PART I

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Transcriber’s Note: Part I lacks a Chapter X.

THE SAHARA

[Illustration: “A STREET SCENE.”

_From the Painting by A. Lamplough._]

THE SAHARA

BY

PIERRE LOTI

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH BY

MARJORIE LAURIE

[Illustration]

NEW YORK

BRENTANO’S

MCMXXI

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY

THE DUNEDIN PRESS LIMITED, EDINBURGH

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION 9

PART I. 20

II. 75

III. 161

INTRODUCTION

I

In your voyage down the west coast of Africa, after passing the southern

extremity of Morocco, you sail for days and nights together past the

shores of a never-ending land of desolation. It is the Sahara, “the

great sea without water,” to which the Moors have given also the name of

“Bled-el-Ateuch,” the land of thirst.

These desert shores stretch for five hundred leagues without one port of

call for the passing vessel, without one blade of grass, one sign of life.

Solitude succeeds solitude with mournful monotony; shifting sandhills,

vague horizons—and the heat grows each day more intense.

At last there comes in sight over the sands an old city, white, with

yellow palm trees set here and there—it is St Louis on the Senegal, the

capital of Senegambia.

A church, a mosque, a tower, houses built in Moorish style—the whole

seems asleep under the burning sun, like those Portuguese towns, St Paul

and St Philip of Benguela, that once flourished on the banks of the Congo.

As one draws nearer one sees with surprise that this town is not built

on the shore, that it has not even a port, nor any direct means of

communication with the outer world. The flat, unbroken coast line is

as inhospitable as that of the Sahara, and a ridge of breakers forever

prevents the approach of ships.

Another feature, not visible from a distance, now presents itself in the

vast human ant heaps on the shore, thousands and thousands of thatched

huts, lilliputian dwellings with pointed roofs, and teeming with a

grotesque population of negroes. These are the two large Yolof towns,

Guet n’dar and N’dar-toute, which lie between St Louis and the sea.

If your ship lies to awhile off this country, long pirogues with pointed

bows like fish-heads, and bodies shaped like sharks, are soon seen

approaching. They are manned by negroes, who row standing. These pirogue

men are tall and lean, of Herculean proportions, admirable build and

muscular development, and their faces are those of gorillas. They have

capsized ten times at least while crossing the breakers. With negro

perseverance, with the agility and strength of acrobats, ten times in

succession have they righted their pirogue and made a fresh start. Sweat

and sea water trickle from their bare skins, which gleam like polished

ebony.

Here they are in spite of all, smiling with an air of triumph, and

displaying their magnificent white teeth. Their costume consists of an

amulet and a bead necklet, their cargo of a carefully sealed leaden box,

which contains the mails.

In this box also are orders from the governor for the newly arrived ship,

and in it, too, are deposited papers addressed to members of the colony.

A man in a hurry can safely entrust himself to these boatmen, secure in

the knowledge that he will be fished out of the sea as often as necessary

with the utmost care, and that eventually he will be deposited on the

beach.

But it is more comfortable to continue one’s voyage as far south as the

mouth of the Senegal, where flat-bottomed boats take off the passengers

and convey them smoothly by river to St Louis.

This isolation from the sea is one of the chief causes of the stagnation

and dreariness of this country. St Louis cannot serve as a port of call

to mail-steamers or merchantmen on their way to the southern hemisphere.

One goes to St Louis if one must, and this gives one the feeling of being

a prisoner cut off from the rest of the world.

II

In the northern quarter of St Louis, near the mosque, there stood a

little solitary house belonging to one Samba-Hamet, trader on the upper

river. It was a lime-washed house. The cracks of its brick walls, the

crevices in its heat-shrunken wood-work harboured legions of white ants

and blue lizards. Two marabout cranes haunted its roof, clacking their

beaks in the sunshine, and solemnly stretching out their featherless

necks when anyone chanced to pass along the straight, unfrequented street.

O the dreariness of this land of Africa!

The slight shadow of a frail thorn palm moved in its slow daily course

along the whole length of the heated wall; the palm was the only tree

in the quarter, where no green thing refreshed the eye. On its yellowed

fronds flights of those tiny blue or pink birds, called in France

_bengalis_, would often come and perch. But all around lay sand, sand,

nothing but sand. Never a tuft of moss, never a fresh blade of grass grew

on the soil, parched by the burning breath of the Sahara.

III

On the ground floor dwelt a horrible old negress called Coura n’diaye,

once the favourite of a great negro monarch. There she had her collection

of grotesque tatters, her little slave girls, decked with beads of blue

glass, her goats, her big-horned sheep, her half-starved, yellow curs.

In the upper storey there was a large, lofty room, square in shape, to

which an outside staircase of worm-eaten wood gave access.

IV

Every evening at sunset, a man in a red jacket, with a Mussulman fez on

his head—in a word, a spahi—entered Samba-Hamet’s house. Coura n’diaye’s

two marabout cranes used to watch him from a distance as he approached.

From the farther end of the dead-alive town they would recognise his

gait, his step, the striking colours of his uniform, and would show no

nervousness at his entry—so long had they known him.

He was a tall man, of proud, erect carriage; he was of pure European

race, although the African sun had already deeply embrowned his face and

chest. This spahi was a remarkably fine-looking man, a grave and manly

type of beauty, with large clear eyes, almond-shaped like an Arab’s. From

under his fez, which was pushed to the back of his head, a lock of brown

hair had escaped and hung in disorder over his broad, unsullied brow.

The red jacket was admirably becoming to his well-moulded figure, and his

whole build was a compound of litheness and muscular strength.

As a rule he was serious and thoughtful, but his smile had a seductive

charm, and gave a glimpse of teeth of remarkable whiteness.

V

One evening, the man in the red jacket could be seen climbing

Samba-Hamet’s wooden staircase with more than his customary air of

abstraction.

He entered the lofty chamber, his own, and seemed surprised at finding no

one in it.

It was a curious place, this lodging of the spahi’s. It was a bare room,

furnished with mat-covered benches. Strips of parchment, written upon

by the priests of Maghreb, and talismans of various kinds hung from the

ceiling.

He went to a large casket, raised on feet, ornamented with strips of

copper and variegated with brilliant colours, a box such as is used by

the Yolofs for locking up their valuables. He tried it and found it

locked.

Thereupon he lay down on a _tara_, a kind of sofa made of light laths,

the work of negroes of the Gambia shore. Then he took from his pocket a

letter, and began to read it, first kissing the corner with the signature.

VI

It was without doubt a love-letter, written by some fair one—an elegant

Parisienne, perhaps, or possibly a romantic senora—to this handsome spahi

_d’Afrique_, who seems of the very mould for playing leading rôles as the

lover in melodrama.

This letter will perchance furnish us with the clue to some highly

dramatic adventure, which will serve as prelude to our tale.

VII

The letter, which the spahi had touched with his lips, bore the postmark

of a village hidden away in the Cevennes. It was written by a poor old

hand, trembling and unpractised. Its lines overlapped, and it was not

free from mistakes.

