The Prospector

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  That’s why I want to remember every minute of my life, for Laure. I’m on this boat, making its way farther and farther out to sea for her. I have to defeat the destiny that drove us from our home, that destroyed us all, that made my father die. I feel as if something snapped when I left on the Zeta, as if I broke a circle. So when I go back everything will be changed, new.

  That’s what I’m thinking about and the dizzying light is filling me. The sun is almost touching the horizon, but at sea the night doesn’t give rise to anxiety. On the contrary, there is a gentleness that settles over this land in which we are the only living creatures on the face of the water. The sky turns golden and is tinted with crimson. The sea, which is so dark under the zenith sun, is now smooth and light like a purple mist mingling with the clouds on the horizon and veiling the sun.

  I listen to the helmsman’s lilting voice, talking perhaps to himself, standing in front of the wheel. At his side, Captain Bradmer’s armchair is empty, because this is the time he retires to his alcove to sleep or write. In the horizontal light of the setting sun the tall form of the helmsman stands out against the bright sails, seeming unreal, as does the singing sound of his words filling my ears but which I don’t understand. Night is falling and I think of the silhouette of Palinurus as Aeneas must have seen it, or even that of Typhus on the Argo, when he seeks to reassure his fellow travellers at nightfall. I still recall his words: ‘Titan sank into the waters without a trace, confirming a good omen. Thus in the night the wind presses yet stronger upon the sails and sea: during those silent hours the vessel flies swifter. My eyes no longer follow the course of the stars leaving the sky and plunging into the sea, such as Orion that is now sinking or Perseus that is throwing the angry waves into uproar. My guide is the serpent enlacing seven stars in its coils that always hovers and never hides.’ I recite out loud the verses of Valerius Flaccus that I used to read in my father’s library and for just a moment longer I can still believe I’m aboard the Argo.

  Later, in the hush of twilight, the crew come up on deck. They are bare-chested in the warm breeze, they’re smoking, talking or gazing out to sea, as I am.

  Since the very first day I’ve been impatient to reach Rodrigues, where my journey will come to an end, and yet now I want this moment to go on for ever, for the vessel Zeta, like the Argo, to continue slipping endlessly over the buoyant sea, so close to the sky, its sail incandescent with sun like a flame against the already dark horizon.

  Yet another night at sea

  Having gone to sleep in my place in the hold, against my trunk, I’m awakened by the oppressive heat and the frantic activity of the cockroaches and rats. The roaches are whirring about in the thick air of the hold and the darkness makes their flight even more unsettling. You have to sleep with a handkerchief or a flap of shirt over your face if you don’t want to have one of those monsters fall on your face. The rats are more circumspect, but more dangerous. The other evening a man was bitten on the hand by one of the rodents he’d disturbed while it was searching for food. The wound became infected in spite of the rags soaked in arak that Captain Bradmer used to clean it and I can now hear the man lying on his mattress, delirious with fever. The fleas and lice don’t leave you any respite either. Every morning we scratch at the innumerable bites received during the night. The first night I spent in the hold I also underwent the assaults of battalions of bedbugs and that’s why I declined the mattress reserved for me. I pushed it into the back of the hold and I sleep on the bare floor, rolled up in an old horse blanket, which has the advantage of allowing me to suffer less from the heat and sparing me the smell of sweat and brine that is ingrained in the bedding.

  I’m not the only one who suffers from the all-pervasive heat in the hold. The men wake up one after the other, talk to one another, pick up their interminable game of dice where they had left off. What could they be playing for? Captain Bradmer, to whom I put the question, shrugged his shoulders and simply answered, ‘Their wives.’ Despite the captain’s orders, the sailors have lit a small oil lamp up in the front of the hold, a Clarke night light. The orange flame flickering with the rocking of the ship lights up fantastically the black faces shiny with sweat. From a distance I can see the whites of their eyes shining, their sparkling teeth. What are they doing sitting around that lamp? They aren’t playing dice, they aren’t singing. They’re talking, one after the other in whispers, a long conversation punctuated with laughter. Once again fear of a conspiracy, a mutiny, begins to creep over me. And what if they really did decide to take over the Zeta, what if they threw Bradmer, the helmsman and me overboard? Who would ever know? Who would go after them in the remote islands, in the Mozambique canal or on the coasts of Eritrea? I lie very still, waiting with my head turned towards them, watching the trembling flame to which careless red cockroaches and mosquitoes fly too close and get singed.

