The Prospector

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  I’m so busy looking at the sea and the sky, at every dark hollow between the waves and the lips of the wake opening wider, I’m listening so intently to the sound of the water on the stem, the sound of the wind, that I haven’t noticed the crewmen are eating. Bradmer walks over to me. He looks at me with that mocking glimmer in his little black eyes again.

  ‘Well, sir? Has seasickness gotten the better of your appetite?’

  I stand up immediately to show him I’m not feeling ill.

  ‘No, sir.’

  ‘So come and eat, then.’ It’s almost an order.

  We go down the ladder into the hold below. In the bottom of the boat the heat is suffocating and the air is thick with the smells of cooking and merchandise. Despite the open hatches, it is dark. The inside of the boat is one large hold, the centre of which is filled with crates and bales of merchandise, and the back with mattresses set down on the bare floor where the crew sleeps. Under the front hatch the Chinese cook is busy distributing rations of curried rice that he’s cooked on an old spirit stove, and pouring tea from a large pewter teapot.

  Bradmer squats, Indian-style, his back propped against a rib, and I do likewise. Here in the bottom of the hold the pitching of the boat is dreadful. The cook gives us enamelled plates filled with rice, and two tin mugs of steaming tea.

  We eat without speaking. In the half-light I can make out the Indian sailors also squatting as they drink their tea. Bradmer eats rapidly, using the dented spoon as one would a chopstick, pushing the rice into his mouth. The rice is greasy, smothered in fish sauce, but the curry is so strong you can hardly taste anything. The tea burns my lips and throat, but it’s somewhat soothing after the spicy rice.

  When Bradmer is finished, he stands and sets the plate and the tin mug on the floor next to the Chinese man. Just as he starts up the ladder towards the deck, he rummages about in his jacket pocket and draws out two odd-looking cigarettes made with a still green leaf of tobacco rolled up on itself. I take one of the cigarettes and light it with the captain’s tinderbox. We climb up the ladder one after the other, and we’re up on the deck again in the whipping wind.

  After having been down in the hold for a few minutes I’m so dazzled by the light that my eyes fill with tears. Almost groping my way, hunched over the boom, I return to my place at the stern, sit down next to my trunk. As for Bradmer, he’s gone back to his armchair screwed to the deck and is gazing out in the distance, not speaking to the helmsman, as he smokes his cigarette.

  The smell of the tobacco is acrid and sweet, it makes me nauseous. To me it doesn’t fit in with the pure blue of the sea and the sky, with the sound of the wind. I crush out the cigarette on the deck, but I can’t bring myself to throw it into the sea. I can’t allow this blemish, this foreign body to float on such beautiful, smooth, living water.

  The Zeta is not a blemish. It has travelled so far over this sea and other seas as well, out beyond Madagascar, all the way out to the Seychelles or southward as far as Saint Paul. The ocean has purified it, made it resemble the great seabirds that glide along on the wind.

  The sun is moving slowly down in the sky, it’s lighting the other side of the sails now. I can see the shadow of the sails growing longer by the hour. By the end of the afternoon the wind has lost its breath. There’s a light breeze that is barely pressing on the mainsails, smoothing over and rounding out the waves, making the surface of the water quiver like skin. Most of the sailors have gone down into the hold, they’re drinking tea and talking. Some are sleeping on the mattresses placed directly on the floor, readying themselves for the night watch.

  Captain Bradmer has remained in his armchair behind the helmsman. They’re hardly speaking, just a few indistinct words. Tirelessly, they smoke those green tobacco cigarettes whose smell wafts over in my direction once in a while, when the wind swirls. I can feel my eyes stinging, maybe I have a fever? The skin on my face, my neck, my arms, my back is burning. The heat of the sun for so many hours has put its stamp on my body. All day long the sun beat down on the sails, on the deck, on the sea too, without my paying much heed. It fired sparkles on the crests of the waves, formed rainbows in the sea spray.

  Now the light is coming from the sea, from the very depth of its hue. The sky is clear, almost colourless, and I gaze out at the blue expanse of sea and the blank sky until my head swims.

