...of the past

I walked around for so many days through the squares, my bag on my shoulder, past the luxury apartment buildings that look out over the sea. Then I came up in front of a large white building, so beautiful, so peaceful, lit with the last rays of the sun. That was what I’d wanted to see. Beautiful and sinister, like a royal palace, surrounded by its formal garden, its basin of calm water where the pigeons and the blackbirds came to drink. How could I not have seen it before? That house was visible from every point in the city. At the end of the streets, above the tumult of cars and humans, stood that white house, majestic, eternal, infinitely contemplating the sun and following its course from one end of the sea to the other.
I walked slowly, cautiously closer, as if time had stopped, as if death and suffering were still in the sumptuous apartments, in the symmetrical park, under the bowers, behind every plaster statue. Walking slowly through the park, I heard the gravel crunching under the soles of my sandals and in that silent domain the noise seemed to make a sharp, compact, almost threatening sound. I thought of the Excelsior Hotel that I saw yesterday near the train station, its gardens, its white baroque facade, its wide entrance adorned with plaster cherubs through which the Jews had to pass before being interrogated. But in the quiet and luxury of the large park, beneath the windows of the white house, despite the cooing of turtledoves and the cries of blackbirds, a deathly silence reigned. I walked on and on and I could still hear my father’s voice in the kitchen of our house in Saint-Martin as he talked about the cellars in which people were killed and tortured every day, cellars hidden under the sumptuous edifice and at night, the screams of women being beaten, the screams of the tormented, muffled by the shrubs and the pools, the shrill screams that one couldn’t mistake for the cries of blackbirds, and so perhaps in order not to understand in those days, one had to plug up his ears. I walked along under the high windows of the palace, the windows from which the Nazi officers leaned to observe the streets of the city through binoculars. I used to hear my father uttering the name of the house, The Hermitage, almost every evening I heard say that name in the dark kitchen when the windows were stopped up with newspaper because of the curfew. And the name remained within me all this time, like a hated secret, The Hermitage, the name that doesn’t mean anything to others, signifies nothing other than the big luxury apartments overlooking the sea, the peaceful park crowded with pigeons. I walked around in front of the house looking at the facade, window after window, and the dark mouths of basement windows from where the voices of the tortured rose. There was no one around that day, and despite the sunlight and the sea shining in the distance between the palm trees, a cold shudder arose from deep inside me.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of a wanderer

I was just like Nora, I saw blood and death everywhere. It was winter, the sun scorched the hills of Galilee, seared the roads. And that weight in my womb, that ball of fire. Nights, I couldn’t sleep, my eyelids opened, I had salt in my eyes. I just couldn’t understand, I felt I was tied to Jacques beyond death, by the life that he had sown in me. I talked to him as if he were there and could hear me. Elizabeth heard me, she caressed my hair. She thought it was grief. “Cry, Estrellita, you’ll feel better afterward.” I didn’t want to talk to her about the child.
In the daytime, I wandered aimlessly through the streets. I had the same stride as the madwoman who begged by the marketplace. Then I did that crazy thing; I hopped on one of the military trucks that transported material and provisions. I succeeded in convincing two soldiers - so young, still children - that I was going to visit my fiance on the front. I went to Tiberias, and once there, started walking in the hills, not knowing where I was going, just wanting to walk on the land where Jacques had died.
The sun beat down, I could feel the light weighing on my back and shoulders. I climbed up through the terraced olive groves, passed abandoned farms, walls riddled with bullets. There wasn’t a sound. It was just like on the road to Festiona, when I used to watch for my father to appear in the mountains. The silence and the wind made my heart quicken, the sunlight was blinding, but I kept on walking, running through those silent hills.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of refugees

Esther took the food from the bag, bread, apples, bananas. She offered them the fruit, shared out the bread. The bolder ones, three boys, took the food without saying anything, and backed away to the rocks. Esther went over to the little girls, climbed up the rocks to them, she tried to talk to them - a few Arab words she’d learned at the camp: houbs, aatani, koul! It made the children laugh, they repeated the words as if they were in a foreign language.
Then some men came. They wore the long white robe of Druzes, they had white handkerchiefs on their heads that hung down on their necks. They stayed up high on the crest of the hill, their silhouettes rising against the sky like birds. Yohanan stopped playing, he motioned them to come. But the men did not move closer. One day Esther ventured up through the rocks to them. She took bread and fruit that she gave to the women. It was silent, frightening. She gave them the food, then she went back to join Nora and Yohanan. The following days the children came down as soon as the flock reached the foot of the hill. One of the women came down with them, she was around Esther’s age, she was wearing a long sky-blue robe and gold threads ran through her hair. She held out a jug of wine. Esther wet her lips, the wine was cool, light, a bit sour. Yohanan took a drink in turn, and Nora drank too. Then the young woman retrieved the jug and went back up through the rocks to the top of the hill. That was all - the silence, the children’s eyes, the taste of wine in the mouth, the bright sun. That’s also why Esther thought that everything should last forever, as if nothing had ever existed before, as if her father would appear and he too would walk through the rocks up on the hilltop. When the sun was nearing the horizon, almost touching the haze out at sea, Yohanan rounded up his animals. He whistled to the dog, took up the crook, and the sheep and goats started walking toward the centre of the prairie where the pond sparkled between the trees.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of disease

