The Prospector (40 page)

And yet when night falls I sense something troubling. Ouma's handsome face, the colour of dark copper, has a blank expression, as if nothing around us is real. Several times she says in a soft voice, ‘One day, I'll go away…'

‘Where will you go?' But she says nothing more.

The seasons have passed, a winter, a summer. It's been such a long time since I've seen other people! I don't know what it was like before, at Forest Side, in Port Louis. Mananava is vast. The only person tying me to the outside world is Laure. When I talk about her, Ouma says, ‘I wish I knew her.' But she adds, ‘That's impossible.' I talk about her, I remember when she went begging for money from the rich people in Curepipe, in Floréal, for the indigent women, the wretched sugar-cane outcasts. I talk about the rags she collected in the wealthy houses to make shrouds for the old Indian women on the verge of death. Ouma says, ‘You should go back to live with her.' Her voice is clear and it hurts and troubles me.

Tonight is cold and pure, a winter night like those in Rodrigues when we would lie in the sand of English Bay, looking up at the sky being peopled with stars.

Everything is silent, stopped, time on Earth is the same as that of the universe. Lying on the screw-pine mat, curled up with Ouma in the army blanket, I look up at the stars: Orion to the west and, close up against Argo's sail, the Larger Dog, where Sirius – the night sun – shines. I love talking about the stars (and I never miss the chance to), I say their names out loud, as I used to when I would recite them for my father, walking down the Alley of Stars.

‘Arcturus, Denebola, Bellatrix, Betelgeuse, Acomar Antares, Shaula, Andromeda, Fomalhaut…'

All of a sudden, above us in the vaulted heavens, a sprinkle of stars falls. On all sides trails of light streak through the night, then blink out, some very brief, others so lengthy they leave their marks on our retinas. We have sat up to see them better, heads thrown back, spellbound. I can feel Ouma's body trembling against mine. I try to warm her, but she pushes me away. Touching her face, I realize she's crying. Then she runs towards the forest, hides under the trees, so as not to see the fiery trails that are filling the sky. When I join her, she speaks in a hoarse voice, filled with anger and weariness. She speaks of tragedy and of war that must return, once again, of her mother's death, of the Manafs, who are always driven away from everywhere, who must now go away again. I try to calm her, I want to tell her, but they're only aerolites! But I can't tell her that, and for that matter, are they really aerolites?

Through the foliage I see the shooting stars slipping silently across the icy sky, dragging other stars, other suns, along in their wake. Perhaps war will return, the sky will once again be lit with the flash of bombs and fires.

We stand there for a long time, holding tightly to one another under the trees, sheltered from the signs of fate. Then the sky grows still and the stars begin to shine again. Ouma doesn't want to go back to the rocks. I wrap her in the blanket and fall asleep, sitting at her side, like a useless watchman.

Ouma's gone. Under the canopy of branches where the evening dew is pearling, all that is left is the screw-pine mat where the mark of her body is already fading. I want to believe she'll come back and, to avoid thinking about it, I go down to the stream to wash sand in my pan. Mosquitoes dance all around me. The mynahs flit about, calling to one another with their mocking cries. At times, in the thick of the forest, I think I see the silhouette of the young woman leaping through the bushes. But it's only a monkey that flees when I approach.

I wait for her every day, near the source where we used to bathe and pick red guavas. I wait for her, playing a grass harp, for that is how we agreed to communicate. I remember the afternoons when I used to wait for Denis and I would hear the signal squeaking deep in the tall grass, a strange insect repeating: veenee, veenee, veenee…

But out here no one answers. Night falls, blanketing the valley. Only the mountains that surround me – Brise-Fer, Machabé – remain floating above it. And off in the distance, looking out over the metallic sea, the Morne. The wind is blowing in on the tide. I remember what Cook used to say when the wind would echo through the gorges. He'd say, ‘Listen! It's Sacalavou moaning, because the white men pushed him off the top of the mountain! It's the voice of the great Sacalavou!' I listen to the complaint as I watch the light fading. Behind me the red rock of the cliffs is still burning hot, and down below stretches the valley steeped in its mists. I feel as if, any minute now, I'll hear Ouma's footsteps in the forest, I'll smell the odour of her body.

