The Dream Maker (9 page)

We stayed for a long time on the shore that first day, so much so that the sun burned our faces. We saw sails go by some way off from the coast, and I watched this miracle and found it more astonishing than the sea. Of all human activity, sailing seems to me the most daring. To ride the waves, and trust one's destiny to the wandering of the wind and the turbulence of water, to head off in the direction of nothing, filled all the while with the hope, or even the certainty, of finding something there. The calling of a sailor seemed to be the fruit of dreams even more insane than my own.

We returned to town. From that moment on I had only one desire: to board a ship, head out to sea, and, since the skill of captains made it possible, sail to the Levant.

My valet, Gautier, had been very discreet during our journey. He had left me alone and I was grateful to him. But it was only fear and a certain timidity that had induced his silence. It was not his true nature. He was, in fact, rather talkative, and he made friends easily. This quality did not depend on language. In this region where he could hardly make himself understood, he had long conversations with everyone we met. I made the most of his talents to make him my informant. In Aigues-Mortes, he forged friendships with fishermen and all sorts of seafarers. Thus, he learned that an expedition was being mounted to the Ports of the Levant. A galley was being loaded in the port, and it belonged to a merchant from Narbonne by the name of Jean Vidal.

I went to see the vessel. It was much larger than the fishing boats and even most of the commercial ships. From the wharf it seemed as tall as several houses. A painted wooden panel at the rear blazoned its name:
Notre-Dame et Saint-Paul
. The hull was made of the same wood that had gone to build the roof and walls of my childhood home. But these beams, instead of being placed on solid ground, rose high in the air and danced to the whim of the waves. Men were unloading bales of cloth from a cart and preparing to stow them in the hold. They informed me that the ship would soon be sailing. We hurried back to Narbonne. In my baggage I had a folded velvet suit and the accessories required should I need a burgher to recognize me as one of his own kind. Gautier went ahead to introduce me. Jean Vidal received me amiably. He was a man my age, with a sharp gaze and the small mouth of someone who weighs his words, guarding them in his mind with the same caution reserved for the money in his coffers. He was pleasant and well disposed toward me. He informed me that the ship was already fitted out. A group of Montpellier merchants had bought shares in her; the cargo was full. I insisted on buying a share. When I had made my introduction, I emphasized the office of minter I had occupied in Bourges, and we had spoken the names of several prominent merchants of the Languedoc with whom I had been in business. Vidal showed great respect for our city and viewed it, quite justifiably, as the new capital of the realm. These connections left him favorably inclined, and he sought to please me. We agreed to that I would board the vessel with my valet, but that my share in the cargo would be purely symbolic. I accepted his terms, all the more gladly because I had brought only money with me, and very little in the way of goods (in all, a bale of precious fur which I intended to use along the way to acquire what we might need).

Thus, less than a week later, I climbed the wooden gangplank and boarded the galley. I met a dozen other passengers. They had said their farewells to their families and were now in that exalted, worried state of mind which always precedes departures. They spoke loudly, laughed, called out to people on the wharf to hand them one last letter, or convey a last recommendation. I understood that most of them had never been to sea. The ship's captain, Augustin Sicard, walked among the voyagers, trying to calm them with reassuring words. With his healthy complexion and round belly he looked like a laborer. No doubt I had been mistaken about sailors. I had pictured them as visionary dreamers. Sicard made me think that they came, rather, from an ancient race of peasants. Frustrated by the limits of their fields, they had decided to expand the furrows ordinarily traced in the soil to the surface of the water.

The oarsmen at their benches were not that different. They had the resigned air of men who work in nature. Their calloused hands curled round the wood of the long oars in the same way they had once held the polished handles of their hoes. We sailed at dawn. Most of the passengers stood by the stern, waving and gazing at the city fading into the distance. As I had no one to wave to on the wharf, I stood by the prow, breathing in the sea air. Everything was new, terrifying, and full of promise: the creaking of the wood, the motion of the deck as it went up and down according to the surface of the sea, the sun appearing in a gap between clouds and water. The wind brought the smell of the sea and droplets of salt water, whereas below deck the ship smelled of sap and sweat, victuals and pitch.

