The Prospector

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  Then I see her: it’s the young girl who saved me the other day when I was delirious with thirst and fatigue. She has a child’s face, but she is tall and svelte, wearing a short skirt, as is the custom for Manaf women, and a ragged shirt. Her hair is long and curly like that of Indian women. She’s walking along the valley, head down because of the rain. She’s coming towards my tree. I know she hasn’t seen me yet and I’m apprehensive about what will happen when she notices me. Will she cry out in fear and run away? She walks silently along with the supple movements of an animal. She stops to glance at the tamarind tree, she sees me. For an instant her smooth, handsome face betrays wariness. She stands still, balanced on one leg, leaning on her long harpoon. Her rain-soaked clothes are clinging to her body and her long black hair makes her copper skin seem more luminous.

  ‘Good day!’

  I say that first, to drive away the anxious silence that reigns up here. I take a step towards her. She doesn’t move, just stares at me. The rain is running down her forehead, her cheeks, down her long hair. I notice she’s holding a vine bandolier strung with fish in her left hand.

  ‘Have you been fishing?’

  My voice rings out oddly. Does she understand what I’m saying? She goes as far as the tamarind tree and sits on one of its roots, sheltered from the rain. She keeps her face turned towards the mountains.

  ‘Do you live in the mountains?’

  She nods her head. In a lilting voice she says, ‘Is it true you’re looking for gold?’

  I am less surprised by the question than by the language. She speaks French with hardly any accent.

  ‘Have you been told that? Yes, it’s true, I am looking for gold.’

  ‘Have you found any?’

  I laugh.

  ‘No, I haven’t found any yet.’

  ‘And do you really believe there’s gold around here?’

  I find her question amusing.

  ‘Why? Don’t you believe so?’

  She looks at me, her face is smooth, fearless, like that of a child.

  ‘Everyone is so poor here.’

  Again she turns her head towards Mont Limon, which has vanished in the cloud of rain. For a moment we watch the rain falling without saying anything. I look at her wet clothing, her slender legs, her bare feet resting nice and flat on the ground.

  ‘What’s your name?’

  The question has slipped out almost in spite of myself, maybe so I can hold on to something about this strange young girl who will soon disappear into the mountains. She looks at me with her deep, dark eyes, as if thinking about something else.

  Finally she says, ‘My name is Ouma.’

  She stands, picks up the vine on which the fish are strung, her harpoon, and leaves, walking quickly along the stream in the slackening rain. I see her nimble silhouette leaping from stone to stone, just like a young goat, then it fades into the underbrush. It all happened so fast that it’s difficult for me to believe I haven’t imagined that apparition – that beautiful, wild, young girl who saved my life. The silence is making my head reel. The rain has stopped altogether and the sun is shining brightly in the blue sky. The mountains seem even higher, more inaccessible, in the sunlight. In vain I scan the slopes of the mountains, over in the direction of Mont Limon. The young girl has disappeared, she’s blended in with the walls of black stone. Where does she live, in which Manaf village? I think of her strange name, an Indian name, whose two syllables she’d made ring out clearly, a name that troubles me. I end up running back down to my camp under the old tamarind tree at the bottom of the valley.

  In the shade of the tree I spend the rest of the day studying the maps of the valley and marking the places I’ll need to probe with a red pencil. When I go out to locate them on the terrain, not far from the second point, I can clearly make out a mark on an immense boulder: four regular holes chiselled into the rock in the shape of a square. Suddenly I recall the formula in the Mysterious Corsair’s letter: ‘Look for : :’. My heart starts beating faster when I turn to the west and discover that the watchtower of the Commander’s Garret does indeed lie on the diagonal of the north-south axis.

  Late in the day I find the first mark of the anchor ring on the slope of the hill on the eastern side.

  As I’m trying to establish the east-west axis that cuts across the Roseaux River at the edge of the old swamp, I find the anchor ring.