The English soldiers are surrounding the refugee camp in Black River. Rolls of barbed wire have been around the camp for several days to prevent anyone from going in or out. Those who are in the camp, Rodriguans, Comorians, people from Diego-Suarez, from Agalega, Indian or Pakistani coolies, are waiting to be screened. Those whose papers are not in order must go back to their homes on their islands. An English soldier breaks the news to me when I try to go into the camp in search of Ouma. Behind him, in the dust between the shacks, I see children playing in the sun. It is poverty that sets the cane fields afire, makes anger flame, makes your head reel.

I wait for a long time in front of the camp, in the hope of seeing Ouma. In the evening I don't want to go back to Mananava. I sleep in the ruins of our old property in Boucan, in the shelter of the chalta tree of good and evil. I listen to the toads singing in the ravine before falling asleep and I feel the sea breeze rise along with the moon and the waves running all the way into the grassy fields.

At dawn some men come with a sirdar and I hide under my tree in case they've come for me. But they're not looking for me. They're carrying
machabées
, those heavy, cast-iron pliers that are used for digging up tree stumps and large rocks. They've also got picks and mattocks, axes. With them is a group of women in gunny cloth, balancing their hoes on their heads. Two men on horseback accompany them, two white men, I know that from the way they give orders. One of them is my cousin Ferdinand, the other is an Englishman I don't know, a field manager probably. From my hiding place under the tree I can't hear what they're saying, but it's easy to understand. The last acres of our land are going to be cleared for sugar cane. I look on with indifference. I remember the despair all of us felt when we'd been driven out and were riding slowly away in the carriage loaded with furniture and trunks through the dust on the wide straight road. I remember the anger that rang in Laure's voice when she kept repeating, ‘I wish he were dead!' Meaning Uncle Ludovic – and already, Mam no longer protested. Now it's as if all of that were part of some other life. The two horsemen have left and from my hiding place – a bit muffled by the leaves of the trees – I can hear the sound of the pick hitting the earth, the
machabées
grating against the rocks, and the slow and sad song of the black men as they work.

When the sun reaches its zenith, I feel hungry, I walk over to the forest in search of guavas and coromandel. There's a pang in my heart when I think of Ouma in the prison of the camp where she's chosen to join her brother. From up on the hill I can see the trails of smoke coming from the camp in Black River.

Near evening I notice the dust on the road – the long convoy of trucks heading for Port Louis. I reach the road just as the last trucks are passing. Under tarpaulins, half-opened due to the heat, I glimpse dark, weary, dust-streaked faces. I realize they're being taken away, Ouma is being taken away, to some other place, anyplace, somewhere to be loaded into the holds of ships headed for their homelands, so they won't ask for water, for rice, for work any more, so they won't burn the white men's fields any more. I run down the road for a moment in the dust that is covering everything, then stop, breathless, with a burning pain in my side. The people, the children all around are staring at me in incomprehension.

I roam around on the shore for a long time. Above me stands the Tourelle with its ragged rock like a watchtower before the sea. Climbing up through the brush to the Etoile, I'm in the very same spot I was when, thirty years ago, I saw the great hurricane that destroyed our house coming. Behind me is the horizon from where the clouds, the plumes of smoke, the sweeping trails filled with lightning flashes and rain came. Today I believe I can truly hear the howling of the wind, the rumbling of the catastrophe that is brewing.

How did I reach Port Louis? I walked in the sun until I was utterly exhausted, following the tracks of the military trucks. I ate whatever I found on the wayside, pieces of sugar cane that had fallen from carts, a little rice, a bowl of kir porridge in an Indian woman's hut. I avoided the villages for fear of the children mocking me or because I was afraid the police were still looking for the people who started the fires. I drank water from ponds, slept in the brush on the edge of the road or hidden in the dunes at Sables Point. At night, as if I were still with Ouma, I bathed in the sea to cool my feverish body. I swam in the waves, very slowly, and it was just like sleeping. Then I sprinkled my body with sand and waited for it to run off in little trickles with the wind.

