The Prospector (29 page)

Using my pick, I enlarge the opening. Little by little we uncover a sort of well that reaches all the way down to the base of the cliff that dead-ends the ravine. The bottom of the well is of the same rust-coloured rock that alternates with the outcrops of basalt on the bottom of the ravine. Young Fritz goes down into the well, where he disappears entirely, then comes back up.

He shakes his head. ‘There's nothing down there.'

Mercure shrugs his shoulders derisively.

‘It's the goat fountain.'

Is it really one of those old troughs for the herds? Then why would anyone have gone to so much trouble, since Roseaux River is so near? The men saunter away with their shovels and ropes. I hear their laughter fading out as they pass through the entrance to the ravine. Only young Fritz Castel has remained at my side, standing before the gaping cache, as if waiting for my instructions. He's ready to go back to work, plant new markers, dig new probe holes. Perhaps he's been infected with the same fever as I have, the one that makes you forget everything, the world and human beings, in quest of a mirage, a gleam of light.

‘There's nothing more to be done here.' I speak to him in a hushed voice, as if talking to myself. He looks at me with his shiny eyes, not understanding.

‘All the caches are empty.'

We come out of the burning trench of the ravine in turn. At the top of the slope I contemplate the vast valley, the dark-green tufts of the tamarind trees and the screw pines, the fantastic forms of the basaltic rock and especially the thin stream of sky-blue water that snakes towards the swamp and the dunes. The latanias and coconut trees form a moving screen in front of the sea and when the wind blows I can hear the sound of the breakers, a sluggish respiration.

Where to search now? Down there by the dunes in the marshlands where the sea once raged? In the caves on the other bank at the foot of the ruined tower of the Commander's Garret? Or else high up, deep in the wild mountains of the Manafs, at the source of the Roseaux River where the herds of goats live in cracks hidden by thorn bushes? Now I feel as if all the lines on my maps are fading away, as if the signs inscribed on the rocks are merely the traces of storms, the bite of lightning bolts, the abrasion of the wind. A sense of despair is creeping over me and draining my strength.

I feel like saying to Fritz, ‘It's all over, there's nothing more to find here, let's go.'

The young man is looking so insistently at me, his eyes shining so brightly, that I can't bring myself to reveal my despair to him. As firmly as I can, I stride across the floor of the valley to my camp under the tamarind tree.

‘We're going to explore the area over there to the west. We'll need to probe, plant new markers. You'll see, we'll find it in the end. We'll search everywhere on the other side and then high up in the valley too. We won't leave an inch of terrain unturned. We'll find it!'

Does he believe what I'm saying? My words seem to have put his mind at ease.

‘Yes, sir, we'll find it, if the Manafs haven't found it before us!' he says.

The idea of the Corsair's treasure being in the hands of the Manafs makes him laugh. But growing suddenly serious, he adds, ‘If the Manafs found the gold, they'd throw it into the sea!'

And what if that were true?

That feeling of anxiety I've been having for weeks now, the sound that is rumbling out beyond the seas like thunder and which I cannot forget, either by day or by night, today suddenly – the full measure of its violence has dawned upon me.

Having left for Port Mathurin early this morning in the hopes of getting a new letter from Laure, I come up through the underbrush and the screw pines in front of the buildings of the Cable & Wireless at Venus Point and I see the gathering of men in front of the telegraph house. The Rodriguans are waiting at the foot of the veranda, some are standing up, conversing, others are sitting in the shade, on the steps, with blank looks on their faces, smoking cigarettes.

In these past few days of madness in the bottom of the ravine, trying to find the Corsair's second cache, I hadn't really thought of the gravity of the situation in Europe. And yet the other day, when passing in front of the Mallac & Co. building, I read, along with the crowd, the communiqué tacked up by the door that had arrived from Port Louis on the postal ship. It spoke of a general mobilization for the war that had begun over there in Europe. Britain and France have allied and declared war on Germany. Lord Kitchener is calling upon all volunteers, in the colonies and the dominions, in Canada, in Australia, and also in Asia, the Indies, Africa. I read the public notice, then I went back to English Bay, maybe in the hope of finding Ouma, of talking to her about it. But she didn't come and later the noise of the work at the bottom of the ravine must have frightened her off.