Nothing could bring me greater happiness than this birth into an unknown life, promising both beauty and death, hardship today and wealth, no doubt, tomorrow. The life of adventure that lay ahead, unlike the burgher's life and its security, might augur the worst but also the best—that is, the inconceivable, the unexpected, the fabulous. I felt alive at last.

The day before yesterday I went with Elvira to the town and was almost found out. The man who is looking for me was in the midst of a heated discussion with two other men who seemed to be strangers as well. I observed them from a distance as I leaned against the wall of the harbormaster's office. Suddenly, I saw them start in my direction. I had been distracted by the maneuvers of a ship in the harbor and by the time I realized they were headed my way they were already quite near. I had not noticed that at this midday hour there were fewer people about. The strangers no doubt needed some information. They wanted to come up to me because I was the closest person, and one of the only ones not hurrying off to his lunch. Fortunately, my hat hid me well and I was still in the shade of the wall, whereas they were hampered by the dazzling sunlight as they walked toward me. I do not think they recognized me. When I fled, they laughed loudly and did not give chase. No doubt they took me for a poor peasant frightened by their rich merchants' finery.

Still, I came close to being unmasked and captured. After this alarm I have decided not to venture into town for the time being, but to try and make myself scarce. I will stay in the house and limit my walks to the immediate vicinity.

In the morning our terrace is in the shade, and the lingering chill of night prevents me from staying still. This is the time when I go for a walk along the path that leads down to the sea. The nature here does not waken with the dawn. On the contrary, it is in the evening that the colors blaze and all the fragrances rise. With the appearance of the sun, the plants seem to curl in on themselves, grow pale and motionless in anticipation of the sun's pounding, until sunset. The early morning is an inquisitive moment when one can watch the preparations for this vigil. The sea itself, at this morning hour, hardly moves, and the lapping of little waves against the sharp rocks produces a regular murmur, as calming as a lullaby. I take these soft hours to let memories of the past rise up. When I am full of them, so much so that I no longer pay attention to what is around me, I go slowly back up through the bushes of oleander and ilex and settle beneath the trellis, now warm, to write.

There are many houses like ours on the island, and I hope that my pursuers will grow weary of exploring them before they find me. Through Elvira I sent a note to the innkeeper who found me this hideaway, to ask him to spread the rumor that I embarked on a vessel bound for Rhodes, or Italy. To my message I added a sum apt to persuade him to do my bidding.

Although there is nothing to justify it, I feel confident. I have been hounded for so long that I have come to know my pursuers' methods. They throw themselves on the clues they are given with very little discernment. All I have to do is wait.

But this alters the atmosphere of my time here. I had come to Elvira's with the idea that I would stay for only a few days. Now I will have to reckon in weeks, or even months. The sweetness I have found in her presence is no longer merely a passing comfort. Our silent affection has acquired the strength of a veritable attachment. I do not know what she feels, but for me something is being born which looks not yet like love; perhaps, simply, it is like happiness.

I am more and more occupied with my writing. Ever since I began the story of my life, my greatest desire, every day, is to immerse myself in the past as if it were a clear, warm pool.

I had begun telling of my journey to the Levant, and the setting in which fate has placed me at this time is by far the best I can imagine to inspire me. Chios, with its heat and its colors, already belongs to the Levant . . .

 

*

 

It was an extraordinary voyage. I have preserved such a detailed, precise memory of it that it would be possible for me to tell you about it for days. At the time, however, the wealth of the experience first seemed to me like a chaos of novelties, troubling my understanding. I do not exaggerate when I say that it has taken the rest of my life, and so many other experiences, to put some order into what was initially a shock that left me almost without consciousness.

