The Prospector

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  We have another hiding place. It’s a ravine at the bottom of which runs a thin stream that later flows into the Boucan River. Sometimes the women go there to bathe – a little lower down – or sometimes a herd of goats driven by a little boy. Laure and I go to a place in the ravine where there’s a level shelf and an old tamarind tree leaning out in mid-air. Straddling its trunk, we shimmy up towards the branches and remain there, heads resting against the bark, daydreaming and watching the water rush over the lava stones down to the bottom of the ravine. Laure thinks there’s gold in the stream and that’s why the women come to do their washing, to trap gold dust in the cloth of their dresses. So we’re always watching the water run past, searching for reflections of sunlight in the black sand, on the beaches. When we’re up there, we don’t think about anything else, we don’t feel the threat any more. We don’t think about Mam’s illness or the lack of finances or Uncle Ludovic, who’s buying up all of our land for his plantation. That’s why we go to those hiding places.

  My father left for Port Louis in the horse-drawn carriage at dawn. I immediately went out into the fields and headed north first, to see the mountains I love, then turned my back on Mananava and now I’m walking towards the sea. I’m alone, Laure can’t come with me because she’s indisposed. She’s never used that expression before, never talked about the blood that comes to women with the phases of the moon. Afterwards she never speaks of it again, as if she’d later grown ashamed of it. I remember her on that day, a pale, stubborn-looking little girl with long black hair and that very straight, handsome forehead with which she took on the world and something that had already changed, made her distant, foreign. Laure standing on the veranda, wearing her long pale-blue cotton dress, sleeves rolled up, showing her thin arms, and the smile on her face when I walk away, as if to say: I’m the Wild Woodsman’s sister.

  I run without stopping until I reach the foot of the Tourelle on the edge of the sea. I don’t want to go to Black River beach any more, or the sandbar at Tamarin, because of the fishermen. Ever since the adventure in the pirogue, ever since they punished Denis and me by separating us, I don’t want to go to the places we used to go any more. I go up to the top of the Tourelle or up to the Etoile, into secret places in the underbrush and watch the sea and the birds. Not even Laure knows where to find me.

  I’m alone and I’m talking to myself out loud. I’m asking questions and giving the answers, like this:

  ‘Come on, let’s sit down there.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Over there on that flat rock.’

  ‘Are you looking for someone?’

  ‘No, no, my good man, I’m watching the sea.’

  ‘Are you trying to catch a glimpse of the sea larks?’

  ‘Look, a boat sailing by. Can you see its name?’

  ‘I know that boat, it’s the Argo. It’s my ship, it’s coming to get me.’

  ‘Are you going away?’

  ‘Yes I’ll be going soon. Tomorrow or the day after, I’m going away…’

  I’m up on the Etoile when the rain first comes in.

  It had been a nice day, the sun was burning my skin through the clothing, the chimneys were smoking far away in the cane fields. I sat gazing at the expanse of dark-blue sea, choppy out beyond the reefs.

  The rain comes sweeping over the sea, coming from Port Louis, a great grey curtain in a semicircle that is coming straight towards me at top speed. It’s so sudden I don’t even think of looking for shelter. I just stand there on the rocky outcrop – heart racing. I love seeing the rain driving in.

  At first there is no wind. All sounds are suspended, as if the mountains are holding back the breath of air. That’s what’s making my heart pound too, the silence that drains the sky, that makes everything stand still.

  All of a sudden the cold wind hits me, blustering through the foliage. I can see the ripples running over the cane fields. The wind is whirling around me, with gusts that force me to squat down on the rock to keep from being blown over. Over in the direction of Black River, I see the same thing: the huge dark curtain that is rushing towards me, veiling the sea and the land. That’s when I realize I need to get away from here as fast as I can. It’s not just an ordinary rainstorm, it’s a tempest, a hurricane like the one in February that lasted two days and two nights. But today there is that silence, like none I’ve ever heard before. And still I don’t move. I’m unable to tear my eyes away from the huge grey curtain that is swooping so swiftly over the valley, over the sea, swallowing the hills, the fields, the trees. The curtain is already obscuring the breakers. Then Rempart Mountain, Trois Mamelles disappear. The dark cloud has passed over them, erased them. Now it’s sweeping down the mountainsides towards Tamarin and the Boucan Embayment. I think suddenly of Laure, of Mam, who are home alone, and panic tears me away from the sight of the onrushing rain. I jump off the rock and make my way down the slope of the Etoile as fast as I can, charging unhesitatingly through the underbrush that scratches my face and legs. I run as if a pack of mad dogs were at my heels, as if I were a deer escaped from a ‘chassé’. Without thinking about it I find all the shortcuts, clamber down a dry streambed leading eastward and in a second I’m in Panon.

