The Prospector

by J. M. G. Le Clézio

  She stops talking. Night is very near now. Outside the valley is already in shadows. The rain has stopped, but we can hear water dripping on the tent when the wind shakes the branches of the old tamarind tree.

  ‘In the beginning it was hard living here, because I didn’t know anything about life with the Manafs. I didn’t know how to do anything, I couldn’t run or fish or make a fire, I didn’t even know how to swim. And I couldn’t talk, because no one spoke French, and my mother spoke only Bohjpuri and Creole. It was dreadful, I was fourteen years old and I was like an infant. In the beginning the neighbours made fun of me, they said my mother would have done best to leave me with the bourgeois. I wanted to leave, but I didn’t know where to go. I couldn’t go back to France, because I was a Manaf and nobody would have wanted me. And also, I liked my little brother Sri a lot, he was so gentle, so innocent, I think my mother was right to say he was God’s messenger… So I started learning everything I needed to know. I learned how to run barefoot over the rocks, to run after and catch goats, to make a fire, and to swim and dive for fish. I learned how to be a Manaf and live like the maroons, hiding in the mountains. But I truly like being here with them, because they never lie, they never harm anyone. People from the coast in Port Mathurin are the same as the others from Mauritius, they lie and trick you, that’s why we stay hidden in the mountains…’

  Now it’s completely dark. Cold settles in over the valley. We’re lying close against one another, I can feel the warmth of Ouma’s body against mine, our legs are intertwined. Yes, it’s exactly as if we were the only living beings on Earth. The valley of English Bay is lost, it’s drifting away in the cold sea wind.

  I’m not trembling any more, I don’t feel hurried or fearful at all now. Ouma too has forgotten that she must constantly be fleeing, hiding. Just as she had a little while ago in the reeds, she takes off her clothing and helps me get undressed too. Her body is smooth and warm, still covered with sand in places. She laughs as she brushes off the patches of sand on my back, my chest. Then we are inside one another, I’m not sure how. Her face is tilted backwards, I can hear her breathing, I can feel the beating of her heart and her warmth is within me, vast, more powerful than all of the burning days spent out at sea and in the valley. Now we are gliding, soaring, free of all thoughts, out into the night sky among the stars that hover silently, listening to us breathing in unison like two people deep in sleep. We lie holding one another close, so as not to feel the cold stones.

  At last I’ve found the ravine where a spring once flowed, but has now run dry. It’s the one I’d glimpsed when I first arrived in English Bay and that I’d judged too far from the riverbed to appear on the Corsair’s map.

  But as I plant more and more markers extending the straight lines from the first signs, I am led over to the eastern side of the valley. One morning while I’m out alone, surveying in English Bay, not far from the western mark of the mooring ring, I decide to explore along the line that stretches from the mooring ring to the stone with the four punch marks that I found on the first spur of the eastern cliff and that, in the Corsair’s document, is noted down as ‘Look for : : S’.

  Having nothing but the lengths of reeds planted at irregular intervals as markers, I move slowly forwards along the floor of the valley. A little before noon I arrive at the top of the eastern cliff, having measured and marked over a thousand king’s feet. At the same time as I reach the top of the cliff I notice the crack of the ravine and the stone marking it. It is a block of basalt around six feet high, stuck in the powdery earth of the hillside in such a manner that it must be visible from the original estuary at the bottom of the valley. It’s the only one of its kind, fallen from the basalt overhang that culminates above the cliff. I’m certain it was brought here by human means, perhaps rolled on logs and then stood upright in the manner of druid stones. On its sides the notches made to wrap ropes around it are still clear. But what catches my eye is the mark the rock bears at its top, exactly in the middle: a straight groove, approximately six inches long, carved by means of a chisel. The groove is precisely aligned with the extended straight line I followed from the western mooring ring, and indicates the opening of the ravine. Heart pounding, I step nearer and see the ravine for the first time. It’s a corridor of erosion that runs through the width of the cliff and grows narrower towards English Bay. A rockslide obstructs its entrance and that is why it still hadn’t dawned on me to explore it. Seen from the valley the entrance to the ravine blends in with all the other rockslides on the cliff. And from the top of the eastern hill as I first saw it, the ravine resembles a shallow depression in the land.