The letter said:—

My dear son,—The present is to give you news of our health,

which is pretty good just now; we thank the good God for it.

But your father says he feels himself growing old, and as his

eyes are failing a good deal, it is your old mother who is

taking up the pen to talk to you about ourselves. You will

forgive me, knowing that I cannot write any better.

My dear son, I have to tell you that we have been in great

trouble for some time. Since you left us three years ago,

nothing has gone well with us. Good fortune, as well as

happiness, left us when you did. It has been a bad year on

account of a heavy hailstorm which fell on the field and

destroyed nearly everything except at the side of the road.

Our cow went sick, and it cost us a lot of money to have her

attended to. Your father’s wages are sometimes short, since he

came back to this country of young men, who work faster than

he. Besides this we have had to have part of our roof repaired,

as it threatened to fall in with the heavy rains. I know that

soldiers haven’t much to spare, but your father says that if

you can send us what you promised without stinting yourself, it

will be very useful to us.

The Mérys, who have plenty of money, could easily lend us

some, but we don’t like asking them, especially as we do not

want them to think us poor people. We often see your cousin,

Jeanne Méry; she grows prettier every day. Her chief joy is

to come and see us, and to talk about you. She says she would

ask nothing better than to be your wife, my dear Jean. But

her father will not hear of the marriage, because he says we

are poor, and also that you have been a bit of a scapegrace

in your day. I think, however, that if you were to get your

quartermaster’s stripes, and if we could see you coming home

in your fine uniform, he would perhaps end by consenting after

all. I could die happy if I saw you married to her. You would

build a house near ours, which would no longer be fine enough

for you. We often make plans about it together with Peyral in

the evenings.

My dear son, send us a little money without fail, for I assure

you that we are in great trouble. We have not been able to

manage this year, as I told you, because of that hailstorm and

the cow. I see your father worrying himself terribly, and at

night I often see him, instead of sleeping, thinking about it

and turning from side to side. If you cannot send us the whole

amount, send what you can.

Good-bye, my dear son; the village folk often ask after you,

and want to know when you are coming back. The neighbours send

hearty greetings. As for me, you know that I have had no joy in

life since you went away.

I enclose my letter, embracing you, and Peyral does likewise.

Your loving old mother,

FRANÇOISE PEYRAL.

VIII

... Jean leaning on his elbow at the window fell into a reverie, looking

absently at the wide prospect of African scenery stretched out before

him—the pointed outlines of the Yolof huts, grouped by hundreds at his

feet—in the distance the troubled sea and the ceaseless onset of the

African breakers; the yellow sun about to set, still shedding upon

the desert, further than the eye could see, its wan radiance; sand

interminable; a distant caravan of Moors; flights of birds of prey

swooping through the air; and yonder, a point on which he fixed his

eyes, the cemetery of Sorr, whither he had already escorted some of his

comrades, mountain-bred like himself, who had died of fever in that

accursed climate.

O to return home to his aged parents, to live in a little house with

Jeanne Méry, quite close to the humble paternal roof. Why had he been

exiled to this land of Africa? What had he in common with this country?

As for this uniform and this Arab fez in which they had dressed him up,

and which, for all that, gave him so grand an air, what a burlesque

disguise for him, the humble little peasant from the Cevennes.

He remained there a long time lost in thought, dreaming of his village,

this poor soldier on the banks of the Senegal. With sunset and nightfall,

his thoughts plunged themselves in unrelieved gloom.

From the direction of N’dar-toute came the hurried drumming of the

tom-tom, summoning the negroes to the _bamboula_, and fires were lighted

in the Yolof huts. It was an evening in December; a vexatious winter wind

sprang up, whirling the sand in eddies here and there, and the great,

parched land shuddered with an unwonted sensation of chill.

* * * * *

The door opened, and a yellow dog with straight ears and a look

suggesting the jackal, a dog of the country, of the Laobé breed, bounded

into the room and gambolled about his master.

At the same time, a young negro girl, with a merry smile, appeared at the

door of the lodging. She made a little jerky bow, brusque and comic, the

negresses’ salutation, and said _Kéou_! (Good-day).

IX

The spahi glanced at her absently.

“Fatou-gaye,” he said in a mixture of creole French and Yolof, “open the

casket; I want to take out my money.”

“Your _khâliss_!” (your coins), exclaimed Fatou-gaye, opening her eyes

so that the whites showed against the black eyelids. “Your _khâliss_!”

she repeated with the mixture of fear and effrontery of children who have

been surprised in a fault and are afraid they will be punished.

And then she showed him her ears, on which hung three pairs of

exquisitely worked gold earrings.

They were ornaments of pure Galam gold, wonderfully delicate, such as

are made by black craftsmen who possess the secret of this art, plying

their trade in the shade of small, low-roofed tents, where they work

mysteriously, crouching on the desert sands. Fatou-gaye had just been

buying these trinkets, long-coveted, and that was what had become of the

spahi’s _khâliss_, a hundred francs or so, accumulated little by little,

the fruit of a soldier’s petty economies, and set aside by him for his

old parents.

The spahi’s eyes flashed, and he made as if to strike her with his

whip, but his arm sank harmlessly to his side. He soon regained his

self-control, Jean Peyral; he was gentle, especially towards the weak.

He uttered no reproaches, knowing that they would be useless. It was his

fault no less than hers. Why had he not been more careful to hide away

this money, which he must now at all costs procure elsewhere?

Fatou-gaye knew how to soothe her lover with catlike caresses; how to

clasp him in her black silver-braceletted arms that were shapely as the

arms of a statue; how to lean her bare bosom against the red cloth of his

jacket, rousing in him feverish desires that would bring about pardon

for her offence....

And the spahi sank with indifference on the tara beside her, putting off

until the morrow the task of raising the money for which his old parents

were waiting in their cottage overseas.

PART I

I

It was three years since Jean Peyral had first set foot in this land

of Africa, and since his arrival he had undergone an extraordinary

transformation. He had passed through several phases of moral

development. Environment, climate, nature, had gradually exercised all

their enervating influence upon his youthful personality. Slowly he had

felt himself gliding down unknown slopes—and to-day he was the lover of

Fatou-gaye, a young negro girl of Khassonké race, who had cast upon him I

know not what sensual and impure seduction, what talismanic enchantment.

The story of Jean’s early life was not a very complicated one.

At twenty the ballot had snatched him from his old mother, who wept. He

had gone away like other lads of the village singing noisily to keep

himself from bursting into tears.

His height marked him out for cavalry. The mysterious attraction of the

unknown had induced him to choose the corps of spahis.

His childhood had been passed in the Cevennes, in an obscure village in

the heart of the woods.

In the strong, pure mountain air he had shot up like a young oak tree.

The first impressions graven on his childish mind were wholesome and

simple, the well-beloved forms of his father and mother, his home, a

little old-fashioned house shaded by chestnut trees. These things were

all imprinted ineffaceably upon his memory, and had their own sacred

place deep down in his heart. And then there were the great woods, his

wanderings at random along paths deep in moss—and there was freedom.