  Then the wind hits me, the wall of rain comes crashing down upon me. I’ve never felt anything like it. Water envelops me, streams over my face, into my mouth, my nostrils. I’m suffocating, I’m blinded, I’m staggering in the wind. Most terrifying of all is the noise. A deep, heavy noise that rumbles in the earth, and I think the mountains must be tumbling down. I turn my back on the tempest, crawl on my hands and knees through the bushes. Branches torn from trees go whipping through the air, shooting past like arrows. I wait, squatting at the foot of a tall tree, my arms over my head. A second later the blast has passed. Rain is pouring down, but I can stand up now, breathe, see where I am. The underbrush on the edge of the ravine is beaten flat. Not far from there a tall tree like the one that sheltered me has fallen to the ground with its roots still clinging to the red earth. I start walking again – haphazardly – and suddenly, during a lull, I see the buttress of Saint Martin, the ruins of the old sugar mill. No time to waste, that’s where I’ll go for shelter.

  I know these ruins. I often saw them when I used to roam around in the fallow lands with Denis. He didn’t want to go near them, he says it’s the Mouna Mouna’s house, that they beat the ‘devil’s drum’ here. Inside the old walls I huddle up in a corner under what’s left of the vaulting. My drenched clothing is clinging to my skin, I’m shivering with cold, and with fear too. I can hear the blasts of wind barrelling across the valley. It’s making a sound like an enormous animal lying down on the trees, crushing the thickets and the branches, breaking the tree trunks as if they were simple twigs. The rainwater is flooding over the ground, surrounding the ruins, cascading down into the ravine. Streams appear as if they’d just sprung up out of the earth. The water swirls by, branches out, knots together, eddies. There is no longer sky or earth, only that mass of liquid, and the wind whipping trees and red mud up into the air. I look straight ahead, hoping to catch a glimpse of the sky through the wall of water. Where am I? Maybe the ruins of Panon are all that’s left on Earth, maybe everyone’s been drowned in the flood. I want to pray but my teeth are chattering and I can’t even remember the words any more. All I can remember is the story of the great flood that Mam used to read us in the big red book, the one where water fell upon the Earth and covered everything up to the mountains and the large boat that Noah built to escape the Flood, and in which he put a pair of every animal species. But how could I build a boat? If Denis were here, maybe he would know how to make a pirogue or a raft with tree trunks. And why should God punish the Earth again? Is it because men have become hardened, as my father says, and they feed on the poverty of the labourers in the plantations? Then I think of Laure and Mam in the abandoned house, and I’m seized with such intense panic that I can hardly breathe. What’s become of them? Maybe the raging wind, the great wall o
f water have engulfed them, swept them away, and I imagine Laure flailing in the river of mud, trying to grab hold of tree branches, being borne towards the ravine. In spite of the blasting winds and the distance I get to my feet, cry out, ‘Laure!… Laure!’

  But I realize it’s no use, the sound of the wind and the water drown out my cries. So I squat back down against the wall, my face hidden in my arms, and the water streaming down over my head mingles with my tears, because I feel so immensely desperate – as if a dark void is swallowing me up and I’m falling through the liquid earth as I crouch here, helplessly, on my heels.

