Desert

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  “The emir reached the middle of the forest; he had his daughter dismount from the horse and tied her to a tree. Then he left her, weeping in sorrow, for the cries of the ferocious beasts could already be heard as they approached their victim...”

  At times, the sound of the waves on the beach is more distinct, as if the sea were drawing nearer. But it’s just the wind blowing, and when it coils round in the hollows of the dunes, it sends spurts of sand that shoot up and mix with the smoke.

  “In the forest, tied to the tree, poor Leila was trembling with fright, and calling out to her father to save her because she couldn’t bear to die like that, devoured by the wild beasts... Already a large wolf was moving toward her, and she could see his eyes glowing like flames in the night. Then all of a sudden a sweet music broke forth in the forest. It was such beautiful, pure music that Leila was no longer afraid, and all the ferocious beasts of the forest stopped to listen...”

  Old Naman’s hands take the brushes, one after the other, and with a slow twirling motion, run them along the hull of the boat. Lalla and the children watch them too, as if the brushes were telling a story.

  “The celestial music resounded throughout the forest, and as they listened, the wild beasts lay down on the ground and became as gentle as lambs, for the song that came from the heavens bewildered them, troubled their souls. Leila also listened to the music with delight, and soon her bonds came loose on their own, and she began to walk through the forest, and wherever she went, the invisible musician was above her, hidden in the leaves of the trees. And the wild beasts were lying along the path, and they licked the princess’s hands without causing her the slightest harm....”

  The air is so transparent now, the light so soft, that you think you’re in another world.

  “Thus Leila came back to her father’s house in the morning, after having walked all night long, and the music followed her all the way to the gates of the palace. When the people saw this, they were very happy because they loved the princess dearly. And no one noticed a little bird flying discreetly from branch to branch. And that very same morning the rain began to fall upon the earth...”

  Naman stops painting for a minute; Lalla and the children stare at his copper face in which his green eyes are shining. But no one asks any questions, no one utters a word.

  “And the bird Balaabilou sang on in the rain, because he was the one who had saved the life of the princess he loved. And since he could not return to his original form, he came every night to perch on the branch of a tree next to Leila’s window and sing his sweet music to her. It is even said that after her death, the princess was also turned into a bird, and she joined Balaabilou to sing in the forests and gardens with him forevermore.”

  When the story is finished, Naman says nothing more; he continues working on his boat, running his pitch paintbrushes with a twirling motion along the hull. The light wanes because the sun is slipping over to the other side of the horizon. The sky becomes very yellow, with a hint of green, the hills seem to be cut out of tarpaper. The smoke from the bonfire is thin, light, it can barely be seen against the sunlight, like the smoke of a single cigarette.

  The children drift off, one after another. Lalla remains alone with Old Naman. He finishes his work without saying anything. Then he goes off as well, walking slowly along the beach, carrying his paintbrushes and his pot of pitch. Then the only thing left next to Lalla is the dying fire. Darkness quickly reaches deep into the sky, all of the intense blue of day is gradually turning into the black of night. The sea grows calm at this particular time, no one knows why. The waves fall very lazily on the sandy beach, extending their skirts of purple foam. The first bats begin to zigzag over the sea in search of insects. There are a few mosquitoes, a few gray moths that have lost their way. Lalla listens to the muffled cry of the nighthawk in the distance. All that is left of the fire are a few red embers still burning with no flame or smoke, like strange throbbing beasts hidden amidst the ashes. When the last ember goes out, after having flared for just a few seconds, like a dying star, Lalla rises to her feet and walks away.

  THERE ARE TRACKS almost everywhere in the dust of the old paths, and Lalla plays at following them. Sometimes they don’t lead anywhere, when they’re bird or insect tracks. Sometimes they lead you to a hole in the ground, or else to the door of a house. It was the Hartani who had shown her how to follow the tracks without getting thrown off by the surroundings, the grass, the flowers, or the shiny stones. When the Hartani is following a track, he’s exactly like a dog. His eyes gleam, his nostrils flare, his whole body tenses and leans forward. Sometimes he even lies down on the ground to better smell the trail.