  There is only one path that could have led me to it and that’s the line I followed that began at the western mooring ring, ran across the Roseaux riverbed at point 95 (the exact intersecting point of the north-south line), passed through the middle of the stone with the four punch marks (point ‘S’ on the Corsair’s document) and then led me to the block of basalt, where it converges with the groove carved by the Corsair’s chisel.

  I’m so excited by this discovery that I need to sit down and collect myself. The cold wind brings me back to my senses. Hurriedly, I climb down the slope to the bottom of the ravine. There, I’m in a sort of open well in the shape of a horseshoe, about twenty-five king’s feet large, which runs some hundred feet down to the rockslide that closes off the entrance.

  This is the place – I have no doubt about it – where the key to the mystery is to be found. This is the place, somewhere here under my feet, where the vault must be and also the sea chest, once solidly fixed to the front part of the ship where the Corsair kept his fabulous riches locked up, safeguarding them from the English and the cupidity of his own men. What better hiding place could he have found than this natural fault in the cliff, invisible from both the sea and the valley and closed off by the natural obstacle of the rockslide and silt from the torrent? I’m too impatient to wait until I can find help. I go to the camp and come back with everything I’ll need: the pick, the shovel, the long iron-probe rod, a rope and a supply of drinking water. Till evening, without stopping, I probe and dig on the floor of the ravine in the place that I believe the groove in the block of basalt indicates.

  Near the end of the day, when the shadows begin to darken the bottom of the ravine, the rod penetrates the earth diagonally, revealing the opening to a cache half-filled with dirt. Furthermore, the dirt is of a lighter colour, proof, in my view, that it was put there to plug up this cavity.

  Using my hands to clear the blocks of basalt, I enlarge the opening. My heart is pounding in my temples, my clothes are drenched in sweat. The hole grows larger, uncovering an old chamber fortified by means of a drystone structure built in a half-circle. I am soon inside the cellar up to my waist. I don’t have enough room to work with the pick and I have to dig with my hands, clear away the blocks by pushing on the rod like a lever. Then the metal rod rings on rock. I can’t go any further, I’ve touched bottom: the hiding place is empty.

  It’s already night. The blank sky over the ravine is slowly growing dark. But the air is so hot that it’s as if the sun were still beating down on the stone walls, on my face, on my hands, inside my body. Sitting in the bottom of the ravine, facing the empty cache, I drink all the water that’s left in the canteen, hot, tasteless water that doesn’t quench my thirst.

  For the first time in a long time I think of Laure, I feel as if I’m coming out of my dream. What would she think of me if she saw me like this, covered with dust at the bottom of this ditch, hands bloody from digging? She’d look at me with her dark, shiny eyes and I’d feel ashamed. Right now I’m too tired to move, to think, to feel anything at all. I await the coming of night avidly, longingly, and I stretch out right where I am at the bottom of the ravine, head resting on one of the black rocks I’ve torn from the earth. Above me, between the high stone walls, the sky is black. I see the stars. They are bits of broken constellations, whose names I no longer remember.

  I
n the morning, when I come out of the ravine, I see Ouma’s silhouette. She’s sitting near the camp, in the shade of a tree, waiting for me. Sri is beside her, watching me walk up, without moving.

  I go over to the young girl, sit down beside her. In the shade her face is dark, but her eyes are shining bright.

  ‘There’s no more water in the ravine, the fountain has dried up,’ she says.

  She says ‘fountain’ for spring, Creole-style. She says it calmly, as if I’d been searching for water in the ravine.

  The morning light is shining on the stones, in the foliage of the trees. Ouma has gone to fetch water in the river with the stewpot and now she’s preparing the porridge, called kir, that Indian women make with flour. When the porridge is ready, she serves me on an enamel plate. As for her, she dips her fingers directly into the pot.