In the first years of his life he knew nothing of the rest of the world

beyond the bounds of the obscure village where he was born. He was aware

of no other neighbourhood, but the wild, open country where the shepherds

dwelt, the mountain sorcerers.

In these woods, where he was wont to roam all day long, he nursed the

dreams of a solitary child, the musings of a shepherd boy—and then

suddenly he would be seized with a wild desire to run, to climb, to break

branches from the trees, to catch birds.

One distasteful memory was that of the village school, a gloomy place,

where one had to stay quietly cooped up within four walls. His parents

gave up sending him there; he was always playing truant.

On Sunday he was given his fine mountaineer’s dress to wear, and he went

to church with his mother, hand in hand with little Jeanne, whom they

picked up as they passed Uncle Méry’s house. After service, he used to

play bowls on the common under the oak trees.

He was conscious that he was better looking and stronger than the other

children, and at play he was always the one to be obeyed, and he was

accustomed to meet with this submission wherever he went.

When he grew older his independence of spirit and his insatiable

restlessness became more marked. He would go his own way. He was forever

in mischief, untethering horses and galloping far away on them, forever

poaching with an old gun that would not go off, and frequently getting

into trouble with the rural constable, to the great despair of his Uncle

Méry, who had hoped to have him taught a trade, and to make of him a

steady man.

It was true. He had really been “a bit of a scapegrace in his time,” and

it was still remembered against him at home.

Nevertheless he was a general favourite even with those who had suffered

most at his hands, because he had a frank and open disposition. No

one could be seriously angry with him who saw his good-natured smile.

Besides, if he were spoken to gently and taken the right way, he could be

led like a docile child. Uncle Méry, with his lectures and threats, had

no influence over him. But when his mother reproved him, and he knew that

he had grieved her, his heart was very heavy, and this big boy, who had

already the air of a man, could be seen hanging his head, almost in tears.

He was undisciplined, but not dissolute. This big, strong, growing youth

was of a proud, and somewhat uncouth, demeanour. In his village young

men were safe from evil communications from the precocious depravity

of sickly, town-bred creatures, so much so, that when he reached his

twentieth year and had to begin his term of military service, Jean was as

pure as a child, and almost as ignorant of the facts of life.

II

But then came a period full of all kinds of surprises for him.

He had followed his new comrades to places of debauch, where he had made

the acquaintance of “love” in the most sordid and revolting conditions

that a great town affords. His youthful understanding was confused, what

between surprise and disgust, and also the devouring fascination of this

new thing just revealed to him.

And then, after some days of riotous life, a ship had carried him far,

far away over the calm, blue sea, and had landed him on the banks of the

Senegal, a bewildered exile.

III

One day in November—the season when the great baobabs shed their last

leaves on the sand—Jean Peyral had cast his first glance of curiosity on

this corner of the earth, where the hazard of destiny had condemned him

to pass five years of his life.

The strangeness of this land had in the first instance appealed strongly

to his imagination and inexperience. Besides that, he had appreciated

very keenly the joy of having a horse, of curling his rapidly growing

moustache, of wearing an Arab fez, a red jacket, and a big sabre. He

considered the ensemble very fine, and this gave him great pleasure.

IV

It was November—the fine weather season corresponding to our French

winter; the heat was less violent, and the dry wind of the desert had

taken the place of the great storms of the summer.

When the fine weather begins in Senegal, one may safely camp out in the

open without a roof to one’s tent. For six months not a drop of water

will fall on the land; every day without respite, without remorse, it

will be scorched by the consuming sun.

It is the season in which the lizards delight—but the water fails in the

cisterns; the marshes dry up; the grass dies; even the cactuses, the

thorny nopals, no longer open their melancholy yellow flowers. Yet the

evenings are chill. At sunset a strong sea-breeze invariably springs up,

rousing the breakers off the African coast to their everlasting moaning,

pitilessly shaking the last autumn leaves.

It is a dreary autumn, bringing with it neither the long evenings of

France, nor the charm of the first frosts, nor harvest, nor golden fruit.

Never a fruit in this land disinherited of God! Even the dates of the

desert are denied to it, nothing ripens there, except the ground nut and

the bitter pistachio.

The sensation of winter, experienced in the midst of heat which is still

extreme, has a curious effect upon the spirit.

Here and there upon the vast, hot plains, forlorn and desolate, covered

with dead grass, side by side with slender palms, tower huge baobabs,

mastodons, as it were, of the vegetable kingdom; their bare boughs are

inhabited by families of vultures, lizards, and bats.

V

Poor Jean had soon fallen a victim to boredom. He suffered from a kind

of vague, indefinable melancholy, such as he had never felt before,

the beginning of home-sickness for his mountains, his village, for the

cottage of the aged parents, so dear to him.

The spahis, his new companions, had already worn their big sabres in

various Indian and Algerian garrisons. In the taverns of maritime towns,

where they had spent their youth, they had caught the mocking and

licentious turn of mind, peculiar to those who lead a roving life. They

were masters of ready-made, cynical jests, in slang, in Sabir, and in

Arabic, and with these jests they met every contingency. Good fellows at

heart, gay companions as they were, they had none the less certain habits

which Jean failed to understand, and certain pleasures that excited in

him extreme repugnance.

Jean was a dreamer, like all mountaineers. Reverie is a thing unknown

to the stupefied and corrupt faculties of the populace of great cities.

But among those who have been brought up on the land, among sailors,

among fishermen’s sons who have grown up in their father’s boat, amid

the perils of the deep, there are men who really dream, true, but

inarticulate poets, with a poet’s insight into all things. Only, they

have not the faculty of putting their impression into form, and remain

incapable of interpreting them.

Jean had plenty of leisure in barracks, and he spent it in observing and

thinking.

Every evening he was wont to take a walk along the great stretch of

beach, whose bluish sands were lighted up by sunsets of unimaginable

beauty.

He would bathe in those great breakers of the African sea, amusing

himself, like the child he still was, by letting himself be rolled over

and over by these enormous waves, which covered him with sand.

Or he would take long walks, for the mere pleasure of movement, of

breathing deeply the salt air that blew off the sea. At times this

unending flatness vexed him, oppressed his imagination, accustomed to the

contemplation of mountains. He felt, as it were, a need to go on and on

forever, to widen his horizon, to catch a glimpse of what lay beyond.

At dusk, the beach was crowded with negroes returning to the villages,

laden with sheaves of millet. Fishermen, too, were drawing in their nets,

surrounded by clamorous swarms of women and children.

These hauls of fish in Senegal were always miraculous draughts; the nets

would break under the weight of thousands of fish of every shape and

form. The negresses carried away on their heads baskets full of them; the

black babies returned home garlanded with big fish, still alive, strung

together through the gills.

