by André Gide
We threw new coins into the water; they scintillated as they sank; and when they were about to disappear, the men, leaping from the boat and plunging into the sea, smothered them as one would snuff out a candle. But if it had not been for the joy of looking at the bottom of the sea and seeing the men’s blood, these games would not have entertained us; after a while, we came back to the town.
We bathed in excessively warm pools in which children swam and chased each other. Mosaics could be seen on the bottom through the green water, and two symmetrically arranged figures of pink marble spilled perfumes into round basins; the perfumes fell into the water in delicate cascades, with soft sound. Coming up to the statues, we stretched out our hands toward the basins, and the perfumes ran down the length of our arms and trickled over our hips. When we dived back into the water, it seemed to scald us. A scented vapor rose to the translucid ceiling; it condensed and formed droplets that made the light turn blue and from the ceiling these droplets fell one by one into the water.
And since we were overcome by torpor when we breathed in this warm vapor, we remained motionless, suspended, hopelessly entranced in the wondrous green and blue water, with only a soft light spilling over it and the arms of the slender children turning blue in the light as droplets fell from the ceiling and splashed monotonously into the pool.
… At nightfall the sea became phosphorescent; fires along the bank leaped at each other, as did the waves. The night was aflame; the sailors and the spurious men went back to their women, and the thought of their embraces tormented us, for the night was truly too passionate. An enormous blushing moon rose above the waves and cast its reflection over the already luminous sea. Brown boats cut through its furrows on their way back to the shores. Only the sound of waves and flickering fires was heard in the night.
And from the forests vampires came on broad wings and hovered near the bare feet, near the lips of drowsy fishermen, sucked out their lives and lulled them to sleep with the silent beating of their wings.*
Morgain was feverish. He asked us to put eternal snow on his forehead.
We put into port alongside an island dominated by a very high mountain. We went ashore; Nathanael, Ydier, Alain, Axel and I walked toward the snows. For a long time afterwards, we were still thinking of the island, for it was calm and enticing; because of glaciers that had moved all the way down to the valley, the air that circulated was almost cool. We walked along, happy to experience such calm.
On reaching the foot of a translucid glacier, we saw a clear fountain. It flowed softly from beneath the ice; a polished sheet of quartz, which it had hollowed out in the shape of a chalice, served as a receptacle. We filled our crystal vial in order that we might take some of the water back to Morgain.
Cold water of ineffable purity! In the goblets from which we drank, it still retained its sky-color. It was so limpid and so blue that it seemed to have lost none of its depth. It was still as fresh as hiemal water. It was as pure and intoxicating as the early morning air in the mountains. As we drank the water, a seraphic happiness enraptured us; we dipped our hands in it; we dampened our eyelids; it washed away the ravages of fevers, and its subtle virtue penetrated even our thoughts, as lustral water. Afterwards, the countryside seemed to us more beautiful, and we marveled at everything around us.
Toward noon we returned to the sea and walked along the shoreline. From the sand we gathered golden pebbles and rare shells washed ashore by the tide, and on the tamarisks along the beach we found emerald-colored beetles.
Near the sea grew a plant whose flowers were always crowned with butterflies. The butterflies were indistinguishable from the petals, and this made the flowers seem to have wings. We knew that spring butterflies, the first butterflies in May, are white and yellow, like primroses and hawthorns; summer butterflies variegated, like all flowers, and autumn butterflies the color of dead leaves; but these, on pink flowers, had the transparent wings of butterflies from high summits, and the corollas of the flowers were visible through their wings.
As we walked along the shoreline, we came upon a mysterious child who was sitting on the sand, lost in revery. His huge eyes were as blue as a glacial sea; his skin shimmered like lilies and his hair was like a cloud struck by the sun at dawn.* He was trying to understand some words that he had traced on the sand. He spoke; his voice spilled from his lips like the morning bird shaking off the dew and taking flight; we would gladly have given him our shells, our insects and our pebbles, all that we had, so sweet was his charming voice. He smiled with infinite sadness. We wanted to take him to the ship, but he crouched on the sand and resumed his calm meditation.
We departed. The walk through this island had given us strength, and when the Orion again set sail, we gazed upon the open sea ahead of us and felt a tremor in our hearts.
We did not bathe that day.
* Narcissus (1891), written to defend the doctrine of Symbolism, depicts Narcissus in the classical pose—bending over the water and viewing not only his own image but the moving panorama of life.
* Gide felt a strong attraction, partly sexual and partly intellectual, to the people with whom he had no common intellectual or economic ties, yet was never able to mingle easily with them. His predilection for the moslem culture caused him to travel outside France on various occasions.
* There is much to support the theory that for Gide art was a means of avoiding painful reality. As a child and as a writer he preferred pleasurable fantasies to painful realities.
* Gide here added a footnote—the simple word Novalis. Fried-rich Leopold, Freiherr von Hardenberg (1772-1801), was a pioneer of the Romantic movement. His long unfinished Heinrich von Ofterdingen, which relates a hero’s quest for the mysterious blue flower is an allegory of the writer’s life.
