The Prospector

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  I repeat, ‘Tomorrow or the day after?’

  ‘Tomorrow if the wind keeps up.’

  So the journey is coming to an end. That’s undoubtedly why everything seems so different.

  The men have finished the provisions of meat. As for myself, I ate only spiced rice, that flesh horrifies me. For several days now I’ve felt a fever coming over me in the evening. Rolled up in my blanket down in the hold I lie shivering in spite of the sweltering heat. What will I do if my body betrays me? In my trunk I find the phial of quinine, purchased before my departure, and swallow a pill with my saliva.

  It has grown dark without my noticing.

  Late in the night I wake up soaked in sweat. Next to me, sitting cross-legged with his back leaning against the hull, is a man whose black face is lit strangely by the lamplight. Raising myself up on one elbow, I recognize the helmsman, his fixed gaze. He speaks to me in his sing-song voice, but I can’t really understand the meaning of his words. I hear him asking me questions about the treasure I am going to look for in Rodrigues. How does he know about it? Captain Bradmer must have told him. He asks me questions and I don’t answer, but that doesn’t bother him. He just waits, then asks another question, and still another. Finally he grows disinterested in the subject and begins talking about Saint Brandon, where he says he will go to die. I imagine his body sprawled out among the tortoise shells. I drift back to sleep, lulled by his voice.

  In sight of Rodrigues

  The island appears out on the horizon. It wells up from the sea in the yellow evening sky, with its tall blue mountains against the dark sea. Perhaps the seabirds crying over our heads was what first alerted me. I go up to the bow to get a better look. The sails billowing in the west wind are causing the stem to skittle after the waves. The ship drops into the troughs, surges up again. The horizon is very clear, pulled taut. The island rises and falls behind the waves, and the peaks of the mountains seem to be born of the ocean depths.

  Never has a landscape made such an impression on me: it resembles the peaks of Trois Mamelles, but higher still, it forms an impassable wall. Casimir is beside me at the front. He happily informs me about the mountains, tells me their names.

  Now the sun is hidden behind the island. The tall mountains stand out aggressively against the pale sky.

  The captain has the crew reduce sail. The men climb up to the yards to reach the reefs. We are heading towards the dark island at the same speed as the waves, the jibs shining in the twilight like the wings of seabirds. As the ship approaches the coast I can feel anxiety welling up inside. Something is coming to an end, freedom, the joy of the sea. Now I’ll have to find shelter, talk, ask questions, be in contact with the land.

  Night falls very slowly. Now we are in the shadows of the high mountains. At around seven o’clock we go through the pass and head for the red lantern lit at the end of the jetty. The ship sails along the reefs. I can hear the voice of a sailor taking soundings starboard, calling out the measures, ‘Seventeen, seventeen, fifteen, fifteen…’

  At the end of the channel the stone jetty begins.

  I hear the anchor drop and the chain unreeling. The Zeta is at rest along the wharf and, without waiting for the gangplank, the men jump down from the ship, start talking loudly with the waiting crowd. I’m standing on deck and for the first time in days, in months maybe, I’m fully dressed, I’ve slipped on my shoes. My trunk is packed at my feet. The Zeta is leaving tomorrow, in the afternoon, when the tides have changed.

  I say goodbye to Captain Bradmer, he shakes my hand, evidently doesn’t know what to say. I’m the one who wishes him luck. The black helmsman is already down below, he must be stretched out, his fixed gaze watching the sooty ceiling.

  On the wharf, the blasts of wind make me stagger under the weight of the trunk on my shoulder. I turn, take one last look at the silhouette of the Zeta against the pale sky, with its inclined masts and the network of its lines. Maybe I should turn around and go back on board. I’d be in Port Louis in four days, I’d take the train, I’d walk through the drizzling rain towards the house at Forest Side, I’d hear Mam’s voice, I’d see Laure.

  A man is waiting for me on the wharf. In the glimmer of the lantern I recognize Casimir’s athletic shape. He takes my trunk and walks along with me. He’s going to show me the only hotel on the island, near the Government House, a hotel run by a Chinaman, one can eat there too, apparently. I walk behind him in the darkness through the narrow streets of Port Mathurin. I’m in Rodrigues.

