The Prospector

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  The first consequence of my father’s death was even greater impoverishment, especially for Mam. Europe was now completely out of the question. We were prisoners on our island, with no hope of escaping. I began to hate that cold, rainy town, the roads crowded with the poor, the carts endlessly carrying loads of cane to the sugar train, and even the things I’d so loved in the past, those immense expanses of cane with the waves of wind running over them. Would I be forced to work one day as a gunny, load the sheaves of cane on to the ox carts, and then pitch them into the mouth of the mill every day of my life, with no hope, no freedom? That wasn’t what came to be, but what did was perhaps even worse. My grant for the College having expired, I had to go to work, and it was in the post my father had occupied in the dreary offices of W. W. West, the export and insurance company controlled by my powerful uncle Ludovic.

  So then I felt as if I were breaking the ties that bound me to Laure and to Mam, but more than anything else as if Boucan and Mananava were disappearing for ever.

  Rempart Street was another world. I arrived every morning with the swarm of errand boys and Chinese and Indian merchants coming to do business. The important people, businessmen, lawyers, wearing dark suits, carrying their hats and canes came streaming from the first-class coaches. I was caught up in the flow of that crowd and swept over to the door of the offices of W. W. West, where the registers and piles of bills were awaiting me in the sultry half-light. I remained there until five o’clock in the evening, with a half-hour lunch break at noon. My colleagues went to eat at a Chinese place in Rue Royale, but to save money – and also because of my fondness for solitude – I would simply nibble on a few hot pepper cakes in front of the Chinese store, and sometimes, as a special treat, an orange from South Africa that I’d cut into sections, sitting on a low wall in the shade of a tree and watching the Indian peasants coming back from the market.

  It was a routine life, with no surprises. And I often felt as if none of it was real, as if I was having a waking dream – all of it – the train, the figures in the registers, the smell of dust in the offices, the voices of the W. W. West employees who spoke in English and those Indian women walking slowly along the immense streets in the sunshine on their way back from the market carrying empty baskets on their heads.

  But there were the boats. I would go down to the port to see them whenever I could, whenever I had an hour before the W. W. West offices opened, or after five o’clock, when Rempart Street was empty. On holidays, when other young men went strolling down the walkways of Champ de Mars with their fiancées on their arms, I preferred to hang around the wharves, surrounded by ropes and fishing nets, listening to the fishermen and watching the boats rocking on the heavy water, trying to follow the tracery of the riggings with my eyes. I was already dreaming of going away, but I had to make do with reading the names of the boats on the sterns. At times they were simply fishing barks bearing only a rudimentary drawing of a peacock, a rooster or a dolphin. I’d stare intently at the sailor’s faces, old Indians, black men, turbaned Comorians, sitting in the shade of tall trees, barely moving, smoking their cigars.

  Today I can still recall the names I used to read on the sterns of the ships. They’re etched into my mind like the words of a song: Gladys, Essalaam, Star of the Indian Sea, L’Amitié, Rose Belle, Kumuda, Rupanika, Tan Rouge, Rosalie, Poudre d’Or, Belle of the South. To me they were the most beautiful names in the world, because they spoke of the sea, they told of the long waves out on the open seas, the coral reefs, the distant archipelagos, even the storms. When I read them I would suddenly be far from land, far from the city streets, and especially far from the dusty gloom of the offices and the registers filled with figures.

  One day Laure came down to the wharves with me. We walked for a long time past the boats, past the indifferent looks of the seamen sitting in the shade of the trees. She’s the one who brought up my secret dream first, saying, ‘Will you be sailing away on a boat soon?’ I laughed a little, surprised at her question, as if it were a joke. But she looked at me without laughing, her lovely dark eyes filled with sadness. ‘Oh yes, I think you’re quite capable of sailing away on any one of these ships, of going off any place, just like with Denis on the pirogue.’ Since I didn’t answer, she said, almost gaily, ‘You know, I’d really like to do that too, just sail off to any old place on a ship, to India, to China, anywhere. But it’s just so impossible! Do you remember the trip to France? I wouldn’t want to go now,’ said Laure. ‘To India, to China, but not to France any more.’ She stopped talking and we continued looking at the ships moored along the wharves, and I was happy, I knew why I was happy every time a boat raised its sails and sailed out towards the high seas.