There were extraordinary-looking people, just-arrived from the interior;

picturesque caravans of Moors and Peuhles, who had come down the Neck

of Barbary; incredible scenes at every step, in the white glow of an

unnatural radiance.

And then the blue summits of the sandhills turned pink; the last

horizontal rays of light glided across this whole region of sand; the sun

was quenched in blood-red vapour. And with one impulse all that black

throng cast themselves face downwards on the ground to offer up the

evening prayer.

It was Islam’s holy hour. From Mecca to the Sahara coast the name of

Mahomet passed from mouth to mouth, wafted like a mysterious breath over

Africa. Little by little it became fainter as it travelled over the

Soudan, until it expired there on those black lips by the shore of the

great, restless sea.

The old Yolof priests in their flowing robes, turned towards the sea,

recited their prayers with their faces bowed upon the sand, and all the

shores were covered with prostrate men. Then all was still, and night

fell with the rapidity usual in those countries of the sun.

At nightfall, Jean returned to the spahi’s quarters in the south of St

Louis.

In the great white barrack room, open to the evening breeze, all was

still and quiet. The numbered beds of the spahis were ranged in rows

along the bare walls; the tepid wind from the sea swayed their muslin

mosquito curtains. The spahis were out. Jean returned home at a time when

the other men were scattered about the deserted streets, hastening to

their pleasures, to their loves.

It was at such times that the isolated barracks seemed to him dreary, and

that he thought most of his mother.

VI

In the southern quarter of St Louis stood some old brick houses, Arab in

appearance, which were lighted up at evening, and whose lamps continued

to cast their red rays upon the sands at a time when all that dead-alive

town lay asleep. Strange odours of negroes and alcohol, all blended and

intensified by the torrid heat, issued thence. Here also at night broke

forth an uproar as from hell itself. In that quarter the spahis reigned

supreme. Thither betook themselves these unfortunate, red-jacketed

warriors, to raise a racket and to forget their troubles; to absorb,

actuated either by habit or bravado, incredible quantities of alcohol,

and wantonly to spend the sap of their lusty youth.

A dishonouring intimacy with mulatto women lay in wait for them in these

vile dens, and extravagant orgies were held, in a delirium caused by

absinthe and the torrid heat of Africa.

But Jean avoided with horror these haunts of vice. He was very steady,

and was already putting aside the little he could save out of his

soldier’s pay, against the blissful moment of his home-coming.

He was very steady, and yet his comrades did not rally him on the subject.

Handsome Muller, a tall Alsatian, who set the tone in the spahis’

barracks by virtue of a past full of duels and adventure—handsome Muller

thought a great deal of him, and every one was always of the same opinion

as Fritz Muller. But Jean’s real friend was Nyaor-fall, the black spahi,

a gigantic African, of the magnificent Fouta-Diallonké tribe, a strange,

imperturbable figure, with a delicate Arab profile, and a mysterious

smile always hovering on his thin lips—a splendid statue in black marble.

This man was Jean’s friend; he used to take Jean home to his native

dwelling in Guet n’dar; he would make him sit beside his wives on a white

mat, and offer him negro hospitality: _kouss-kouss_ and _gourous_.

VII

In the evenings at St Louis, social life followed the usual monotonous

routine of small colonial towns. The fine weather brought a little

animation to these dead-alive streets. After sunset, a few women who

had escaped fever displayed their European frocks on the Place du

Gouvernement, or in the avenue of yellow plains of Guet n’dar. This

introduced a suggestion of Europe into that country of exile.

On that large Place du Gouvernement, surrounded by symmetrical,

white buildings, one might have imagined oneself in some town of

southern Europe had it not been for that immense stretch of sand, that

interminable plain, which flung afar its uncompromising line.

These few persons who came to take the air were all acquaintances, and

passed the time in staring at one another. Jean would look at these

people, and they also would look at Jean. The handsome spahi, who walked

alone with such a grave seriousness, roused the curiosity of St Louis

society, who imagined that his life contained some romantic episode.

There was one woman, in especial, who looked at Jean, a woman better

dressed and prettier than the rest.

She was said to be a mulatto, but so white, so very white, that she might

have been taken for a Parisienne.

White and pale she was, of a Spanish pallor, with fair chestnut hair—the

fairness of mulattos—with large, half-closed, dark-shadowed eyes, which

she turned slowly with creole languor.

She was the wife of a rich farmer of revenue on the river. But at St

Louis she was referred to by her Christian name, like a coloured woman.

Cora they called her, in contempt.

She had just returned from Paris, as the other women could see from her

gowns. Jean, however, was not yet sufficiently experienced to be able to

define the difference. But he was well aware that her trailing gowns,

even when they were simple, had something distinctive about them, a

gracefulness, in which the other women’s gowns were lacking.

The point that he principally noticed was that she was very beautiful,

and as she always flung her glances around him, he felt a sort of tremor

when he met her.

“She’s in love with you, Peyral,” handsome Muller had declared, with the

knowing air of a man who has had his successes in the pursuit of love

affairs.

VIII

It was true that she was in love with him in her mulatto way, and one day

she summoned him to her house to tell him so.

* * * * *

For poor Jean the two months that followed fled past in the midst of

enchanting dreams. This unwonted luxury, this dainty, perfumed woman, all

these things worked terrible confusion in his hot head and chaste body.

Love, of which hitherto only a cynical travesty had been revealed to him,

now intoxicated him.

And all this had been bestowed upon him precipitately, without

reservation, like a splendid fortune in a fairy tale. Yet one reflection

troubled him. This woman’s avowal, this want of modesty, disgusted him a

little when he thought about it.

But he seldom pondered, and when he was at her side he was intoxicated

with love.

He, too, began to experiment with refinements of the toilet. He used

scent, and tended his moustache and his brown hair. It seemed to him, as

to all young lovers, that life had begun for him on the day when he first

met his mistress, and that all his past existence counted for nothing.

IX

Cora loved him, too, but the heart had little to do with the sort of love

she felt.

A mulatto of Bourbon, she had been brought up in the sensual idleness and

luxury of wealthy creoles, but had been kept at arm’s length by white

women with pitiless contempt, repulsed everywhere as a coloured woman.

The same racial prejudice had pursued her to St Louis; although she was

the wife of one of the leading farmers of revenue on the river, she was

left alone, an outcast.

In Paris she had had numbers of exquisites to love her; her ample means

had enabled her to make a presentable appearance in France, to taste vice

according to the most elegant standards of propriety.

At present she was tired of delicate gloved hands, the sickly

affectations of dandies, and their romantic languid airs. She had chosen

Jean because he was big and strong. In her way she loved this splendid,

wild growing plant. She loved his rough, simple manners; she found

attraction even in the coarse texture of his soldier’s shirt.

Cora’s dwelling was an immense brick building, with the somewhat

Egyptian aspect common to the old parts of St Louis, and white like an

Arab caravanserai. Below, there were great courts, whither came camels

and Moors of the desert to crouch upon the sand, and where swarmed a

grotesque, motley crowd of cattle, dogs, ostriches, and black slaves.