  So then, just as I did the other night, without a sound, I climb up the ladder to the hatch where the sea breeze is blowing. Wrapped in my blanket I walk barefoot over the deck, delighted to be out in the night feeling the cool sea spray.

  The night is so lovely out on the sea, with the vessel gliding almost noiselessly over the backs of the waves as if it were at the very centre of the world. It makes you feel as if you are flying rather than sailing, as if the firm wind pressing against the sails has changed the vessel into an immense bird with outstretched wings.

  Tonight, once again, I lie down on the deck all the way up at the bow of the ship, against the closed hatch, sheltered by the rail. I can hear the lines of the jibs humming near my head and the steady whoosh of the sea opening out. Laure would love this sea music, the mixture of the high-pitched sound and the waves echoing deeply against the bow.

  I’m listening to it for her, so I might send it back to her, all the way back to that dark house in Forest Side where I know that she too is lying awake.

  I think again of the look in her eyes, before she turned away and strode off towards the road that runs along the railway tracks. I can’t forget the flame that blazed in her eyes just as we parted, that tempestuous and angry flame. At the time I was so surprised I didn’t know what to do, then – without thinking – I got on the coach. Now, on the deck of the Zeta, heading for an untold fate, I recall that look and feel the wrench of that parting.

  Yet I had to go, it was the only hope. I think of Boucan again, of everything that might be able to be saved, the house with the sky-coloured roof, the trees, the ravine and the sea breeze that disturbed the night, awakening the moaning of the maroon slaves in the shadows of Mananava, and the flight of the tropicbirds before dawn. I don’t want to stop seeing all of that, even far across the seas, when the hiding places of the Corsair have unveiled their treasures to me.

  The vessel slips over the waves, ethereal, airy, in the starlight. Where is the serpent with seven lights that Typhus mentioned to the crew of the Argo? Is that Eridanus rising in the east, facing the sun Sirius, or is it Draco stretching northwards, bearing on its brow the gem Etamin? No, suddenly I can see it clearly under the Pole Star, it’s the side of the Chariot, slender and precise, floating eternally in its place.

  We too are following its sign, lost amid the whorling stars. The sky is traversed with that infinite wind that is filling our sails.

  Now I understand where I’m going, and it so stirs me that I have to sit up to calm my racing heart. I’m heading out into space, into the unknown, I’m gliding through the middle of the sky towards an unknown end.

  I think again of the two tropicbirds that circled, making their rattling sound over the dark valley as they fled the storm. When I close my eyes I can see them as if they were just above the masts.

  A little before sunrise I fall asleep, while the Zeta endlessly wends her way towards Agalega. Now all the men are asleep. The black helmsman alone is keeping watch, his unblinking eyes fixed straight ahead in the night. He never sleeps. Sometimes, in the early afternoon, when the sun is beating down on the deck, he goes into the h
old to lie down and smoke without saying anything, eyes open in the half-light, staring at the blackened planks overhead.

  A day steering for Agalega

  How long have we been travelling? While I’m sorting through the contents of my trunk in the stifling duskiness of the hold, that question is wracking my mind with disquieting insistence. What difference does it make? Why should I want to know? But I make a great effort to remember the date of my departure, to try to calculate the number of days at sea. It’s a very long time, innumerable days, and yet it also seems quite fleeting. It’s but one interminable day that I began when I boarded the Zeta, a day that is like the sea, in which the sky changes at times, turns cloudy and grows dark, in which starlight replaces sunlight, but the wind never stops blowing or the waves rolling onwards or the horizon encircling the ship.

