J.M. le Clézio - Desert

There was another heavy silence, as the horsemen stopped circling on the plain. Colonel Mangin took a look with his binoculars, trying to understand: were they going to retreat? Then it would mean marching again for days over that deserted land, pursuing that fleeing, exasperating horizon. But Moulay Sebaa remained motionless on his horse, because he knew that the end was near. The mountain warriors, the sons of the tribal chieftains had come here to fight, not to flee. They had stopped circling to pray before the charge.

Then everything went very quickly in the cruel, noonday sun. The three thousand horsemen charged in close formation, as if for a cavalcade, brandishing their long spears. When they reached the riverbed, the non-commissioned officers in charge of the machine guns glanced at Colonel Mangin, who had raised his arm. He let the first horsemen through, then suddenly brought his arm down, and the steel barrels started firing their streams of bullets, six hundred a minute, with a sinister sound that hacked the air and echoed through the entire valley, all the way out to the mountains. Does time exist when a few minutes are enough to kill a thousand men, a thousand horses? When the horsemen realized they were trapped, that they would never get through that wall of bullets, they tried to retreat, but it was too late. The bursts of machine gun fire swept over the riverbed, and the bodies of men and horses continued to fall, as if a large invisible wave were mowing them down. Streams of blood ran over the smooth stones, mingled with the thin trickles of water. Then silence fell again, while the last horsemen escaped toward the hills, covered with blood, on their horses whose hair was bristling in fear.

Unhurriedly, the army of black soldiers began marching along the riverbed, company after company, with the officers and Colonel Mangin in the lead. They took the eastern trail, in the direction of Taroudant, Marrakech, in pursuit of Moulay Sebaa, the Lion. They left without even glancing at the site of the massacre, without looking at the broken bodies of the men sprawled on the shingles, or the horses on their backs, or the vultures that were already on the banks of the river. They didn’t look at the ruins of Agadir either, the black smoke still rising into the blue sky. In the distance, the cruiser Cosmao was gliding slowly out on the metal-colored sea, heading northward.

Then the silence ceased, and the cries of the living could be heard, the wounded men and animals, the women, children, like a single interminable wail, like a song. It was a sound filled with horror and suffering that rose from all sides at once, on the plain and on the riverbed.

Now Nour was walking over the shingles, amongst the felled bodies. The voracious flies and wasps were already buzzing in black clouds above the cadavers, and Nour felt nausea tightening in his throat.

With very slow movements, as if they were emerging from a dream, women, men, children, drew back the brush and walked over the riverbed without speaking. All day long, until nightfall, they carried the bodies of the men to the riverbanks to bury them. When night came, they lit fires on each bank, to ward off the jackals and wild dogs. The women of the villages came, bringing bread and sour milk, and Nour ate and drank with relief. Then he slept, lying on the ground, without even thinking of death.

The next day, at the crack of dawn, the men and women dug more graves for the warriors, then they also buried their horses. Over the graves, they placed large rocks from the river.

When everything was finished, the last blue men started walking again, on the southern trail, the one that is so long that it seems to never end. Nour was walking with them, barefoot, with nothing but his woolen cloak and a little bread tied in a moist cloth. They were the last Imazighen, the last free men, the Taubalt, the Tekna, the Tidrarin, the Aroussiyine, the Sebaa, the Reguibat Sahel, the last survivors of the Berik Allah, those who are blessed by God. They had nothing but what their eyes saw, what their bare feet touched. Before them, the flat earth stretched out like the sea, glistening with salt. It undulated, created white cities with magnificent walls, with domes that burst like bubbles. The sun burned their faces and their hands, the light hollowed out its dizziness at the time of day when the shadows of men are like bottomless wells.

Each evening, their bleeding lips sought the cool wells, the brackish mud of alkaline rivers. Then, the cold night enveloped them, crushed their limbs and took their breath away, weighed down on their necks. There was no end to freedom, it was as vast as the wide world, beautiful and cruel as the light, gentle as the eyes of water. Each day, at the first light of dawn, the free men went back toward their home, toward the south, toward the place where no one else could live. Each day, with the same motions, they erased the traces of their fires, they buried their excrement. Turned toward the desert, they carried out their wordless prayer. They drifted away, as if in a dream, disappeared.

JEAN-MARIE GUSTAVE LE CLÉZIO, winner of the 2008 Nobel Prize in Literature, was born on April 13th, 1940 in Nice, a descendant of a family from Brittany that immigrated to Mauritius in the eighteenth century. He pursued his undergraduate studies at the Institut d’Études Littéraires in Nice and earned his doctoral degree in early Mexican history from the University of Perpignan. His first novel, Le procès-verbal ( The Interrogation ), won the Prix Renaudot in 1963 and established his reputation as one of France’s preeminent contemporary writers. He was awarded the Grand Prix Paul Morand by the Académie Française in 1980 for his novel Désert. He has published more than forty works of fiction and anthropology, as well as several books for children. Mr. Le Clézio has lived in France, Mauritius, Thailand, Mexico, Panama, the United States, and England. He and his wife currently divide their time between New Mexico, Nice, and the island of Mauritius.

A Verba Mundi Book

David R. Godine · Publisher · Boston

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This is a Verba Mundi Book published in 2009 by David R. Godine, Publisher

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Originally published in French in 1980 as Désert by Editions Gallimard, Paris

Copyright © 1980 by Editions Gallimard

Translation copyright © 2009 by C. Dickson

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Cet ouvrage, publié dans le cadre d’un programme d’aide à la publication, bénéficie du soutien du Ministère des Affaires étrangères et du Service Culturel de l’Ambassade de France aux Etats-Unis.

This work, published as part of a program of aid for publication, received support from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Cultural Services of the French Embassy in the United States.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING IN PUBLICATION DATA

Le Clézio, J.M.G. (Jean-Marie Gustave), 1940–

[Désert. English]

Desert / by J.M.G Le Clezio.

p. cm.

HARDCOVER ISBN: 978-1-56792-386-5

SOFTCOVER ISBN: 978-1-56792-387-2

E-BOOK ISBN: 978-1-56792-444-2

I. Title.