The Prospector (17 page)

When the ship is only a few fathoms from the reefs, the prow pointed straight for the pass, the captain gives the order to drop anchor. The main anchor along with its heavy chain falls into the water first. Then the crew drop three smaller frigate anchors: portside, starboard and at the bow. When I ask him why so many precautions, the captain tells me in a few words about the shipwreck of a one-hundred-and-fifty-ton, three-masted schooner, the
Kalinda
, in 1901: it had dropped anchor in this same spot, facing the pass. Then everyone had gone ashore, even the captain, leaving two green Tamil cabin boys on board. A few hours later the tide had risen, but was unusually strong on that particular day and the current that rushed into the unique pass was so powerful that the anchor chain broke. People on the shore had seen the ship drawing closer, high over the coral reef, where the rollers were breaking, as if it were going to take flight. Then it had suddenly plunged down on to the reefs and a receding wave engulfed it, pulling it down to the bottom of the sea. The next morning pieces of masts, bits of plank and a few bales of the cargo were found, but the two Tamil cabin boys never were.

Thereupon the captain gives the order to douse all sails and lower the pirogue. I gaze at the dark water – it's over ten fathoms deep – and I shudder, thinking of the green shadows of sharks slipping around, waiting perhaps for another shipwreck.

On the deck of the
Zeta
we're growing impatient. The sun is low when the pirogue returns, greeted by the joyous cries of the sailors. This time it's my turn. I follow the helmsman and slide down the cable to the pirogue, four other crew members also board. We are rowing, unable to see the pass. The helmsman is at the tiller, standing in order to steer better. The roar of the waves warns us that the reef is near. Indeed, I suddenly feel our skiff being lifted up by a swift wave and we make it through the narrow channel between the reefs riding high on its crest. Now we are already on the other side, in the lagoon, barely a few yards from the long coral barrier. The helmsman brings us to shore in the place where the waves come washing up to die, very near the sandy beach, and moors the pirogue. The sailors jump out on to the embankment, whooping, then disappear amid the crowd of inhabitants.

I disembark in turn. On the shore there are a good many women, children, black fishermen and Indians too. They all look at me curiously. With the exception of Captain Bradmer, who comes when he has a shipment of merchandise, these people must not see white people often. And what with my long hair and beard, my suntanned face and arms, my dirty clothes and bare feet, I must be quite a strange white man! It's mostly the children who examine me, laughing openly. On the beach there are dogs, a few scrawny black pigs, some young goats trotting around looking for salt.

The sun will soon be setting. The sky is a bright yellow above the coconut trees, behind the islands. Where am I going to sleep? I start to look for a spot somewhere on the beach between the pirogues when Captain Bradmer asks me to accompany him to the hotel. My astonishment at the word ‘hotel' makes him laugh. In the guise of a hotel there's an old wooden house whose proprietress, an energetic woman – a mix of black and Indian – rents rooms to the rare travellers who venture out to Agalega. They say she even housed the chief justice of Mauritius during his sole visit in 1901 or 1902! For dinner the woman serves us a crab curry that is absolutely excellent, especially compared with the everyday fare of the Chinaman on the
Zeta
. Captain Bradmer is in top form, he questions our hostess about the inhabitants of the island and tells me about Juan de Nova, the first explorer to discover Agalega, and about a French colonizer by the name of Auguste Leduc, who organized the production of copra that was once the sole resource of the islands. Today the sister islands also produce rare wood, mahogany, sandalwood, ebony. He speaks of Guguel, the colonial administrator who founded the hospital and built up the island's economy in the beginning of this century. I promise myself to take advantage of the time we are in port – Bradmer has just informed me that he needs to load a hundred or so barrels of copra – to visit the forests which are, from what I've heard, the loveliest in the Indian Ocean.

After dinner I stretch out on my bed in the little room at one end of the house. Despite my weariness, I have trouble going to sleep. After all those nights in the suffocating hold, the tranquillity of this room unsettles me and I can't stop feeling the rolling movement of the waves. I open the shutters to breathe in the night air. Outside the smell of land is heavy and the song of toads punctuates the night.

