J.M. le Clézio - Desert

The Hartani is barely visible. His light silhouette is dancing over the white stones, like a shadow detached from the earth. Lalla isn’t trying to follow in his steps now, she can’t even see the immobile red mass of the mountain in the sky at the other end of the plain any longer. Maybe she’s not moving forward anymore? Her bare feet stub up against the rocks, bleed, stumble over holes. But it is as if the path is always undoing itself right behind her, like river water slipping through your legs. Most of all, it’s the light which is flowing by, it runs down onto the vast empty plain, flows by on the wind, sweeping over the open space. The light is making a sound like water, and Lalla hears its song, without being able to drink. The light is coming from the center of the sky; it burns down on the earth in the gypsum, in the mica. From time to time, in amidst the ochre dust between the white pebbles, there is an ember-colored flint, sharp as a fang. Lalla keeps her eye on its glint as she walks, as if the stone were giving her strength, as if it were a sign left by al-Ser, to show her which way to go. Or else, still farther out, a plaque of mica just like gold, with reflections that look like a nest of insects, and Lalla thinks she can hear the humming of their wings. But sometimes on the dusty ground, there just happens to be a dull, gray, round stone, an ordinary shingle from the sea, and Lalla looks at it as hard as she can; she takes it in her hand and holds it tight, to save herself. The stone is burning hot, all striped with white veins that make up a route in its center from which branch other routes as fine as baby hairs. Holding it in her fist, Lalla walks straight ahead. The sun is already going down toward the other end of the white plain. The evening wind is sweeping up flurries of dust that hide the tall red mountain at the foot of the sky.

“Hartani! Hartani!” Lalla shouts. She’s fallen to her knees on the stones because her legs refuse to walk any farther. Above her the sky is blank, ever more vast, ever more blank. There isn’t an echo to be heard.

Everything is clear and pure, Lalla can see the smallest pebbles, the slightest shrub, almost all the way out to the horizon. No one is moving. She’d love to see the wasps; she thinks she’d really like that, watch them making their invisible knots in the air around the children’s hair. She’d really like to see a bird, even a crow, even a vulture. But there’s nothing, no one. Only her dark shadow stretching out behind her, like a pit in the too-white earth.

So she lies down on the ground, and thinks that she is going to die soon, because there’s no strength left in her body, and the fire of the light is burning her lungs and her heart up. Slowly, the light fades, and the sky becomes veiled, but perhaps it is the weakness inside of her that is dimming the sun.

Suddenly Hartani is there again. He’s standing in front of her on one leg, balancing himself like a bird. He comes up to her, leans over. Lalla grabs onto his homespun robe, she clings to the cloth with all her might, she doesn’t want to let go of it, and she almost makes the boy fall over. He squats down next to her. His face is dark, but his eyes are filled with intensity and are shining very brightly. He touches Lalla’s face, her forehead, her eyes, he runs his fingers over her cracked lips. He motions to a point out on the stony plain, in the direction of the setting sun, over where there is a tree next to a rock: water. Is it near, is it far? The air is so pure that it’s impossible to tell. Lalla tries to get back to her feet, but her body isn’t responding anymore.

“Hartani, I can’t go on…” murmurs Lalla, nodding toward her bleeding legs doubled up underneath her.

“Go away! Leave me, go away!”

The shepherd hesitates, still squatting next to her. Maybe he is going to go away? Lalla looks at him without saying anything; she feels like going to sleep, disappearing. But the Hartani puts his arms around Lalla’s body, slowly lifts her up. Lalla can feel the muscles of the boy’s legs trembling under the load, and she tightens her arms around his neck, tries to make her weight blend in with that of the shepherd.

The Hartani walks over the stones, he lopes along quickly as if he were alone. He runs along on his long wobbly legs, crossing ravines, striding over rifts. The sun and the dusty wind have stopped whirling over the stony plain, but there are still slow movements out on the red horizon throwing sparks off the flint stones. There is something like a huge funnel of light before them, out where the sun has plunged toward the earth. Lalla listens to the Hartani’s heart beating in the arteries of his neck, she can hear his panting breath.

Before nightfall, they reach the rock and the tree, the place where there is an eye of water. It’s just a hole in the stony ground with gray water in it. The Hartani sets Lalla down gently beside the water and helps her drink from his cupped hand. The water is cold, a little bitter. Then the shepherd leans over too, and drinks for a long time with his head near the water.

They wait for the night. It falls very rapidly out here, sort of like a curtain being drawn, with no mist, no clouds, nothing spectacular. It’s almost as if there were no more air, or water, just the glow of the sun being gradually extinguished by the mountains.

Lalla is lying on the ground against the Hartani. She isn’t moving. Her legs are bone tired, lacerated, and the clotted blood has made scabs covering the soles of her feet like black shoe leather. Sometimes the pain from her feet shoots up through her legs, running along the bones and muscles to her groin. She moans a little, teeth clenched to keep from crying out, her hands squeeze the young boy’s arms. He doesn’t look at her; he’s looking straight out at the horizon, over in the direction of the dark mountains, or maybe he’s watching the huge night sky. His face has grown very black due to the shadows. Is he thinking about something? Lalla would really like to go inside of him to find out what he wants, where he’s going… She starts to talk, more for herself than for him. The Hartani listens to her in the way a dog does, lifting its head and following the sound of the syllables.

She talks to him about the man with the gray-green suit, about his hard black eyes like bits of metal, and then about the night spent with Naman, when the wind of ill fortune was blowing over the Project. She says, “Now that I’ve chosen you for my husband, no one can take me away, or force me to go before a judge to get married… We’re going to live together now and we’ll have a child, and no one else will want to marry me, you understand, Hartani? Even if they catch us, I’ll say that you are my husband, and that we are going to have a child, and they won’t be able to stop that. So then they’ll let us go, and we can go and live in the lands to the south, far away, in the desert…”

She no longer feels the fatigue, or the pain, only the exhilaration of that freedom, in the middle of the field of stones, in the silent night. She holds the body of the young shepherd very tightly until their odors and their breaths have completely mingled. Very slowly, the boy enters and possesses her, and she can hear the sound of his heart quickening against her chest.

Lalla turns her face up toward the center of the sky, and looks out intently. The cold, beautiful night envelops them, holding them in its blue darkness. Never has Lalla seen such a beautiful night. Back there in the Project, or on the shores of the sea, there was always something that came between you and the night — mist or dust. There was always a veil dulling it, because there were people everywhere, with their fires, their food, their breathing. But here, everything is pure. Now the Hartani lies down beside her, and a very deep, dizzy feeling traverses them, widening their pupils.