Free Desert Divers by Sven Lindqvist

as lovers and marrying one of them without altering her unbridled life – considered in those terms, it is easier to understand what forces Isabelle was challenging.
    The French Empire in North Africa rested ultimately on the myth of the superiority of the white race. Her whole way of life questioned that myth.
    It also questioned the myth of male superiority. If a female transvestite could penetrate the world of men and acquire its freedoms, vices and privileges, then the gender rôles were made to waver. Unclear sexual identity aroused anxiety and aggression. Isabelle put herself outside all categories.
    Even that might possibly have been forgiven, as her fate verified all prejudices, apparently confirming that anyone who defies the conventions sinks into the dregs. So far, so good. But throughout her deterioration, Isabelle had the insolence to maintain a sense of moral superiority. That was unforgivable.
    In that respect she belongs to a totally different family from Loti. She belongs to a long line of French literature running from Villon via Baudelaire and Rimbaud to Céline and Genet. She may be the only woman in that company.

The Immoralist
63
    André Gide’s
Fruits of the Earth
was published in Swedish in 1947, when I was fifteen.
    As soon as I opened the book I felt someone was speaking to me, not over my head to other adults, but directly to me. And so confidentially, almost whispering, as if it were late at night when everyone else was asleep.
    The book gave me another name, Natanael, which drew me into the text so that we could be together there. I liked it very much.
    Some writers hide themselves in Action, others conceal themselves in Facts. But the master in
Fruits of the Earth
despised such hiding places. He talked about himself. He had a message. It filled the whole book. It was already there in his voice, in his way of speaking to me.
    I was looking for a Master. I heard his voice for the first time in
Fruits of the Earth
, and fortunately he was also looking for what I wanted to be: an apprentice.
    That was dangerous and forbidden. I realized that at once. The Master defied all authority. He preached departure, departure from everything, even from himself. He said: ‘When you’ve read my book, throw it away and go out! I would like it to have given you the desire to leave something, anything, your town, your family, your way of thinking. Don’t take my book with you … Forget me.’
    That voice made me happy. But it also frightened me, made me afraid of the demands it made, afraid of the great unknown awaiting me.
64
    ‘Our actions consume us, but they give us our radiance.’
    That could be an epitaph for Isabelle Eberhardt.
    She went to North Africa in 1897, when
Fruits of the Earth
was on sale for the first time. She died in 1904 when
The Immoralist
had just been published. Her whole writing life was lived between these two of Gide’s books.
    She was obsessed by the same mystique of departure as Gide. She preached the same nomadism. As he did, she wanted to try every experience, even those that were bad, brutal or depraved. It is conceivable that the reason why she dressed as a boy was in order to become his favourite apprentice, Natanael.
    But there is nothing to indicate that she read Gide, at thattime still a little-known young writer. André and Isabelle were simply children of the same day.
    And through
Fruits of the Earth
, that day also became mine.
65
    I came to
Fruits of the Earth
from
Manual for Infantrymen
, which had long been my favourite book. I also came from the training guide
Physical Fitness and Strength
. I read Gide in the same way. I came from
Scouting for Boys
. In this last, the narrative and descriptive parts were interspersed with small comments in brackets: ‘(practise it!)’. I read parentheses of that kind into
Fruits of the Earth
as well.
    When it said:
    ‘Every creature is capable of authenticity, every feeling of fullness.’
    Or:
    ‘I lived in a state of