Urien's Voyage (5 page)

It was still twilight, but there were no longer any sounds. We passed beyond the terraces and found ourselves behind the town; long walls fronted on a small strip of sand onto which gutters spilled their offensive smells. We hastened because of the approaching sea and night, but we thought we might be able to return by another route if the tide should block this one. After the walls came low banks of clay; the space that separated them from the water became narrower and narrower, and the waves finally soaked their base. We stopped, uncertain, to determine what the sea was doing. But the tide was not yet rising; stepping on rocks that jutted out of the water, we continued our search. A promontory came into view; we thought we could see a beach in the distance. Our feet slid over soft plants; gray, crepuscular water, barely distinguishable, splashed feebly between the rocks; uneasiness gripped us, so indeterminate was this water…And suddenly the bank came to an end; fear surged through our hearts, for we sensed the ship was there. The night was allembracing. Noiselessly we moved onward a few steps and then, leaning against the last rock, we looked.

The moon was rising over an immense strand; the blue sands shifted, undulated. On the water floated a whole fleet, formidable, vaporous, strange; we dared not proceed. Mysterious shapes passed by; everything seemed to us so fanciful, so uncertain that we fled, gripped by piteous fear; we were guided and bewildered by the moon that rose above the strand and cast our distorted shadows on the rocks and water in front of us.

Our deliverance came about in a most tragic manner. Appearing and spreading throughout the town, but mildly at first, was the horrible and lamentable plague that later ravaged the island, leaving it as forlorn as an immense desert. It was already interfering with the festivities.

… In the morning the fresh juices that we drank on the terraces, the fruits, and the glasses of cold water after walks in the sunshine; and in the evening, worn out by the excitement of the long day, iced lemonade under the trees in the perfumed gardens that led down to the sea; everything—excessively warm baths and idle musings in the presence of the insidious garments of the women—would soon have induced languor, the first symptom of the plague, if the fear of excessive suffering had not prejudiced us against so many pleasures. We resisted smiles, nocturnal entreaties, the desire for satisfying fruits, shadows in the gardens, music; we even stopped singing for fear of growing faint; but in the morning before sunrise we would walk down the beach, immerse our naked bodies in the wholesome water, and draw new strength and comfort from the sea and the air.

Filth deposited in hidden sewers and wash-houses by slovenly townspeople sent up a pestilential exhalation in the evening; and these paludal vapors carried deadly germs. The sailors and the women felt them in their flesh; it was a nascent uneasiness; they used balms to rinse out their mouths and the heavy scent of aromatic oils blended with their hot breath.

That evening even their dances were subdued. Never had the winds been milder; the waves sang and each soul was enchanted by its body. All of their bodies, as beautiful as marble statues, glistened in the shadows; they sought out each other for embraces, but their desire was not sated; their fever was intensified by their embraces; each added the other's ardor to his own. Their kisses were bites; wherever their hands touched, they bled.

All night long they depleted themselves through their false embraces, but morning bathed them in a new dawn; then they went toward the fountains to cleanse their tainted tunics. There, new festivities began; light-headed, they laughed from weariness, and their bursts of laughter echoed through their empty heads. The water from the bath-house had been defiled. They rammed their big poles deep into the slime; clouds of mud arose; bubbles arose and burst; leaning over the edges, they breathed in the pestilential smells, but without alarm; they laughed because they were already sick. They again put on their damp tunics and, chilled, drew comfort from the illusion that their bodies had been revitalized. But in the evening their fever underwent a radical change; they ceased laughing; they were overcome by torpor, and each of them flung himself on the grass-covered lawn and thought only of himself.…

On the island were flowers whose bruised corollas discharged a scent like that from a glacial mint. From these plants that grew in the sands they gathered flowering branches, and the petals which they masticated all day long were delightfully refreshing to their dry eyes when placed on their hot eyelids. A soothing sensation permeated their cheeks, penetrated their brains and prompted torpid dreams. They dozed like fakirs. As soon as they ceased their chewing, soothing changed to burning, as happens in the case of sweet-smelling spices or herbs with a peppery flavor. Thirsty, they drank from metal goblets water tinged with tart gooseberry juice. They stopped chewing only to drink.