  Lalla really likes the paths around the dunes. She remembers the first few days after arriving in the Project, after her mother had died from the fevers. She remembers her journey in the tarp-covered truck, and her father’s sister, the one named Aamma, being wrapped up in the large, gray, woolen cloak, with her face covered because of the desert dust. The journey had lasted several days, and every day Lalla had sat at the back of the truck under the stifling tarp, amidst dusty bags and bundles. Then one day, through the opening in the tarp, she had seen the deep blue sea stretching down the length of foam-fringed beach, and she’d started to cry, without knowing if it was from joy or fatigue.

  Every time Lalla walks out on the path by the seaside, she thinks of the deep blue sea in the midst of all the dust from the truck and of those long silent waves unfurling sideways, way off in the distance along the beach. She thinks of everything she saw all at once, just like that, through the slit in the tarp of the truck, and she can feel tears in her eyes, because it’s sort of like her mother’s eyes falling upon her, enveloping her, making her shudder.

  That’s what she’s looking for along the path of the dunes, heart pounding, her whole body straining forward, like the Hartani when he’s on a trail. She’s looking for the places she came to afterwards, so long ago that she can’t remember by herself.

  Sometimes she says, “Oummi,” just like that, softly, in a murmur. Sometimes she talks to her all by herself, very quietly, in a whisper, gazing out at the deep blue sea between the dunes. She doesn’t really know what she should say, because it was so long ago that she’s even forgotten what her mother was like. Could she have even forgotten the sound of her voice, even the words that she used to like to hear back then?

  “Where did you go, Oummi? I’d like you to come to see me here, I’d really like that...”

  Lalla sits down in the sand facing the sea, and she watches the slow movements of the waves. But it’s not really the same as the day she saw the sea for the first time, after the stifling dust of the truck on the red roads coming from the desert.

  “Oummi, don’t you want to come back to see me? See, I haven’t forgotten you.”

  Lalla searches her memory for traces of words that her mother used to say, words she used to sing. But it’s difficult to find them. You have to close your eyes and throw yourself back as far as you can, as if you were falling into a bottomless well. Lalla opens her eyes again, because there’s nothing left in her memory.

  She gets to her feet, walks down the beach watching the water pushing the froth farther up on the sand. The sun burns her shoulders and the back of her neck; the light blinds her. Lalla likes that. She also likes the salt that the wind leaves on her lips. She examines the seashells abandoned on the sand, straw-colored or pink mother-of-pearl, the old, worn, empty snail shells, and the long ribbons of greenish-black, gray, or purple seaweed. She’s careful not to step on a jellyfish, or a ray. Every now and again there is a strange, frantic churning in the sand when the water recedes in the place where a flatfish has been. Lalla walks a very long way down the shore, spurred on by the sound of the waves. Sometimes she stops, stands still, looking at her shadow puddled at her feet, or the bright sparkling of the foam.

  “Oummi,” Lalla says again. “Can’t you come back, just for a minute? I want to see you, because I’m all al
one. When you died and Aamma came to get me, I didn’t want to go with her, because I knew I would never be able to see you again. Come back, just for a minute, come back!”

  By half-closing her eyes and staring at the light reverberating off the white sand, Lalla can see the large fields of sand that were all around the house, back there, in Oummi’s country. She even startles suddenly, because for a second she thinks she sees the shriveled tree.

  Her heart is beating faster, and she begins to run toward the dunes, up where the wind from the sea is cut off. She throws herself down on her stomach in the hot sand; the small thistles tear her dress a little and stick their tiny needles in her belly and thighs, but she doesn’t notice. There is an excruciating pain deep in her body, such a sharp jab that she thinks she’s going to faint. Her hands sink into the sand, her breath stops. She becomes very stiff, like a wooden board. Finally she’s able to open her eyes, very slowly, as if she were really going to see the outline of the shriveled tree awaiting her. But there’s nothing there, the sky is very vast, very blue, and she can hear the long, drawn-out sound of the waves behind the dunes.