VII
For the seventh time the ship stopped. This island where we disembarked full of hope and from which we were not to depart until long thereafter, was for many the end of the voyage. Those of us who continued onward, leaving behind us so many dead companions and hopes, were never again to see the splendid lights which had previously roused us. But sailing aimlessly under a morose sky, we regretted the town—beautiful in spite of all its sensuality—the royal town, the palaces of Haïatalnefus with their terraces that frightened us when we walked on them because their sheer beauty made them unsafe. Terraces! Merciful Bactrian terraces bathed in morning sunshine! Hanging gardens, gardens with a view of the sea! Palaces no longer seen but still longed for! How we would have loved you if not for this island!
The winds had ceased completely. But wary, because of a certain splendor that made the air along the shores vibrate, only four disembarked at first. From the Orion we saw them climb a hillock covered with olives, then return. The island was wide and beautiful, they said; from the hillock one could see plateaus, high smoking mountains and, along the shore that curved inward, the last houses of a town. Since nothing that they had seen justified our first fears, all of us, including the sailors, disembarked and made our way toward the town.
The first inhabitants that we encountered were drawing water beside a fountain; they came up to us as soon as they saw us. They were dressed in sumptuous garments which weighed heavily upon them and fell in straight folds; headdresses in the shape of a diadem gave them a priestly air. They offered their lips to be kissed and their eyes glittered with vicious promises. But when we refused them, these women, whom we had not recognized at first, were horrified; on seeing that we were foreigners, ignorant of the customs of the island, they half-opened their purple cloaks and exposed their pink-painted breasts. When we still rejected them, they were astounded; then, taking our hands, they led us toward the town.
Through the streets roved only admirable creatures. Early in their childhood those not perfectly beautiful, feeling the weight of reprobation, went into seclusion. Not all, however, for some of the most horrible and most deformed ones were pampered and used to satisfy abnormal desires. We saw no men—only boys with the faces of w
omen and women with the faces of boys; sensing the approach of new terrors, they fled toward plateaus inhabited only by men. Since the death of Camaralzaman, the men had all left the town. Maddened by the desire for men, these forsaken women, like those whom we had met, would sometimes venture into the countryside; thinking that some men who had come down from the plateaus might come, they disguised themselves in order to seduce them. We learned this, not at the outset, but only after the queen, having led us into the palace, came to tell us that she was holding us prisoner.
Enticing captivity, more perfidious than harsh jails. These women desired our caresses, and they kept us imprisoned in order that they might satisfy their desires.
From the first day the sailors were lost; then one by one the others fell; but there remained twelve of us who would not give in.
The queen became enamored of us; she had us bathe in warm pools and perfumed us with nitrobenzene; she reclothed us in splendid cloaks; but avoiding her caresses, we thought only of our departure. She thought boredom would overcome our resistance, and long days elapsed. We waited; but over the monotonous Ocean moved not a single gust; the air was as blue as the sea; and we did not know what had become of the ship.
From noon until evening we slept in small rooms with glassed doors that opened out on a wide stairway leading down to the sea. When the rays of the evening sun struck the panes, we would go outside. Then the air was calmer; from the sea there arose a scented coolness; we would inhale the cool air and remain enraptured for a short while before descending; at this hour the sun was plunging into the sea; oblique rays struck the marble steps and infused them with scarlet transparencies. Slowly then, all twelve of us, majestic, symmetrical and solemn because of our sumptuous attire, walked down toward the sun, down to the last step where a light breeze sprayed our robes with foam.
At other times or on other days we would sit, all twelve of us, on a raised throne, each like a king, facing the sea and watching the tide rise and fall; we were hoping that perhaps on the waves would appear a sail or in the sky a cloud swollen by a propitious wind. Restrained by our nobility, we made no gestures and remained silent; but when in the evening our fallen hope departed with the light, then, like a wail of despair, a great sob welled up in our chests. And the queen would come running to gloat over our distress, to study us; but she always found us motionless, our dry eyes gazing toward the place where the sun had set. She saw clearly that we were thinking of the ship, and we dared not ask her what had happened to it.
Since we kept resisting and seemed more austere to her each day, the queen tried to distract us, thinking that in games and festive activities we would forget our voyage and our destinies. They seemed to us very serious and precise; our pride was heightened by this resistance, and underneath the splendor of our cloaks we felt welling in our hearts an irrepressible desire for glorious actions.
Pompous gardens with tiered terraces descended from the palace to the sea. Sea water flowed in through marble canals, and the trees hung low overhead; strong bindweeds interwined, forming swaying bridges and swings. At the mouth of the canals they floated in a dense cluster that resisted the sharpest blades; farther along, the water in the canals was always calm. Boats moved through the canals, and we saw fish swimming in their mysterious shadows; but we dared not bathe there because of stinging crabs and cruel lobsters.