As I walk up to the telegraph building, no one pays any attention to me, despite my torn clothing and my overly long hair. I recognize Mercure, Raboud and, a little off to one side, the giant Casimir, the sailor on the
Zeta
. He recognizes me as well and his face lights up. Eyes bright with pleasure, he explains to me that they're waiting here for instructions on how to enlist. That's why there are only men here! Women are repelled by war.

Casimir talks to me about the army, warships that he hopes will take him on, poor gentle giant! He's already talking about the battles he will wage in countries he's never seen against an unknown enemy. Then a man, an Indian telegraph employee, appears on the veranda. He begins reading a list of names, the ones that will be communicated to the recruitment bureau in Port Louis. With his ringing, nasal voice and his English accent which deforms the syllables, he reads out the names very slowly in the silence that now lies heavily over the men.

‘Hermitte, Corentin, Latour, Lamy, Raffaut…'

He reads those names, and the wafting wind sweeps them away and strews them over the hills amid the blades of screw pines and the black rocks, those names that already have a strange ring to them, like the names of dead men, and suddenly I want to flee, go back to my valley, to the place where no one can find me, disappear into Ouma's world among the reeds and the dunes without leaving a trace. The slow voice enumerates the names and I shudder. Never have I felt this before, as if the voice would pronounce my name among those names, as if the voice had to say my name among those of the men who are going to leave their world to fight against our enemies.

‘Portalis, Haouet, Céline, Bégué, Hitchen, Castor, Pichette, Simon…'

I can still leave, I think about the ravine, about the lines that intersect on the valley bottom and make the landmarks shine out like beacons, I think about everything I've experienced in all of these months, all of these years, that light-filled beauty, the sound of the sea, the fancy-free birds. I think of Ouma, of her skin, her smooth hands, her body of black metal slipping under the water of the lagoon. I can go away, there's still time, far from this insanity, where the men laugh and rejoice when the Indian pronounces their name. I can leave, find a place where I could forget all of this, where I wouldn't hear the sound of the war in the sound of the sea and the wind any more. But the sing-songy voice continues to pronounce the names, those names that are already unreal, the names of men from here who will die over there, for a world they know nothing about.

‘Ferney, Labutte, Jeremiah, Rosine, Medicis, Jolicoeur, Victorine, Imboulla, Ramilla, Illke, Ardor, Grangourt, Salomon, Ravine, Roussety, Perrine, Perrine the younger, Azie, Cendrillon, Casimir…'

When the Indian pronounces his name, the giant stands up and jumps up and down, shouting. There is an expression of such naive contentment on his face one might think he'd just won a bet or that he'd learned some good news. And yet it's the name of his death that he's just heard. Maybe that's why I didn't flee to English Bay, didn't try to find a place where I'd be able to forget the war. I think it's because of him, because of his joy at hearing his name called.

When the Indian has finished reading the names on his list, he stands still for a moment with the paper fluttering in the wind and asks in English, ‘Are there any other volunteers?'

And almost in spite of myself I climb up the cast-iron stairs to the veranda and give him my name to add to the list. A little while ago Casimir set the tone for a celebration and now most of the Rodriguans are dancing and singing right on the spot. When I go down the stairway, some of them circle around me and grasp my hands. The jubilation draws out all along the road that follows the coast to Port Mathurin, and we go through the streets of the town in a boisterous crowd, to reach the hospital where the medical examination is to be carried out. The examination is simply a formality that only lasts a minute or two. Each in turn – bare-chested – we enter the torrid office where Camal Boudou, flanked by two nurses, examines the volunteers and hands them a stamped travel authorization. I'm expecting him to ask me some questions, but he just checks my eyes and teeth. He hands me the paper and, as I'm going out, he merely says in that deep and gentle voice of his, his Indian face remaining expressionless, ‘You are going out to the Front too?' Then he calls in the next person without waiting for an answer. On the paper I read my departure date: 10 December 1914. The name of the ship is left blank, but the destination of the journey is filled in: Portsmouth. There you have it, I'm enlisted. I won't even see Laure and Mam before leaving for Europe, since we'll be departing from somewhere around the Seychelles.

