The Prospector (37 page)

In Port Mathurin people are beginning to wonder. One day when I go in to withdraw some money, the director of Barclay's says, ‘Well there? You don't come into town very often any more, do you? Does that mean you've lost all hope of finding your treasure?'

I look at him, smiling and answer firmly, ‘On the contrary, sir. It means I've found it.'

I went out without waiting for any further questions.

In fact, I go down to the sea wall every day, hoping to see the
Zeta
. It's been months since it came into Rodrigues. The transporting of goods and passengers is now provided by the
Frigate
, a steamer from the all-powerful British India Steamship of which Uncle Ludovic is the representative in Port Louis. That's the boat that brings the mail, the letters Laure has been sending me for several weeks in which she talks of Mam's illness. Laure's last letter, dated 2 April 1921, is even more pressing. I keep the envelope in my hand, not daring to open it. I wait under the awning of the landing stage, surrounded by the agitation of sailors and dockers, looking at the clouds gathering over the sea. There's talk of a storm coming, the barometer is falling by the hour. Around one o'clock in the afternoon, when things have calmed down again, I finally open Laure's letter, in reading the first words, I'm grief-stricken:

My dear Ali, when this letter reaches you, if it ever reaches you, I don't know whether Mam will still be alive…

My eyes grow blurry. I know that this is the end of everything now. Nothing can keep me here, since Mam is so ill. The
Frigate
will be here in a few days, I'll sail with it. I send a telegram to Laure to inform her of my return, but silence has crept into me, it accompanies me everywhere.

The storm starts blowing during the night and I'm awakened by a feeling of anxiety: at first it's a slow, persistent wind in the oppressively dark night. In the morning I see the torn shreds of clouds darting rapidly over the valley, the sun casting quick flashes between them. In the shelter of my hut I hear the roaring of the sea on the coral reefs, a terrifying, almost animal sound, and I realize a hurricane is sweeping down upon the island. I don't have a second to lose. I take my duffel bag and, leaving my other belongings in the hut, climb up the hill to Venus Point. The only place to seek refuge from the hurricane is in the telegraph buildings.

When I come up in front of the large grey hangars, I see the neighbouring inhabitants that have gathered there: men, women, children, even dogs and pigs that the people have brought with them. An Indian employee of the telegraph company announces that the barometer is already below 30. Around noon the howling wind reaches Venus Point. The buildings begin to shake, the electric lights go out. Torrential rains come pelting down on the sheet metal of the walls and roof like a waterfall. Someone has lit a storm lamp that lights up the faces grotesquely.

The hurricane lasts all day long. In the evening we fall asleep, exhausted, on the floor of the hangar, listening to the howling wind and the creaking metal framework of the buildings.

At dawn the silence awakens me. Outside the wind has died down, but we can hear it roaring out on the reefs. The people are gathered on the headland in front of the main telegraph building. When I draw near I see what they are looking at: on the coral reef in front of Venus Point is a shipwrecked vessel. At less than a mile from shore, we can clearly make out the broken masts, the gouged-out hull. Only half of the ship is left, the upright stern, and the furious waves are breaking on the wreck, tossing up clouds of foam. The name of the ship is on everyone's lips, but at the very moment I hear it I've already recognized it: it's the
Zeta
. On the stern I can see the old armchair screwed down to the deck where Captain Bradmer used to sit. But where is the crew? No one knows anything. The shipwreck took place during the night.

I run down to the shore, walk along the devastated coast strewn with branches and stones. I hope to find a pirogue, someone who can help me, but in vain. There's no one on the shore.