How impatient I am already to get back to the desert of the sea, to the sound of the waves against the stem, the wind vibrating in the sails, to feel the quickness of the air and the saltwater, the power of the void, to hear the music of absence. Sitting on the old rickety chair in front of the open window, I inhale the fragrance of the garden. I can hear Bradmer's voice, his laughter, the laughter of the landlady. It sounds as if they're having a good time… Little matter! I think I fall asleep like that, with my forehead resting on the windowsill.

I walk across South Island, where the village is located. Together, the sister islands that make up Agalega are probably no larger than the Black River District. Nevertheless, it seems very large after the days on the
Zeta
, where the only activity consisted in going from the hold to the deck, from the stem to the stern. I walk across the groves of coconut trees and palmettos standing in straight rows as far as the eye can see. I walk slowly, barefoot in the sandy soil that is sapped with the burrows of land crabs. I'm also disoriented due to the silence. One can't hear the sound of the sea in these fields. There's only the murmur of the wind in the palms. Despite the early hour (when I left the hotel everyone was still sleeping) the heat is already oppressive. There is no one on the straight paths and if those ruled lines didn't signal a human presence I might think I was on a deserted island.

But I'm mistaken in saying there's no one here. Since I entered the grove I have been followed by anxious eyes. The land crabs are observing me along the path, they rise up at times, waving their threatening claws. At one point a group of them even block my passage and I have to make a long detour. At last I reach the other side of the plantation in the north. I'm separated from the sister island, poorer than this one, by the calm waters of the lagoon. There is a cabin on the shore and an old fisherman repairing his nets near his upturned pirogue. He lifts his head to look at me, then pursues his work. His black skin shines in the sunlight.

I decide to make my way back to the village by walking up the white beach that encircles almost the entire island. I can feel the sea breeze out here, but I no longer have the advantage of the shade of the coconut trees. The sun is so hot that I need to take off my shirt to cover my head and shoulders. When I reach the other end of the island, I can't wait any longer. I strip off all my clothes and dive into the clear water of the lagoon. I swim delectably towards the coral reefs until I come to the cold layers of water and the roar of the waves is very near. Then I go very slowly back to shore, drifting along, hardly moving. Eyes open under the water, I watch the fish of all different colours fleeing before me, I'm also looking out for the shadows of sharks. I can feel the cold flow of water coming from the pass, sweeping along fish and bits of seaweed.

When I'm on the beach I get dressed without drying off and walk barefoot over the burning sand. Farther along I encounter a group of black children going octopus-fishing. They are the same age as Denis and I were when we used to roam around Black River. They gaze in astonishment at the ‘
burzoi
s
' – which is Creole for bourgeois – clothes stained with seawater, hair and beard matted with salt. Maybe they take me for a castaway? When I walk over to them, they flee and hide in the shade of the coconut grove.

Before I enter the village I shake out my clothes and comb my hair, so I won't make too bad an impression. On the other side of the coral reefs I can see the two masts of Bradmer's schooner. The barrels of oil are lined up on the long coral embankment, waiting to be taken aboard. The sailors are coming and going with the pirogue. There are still some fifty barrels to be loaded.

Back in the hotel I have breakfast with Captain Bradmer. He's in a good humour this morning. He informs me that the crew will have finished loading the oil this afternoon and that we'll be leaving tomorrow at dawn. We'll sleep on board to avoid having to wait for the tide. Then, to my great astonishment, he speaks to me about my family, about my father, whom he'd known long ago in Port Louis.

‘I learned of the misfortune that befell him, all of his problems, his debts. All of that is quite sad. You were in Black River, isn't that so?'

‘In Boucan.'