Up above there were endless verandahs, supported by massive, square

columns, like the terraces of Babylon.

The apartments were reached by means of outside staircases of white

stone, monumental of aspect. All this was dilapidated and dreary, like

everything else at St Louis, that town which has already lived its life,

that moribund colony of bygone days.

The drawing-room had a certain air of grandeur, with its lordly

proportions and its furniture of the past century.

Blue lizards haunted it; cats, parrots, tame gazelles chased one another

over the fine Guinea mats; negro women servants went dolefully backwards

and forwards across the room, shuffling their sandals, diffusing pungent

odours of soumaré and musk-scented amulets. The ensemble produced an

indefinably melancholy atmosphere of exile and solitude. It was very

dreary, all of it, especially in the evening, when the sounds of life

ceased and gave place to the eternal complaint of the African breakers.

In Cora’s bedroom everything was gayer and more modern. The furniture and

hangings, lately arrived from Paris, gave it an air of fresh elegance and

comfort. One breathed there the perfume of the most fashionable essences

bought at the scent shops on the boulevard.

It was there that Jean passed his hours of intoxication. This room seemed

to him an enchanted palace, surpassing in luxury and charm all that his

imagination could have pictured.

This woman had filled his life and had become his only happiness. With

the refinement of a creature sated with pleasure, she had desired to

possess Jean’s soul as well as body. With the feline guile of a creole

she had acted for the benefit of this lover, who was younger than

herself, an irresistible comedy of ingenuous love. She had succeeded; he

belonged to her, body and soul.

XI

A very comical little negress, of whom Jean took no notice, lived in

Cora’s house as a “captive.” This little girl was called Fatou-gaye.

She had been brought quite recently to St Louis and sold as a slave

by Douaïch Moors, who had captured her in one of their raids upon the

territory of the Khassonkés.

Her extreme mischievousness and her fierce independence had caused her to

be relegated to a very humble position in the household. She was looked

upon as a little nuisance, a useless mouth, and an acquisition to be

regretted.

Having not yet quite arrived at marriageable age, when the negresses of

St Louis deem it proper to clothe themselves, she generally went naked,

with a necklet of _grigris_ round her throat, and a few glass beads

strung round her loins. Her head was very carefully shaven, except for

five tiny locks of hair, knotted and stiffened with gum, five little

rigid tails, arranged at regular intervals from the forehead to the nape

of the neck. Each of these locks had a coral bead at the tip, except the

middle one, which displayed a more precious ornament. This was a gold

sequin of great antiquity, which must have been brought in old days from

Algiers by caravan, after long and complicated wanderings through the

Sahara.

Without this grotesque arrangement of hair, the regularity of

Fatou-gaye’s features would have been striking. She was of the purest

Khassonké type: a small delicate Grecian face, with a skin smooth

and black as polished onyx; teeth of dazzlingly whiteness; eyes of

extraordinary mobility, two large, jet black, restless orbs rolling left

and right, with whites of a bluish tint, and black eyelids.

When Jean was leaving his mistress, he often used to meet this little

creature.

As soon as she saw him she tucked a piece of blue cotton cloth around

her waist—this was her festal garment—and came towards him smiling. With

soft, caressing inflections in her small, shrill, piping negress’s voice,

with hanging head and the mincing airs of an enamoured ouistiti, she

would say,

_May man coper, souma toubab._ (Translated: Give me a copper, give me a

sou, my white man.)

That was the refrain of all the little girls in St Louis. Jean was used

to it. When he was in a good temper and had a sou in his pocket, he would

give it to Fatou-gaye.

But that was not the most curious feature of the incident. What was out

of the ordinary was Fatou-gaye’s behaviour. Instead of buying herself a

piece of sugar, as other girls might have done, she would go and hide

herself in a corner and set to work to sew very carefully into the

sachets of her amulets the sous that she received from the spahi.

XII

One night in February a suspicion crossed Jean’s mind.

Cora had asked him to leave at midnight, and just as he was going away,

he thought he heard a sound of pacing in an adjoining room, as if someone

were waiting there.

He left at midnight, and then he returned with stealthy tread, stepping

noiselessly over the sand. He climbed over a wall and on to a balcony,

and looked into Cora’s room through the half-opened door leading on to

the terrace.

* * * * *

Someone had taken Jean’s place by his mistress’s side—quite a young man,

wearing the uniform of a naval officer. He had made himself at home, and

was lounging in an arm chair with an air of disdainful ease.

She was standing, and they were talking.

At first it seemed to Jean that they were speaking an unknown tongue.

The words were French, yet Jean could not understand them. These scraps

of speech, which they interchanged so lightly, seemed to him mocking

enigmas, perfectly meaningless for him. Cora too, was no longer the same;

her expression had changed; a kind of smile hovered on her lips, a smile

such as he remembered to have seen on the lips of a tall girl in a place

of ill-repute.

* * * * *

Jean found himself trembling. He felt as if all the blood had left his

head, and had poured back into his heart. He heard a roaring in his ears,

like the noise of the sea; his eyes grew dim.

He was ashamed of being there, yet he was determined to remain and to

understand.

He heard his name spoken; they were talking about him; he drew nearer,

supporting himself against the wall, and he caught some words more

distinctly spoken.

“You are wrong, Cora,” said the young man in a very quiet voice, with an

exasperating smile. “In the first place, he is a very handsome fellow,

and then he, at all events, loves you.”

“True, but I wanted two of you. I chose you because your name is Jean,

like his. Otherwise I should have been capable of making a slip in the

name when I was talking to him. I am very absent-minded.”

* * * * *

And then she drew closer to the new Jean.

She was still more changed in voice and face. With the languorous,

lisping, coaxing inflections of the creole accent she murmured childish

words to him, and offered him her lips, still warm from the spahi’s

kisses.

* * * * *

But her lover had caught sight of the pale face of Jean Peyral gazing

at them through the half-open door, and for all reply he pointed Cora

towards him with his hand.

The spahi was standing there, motionless, petrified, fixing his wide,

haggard eyes upon them.

When he found that they in their turn were looking at him, he simply

stepped back into the shadow. Cora had advanced towards him, with the

hideous expression of an animal disturbed in its love-making; this woman

frightened him; she was almost near enough to touch him. She shut her

door with a furious gesture; shot a bolt behind it ... and all was over.

Through the disguise of the polished _élégante_ the mulatto woman,

grand-daughter of a slave, had betrayed herself again with her appalling

cynicism. She felt neither remorse, nor fear, nor pity....

The coloured woman and her lover heard a noise as of a body falling

heavily to the ground, a loud sinister noise in the silence of the

night—and then later, towards morning, a sob behind that door, and a

rustling sound as of hands fumbling in the dark.

The spahi had risen to his feet, and feeling his way, he went out into

the night.