Maybe in Port Mathurin, the lifeboat? But I'm just too anxious, I can't wait. I take off my clothing, enter the water, slipping on the rocks, slapped by the waves. The sea is raging, washing over the coral reef, the water is troubled like that of a flooding river. I swim against the current that is so strong I make no headway. The roaring of the breaking waves is directly in front of me, I can see curtains of foam thrown up into the dark sky. The wreck is barely a hundred yards away, the sharp teeth of the reefs have cut it in two where the masts rose from the deck. The sea is covering the deck, swirling around the empty armchair. I can't get any closer without running the danger of being crushed against the reefs myself. I want to shout, call ‘Bradmer…!' But my voice is drowned out by the thundering of the waves and even I can't hear it! For a long moment I swim against the sea, which is sweeping over the reef. The wreck is lifeless, it looks like it ran aground here centuries ago. Shivers are running through my body, cutting short my breath. I have to give up, turn back. Slowly I allow myself to be carried along on the waves with the debris from the storm. When I reach shore I am so weary and desperate I can't even feel that my knee has been injured from having knocked against a rock.

In the beginning of the afternoon the wind stops completely. The sun shines down on the ravaged land and sea. It's all over. Staggering, on the verge of fainting, I walk towards English Bay. Near the telegraph buildings, everyone is outside, laughing, talking loudly: having escaped unscathed with nothing but a good fright.

When I am just above English Bay I see the ruined landscape. The Roseaux River is a dark torrent of mud crashing loudly down into the valley. My hut has disappeared, the trees and screw pines have been uprooted and nothing is left of the vegetables I planted. On the floor of the valley there is nothing but gullied-out land and blocks of basalt that have sprung up from the earth. Everything I left in my cabin has vanished: my clothes, my cooking pots, but especially my theodolite and most of the documents concerning the treasure.

Day is rapidly waning in this apocalyptical setting. Once again I'm walking around in the back of English Bay in quest of some object, some trace that might have escaped the hurricane. I look everywhere, but everything has already completely changed, become unrecognizable. Where is the pile of stones that mirrored the Southern Triangle? And these basalt rocks near the slope, are they the ones that first led me to the mooring rings? The dying day is the colour of copper, the colour of molten metal. This will be the first time that the seabirds will not fly across the bay to go back to their roosts. Where have they gone? How many of them survived the hurricane? This will also be the first time the rats have come down into the valley bottom, driven from their nests by the mudslides. They are bounding about me in the dusk light letting out sharp little alarming cries.

In the middle of the valley, near the river that has broken its banks, I find the tall slab of basalt upon which, before leaving for the war, I engraved the east-west line and the two inverted triangles of the mooring rings that form the star of Solomon. The slab has resisted the wind and the rain, it's simply sunken a little deeper into the ground, and standing in the middle of this ravaged landscape it looks like a monument from the origins of the human race. Who will find it one day and understand what it signifies? The valley of English Bay has clapped its secret shut, closed the doors that had opened momentarily for me alone. On the cliff to the east, lit by the beams of the setting sun, the entrance to the ravine draws me over one last time. But when I get closer I see that, with the heavy water runoff, part of the cliff has collapsed, barring access to the corridor. The torrent of mud that poured out of the ravine devastated everything in its path, uprooting the old tamarind tree, whose soothing shade I so loved. In a year there will be nothing left of its trunk, only a mound of earth topped with a few thorn bushes.

I stay up there for a long time, until nightfall, listening to the sounds of the valley. The river rushing down, hauling earth and trees along with it, the water trickling from the schist cliffs and, far away, the constant thundering of the sea.

I spend the two days I have left gazing out over the valley. Every morning I leave the narrow room in the Chinese hotel early and go up to the Commander's Watchtower. But I don't go down into the valley any more. I just sit in amid the underbrush, near the ruins of the tower, and contemplate the long red-and-black valley, where all traces of me have already disappeared. Out at sea, hanging on the coral reef, the unearthly stern of the
Zeta
remains motionless amid the crashing waves. I think of Captain Bradmer, whose body hasn't been found. They say he was alone aboard his ship and did not try to save himself.

It's the last image I'm taking away with me from Rodrigues, as I stand on the deck of the new
Frigate
heading out to sea with all of its iron plating vibrating in time to its straining engines. The
Zeta
stands facing the tall, barren mountains shimmering in the morning sun, as if it were balancing for all time on the brink of the deep water. A few seabirds are circling over it, exactly as if it were the carcass of a whale washed up by the storm.

