There were more and more tourists around. Paul saw them walking along the beach and they looked up and saw him, with his beard, standing against the lilac sky, under the roiling, boiling, biblical clouds. They never approached. Paul shook his fist and thought, What a triumph of Heaven over Earth! The sky was electric! All glare and clouds; the sky frowned with clouds.
He felt like one of the desert fathers. The desert fathers were not fathers, they were as barren as the desert itself. Oh, yes, in another life, they might have had children, wives, livestock, unpaid taxes, unsupportable debts… but here, in the desert, they were free.
He couldn’t be sure but he thought he’d been here for some time now. It could have been weeks. Perhaps months. Had he come here to lose himself or to find something? God, perhaps? If so, Paul had not found him. Not in the empty, endless sky, the stony, sparsely seeded ground that stretched red and cracked as a washerwoman’s hands. It was not as lonely as you’d think, he thought, the desert. So far he had encountered other men, hermits like himself, stripped to the waist, their scrubby beards hanging down their chests. They did not acknowledge him as they passed, respectful of his solitude; they scuttled across his horizon, anxious not to disturb his view or block his light. But he wanted to stop them as they passed, wanted to stay them with his scrawny grip, tight as an old man’s or a newborn’s or a madman’s, and tell them, Don’t go. The devil appeared to him at noon, shimmering in the heat haze, his eyes the size and colour of gooseberries. The world was a desert full of men wanting to be alone.
Here in the desert, water was scarce so he didn’t wash. And washing off this red dirt which had settled on his skin like brick dust after a demolition would distance him from his environment, his purpose: would make him less of an element of his surroundings and more like an intruder. His own smell made him feel less alone. His body was a forest of smells. But the memories: these made him feel more alone. When a man was shipwrecked, even in the desert, all his memories returned to him. His memory became as pin-sharp as the desert island sun and nothing escaped its glare.
And it was like that when you drowned, of course – your life flashed before your eyes. Once was enough! you thought, as you lived through it all again, drowning in memory, a wine-dark sea, and they crowded in on you, breathlessly, the memories – once was enough! But then, wading into the black sea, wading into the night, gasping with cold, watching the dust melt away and your skin come up glittery with salt, slippery as a newborn’s – as you waded out to the point where your feet floated free and you lost touch with the earth, like walking on water, like dreams of flying, as you gradually found yourself out of your depth and the water closed over your head, stinging your eyes, like crying in reverse, and you started to swallow your tears, the thoughts burst like bubbles in your mouth and filled your lungs and it all flashed before you – once was enough – but then you were glad to know at last, after a whole life of searching, the moment when everything had gone wrong.
Acknowledgements
This book would not have been written without the love and support of my first and best reader, Luke Williams. He’s the greatest friend known to woman, man or dog.
Thank you also to Candida Lacey, Corinne Pearlman and the team at Myriad, particularly Vicky Blunden, for her sensitive and intelligent editing, and Linda McQueen for her heroic copy-editing.
Thank you to Cathryn Summerhayes, for her unfailing enthusiasm, warmth, good humour and tenacity.
Thanks to Andrew Cowan for the encouragement and brilliant editorial advice.
Thank you to those who read the book closely and offered much support during its writing: Rattawut Lapcharoensap, Richard Misek, Chris Power, Stan Roche, Natalie Soobramanien, Hilery Williams, Caroline Woodley.
Thank you to Amit Chaudhuri, Maureen Freely, Ali Smith and Christos Tsiolkas for generous encouragement.
Thank you to Barlen Pyamootoo for the conversations.
My family have been great. I owe thanks to Arlette Ta-Min for taking the time to read the book and comment on it, and to Harry and Mona Ramasawmy for their hospitality, and for showing me around Mauritius. While there I also stayed with Gaby and Doris, who spoilt me rotten, and got to know my cousins Shane and Rudi and Kevin and Kenny, who showed me the island. Thanks to you all, and also to Armio and Jacqueline.
Thanks to Gom for taking me to Rodrigues, and to Sarojini Ramasawmy for accompanying us. And thanks to Mum and Dad for the writer’s retreat in Brittany.
Two of the stories in the book were written while on a residency at Cove Park. Thank you to Polly Clark and Julian Forrester for inviting me there.
Thank you to everyone who read the book or chapters of it in its early stages: Eleanor Birne, Jon Cook, Sara De Bondt, Oliver Emanuel, Jon Evans, Sara Heitlinger, David Lambert, Robert McGill, Belinda Moore, Andrew Motion, Tiffany Murray, Sarah Ridgard, Iain Robinson, Kathryn Simmonds, Peter Straus, John Thieme, Simon Trewin, Zoe Waldie, Yair Wallach, Jason Warren, Saul Williams and Jo Wroe.
And finally, thank you to my dearest Rob, for all the love and support, for the beautiful first edition of Paul et Virginie, and for crying at the end.
Author’s Note
There is currently no standard orthography for Mauritian Creole. I have based mine on Baker and Hookoomsing’s Dictionary of Mauritian Creole (L’Harmattan, 1987) and the version of Ledikasyon pu Travayer’s Prototype Mauritian Creole-English Dictionary that is available online at www.lalitmauritius.org.
Genie’s immediate impressions of Rodrigues are based on my own translation of an extract from Jean-Marie Le Clézio’s Voyage à Rodrigues (Gallimard, 1999). Gaetan’s story about the island of Saint Brandon is a retelling of one in Le Clézio’s The Prospector (David Godine, 2008).
Another version of Grandmère’s story about the lost dog first appeared in Luke Williams’ The Echo Chamber (Hamish Hamilton, 2011). Further information about Genie and Paul and Bernardin de Saint-Pierre’s Paul et Virginie are available at www.genieandpaul.com.
About the Author
Natasha Soobramanien studied English at Hull University and Creative Writing at the University of East Anglia. She contributed two chapters to Luke Williams’ debut novel The Echo Chamber, winner of the Saltire Society’s Scottish First Book of the Year Award 2011. Natasha was born in London, where she now lives.
Copyright
First edition published in 2012
This ebook edition published in 2012 by
Myriad Editions
59 Lansdowne Place
Brighton BN3 1FL
www.myriadeditions.com
Copyright © Natasha Soobramanien 2012
The moral right of the author has been asserted.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means without the written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN: 978–1–908434–16–6
www.myriadeditions.com
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