  Walking along with compass in hand, my back to the sun, I pass over a dip in the ground that I think is the bed of a former tributary. I reach the cliff on the east side, very sheer in that particular place. It is almost a vertical wall of basalt that is partially crumbled down. On one of the rock faces, up near the top, I see the mark.

  ‘The mooring ring! The mooring ring!’

  Repeating these words in a hushed voice I try to find a way to reach the top of the cliff. The stones roll out from underfoot, I grab hold of shrubs to pull myself up. Once near the top I have a hard time finding the rock wall with the mark. Seen from below, the sign was clear, in the shape of an inverted equilateral triangle, exactly like anchor rings in the days of the corsairs. As I’m searching for that sign, I can feel my blood beating in my temples. Could I have been the victim of an illusion? I see angular marks caused by past fractures on all the rock faces. I examine the edge of the cliff several times, slipping on the loose rocks.

  Down below in the valley young Fritz Castel, who’s come to bring me my meal, has stopped at the foot of the cliff and is looking up. I understand my error when I see the direction in which he’s looking. The rock faces all resemble one another and I’m sure the ones I’d spotted are higher up. I climb higher and reach a second level that is also where the vegetation stops. There, before my eyes, on a large black rock, shines the magnificent triangle of the mooring ring, etched into the hard rock with a regularity that only a chisel could achieve. Trembling excitedly, I step up to the stone, brush my fingertips across it. The basalt is warm with light, soft and smooth as skin and I can feel the sharp edge of the triangle that is inverted, like this:

  I will surely find the same sign on the other side of the valley by following a line running east-west. The other slope is at quite a distance, even with a telescope, I wouldn’t be able to see it. The hills on the western side are already in shadows and I put off the search for the other mooring ring until tomorrow.

  When young Fritz has left I climb back up. I stay there, sitting on the crumbling rock, gazing out on the expanse of English Bay being overtaken by the night. For the very first time I have the feeling that I’m not seeing it with my own eyes, but with those of the Mysterious Corsair who came here a hundred and fifty years ago, who drew up the plan of his secret in the grey sand of the river and then allowed it to fade away, leaving only the marks carved in the hard stone. I imagine how he must have held the hammer and chisel in order to engrave this sign and how the pounding of the hammer must have rung out all the way to the other end of the deserted valley. In the serenity of this bay, where a quick ruffle of wind passes from time to time, bearing along with it snatches of the rumbling sea, I can hear the sound of the chisel chipping at the stone echoing in the surrounding hills. Tonight, lying on the bare ground between the roots of the tamarind tree, wrapped in my blanket just as I used to be out on the deck of the Zeta, I dream of a new life.

  Today at the crack of dawn I’m standing at the foot of the western cliff. There is barely enough light to make out the black rocks and in the crook of the bay the blue of the sea is translucent, lighter than the sky. Like every morning I hear the cry of seabirds flying over the bay, squadrons of cormorants, gulls and boobies calling out hoarsely on their way to Lascars Bay. I’ve never been so happy to hear them. It seems as if their cries are greetings they are sending to me as they pass over the bay, and I too cry out to them in answer. A few birds fly right over me, sterns with vast wings, fast-flying petrels. They circle round near the cliff, then go off to join the others out at sea. I envy their lightness, the speed with which they s
lip through the air, free of all ties to the earth. Then I see myself glued to the floor of this sterile valley, spending days, months scouting out territories that the birds’ eyes have scanned in an instant. I love watching them, I partake in a bit of their beauteous flight, a bit of their freedom.

  Do they need gold, riches? The wind is enough for them, the morning sky, the sea abounding in fish and the emerging rocks, their sole shelter from storms.

  Guided by my intuition I make my way over to the black cliff where I’d noticed crevices from the hill on the other side of the valley. As I pull myself up with the aid of shrubs, the wind buffets, inebriates me. All at once the sun appears above the hills in the east – magnificent, dazzling, lighting sparkles on the sea.