When their tunics parted and exposed their chests, under their arms, near their breasts, could be seen a purplish bruised spot where the malady had its seat; sometimes their bodies were completely covered with violet drops of sweat. All twelve of us remained silent, too solemn even to cry, and watched our companions die.

Oh! the terrible part was the arrival of the men; they all came down from the plateaus hoping to find women emboldened by desire whom they could infect with the sickness. They came running, hideous, livid; but when they saw that the women were so pale and understood why, they were terrified and ran through the town shouting. Some women still desired them; and as the certainty of death restored in them a sinister boldness, the men and women embraced furiously. They sucked in all the joy they could with a thirst, a mania, a sort of frenzy that struck us dumb with terror; it seemed that they were trying in this way to eliminate the time of remorse. And other women sobbed because they had arrived too late.
*

A light wind arose, forced the heavy smoke from the volcanoes back toward the town, and drenched them with gray ashes. Exhausted, they had parted to vomit. Now they were rolling confusedly on the grass, and their entrails were making hideous attempts to come out. So they died, crumpled, twisted, hideous, already decomposed; and silence fell upon the town.

Then clouds appeared; a cold rain toward morning finished glazing their souls and covered them with a muddy shroud formed by water and the ashes.

And we thought of great sails, of departure; but having hoped in vain for so long and under such monotonous circumstances, now that nothing prevented us from departing, we felt so tired, so upset, so concerned over the solemnity of our tasks, so exhausted by everything, that for twelve more days we remained on the big island, sitting on the beach and facing the sea, speechless, pensive, aware of the uncertainty and superfluity of our whims.

And what really made us depart was the unbearable stench of the corpses.

*
From his Journals we learn that Gide had periods of happy productivity but seemed during periods of demoralization to draw comfort from the recording of sad events.

SARGASSO SEA

Sargasso Sea; tearful dawn and cheerless flashed on the gray water. Certainly, if I had been able to choose, I would not have rowed toward those latitudes. Boredom! Why say it? One who has not known it will not understand it: one who has known it asks not to be reminded of it. Boredom! Dismal contemplations of the soul, when forbidden splendors and illuminations depart, you claim us. Scintillations have ceased, temptations flee; nothing concerns us now, except ourselves, our disenchanted dawns.

The ashes of twilight fall on faded suns, and the mists of boredom on great surgings of desire.

Psychology! Psychology! Science of the soul and all its vanity, which the soul attributes to you! Ashen fruits which we might have consumed; desires that might have stained our gums. Oh, temptations which we once deplored and dreaded. Desires! At least when we resisted you, our souls were not idle; we did not yield; we hoped that temptations would go away, and now that they have, boredom spreads endlessly across the gray sea!

Gelatinous fucuses uncoil on the thick sea. Infinitely long strands of algae float on the surface and stretch sinuously toward the horizon; we thought at first on seeing them at dawn that they were reptiles but they were not; there was nothing in the distance except these long, docile algae.

We looked at the compass, and our waning faith allowed our bleak knowledge to increase. On charting our latitude, we saw that we had reached that point which sailors call “The Trap” because the oleaginous sea is so calm.

The sea in spots was a mass of algae, and soon we were sailing between two long lines of sargassum; far apart and loose at first, they began to coagulate; gradually they drew together, and in the ever narrowing channel of free water that separated them, the
Orion
became a felucca. Soon the long spirals of fucuses gave way to thick tangles of soft leaves and a viscous, vegetable substance, barely penetrable, soon seemed to swell and rose slightly above the water in shallow places, where it formed low, slimy mountains. The channel undulated between their curves.

On the third day appeared the first fluvial plants; the felucca was moving slowly up a placid tributary.

On the fourth day smoke-colored herons hunted for worms in the mud on the shores; behind them lay a level sward. At night clouds caught in the pale light of the dying day were reflected in the river which, because of the shadows that obscured its banks, seemed to flow in a straight line; the oars became tangled in the reeds alongside the felucca as it went around the bends.

