Desert Rose

Desert Rose (Little Prince continuation of “Love in the Heavens“)

The Vintage Princess continues her story:

The next morning when I woke up, Toño was already working on his plane. He said that we were running out of water so we needed to get out of the desert as soon as possible. I remembered the knapsack my alien friends had given me when they brought me here. Surprisingly, everything needed to make a suitable breakfast was inside of it. Toño was quite surprised when I handed him a cup of coffee and an éclair.

Most of the day was spent with plane reparations. It was terribly hot and difficult to work. But Toño was determined to get it fixed as soon as possible.

Finally, it was evening and the heat collected by the sand during the day was beginning to dissipate causing the temperature to drop. I threw a blanket on the sand for a picnic dinner then opened my knapsack. I don’t know what kind of technology those aliens used but what I was finding inside my knapsack was incredible. Cheese, cold cuts, bread, a bottle of Chateau Margaux and even a bowl of strawberries! Toño and I ate as we sat on the blanket looking up at the stars. I noticed that Toño had fixed his gaze on one particular star. He said he wondered if that was the home of the Little Prince. Curious to know more, I encouraged him to talk.

Despite all his macho manners, he’d been in the desert alone for too long and needed to externalize his feelings. Because the need to connect with another is basic to human life–Interrelating is how we homo sapiens were able to evolve.

With the assistance of some wine, Toño finally relaxed enough to talk. This is the story he told me:

One morning while Toño was working on his plane, he was shocked to see a young boy in the desert. But even more surprising was the young boy’s immediate request that Toño draw him a lamb. Toño tried but his drawings were always rejected by the young boy. Finally, Toño drew a box and told the young boy that his lamb was inside the box. This time the young boy was delighted with the drawing. After folding it and putting it in his pocket, he began bombarding Toño with questions. But Toño had a few questions he wanted to ask as well. Finally, he learned that the young boy, who’d introduced himself as the Little Prince, came from asteroid B-612. He lived there alone with his rose and three volcanoes (although one was inactive). The rose had appeared on his asteroid unexpectedly and immediately demanded attention. The Little Prince had fallen in love with the rose but her melodramatic nature irritated him. So much so that the Little Prince decided to leave his home and travel the universe. He got lucky and was able to hitch a ride with some wild birds migrating elsewhere.

He travelled to other planets and met other people. The more people he met, the more he believed that people were absurd. Nevertheless, the Little Prince learned something from every place he’d visited. He’d met a king, a businessman, an astronomer, a narcissist, a drunk, and a lamplighter.

The Little Prince also learned new things like the importance of eradicating baobab saplings before they could grow up and take over.

He also developed a passion for sunsets. His planet was so small that, unlike earth, he could see various sunsets a day simply by moving his chair.

But it was meeting the fox that radically changed him.

Life for the Little Prince on earth was very lonely. One morning, under the apple tree, he met a fox. The Little Prince was elated because finally, he believed, he had someone to play with. But no, said the fox. They couldn’t play together because he, the fox, wasn’t tamed. As the little prince had no idea what “tamed “ meant, the fox explained that “tame” meant to establish ties. Because ties make you unique. If you’ve no ties with anyone, you’re no one. “Take me, for example”, said the fox. “For you I’m just like thousands of other foxes. I don’t need you and you don’t need me. But if you tame me”, continued the fox, “a reciprocal need is created. You will become unique for me as I will for you.” And who doesn’t want to be unique to someone?

The conversation with the fox made the Little Prince think about his rose.

The fox complained that his life was monotonous. He hunted chickens and men hunted him. All the chickens were alike and all the men were alike. As a consequence, the fox had become quite bored. But, he said, if the Little Prince would tame him, the sun would finally shine on his life. The fox would be able to distinguish the sound of the Little Prince’s footsteps that would be different from the others. The fox would even see the golden grain of fields differently because the color would remind him of the Little Prince’s curls.

The fox fixed his gaze on the Little Prince with intensity and pleaded: Please tame me.

The Little Prince told the fox that he would like to tame him only he couldn’t because he had things to do. Things like discovering new friends and understanding new things. But the fox responded that one only understands those things that one tames. Men no longer take the time to understand anything making it difficult to create friendships.

Convinced, the Little Prince asked what he had to do to tame the fox. “You must be very patient”, said the fox. “In the beginning, we shall sit some distance from one another and look at each other only from the corner of an eye. We will not talk because words are the source of misunderstanding.”

So, little by little, the Little Prince tamed the fox. But when it was time for the Little Prince to go back home, the fox said “Now I shall cry”. The Little Prince couldn’t understand why the fox had wanted to be tamed knowing that it would cause him sadness. “Whenever I see the golden wheat fields, I’ll think of you,” said the fox.,

“For you to better understand me, you need to go to the Rose Garden and look at all the roses. When you see them altogether, you will understand how unique your rose is.”

The Little Prince went to the Rose Garden as the fox had asked. After much observation, the Little Prince began to understand what the fox was talking about. He stood in front of all the roses and said, “you’re beautiful but empty and no one would be willing to die for you.” This made the roses cry.

Nevertheless, the Little Prince continued: “a passerby could think that my rose is just like you but she’s not. Because she belongs to me. I’ve watered her and sheltered her and have even killed for her. To protect her, I killed caterpillars depriving them of the chance of becoming beautiful butterflies. And because she’s my rose, I’ve listened to her grumble and boast. I’ve listened to her complain just as I’ve listened to her silence.”