  I examine the cliff bit by bit. I can feel the burn of the sun growing steadily hotter. Around midday I hear someone call. It’s young Fritz waiting for me below, near the camp. I climb back down to rest. The enthusiasm I felt in the morning has waned considerably. I feel weary, discouraged. In the shade of the tamarind tree I eat the white rice in Fritz’s company. When he’s finished eating, he sits waiting in silence, gazing out into the distance with that impassive attitude that is characteristic of the black people from here.

  I think of Ouma, so wild, so lithe. Will she come back? Every evening before sunset I walk along the Roseaux River until I reach the dunes, looking for traces of her. Why? What could I say to her? Even so, I think she’s the only one who understands what I’ve come here in search of.

  Tonight, when the stars appear one by one in the sky, to the north, the Smaller Chariot, then Orion, Sirius, I suddenly understand where I’ve gone wrong: when I plotted the east-west axis, starting from the mark of the mooring ring, I was using the magnetic north as my compass indicated. The Corsair, who drew up his maps and marked off the rocks, didn’t use a compass. He undoubtedly used the northern star as a reference point and it is in relation to that direction that he established the east-west perpendicular. Since the difference between the magnetic north and the stellar north is 7°36, that would mean a discrepancy of nearly one hundred feet at the base of the cliff – that is to say on the other rock face which forms the first spur of the Commander’s Garret.

  I’m so shaken by this discovery that I can’t convince myself to wait until morning. Armed with my storm lamp, I walk barefoot out to the cliff. There is a heavy wind blowing, sweeping along clouds and sea spray. In the shelter of the roots of the old tamarind tree I hadn’t heard the storm. But out here I can barely stand up, it’s whistling in my ears and making the flame of my lamp flicker.

  Now I’m at the foot of the black cliff and I’m searching for a route to climb up. The cliff wall is so sheer that I need to hold the lamp between my teeth to scale up. I reach a ledge about halfway to the top in this manner and start looking for the mark along the crumbling cliff wall. In the light of the lamp the basalt rock face takes on an eerie, diabolic aspect. Each pock mark, each crack, makes me cringe. I work my way along the length of the ledge like this until I reach a crevice that separates this part of the cliff from the rocky bluff hanging over the sea. I’m numb from the cold, lashing winds, from the roaring of the sea directly below me, from the water streaming over my face. Just as I’m preparing to go back down, exhausted, I notice a large boulder just above me and I know the sign must be there, I’m certain of it. It’s the only boulder visible from all points in the valley. To reach it I have to make a detour, follow a path over a shifting rockslide. When I finally find myself before the boulder, holding the storm lantern between my teeth, I see the mooring ring. It’s engraved so clearly that I could have seen it without the lantern. Under my fingers its edges are as sharp as if they’d been carved yesterday. The black rock is cold, slippery. The triangle is drawn with the summit pointing upwards, contrary to the mooring ring on the east. On this rock, it seems like a mysterious eye staring out from the other end of time, contemplating the opposite side of the valley unfalteringly, day after day, night after night. A shudder runs through my body. I’ve found my way into a secret that is more powerful, more durable than I am. Where will it lead me?

  After that I live in a sort of waking dream in which Laure’s voice and that of Mam out on the veranda in Boucan mingle with the Corsair’s message and with the fleeting vision of Ouma slipping through the brush high up in the valley. Loneliness has closed in upon me. With the exception of young Fritz Castel, I don’t see anyone. Even he doesn’t come as regularly as he used to. Yesterday (or the day before, I’m not sure any more) he set the pot of rice down on a stone in front of the camp, then left, climbing the hill in the west without answering my calls. As if I frightened him.

  At dawn I go down to the estuary of the river, as I do every morning. I take my toiletry bag with a razor, a bar of soap and a brush, as well as the laundry that needs washing. I put the mirror on a stone and begin by shaving my beard, then I cut my hair that now reaches down to my shoulders. In the mirror I look at my thin face, darkened from the sun, my eyes shiny with fever. My nose – which is thin and aquiline, as is that of all males who bear the name L’Étang – accentuates the lost, almost ghostly expression on my face. I sincerely believe that by dint of following in his footsteps I’ve begun to resemble the Mysterious Corsair who once lived in this valley.