XIII

Walking on aimlessly, like a drunken man, sinking ankle-deep in the sand

of the deserted streets, Jean came to Guet n’dar, the negro town with its

thousands of pointed huts. In the darkness he stumbled over men and women

who lay sleeping on the ground rolled in pieces of white cotton, seeming

to him like a population of phantoms. He walked on and on, feeling as if

he had lost his senses.

Soon he found himself on the shore of the sombre sea. The breakers

were roaring loudly. With a shudder of horror he distinguished swarms

of crabs, fleeing before his footsteps, in solid masses. He remembered

to have seen a corpse that had been washed up on the beach, torn and

excarnated by them. He had no wish for such a death.

Nevertheless these breakers attracted him; he felt himself fascinated,

as it were, by those great, glistening volutes, already gleaming silvery

in the doubtful light of the morning, curling over all along the vast

beaches, farther than the sight could reach.

It seemed to him that their coolness would be grateful to his burning

head, and that in their kindly waters death would appear less cruel.

* * * * *

And then he remembered his mother and Jeanne, the little friend and

sweetheart of his childhood. He no longer wished for death.

He threw himself on the sand and fell into a strange, heavy sleep.

XIV

For full two hours it had been daylight, and Jean’s sleep continued.

He was dreaming of his childhood and of the woods of the Cevennes. It was

dark in these woods, dark with the mysterious obscurity of dreamland;

his visions were clouded like far-off memories. He saw himself there,

a child, with his mother in the shade of immemorial oaks: in a spot

carpeted with moss and slender grasses he was plucking bluebells and

heather.

* * * * *

And when he awoke, he cast a bewildered glance around him.

The sands were glittering under a torrid sun. Black women, adorned with

necklets and amulets, were traversing the burning ground, singing weird

melodies. Great vultures glided backwards and forwards silently through

the still air; the grasshopper chirped noisily....

XV

Then he noticed that his head was sheltered under a little canopy formed

by a piece of blue cotton, supported by a series of small sticks planted

in the sand, the whole erection casting upon him a clear-cut, ashen

shadow with grotesque contours....

The patterns of the piece of cotton seemed to him familiar. He turned his

head and saw Fatou-gaye seated behind him, rolling her mobile eyeballs.

She it was who had followed him and had spread her festal garment above

his head.

Had it not been for this shelter he would undoubtedly have died of

sunstroke sleeping on those sands.

She it was who for several hours had been crouching there in ecstasy,

very gently kissing Jean’s eyelids when no one was passing, dreading to

wake him lest she should send him away, and no longer have him all to

herself; trembling, too, at times lest Jean should be dead, yet happy,

perchance, had it been so. For then she would have dragged him far away,

very far away, and would have stayed with him always until she died by

his side, clasping him tight, so that none should separate them again.

“It is I, my white man,” she said, “I did this, because I know that

the sun of St Louis is not good for the _toubabs_ of France.... I knew

very well,” continued the little creature with tragic solemnity, in an

indescribable jargon, “that there was another _toubab_ who came to see

her. I did not go to bed last night so that I might listen. I was hidden

on the staircase among the calebashes. When you fell down by the door, I

saw you. I watched over you the whole time. And then when you got up, I

followed you.”

Jean gazed up at her, his eyes wide with astonishment, and full of

kindness and gratitude. He was touched to the heart.

“Do not tell anyone, child.... Go home now quickly, and do not tell

anyone that I came and lay down on the beach. Go back to your mistress at

once, little Fatou. And I, I will go back to the spahi’s house.”

And he caressed her, patting her gently with his hand, with precisely

the same emotion as he felt when he used to scratch the neck of the big,

coaxing Tom cat, who at night in barracks would come and curl himself up

on Jean’s soldier’s cot.

Quivering under Jean’s innocent caress, with hanging head, half-closed

eyes, and heaving bosom, she took up her festal garment and went away

trembling all over with joy.

XVI

Poor Jean! Suffering was a new experience for him; he rebelled against

this unknown power that had seized him and was strangling his heart with

bruising hoops of iron.

Smothered rage, rage against that young man, whom he longed to break

in pieces with his own hands; rage against that woman, whom it would

have delighted him to maul with blows of his spurs and whip; all this

he endured, and at the same time he was possessed with I know not what

urgent physical need of action, an impulse to rush headlong into some

desperate piece of folly. He found, too, that his comrades vexed and

irritated him. He was conscious that they cast upon him glances which

were already inquisitive, and might to-morrow become ironical.

Towards evening he asked for, and obtained permission, to go with

Nyaor-fall to try some horses to the north of the Point of Barbary.

They had a furious gallop over the desert sands in gloomy weather,

under a wintry sky—for out there, too, there are wintry skies, less

frequent than our own, of a startling and sinister effect in that land

of desolation—unbroken clouds, so black and low that the plain beneath

appears white, and the desert seems an interminable, snow-covered steppe.

When the two spahis passed in their burnooses, carried at full speed on

their madly excited horses, huge vultures, that were lazily walking about

the ground in families, rose in startled flight and began to describe

fantastic curves in the air overhead.

* * * * *

At night Jean and Nyaor returned dripping with sweat to their quarters,

with their exhausted horses.

XVII

But on the morrow of this one day of unnatural excitement, fever attacked

Jean.

On the morrow, the spahi, lying on his wretched little grey mattress, was

placed on a stretcher and taken to hospital.

XVIII

Noon!... The hospital is as still as a great mortuary.

Noon!... The grasshopper is chirping. The African woman is singing in

her thin voice her vague and drowsy song. Upon the whole expanse of the

desert plains of Senegal the sun darts down its perpendicular rays of

torrid light, which the vast horizon reflects in shimmer and glitter.

* * * * *

Noon!... The hospital is as still as a great mortuary. The long, white

galleries, the long corridors are deserted. Half way up the high, bare

wall, lime-washed a dazzling white, hangs a clock, pointing to noon with

it slow-moving hands of steel. The grey-lettered, mournful inscription

around the dial is fading in the sun, _Vitæ fugaces exhibet horas_. The

twelve strokes ring out painfully, with that feeble tone that the dying

know; that tone, heard in feverish, wakeful hours, by those who have come

hither to die; that tone like a knell, tolled in an atmosphere too heavy

with heat to conduct the sounds.

Noon!... The mournful hour, when sick men die. The air of this hospital

is heavy with fever, the indefinable emanations, as it were, of death.

* * * * *

Above, in an open ward, are voices that whispered softly; little,

scarcely perceptible sounds; the good sister’s cautious footsteps, as she

moves carefully over the mats. She comes and goes with a troubled air,

Sister Pacôme, with her pale, sallow face under her nurse’s cap. Doctor

and priest are there, too, seated beside a bed, which is curtained with a

white mosquito net.

Out-of-door, through the open window, are sun and sand, sand and sun, and

far away, blue outlines and shimmering light.

Will he pass away, poor spahi?...

Is this the moment when Jean’s soul will take its flight thither into

that overwhelming noontide air?... So far from home, where will it find

a resting place in all these desert plains?... Whither will it vanish?...

* * * * *

No. The doctor, who had remained there a long time, expecting the final

departure, has quietly withdrawn.