  ‌

  ‌Rodrigues, English Bay, 1911

  ‌

  That’s how, one morning in the winter of 1911 (in August, I believe, or at the beginning of September) I find myself in the hills overlooking English Bay, where all of my explorations will be carried out.

  For weeks, months now, I’ve wandered Rodrigues from the south, where the other pass opens facing Gombrani Island, all the way to the chaotic black lava of Malagache Bay in the north, by way of the high mountains in the middle of the island, through Mangues, Patate, Montagne Bon Dié. The notes copied from Pingré’s book were my guide. ‘To the east of the large harbour,’ he writes in 1761, ‘we find insufficient water to sustain our pirogues, or else the water communicating with the open sea was too rough to sustain such a fragile vessel. Monsieur de Pingré, therefore, sent the pirogues back along the same route they had been brought, with orders to join us the following day at the Enfoncement des Grandes Pierres à Chaux (Limestone Embayment)…’ And elsewhere: ‘The Quatre Passes mountains are very steep, and as there are almost no coral reefs and the shore is directly exposed to the wind, the sea crashes so violently against the coast that it would be particularly imprudent to attempt to cross here.’ Read in the wavering light of my candle, in the hotel room in Port Mathurin, Pingré’s account reminds me of the famous letter written by an old sailor imprisoned in the Bastille, who put his father on the trail of the treasure: ‘On the west coast of the island, in a place where the sea crashes against the coast, there is a river. Follow the river, you will find a source, next to the source, a tamarind tree. Eighteen feet from the tamarind tree begins the stone work that hides an immense treasure.’

  Very early this morning I walked along the coast with a kind of feverish haste. I crossed Jenner Bridge, which marks the city limits of Port Mathurin. Farther along, I waded across the Bamboo River in front of the little cemetery. After that point there are no more houses and the path along the coast grows narrower. To the right I take the road that leads up to the buildings of the Cable & Wireless, the English telegraph company, at the summit of Venus Point.

  I skirt the telegraph buildings, perhaps out of fear of encountering one of those Englishmen that slightly frighten the people of Rodrigues.

  Heart racing, I go all the way to the top of the hill. This is the place – I’m sure of it now – where Pingré came to observe the orbit of Venus in 1761, long before the astronomers, accompanying Lieutenant Neate who named Venus Point in 1874.

  The strong easterly wind throws me off balance. At the foot of the cliff I can see the choppy waves coming from the ocean flowing through the pass. Just beneath me are the buildings of the Cable & Wireless, long wooden hangars painted grey with reinforcements like those of an ocean liner: bolted on plates of sheet metal. A little higher up, amid the screw pines, I notice the director’s white house, its veranda with closed shutters. A lone black man sitting on the steps of a hangar is smoking without looking at me.

  Pushing on through the underbrush I soon reach the edge of the cliff top and discover the vast valley. All at once I realize I’ve finally found the place I’ve been looking for.

  English Bay opens out on to the sea from either side of the Roseaux River estuary. From where I’m standing I can see the entire stretch of the valley all the way up to the mountains. I can make out every bush, ever tree, every stone. There is no one in the valley, not a house, not a human trace. Only stones, sand, the thin trickle of the river, the tufts of desert vegetati
on. My eyes follow the course of a stream up to the back of the valley from where the tall, still dark mountains rise. For an instant I think of the time when Denis and I would stop at the Mananava ravine, as if on the threshold of a forbidden land, listening for the reedy call of the tropicbirds.

  Out here, there isn’t a bird in the sky. Only clouds that loom up from the sea in the north and scud over in the direction of the mountains, making their shadows scurry along the valley bottom.

  I stand up on the cliff in the lashing wind for a long time. I look for a way to get down. From where I am, it’s impossible. The rocks jut straight up over the estuary of the river. I go back towards the top of the hill, pushing my way through the underbrush. The wind blowing through the leaves of the screw pines makes a wailing sound that intensifies the lonely feeling of this place.

  Just before reaching the top of the hill I find a passageway: a rockslide that drops all the way down to the valley.