Yet I go back to the ravine every day, as if I would at last be able to find what I'm searching for. I can't tear myself away from that crack in the side of the valley, with not a blade of grass, not a tree, nothing that moves or is alive, with only the light reverberating on the rusty slopes of the mountain and the basalt rocks. In the morning, before the sun gets too hot, and in the evening twilight, I walk down to the bottom of the dead-end ravine and look at the holes I discovered at the foot of the cliff. I stretch out on the ground, run my fingers over the mouth of the well, over the wall worn smooth by the waters of another era, and dream. All around on the bottom of the ravine there are furious pick marks and the earth is full of craters that are already beginning to fill with dust. When the wind pushes its way into the ravine, wailing, blustering violently up at the top of the cliff, little avalanches of black dirt run into those holes, echo on the stones at the bottom of the caches. How long will it take for nature to close up the Corsair's well which I've laid bare in this way? I think of those who will come after me, in ten years, perhaps, in a hundred years, and it's for them that I decide to seal up the caches again. Down in the valley I find large, flat stones that I carry with great difficulty to the mouths of the wells, I use other smaller rocks gathered right in the ravine to fill up the cracks and with my shovel I throw red earth on top that I tamp down by pounding it with the shovel. Without understanding, young Fritz Castel helps me with this work. But he never asks any questions. For him, from the very beginning this whole thing will have been nothing but a series of incomprehensible and somewhat frightening rituals.

When everything is finished I contemplate with satisfaction the mound that hides the Corsair's two caches in the bottom of the ravine. I feel as if, in accomplishing this job, I've made a new step forward in my quest, as if – in a way – I've become the accomplice of the mysterious man whose trail I've been following for such a long time.

I like being in the ravine, especially in the evening. When the sun is drawing near the jagged line of the hills in the west, over by the Commander's Garret, the sunshine reaches almost all the way to the back of the long stone corridor, lighting up the slabs of rock in a strange way, igniting the flakes of mica in the schist. I just sit there at the entrance to the ravine, watching the shadows creep over the silent valley. I observe every detail, every movement in this stone-laden, thorny land. I await the arrival of my friends the seabirds, who leave every evening from the southern shores, Pierrot Island, Gombrani, and fly to their roosts in the north, where the sea breaks on the coral reefs.

Why do they do that? What secret command guides them every evening along their way over the lagoon? At the same time as I'm waiting for the seabirds I'm also waiting for Ouma, I'm waiting to see her walking in the riverbed, slender and dark, carrying the octopuses on the end of her harpoon or a necklace of fish.

Sometimes she comes, sticks her harpoon in the sand near the dunes, as if it were the signal for me to join her. When I tell her I found the Corsair's second cache and that it was empty, Ouma bursts out laughing, ‘So there's no more gold, there's nothing at all here!' It irritates me at first, but her laughter is contagious and I'm soon laughing with her. She's right.

When we discovered that the wells were empty, we must have looked pretty comical! Ouma and I run through the reeds out to the dunes and swarms of silver birds fly up in front of us, twittering. We hurriedly take off our clothes and dive together into the transparent water of the lagoon, so mild that we hardly feel it when our bodies enter the other element. We glide along underwater near the coral for a long time without coming up for breath. Ouma isn't even trying to catch fish. She's just having fun chasing them underwater, flushing out the red groupers from their dark crannies. Since we learned that the treasure caches are empty, we've never been so happy! One evening, as we're watching the stars appearing above the mountains, she says, ‘Why are you looking for gold here?'

I want to tell her about our house in Boucan, about our infinite garden, about everything we lost, because that is what I'm looking for. But I don't know how to tell her and she adds in a whisper, as if talking to herself, ‘Gold is worthless, one mustn't be afraid of it, it's like scorpions, they only sting those who are afraid.'