  As the journey draws on Captain Bradmer is growing friendlier with me. This morning he taught me to plot our position with the sextant and the method for determining the longitude and latitude. Today we’re located at 12°38 S and 54°30 E, and calculating our position provides me with the answer to my question concerning the time, since it means we’re two days navigating time from the island, just a few minutes too far east due to the trade winds that threw us off course during the night. When he finishes taking the bearing, Captain Bradmer carefully puts away the sextant in his alcove. I show him my theodolite and he looks at it, intrigued. I think he even says, ‘What in the devil will you use that for?’ I answer elusively. I can’t tell him my father brought it back when he was preparing to lay claim to the Mysterious Corsair’s treasures! Coming back up on deck again, the captain returns to sit in his armchair behind the helmsman. Since I’m standing beside him, he offers me – for the second time – one of those horrid cigarettes that I don’t dare refuse and that I allow to go out on its own in the wind.

  He says, ‘Are you familiar with the Queen of the Islands?’ He asks me the question in English and I repeat, ‘The Queen of the Islands?’ ‘Yes, sir, Agalega. That’s what it’s called, because it’s the most salubrious and most fertile island in the Indian Ocean.’ I think he’s going to pursue this, but he falls silent. He simply settles back in his armchair and repeats, ‘the Queen of the Islands…’ with a dreamy look in his eye. The helmsman shrugs his shoulders. He says, ‘It should rather be called the Island of Rats.’ Then he begins telling us about how the English declared war on the rats, because of the epidemic that was spreading from island to island. ‘There was a time when there were no rats on Agalega. It too was like a little paradise, like Saint Brandon, because rats are animals of the Devil, there weren’t any in paradise. And one day a boat from Grand Terre came to the island, no one can recall its name, an old boat that no one had ever seen. It sank in front of the island and the crates of cargo were salvaged, but there were rats in the crates. When the crates were opened they spread out over the island, they reproduced and became so numerous that they appropriated everything. They ate all of Agalega’s provisions, the corn, the eggs, the rice. There were so many of them that people couldn’t sleep any more. The rats even gnawed at the coconuts in the trees, they even ate the seabirds’ eggs. So first they tried cats, but the rats grouped together and killed the cats and ate them, of course. So they tried traps, but rats are crafty, they avoided the traps. So then the English had an idea, they had boatloads of dogs shipped in – fox terriers, that’s what they’re called – and they promised to give a rupee for each rat. The children climbed up the coconut trees and shook the palm leaves to make the rats fall down and the fox terriers killed them. I was told that the people of Agalega killed more than forty thousand rats every year and there are still rats there! Most of them are in the north of the island. Rats are very fond of Agalega coconuts, they spend their lives up in the trees. There you have it, that’s why your Queen of the Islands, should rather be called the Island of Rats.’

  Captain Bradmer laughs loudly. This might be the first time the helmsman has told that story. Then Bradmer starts smoking again in his clerk’s armchair, eyes squinted against the noon sun. When the black helmsman goes to stretch out on his mattress in the hold, Bradmer motions towards the helm.

  ‘Try your hand at it, Mister?’

  He says ‘Missa’, after the Creole fashion. He doesn’t need to repeat the question. Now I’ve got a tight grip on the worn handles of the large wheel. I can feel the heavy waves against the rudder, the wind pressing against the large sails. It’s the first time I’ve navigated a ship.

  At one point a strong gust makes the ship heel, sails filled out tight enough to split, and I listen to the hull cracking under the pressure as the horizon tips up in front of the bowsprit. The vessel remains like that for a long time, balancing on the crest of the wave and I can’t breathe. Then all of a sudden, I instinctively turn the wheel to port, yielding to the wind. Slowly the ship rights itself in a cloud of spray.

  The sailors on deck shout, ‘Whoa!’

  But Captain Bradmer remains seated without saying a word, squint-eyed, the eternal green cigarette at the corner of his mouth. That man would be capable of going down with his ship without even leaving his armchair.

  Now I’m on my guard. I’m watching the wind and the waves and when both seem to be exerting too much pressure I ease up a little by turning the helm. I don’t believe I’ve ever felt so strong, so free. Standing on the blistering deck, toes splayed to better keep my balance, I can feel the powerful movement of the water over the hull, on the rudder. I can feel the vibrations of the waves hitting the bow, the wind gusting in the sails. I’ve never experienced anything like this. It eclipses everything else, the land, time, I’m in the absolute future that is all around me. The future is the sea, the wind, the sky, the light.