  This is what I’ve always dreamt of. It’s as if my life stopped long ago, sitting in the front of the pirogue that was drifting on the lagoon of the Morne, while Denis was inspecting the sea bottoms in search of a fish to spear. All of that, which I thought had vanished, been forgotten – the sound, the gaze of the sea with its fascinating depths – is now seething inside me, coming back as the Zeta clips along.

  Slowly the sun is going down towards the horizon, lighting up the crests of the waves, opening up valleys of shadow. As the light declines and takes on a golden tint, the movement of the sea slows. The wind isn’t gusting any more. The sails fall slack, hang loose between the yards. The heat grows suddenly oppressive, humid. All the men are up on deck, in the front part of the ship, or else sitting around the hatches. They’re smoking, some are lying down bare-chested on the deck, eyes half-closed, daydreaming, perhaps under the influence of ganja. The air is calm now, the sea is barely lapping its slow waves against the hull of the ship. It has taken on a violet tinge that no longer emits any light. I can hear the voices, the laughter of the sailors very clearly, they’re playing dice up in the front of the ship, and the monotone words of the black helmsman talking to Captain Bradmer without looking at him.

  It’s all very strange, like an uninterrupted dream from long ago, born of the shimmering sea when the pirogue had gone slipping along near the Morne, under the white void of the sky. I think about the place I’m going and my heart beats faster. The sea is a smooth route for discovering mysteries, discovering the unknown. There is gold in the light all around me, hidden under the mirror of the sea. I think about what is awaiting me at the other end of this journey, as if it were a land I’d already been to long ago and that I’d now lost. The ship is sliding over the mirror of memory. But will I be able to understand once I reach there? Here, on the deck of the Zeta, moving slowly along in the languid, dusk light, the thought of the future makes me dizzy. I close my eyes to shut out the glare of the sky, the unbroken wall of the sea.

  The following day on board

  In spite of my loathing for it, I have to spend the night down in the hold. Captain Bradmer doesn’t want anyone up on deck during the night. Lying on the bare floor (I don’t much like the look of the sailors’ mattresses), my head resting on my rolled-up blanket, I keep a firm grip on the handle of my trunk, because of the ship’s constant rolling. Captain Bradmer sleeps in a sort of alcove built into the structure of the hull between two huge, rough-hewn, teak stanchions that support the deck. He even strung up a precarious curtain enabling him to close himself off, but it must stifle him, because at the break of dawn I see he’s drawn the curtain away from his face.

  Exhausting night, due mainly to the ship’s rolling, but also to the promiscuous conditions. Men snoring, coughing, talking to one another, endlessly going back and forth from the hold to the hatches to get a breath of fresh air or to urinate overboard on the leeward side. Most of them are foreigners, Comorians, Somalians, who speak a guttural language, or Indians from the Malabar Coast with dark skin, with sad eyes. The fact that I haven’t got any sleep tonight is also due to these men. In the oppressive darkness of the hold, which the flickering flame of the night light is barely able to pierce, with the hull groaning as it is tossed about in the waves, I feel an absurd and uncontrollable fear creeping over me. Among those men, perhaps there are mutineers, notorious pirates from East Africa, who were mentioned so often in the journals Laure and I used to read. Perhaps they plan on killing Captain Bradmer, myself, and the members of the crew who are not part of the plot, in order to take over the ship. Perhaps they believe I’m carrying money and precious objec
ts in this old trunk, where I keep my father’s papers locked up. Evidently I should have opened it in front of them, so they might see it holds nothing but old papers, maps, clothing and my theodolite. But then wouldn’t they have thought there was a false bottom filled with gold pieces? As the ship rocks slowly I can feel the warm metal of the trunk against my shoulder and I keep my eyes open to watch over the dark hold. How different from the first night spent on the deck of the Zeta, when the ship had rigged out while I was sleeping and I’d awoken with a start in the morning, dazzled by the immense sea.

  Where are we going? Seeing that we’ve been heading due north since our departure, there’s no doubt now that we’re heading for Agalega. To the inhabitants of that remote island Captain Bradmer is carrying the greater part of his disparate cargo: bales of cloth, spools of wire, barrels of oil, crates of soap, bags of rice and flour, beans, lentils and all sorts of pots and enamelled dishes wrapped in fishnets. It will all be sold to the Chinese shopkeepers, who supply the fishermen and the farmers.