Saadi went into the house and I strained to listen to listen to the silence, as I had in the streets of the camp. He came back out, he took a few steps, and he sat down near the door, broken with fatigue. The dead birds and the dates scattered in the dust. I went into the house. Aamma Houriya was sitting in the same place, the wet cloth still in her hand. In the shadows I saw Roumiya’s body, her face cocked backward, her eyes closed, her blond hair wet around her shoulders. She looked as if she were asleep. I thought about when she arrived at the camp, so long ago it seemed, so very long ago. There was the silence of death and I felt not a single tear in my eyes. But this was a death like in wartime, it froze everything around Roumiya. Her face wasn’t marked by the disease. It was very white, with two dark circles around the eyes. I’ll never be able to forget that face. As I was just standing, very still, next to the door, Aamma Houriya looked at me. Her eyes were hard. In a voice I’d never heard before, almost hateful, she said, “Go away, get out of here. Take the child and go. We’re all going to die.” She lay down on the floor next to Roumiya. She too, closed her eyes, as if she were going to go to sleep. So I dropped my head and I left.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of a storyteller

“Long ago you know, the earth wasn’t what it is today. Both the Djenoune and human beings inhabited the earth. The earth was like a vast garden, surrounded by a magical river that flowed in both directions. On one side, it flowed to the west, on the other, it flowed to the east. And this place was so beautiful that it was called Firdous, or paradise. And you know, from what I’ve heard, it wasn’t very far from here. It was on the seashore, very near the city of Akka. Today there is still a village that goes by that name, paradise, and they say the inhabitants of the village are all descendants of the Djenoune. Whether that is the truth, or a lie, I can’t really say. In any case, eternal spring reigned in that garden, it was filled with flowers and fruits, fountains that never ran dry, and the inhabitants were never in want of food. They lived on fruit, honey, and herbs, for they did not know the taste of flesh. In the middle of the vast garden there was a magnificent cloud-coloured palace, and the Djenoune lived in that palace, because they were the masters of the land, God had entrusted it to them. In those days, the Djenoune were kind, they never tried to harm anyone. Men, women and children lived in the garden around the palace. The air was so balmy, the sun so clement, that they had no need of houses to protect themselves, and winter never came and it was never cold. And now children, I am going to tell you how it was all lost. For the place where that garden once stood, the land so sweetly named, Firdous, paradise, the garden filled with flowers and trees, where fountains and birds sang endlessly, the garden where human beings lived in peace and ate nothing but fruit and honey, is now the dry earth, the rough bare earth, with not a tree, not a flower, and humans in that land have become so viscious that they wage a ruthless and cruel war, abandoned by the Djenoune.
Aamma Houriya stopped talking. We remained very still, waiting for the rest of the story. It was while she was telling that story, I recall, that the young Baddawi, Saadi Abou Talib came into the camp for the first time. He squatted down on his heels, a little off to one side, to listen to what out aunt was telling us. On that day Aamma Houriya was silent for a long time, so that we could hear our hearts beating, the soft sounds coming from other houses before nightfall, the babbling of babies, the barking of dogs. She knew the value of silence.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of the vanquished

