THE TIDE AT NOON
When the time comes that he can sail no longer, the mariner makes his home near the sea; and when it moans he rises to watch, unable to sleep longer; like a nurse who hears a little child complain in the night.
I do likewise, and, by the living virtue of the sea in my blood, my mind communicates with the movement of the waters as does a city by its secret drains.
While I am speaking or writing, resting or eating, I participate in the sea, which rises toward or recedes from me. And often at noon, temporary citizen of this commercial coast, I gaze on what the tide brings us: the tribute of the ocean gathered into this flowing channel in one wide current of yellow water.
I observe the approach of all the people of the sea, the procession of ships towed by the tide as if on the chain of a barge, the junks with their four bulging sails as smooth and stiff as blades, in a puff of wind. Those from Foutchéou carry an enormous fagot of beams lashed to each side; then,among a scattering of tri-colored sampans, come the giants of Europe, the American sailing ships full of gasoline; all the “camels” of Madian, all the cargoes of Hamburg and London, all the carriers of the Coast and the Islands.
The air is very clear. I enter into a light so pure that neither my secret conscience, it seems, nor my body, offer resistance to it. It is deliciously cool. With closed mouth, I breathe the sunlight, my nostrils open to the exhilarating air. Meanwhile noon sounds from the tower of the Customs; the ball of the semaphore drops, all the boats mark off the hour, cannon thunder, the Angelus rings its part, the whistles of the factories mingle with the long tumult of the siren.
All humanity gathers together to eat; the sampan man at the stern of his skiff, lifting a wooden cover, surveys with a contented eye the simmering of his stew. The wharf-hands, tied up in thick bundles of rags, each yoke carried over the shoulder like a pike, surround the open-air kitchen; those who are already served, all laughing, seated on the edges of the wheelbarrows, with bowls of smoking rice between their hands, test the heat with the ends of their greedy tongues.
The regulator of Life’s level rises; all the sluices of the earth are filled; the rivers suspend their course; and the sea, mingling her salt with their sands, joins them, to drink fully at their mouths. It is the hour of plenitude. Now the tortuous canals which cross the city become long serpents of close-packed barges advancing amid vociferations; and the irresistible waters, in their expansion, float bridges of boats and dead bodies from the mud, like corks.