Just one more souvenir of Algeria and then--back to the windmill!...
I couldn't sleep the night I arrived at the farm of the Sahel. Maybe it
was the new country, the stress of the voyage, the barking jackals, on
top of the irritating, oppressive, and completely asphyxiating heat. It
felt as though the mosquito nets were keeping the air out with the
insects.... As I opened my window at first light, I saw a heavy summer
mist, slow-moving, fringed with black and pink, and floating in the air
like smoke over a battle field. Not a leaf moved in the lovely gardens
stretched out before me, where, the well-spaced vines, that gave such
sweet wine, were enjoying full sunshine on the slopes. There were also
European fruit trees sheltered in a shady spot, and small orange and
mandarin trees in long, closely packed lines. Everything had the same
gloomy look about it, with that certain limpness of leaf waiting for
the storm. Even the banana trees, those great, pale-green reeds,
usually on the move as some light breeze tangles their fine, light
foliage, stood straight and silent in their symmetrical plumage.
I stayed there for a while looking at this fabulous plantation, where
seemingly all types of the world's trees could be found, each one
giving exotic flowers and fruit, in its proper season. Between the
wheat fields and the massive cork-oaks, a stream shone, and
refreshed--the eye at least--on an airless morning. As I approved the
fineness and order of it all: the beautiful farm with its Moorish
arcades and terraces, brilliantly white in the dawn, and its
surrounding stables and barns, I recalled that it was twenty years
since these brave settlers set up home in the valley of the Sahel. At
first, they found only a workman's shack, and ground haphazardly
planted with dwarf palms and mastic trees. Everything was yet to be
done; everything to be built. At any time, there could be an attack
from Arabs. They had to leave the plough out for cover in case of a
shoot-out. Then there was the sickness, the ophthalmia, the fevers; and
the failed harvest, the groping inexperience, and the fight against a
narrow-minded administration--always putting off its prevarications.
What a world of work, and fatigue, and having to watch their backs all
the time!
Even now, despite the end of the bad times, and the hard-won good
fortune, both the settler and his wife were up before anyone else on
the farm. At an ungodly hour they could be heard coming and going,
overlooking the workers' coffee, in the huge kitchens on the ground
floor. Shortly afterwards, a bell was rung and the workmen set out for
the day's work. There were some Burgundy wine-growers, Kabyle workers
in rags and red tarbooshes, bare-legged Mahonian terrace workers,
Maltese, and people from Lucca; men from many places and therefore more
difficult to manage. Outside the door, the farmer curtly gave out the
day's work to everyone. When he was finished, this fine man looked up
and scrutinised the sky anxiously. Then, he noticed me at the window:
--Awful growing weather, he told me, here comes the sirocco.
In fact, as the sun rose waves of hot, suffocating air came in from the
south as though an oven door had briefly opened. We didn't know where
to put ourselves or what to do. The whole morning was like this. We
took coffee sitting on mats in the gallery, without finding the will
power to move or speak. The dogs, stretched out, hoping the flagstones
would keep them cool, looked utterly washed out. Lunch picked us up a
bit; it was a generous if singular meal, and included carp, trout, wild
boar, hedgehog, Staouëli butter, Crescian wines, guavas, and bananas.
All in all, an improbability of delicacies which nevertheless reflected
the complex variety of nature which surrounded us.... We were just
about to get up from the table, when shouts rang out from behind the
closed French window, shouts that guaranteed that we would soon
experience first-hand the furnace-like heat in the garden:
--Locusts! Locusts!
My host paled, as any man would who had been told of an impending
catastrophe, and we shot outside. For ten minutes, in the farmhouse,
once so calm, there was the sound of running footsteps, and indistinct
voices lost in the sudden panic. From the shade of the dormitories, the
servants rushed outside banging and clanging anything that came to
hand; sticks, forks, flails, copper cauldrons, basins, saucepans. The
shepherds blew their horns, others blew their conches or their hunting
horns; a fearfully discordant racket, soon overlaid by the shrill
voices of the Arab women ululating as they rushed out from nearby
caves. Sometimes, setting up a great racket and a resonant vibration in
the air is enough to send the locusts away, or at least to stop them
coming down.
So, where were they then, these awful creatures? In a sky vibrant with
heat, I saw nothing except a solitary cloud forming on the horizon, a
dense, copper-coloured, hail-cloud, but making a din like a storm in a
forest. It was the locusts. They flew en masse, suspended on their
long, thin wings and despite all the shouting and effort, they just
kept on coming, casting a huge, threatening shadow over the plain. Soon
they were overhead. The edges of the cloud frayed momentarily and then
broke away, as some of them, distinct and reddish, peeled off from the
rest like the first few drops of a shower. Then, the whole cloud burst
and a hailstorm of insects fell thick, fast, and loud. As far as the
eye could see, the fields were completely obliterated by locusts. And
they were enormous; each one as big as a finger.
Then the killing began to a hideous squelching sound like straw being
crushed. The heaving soil was turned over using harrows, mattocks, and
ploughs. But the more you killed, the more of them there were. They
swarmed in waves, their front legs all tangled up, their back legs
leaping for dear life--sometimes into the path of the horses harnessed
up for this bizarre work. The farm dogs, and some from the caves, were
released onto the fields, and fell amongst them crunching them in a
frenzy. Then, two companies of Turks following their buglers came to
the aid of the colonists, and the massacre changed complexion
completely.
They didn't crush the locusts, they burnt them with a wide sprinkling
of gunpowder.
I was drained by all this killing and sickened by the smell, so I went
back into the farmhouse, but there were almost as many in there. They
had come in through the open doors and windows and down the chimney. On
the woodwork and curtains, already stripped, they crawled, fell,
fluttered, and climbed up the white wall, casting huge shadows making
them look even uglier. And there was just no getting away from the
awful stench.
Later, we had to do without water with our meal as the tanks, basins,
wells, and fish ponds were all covered over with dead locusts. In the
evening, in my room, where many had been killed, I heard a buzzing
under the furniture, and the cracking of wing cases, which sounded like
plant pods bursting in the sweltering heat. Naturally, I couldn't sleep
again. Besides, everybody else was still noisily busy all over the
farm. Flames were spreading over the ground from one end of the plain
to the other; the Turks were still in their killing fields.
The next day, opening my window, I could see that the locusts were
gone. But what total devastation they left behind. There wasn't a
single flower, or a blade of grass; everything was black, charred, and
eaten away. Only the banana, apricot, peach, and mandarin trees could
be recognised by the outline of their stripped branches, but lacking
the charm and flourish of the leaves which only yesterday had been
their living essence. The rooms and the water tanks were being washed
out. Everywhere, labourers were digging into the ground destroying the
locusts' eggs. Each sod of soil was carefully examined and turned over.
But it broke their hearts to see the thousands of white, sap-filled
roots in the crumbling, still-fertile soil....