  Now I’m walking through the valley of the Roseaux River, not knowing which way to go. From here, the valley seems wide, bordered in the distance by the black hills and the high mountains. The north wind is coming in from the mouth of the river, bearing with it rumours of the sea, giving rise to little whirlwinds of sand, like ashes, that for a moment make me think there are people arriving on horseback. But there’s a strange silence out here, due to all of this light.

  On the other side of the hills of Venus Point there is the bustling life of Port Mathurin, the marketplace, the coming and going of pirogues in Lascars Bay. And here everything is silent like a desert island. What will I find here? Who is waiting for me?

  I walk around haphazardly on the valley bottom until the end of the day. I want to understand where I am. I want to understand why I came all the way out here, what had spurred me, alerted me. In the dry sand of the river beach I trace a map of the valley using a twig: the entrance to the bay with large basalt boulders on the east and west. The bed of the Roseaux River leading up in almost a straight line to the south and then making a bend before entering the gorges, between the mountains. I don’t need to compare it with the Corsair’s map as it appears in my father’s documents: I’m obviously in the very spot where the treasure is.

  Once again I feel light-headed, dizzy. There’s so much silence here, so much solitude! Only the wind blowing through the boulders and the underbrush, bearing along the distant rumbling of the sea on the reefs, but it’s the sound of a world without humans. Clouds scurry across the dazzling sky, puff, disappear behind the hills. I can’t keep the secret to myself any longer! I feel like screaming, as loud as I can, so that I’ll be heard out beyond the hills, even farther out than this island, out on the other side of the sea, all the way out in Forest Side, and my scream will penetrate the walls and deep into Laure’s heart.

  Did I truly scream? I don’t know, my life is already like those dreams in which longing and fulfilment are one and the same. I run along the bottom of the valley, leaping over the black rocks, over the streams, I run as fast as I can through the brush, past the sun-scorched tamarind trees. I don’t know where I’m going, I’m running as if I were falling, listening to the sound of the wind in my ears. Then I fall to the grey earth, on the sharp stones, without even feeling any pain, breathless, my body streaming with sweat. I lie there on the ground for a long time, face turned towards the clouds that are still fleeing southward.

  Now I know where I am. I’ve found the place I was looking for. After months of roaming I feel at peace, filled with new fervour. I spend the days following my discovery of English Bay, preparing for my explorations. At Jeremie Briam’s on Douglas Street I buy the basic necessities: a pick, a shovel, rope, a storm lamp, sailcloth and food. The finishing touch to my explorer’s kit is one of those large hats made of screw-pine fibre worn by Manafs, the black people in the mountains. As for the rest, I decide that the few pieces of clothing I have and my old blanket should suffice. I deposit the meagre sum of money I have left at Barclay’s Bank, whose manager, an obliging Englishman with a parchment face, simply notes down that I’ve come to Rodrigues on business and, since he represents the Elias Mallac postal company, offers to keep my mail.

  When I’ve finished all of my preparations I go to the Chinaman’s place to eat rice and fish, as I always do at noon. He knows I’m leaving and comes over to my table after the meal. He doesn’t ask any questions about my departure. Like most of the people I’ve met in Rodrigues, he thinks I’m going to pan for gold in the mountain streams. I’ve carefully refrained from denying those rumours. A few days ago, as I was finishing my dinner in this same room, two men asked to speak with me, two Rodriguans. Right off the bat they opened a small pouch in front of me and poured out on to the table some earth mixed with shiny bits. ‘Is it gold, sir?’ Thanks to my father’s lessons, I immediately recognized copper pyrite, which has led so many prospectors astray and is called ‘fool’s gold’. The two men were looking at me anxiously in the light of the oil lamp. I didn’t want to disappoint them too badly. ‘No, it isn’t gold, but it might be a sign that you are going to find some.’ I also advised them to obtain a phial of royal water to avoid errors. They went away, half-satisfied, with their leather pouch. I think that is how I earned the reputation of being a prospector.

