The Prospector (16 page)

He says, ‘Are you familiar with the Queen of the Islands?' He asks me the question in English and I repeat, ‘The Queen of the Islands?' ‘Yes, sir, Agalega. That's what it's called, because it's the most salubrious and most fertile island in the Indian Ocean.' I think he's going to pursue this, but he falls silent. He simply settles back in his armchair and repeats, ‘the Queen of the Islands…' with a dreamy look in his eye. The helmsman shrugs his shoulders. He says, ‘It should rather be called the Island of Rats.' Then he begins telling us about how the English declared war on the rats, because of the epidemic that was spreading from island to island. ‘There was a time when there were no rats on Agalega. It too was like a little paradise, like Saint Brandon, because rats are animals of the Devil, there weren't any in paradise. And one day a boat from Grand Terre came to the island, no one can recall its name, an old boat that no one had ever seen. It sank in front of the island and the crates of cargo were salvaged, but there were rats in the crates. When the crates were opened they spread out over the island, they reproduced and became so numerous that they appropriated everything. They ate all of Agalega's provisions, the corn, the eggs, the rice. There were so many of them that people couldn't sleep any more. The rats even gnawed at the coconuts in the trees, they even ate the seabirds' eggs. So first they tried cats, but the rats grouped together and killed the cats and ate them, of course. So they tried traps, but rats are crafty, they avoided the traps. So then the English had an idea, they had boatloads of dogs shipped in – fox terriers, that's what they're called – and they promised to give a rupee for each rat. The children climbed up the coconut trees and shook the palm leaves to make the rats fall down and the fox terriers killed them. I was told that the people of Agalega killed more than forty thousand rats every year and there are still rats there! Most of them are in the north of the island. Rats are very fond of Agalega coconuts, they spend their lives up in the trees. There you have it, that's why your Queen of the Islands, should rather be called the Island of Rats.'

Captain Bradmer laughs loudly. This might be the first time the helmsman has told that story. Then Bradmer starts smoking again in his clerk's armchair, eyes squinted against the noon sun. When the black helmsman goes to stretch out on his mattress in the hold, Bradmer motions towards the helm.

‘Try your hand at it, Mister?'

He says ‘Missa', after the Creole fashion. He doesn't need to repeat the question. Now I've got a tight grip on the worn handles of the large wheel. I can feel the heavy waves against the rudder, the wind pressing against the large sails. It's the first time I've navigated a ship.

At one point a strong gust makes the ship heel, sails filled out tight enough to split, and I listen to the hull cracking under the pressure as the horizon tips up in front of the bowsprit. The vessel remains like that for a long time, balancing on the crest of the wave and I can't breathe. Then all of a sudden, I instinctively turn the wheel to port, yielding to the wind. Slowly the ship rights itself in a cloud of spray.

The sailors on deck shout, ‘Whoa!'

But Captain Bradmer remains seated without saying a word, squint-eyed, the eternal green cigarette at the corner of his mouth. That man would be capable of going down with his ship without even leaving his armchair.

Now I'm on my guard. I'm watching the wind and the waves and when both seem to be exerting too much pressure I ease up a little by turning the helm. I don't believe I've ever felt so strong, so free. Standing on the blistering deck, toes splayed to better keep my balance, I can feel the powerful movement of the water over the hull, on the rudder. I can feel the vibrations of the waves hitting the bow, the wind gusting in the sails. I've never experienced anything like this. It eclipses everything else, the land, time, I'm in the absolute future that is all around me. The future is the sea, the wind, the sky, the light.

For a long time, perhaps for hours, I remain standing in front of the wheel, with winds and sea spray whirling around me. The sun is burning my back, my neck, is reaching down along the left side of my body. It's almost touching the horizon already, it's casting its fiery dust over the sea. I'm so in tune with the gliding of the ship that I anticipate every pause in the wind, the trough of every wave.