Since my return, everything at Forest Side has grown to be unfamiliar, silent. The old house – the shack, as Laure calls it – is like a ship taking on water everywhere, patched up as best as possible with bits of sheet metal and tarpaper. The humidity and the karyas will soon get the better of it. Mam doesn't speak, doesn't move, hardly even eats any more. I admire Laure's perseverance, she stays at Mam's side night and day. I haven't got the strength. So I walk out along the paths through the cane fields, over by Quinze Cantons, over where you can see the peaks of Trois Mamelles and what the sky looks like on the other side.

I have to work and, following Laure's advice, I've mustered up the courage to apply for a job at W. W. West again, which is now managed by my cousin Ferdinand. Uncle Ludovic has grown old, he's withdrawn from the business and lives in the house he had built near Yemen, where our lands once commenced. Ferdinand welcomes me with scornful derision, which would have made me angry in the past. Now it just doesn't faze me.

When he says, ‘So you've come back to your old…'

I suggest, ‘Haunts?'

And even when he speaks of ‘war heroes the likes of which we see every day', I don't bat an eye. In the end he offers me a job as foreman on their Médine plantation and I have to accept. Now I've become a sirdar!

I live in a cabin over by Bambous and every morning I ride around the plantation on horseback to oversee the work. I spend the afternoons in the racket of the sugar mill, supervising the arrival of the cane, the bagasse, the quality of the syrups. It's exhausting work, but I prefer it to the suffocating offices of W. W. West. The manager of the sugar mill is an Englishman by the name of Pilling, sent from the Seychelles by the Agricultural Company. In the beginning Ferdinand had tried to pit him against me. But he's a fair man and our relationship is excellent. He talks about Chamarel, where he hopes to go. If he's sent over there he promises to try to have me come along.

Yemen is lonely. Mornings, the field workers and women wearing gunny cloth move through the immense fields like a ragged army. The whooshing sound of the cane knives makes a slow, regular rhythm. At the edge of the fields, over by Walhalla, men are breaking ‘teeth' or heavy stones to make the pyramids. I ride across the plantation, heading southwards, listening to the sound of the cane knives and the yapping of the sirdars. I'm streaming with sweat. In Rodrigues the burn of the sun made my head reel, I saw sparks firing on the stones, on the screw pines. But here the heat just adds to the loneliness in the dark-green stretch of the cane fields.

I think about Mananava now, the only place left to me. It's been within me for so long, ever since the days when Denis and I would walk up to the entrance of the gorges. Suddenly, as I ride along the paths of the cane fields, I glance southwards and imagine caches at the source of rivers. I know that's where I must go in the end.

I saw Ouma today.

They've started cutting the virgin cane, high up in the plantations. The men and women have come from all parts of the coast, with anxious faces, because they know that only a third of them will be hired. The others will have to go back home with hungry bellies.

On the way to the sugar mill a woman in gunny cloth is standing to one side. She turns halfway towards me, looks at me. In spite of her face being half-hidden by the long white veil, I recognize her. But she's already disappeared in the crowd that is separating on the paths between the fields. I try to run over to her, but bump into field hands and women who've been turned away, and everything is covered with a cloud of dust. When I get to the fields all I can see is the thick, green wall undulating in the wind. The sun is burning down on the dry earth, burning down on my face. I start running along one of the paths, shouting, ‘Ouma! Ouma…!'

Scattered women in gunny cloth raise their heads, stop cutting the grass between the cane. A sirdar calls out to me in a harsh voice. Looking somewhat disoriented, I question him. Are there Manafs here? He doesn't understand. People from Rodrigues? He shakes his head. There are some, but they're in the refugee camps down by the Morne, at Ruisseau des Créoles.

I look for Ouma every day on the road that brings the gunnies and in the evening in front of the accountant's office at pay time. The women have already caught on, they make fun of me, call out to me, jeer at me. So now I don't venture out on the paths in the cane fields any more. I wait for night and cross the fields. I pass children gleaning. They aren't afraid of me, they know I won't turn them in. How old would Sri be now?