From 'Onitsha'

The days were so long. Perhaps it was the summertime light, or the horizon, so far away, with nothing to hold one's gaze. It was like waiting, hour after hour, until you no longer knew what you were waiting for. Maou stayed in the dining room after breakfast, next to the greasy window, which blurred the color of the sea. She was writing. With the white paper spread flat on the mahogany table and the inkwell wedged in the hollow space provided for a glass, she was writing, her head somewhat inclined. She had got into the habit of lighting up a cigarette, a Player's bought in packets of one hundred at the steward's shop; she let the cigarette burn by itself on the edge of the ashtray engraved with the initials of the Holland Africa Line. . . . To write, listening to the rustling of water against the hull, as if one were travelling up an endless river.

San Remo, she wrote, the square in the shade of the tall trees in full bloom, the fountain, the clouds above the sea, the scarabs in the warm air.

I feel the breeze on my eyes.

In my hands I hold the prey of silence.

I wait for the quiver of pleasure from your gaze on my body.

-- Jean-Marie Gustave Le Clézio, "Onitsha,"

published in the United States by

the University of Nebraska Press, 1997