  I remain motionless for a long time, while the sky changes above me and the walls of water sweep along like waves. Finally the rain subsides, the wind weakens. I stand up, walk, deafened by the sudden silence. The sky has rent in the north and I can see the shapes of Rempart, of Trois Mamelles appearing. They’ve never seemed more beautiful to me. My heart is beating very fast, as if they were human friends that I’d lost and just found again. They are unreal, dark blue among the grey clouds. I can see every detail of their ridges, every rock. The sky around them is still, has reached down into the hollow of Tamarin where other rocks, other hills are slowly emerging. Turning around, I can see islands of neighbouring hills out on the sea of clouds: the Tourelle, Mont Terre Rouge, Brise-Fer, Morne Sec. Far away, lit with incredible sunshine, Grand Morne.

  It is all so beautiful I just stand there, motionless. Lingering, I contemplate the wounded landscape upon which tattered clouds are snagging. Out around Trois Mamelles, perhaps somewhere near Cascades, there’s a magnificent rainbow. I’d love for Laure to be here with me to see that. She says rainbows are the roadways of the rain. The rainbow is very bright, it’s resting on the base of the mountains in the west and stretching all the way over to the other side of the peaks around Floréal or Phoenix. There are still dark clouds roiling. But all of a sudden the ones just above me tear open and I see the sky is a pure, dazzling hue of blue. Then it’s as if time takes a leap backwards, inverting its course. A few moments ago it was evening, the light was waning, yet an infinite evening, leading out to the void. And now I can tell it is barely noon, the sun is at its zenith and I can feel the heat of its light on my face and hands.

  I run through the wet grasses, go back down the hill towards Boucan Valley. Everywhere the earth is sodden, streams are spilling over with water the colour of red ochre. There are broken tree trunks on the path. But I pay no attention. It’s over with, that’s what I’m thinking, it’s all over with since the rainbow appeared to seal God’s peace.

  When I arrive in front of our house I’m so anxious the strength drains from my body. The garden, the house are intact. There are just leaves, broken branches strewn about in the lane, muddy puddles everywhere. But the sunlight is gleaming on the light roof, on the leaves of the trees, and everything seems newer, younger.

  Laure is on the veranda, as soon as she sees me she cries, ‘Alexis!’ She runs to me, hugs me tightly. Mam is there too, standing in front of the door, pale, worried. Though I keep telling her, ‘It’s over, Mam, it’s all over, there isn’t going to be a flood!’ I don’t see her smile. Only then do I think of our father who went to town and something inside me hurts. ‘But he’s going to come now? He’s going to come?’ Mam squeezes my arm, says in a hoarse voice, ‘Yes, of course he’s going to come…’ But she’s unable to hide her worry and I’m the one who has to repeat, holding her hand as tightly as I can: ‘It’s over now, there’s nothing to be afraid of any more.’

  We remain huddled together on the veranda, clinging to one another, warily observing the far end of the garden and the sky where once more large black clouds are gathering. There is that strange silence again, weighing down upon the valley around us as if we were all alone in the world. Cook’s hut is empty. He left for Black River this morning with his wife. In the fields, not a cry, no sound of a carriage to be heard.

  It’s that silence penetrating deep down inside us, that ominous silence, bearing the threat of death that I’ll never be able to forget. There’s not a bird in the trees, not an insect, not even the sound of the wind in the she-oaks. The silence is more powerful than the sounds, it swallows them up, and everything around us drains away and is annihilated. We stand still on the veranda. I’m shivering in my damp clothes. When we speak our voices ring out strangely in the distance and our words are immediately eclipsed.

  Then the sound of the hurricane comes upon the valley, like a herd running through the cane fields and the brush, and I can also hear the sound of the sea, terribly close. We stand there frozen on the veranda and I feel nausea rising in my throat, because I realize that the hurricane isn’t over. We were in the eye of the storm, where everything is calm and silent. Now I hear the wind coming in from the sea, coming in from the south – louder and louder – and the body of the huge enraged animal crushing everything in its path.

  This time there is no wall of rain, the wind comes alone. I see the trees tossing in the distance, the clouds scudding like wisps of smoke, long sooty trails stained with violet patches. The sky is the most frightening. It is speeding past, opening, closing, and I feel as if I’m sliding towards it, falling.

  ‘Hurry! Hurry, children!’

