One morning the melancholy rain ceased to fall. The sun rose up into a sky that had been washed clean of the murky vapors of winter, and was now a deep blue.
In the hidden garden the big Judas tree stretched forth its arms, laden with flowers of pink porcelain.
To the right were the hills at Mustapha, their voluptuous curves receding into the distance, to lose themselves finally in infinite transparency.
The fronts of the villas glistened with tiny gold sequins.
Far-off, the pale wings of the feluccas dotted the pattern of changing reflections that lay across the quiet gulf. The warm air passed by like a caress. There was a shuddering in the essence of things. It was then that the vagrant conceived the idea of waiting, of staying in one place, of being happy.
He shut himself away with the one he loved, away in the milky little house where the hours flowed by without touching, in a delicious languid stream, behind carved wooden screens, behind the faded curtains.
Stretching before them was the grandiose stage-set of Algiers, inviting them to share in its tender death-throes.
Why leave, why look elsewhere for happiness? The vagrant had come upon the inexpressible, here in the shifting depths of his loved one's eyes, depths he plumbed for endless periods of time, until the unspeakable anguish of pleasure crushed them both beneath its weight. Why seek the great open air, when their narrow hiding-place looked out over the immense horizon, and when they could feel the entire universe within themselves?
All that which was not a part of his love now fell away from him and was swept into the nebulous distance.
He abandoned his proud dream of solitude, and with it the joy he had felt when he had found a chance lodging. He renounced the friendly road, that tyrannical mistress drunk with sunlight who had ensnared him, and whom he had worshiped.
For hours and days the hot-blooded vagrant let himself be lulled by the music of a happiness that tasted of eternity.
Life and the things of life seemed beautiful to him. Also he thought he had become a better man, for as a result of his relaxed will he had mistreated his brutally healthy body, and this had left him with a better temper.
In the old days of exile, under the crushing boredom of sedentary life in the city, it had been painful merely to recall the play of sunlight on open plains.
Now, lying on a bed warmed by the sun that entered through the open window, he could turn to his loved one and whisper into her ear, telling her about the country of his dreams, and his words had the sweet melancholy that is weighted with the scent of dead things.
The vagrant longed for nothing. He hoped only for the limitless duration of that which existed.
✧✧✧✧
The warm night fell across the gardens. A silence reigned, an immense sighing, the sigh of the sleeping sea under the stars, as it lay beside the hot amorous earth.
On the soft manes of the hills the fires blazed like jewels. There were flames that trailed off in golden chains along the coastline, and flames that flared up suddenly like uncertain eyes in the velvet shadow of the big trees.
The vagrant and his love went out and walked along the road, where there was no one. They went hand in hand, smiling, in the night.
They did not speak, because they understood each other better in silence.
Slowly they climbed the slopes of the Sahel, as the late-arriving moon came up out of the eucalyptus forests of the Mitidja.
They sat down on a rock.
The nocturnal countryside was bathed in a bluish light, and silver feathers trembled on the damp branches.
For a long time the vagrant stared at the wide white road that led into the distance.
It was the road to the south.
The vagrant's soul suddenly awoke. A world of memories stirred within him.
He shut his eyes to blot out the visions, and his hand closed tighter on hers.
But in spite of himself he opened his eyes.
The old desire for the other mistress, tyrannical and drunk with sun, had returned.
Once again, in all the fibers of his being, he belonged to her.
One last time, as he stood up, he gazed for a long moment at the road; he had promised himself to it.
They went back into the living shadows of their garden and lay down silently under a great camphor tree.
Above their heads the Judas tree stretched forth its arms, offering the pink flowers that looked lavender in the blue of the night.
The vagrant glanced at his love beside him.
Already she was no more than a vaporous vision, something without consistence that would soon be absorbed by the clear moonlight.
Her image was indistinct, very far away, scarcely visible. Then the vagrant, who still loved her, under-stood that at dawn he would be leaving, and his heart grew heavy.
He took one of the big flowers of the spicy camphor tree and pressed it to his lips to stifle a sob.
✧✧✧✧
The great red sun had sunk into an ocean of blood above the black line of the horizon.
Swiftly the daylight went out, and the stony desert was drowned in a frosty transparency.
In one corner of the plain a few fires were lighted.
Nomads armed with guns sat around the bright flames, and the long white folds of their burnouses moved in the firelight.
A fettered horse whinnied.
A man crouching on the ground, his head thrown back, his eyes shut as if he were in a dream, sang an ancient song in which the word for love alternated with the word for death.
Then everything grew still, and became a part of the immense silence roundabout.
✧✧✧✧
The vagrant lay rolled in this burnous facing a half-dead fire.
Relaxed, resting his head on his arm, he abandoned himself to the infinite sweetness of falling asleep alone on the ground, a stranger among simple rough men, in a nameless desert spot to which he would never return.
Excerpt from The Oblivion Seekers, Translated by Paul Bowles. City Lights Books, San Francisco, 1975