  In her calm, chanting voice she tells me again about her childhood in France, in the nun’s convent, and about her life when she came back to live with her mother, in Manaf country. I like the way she talks to me. I try to imagine her, the day she got off the huge ocean liner, wearing her black uniform, squinting against the light.

  I too tell her about my childhood, in Boucan, about Laure, lessons with Mam under the veranda in the evenings and the adventures with Denis. When I tell her of our journey in the pirogue, out to the Morne, her eyes light up.

  ‘I’d really like to go out to sea too!’

  She stands, looks over towards the lagoon.

  ‘On the other side there are lots of islands, islands where the seabirds live. Take me over there to fish.’

  I love it when her eyes shine like that. I’ve made up my mind, we’ll go out to the islands, to Booby Island, to Baladirou, maybe even down south to Gombrani. I’ll go to Port Mathurin to rent a pirogue.

  A storm was blowing for two days and two nights. I lived huddled up under my tent, eating only salt biscuits, hardly going out. Then on the morning of the third day the wind stops. The sky is a brilliant colour of blue, cloudless. I find Ouma standing on the beach, as if she hadn’t budged the whole time.

  When she sees me she says, ‘I hope the fisherman will bring the pirogue today.’

  One hour later, in fact, the pirogue comes running up on the beach. We embark, with the water supply and a tin of biscuits. Ouma is at the prow, holding her harpoon, watching the surface of the lagoon.

  We leave the fisherman at Lascars Bay and I promise to bring the pirogue back the next day. We set off, sail blown taut in the east wind. The tall mountains of Rodriques tower behind us, still pale in the morning light. Ouma’s face is lit with joy. She points out to me the mountains: Limon, Piton, Bilactère. When we go through the pass, the swell makes the pirogue lurch and we are enveloped in sea spray. But further out we’re back in the lagoon, sheltered by the reefs. Even so, the water is dark, traversed by mysterious reflections.

  An island appears in front of the prow: it’s Booby Island. Even before seeing them, we hear the calls of the seabirds. It’s a constant, regular chatter, filling the sea and sky.

  The birds have seen us, they fly out over the pirogue. Sterns, albatrosses, black frigates and the huge boobies, circling and squawking.

  The island is now only some fifty yards from us, starboard side. On the lagoon side it is a band of sand and, facing the ocean, a rocky shore upon which the waves come crashing down. Ouma has made her way over to me at the tiller, she says in a low voice next to my ear, ‘It’s beautiful…!’

  Never have I seen so many birds. There are thousands of them on the rocks which are white with guano, they dance, take flight and come to rest, and their wings make a rushing sound like the sea. The waves come thundering over the reefs, covering the rocks with a dazzling white roil, but the boobies aren’t frightened. They open their powerful wings and raise themselves up in the wind over the water flowing past, then drop back down on to the rocks.

  A flight of birds flying in tight formation passes over us, screeching. They circle around our pirogue, darkening the sky, flying against the wind, their immense wings outstretched, their black heads with the cruel eye turned towards the strangers, whom they hate. Now there are more and more of them, their strident cries are deafening. Some of them attack, swooping down upon the stern of the pirogue and we are forced to protect ourselves. Ouma is afraid, she huddles close to me, covers her ears with her hands.

  ‘Let’s get out of here! Let’s go!’

  I push the tiller starboard and, snapping, the sail fills with wind again. The boobies understand. They fly off, gain altitude and continue circling, keeping an eye on us. On the rocks of the island the bird population continues jumping over the swirling foam.

  Ouma and I are still shaken. We’re skipping along on the wind and for a long time after having left the waters around the island we can hear the sharp cries of the birds and the swift beating of their wings. One mile from Booby Island we find another islet on the coral reefs. To the north, the waves from the ocean break upon the rocks with a thundering sound. Here there are almost no birds, except for a few sterns gliding over the beach.