  “Oummi, oh, Oummi,” Lalla says again, moaning.

  But now she can see it all very clearly: there is a large field of red stones and dust, right there in front of the shriveled tree, a field so immense it seems to stretch out to the ends of the earth. The field is empty, and the little girl runs toward the shriveled tree in the dust, and she’s so small that she is suddenly lost in the middle of the field near the black tree, unable to see which way to go. So then she screams as hard as she can, but her voice bounces off the red stones, trails away in the sunlight. She screams, and a terrible silence surrounds her, a vicelike, aching silence. Then the lost little girl walks straight ahead, falls, gets back on her feet; she scrapes her bare feet on the sharp stones, and her voice is all broken with sobs, and she can’t breathe.

  “Oummi! Oummi!” That’s what she’s screaming; Lalla can hear the voice distinctly now, the broken voice that cannot leave the field of stones and dust, that bounces back on itself and is muffled. But those are the words Lalla hears, from the other end of time, the words that hurt her so, because they mean that Oummi will not come back.

  Then suddenly, standing in front of the lost little girl, in the very middle of the field of stones and dust, is that tree, the shriveled tree. It’s a tree that has died of thirst or old age, or maybe it was struck by lightning. It is not very tall, but it is extraordinary because it is twisted every which way with several old branches bristling up like fish bones and a black trunk with twining bark, with long roots knotted around rocks. The little girl walks toward the tree, slowly, without knowing why, she goes up to the calcified trunk, touches it with her hands. And suddenly she is seized with fear: from the top of the shriveled tree, in a very long, slow movement, a snake uncoils and slips down. As it slithers interminably along the branches, its scales swish over the dead wood with a metallic sound. The snake comes down leisurely, moving its blue-gray body toward the little girl’s face. She watches it without blinking, without moving, almost without breathing, and now not a cry can escape from her throat. Suddenly, the snake stops, looks at her. Then she leaps backward and starts running with all her might across the field of stones, she’s running so hard it looks as if she’ll go all the way around the world, her mouth dry, blinded with the light, wheezing, she runs over to a house, over to the shape of Oummi who holds her very tight and strokes her face; and she can smell the sweet smell of Oummi’s hair, and she can hear her gentle words.

  But today there is no one, no one at the other end of the stretch of white sand, and the sky is even vaster, emptier. Lalla is sitting doubled over in the hollow of a dune, her head pushed down between her knees. She can feel the sun burning on the back of her neck, in the place where her hair parts, and on her shoulders, through the stiff cloth of her dress.

  She thinks about al-Ser, the one she calls the Secret, whom she met on the plateau of stones near the desert. Maybe he wanted to tell her something, tell her she wasn’t alone, show her the path that leads to Oummi. Maybe it is his gaze once again that is burning her shoulders and neck right now.

  But when she opens her eyes again, there is no one on the shore. Her fear has vanished. The shriveled tree, the snake, the vast field of red stones and dust have faded away, as if they’d never existed. Lalla goes back toward the sea. It is almost as beautiful as on the day she saw it for the first time through the opening in the tarp of the truck and started to cry. The sun has swept the air over the sea clean. There are sparkles dancing above the waves and huge, frothy rollers. The wind is mild, heavy with the scents of the ocean depths, seaweed, shellfish, salt, foam.

  Lalla begins to walk slowly along the shore again, and she feels a sort of giddiness deep inside of her, as if a gaze really were coming from the sea, from the light in the sky, from the white beach. She doesn’t quite understand what it is, but she knows there is someone all around who is watching her, who lights her way with his gaze. It worries her a little, yet at the same time it gives her a warm feeling, a wave radiating inside her body, going from the pit of her stomach all the way out to the ends of her limbs.

  She stops, looks around: no one is there, no human form. Only the great motionless dunes scattered with thistles, and the waves rolling in, one by one, toward the shore. Maybe it is the sea that is always looking on in that way, the deep gaze of the waves of water, the dazzling gaze of the waves of salt and sand. Naman the fisherman says that the sea is like a woman, but he never explains it. The gaze comes from all sides at once.