Down below, the alleys of the camp lie in impeccably straight lines. Each day, it has slowly bcome our prison, and who knows if it shan’t be our cemetery? On the arid rocky plain, bordered in the east by the dry wadi, the Nour Chams Camp makes a large dark smear, the colour of rust and mud, at the end of the dusty road. I love to sit up here in the afternoon silence and imagine the rooftops of Akka - all the different sorts of flat roofs, domes, high towers, the ancient walls overlooking the sea where you could watch the seagulls gliding on the wind and the thin crescent sails of the fishing boats. Now I realise that all of that will never again be a part of our lives. Akka - Arab soldiers in tatters, heads bleeding, legs wrapped in rags that served as bandages, unarmed, their faces sunken with hunger and thirst, some of them no more than children whom exhaustion and war had already turned into men; and the throngs of women, young children, cripples that stretched out all the way to the horizon. When they arrived at the walls of Akka, they didn’t have the courage to enter the gates of the town so they simply lay down on the ground in the olive groves waiting to be given water and bread, a little buttermilk. That was in the spring, and they told of what had happened in Haifa, they told of the fighting in the narrow streets, how it spread through the covered market in the old part of town, and of all the bodies lying face down on the ground. So the people had walked toward Akka following the sea, on the immense sandy beach, all day long in the burning sun and wind, until they reached the walls of our city.
I remember, that evening I wandered out alone, wearing a very long dress, covered with veils, I stooped over and carried a walking stick so I would look like an old woman searching for a little food, because people in town said there were bandits hiding among the fugitives, and that they raped young girls. At the gates to the city, I saw all those people lying on the ground, amid the thorn bushes and the olive trees, like thousands of beggars. They were exhausted, but they weren’t sleeping. Their eyes were wide with fever, with thirst. Some of them had managed to make little fires that were glowing here and there in the dim twilight on the beach, shining on their vanquished faces. Old men, women, children. As far as the eye could see on the beach and in the dunes, all those people strewn about as they’d been flung down upon the earth. They didn’t complain, they didn’t say anything. And the silence was more terrifying than cries or laments. Every now and again the whimpering of a child arose, then stopped. And the sound of the sea on the shore, the long waves rolling placidly in, washing up against the beached skiffs.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of foreboding

The caravan of trucks entered a forest of pines and cedars through which clear streams ran. The convoy stopped in the village of Latrun and soldiers and immigrants got out to freshen up. There was a fountain and a washtub, the water gurgled out peacefully. The women washed the dust from their faces and arms, the children splashed each other laughing. Esther took a long drink of the cold water, it was delicious. There were bees hanging in the air. The streets of the village were deserted, silent. At times, they could hear something like the rumbling of a storm far away in the mountains.
While the women and children drank, the men stood at the entrance to each street, rifles in hand. The silence was odd, menacing. Esther remembered the day she and Elizabeth had walked into the square in Saint-Martin where everyone was gathering before their departure, the old men in their black coats, the women with black scarves knotted tightly around their faces, the children who were running around innocently, and on that day too there had been the very same silence. Only the rumbling, like thunder.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of G__

Day is breaking. For the first time, I’m able to think about what’s in store for us. Soon the Italian boat will be out there in Alon Harbour, which I’m just now beginning to distinguish. It seems as if I can already feel the rolling of the sea. The sea will take us to that holy city, the wind will push us all the way to the door of the desert. I never spoke of G__ with my father. He didn’t want us to talk about it. He had a way of looking at you, very simply and directly, that stopped you from asking questions. Afterwards, when he wasn’t there anymore, it no longer mattered. One day Uncle Simon Ruben asked Mama if it wasn’t time to start thinking about instruction - he meant religion - to make up for lost time. Mama always refused, without saying no but simply saying we’ll see about that later, because it was against my father’s wishes. She said it would come in time, when I was old enough to choose. She too believed that religion was a matter of choice. She didn’t even want people to call me by my Jewish name, she said “Hélène” because it was also my name, the name she’d given me. But I called myself by my real name, Esther, I didn’t want any other name now. One day my father told me the story of Esther, who was called Hadassa, and had neither father nor mother, and how she had married King Ahasuerus and dared to enter the grand chamber where the king was enthroned to ask him to save her people. And Simon Ruben told me about her, but he said the name of G__ should not be pronounced, or written, and that’s why I thought it was a name that was like the sea, an immense name that was impossible to know in its entirety. So now I know it’s true, I have to reach the other side, cross the sea, all the way to Eretz Israel and Jerusalem, I have to find that force. I never thought it was such a difficult door we had to go through. The fatigue, the cold prevent me from thinking about anything else. All I can think of is this interminable night that is now ending in a gray dawn, and the wind in the giant trees, and the sound of the sea between the sharp rocks. I drop off to sleep just then, lying close to Mama, listening to wind flapping in the blanket like a sail, listening to the unbroken sound of the waves on the sandy beach. Perhaps I dream that when I open my eyes the ship will be out there on the sparkling sea.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of permanence

