Desert (21 page)

Old Naman is lying on his mat, just as she’d left him. He’s still breathing, very slowly, with a wheeze, and his eyes are wide open in the dark. Lalla leans over his face, but he doesn’t recognize her. His mouth is so busy trying to breathe, it can’t smile anymore.

“Naman ... Naman...” Lalla murmurs.

Old Naman has no strength left. The wind of ill fortune has given him a fever, the kind that weighs on your body and on your head and keeps you from eating. The wind might carry him away. Anxiously Lalla leans down near the fisherman’s face.

She says, “You don’t want to go now? Not now, not yet?”

She wants so much to be able to hear Naman talk to her, tell her the story of the white bird who was a prince of the sea once again, or the story of the stone the Archangel Gabriel gave to human beings, and which turned black with their sins. But Old Naman can’t tell stories anymore; he barely has enough strength to raise his chest to breathe, as if there were an invisible weight upon him. Foul sweat and urine soak the thin body lying seemingly broken on the floor.

Lalla is too tired now to tell other stories, to continue talking about everything over there, across the sea, all of those cities in Spain and France.

So she sits down next to the old man and watches the night light through the open door. She listens to the wheezing breath, hears the evil sound of the wind outside, rolling tin cans around and making pieces of corrugated iron flap. Then she falls asleep, like that, sitting with her head resting on her knees. From time to time Old Naman’s choked breathing awakens her, and she asks, “Are you there? Are you still there?”

He doesn’t respond, he’s not sleeping; his gray face is turned toward the door, but his shiny eyes don’t seem to see anymore, as if they were contemplating what lies beyond.

Lalla tries to fight against sleep, because she’s afraid of what will happen if she goes to sleep. It’s like the fishermen, the ones who are far away, lost out at sea, who can’t see anything, rocked on the waves, caught in the whirling winds of the storm. They can’t ever fall asleep because then the sea will grab them, throw them down into the depths, swallow them up. Lalla wants to resist, but her eyelids close in spite of herself, and she feels herself falling backwards. She swims for a long time without knowing where she’s going, borne along on the slow sound of Old Naman’s breathing.

Then, before daybreak, she awakens with a start. She looks at the old man stretched out on the floor, his peaceful face resting against his arm. He’s not making a sound now, because he has stopped breathing. Outside, the wind has stopped blowing, the danger has passed. Everything is peaceful, as if no one ever died, anywhere.

W
HEN LALLA DECIDED to leave, she didn’t say anything to anyone. She decided to leave because the man with the gray-green suit came back to Aamma’s house several times, and each time he looked at Lalla with those eyes that were as shiny and hard as black stones, and he sat on Lalla Hawa’s trunk to drink a glass of mint tea. Lalla isn’t afraid of him, but she knows if she doesn’t go away, one day he’ll force her to go to his house and marry him, because he is rich and powerful and doesn’t like anyone to resist him.

She left this morning at the crack of dawn. She didn’t even glance into the back of the house at the shape of Aamma sleeping, rolled up in her sheet. She just took a piece of blue cloth in which she put some stale bread and a few dried dates, and a gold bracelet that had belonged to her mother.

She went out without making a sound, without even waking a dog. She walked barefoot over the cold earth, between the rows of sleepy houses. Before her, the sky is a little pale, because day is coming. The mist is coming in from the sea; it makes a big, soft cloud that floats up the river, spreading out two curving arms like a gigantic bird with gray wings.

For a minute, Lalla feels like going as far as Naman the fisherman’s house, just to see it once more, because he’s the only person that Lalla has felt sad about losing. But she’s afraid of being late, and she walks away from the Project, along the goat path, toward the rocky hills. When she begins climbing up the rocks, she feels the cold wind cutting through her. There is no one up here either. The shepherds are still asleep in their huts of branches by the corrals, and it’s the first time that Lalla has entered the region without hearing their sharp whistling. It makes her a little frightened, as if the wind had turned the earth into a desert. But little by little, the sunlight appears on the other side of the hills, a red and yellow patch mingling with the gray night. Lalla is glad to see it, and she thinks that is where she’ll go later, to the place where the sky and the earth are filled with that huge patch of first light.

Thoughts are a bit jumbled in her mind as she walks over the rocks. It’s because she knows she won’t be coming back to the Project, that she’ll never see all the things she is so fond of again, the vast arid plain, the stretch of white beach where the waves fall one after the other; she’s sad because she’s thinking of the still dunes where she used to sit and watch the clouds make their way across the sky. She’ll never see the white bird who was the prince of the sea again, or the silhouette of Old Naman sitting in the shade of the fig tree by his upturned boat. So she slows down her pace a bit, and for a minute she feels like looking back. But before her are the silent hills, the sharp stones where the light is beginning to sparkle, and the little thorn bushes, where small droplets of moisture from the sky are trembling, and also the feather-light gnats drifting along on the wind.

So she walks on without turning around, holding the bundle of bread and dates tightly against her chest. When the path comes to an end, it means there are no more humans around. Then the sharp stones come up out of the ground, and you have to leap from rock to rock, making your way up to the highest hill. That’s where the Hartani is waiting for her, but she can’t see him yet. Maybe he’s hiding in a cave over by the cliff, in the place where you can look out over the whole valley, all the way to the sea. Or else he’s right nearby, behind a burnt bush, hidden up to his neck in some hole made from a stone, just like a snake.