The helmsman is beside me. He too is looking out to sea, not saying anything. I realize he wants to go back to the wheel. I savour the pleasure a little longer, just to feel the vessel slip along the curve of a wave, hesitate, then move on, pushed by the wind filling its sails. When we are in the trough of the wave I take a step to one side, without letting go of the wheel, and the helmsman's dark hand closes over the handle, gripping it forcefully. When he's not at the helm that man is even more taciturn than the captain. But no sooner have his hands touched the handles of the wheel than a strange change comes over him. It's as if he becomes another person, someone taller, stronger. His thin, sunburned face, as if it were sculpted in basalt, takes on a sharp, energetic expression. His green eyes shine out, become animated, and his entire face expresses a sort of well-being that I now understand.

So then he starts talking, in his chanting voice, launches out in an interminable monologue that is swept away in the wind. What is he talking about? I'm sitting on the deck now, to the left of the helmsman, while Captain Bradmer sits in his armchair, still smoking. The helmsman is talking neither to him nor to me. He's talking to himself, as others might sing or whistle.

He's talking about Saint Brandon again, where women are not allowed to go. He says, ‘One day a young girl wanted to go to Saint Brandon, a young black girl from Mahé, tall and pretty, I don't think she was any older than sixteen. Since she knew it was forbidden, she asked her fiancé – a young man who worked on a fishing boat – “Please take me!” At first he didn't want to, but she would say, “What are you afraid of? No one will find out, I'll go disguised as a boy. You'll say I'm your little brother and there you have it.” So he ended up accepting and she dressed up as a boy, put on a pair of worn trousers and a large shirt, she cut her hair and, because she was tall and thin, the other fishermen took her for a boy. So she left with them on the boat for Saint Brandon. Nothing happened during the whole journey, the wind was gentle as a breath and the sky was nice and blue and the boat reached Saint Brandon in a week. No one knew there was a woman on board, except for the fiancé, of course. But sometimes in the evenings he would whisper to her, saying, “If the captain learns of this, he'll get angry, he'll let me go.” She would answer, “How could he ever find out?”

‘So the boat entered the lagoon, the place that is like paradise, and the men began fishing the large tortoises that are so gentle they allow themselves to be caught without trying to flee. Up until then, still nothing happened, but when the fishermen landed on one of the islands to spend the night, the wind rose and the sea became furious. The waves came crashing over the coral reefs and rolled into the lagoon. Then there was a terrible storm all night long and the sea swelled over the rocks of the islands. The men left their cabins and sought refuge in the trees. Everyone prayed to the Virgin Mary and the saints to protect them and the captain bewailed the sight of his vessel beached on the shore, for the waves were going to batter it to pieces. Then one wave appeared that was taller than the others, it rushed towards the islands like a wild beast and when it arrived it ripped up a rock where the men had taken shelter. Then, suddenly, everything fell calm and the sun began to shine as if there had never been a storm. Then we heard someone weeping, saying, “Bhoo, bhoo, little brother!” It was the young boy who had seen the wave carry away his fiancée, but since he had disobeyed, bringing a woman on to the islands, he was afraid of being punished by the captain, and he was weeping, saying, “Bhoo, little brother!”'

When the helmsman finishes speaking, the light on the sea has taken on its golden colour, the sky is pale and blank down near the horizon. Night is already falling, another night. But twilight lasts a long time out at sea and I watch the daylight dwindling very slowly. Is this the same world I used to know? I feel as if I entered some other world when I crossed the horizon. It's a world that resembles that of my childhood, in Boucan, where the sound of the sea was all-pervasive, as if the
Zeta
were sailing backwards on the route that abolishes time.

As the daylight vanishes, little by little, I allow myself to slip into a daydream once again. I can feel the heat of the sun against my neck, on my shoulders. I can also feel the gentle evening wind that is swifter than our vessel. Everyone has fallen silent. Every evening it's like a mysterious ritual that we all observe. No one speaks. We listen to the sound of the waves breaking against the stem, the dull vibration of the sails and rigging. Like every evening the Comorian sailors kneel down on the deck in the front of the ship to say their prayer facing north. Their voices drift over to me in a muffled murmur, mingled with the wind and the sea. Never more than tonight have I so keenly felt – in the quick gliding and the slow rocking of the hull upon this limpid sea so like the sky – the beauty of that prayer, sent out to no particular place, lost in this immensity. I think how much I would like you to be here, Laure, at my side – you, who so love the muezzin's call to prayer that echoes in the hills of Forest Side – and for you to hear this prayer here, this susurration, while the vessel is swaying to and fro like a great seabird with dazzling wings. I would have liked to bring you with me like the fisherman of Saint Brandon, I too could have said you were my ‘little brother'!