Now, fully understanding that he was responsible for his rose, the Little Prince felt an urgency to get home. He went to say goodbye to the fox who’d been waiting for him to return. Because the fox had a fundamental secret to share with him: “It’s only with the heart that one can see rightly; what’s essential is invisible to the eye.”

On their 8^th day in the desert, Toño said that they needed to find a well otherwise they’d die of thirst. So Toño and the Little Prince started walking and, despite the immensity of the desert, looked for a well. They walked hours without finding a well. Once it was dark, they sat down to rest. The Little Prince immediately fell asleep. Toño looked at him and felt strong emotions rambling inside of him.

Suddenly Toño, too, felt an urgency to get back to his own rose, back to Carmella. He reflected on the little Prince’s loyalty to his rose and felt ashamed when he compared the little prince’s commitment to his rose with his own lack of commitment to Carmella.

With that thought anchored in his head now, he found the well. It had a pulley, a bucket, and a rope waiting to be used. Although the pulley moaned in its efforts to move, the bucket went straight down and returned full of water. Finally, Toño and the Little Prince drank the water and life started all over again.

The Little Prince and Toño agreed that the Little Prince would return to the place where he landed while Toño finished repairing the plane. But Toño would return the following evening.

The next evening, when he returned, Toño could see the Little Prince sitting on an old stone wall near the well. His legs were dangling above a poisonous snake. Fearing for the Little Prince’s safety, Toño took his pistol and fired. But the snake slid across the sand and disappeared.

Toño ran towards the wall and saw the Little Prince falling off it. He reached the wall just in time to catch the Little Prince. The Little Prince put his arms around Toño who then loosened his scarf, moistened his temples, and gave him some water. But said nothing. Because he could feel the Little Prince’s heart beating like that of a dying bird.

Toño had arrived too late. He froze knowing that something irreparable had happened. He knew now that he would never hear the Little Prince laugh again and this realization was devastating.

There’s something about the vastness of a desert sky that makes you want to fill it up.

The Little Prince told Toño some people just see stars as little lights in the sky but one of those stars was his home. So, in the future when Toño looked at the stars, he will feel the Little Prince’s laughter and this will smooth his sorrows.

Then the Little Prince told Toño not to return to him that evening because he would, at a certain time, seem to be dying. And it would only make Toño suffer.

The Little Prince began to cry. He said he was responsible for his rose who was naïve and, with only four thorns, couldn’t protect herself against the world.

Feeling weak, Toño sat down next to the prince. But the prince got up abruptly. A flash of yellow attacked his ankle. Then the Little Prince remained motionless for awhile before gently falling on the sand.

After Toño finished telling me the story of the Little Prince, he began sobbing incessantly. At first I thought it was because of the Little Prince. But then Toño started saying that the Little Prince’s rose was just like Carmella. The story of the rose and of Carmella became so entangled that the two became one.

Initially, I didn’t understand who this Carmella was then I understood that it was Toño’s wife. Both Toño and Carmella, it seemed, had animated personalities and often tended to clash. And just like the Little Prince who’d left his planet to liberate himself from the presence of the rose, Toño had also left his home to escape from Carmella.

Enough had been said for one day so Toño and I went back to the plane and our makeshift bed and slept the night away.

The next morning when we woke up, Toño was somewhat distant. Maybe he was embarrassed by having exposed so much emotion the night before. But that’s a weird thing about men. They don’t like to talk about their feelings.

The plane was fixed and we had to prepare for departure. The flight took hours but finally we were free of the desert sand. Toño had to go to Paris, which was as good as any place for me to create a new life on Earth.

In Paris, Toño and I said goodbye without much ceremony and I never saw him again.

P. S. on July of 1944, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry disappeared during a reconnaissance mission near Corsica. No plane wreckage or a body were found leaving his disappearance a mystery for years.

“The Little Prince” draws on Saint-Exupéry’s crash in the Sahara in 1935. Here Saint-Exupéry and his pilot miraculously survived the crash. But they risked death due to dehydration. They started hallucinating and would have died had it not be for a Bedouin on a camel passing by who offered them a native rehydration treatment.

“The Little Prince” was written in the U.S. and initially published in English instead of Saint-Exupéry’s native French.

General Charles de Gaulle and Saint-Exupéry didn’t like one another. Although, theoretically, they were both on the same side during the war, they were opposites in terms of priorities. De Gaulle made it impossible for Saint-Exupéry to publish in France. Why was de Gaulle so adamant about blocking Saint-Exupéry ‘s book? Maybe because de Gaulle also like to write? De Gaulle began writing in his early teens. He was particularly into poetry and wanted to be a writer but, instead, joined the army to please his father.

More than political differences, de Gaulle and Saint-Exupéry had a problem of competing egos.

In the spring of 2000, a diver found wreckage from Saint-Exupéry’s plane near the coast of Marseille. Initially, it was believed that Saint-Exupéry had been shot down. But on the pieces found, there were no bullet holes. Some experts say that from tests made of these remains, its believed that his plane made a vertical dive into the sea indicating that Saint-Exupéry deliberately crashed.

Because of its existential vibe, some speculate that “The Little Prince” was a kind of suicide note. Saint-Exupéry was very depressed about having been accused of treason. He also had problems with his health and well as with his wife, Consuelo. The search for meaning in an absurd world could have been too overwhelming for him.