On the shore near the town was a cave to which we were taken by the queen. The boat entered through a narrow opening that vanished from sight soon after we passed through it; the light in traveling through the blue water under the rocks took on the color of the waves whose movements appeared as faint flickers on the walls. The boat followed a circuitous route between two rows of basaltic columns; the air and the diaphanous water intermingled and became indistinguishable; everything was shrouded by bluish light. At the base of the descending columns were sand, algae and rocks from which the indeterminate light seemed to emanate.
Above our heads played the shadow of the boat. In the depths of the cave the sand fanned out into a beach lashed by small waves. We would have liked to swim in this ocean fairyland, but we dared not bathe for fear of crabs and lampreys.
In this manner the queen entertained us; though we continued to resist, our hearts thrilled at the sight of the marvels through which she hoped to seduce us. At night in the boat at sea, watching the stars and constellations wholly unlike those that appear in our skies, we sang:
“Queen! Queen of chimerical islands, queen with necklaces of coral, you whom we would have loved if you had come at dawn, queen of our despair, beautiful Haïatalnefus, oh let us depart!”
Then she said, “Why? What will you do?” and we did not know the answer. She continued:
“Stay with us; I yearn for you. One night, I would have you know, you were sleeping in your rooms; without a sound I came and kissed your eyes, and your soul was refreshed by the kiss that I placed on them. Stay. The winds have fallen, and you no longer have a ship. What will you seek elsewhere?”
And we did not know what to say, for she could not understand that all of this could not satisfy the vast yearning of our souls. We were weeping in our anxiety.
“Madame, oh what should I say to you? Nobility and supreme beauty always draw our tears. As beautiful as you are, Madame, you are not so beautiful as our lives; and the brave deeds that lie before us illuminate our paths like stars.”
Then, elated by the night and the ease with which words came, I declaimed, thinking that I could see in the past a reflection of the brave deeds that awaited us:
“Oh! Oh, Madame, if only you knew about the missions and cavalcades of our youth: majestic hunts in the forest; glorious deliverances and the return, in the evening, along the same path and through the dust; and the joy of having accomplished our day’s task! And our exhaustion, Madame, and our sad appearance! How serious our lives! And how we bestrode the mountain as the sun sank and shadows claimed the valley; sometimes we felt that we were about to catch our chimeras, and our hearts fluttered with happiness!…
The queen kept looking at me, the trace of a smile in her eyes, and asking:
“Is that true?”
But I was so convinced that I said to her:
“Oh, yes, Madame.”
As the moon moved onward I cried out:
“I am so sad for her because of her pallor.”
Then the queen spoke up:
“What does it matter to you?” she asked. And suddenly the aptness of her question forced me to agree.
And thus the days passed, given over to excursions or festivities.
One evening the queen had playfully dropped a ring from one of her fingers into the deep sea. It was not an expensive ring but had been given to her, like all her rings, by Camaralzaman, her husband. It was old and had an aventurine set in a bezel supported by plaited strands of pale gold. It could still be seen when plants changed their position on the blue sand where pink anemones glistened, pensive and bewildered. Clarion, Agloval and Morgain equipped themselves for diving and descended; I did not follow them—not because I was too bored but because I was too anxious, for the mysterious depths of the sea had always attracted me. They remained underwater for a long time; as soon as they surfaced I questioned them, but they fell into a deep sleep, and when they were awakened they seemed to remember nothing, or to be unwilling to answer me.
“It was so dark all around me that I could see nothing,” said Angloval.
“A paralyzing torpor overpowered my thoughts,” said Clarion, “and then I could think only of the relucent sleep that one would sleep in this fresh water, lying on the soft algae.”
Morgain remained silent and sad, and when I begged him to relate what he had seen, he replied that even if he so willed, he could not find the right words.
Then came new festivities, decorative lights and dances; in this way still other days passed, and we were tormented by the feeling that our superb lives were being wasted on trivial occupations.
We thought of
the ship, and we began to evolve a plan of escape. Before the palace stretched the plain, and the open shore curved inward; one could clearly see that the Orion was not there on the vast sea. But on the other side of the palace must lie other beaches; the Orion must be there. The high walls of the last terraces jutted out into the sea as if to block its approach; secret paths must lead out to it, but only the queen knew where they were. One night when the sea was so low that it withdrew from the base of the walls, Ydier, Hélain, Nathanael and I set out secretly in search of the ship.
It was still twilight, but there were no longer any sounds. We passed beyond the terraces and found ourselves behind the town; long walls fronted on a small strip of sand onto which gutters spilled their offensive smells. We hastened because of the approaching sea and night, but we thought we might be able to return by another route if the tide should block this one. After the walls came low banks of clay; the space that separated them from the water became narrower and narrower, and the waves finally soaked their base. We stopped, uncertain, to determine what the sea was doing. But the tide was not yet rising; stepping on rocks that jutted out of the water, we continued our search. A promontory came into view; we thought we could see a beach in the distance. Our feet slid over soft plants; gray, crepuscular water, barely distinguishable, splashed feebly between the rocks; uneasiness gripped us, so indeterminate was this water…And suddenly the bank came to an end; fear surged through our hearts, for we sensed the ship was there. The night was allembracing. Noiselessly we moved onward a few steps and then, leaning against the last rock, we looked.