  Mam has finally spoken. Her voice is hoarse. But she’s succeeded in breaking the spell, our horrified fascination at the sight of the sky destroying itself. She’s pulling, pushing us into the house, into the dining room with closed shutters. She blocks the door with the hooks. The house is filled with shadows. It’s like the interior of a ship where we’re listening to the wind bearing down upon us. In spite of the stifling heat I’m shivering with cold, with anxiety. Mam notices. She goes to her room, looking for a blanket. While she’s gone the wind hits the house like an avalanche. Laure clings even tighter to me and we hear the boards squealing. Broken branches are flung up against the sides of the house, stones roll against the shutters and doors.

  Through the cracks in the shutters we suddenly see the daylight blink out and I realize that clouds are covering the earth again. Then water falls from the sky, whipping at the walls under the veranda. It seeps in under the door, through the window frames, floods over the floorboards around us in dark, blood-red streams. Laure watches the water coming towards us, pooling around the big table and the chairs. Mam returns and the look on her face frightens me so much that I take the blanket and try to plug up the space under the door, but the water quickly soaks through it and rushes in again. The howling winds outside are deafening and the sinister cracking of the frame of the house, the sharp snapping of the clapboards being torn away fills our ears. The rain is flooding into the attic now and I think of our old journals, our books, everything that we love that is going to be destroyed. The wind has shattered the garret windows and is rushing through the attic, howling, smashing the furniture. With a thunderous blast, it rips up a tree that comes crashing into the southern façade of the house, eviscerating it. We hear the sound of the veranda caving in. Mam pulls us out of the dining room just as a huge branch thrusts through one of the windows.

  The wind enters the breach like a furious and invisible animal and for a moment I have the feeling that the sky has descended upon the house to crush it. I hear the clatter of furniture being overturned, windows breaking. Mam somehow drags us over to the other side of the house. We take refuge in our father’s office and remain there, the three of us crouching against the wall where the large map of the night sky hangs alongside that of Rodrigues. The shutters are closed, but even so, the wind has broken the windows and the hurricane waters are running over the parquet, over the desk, over our father’s books and papers. Laure clumsily attempts to put a few papers away, then sits back down, discouraged. Outside, through the cracks in the shutters, the sky is so dark you’d think it was night. And the incessant tumult of trees toppling all around us.

  ‘Let’s pray,’ says Mam. She hides her face in her hands. Laure’s face is pale. She’s staring unblinkingly at the window,
and I’m trying to think of the angel Gabriel. I always think of him when I’m afraid. He’s tall, surrounded by light, armed with a sword. Could he have condemned us, abandoned us to the raging sea and sky? The light is growing ever dimmer. The sound of the wind is shrill, high-pitched, and I can feel the walls of the house trembling. Pieces of wood fly away from the veranda, the shingles are torn off the roof. Branches are whirled up against the windows like blades of grass. Mam holds us tightly to her breast. She’s not praying either. She’s staring out with a steady, terrifying gaze, while the roaring of the wind makes our hearts quail. I’m not thinking about anything, I can’t utter a word. Even if I wanted to talk, there’s such a furore that Mam and Laure couldn’t hear me. An endless sound of destruction that reaches down into the very depths of the earth, a wave that is slowly, inexorably unfurling upon us.

  It lasts for a long time, and we’re falling through the ragged skies, through the gaping earth. I hear the sea as I have never heard it before. It has gone over the coral reef and is coming up the estuary of the rivers, pushing the overflowing torrents out in front of it. I can hear the sea in the wind, I can’t move any more: everything has come to an end for us. Laure, with her hands over her ears, is leaning against Mam in silence. Mam, wide-eyed, is staring fixedly at the dark shape of the window, as if to stave off the furious elements. Our poor house is shaking from top to bottom. On the southern end part of the roof has been torn off. The wind and gushing water are devastating the gutted rooms. The wooden partitioning wall of the office also splits apart. A little while ago, through the hole made by the tree, I saw Capt’n Cook’s cabin being swept away in the wind like a toy. I also saw the tall bamboo hedge bending to the ground as if an invisible hand were holding it down. In the distance, I can hear the wind pounding against the rampart of the mountains with a thunderous rumble that joins in with the rushing sound of the unleashed sea surging up the rivers.