  After lunch I get in the horse-drawn cart I’ve rented for the journey. The coachman, a jovial old black man, loads up my trunk and the material I bought. I climb up next to him and we set off through the empty streets of Port Mathurin towards English Bay. We drive down Hitchens Street and past the Begué house, then we take Barclay’s Street up to the Governor’s house. After that we head west, past the protestant church and the Depot, through the Raffaut Estate. Black children run after the cart for a time, then grow weary of it and go back to swim in the harbour. We cross the wooden bridge over the Lascars River. Because of the sun, I’ve pushed my large Manaf hat down on my head and I can’t help thinking about how Laure would burst out laughing if she could see me in this outfit, bumping around in this cart with the old black coachman shouting at the mule to make it keep going.

  When we arrive at the top of the hill at Venus Point the coachman unloads my trunk and the other tools, as well as the burlap bags containing my provisions. Then, after having pocketed what I owe him, he drives off, wishing me luck (that tale of my being a prospector), and I’m left alone on the edge of the cliff with my load in the rustling silence of the wind with the odd impression of having been left on the shore of a deserted island.

  The sun is descending over the hills in the west and the shadows are already stealing over the bottom of the Roseaux River Valley, making the trees grow taller, the pointed leaves of the screw pines sharper. Now there is a vague feeling of anxiety creeping over me. I dread going down into that valley bottom, as if it were some forbidden land. I stand there at the edge of the cliff, not moving, staring at the landscape just as I’d discovered it the first time.

  The strong wind makes up my mind. I’d noticed a stone platform halfway down the incline that could protect me from the chill of night and the rain. That is where I decide to set up my first camp and I carry the heavy trunk down on my shoulder. Despite the late hour, the sun is beating down on the slope and I’m bathed in sweat when I reach the platform. I need to rest for quite some time before going back to get my equipment, the pick and shovel, the sacks of provisions and the canvas that will serve as a tent.

  The platform is very similar to a balcony, supported by large blocks of lava fitted together over the precipice. It must certainly be a very old construction because large screw pines have grown on the platform, their roots are even splitting the lava walls. Farther away, towards the upper part of the valley, I can see other identical platforms on the sides of the hills. Who built these balconies? I think of the mariners of the past, of the American whale-hunters who came to smoke their catch. But I can’t help imagining the Corsair I’m searching for coming here. Perhaps he’s the one who had these outposts built so he might better observe
the ‘stonework’ being done to hide his treasure!

  Once again I feel a sort of dizziness creeping over me, a fever. As I come and go on the slope of the hill, carrying my belongings, suddenly, on the floor of the valley, among the withered trees and the forms of the screw pines, I think I see them: shadows walking in single file, coming from the sea, carrying heavy sacks and picks, heading for the shadows of the hills in the west!

  My heart is pounding, sweat is trickling down my face. I have to lie on the ground at the top of the cliff and gaze out at the yellow twilit sky to calm myself down.

  Night is setting in rapidly. I hurry to pitch my camp before everything grows dark. Left behind by the floodwaters, I find some tree branches and kindling for making a fire on the riverbed. I use the large branches to build a makeshift framework to which I attach the sailcloth. I consolidate the structure by means of a few large stones. When I’ve set everything up, I’m too weary to think about making a fire and I content myself with eating a few sea biscuits, sitting out on the platform. Night has fallen suddenly, drowning the valley beneath me, blotting out the sea and the mountains. It is a cold, mineral night, with no unnecessary sounds, nothing but the wind whistling in the brush, the cracking of stones contracting after the burn of day and, off in the distance, the roaring of the waves on the reefs.

  Despite my weariness, despite the cold that is making me shiver, I’m happy to be here, in the place I’ve dreamt about for so long without knowing whether it really existed. Deep down inside I feel a persistent thrill and I sit, waiting wide-eyed, watching the night. Slowly the stars slip westward, descend towards the invisible horizon. The heavy wind is jerking at the sailcloth behind me, as if I had not yet come to the end of my journey. Tomorrow I’ll be here, I’ll see the shadows passing. Something, someone is waiting for me. That’s why I’ve come all the way out here, to find it, that’s why I left Mam and Laure. I have to be ready for what will appear in this valley out at the other end of the world. I fall asleep, sitting at the entrance to my tent, leaning up against a stone, eyes gazing at the dark sky.