  That was the year I encountered Captain Bradmer and the Zeta. Now I wish I could remember every detail about that day, so I could relive it, because that was one of the most important days of my life.

  It was a Sunday morning, I’d left the old house in Forest Side at the break of day and taken the train for Port Louis. I was wandering around as usual along the wharves among the fishermen, who were already coming in, their baskets filled with fish. The boats were still drenched from the high seas, weary, their sails hanging down on the masts to dry in the sun. I loved being there when they returned, hearing the creaking of the hulls, breathing in the smell of the sea that was still upon them. Then, amid the fishing barks, the luggers and the throng of pirogues with sails, I saw it: it was already an old boat, with the slender, graceful form of a schooner, two masts tilting slightly backwards and two lovely gaff sails snapping in the wind. On the long black hull, curving upward at the bow, I read its strange name in white letters: ZETA.

  Surrounded by the other fishing boats, it looked like a thoroughbred prepared for a race, with its large, very white sails and its rigging sweeping from the topsail to the bowsprit. I stood still for a long time, admiring it. Where had it come from? Would it sail away again on some journey from which I imagined there would be no return? A sailor was standing on the deck, a black Comorian. I ventured to ask him where he’d come from and he responded, ‘Agalega’. When I asked him to whom the ship belonged, he said a name that I misunderstood: ‘Captain Bras-de-Mer’, meaning ‘arm of the sea’ in French. Perhaps it was that name, evoking the days of pirates, that first sparked my imagination, drew me to that boat. Who was this ‘Bras-de-Mer’? How might one go about meeting him? Those were the questions I would have liked to ask the sailor, but the Comorian had turned his back on me and sat down in a wooden armchair, at the back of the boat in the shade of the sails.

  I returned several times that day to look at the schooner moored at the wharf, feeling anxious at the thought it might sail away on the evening tide. The Comorian sailor was still sitting in the wooden armchair shaded by the sail as it fluttered in the wind. Around three o’clock in the afternoon the tide began to rise and the sailor brailed up the sail to the yard. Then he carefully battened down the hatches with padlocks and made his way to the wharf. When he saw me standing in front of the boat again, he said, ‘Captain Bras-de-Mer will be coming now.’

  That afternoon spent waiting for him seemed terribly long. For quite some time I sat under the trees of the Intendance to keep out of the burning sun. As the day drew on, the activities of the seamen abated and soon there was no one about save a few beggars sleeping in the shade of the trees or gleaning leftovers from the market. With the rising tide the wind was blowing in from the sea, and off in the distance, between the masts, I could see the bright line of the horizon.

  Near dusk I went back to stand in front of the Zeta. It was barely moving at the end of its mooring lines in the swell of the waves. Resting against the deck in the guise of a gangplank, a single board was squeaking in time to its sway.

  In the golden light of evening in that deserted port where nothing was stirring but a few seagulls, with the tenuous sound of the wind whistling in the rigging and maybe also because of the long wait in the sun – just like in the old days when I used
to go running through the fields – the ship took on something of a magical aura with its tall, tilted masts, its yards caught up in the network of lines, the sharp point of the bowsprit like a beak. On the shiny deck the empty wooden armchair placed in front of the helm heightened the feeling of otherworldliness. It wasn’t a ship’s chair, but rather an office chair made of turned wood, like the ones I saw every day at W. W. West! And there it was at the stern of the ship, weathered from sea spray, bearing the marks of travels out across the ocean!

  I couldn’t resist the temptation. In one leap I was up the board that served as a gangplank and found myself on the deck of the Zeta. I walked over to the armchair and sat down to wait in front of the large wooden wheel at the helm. I was so absorbed in the magic of the ship in that lonely harbour and the golden light of the setting sun that I didn’t even hear the captain arrive. He walked straight up and looked at me inquisitively, without getting angry, and said with a strange look on his face, at once mocking and serious, ‘Well, young man? When shall we be getting under way?’

