The Immoralist — Chapter 4

Chapter 5 of 14 · Review of The Immoralist

Marceline, meanwhile, who saw with joy that my health was at last coming back, had for some days been speaking to me of the marvellous orchards of the oasis. She loved the open air and walking. The freedom my illness had won her allowed her long expeditions from which she returned dazzled; until then she had hardly spoken of them, not daring to urge me to come with her and afraid of seeing me saddened by the account of pleasures I could not yet have enjoyed. But now that I was better, she counted on their charm to finish setting me right. The taste I was recovering for walking and for looking drew me there. And the very next day we went out together.

She went before me along a strange road, such as I have never seen the like of in any country. Between two rather high walls of earth it winds as though indolently; the shapes of the gardens those high walls enclose bend it at their leisure; it curves or breaks its line; from the very entrance a turning loses us; one no longer knows where one has come from nor where one is going. The faithful water of the river follows the path, runs beside one of the walls; the walls are made of the very earth of the road, the earth of the whole oasis, a pinkish or soft grey clay which the water darkens a little, which the burning sun cracks and which hardens in the heat, but which softens at the first shower and forms then a yielding soil where bare feet stay printed. — Above the walls, palm trees. At our approach, turtle doves flew up among them. — Marceline was watching me.

I forgot my weariness and my constraint. I walked in a kind of ecstasy, of silent gladness, of exaltation of the senses and of the flesh. At that moment light breaths of air arose; every frond stirred and we saw the tallest palms bow down — then the whole air grew calm again, and I heard distinctly, behind the wall, the song of a flute. — A breach in the wall; we went in.

It was a place full of shade and of light; tranquil, and seeming as though sheltered from time; full of silences and of tremblings, the light noise of the water that flows away, waters the palms, and slips off from tree to tree, the discreet call of the turtle doves, the song of a flute that a child was playing. He was keeping a flock of goats; he sat, almost naked, on the trunk of a fallen palm; he was not troubled at our approach, did not run off, stopped playing only for an instant.

I noticed, during that short silence, that another flute was answering far away. We went on a little further, then:

"No use going further," said Marceline; "these orchards are all alike; only at the end of the oasis do they grow a little larger…" She spread the shawl on the ground:

"Rest yourself."

How long did we stay there? I no longer know; — what did the hour matter? Marceline was beside me; I stretched myself out, laid my head on her knees. The song of the flute still flowed on, ceased at moments, began again; the noise of the water… At moments a goat bleated. I closed my eyes; I felt Marceline's cool hand come to rest upon my forehead; I felt the burning sun gently sifted by the palms; I thought of nothing; what did thought matter? I felt extraordinarily…

And at moments, a new sound; I opened my eyes; it was the light wind in the palms; it did not come down as far as us, stirred only the high fronds…

The next morning I came back to that same garden with Marceline; that same evening I went there alone. The goatherd who played the flute was there. I went up to him and spoke to him. His name was Lassif, he was only twelve, he was beautiful. He told me the names of his goats, told me that the channels are called séghias; not all of them run every day, he informed me; the water, wisely and sparingly shared out, satisfies the thirst of the plants, then is at once taken away from them. At the foot of each of the palms a narrow basin is hollowed out which holds the water for watering the tree; an ingenious system of sluices, which the child explained to me by working them, masters the water and brings it where the thirst is too great.

The following day I saw a brother of Lassif's: he was a little older, less beautiful; his name was Lachmi. With the help of the sort of ladder made along the trunk by the scars of the old cut fronds, he climbed to the very top of a lopped palm; then came down nimbly, letting a gilded nakedness be seen beneath his floating cloak. He brought down from the top of the tree, whose crown had been mown off, a little earthen gourd: it had been hung up there, close to the fresh wound, to gather the sap of the palm, from which is made a sweet wine that the Arabs like greatly. At Lachmi's invitation I tasted it; but that flat, harsh and syrupy taste displeased me.

On the days that followed I went further; I saw other gardens, other herdsmen and other goats. Just as Marceline had said, these gardens were all alike; and yet each one differed.

Sometimes Marceline still went with me; but more often, at the entrance to the orchards, I left her, persuading her that I was tired, that I wanted to sit down, that she must not wait for me, since she needed more walking; so that she finished the walk without me. I stayed among the children. Soon I knew a great number of them; I talked with them at length; I learned their games, showed them others, lost all my coppers at pitch-and-toss. Some of them went a long way with me (each day I lengthened my walks), pointed out a new passage for getting home, took charge of my cloak and my shawl when I happened to bring both; before leaving them I handed out small coins; sometimes they followed me, still playing, as far as my door; sometimes, indeed, they came through it.

Then Marceline brought some of her own. She brought the ones from the school, whom she encouraged in their work; when the classes came out, the well-behaved and the gentle came up; the ones I brought were of another kind; but games drew them together. We took care to have syrups and sweetmeats always ready. Soon others came of their own accord, no longer even invited by us. I remember every one of them; I see them again…

Towards the end of January the weather suddenly turned foul; a cold wind began to blow and my health at once felt it. The great open space that separates the oasis from the town became impassable for me once more, and I had again to content myself with the public garden. Then it rained; an icy rain which, far off on the horizon to the north, covered the mountains with snow.

I spent those dismal days beside the fire, listless, struggling furiously against the illness which, in that bad weather, was gaining the upper hand. Dreary days: I could neither read nor work; the slightest effort brought on uncomfortable sweats; fixing my attention wore me out; the moment I did not take care to breathe carefully, I was stifling.

During those dismal days the children were the only distraction possible for me. In the rain, only the most familiar came in; their clothes were soaked; they sat down before the fire, in a circle. Long stretches of time went by without a word said. I was too tired, too ill, for anything but looking at them; but the presence of their health healed me. The ones Marceline made much of were weak, sickly and too well-behaved; I grew irritated with her and with them and in the end drove them away. To tell the truth, they frightened me.

One morning I had a curious revelation about myself: Moktir, the only one of my wife's protégés who did not irritate me (perhaps because he was beautiful), was alone with me in my room; until then I had liked him only moderately, but his bright, dark gaze intrigued me. A curiosity I could not well explain to myself made me watch his movements. I was standing by the fire, both elbows on the mantelpiece, over a book, and I seemed absorbed, but I could see reflected in the glass the movements of the child to whom my back was turned. Moktir did not know that he was being observed and believed me deep in my reading. I saw him go noiselessly up to a table where Marceline had laid, beside a piece of needlework, a pair of small scissors, seize them furtively, and at one stroke bury them in his burnous. My heart beat hard for a moment, but the soundest reasoning could not bring to a head in me the slightest feeling of revolt. Far more! I could not manage to prove to myself that the feeling which then filled me was anything other than joy. — When I had given Moktir all the time he needed to rob me thoroughly, I turned back to him and spoke to him as if nothing had happened. — Marceline was very fond of that child; yet it was not, I think, the fear of paining her that made me, when I saw her again, invent some fable or other to explain the loss of the scissors rather than denounce Moktir. — From that day on, Moktir became my favourite.