The Tale of the Rose by Consuelo de Saint-Exupery Page B

retreat into my silence. I’m like a different man there, I have a different skin, I need rest, calm, peace. So you make conversation for me all by yourself, giving me details about the letters we’ve received from France, about our friends in Casablanca, you talk to me about your life, about life in general. I admire you, you forget nothing, you keep me informed about this country. The doctor in Casa did this, the colonel said that . . . The latest news from the papers. But when I see you exhausted because I’m a bear who devours your words, your tender gestures, I’d like to dance for you alone, the way a bear dances, to entertain you, to tell you that I’m your bear, yours, for life.
    “Listen, some funny things happen to us during the stopovers. The other day, a Christian association for the protection of women, near Dakar, sent us some fifteen-year-old girls to keep the pilots company during their night off!
    “They sell those poor creatures in the market as slaves, you know. The association let us know its schedule of fees. We were to pay these virgin girls four French francs for the evening. To them, it’s a lot of money, in their far corner of the desert. We often ask them to sweep out the shack, wash a glass for us, clean a gasoline lamp. One day, Mermoz, * who was coming back quite late from a café in Dakar, found a little girl of about fourteen at his door. He had drunk a lot, and he told her to leave. But the little girl grew upset and started to cry; it was the only way she had of showing her despair since she didn’t speak French. So Mermoz told her, ‘Come in, you can sleep with me.’ He starts taking her clothes off, taking off her burnous, but she weeps all the harder. He gives her the four francs, not wanting to pay any more than the official rate, for the sake of the other men. He puts her burnous back on. The tears don’t stop. He takes the burnous off again and gives her a second fistful of money. ‘To hell with the official rates, you’re nice, you’re going to sleep.’ But the little girl, almost naked in the darkness, doesn’t want to leave and goes on sobbing. He no longer knows what to do. He gives her presents: his watch, which fills her with wonder, his eau de Cologne. She calms down for a moment, then plunges back into her despair. Mermoz becomes enraged. He shouts, ‘I’ve had enough! Leave, I want to sleep; go home.’ The little girl just stands there, looking lost, immobile, like someone who hasn’t yet done what she came to do. Her deep eyes gleam with an anguished light. Her mouth half open, she can’t say anything in the language of this white man who flies, who comes down out of the sky. Sounds emerge from her throat softly, as if she were speaking to herself. In the face of her immense sorrow, the pilot takes pity on her; once again he takes off the white cloth that covers her and looks her over attentively. She wasn’t like the other Bedouin women, who come submissively, their eyes lowered before wickedness. . . . The pilot finds her beautiful, even more beautiful with her strange expression. He tries to soothe the look of a hunted animal out of her eyes. ‘That’s how several of my fellow pilots have married Arab girls,’ he says to himself. At dawn, he pushes the girl out of bed. ‘Go away.’ She feels the order in the pilot’s muscles. She leaves the bed. She understands that she must go. But she sits down on the ground again, to show him she will not leave. This is more than Mermoz can bear. ‘Oh, right, you want to follow me like a slave, a dog . . .’ And he says the word in Arabic. She screams in indignation. An airplane comes rumbling down the runway. Mermoz looks at her, then shuts his eyes. Maybe, he thinks, if I pretend I’m asleep, she’ll leave. He still has long hours of flying ahead of him. He must sleep. If he falls asleep in the middle of a flight, it will be this stubborn girl’s fault. She’s stronger than he is. The pilot sighs. The