  The presence of the merchandise and its smell reassures me. Is this the type of cargo for pirates? The Zeta is a floating grocery store and the idea of a mutiny suddenly seems ludicrous.

  But I’m still not able to sleep. Now the men have fallen quiet, but the insects have started in. I can hear the huge cockroaches scurrying around, sometimes flying across the hold, whirring. Between their scurries and their flights I can hear the high-pitched hum of mosquitoes near my ears. I’m watching out for them too, covering my arms and face with my shirt.

  Unable to sleep, I walk over to the ladder and stick my head out of the open hatch. Outside it’s a beautiful night. The wind has started blowing again, pulling on the sails that are about three-quarters out. It’s a cold wind coming from the south that’s driving the ship. After the oppressive heat of the hold the wind makes me shiver, but it feels pleasant. I’m going to break Captain Bradmer’s rules. Armed with my horse blanket, a souvenir from the Boucan days, I’m up on the deck, walking towards the prow. In the back of the ship are the black helmsman and two sailors who are smoking ganja and keeping him company. I sit down all the way up at the front of the prow, under the wings of the jibs, and gaze out at the sea and sky. There is no moon and yet with my pupils dilated I can make out each wave, the night-coloured water, the patches of sea foam. The starlight is illuminating the sea. Never have I seen the stars like this. Even in the old days, in the garden at Boucan, when we’d walk with our father down the ‘alley of stars’, it wasn’t this beautiful. On land the sky is eaten up by the trees, the hills, tarnished by that intangible mist rising like a breath from the streams, the grassy fields, the mouths of wells. The sky is distant, you see it as if through a window. But here, in the middle of the sea, the night is boundless.

  There’s nothing between me and the sky. I lie down on the deck, my head resting against the closed hatch, and look at the stars as intently as I can, as if I were seeing them for the first time. The sky rocks between the two masts, the constellations turn, stop for a moment, then fall back again. I don’t recognize them yet. Here the stars are so bright – even the faintest ones – they seem new to me. There’s Orion on the port side and over in the east – perhaps Scorpius, where Antarus is gleaming. The ones I can see very clearly at the stern of the ship when I turn around, so close to the horizon that I simply need to glance down in order to follow their slow swaying, are the stars of the Southern Cross. I recall my father’s voice as he led us across the dark garden and asked us to pick it out, faint and fleeting above the line of hills.

  I look at that cross of stars and feel as though I’m even farther away, because it truly belongs to the Boucan sky. I can’t take my eyes from it, for fear of losing it for ever.

  That’s how I drift off to sleep, just before dawn, eyes fixed on the Southern Cross. Rolled up in the blanket, gusts of wind buffeting my face and hair, listening to the wind snapping in the jibs and the whishing sound of the sea against the stem.

  Another day at sea

  Up at the crack of dawn and from my post at the stern beside the black helmsman, I sit gazing at the sea, almost without moving. The helmsman is a Comorian who has an extremely dark face like an Abyssinian, but with luminous green eyes. He’s the only one who really talks to Captain Bradmer, and my status as a paying passenger allows me the privilege of being able to sit near him and listen to him talk. He speaks slowly, choosing his words, in very pure French with barely any hint of a Creole accent. He says he was once enrolled in a Moroni Seminary and was to become a priest. One day he gave it all up, for no real reason, to become a seafarer. He’s been sailing for thirty years now and he knows every port from Madagascar to the African coast, from Zanzibar to Chagos. He talks about the islands, the Seychelles, Rodrigues, and also more remote ones, Juan de Nova, Farquhar, Aldabra. The one he loves most is Saint Brandon, which belongs to the sea turtles and seabirds alone. Yesterday, tearing myself away from the spectacle of the waves rushing forwards and then forming again in the same place, I took a seat on the deck beside the helmsman and listened to him talking to Captain Bradmer. I should say talking in front of Bradmer, for the captain – as any respectable Englishman – can remain sitting still for hours in his clerk’s chair, smoking those little green cigarettes, while the helmsman talks, not responding save for a vague grunt of assent, a sort of ‘ahem’ that serves only as a reminder that he is still there. Strange stories of the sea that the helmsman tells in his slow melodic voice, his green gaze scanning the horizon. Stories of ports, of storms, of fabulous catches, of women, stories that are aimless and endless, like his life.