…One evening, as she lay in her bed in the dark room, Esther heard her mother complaining that she spent all her time roaming around, and her father simply responded, “Let her be, these might be her last days…” Ever since then, those words had stuck in her mind: her last days… That was what lured her so irresistibly out of doors. That was what made the sky so blue, the sun so bright, the mountains and the grassy field so fascinating, so all-consuming. At the crack of dawn, Esther started watching the light through the chinks in the cardboard that blocked off the small ventilator window, she waited for the brief cries of birds to call to her, the twittering of sparrows, the shrill whistle of swifts inviting her to come outside. When she could finally open the door and go out into the fresh air in the street, with the icy stream running down the middle of the cobblestones, she had an extraordinary sensation of freedom, a feeling of limitless bliss. She could walk down to the last houses in the village, look out over the whole stretch of the valley - still immense in the morning mist - and her father’s words would fade away. The she’d start running through the big grassy field above the river, without even thinking of vipers, and she reached the place where the path led up toward the high mountains. That’s where her father went every morning, up into the unknown. Eyes blinded with the morning light, she tried to glimpse the highest peaks, the forest of larches, the gorges, the treacherous ravines. Below, on the floor of the valley, she could hear the voices of children in the river. They were busy catching crayfish, wading into the water up to their thighs, feet sunk deep in the sandy bottoms of the torrent’s pools. Esther could distinctly hear the girl’s laughing, their sharp calls, “Maryse! Maryse!…” She kept walking through the field until the voices and laughter grew faint, disappeared. On the other side of the valley rose the dark slope of the mountain, the screes of red-coloured rocks scattered with small thorn bushes. In the grassy field, the sun was already burning hot and Esther felt sweat running down her face, under her arms. Farther up, in the shelter of a few boulders, there was no wind, no breath, not a sound. That was what Esther came here for, that silence. When there was not a human sound to be heard, only the shrill whirring of insects, and the brief cry of a skylark from time to time, and the rustling grasses, Esther felt so fine. She listened to her heart beating with slow heavy thumps, she even listened to sound of the air coming out of her nostrils. She didn’t understand why she desired that silence. It was just simply right, it was necessary. And so, little by little, the fear dissipated. The sunlight, the sky in which all the clouds were just beginning to swell, and the vast grassy fields where the flies and the bees hung suspended in the light, the somber walls of the mountains and the forests, all of that would go on and on. It wasn’t the last day yet, she knew that then, all of it could still remain there, keep going, no one would stop it.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]

...of complicity

Half-hidden behind the trees, Tristan watched Esther and her parents as they waited. He was a little ashamed because he and his mother didn’t have to stand in line; they weren’t like the others. It was right there in that square that Esther had looked at him for the first time. It was raining off and on. The women wrapped themselves tightly in their shawls, opened their big black umbrellas. The children stayed close by, not running, not shouting. In the shade of the plane trees, Tristan watched Esther standing in the middle of the line. Her head was bare, drops of rain sparkled in her black hair. She was holding her mother’s arm, and her father looked very tall next to her. She wasn’t talking; no one was talking, not even the carabinieri standing in front of the door to the restaurant. Every time the door opened, Tristan caught a quick glimpse of the large room lit by the French doors thrown open onto the garden. The carabinieri were standing near the windows smoking. One of them was sitting at a table with an open register in front of him, he was checking off the names. For Tristan, there was something awful, something mysterious about it all, as if the people that went into the room wouldn’t come out again. One the side of the hotel facing the square, the windows were closed, curtains drawn. When night fell, the Italians closed the shutters and barricaded themselves inside the hotel. The square was pitch-dark, as if uninhabited. No one was allowed to go out.
It was the silence that drew Tristan to the hotel. He’d left the tepid room where his mother was breathing softly, the dream of music and gardens, to come and watch Esther amidst all the dark shapes waiting in th square. The carabinieri wrote down her name. She went in with her mother and father, and the man with the register marked her name in the notebook at the bottom of the list with all the other names. Tristan would have liked to be with her in the line, move up with her till they reached the table; he couldn’t sleep in the room at the Hotel Victoria while that was happening. The silence in the square was too heavy. The only sound was that of the water in the basin of the fountain, a dog barked somewhere.
Afterward, Esther came back out. She walked in the square a little off to one side of her mother and father. When she went past the trees, she saw Tristan and there was a blaze in her black eyes, something like anger, or disdain, a violent flame that had made the boy’s heart beat too fast. He stepped back. He wanted to say, you’re beautiful, I can’t think of anything but you, I love you. But the silhouettes were already hurrying off toward the narrow streets.

[Wandering Star, Le Clézio, J. M. G.]