On the seventh day we met my dear Ellis who was waiting for us under an apple tree on the sward. She had been there for fourteen days, having arrived by land sooner than we; she wore a polka dot dress and carried a cherry-colored parasol; beside her was a vanity case containing toilet articles and a few books; on her arm was a Scottish shawl; she was eating an escarole salad and reading
Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysic.
*
We had her climb into the boat.

Our reunion was rather dull, and since we were accustomed to discussing only what we both knew about and had followed different routes, we found nothing to say. For three days we watched the steep banks in silence; then the new terrains that we had passed through provided us with another opportunity to exchange comments.

The sky was pale, the countryside discolored. Along the glaucous banks lined with green plants and ashes were placid storks which had returned from their quests. Ellis thought that their feet were disproportionate; that is how I found out about her disturbing superficiality; but I said nothing to her about her cherry-colored umbrella in the tearful setting, reserving the question of imperfections for subsequent conversations.

The uninspiring, verdigris-encrusted banks between which we were still rowing, so flat, so calm, so confining, so consistently the same, offered nothing to tempt us to stop our monotonous escapade at one point rather than another. The sole episode in our rash adventure was the boat on the calm stream, imprisoned between the banks, and since it kept moving along with us, we remained in it simply because we did not know where to disembark. And when one evening we finally did set foot on an indifferent bank, it was rather because of the hour, because of the approach of twilight.

A tattered mist hovered over the bleak water and clung to the reeds along the banks. We decided to spend the night on the sward; Ellis had to stay in the boat; she wrapped herself in her shawl because of the humidity, placed her vanity case under her head, and fell asleep among the reeds bruised by the anchored boat.

After a dreamless night came a cheerless awakening; there was no red in the sky, which was brightened only in the morning by a sad and chilling dawn. The light was so faint that we were still expecting the dawn when we glimpsed the sun, which had already risen, behind a cloud. We rejoined Ellis; she was sitting in the felucca, reading the
Theodicy.
Irritated I took the book from her; the others remained silent; there was a painful moment of consternation; and since our course was unsure and our destinies were no longer linked by a common goal, our wills diverged and each of us made his own way inland.

I did not have the heart to go far; only toward a little grove of beech trees. But I did not even reach the grove and threw myself instead into the shadow of the first shub; since I was no longer in view of the others, and since I felt my strength ebbing away and the past returning, I put my head in my hands and cried wretchedly.

Evening fell on the pimpernel-spotted prairie; then I said a little prayer, stood up and returned to the abandoned boat.

Ellis in the boat was reading the
Treatise on Contingency;
exasperated, I wrenched the book from her hands, threw it into the river.

“Don't you know, wretched Ellis,” I shouted, “that books are temptation? And our goal was glorious actions.…”

“Glorious?” said Ellis, looking at the uninspiring plain.

“Oh! I know that it doesn't seem that way; I know everything that you can say. Silence! Silence!” On the verge of tears, I hid my face from her and stared at the water in the stream.

My companions returned one by one, and when all of us had reassembled in the boat, each felt so acutely the desire of all that no one dared ask whether the others had seen nothing; instead, propriety caused each to make a vain statement to disguise the inanity of his vision:

“I saw, I saw,” said Aguisel, “rows of dwarf birches on a clay knoll.”

“As for me,” said Eric, “on a sandy plain I saw grasshoppers feeding on bitter grass.”

“And you, Urien?” said Axel.

“A pimpernel-spotted field.”

“Morgain?”

“Forests of blue pines near the seashore.”

“Ydier?”

“Some abandoned quarries…”

And since the hour was late and we had lost interest in the discussion, we fell asleep.

The next day I awoke late; all the others had already risen, and I saw them sitting on the shore. They were all reading. Ellis had passed out some brochures on ethics. I grabbed her vanity case; in it were three memorandum-books,
The Life of Franklin,
a little treatise on temperate climates, and Desjardins'
Present Duty.
Even as I searched the vanity case, I was preparing an apostrophe; when everything was ready, I threw down the case. It sank in the river. Two huge tears ran down Ellis' cheeks. Not because I was moved but because I sensed our common misery, my irritation suddenly vanished and censure gave way to compassion.