V

On the twenty-first day we stopped opposite a shore covered with trees. Not far from the shore, we could see a town; leading to it was an avenue lined with myrtles, along which strolled groups of women; on both sides of the avenue, between the trees, canvas trestles and booths had been set up for a market, and from the ship we could see splotches of red and yellow representing sweet peppers and clusters of bananas.

Before the day’s end, Mélian, Lambégue and Odinel went ashore, as did a part of the crew, to buy food and to ask directions. We waited for them all evening. The next day, Mélian, Lambégue and Odinel came back, but with only a few of the sailors. They were pale and their wide eyes sparkled with ineffable sweetness. They brought back admirable fruits, scarlet and bleeding like wounds, and cakes made from unknown ingredients; but when we tried to question them, they pretended extreme fatigue and stretched out in their hammocks; then we understood that they had been with the women on the coast, and we were extremely sad. Since we did not wish to set out again until all the others returned, toward evening Lambègue, Odinel, and Mélian, and those sailors who had returned with them the previous day, decided to revisit the town; we were unable to stop them; nor could we keep Alfasar and Hector from following them. Both of them must have talked with those exhausted by their nocturnal orgies, for we saw them standing for a long time beside their swaying hammocks.

All of them returned the following day, and the Orion managed once again to set sail. They had brought back fresh fruit—huge, purple fruit that looked like egg-plants; their eyes were haggard and insulting; their lips betrayed an ironic smirk. It was over the beautiful fruit that the quarrel began; they insisted that we taste it, butits sheen, its splendor made us suspicious of it; when we voiced our distrust, they made fun of us:

“Just look at you courageous gentlemen! You dare not even taste the fruit; you are afraid, and your sterile virtue springs from abstinence, from doubt. Will you always be dubious? Why?”

And without our asking, they related what they had done in town: the market, the purchase of the fruit, and the unknown tongue spoken by the women; then the lighted pleasure gardens and the lanterns in the foliage; they had remained there for a long time before entering, viewing the dances and girandoles through fences; then some passing women had taken them inside, and they had suddenly felt their resistance crumble at the touch of the women’s hands. They had at first been ashamed, then had derided their shame. But when they tried to tell us about their nocturnal embraces, Angaire shouted out that he did not understand how any one dared to pair off to engage in these indispensable but filthy practices, and that at such moments he even shunned mirrors.*

His sudden candor caused an uproar. Angaire then said that he liked women only when veiled, and that he was afraid even then that they would become lewd and remove their garments at the first sign of tenderness. Then they burst out laughing and turned away from us. From this day on, we were no longer all united in our thought— and, acutely aware of what we did not wish to be, we began to know what we were.

They bathed in sad, blue water; they swam in the salty spume. Back in the boat, still naked for a long time, they watched their skin gleam with unwonted paleness and let the clear sea foam dry on them from the heat. And we were ashamed for them, for they looked very beautiful and seemed happier than mere men.†

We were not very fond of Alfasar, for he was pompous and choleric, but we regretted Mélian, who was gracious and compassionate.

* Paul Claudel called attention to Gide’s fascination by mirrors and labeled his Journal “a series of poses…a monument of insincerity.” During his early years Gide liked to stand before a dresser alternately writing on the table and looking at himself in the mirror.

† Gide in his intimate writings frequently called attentionto his personal predicament and called his failure to achieve a blending of the spiritual and the sensual, one of the most bitter realities of his life.