  Just then, a large flock of gulls and terns passes along the shore, covering the beach in its shadow. Lalla stops, her feet sunk deep in sand mixed with water, her head thrown back: she watches the sea birds pass.

  They pass slowly overhead, flying against the warm wind, their long tapered wings plying the air. Their heads are craned out to the side a little, and odd wailing, squawking sounds are coming from their slightly open beaks.

  In the center of the flock is a gull that Lalla knows well because it is entirely white, without a single black spot. It flies slowly over Lalla, stroking steadily against the wind, its wing feathers slightly spread, beak open; and as it is flying over like that, it looks at Lalla, its little head tilted toward the beach, its round eye gleaming like a droplet.

  “Who are you? Where are you going?” asks Lalla.

  The white gull looks at her and doesn’t answer. It goes off to join the others, flies for a long time along the shore looking for something to eat. Lalla thinks that the white gull knows her but doesn’t dare fly right up to her because gulls aren’t made for living with humans.

  Old Naman sometimes says that sea birds are the souls of men who died at sea in a storm, and Lalla thinks that the white seagull is the soul of a very tall and slim fisherman, with light skin and hair the color of sunlight, whose eyes shine like a flame. Maybe he was a prince of the sea.

  Then she sits down on the beach, between the dunes, and watches the group of gulls flying along the shore. They fly easily, with little effort, their long curved wings leaning on the wind, heads craned out a little to the side. They’re looking for food, because not far from there is the huge city dump where the trucks unload. They continue crying out, making their funny, uninterrupted wailing sounds, mixed with sudden, inexplicable shrill outbursts, yelps, laughs.

  And then from time to time, the white gull, the one that is like a prince of the sea, comes over and flies around Lalla; it traces wide circles above the dunes, as if it has recognized her. Lalla makes waving motions at it with her arm; she attempts to call it, trying out diVerent names in hopes of saying the right one, the one that might give it back its original form, cause the prince of the sea to appear amid the foam with his hair streaming light and his eyes as bright as flames.

  “Souleïman!”

  “Moumine!”

  “Daniel!”

  But the large white gull continues circling in the
sky, out by the sea, grazing the waves with the tip of its wing, its sharp eye riveted on Lalla’s silhouette, without answering. Sometimes, because she feels a little spiteful, Lalla runs after the gulls, waving her arms and shouting out names randomly, to annoy the one that is the prince of the sea.

  “Chickens! Sparrows! Little pigeons!”

  And even: “Hawks! Vultures!” Because those are birds the gulls don’t like. But the white bird that has no name continues its very slow, indifferent flight, it sails away down the shoreline, gliding on the east wind, and run as she might over the sandy beach, Lalla can’t catch up with it.

  Off it flies, slipping in amongst the other birds strung out along the foam, off it flies; soon they are nothing but imperceptible dots melting into the blue of the sea and the sky.

  THE WATER IS beautiful too. When it starts to rain in the middle of summer, the water streams over the metal and tarpaper roofs, making its sweet music in the large drums under the drainpipes. The rain comes at night, and Lalla listens to the sound of thunder building and rolling around in the valley or over the sea. Through the cracks between the planks, she watches the lovely white light constantly flashing on and off, making everything in the house shake. Aamma doesn’t move on her pallet, she goes on sleeping with her head under the sheet, without hearing the sounds of the thunderstorm. But at the other end of the room, the two boys are awake, and Lalla can hear them speaking in hushed tones, laughing quietly. They are sitting up on their mattresses, and they too are trying to see outside through the cracks between the planks.

  Lalla gets up, walks silently over to the door to see the patterns the lightning is making. But the wind has risen, and big cold drops are falling on the dirt and spattering on the roof; so Lalla goes back to lie in her blankets, because that’s the way she loves to hear the sound of the rain: eyes opened wide in the dark, seeing the roof light up from time to time, and listening to all the drops pelting down violently on the earth and on the sheet metal, as if small stones were falling from the sky.