BETWEEN YES AND NO
1091
very end of the Moorish town, I remember not a happiness gone by,
but rather a strange feeling. It is already night. On the walls, sheiks
clothed in green are being pursued among leafy palms by canary–
yellow lions. In a corner of the cafe an acetylene lamp casts a flicker–
ing light. The real lighting comes from a little enamelled oven in the
fireplace. The flame lights up the center of the room and I feel the
shadows it casts on my face. I am facing the door and the bay.
The proprietor of the cafe, crouching in a corner, seems to be looking
at my empty glass, at the bottom of which is a mint leaf. Nobody
inside, the noise of the city below, farther off, lights on the bay.
I hear the Arab breathing very hard, and his eyes gleam in the
shadow. Is that the sound of the sea off in the distance? The world is
sighing out to me in a long rhythm and brings me the indifference
and the tranquillity of that which does not die. The lions on the walls
undulate in the great red shadows of the flame. The beacons begin
to turn: a green light, a red one, a white one. And always the great
sigh of the world. A kind of secret song is born of this indifference.
And here am I repatriated. I think of a child who lived in a poor
neighborhood. What a neighborhood, what a house! It was only one
story high and there was no light on the stairway. Now again, years
later, he could go back there in the middle of the night. He knows
that he would climb the stairway at full speed without even once
stumbling. His very body is permeated with this house. His legs still
retain the exact measurement of the height of the steps. His hand, the
instinctive horror, which he has never overcome, of the banister. And
it was because of the cockroaches.
On summer evenings, the workmen sit on the balconies. In his
house there was only a tiny window. So they used to bring chairs
down in front of the house and enjoy the evening. There was the
street, the dairyman next door, the cafes opposite and the noise of
children running from door to door. But above all, between the big
ficus trees, there was the sky. There is a solitude in poverty, but a
solitude which restores to each thing its value. At a certain degree
of fortune, the sky itself and the starry night seem to be natural
wealth. But at the bottom of the scale, the sky takes on its full mean–
ing: a priceless grace. Summer nights, mysteries in which stars sput–
tered. Behind the child was a smelly hallway and his little chair,
which was punctured, sagged beneath him slightly. But his eyes were
