tattered and typical of the mistral, scudded across the cold, clear sky, fragments of the bank of cloud still filling the northern horizon, a cloud the wind had elongated like a monstrous lizard.
The fierce blasts pounding the pond water created a choppy swell, which threw up streams of water. The wind combined these streams with whirls of fine muddy sand from the pond’s banks and the sandbar separating it from the sea. Gusts of watery spray with myriad grains of sand rapidly covered the boat’s bridge and our puny bodies with the thinnest layer of slime. Coated by a wet mineral mange, our hair, eyes and faces were sore and irritated beyond belief. We were immersed in a haze of small, solid, floating particles, which the wind then swept away to create a low curtain of fog no eye could penetrate.
On the other side of the long ribbon of the sandbank, the sea churned the mass of froth and foam in long crashing waves.
The atmosphere gradually darkened, and twilight seemed to lodge the first, unimaginably bright stars in the sky. The smooth, wan metallic sky gave the stars the magnetic brilliance of luminous splinters.
Meanwhile, the wind blew with the blind tenacity of dark forces, tense, wild and incomprehensible, a dull, dark roar over which spirals of streaming spray whistled intermittently.
It was pure prehistory, nature in the raw, totally haphazard, a transmutation of land and sea. You could do nothing, say nothing: only ardently remember things that were motionless and comforting.
Baldiri was taking his time. He’d left over two hours ago. Although it would be tricky for him to get back – so I thought – the delay implied his encounter hadn’t taken place. The man he was expecting must have decided that weather freed him from any commitment. You have to be so poor, possess such vitality and have a tremendous spirit of adventure to engage in those small – terrible, obscure, unknown – tragedies of wretched daily life!
It must have been almost eight o’clock. The mere acknowledgment of the time sent me into the deepest depression…We didn’t hear him come. We suddenly saw him haul himself over the side rail and heard the rubber soles of his Wellington boots scraping over the sand the wind had scattered across the bridge. He looked exhausted, eyes bloodshot, hair disheveled – almost unrecognizable – but I noted he was acting serenely. He said good evening absolutely normally. I saw he was carrying n
othing, hands in pockets. The man had clearly not showed up.
He opened the cupboard under the bench by the mast, rummaged and extracted some clothes – a red jersey and a jacket (an ill-cut, half-length overcoat) – which he put on after taking off the leather blouson he was wearing. He shouted his questions at Saldet so the wind didn’t blow his words away: “Everything stored properly? Everything battened down?”
Saldet nodded several times.
“Start the engine. First in neutral…Then when we move off, open it up slightly.”
He started the engine. It was barely audible, even though it was from an old jalopy and very noisy. The screaming wind blotted everything out.
“Now let the prow rope out. Save as much as you can. Then cut it!”
When Pau Saldet returned after completing that operation, the skipper said: “Now raise anchors. That’s yours!” he ordered, pointing to the starboard. “This gentleman and I will try to lift the other.”
We went to it. It was a long, tricky business, hampered by the way the sandy, salty spray forced us to squint. It irritated our eyes and paralyzed our arms. It was a waste of effort and Baldiri ordered Saldet to put the motor in reverse. The anchors yielded at last and we hauled them on board. The Mestral was released and the wind carried her down the pond. Baldiri jumped and grabbed the tiller and Saldet put the motor into forward.
Now we’ve reached the point in the story I find difficult to tell at all coherently. I could never manage an accurate explanation of our exit from the pond. Was it chance? Was it luck? Was it the skipper’s extraordinary sense of direction, which enabled him to remember the path we’d taken the previous day? Was it the wonderfully clear night sky that helped Baldiri draw on his talents? I don’t know. We did hit a sandbank, but the moment he felt the obstacle on our keel, he ordered the motor on full. The screw threw up a formidable flurry of water, but Baldiri was set on completing the maneuver and the Mestral progressed through. When analyzed coldly, it seems absurd, even though the skipper said he was an expert on sandbanks in the Gulf of Roses and sensed resistance the very first instant the prow heaved. I never really swallowed any of that. The Mestral lurched violently, but it was the power of her engine that carried her through…