  For a long time, perhaps for hours, I remain standing in front of the wheel, with winds and sea spray whirling around me. The sun is burning my back, my neck, is reaching down along the left side of my body. It’s almost touching the horizon already, it’s casting its fiery dust over the sea. I’m so in tune with the gliding of the ship that I anticipate every pause in the wind, the trough of every wave.

  The helmsman is beside me. He too is looking out to sea, not saying anything. I realize he wants to go back to the wheel. I savour the pleasure a little longer, just to feel the vessel slip along the curve of a wave, hesitate, then move on, pushed by the wind filling its sails. When we are in the trough of the wave I take a step to one side, without letting go of the wheel, and the helmsman’s dark hand closes over the handle, gripping it forcefully. When he’s not at the helm that man is even more taciturn than the captain. But no sooner have his hands touched the handles of the wheel than a strange change comes over him. It’s as if he becomes another person, someone taller, stronger. His thin, sunburned face, as if it were sculpted in basalt, takes on a sharp, energetic expression. His green eyes shine out, become animated, and his entire face expresses a sort of well-being that I now understand.

  So then he starts talking, in his chanting voice, launches out in an interminable monologue that is swept away in the wind. What is he talking about? I’m sitting on the deck now, to the left of the helmsman, while Captain Bradmer sits in his armchair, still smoking. The helmsman is talking neither to him nor to me. He’s talking to himself, as others might sing or whistle.

  He’s talking about Saint Brandon again, where women are not allowed to go. He says, ‘One day a young girl wanted to go to Saint Brandon, a young black girl from Mahé, tall and pretty, I don’t think she was any older than sixteen. Since she knew it was forbidden, she asked her fiancé – a young man who worked on a fishing boat – “Please take me!” At first he didn’t want to, but she would say, “What are you afraid of? No one will find out, I’ll go disguised as a boy. You’ll say I’m your little brother and there you have it.” So he ended up accepting and she dressed up as a boy, put on a pair of worn trousers and a large shirt, she cut her hair and, because she was tall and thin, the other fishermen took her for a boy. So s
he left with them on the boat for Saint Brandon. Nothing happened during the whole journey, the wind was gentle as a breath and the sky was nice and blue and the boat reached Saint Brandon in a week. No one knew there was a woman on board, except for the fiancé, of course. But sometimes in the evenings he would whisper to her, saying, “If the captain learns of this, he’ll get angry, he’ll let me go.” She would answer, “How could he ever find out?”

  ‘So the boat entered the lagoon, the place that is like paradise, and the men began fishing the large tortoises that are so gentle they allow themselves to be caught without trying to flee. Up until then, still nothing happened, but when the fishermen landed on one of the islands to spend the night, the wind rose and the sea became furious. The waves came crashing over the coral reefs and rolled into the lagoon. Then there was a terrible storm all night long and the sea swelled over the rocks of the islands. The men left their cabins and sought refuge in the trees. Everyone prayed to the Virgin Mary and the saints to protect them and the captain bewailed the sight of his vessel beached on the shore, for the waves were going to batter it to pieces. Then one wave appeared that was taller than the others, it rushed towards the islands like a wild beast and when it arrived it ripped up a rock where the men had taken shelter. Then, suddenly, everything fell calm and the sun began to shine as if there had never been a storm. Then we heard someone weeping, saying, “Bhoo, bhoo, little brother!” It was the young boy who had seen the wave carry away his fiancée, but since he had disobeyed, bringing a woman on to the islands, he was afraid of being punished by the captain, and he was weeping, saying, “Bhoo, little brother!”’

  When the helmsman finishes speaking, the light on the sea has taken on its golden colour, the sky is pale and blank down near the horizon. Night is already falling, another night. But twilight lasts a long time out at sea and I watch the daylight dwindling very slowly. Is this the same world I used to know? I feel as if I entered some other world when I crossed the horizon. It’s a world that resembles that of my childhood, in Boucan, where the sound of the sea was all-pervasive, as if the Zeta were sailing backwards on the route that abolishes time.