  I remember perfectly well the manner in which he asked me that question and the red flush that spread over my face, because I didn’t know what to say in reply.

  How did I apologize? Above all, I remember the impression the captain made on me at the time, his massive body, his clothing – as worn as his ship – covered with indelible stains like scars, his very ruddy skin, his stern, serious, Englishman’s face that his black shiny eyes, the gleam of youthful mockery in his gaze, belied. He’s the one who spoke first and I knew that ‘Bras-de-Mer’ was in truth Captain Bradmer, an officer in the Royal Navy who was nearing the end of his solitary adventures.

  I think I knew immediately: I would sail on the Zeta, it would be my Argo, the vessel that would carry me over the sea to the place I had dreamt of, to Rodrigues, for my endless treasure hunt.

  ‌

  ‌Heading for Rodrigues, 1910

  ‌

  I open my eyes and see the sea. It’s not the emerald sea that I used to see in the lagoons or the black water off the estuary of the Tamarin River. It’s the sea as I have never seen it before, free, wild, of a dizzying blue, the sea that slowly lifts the hull of the ship, wave after wave, speckled with foam, crazed with sparkles.

  It must be late, the sun is already high in the sky. I was sleeping so soundly I didn’t even hear the ship casting off, going through the pass when the tide came in.

  Yesterday evening I walked around the wharves late into the night, breathing in the smell of oil, of saffron, the smell of rotten fruit that hovers over the marketplace. I could hear the voices of seamen in the boats, the exclamations of dice-players, I could also smell the odour of ‘arak’, of tobacco. I went aboard the ship, lay down on the deck to avoid the suffocating hold, the dusty sacks of rice. I looked up at the sky through the mast rigging, my head resting on my trunk. I fought off sleep until after midnight, looking at the starless sky, listening to the voices, the creaking of the gangplank on the wharf and, in the distance, guitar music. I didn’t want to think about anyone. Laure was the only one who knew about my departure, but she didn’t say anything to Mam. She didn’t shed a tear, on the contrary, there was an uncustomary gleam in her eyes. ‘We’ll see each other soon,’ I said. ‘Over there, in Rodrigues we’ll be able to start a new life, we’ll have a big house, with horses, with trees.’ Was she able to believe me?

  She didn’t want me to reassure her. You’re leaving, going away, maybe for ever. You have to go to the very end of your quest, the very end of the world. That is what she wanted to tell me as she stood there, looking at me, but I wasn’t able to understand. Now I’m writing this for her, to tell her what that night was like, lying on the deck of the Zeta, surrounded by the lines, listening to the voices of seamen, and the guitar, tirelessly playing the same Creole song. At one point the voice grew louder, perhaps the wind rose or maybe the singer turned in my direction, in the dark harbour.

  Vale, vale, prête mo to fizi

  Avla l’oiseau prêt envolé

  Si mo gagne bonher touyé l’oiseau

  Mo gagne l’arzent pou mo voyaze,

  En allant, en arrivant!

  Bway, bway, len mi yuh rifle

  Si waah bud deh, ready fi fly

  If mi lucky fi kill di bud

  Mi wi mek di money fi my trip,

  Fi go and fi cum back!

  I fell asleep listening to the words of the song.

  And when the tide came in the Zeta silently set its sails and slipped out over the dark water, towards the forts of the pass, unbeknownst to me. I lay fast asleep on the deck next to Captain Bradmer, head resting on my trunk.

  When I wake up and look around, dazzled by the sunlight, land no longer exists. I go all the way to the back of the ship, lean on the rail. I gaze at the sea as intently as I can, the long waves slipping under the hull, the wake like a sparkling path. I’ve been waiting for this moment for such a long time! My heart is pounding very hard, my eyes fill with tears.