‘Yes, that's it, behind the Tamarin Estate. I went to your house a very long time ago, long before you were born. It was in the days of your grandfather, it was a lovely white house with a magnificent garden. Your father had recently married, I recall your mother, a very young woman with beautiful auburn hair and pretty eyes. Your father was very taken with her, he had organized a very romantic marriage.' After a silence, he adds, ‘What a pity that it all ended in that way, happiness doesn't last.' He looks over past the other end of the veranda at the little garden where a black pig thrones, surrounded by pecking poultry. ‘Yes, it's a pity…'

But he says nothing more. As if he regretted having revealed his feelings, the captain stands up, puts on his hat and walks out of the house. I hear him speaking to the landlady outside, then he reappears, ‘This evening, sir, the pirogue will make its last trip at five o'clock, before the tide. Be on the embankment at that time.' It's more of an order than a piece of advice.

I am, therefore, standing on the embankment at the said hour, after having spent the day rambling around South Island, from the campsite to the eastern point, from the hospital to the cemetery. I'm impatient to be on board the
Zeta
again, to sail for Rodrigues.

In the pirogue that is moving away from the island it seems as if all the men are feeling the same thing, that desire for the high seas. This time the captain himself is at the tiller of the pirogue and I'm at the front. I see the barrier approaching, the long rollers crashing down, raising a wall of foam. My heart is racing when the front of the pirogue heaves up against the incoming wave. I'm deafened by the sound of the backwash, by the screeching birds circling overhead. ‘Alley-oop!' cries the captain when the wave goes out, and along with the thrust of the eight oars the pirogue is precipitated into the narrow pass between the reefs. It leaps over the next wave. Not one drop of water has fallen into the pirogue! Now we are sliding over the deep blue, towards the dark silhouette of the
Zeta
.

Later, on board the ship, when the men have settled down in the hold to play dice or to sleep, I sit watching the night. Out on the island fires shine, pinpointing the campsite. Then the land fades out, disappears. There's nothing left but the void of night, the sound of the waves on the reefs.

Just like almost every other evening since this journey began, I'm stretched out on the deck of the ship, wrapped in my old horse blanket and looking up at the stars. The sea breeze whistling in the rigging heralds the tide. I can feel the first rollers slipping under the hull, making the frame of the ship crack. The anchor chains are groaning plaintively. Up in the sky the stars are shining in still brightness. I'm watching them attentively, looking for all of them tonight, as if their patterns would reveal the secrets of my fate to me. Scorpius, Orion and the faint shape of the Smaller Chariot. Near the horizon, the Argo with her narrow sail and her long stern, the Smaller Dog, the Unicorn. And tonight, above all, the ones that bring the lovely nights in Boucan to mind, the seven lights of the Pleiades, whose names our father made us learn by heart and that Laure and I used to recite like the words of a magic formula: Alcyone, Electra, Maia, Atlas, Taygeta, Merope… And the last one, that we would name hesitantly, Pleione, so small we weren't sure we'd really seen it. I still love to say their names today, half-whispering in the lonely night, because it's as if I knew they were appearing over there, in the sky over Boucan, through a rent in the clouds.

The wind changed during the night. Now it's blowing northwards again, making any attempt to turn back impossible. The captain decided to run before the wind, rather than resign himself to waiting in Agalega. The helmsman coolly informs me of this. Will we ever go to Rodrigues? That depends on the length of the storm. Thanks to it, we reached Agalega in five days, but now we have to wait for it to allow us to return.

I'm the only one who's worrying about our itinerary. The crewmen just go on with their lives and play dice as if nothing mattered. Is it because of their taste for adventure? No, that's not it. They don't belong to anyone, they don't come from anywhere, that's all. Their world is the deck of the
Zeta
, the airless hold where they sleep at night. I look at those dark faces, burnished by the sun and the wind, like shingles polished by the sea. Just as I had on the night we cast off, I begin to feel that vague, irrational anxiety again. These men belong to another way of life, another time. Even Captain Bradmer, even the helmsman, are with them, are on their side. They too are indifferent to places, to longings, to everything that's important to me. Their faces are as smooth as water, their eyes reflect the metallic glint of the sea.

The wind is whisking us north now, in full sail, with the stem slicing through the dark sea. We clip along, hour after hour, day after day. I have to get used to this, accept the rule of the elements. Every day when the sun is at its peak the helmsman goes down into the hold to rest without closing his eyes and I take the wheel.