The cooler hours of evening have come, and the breeze off the sea brings

relief to the dying. To-morrow, perhaps! But Jean is more tranquil, and

his head does not burn so terribly.

Down below in the street, outside the door, a small negro girl sat

crouching on the sand, playing at knucklebones with white pebbles to keep

herself in countenance when any one went past. She had been there since

morning, endeavouring to avoid notice, playing her little part, for fear

of being driven away. She did not venture to question any one, but she

knew very well that if the spahi were to die, he would be carried through

this door on his way to the cemetery of Sorr.

XIX

The fever lasted another week, and daily at noon Jean became delirious.

Each renewed attack was regarded with anxiety. Nevertheless the danger

was over, and the disease conquered.

Oh those hot hours of midday, hours that weigh most heavily upon the

sick! Those who have had fever on the banks of these African rivers know

them well, those deadly hours of torpor and slumber. Shortly before

noon, Jean would fall asleep. It was a kind of suspended existence,

haunted by confused visions and a persistent impression of suffering. And

from time to time he had the sensation of dying, and for an instant he

would lose all consciousness of himself. These were his moments of peace.

Towards four o’clock he would awake and ask for water. The visions faded,

shrank away into remote corners of the ward, behind the white curtains,

and vanished. Only his head continued to hurt violently, as if boiling

lead had been poured into it, but the delirium had passed its climax.

Among these faces, gentle or grimacing, real or imaginary, that hovered

around him, he had two or three times thought he recognised Cora’s lover

standing near his bed and looking at him kindly, but disappearing as soon

as Jean’s eyes were raised to his. Doubtless he, too, was an illusion,

like those people from his village whom he imagined he saw there, strange

in demeanour, vague and distorted in appearance.

Yet, curiously enough, since he had seemed to see him thus, he no longer

felt that he hated him.

But one evening—no, he was certainly not dreaming—one evening he really

saw him there before him, in the same uniform he had worn at Cora’s

house, with his two officer’s stripes shining on his blue sleeve. Jean

looked at him with his great eyes, raising his head slightly, and he

stretched out his wasted arm as if to feel if there were really someone

there.

Then, seeing that Jean recognised him, the young man, before he

disappeared as usual, took the spahi’s hand and pressed it, saying simply,

“Pardon me.”

Tears, his first tears, sprang to the spahi’s eyes and brought relief.

XX

Jean’s convalescence was rapid.

Once the fever had left him, his youth and strength soon gained the upper

hand. But nevertheless he could not forget, poor fellow, and he was very

unhappy. At times he fell into moods of wild despair, and nourished

almost savage notions of vengeance. But this phase was soon over, and

then he would say to himself that he would willingly endure whatever

humiliations she might choose to inflict, if he might see her and possess

her again, as before.

His new friend, the naval officer, came again from time to time, and

sat by his bedside. He spoke to him almost as one would speak to a sick

child, although he was scarcely as old as Jean.

“Jean,” he said one day very gently.... “Jean, you know, about that

woman—if my telling you this sets your mind at rest—I give you my word

of honour that I have never set eyes on her again since that night that

you remember. You see, there are many things, my dear Jean, that you

don’t know about yet. Some day you will realise; you, too, that one must

not take such a small matter so much to heart.... In any case, as far as

that woman is concerned, I am quite willing to swear to you never to go

near her again.”

This was the only reference to Cora made by either of them, and the

promise actually restored Jean’s peace of mind.

Oh yes! he realised clearly now, poor fellow, that there must be “many

things that he did not know about yet,” that there must be—commonplaces,

no doubt, to people moving in a social sphere more sophisticated than his

own—instances of cold-blooded, subtle perversity, outside the scope of

his imagination.

Little by little, moreover, he grew fond of this friend, whom he could

not understand; this friend once cynical, but now grown kind, who

regarded life with inexplicable serenity and light-heartedness, and who

had come to offer him his protection as an officer, by way of amends for

the suffering he had caused him.

But Jean had no wish for protection; neither promotion nor anything else

appealed to him any longer; his heart, so young still, was filled with

the bitterness of this first agony of despair.

XXI

... It was at Dame Virginie-Scholastique’s. (Missionaries sometimes have

veritable inspirations in naming their neophytes.) It was one in the

morning; the tavern showed large and dark. As is usual with places of

ill-repute, it was closed with thick doors, reinforced with iron.

A small evil-smelling lamp shed its light on a jumbled litter of objects,

crowded painfully together in the dense atmosphere—red jackets and bare,

black flesh, weird entanglements, broken glasses and broken bottles on

the table and on the ground; red caps, negro bon-bons, spahis’ sabres,

all in floods of beer and alcohol. The temperature of the hovel was that

of a vapour bath. The heat was maddening, the atmosphere dense with

black, or milky, smoke, and with the odours of absinthe, musk, spices,

soumaré, sweat of negroes.

It must have been a hilarious revel, and surpassingly uproarious, but now

it was over. There was an end to the songs and the racket. Now followed

the period of reaction, of stupefaction that comes after drinking. The

spahis were there, some of them dull-eyed, resting their foreheads on

the table, and smiling vacuously. Others still preserved their dignity,

bracing themselves against intoxication, still holding their heads

erect—handsome faces with strong features, the lustreless eyes retaining

their seriousness with an indescribable expression of melancholy and

loathing.

Distributed among them, haphazard, was Virginie-Scholastique’s whole pack

of little twelve-year-old negro girls and small negro boys.

Outside a listening ear could hear in the distance the cry of jackals

prowling around the cemetery of Sorr, where for some of those now here

there were places already marked out beneath the sand.

Dame Virginie, copper-coloured, thick-lipped, with woolly hair wrapped in

a piece of red cotton—drunk herself—was sponging the blood from a head of

fair hair. A tall spahi, with a young, fresh-coloured face, and hair the

colour of ripe corn, lay there unconscious with broken head, while Dame

Virginie, assisted by a black wench more drunk than her mistress, was

sponging his wound with fresh water and applying compresses of vinegar.

She was not actuated by motives of compassion—certainly not, but by fear

of the police. She was really uneasy, Virginie Scholastique, for the

blood continued to flow. It had filled a whole bowl and it would not

stop, and the old harridan was sobered by her anxiety.

Jean was seated on a bench in a corner, more drunk than all the rest, yet

still holding himself stiffly, his eyes staring and glassy.

* * * * *

He it was who had inflicted this wound with an iron latch wrenched

off a door, and he was still holding the latch in his clenched hand,

unconscious of the blow he had struck with it.

It was a month since his recovery, and every evening he could have been

seen dragging himself from tavern to tavern, foremost among the dissolute

and drunken, practising himself in the insolent airs of rake and cynic.

There was still much in this behaviour that was due to mere childishness,

but the result was the same; he had travelled along a terrible road

during this month of suffering. He had devoured novels, whose every

detail was new to his imagination, and he had assimilated all their

unwholesome extravagances. And then he had gone the round of the easy

conquests of St Louis, coloured women and white, among whom his handsome

person had secured for him unresisted possession.