  I truly enjoy being here at the Roseaux River estuary, in the place where the dunes begin, where you can hear the sea so close, its slow respiration as the wind comes gusting in amid the euphorbia and the reeds, setting the palms to creaking. Here, at daybreak, the light is so soft, so calm, and the water is as smooth as a mirror. After I’ve finished shaving, bathing and washing my clothes, just as I’m preparing to go back to my camp, I see Ouma. She’s standing in front of the river, holding her harpoon and staring at me openly with a somewhat mocking look in her eyes. I’ve often hoped to meet her here on the beach at low tide, on her way back from fishing, and yet, surprised, I just stand there, stock still, my wet laundry dripping on my feet.

  By the side of the water in the nascent light of day, she’s even lovelier, her cotton skirt and shirt are soaked with seawater, her face the colour of copper, the colour of lava, glittering with salt. She’s just standing there, one leg extended and her torso leaning over her cocked left hip, holding the reed harpoon with the ebony tip in her right hand, her left hand resting on her right shoulder, draped in her wet clothing, like an antique statue. I stare at her without daring to speak and, in spite of myself, I think of the beautiful and mysterious Nada, as she used to be pictured in the illustrations of the old journals in the dusk light of our attic at Boucan. I take a step forward and I feel as if I’ve broken a spell. Ouma turns, she strides away along the riverbed.

  ‘Wait!’ I’ve shouted without thinking, running after her.

  Ouma stops, she looks at me. I can see mistrust, wariness in her eyes. I want to say something to hold her back, but I haven’t spoken to a living soul in such a long time, the words don’t come. I want to tell her about the marks I’ve searched for on the beach, in the evening before the tide comes in. But she’s the one who speaks to me.

  She asks me in her chanting, mocking voice, ‘Have you found gold at last?’

  I shake my head and she laughs. She sits on her heels at the top of a dune, a slight distance away. To sit down, she pulls her skirt between her legs with a gesture I’ve never seen any other woman make. She leans on the harpoon.

  ‘And you, have you caught anything?’

  She shakes her head in turn.

  ‘Are you going back to your place in the mountains?’

  She looks at the sky.

  ‘It’s still early. I’m going to try again, over by the point.’

  ‘Can I come with you?’

  She stands without answering. Then she turns towards me. ‘Come along.’

  She sets off without waiting for me. She walks quickly over the sand with that animal-like gait, the long harpoon on her shoulder.

  I throw the bundle of wet laundry in the
sand, not worrying that the wind might blow it away. I run after Ouma, catch up with her near the sea. She’s walking along the waves that are washing in, eyes fixed on the open sea. The wind is blowing her wet clothing against her slender body. In the still, grey morning sky, my bird-companions pass by, yelping and making that rattling sound of theirs.

  ‘Do you like the seabirds?’

  She stops, one arm lifted towards them. Her face is shining in the light. She says, ‘They’re beautiful.’

  At the end of the beach the young girl bounds agilely, effortlessly, barefoot over the sharp rocks. She goes out to the point facing the deep water, colour of blue steel. When I come up next to her, she motions me to stop. Her long silhouette is leaning over the sea, harpoon raised, she’s searching the depths down near the coral reefs. She remains in that position for a long time, perfectly still, then suddenly leaps forward and disappears into the water. I search the surface, looking for escaping bubbles, a ripple, a shadow. When I no longer know where to look, the young girl surfaces a few arm’s lengths from me, gasping. She swims slowly over to me, throws a speared fish on to the rocks. She gets out of the water with the harpoon, her face is pale with cold.

  She says, ‘There’s another one over there.’

  I take the harpoon and, in turn, dive into the sea, fully clothed.

  Under the water I see the murky bottom, the sparkling flakes of seaweed. The waves breaking on the coral reef make a shrill, grating sound. I swim underwater towards the coral, clasping the harpoon close to my body. I swim twice around the reefs without seeing anything. When I go back to the surface Ouma is leaning over me, shouting, ‘There, over there!’