14
PARTISAN REVIEW
who had strayed somewhat was the shabby ideal of our priests, I
despised them for daring so little when they could do so much, they
lacked faith and I had it, I wanted to be acknowledged by the tor–
turers themselves, to fling them on their knees and make them say:
'0 Lord, here is thy victory,' to rule in short by the sheer force of
words over an army of the wicked. Oh, I was sure of reasoning
logically on that subject, never quite sure of myself otherwise, but
once I get an idea I don't let go of it, that's my strong point, yes the
strong point of the fellow they all pitied!
The sun has risen higher, my forehead is beginning to burn.
Around me the stones are beginning to crack open with a dull sound,
the only cool thing is the rifle's barrel, cool as the fields, as the
evening rain long ago when the soup was simmering, they would wait
for me, my father and mother who would occasionally smile at me,
perhaps I loved them. But that's all in the past, a film of heat is
beginning to rise from the trail, come on, missionary, I'm waiting
for you, now I know how to answer the message, my new masters
taught me, and I know they are right, you have to settle accounts
with that question of love. When I fled the seminary in Algiers I
had a different idea of the savages and only one detail of my imagin–
ings was true, they are cruel. I had robbed the treasurer's office, cast
off my habit, crossed the Atlas, the upper plateaus and the desert,
the bus-driver of the Trans-Sahara line made fun of me: 'Don't go
there,' he too, what had got into them all, and the gusts of sand for
hundreds of wind-blown kilometers, progressing and backing in the
face of the wind, then the mountains again made up of black peaks
and ridges sharp as steel, and after them it took a guide to go out
on the endless sea of brown pebbles, screaming with heat, burning
with the fires of a thousand mirrors, to the spot on the confines of
the white country and the land of the blacks, where stands the city
of salt. And the money the guide stole from me, ever naive I had
shown it to him, but he left me on the trail-just about here, it so
happens-after having struck me: 'Dog, there's the way, the honor's
all mine, go ahead, go on, they'll show you,' and they did show
me, oh yes, they're like the sun that never stops, except at night,
beating sharply and proudly, that is beating me hard at this moment,
too hard, with a multitude of lances burst from the ground, oh
shelter, yes shelter, under the big rock, before everything gets
muddled.