  The Zeta tilts slightly as the waves pass, then rights itself again. As far out as I can see, that is all there is: the sea, the deep valleys between the waves, the foam on their crests. I listen to the sound of the water hugging the hull of the ship, the stem ripping through a wave. The wind especially, billowing in the sails and making the stays moan. I’m quite familiar with that sound, it’s just like the sound the wind used to make in the branches of the tall trees in Boucan, the sound of the rising tide that makes its way in as far as the cane fields. But it’s the first time I’ve ever heard it like this, just that sound alone, with no obstacles, free from one end of the world to the other.

  The sails are beautiful, puffed out in the wind. The Zeta is sailing close-hauled and the white canvas is rippling from top to bottom, making snapping sounds. Up front there are the three jibs, as finely tapered as the wings of seabirds, which seem to be guiding the ship out towards the horizon. Sometimes, after a sudden shift in the west wind, a fold in the canvas will suddenly tauten again with a deafening clap that thunders like a cannon blast. I feel dizzy from all the sounds of the sea, blinded by the light. Above all there’s the blue hue of the sea, that deep, dark, powerful, sparkling blue. The wind is whirling around, inebriating me, and there’s the salty taste of the sea spray when a wave crashes over the stem.

  All the men are up on deck. They are sailors from India, the Comoros, I’m the only passenger on board. We’re all feeling the giddiness of the first day at sea. Even Bradmer must be feeling it. He’s standing on deck near the man at the helm, legs spread to counter the rolling of the ship. He hasn’t budged in hours, hasn’t taken his eyes off the sea. No matter how much I want to, I don’t dare ask him any questions. I have to wait. Impossible to do anything but simply gaze out at the sea and listen to the sound of the wind, and nothing in this world could make me want to go down into the hold. The sun is burning down on the deck, on the dark seawater.

  I go a little farther off to sit down on the deck at the end of the boom that is vibrating. The waves lift the prow of the ship, then let it fall heavily back down. It’s an endless route, widening out towards the horizon behind us. There isn’t a sign of land anywhere. There’s nothing but the deep, light-filled water and the sky in which the clouds – thin wisps born of the horizon – seem to stand still.

  Where are we going? That’s what I want to ask Bradmer. Yesterday he didn’t say a word, remained silent as if he were thinking it over or as if he didn’t want to say. To Mahé maybe or Agalega, it all depends on the wind, so the helmsman tells me – he’s an old man with brick-coloured skin, whose pale eyes gaze at you unblinkingly. The wind is east-south-east right now, steady, not gusting, and we’re heading north. The sun is at the stern of the ship, the sails seem to be filled with its light.

  The giddiness of the early morning doesn’t subside. The black sailors and Indians remain standing on the deck, near the mizzen mast, hanging on the ropes. Now Bradmer has sat down in his wooden armchair, behind the h
elmsman, and is still looking straight out towards the horizon, as if he really were expecting something to appear. There’s nothing but the waves lunging towards us like a herd of animals, heads high, crests sparkling, then smashing into the hull of the ship and slipping under it. When I turn I can see them fleeing with hardly a mark from the keel blade, out to the other end of the world.

  My thoughts are knocking about in my head to the rhythm of the waves. I think I’ve changed, I’ll never be the same again. The sea is already separating me from Mam and Laure, from Forest Side, from everything I used to be.

  What day is it? It seems as if I’ve always lived here, at the stern of the Zeta, looking out over the rail at the vast sea, listening to it respiring. It seems as if everything I’ve been through since the day we were evicted from Boucan – at Forest Side, at the Royal College, then in the W. W. West offices – were nothing but a dream, and all I needed to do was open my eyes and look upon the sea for it all to vanish.

  In the sound of the sea and the wind I can hear a voice deep within me, endlessly repeating: The sea! The sea! And that voice covers over all other words, all thoughts. Sometimes the wind that is driving us out towards the horizon comes in whirling gusts, making the boat rock. I can hear the clap of the sails, the whistle of the stays. Those sounds too are words bearing me away, distancing me from the land where I’ve lived all of this time. Where is it now? It’s become very small, like a lost raft, while the Zeta is being pushed along in the wind and the light. It’s adrift somewhere, out on the other side of the horizon, a thin trickle of mud lost in the blue immensity.