  I like to hear him talk about Saint Brandon, because he speaks of it as if it were paradise. It is his favourite place, the one he always returns to in his thoughts, in his dreams. He’s known a lot of islands, a lot of ports, but that is the place the sea routes always bring him back to. ‘One day, I’ll go there to die. Over there the water is as blue and clear as the purest of springs. In the lagoon it’s transparent, so transparent that you slip over it in your pirogue, without seeing it, as if you were flying over the seabed. Around the lagoon there are quite a few islands, ten, I think, but I don’t know their names. When I went to Saint Brandon I was seventeen years old, I was still a child, I’d just run away from the seminary. Back then I thought I’d reached paradise and now I still believe that is where earthly paradise once was, when mankind knew no sin. I named the islands as I fancied: there was Horseshoe Island and another the Claw, another the King, I don’t know why. I’d come on a fishing boat from Moroni. The men had gone there to kill, to fish, like predatory animals. In the lagoon there were all the fish in creation, they swam slowly, fearlessly around our pirogue. And sea turtles that came up to see us as if there were no death on Earth. Seabirds flew about us by the thousands… They alighted on the deck of the boat, on the yards, to look at us, because I don’t think they’d ever seen humans before… Then we began killing them.’ The helmsman is talking, his green eyes are filled with light, his face is straining towards the sea as if he could still see it all. I can’t keep from following his eyes, out beyond the horizon, all the way to the atoll where everything is as new as it was in the very first days of the world. Captain Bradmer puffs on his cigarette, says ‘ahem-hem’, like someone who won’t be easily taken in. Behind us two black sailors, one of whom is from Rodrigues, are listening without really understanding. The helmsman speaks of the lagoon that he will never see again, except on the day of his death. He speaks of the islands where the fishermen build huts of coral, long enough to stock up on tortoises and fish. He speaks of the storm that comes every summer, so furious that the sea covers the islands, sweeps away all traces of life on land. Each time the sea erases everything and that is why the islands are always new. But the water in the lagoon remains lovely, clear, in that place where the most beautiful fish in the world and the community of tortoises live.

  The voice of the helmsman is gentle when he speaks of Saint Brandon. I feel as if
I am on this ship sailing along in the middle of the sea just to be listening to him.

  The sea has prepared this secret for me, this treasure. I take in this sparkling light, I hunger for the colour of the depths, for this sky, this boundless horizon, these endless days and nights. I must learn more, take in more. The helmsman is speaking again, about Table Bay off Cape Town, Antonia Bay, the Arab feluccas that prowl along the African coast, the pirates from Socotra or Aden. What I love is the sound of his melodious voice, his black face in which his eyes shine, his tall figure standing at the wheel as he steers our ship out towards the unknown, and it all melts in with the sound of the wind in the sails, with the sea spray where a rainbow shimmers every time the stem breaks through a wave. Every afternoon when the light begins to wane, I’m at the stern of the ship, watching the sparkling wake. It’s the time of day I prefer, when everything is peaceful and the deck is deserted, except for the helmsman and a sailor keeping an eye on the sea. Then I think of land, of Mam and Laure so far away in their solitude in Forest Side. I can see Laure’s dark look when I spoke to her of the treasure, of jewels and precious stones hidden by the Mysterious Corsair. Was she really listening to me? Her face was smooth and closed, and deep in her eyes shone a strange flame I didn’t understand. That flame is what I want to see now in the infinite gaze of the sea. I need Laure, I want to think of her every day, because I know that without her I’ll never be able to find what I’m looking for. She didn’t say anything when we parted, she seemed neither sad nor happy. But when she looked at me on the platform of the train station in Curepipe I saw that flame in her eyes again. Then she turned around, she left before the train began to move away, I saw her walking through the crowd, down the road to Forest Side, where Mam – who knew nothing about it yet – was waiting for her.