I know Laure would have felt the same way I do listening to the Comorian sailors' prayer in the sunset. We wouldn't have needed to talk about it. But just as I'm thinking of her, just as I feel that ache in my heart, I realize that no – on the contrary, I'm actually drawing nearer to her now. Laure is in Boucan, back in the large garden thick with vines and flowers near the house, or else she's walking along the narrow path in the cane field. She never left the place she loved. At the end of my journey the sea is rolling into the black beach of Tamarin, into the backwaters at the mouth of the two rivers. I went away to be able to get back there. But I'll have changed when I return. I'll go back as a stranger and this old trunk containing the papers my father left behind will be filled with the Corsair's gold and jewels, the treasure of Golconda or Aurangzeb's ransom. I'll go back redolent with the odour of the sea, browned with the sun, strong and hardened like a soldier, to win back our lost property. That's what I'm dreaming about in the still twilight.

One after the other the sailors go down below to sleep in the heat radiating from the hull that has been baking in the sun all day long. I go down with them, stretch out on the planks, head resting on my trunk. I listen to the sounds of the interminable game of dice that has been taken back up where the break of day had interrupted it.

We've reached Agalega after a five-day journey.

The shoreline of the twin islands must have been visible very early this morning, at daybreak. I was sleeping heavily, down in the hold alone, my head rolling on the floor, oblivious to the agitation up on deck. I was awakened by the calm waters of the harbour, for I have grown so accustomed to the incessant rocking of the ship that the stillness disturbed me.

I go straight up on deck, barefoot, without going to the trouble of putting on my shirt. Before us the thin, grey-green strip, fringed with the foam of the reefs, is growing longer. To us, who for days have seen nothing but the vast blue expanse of the sea joining the blue immensity of the sky, that land, even so seemingly flat and desolate, is a source of wonderment. All the crew members are leaning over the rail up at the bow and watching the two islands avidly.

Captain Bradmer has given the order to douse and the ship remains adrift not far from the coast. When I ask the helmsman why, he simply answers, ‘We have to wait for the right time.' Captain Bradmer, standing next to his armchair, explains: we must wait for the ebb tide in order to avoid being pushed up against the coral reefs by the currents. When we get close enough to the pass, we'll be able to drop anchor and lower the pirogue and make our way to shore. The tide won't begin till late this afternoon when the sun is going down. In the meantime we'll have to be patient and content ourselves with looking at the coast that is so near yet so very difficult to reach.

The sailors' enthusiasm has died down. Now they're sitting on the deck, smoking and playing dice in the shade of the sail that is stirring gently in the wind. Though the coast is quite near, the water is a dark-blue colour. Leaning over the rail at the prow, I watch the green shadows of large sharks passing.

The seabirds come out along with the tide. Small and large gulls, petrels that circle above and deafen us with their cries. They are famished and, mistaking us for one of the fishing boats from the islands, demand their share with shrill cries. When they realize their error, the birds fly off and return to the shelter of the coral reef. Only two or three large gulls continue tracing large circles above us, then dive towards the sea and fly skimming along over the waves. After all of these days spent scrutinizing the barren sea, I'm delighted at the sight of the gulls in flight.

Towards the end of the afternoon Captain Bradmer rises from his armchair, gives orders to the helmsman, who repeats them, and the crew hoist the large sails. The helmsman is standing at the wheel on his tiptoes in order to see better. We're going to go through the pass. Slowly, pushed along on the lazy wind of the rising tide, the
Zeta
nears the reef. Now we can clearly see the long waves crashing against the coral reefs, there is a constant roar in our ears.