On board ship, our days were spent in the heat on deck. The labored cry of the oarsmen, the creaking vessel, the seasickness and muted throbbing of headache troubled my mind. My companions were no better off. Those who had been proud burghers on departure had now stowed their fine clothing in the chests in steerage, and spent their days flat on their backs all around the railing, livid and filthy with vomit and excrement. As a result, we forgot about external danger, in particular the corsairs. On several occasions Augustin Sicard changed course to head into port, or had us anchor to leeward of an island that would conceal us while a suspicious sail crossed the horizon. We took in water at Agrigente, then in Crete. Finally, after a long, ultimate, and perilous crossing on the open sea we reached Alexandria in Egypt. Part of the cargo was unloaded there. Some of my companions took the opportunity to travel by land to Cairo, where the Sultan reigned. In spite of my desire to join them, I had to stay on board with two other passengers who were suffering, as I was, from fever and the bloody flux.

The galley, now almost empty, would continue its voyage to Beirut, and then come back to Alexandria to fetch the others who had disembarked there. Those who were sick stayed on board for the short crossing. My condition gradually improved. I had regained my wits, and during the brief journey I questioned the crew about the Holy Land. A few sailors who had already been there told me about what I might find. They all insisted on the fact that I would be filled with wonder. And the moment I stepped ashore in Beirut this was indeed the case. But mingled with this admiration was a curious feeling. I was surprised by my own wonder. I found it difficult to discern what, exactly, was so worthy of praise in this place.

To be sure, there were the colors of the steep coastline: the sea takes on an emerald hue, and in the distance, steep hills covered with dark green patches of cedar forest overlook the city. The site is splendid, but other ports of call had already shown us such beautiful sights.

Beirut is an open city that preserves some traces of the edifices built by the crusaders, but most of them have been destroyed. This sign of ruin, sadly, resembles that which afflicts a great number of towns and villages in France. And as in France, one sees rich and poor side by side, notables and common folk. It does not seem that the lives of the unfortunate are any more enviable in the Levant than in our towns.

Nor did my sense of wonder come from references to the Gospel. The pilgrims I met in Beirut lived in a state of perpetual turmoil as they made their way from one holy place to another. A barren plot covered in pebbles put them into a trance the moment they thought they had found the place where the adulterous woman had been stoned. But I have already confessed to my lack of appetite for such celestial fare.

My companions were principally merchants, and they were most affected by what we discovered in the bazaars. The city was overflowing with precious goods: varnished pottery from Martaban, silk from Asia Minor, porcelain from China, spices from the Indies . . . These treasures, however, were not produced locally. In the city one could find artisans who enameled glass, inlaid cedar wood with mother-of-pearl, or hammered copper, but their crafts were, all in all, quite modest. As for the countryside around the city, baking with heat, it looked like anything but a garden of the Hesperides. One had to face facts: the Holy Land was not a paradise. So what was it that gave this land its particular character, which commanded admiration? I understood only after a week had gone by.

The last of the cargo had been unloaded from the galley. Sicard replaced it with goods bought locally to be shipped to Cairo. The vessel left again for Alexandria. The plan was that it should come back within a month. I decided to stay on land with a few companions. We would re-embark the next time it called. In the meantime, I wanted to go deeper inland and penetrate the mystery of the Levant, with its strange charm.

We hired donkeys from a muleteer and set off toward Damascus. The road wound its way through the mountains. In spite of the heat of the day, the nights were freezing. We would awake covered with a heavy dewfall, moisture sliding down our necks and into our collars. Then we traveled down a broad valley, which the pilgrims called the valley of Noah. They believed that it was in this very place that Noah built his ship while waiting for the flood. We rode along gorges that led to a vast expanse of desert outside Damascus. It was here that an encounter showed me what I was looking for.

A camel caravan was arriving slowly from the east. Made drowsy by the majestic swaying of their animals, the camel drivers hardly looked at us. The animals were laden with enormous hampers in which one could see earthenware jars, carpets, and copper plates. The muleteer said that the caravan had come from Tabriz, in Persia, carrying goods from all over Asia. The caravan passed slowly by, and suddenly I understood what was so magnificent about this place: it was at the center of the world. In itself it did not possess any exceptional qualities, but history had made it the place toward which everything converged. It was here that the great religions were born, where the different peoples you met in the streets could mingle: Arabs, Christians, Jews, Turkomans, Armenians, Ethiopians, Indians. Above all, this place attracted all the wealth of the world. The finest objects made in China, India, or Persia joined the best productions of Europe or the Sudan.