J.M. le Clézio - Desert

One day, just like that, after having eaten some bread and dates, Lalla followed the Hartani all the way to the foot of the red hills, over where the caves are. That’s where the shepherd sleeps in the dry season when the herd of goats needs to go farther out to find new grazing lands. In the red cliff, there are those black holes, half-hidden by thorn bushes. Some of those holes are hardly as large as a foxhole, but when you go inside, the cave opens out and becomes as large as a house, and so cool.

That’s how Lalla went in, on her belly, following the Hartani. At first she couldn’t see anything at all, and she got frightened. Suddenly, she started shouting, “Hartani! Hartani!”

The shepherd turned back, and took her by the arm and pulled her up into the cave. Then when she recovered her sight, Lalla saw the large room. The walls were so high you couldn’t see the tops of them, covered with gray and blue stains, patches of amber, of copper. The air was gray because of the dim light coming from the holes in the cliff. Lalla heard the sound of wings beating heavily, and she pressed close to the shepherd. But it was only the bats that had been disturbed in their sleep. They went to perch a little farther off, squeaking and screeching.

The Hartani sat down on a large flat rock in the middle of the cave, and Lalla sat next to him. Together they watched the dazzling light coming through the opening of the cave in front of them. The inside of the cave is filled with darkness, with the dampness of everlasting night, but outside the light hurts your eyes. It’s like being in another land, another world. It’s like being at the bottom of the sea.

Lalla isn’t talking now, she doesn’t feel like talking. Like the Hartani, she is on the night side. The look in her eyes is as dark as night, her skin is the color of shadows.

Lalla can feel the warmth of the shepherd’s body very near her, and the light of his eyes slowly creeps inside of her. She would so like to be able to reach him, enter his realm, be with him completely, so that he could hear her at last. She brings her mouth close to his ear, she smells the odor of his hair and his skin, and she says his name very softly, almost silently. The shadows of the cave are all around them, enveloping them like a fine yet sturdy veil. Lalla can hear very clearly the sound of water trickling down the walls of the cave and the small cries the bats are making in their sleep. When her skin touches that of the Hartani, it makes a strange wave of heat run through her body, a dizzy feeling. It’s the heat of the sun that has been sinking into their bodies all day long and that is now flowing out in long feverish waves. Their breaths touch too, mingle, for there is no more need for words, only for what they feel. It’s a dizziness she’s never felt before, that has grown out of the shadows in the cave in just a few seconds, as if the stone walls and the damp shadows had been waiting a long time for them to come in order to release their powers. The dizziness is spinning faster and faster inside of Lalla’s body, and she can distinctly hear the pulsing of her blood mixed with the sounds of drops of water on the walls and the small cries of the bats. As if their bodies were now one with the inside of the cave, or were prisoners in the entrails of a giant.

The Hartani’s odor of goats and sheep mingles with the odor of the young girl. She can feel the warmth of his hands, sweat moistens her forehead and makes her hair stick to it.

Suddenly Lalla can’t understand what’s happening to her anymore. She is afraid, she shakes her head and tries to escape the embrace of the shepherd who is pinning her arms to the rock and knotting his long, hard legs against hers. Lalla wants to scream but, as in a dream, not a sound comes from her throat. The damp shadows are closed tightly around her, veiling her eyes, the weight of the shepherd’s body is preventing her from breathing. Finally, she’s able to wrench out a scream, and her voice echoes like thunder off the walls of the cave. The bats, abruptly awakened, begin whirling around the walls with the rushing sound of their wings and squeaking.

The Hartani is already on his feet atop the rock, he steps back a little. His long arms are flapping around to drive away the clouds of drunken bats swirling about him. Lalla can’t see his face because the shadows in the cave have grown thicker, but she can sense the anxiety in him. A terrible feeling of sadness steals into her, rises steadily. She’s not afraid of the shadows anymore, or of the bats. Now it is she who takes the Hartani’s hand, and she can feel he is trembling dreadfully, that his whole body is jerking with spasms. He’s just standing there. Torso leaning backwards, one arm over his eyes to keep from seeing the bats, he is trembling so hard that his teeth are chattering. Then Lalla guides him over to the opening of the cave, and she’s the one who pulls him outside, until the sun floods down upon their heads and shoulders.

Out in the daylight, the Hartani’s face looks so distraught, so pitiful that Lalla can’t keep from laughing. She wipes the mud stains from her torn dress and from the Hartani’s long shirt. Then they go back down the slope toward the plateau of stones together. The sun shines brightly on the sharp stones, the ground is white and red beneath the nearly black sky.

It’s like diving headfirst into cold water when you are very hot, and swimming a long time to cleanse your whole body. Then they start running across the plateau of stones, as fast as they can, leaping over the rocks until Lalla stops, out of breath, bending over with a pain in her side. The Hartani continues to leap from rock to rock like an animal; then he notices that Lalla is no longer behind him, and he makes a large circle to work his way back. Together they remain sitting in the sun on a rock holding hands tightly. The sun descends toward the horizon, the sky turns yellow. OV in the distant hills, in the hollows of the valleys, the scattered sharp whistles of the shepherds call out to one another, then answer.

LALLA LOVES FIRE. There are all sorts of fires here in the Project. There are the morning fires, when the women and the little girls are cooking the meal in large black pots, and the black smoke swirls along the ground mixing in with the morning mist, just before the sun appears over the red hills. There are fires of grasses and branches that burn for a long time all by themselves, almost smothered, with no flames. There are the fires of the braziers as afternoon draws to an end, in the lovely light of the declining sun, amid coppery reflections. The low smoke slithers around like a long, blurry snake, filling out from house to house, wafting gray rings in the direction of the sea. There are the fires people light under old tin cans to heat tar for plugging up the holes in the roofs and the walls.

Here, everyone loves fire, especially old people and children. Every time a fire is lit, they go and sit around it, squatting on their heels, and they watch the flames dancing with blank looks on their faces. Or else they throw in little dried twigs that flare up all of a sudden, crackling, and handfuls of grass that disappear, making blue swirls.

Lalla goes to sit in the sand by the sea, in the place where Naman the fisherman has lit his big fire of branches to heat up pitch with which to caulk his boat. It’s near evening; the air is very mild, very calm. The sky is an airy color of blue, transparent, without a cloud.

Near the shore, there are always those somewhat scrawny trees, burned by the salt and the sun, whose foliage is made up of thousands of tiny blue-gray needles. As Lalla passes them, she pulls off a handful of needles for Naman the fisherman’s fire, and she also puts a few in her mouth to chew on slowly as she walks. The needles’ taste is salty, bitter, but it mixes in with the smell of smoke and is just right.