  As soon as we’ve landed, Ouma takes off her clothes and dives in. I see her dark body shine under the water, then disappear. She comes up to the surface several times to catch her breath, her harpoon pointing skyward.

  I undress too and dive in, swimming with my eyes open close to the bottom. In the coral there are thousands of fish I don’t even know the names of, silver-coloured, striped with yellow, with red. The water is very soft and I slide along effortlessly near the coral. I search for Ouma in vain. When I come back to shore I stretch out in the sand and listen to the sound of the waves behind me. The sterns are hovering in the wind. There are even a few boobies come over from their island to stare at me, shrieking.

  A long time afterwards, when the white sand has already dried on my body, Ouma comes up out of the water in front of me. Her body is shining in the light like black metal. She’s wearing a string of braided creeper vines around her waist, where she’s hung her prey: four fish, one thumbprint emperor, one spangled emperor and two silver sea bream. She sticks the harpoon into the sand, tip pointing upward, undoes the belt and puts the fish in a hole in the sand that she covers with wet seaweed. Then she sits down on the beach and sprinkles sand over her body.

  By her side I can hear her breath, still heaving with the effort. On her dark skin the sand glitters like gold dust. We don’t speak. We look at the water in the lagoon, listening to the powerful sound of the sea behind us. It’s as if we’ve been here for days, having forgotten everything about the world. Off in the distance, the tall mountains of Rodrigues are slowly changing colour, the indentations of the bays are already in shadows. The tide is high. The lagoon is swollen, smooth, a deep shade of blue. The stem of the pirogue, with its arching bow that looks like a seabird, is barely touching the beach.

  Later on, when the sun has gone down, we eat. Ouma gets up, the sand slips from her body in a fine spray. She gathers dried kelp, pieces of wood left by the tides. With my tinderbox I set fire to the twigs. When the flame springs forth Ouma’s face is lit with a wild joy that draws me to her. Ouma makes a rack with some wet twigs, she cleans the fish. Then she smothers the fire with handfuls of sand and lays the rack directly on the coals. The smell of grilled fish fills us with a feeling of well-being and soon we are eating hurriedly, burning our fingers.

  A few seabirds have arrived, drawn by the scraps. They trace large circles against the sun, then land on the beach. Before eating, they look at us, head tilted to one side.

  ‘They won’t harm us now, they’re used to us.’

  The boobies don’t land on the sand. They dive towards the offal and catch it up in mid-flight, making sudden puffs of dust rise into the air. There are even crabs that come out of their holes, looking at once cowardly and ferocious.

  ‘There’s quite a crowd!’ says Ouma, laughing.

  When we’ve finished eating, Ouma hangs our clothing on the harpoon and we lie down in the hot
sand, in the shade of that makeshift parasol. We bury ourselves beside one another in the sand. Perhaps Ouma falls asleep like that as I observe her face and closed eyes, her smooth, handsome forehead where her hair stirs gently in the wind. When she breathes, the sand slips off her chest, making her shoulder glint in the sun like a stone. I caress her skin with my fingertips. But Ouma doesn’t move. She’s breathing slowly, head resting on her crooked arm as the wind sweeps the sand from her immense body in tiny rivulets. Before me I see the blank sky and Rodrigues in a haze on the mirror of the lagoon. The seabirds fly over, alight on the beach a few yards from us. They’re not afraid any more, they’ve become our friends.

  I think this day is endless, like the sea.

  Yet evening comes and I walk down the beach, surrounded by swooping birds letting out worried cries. It’s too late to envisage going back to Rodrigues. The tide is going out, laying bare the coral plateaus in the lagoon, and we’d be in danger of running aground or wrecking the pirogue. Ouma has just joined me at the point of the island. We’ve put our clothes back on, because of the breeze. The seabirds fly out after us, alight on the rocks in front of us, giving strange cries. Out here the sea is free. We can see the waves breaking at the end of their journey.