He’s always on the lookout, like the wild dogs, ready to jump away, take flight. Maybe today he doesn’t want to leave anymore? Yet Lalla told him only yesterday that she would come, and she’d pointed to the long expanse in the distance, to the large block of limestone that seems to be holding up the sky, right where the desert begins. His eyes had shone brighter, because the idea has always been in his mind, since he was very small, and he has never stopped thinking about it for a second. You can tell by the way he looks out at the horizon, neck craning forward, eyes fixed. He never sits down; he squats on his heels, as if he were ready to leap up. He’s the one who showed Lalla the path in the desert, the path you get lost on, the one no one ever comes back from, and the sky, so beautiful and pure out there.

The sun is up now, it appears before her like a huge disk of fire, dazzling, it rises slowly, ballooning out over the chaos of stone. Never has it seemed so beautiful. In spite of the pain and the tears pouring from her eyes and running down her cheeks, Lalla looks straight at it, without blinking, just like Old Naman said the princes of the sea did. The light goes deep inside of her, touches everything that is hidden in her body, especially her heart.

There’s no longer any trace of the path now, and Lalla has to pick her way through the boulders. She jumps from rock to rock, over dried torrents, she skirts the cliff walls. The rising sun has made a big blind spot on her retinas, and she’s moving along somewhat haphazardly, bent forward to keep from falling. She goes through the hills, one after the other, then walks down the middle of a vast field of stones. There isn’t a soul. As far as she can see, there is nothing but the expanse of dry stone, with a few cactuses and tufts of euphorbia. The sun has depopulated the earth, burned it and worn it down until there is nothing left but these white stones, this brush. Lalla isn’t looking straight at it anymore; it is too high in the sky, and her pupils would be burned in a second, as if by lightning. The sky is ablaze. It’s blue and is burning like a huge flame, and Lalla has to squint up her eyes very tightly to be able to see ahead of herself. As the sun gradually rises in the sky, the things of the earth fill out, soak up light. There is no sound out here, but it seems as if you can hear the stones dilating, cracking from time to time.

She’s been walking for a long time. How long? Hours probably, without knowing where she’s going, simply in the opposite direction of her shadow, toward the other end of the horizon. Out there, the tall red mountains seem to be hanging in the sky, there are villages, a river maybe, lakes of sky-colored water. Then suddenly, without her understanding where he’s come from, the Hartani is there, standing in front of her. He isn’t moving, dressed as he is every day in his homespun robe, his head wrapped in a piece of white cloth. His face is black, but his smile lights it up when Lalla walks up to him.

“Oh, Hartani! Hartani!”

Lalla presses herself against him; she recognizes the smell of his sweat and his dusty clothes. He too has brought a little bread and some dates in a damp rag tied to his belt.

Lalla opens her bundle and shares a little bread with him. They eat quickly, without sitting down, because they’ve been hungry for a long time. The young shepherd glances around. He is studying the landscape carefully, and he resembles a bird of prey with unblinking eyes. He motions to a point, far away, out on the horizon over by the red mountains. He puts the palm of his hand under his lips: there is water out there.

They start walking again. The Hartani is out front, jumping lightly over the rocks. Lalla tries to place her feet in his steps. The boy’s frail, light-footed silhouette is forever out in front of her, he seems to be dancing over the white stones; she watches it like a flame, like a reflection, and her feet seem to move all by themselves, in rhythm with the Hartani.

The sun is beating down hard now, it weighs on Lalla’s head and shoulders, it aches inside her body. It’s as if the light that entered her in the morning was beginning to burn, to well up, and she can feel long painful waves moving up her arms and legs, becoming lodged in the cavity of her skull. The burn of the light is dry and dusty. There is not a drop of sweat on Lalla’s body, and her blue dress rubs against her belly and thighs, crackling with static electricity. The tears in her eyes have dried; crusts of salt have made sharp little crystals like grains of sand in the corners of her eyelids. Her mouth is dry and hard. She runs the ends of her fingers over her lips and thinks that her mouth has become like that of a camel, and she’ll soon be able to eat cactuses and thistles without feeling anything.

As for the Hartani, he’s still springing from rock to rock without looking back. His nimble white silhouette is farther and farther away; it’s like an animal fleeing, not stopping, not looking back. Lalla would like to catch up with him, but she hasn’t enough strength left. She staggers haphazardly over the chaos of stones, eyes trained straight ahead. Her wounded feet are bleeding, and in falling down several times, she’s skinned her knees. But she can hardly feel the pain at all. All she can feel is the withering reverberation of the light everywhere. It’s as if there were a bunch of animals jumping all about her on the rocks, wild dogs, horses, rats, goats making tremendous leaps... There are also large white birds, ibises, secretary birds, storks, beating their long fiery wings, as if they were trying to take flight, and they begin an interminable dance. Lalla can feel the breeze from their wings in her hair; she can hear the rustling of their quill feathers in the thick air. So then she turns her head, looks back to see all of those birds, all of those animals, even the lions she glimpsed out of the corner of her eye. But when she looks at them, they instantly melt away, disappear like mirages, and recompose behind her.

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.