The Prospector (33 page)

No one talks. Everyone eats hastily in silence, drinks the tepid coffee, smokes, without looking at his neighbour. What disturbs the living, what worries them, are the men who didn't come back. At times, in my half-sleep, I think of Odilon as if he were alive, and when I wake up I look around for him. Maybe he's wounded, at the infirmary in Albert, sent back to England? But deep down inside I know very well, despite the glorious sunshine, that he fell face down in the muddy field within sight of the dark line of the hills we were unable to reach.

Now everything has changed. Our division, which was decimated during the Thiepval attack, has been divided up between the 12th and 15th Corps, to the south and north of Albert. We are fighting under Rawlinson's orders, using the ‘hurricane' technique. Every night the columns of light infantry advance from one trench to the next, crawling noiselessly across the wet fields. We penetrate deep into enemy territory and if it weren't for the magnificent, star-filled sky I wouldn't know that we are going further south each night. Thanks to my experience on board the
Zeta
and during the nights in English Bay I'm able to take note of this.

Before daybreak the cannon begin the bombardment, burning the forests, the hamlets, the hills before us. Then, as soon as the sun appears, the men mount the attack, take up positions in the mortar craters, fire at the enemy lines with their rifles. A moment later the retreat is sounded and we all fall back, safe and sound. Fourteenth of July, after the attack, the British cavalry breaks cover for the first time and charges between the bomb holes. Along with the Australian Corps, we enter Pozières, which is nothing but a heap of ruins.

Summer simmers on, day after day. We sleep wherever the attack has led us, anywhere, lying on the bare ground, shielded from the dew with a scrap of canvas. We can't think of death any more. Every night we move forwards, under the stars, in single file through the hills. From time to time the flash of a flare shines out, we hear the haphazard cracking of shots. Warm, empty nights with not an insect, not an animal.

In the beginning of September we meet General Gough's 5th Army and, along with those who remained under the orders of Rawlinson, we march further south, towards Guillemont. Under cover of night we make our way back north-east, going up the railway in the direction of the woods. Now they're on all sides, darker and even more menacing: the Trônes Woods behind us, the Leuze Woods to the south, and before us the Birch Woods. The men aren't sleeping, just waiting in the calm of night. I don't think any of us can help but dream about what this place used to be like before the war; the beauty of it, these stands of still birches where the hooting of barn owls, the purling of streams, the leaping of wild rabbits could be heard. These woods where lovers would go after the dance, the grass – still warm with the day's sunlight – where bodies would roll and enlace one another, laughing. The woods at evening time, when blue plumes of smoke would rise so peacefully from the villages and on the paths, the silhouettes of little old women gathering firewood. Not one of us is sleeping, we're staring wide-eyed into the night – maybe our last. We've got our ears pricked up, our senses alert to the slightest vibration, the slightest sign of life that seems to have completely vanished. In pained apprehension, we await the moment when the first blasts of 75 mm-calibre cannon will come tearing through the night behind us, making the ‘hurricane' of fire rain down upon the tall trees, disembowel the earth, lay open the dreadful path of the attack.

It begins to rain before dawn. A fine drizzle that penetrates our clothing, wets our faces and makes us shiver. And so, almost with no fire support, the men launch into the attack of the three woods, in successive waves. Behind us the night lights up eerily over in the direction of the Ancre, where the 4th Army is mounting a diversionary attack. But for us it is a silent, cruel, often hand-to-hand combat. One after the other the waves of infantrymen pass over the trenches, capture the LMGs, pursue the enemy into the woods. I hear shots cracking very near to us, in the Birch Wood. Lying in the damp earth we shoot haphazardly into the underbrush. Soundlessly, flares light up above the trees, fall back to earth in a rain of sparks. As I'm running towards the wood I stumble over something: it's the body of a German lying on his back in the grass. He's still holding his Mauser, but his helmet has rolled several feet away. The officers shout, ‘Cease fire!' The wood is ours. Everywhere, in the grey light of dawn, I see the bodies of the Germans lying in the grass in the fine rain. There are dead horses all over the fields and the cawing of crows is already echoing out grimly. Despite their exhaustion, the men are laughing, singing. Our officer, a red-faced, jovial Englishman, tries to explain to me. ‘Those bastards, they weren't expecting us…!' But I turn away and I hear him repeating the same thing to someone else. I feel so intensely exhausted it makes me stagger and feel nauseous. The men settle in for the night in the underbrush, in the German camps. Everything was ready for them to wake up, they say that even the coffee was already brewed. The Canadians are the ones to drink it, laughing. I'm stretched out under the tall trees, my head leaning against the cool bark, and I fall asleep in the lovely morning light.