When I come out upon the harbour I see the ship with the people from Rodrigues, the Comoros, from Agalega already on board. It's a large, new ship that belongs to Abdool Rassool, the
Union La Digue
. It's far out in the water and no one can go near it. The English soldiers are guarding the customs buildings and the warehouses. I spend the night waiting under the trees of the Intendance, along with the tramps and drunken sailors. The grey light of morning awakens me. There isn't a soul on the wharves. The soldiers have gone back to Fort George in their trucks. The sun rises slowly, but the wharves remain deserted, as if it were a holiday. Then the
Union La Digue
lifts its anchors and, puffing smoke, starts to slip over the calm sea with the seabirds flying around its masts. First it heads westwards until it becomes a tiny speck, then it veers and slips over to the other side of the horizon, to the north.

Once again I'm going back to Mananava, the most mysterious place in the world. I remember I used to think it was where night was born and that it later flowed down along the rivers to the sea.

I'm walking slowly through the damp forest, following the streams. I can feel Ouma's presence all around me, in the shade of the ebony trees, I can smell the odour of her body mingling with the fragrance of the leaves, I can hear the pad of her feet in the wind.

I stay close to the sources. I listen to the sound of the water trickling over the pebbles. The wind is making the crowns of the trees glitter. Through the gaps between the leaves I can see the dazzling sky, the clear light. What can I expect from this place? Mananava is a place of death and that's why people never come here. It's the domain of Sacalavou and the black maroons, who are nothing but phantoms now.

Hastily, I gather the few objects that make up the traces of me in this world, my khaki blanket, my duffel bag and my prospecting tools, pan, sieve, phial of royal water. Carefully, as Ouma taught me to do, I erase my tracks, the marks left by my fires, I bury my waste.

The landscape is luminous in the west. Far away, on the other side of Mont Terre Rouge, I can see the dark notch of Boucan Embayment, where the land has been cleared and burned. I think of the path that leads through the
chassés
up to the top of Trois Mamelles, I think of the dirt road that runs through the cane fields to Quinze Cantons. Laure is waiting for me, maybe, or else she's not waiting for me. When I get there she'll pick up some ironic or comical sentence, as if it were only yesterday that we'd parted, as if time doesn't exist for her.

I reach the Black River estuary at the end of the day. The water is dark and smooth, there isn't a breath of wind. On the horizon a few pirogues are slipping along, their triangular sails fixed to the tillers, in search of a wind current. The seabirds are beginning to come up from the south, down from the north, they pass each other, skimming over the water, letting out worried cries. I take the papers I still have concerning the treasure out of my bag, maps, sketches, notebooks I'd written here and in Rodrigues, and burn them on the beach. The wave that washes up on the sand sweeps away the ashes. Now I know that this is what the Corsair did after having taken his treasure out of the caches in the ravine in English Bay. He destroyed everything, threw everything into the sea.

So one day, after having lived through so much killing and so much glory, he retraced his steps and undid what he'd created, in order to be free at last.

I walk along the black beach in the direction of the Tourelle, I have nothing left.

Before reaching the Tourelle I settle in for the night up on the Etoile. To the right is the Boucan Embayment, already in shadow, and a little farther away, the smoking chimney of Yemen. Have the labourers finished clearing the land where our property used to be? Maybe they've taken their axes and cut down the tall chalta tree, our tree of good and evil. If so, there must be nothing left of us on this Earth, not a single thing to refer to.

I think of Mam. It seems as if she must still be sleeping somewhere, alone in her big brass bed, under the cloud of the mosquito net. I want to talk with her about the things that never end, about our house and its azure roof, so fragile, as transparent as a mirage, and the bird-filled garden where the night is creeping in, the ravine, and even the tree of good and evil at the gates of Mananava.

Here I am again in the very place where I saw the great hurricane coming when I was eight years old, when we were driven away from our home and cast out into the world like a second birth. Up on the Etoile I can feel the sound of the sea swelling within me. I'd like to talk with Laure about Nada the Lily, whom I found in lieu of the treasure and who has now gone back to her island. I'd like to talk with her about travels and see her eyes light up as they used to back when we would glimpse, from atop a pyramid, the vast stretch of the sea where one is free.