Read Online The Prospector by J.M.G Le Clézio - Free Book Online

Clam Island the wind rises. The large sail next to me fills out tightly and hums, sea foam splashes up at the prow. Denis and I quickly fold our clothes and tuck them away near the mast. The seabirds are following the pirogue, because they’ve smelled the fish. At times they even try to snatch a fish and Denis shouts, waving his arms to scare them away. They’re black frigates with piercing eyes that glide along on the wind next to the pirogue, cackling. Behind us, the large scorched rock of the Morne is growing distant in the veiled twilight like a castle being engulfed in shadows. Down flush with the horizon, the long grey clouds are streaking the sun.
    Never will I forget this long day, so long it seems like months, like years, the day I discovered the sea for the first time. I’d like it to never end, to last even longer yet. I’d like the pirogue to keep skipping over the waves in the splashing sea foam, all the way out to the Indies, even out to Oceania, going from island to island, lit by the sun that would never set.
    Night has fallen when we run up on the beach in Black River. Denis and I walk rapidly to Boucan, barefoot in the dust. My clothing and hair are stiff with salt, my face, my back are burning with the light of the sun. When I arrive in front of the house Denis walks away without saying anything. I walk down the lane, heart racing, and I see my father standing on the veranda. By the light of the storm lamp he seems taller and thinner in his black suit. His face is pale, drawn with worry and anger. When I’m in front of him he says nothing, but his eyes are hard and cold and my throat tenses, not because of the punishment that awaits me, but because I know I’ll never go back out to sea again, that this is the end of it. That night, in spite of the fatigue, the hunger and the thirst, lying motionless in my bed which is burning my back, indifferent to the mosquitoes, I listen to every movement of the air, every breath of wind, every lull that brings me closer to the sea.
    â€Œ
    Laure and I live the last days of that summer – the year of the cyclone – even more closed up in our own world, secluded in the Boucan Embayment where no one comes to see us any more. Maybe that’s why we have this strange feeling that there is some kind of impending threat or danger. Or maybe solitude has made us more sensitive to the signs portending Boucan’s downfall. Maybe it’s also the almost unbearable heat that weighs upon the shores, upon the Tamarin Valley, night and day. Even the wind from the sea cannot alleviate the heat bearing down upon the plantations, upon the red earth. Around the aloe fields of Walhalla in Tamarin the land is as hot as a furnace and the streams have dried up. In the evening I look at the smoke from the Kah Hin distillery mingling with the clouds of red dust. Laure tells me of the fire that God sent raining down on the accursed cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, and also of Vesuvius erupting in the year AD 79, when the city of Pompeii was drowned in a rain of molten ash. But here we search the heavens in vain and the sky over Rempart Mountain and the Trois Mamelles remains clear, barely flawed by a few inoffensive clouds. But deep down inside ourselves we can sometimes sense the danger.
    Mam has been sick for weeks now and she’s stopped her lessons. As for our father, he’s sombre and weary, he stays shut up in his office reading or writing or smoking, gazing blankly out of the window. I think it’s around this same time that he really speaks to me about the Mysterious Corsair’s treasure and the documents he’s kept concerning it. I’ve already heard about it once, long ago, maybe from Mam, who doesn’t believe in it at all. But this is when he talks to me about it at length, as one would about an important secret. What does he say? I can’t remember for certain, because it’s all mixed up in my mind with everything I