Winter's heavy rains are here. The Ancre and the Somme are flooding their banks. We are prisoners of the conquered trenches, stuck in the mud, huddled in makeshift shelters. We've already forgotten the exhilaration of the battles that brought us this far. We captured Guillemont, the Falfemont farm, Ginchy, and, during the day of 15 September alone, Morval, Gueudecourt, Lesboeufs, pushing the Germans back to their rear-line trenches atop the hills near Bapaume or Transloy. Now we're prisoners of the trenches on the other side of the river, prisoners of the rain and mud. Days are grey, cold, nothing happens. At times the boom of cannon fire resounds in the distance over by the Somme, in the woods around Bapaume. At times we're awakened in the middle of the night by bright lights suddenly illuminating the sky. But they aren't lightning flashes. ‘On your feet!' the officers shout. We pack our bags in the dark, set out, stoop-backed in the icy, sucking mud. We're advancing southward on worn paths along the Somme, unable to see where we're going. What do all these rivers everyone talks about so much look like? The Yser, the Marne, the Meuse, the Aisne, the Ailette, the Scarpe? Rivers of mud under the low-hanging sky, heavy waters washing along the remains of forests, burned rafters, dead horses.

Near Combles we meet the French Divisions. They are paler, more battered than we are. Sunken-eyed faces, ragged, mud-stained uniforms. Some don't even have shoes, only bloody rags around their feet. In the convoy is a German officer. The soldiers are roughing him about, insulting him, because of the gases that have killed so many of our men. Very proud in spite of his tattered uniform, he suddenly pushes them away. He shouts in perfect French, ‘Why you're the ones who used the gases first! You're the ones who forced us to fight in that manner! You!' A striking silence follows. Each of us looks away and the officer goes back to his place among the prisoners.

Later we enter a village. I have never learned the name of that village, in the drab dawn, the streets are deserted, the houses in ruins. Our boots echo out strangely in the rain, as if we'd reached the end of the world, out at the very edge of the void. We pitch camp in the ruins of the village and convoys, Red Cross vans, file by all day long. When the rain stops a cloud of dust veils the sky. Farther away, in the trenches that are extensions of the village streets, we can hear the rumbling of cannon again and, off in the distance, the thud of shells.

Sitting in front of a fire of burning boards, beside piles of rubble, Canadian, Territorial and French soldiers fraternize, exchange names. There are others who aren't asked any questions, who don't say anything. They roam the streets endlessly, unable to stop. Exhaustion. Off in the distance we hear faint rifle shots, like schoolboys playing with firecrackers. We're drifting along in a strange land, steering out into incomprehensible time. The same day, the same endless night, are forever tormenting us. We haven't spoken in such a long time. Haven't spoken a woman's name in such a long time. We hate the war with every fibre of our beings.

All around us, bombed-out streets, ruined, gutted houses. Bodies like ragdolls hanging from machines. In the fields around the village there are dead horses as far as you can see, bloated and black like dead elephants. The crows dip and swoop over the carcasses, their piercing cries make the living wince. Cohorts of pitiful prisoners come into the town, wasted with disease and wounds. With them, mules, lame horses, emaciated donkeys. The air is foul, the fumes, the smell of cadavers. Effluvia of a musty, cellar-like odour. A German shell has sealed up a tunnel where some French soldiers had sought shelter for the night. A man is lost, searching for his company. He clings to me, repeating, ‘I'm from the 110th Infantry. The 110th. Do you know where they are?' In a mortar crater, at the foot of the ruins of the chapel where the dead and dying are piled one on top of the other, the Red Cross has set up a table. We sleep in the Frégicourt trench, then the following night in the Iron Doors trench. We pursue our march across the plain. At night the tiny lights of the artillery posts are our sole points of reference. Sailly-Saillisel is ahead of us, enveloped in a black cloud like that of a volcano. Cannon thunder very nearby, to the north, on the hills of Batack, to the south, in the Saint-Pierre-Vaast Wood.

Battles in the village streets by night, with grenades, rifles, revolvers. Blackened basement windows, the LMGs spray the intersections, cutting down men. I listen to the heavy pounding, breathe in the smell of sulphur, of phosphorous, shadows dance in the clouds. ‘Hold on! Don't shoot!' Along with men I don't know (French? Haig's Englishmen?) I'm huddled up in a ditch. Mud. We've been short on water for days. Fever is burning in my body, I'm seized with a fit of vomiting. The acrid smell fills my throat, in spite of myself, I shout, ‘The gas! The gas is coming…!' I believe I see blood gushing out incessantly, filling the holes, the ditches, rushing into the toppled houses, trickling into the ravaged fields just at daybreak.

Two men are carrying me. They drag me, holding me up by the shoulders, over to the Red Cross shelter. I lie on the ground for such a long time I feel as if I've turned into a hot stone. Then I'm in the van that is bumping along, zigzagging to avoid the bomb craters. In the lazaretto in Albert the doctor looks like Camal Boudou. He checks my temperature, palpates my stomach. ‘Typhus,' he says. And then adds (but I think I must have dreamt that), ‘It's lice who win the wars.'

Freedom at last: the sea. For all of these grim, lifeless years, this is what I've been waiting for: the moment I would be on the deck of the liner with the crowd of demobilized soldiers heading back to India, to Africa. We gaze out to sea from dawn to dusk, and even at night, when the moon lights our wake. Once past the Suez Canal, nights are so very mild. We sneak out of the holds to sleep on deck. I roll up in my army blanket, one of the only souvenirs I'm bringing back from the army, along with my khaki jacket and the canvas duffel bag my papers are in. I've been sleeping out of doors, in the mud, for such a long time that the wooden deck and the star-filled dome above me seem like paradise. The other soldiers and I talk in Creole, in Pidgin, we sing, tell each other interminable stories. The war is already a legend, transformed by the storyteller's imagination. On deck with me there are Seychellois, Mauritians, South Africans. But not a single one of the Rodriguans who answered the call to arms with me in front of the telegraph office. I remember Casimir's joy when his name was called. Could I be the only survivor, having escaped the massacre only by the grace of lice?

Now I'm thinking about Laure. When it's authorized, I go all the way up to the end of the prow, near the capstan and look out at the horizon. I think of Laure's face as I gaze at the dark-blue sea, at the clouds. We're just off Aden, then we'll be sailing around Cape Guardafui, towards the large ports whose names Laure and I used to dream of back in the days of Boucan: Mombasa, Zanzibar. We're heading for the equator and the air is already searing, nights are dry, illuminated with stars. I keep an eye out for flying fish, for albatrosses, for dolphins. Each day it seems as if I can see Laure more clearly, can hear her voice more clearly, see her ironic smile, the light in her eyes. In the Sea of Oman a magnificent tempest comes upon us. Not a cloud in the sky, a furious wind pushing the waves against the liner, a moving cliff wall that the wild rams of the sea are battering up against. Pushed sideways, the vessel is tossing violently, waves are sweeping across the lower deck, where we're standing. Whether we like it or not we're forced to abandon our holiday spot and descend into the nauseating, oven-hot holds again. The crewmen inform us that it's the tail end of a storm passing over Socotra and, sure enough, that very evening torrential rains come driving down upon the ship, flooding the holds. We relay one another to pump out the water as rivers wash through the holds between our legs, sweeping garbage and trash along with them! But when the sea and the sky have grown calm again, they are so resplendent! On all sides the blue immensity of the sea with the long waves trimmed in foam moving slowly along with us.

Stopovers in the ports of Mombasa, Zanzibar, the journey out to Tamatave, have all gone by very quickly. I hardly left my spot on the deck, except when the sun grew too hot in the afternoons or when there were showers. I almost never took my eyes off the sea, I watched it change colours and moods, sometimes smooth, without a wave, riffling in the wind, other times so very hard, horizonless, grey with rain, roaring, heaving its billows at us. I think about the
Zeta
again, about the journey to English Bay. It all seems so far away, Ouma slipping over the sand in the river, harpoon in hand, her body sleeping close against mine, under the glittering sky. Here, thanks to the sea, I've finally found the rhythm, the colour of dreams again. I know I must go back to Rodrigues. It's a part of me, I have to go. Will Laure understand?