And to crown everything, he had begun to drink.

Oh you who lead a well-regulated domestic life, seated peacefully day

after day by your fireside, do not pass judgment on the sailors and

spahis, men of ardent natures, whom their destiny has plunged into

abnormal conditions of life upon the wide ocean, or in the far away lands

of the sun, exposed to unheard of privations, to desires and temptations

of which you have no conception. Do not pass judgment on these exiles, or

these wanderers, whose sufferings, joys, tortured imaginings are unknown

to you.

So Jean began to drink, and he drank more than the others; he drank

prodigiously.

“How can he do it?” said those around him, “a man who has never been

accustomed to it.”

It was precisely because he had “never been accustomed to it” that his

head was stronger, and for the moment he could stand more. And this

impressed his comrades greatly.

Yet through it all, in spite of the rakish airs he gave himself, like the

big, undisciplined child he was, poor Jean had kept himself almost chaste.

He would not stoop to a dishonouring intimacy with negresses, and when

Dame Virginie’s pupils let their hands stray over him, he pushed them

away with the end of his riding whip, like unclean animals, and the

miserable little creatures came to look upon him as a sort of human

fetish whom they might not approach.

But he was violent when he was drunk; when he lost his head and

his enormous physical strength was no longer under control, he was

terrifying. He had struck that blow just now, roused by some casual jest

on the subject of his love affairs, and he no longer remembered anything

about it. He remained there motionless, with lack-lustre eyes, still

holding in his hand the blood-stained latch.

Suddenly his eyes flashed. Now it was that old woman who was provoking

his unreasoning wrath, the senseless rage of a drunken man. He half rose

to his feet, threatening her in his fury. The old hag uttered a hoarse

cry; she went through a minute of horrible fear.

“Hold him,” she moaned to the inert beings who were already lying asleep

under the tables.

Some heads were raised; feeble, impotent hands tried to hold Jean back by

his jacket, but their efforts were futile.

“Give me some drink, you old witch,” he said; “some drink, you old devil

of night; you horrible old hag, some drink.”

“Yes, yes,” she answered, her voice choking with fear. “That’s it! Some

drink, Sam, some absinthe, quick, to finish him off; absinthe laced with

brandy.”

In these emergencies, Dame Virginie did not consider expense. Jean drank

it off at one draught, flung his glass against the wall, and fell back

as if struck by lightning.

He was successfully “finished off,” as the old harridan had said. He was

no longer dangerous.

She was strong, was old Scholastique, sturdily built—and wholly sober

now. With the help of her black wench and her little girls, she lifted

Jean like a dead weight, and after rapidly searching his pockets for the

last coins they might contain, she opened the door and threw him out.

Jean fell like a corpse, his arms extended, his face in the sand—and

the old hag, after discharging a flood of appalling abuse and savage

obscenities, drew to her door, which closed heavily with a loud clang of

iron.

All was still. The wind blew from the cemetery, and in the intense

silence of midnight could be clearly heard the shrill howling of the

jackals, the uncanny music of the body-snatchers.

XXII

Françoise Peyral to her son.

My dear son,—We have had no answer to our letter, and Peyral

says it is beginning to be quite time that something came for

us. I can see that he is very unhappy whenever Toinou goes past

with his box and says that he has nothing for us. I, too, am

very anxious. But I always believe that the good God will guard

my dear boy, as I so often beg of Him, and that no harm can

come to him, nor any trouble, either through bad behaviour or

punishment. If there were anything like that I should be too

unhappy.

Your father wishes me to say that memories come into his head

of what he himself was like, formerly, when he was in the army.

And he says, when he was stationed in garrison towns, he has

seen young men, who were not very sensible, have a rough time

of it, through comrades leading them on to drink and to mix

with bad women, who are always on the lookout to ruin them. I

am telling you this because he wants me to, but for my part I

know that my dear boy is steady, and that he has ideas in his

head which will surely keep him away from all these evil things.

Next month we will send you a little more money. Out there I

expect you have to pay a great deal for trifling things. I know

you will not spend money unnecessarily, when you think of all

the trouble your father takes. As for me, a woman’s trouble is

no great matter, and I speak for him, the dear man. The village

folk always talk about you at the evening working parties and

merrymakings, and no social gathering passes without some

conversation about our Jean. All the neighbours send hearty

messages.

My dear son, your father and I embrace you with all our hearts.

The good God keep you.

Your mother,

FRANÇOISE PEYRAL.

This letter was received by Jean in the prison attached to the barracks,

where he had been locked up “for drunkenness, and for having had himself

brought back by the guard.”

Fortunately the fair-haired spahi’s wound was not very serious, and

neither the injured man nor his comrades had wished to report Peyral.

Jean’s clothes were soiled and blood-stained, his shirt in rags, and his

head still confused with the fumes of alcohol. Mists swam before his

eyes, so that he could scarcely read. And besides, a dense veil now lay

upon the affection he felt for the friends of his childhood and for his

family. This veil was woven by Cora and his own despair and passions. (It

is thus, sometimes, during periods of bewilderment and loss of balance.

Then the veil fades away, and quite tranquilly one returns to all that

one used to love.)

In spite of all, this touching letter, so full of trust, found without

difficulty the way to Jean’s heart. He kissed it devoutly, and tears came

to his eyes.

And then he swore to himself to drink no more, and as the habit was not

yet inveterate he was able to keep strictly to his promise; he was never

drunk again.

XXIII

A few days later an unforeseen event created a fortunate and necessary

diversion in Jean’s existence.

The spahis were ordered, both horses and men, to go for a change of air

into camp at Dialamban, several miles to the south of St Louis, near the

mouth of the river.

The day before their departure, Fatou-gaye came to the quarters, wearing

her fine blue garment, to pay a farewell visit to her friend. He kissed

her for the first time on both her little black cheeks. At nightfall the

spahis set out on the march.

As for Cora, after the first moments of excessive excitement and

resentment, she missed her lovers. In truth she missed both of them,

both Jeans, each of whom had appealed equally to her senses. Treated by

the spahi as a goddess, it was a change to be treated by the other as the

light woman she really was. Hitherto no one had exhibited towards her

such calm, absolute contempt; the novelty of it charmed her.

But she was seen no more at St Louis trailing her flowing draperies over

the sand. She took her departure secretly one day, despatched by her

husband on the recommendation of the authorities, to one of the most

remote branches in the south.

Doubtless Fatou-gaye had been gossiping, and St Louis was shocked at this

last scandal in which this woman had figured.

XXIV

It is a calm night at the end of February, a typical cold weather

night—calm and cool, following upon a burning day.

The column of spahis bound for Dialamban is crossing at a walking pace

the plains of Legbar. Leave had been given to break rank, each man at his

choice and pleasure, and Jean, who has fallen to the rear, is marching

quietly along in the company of his friend Nyaor....

In the Sahara and the Soudan there are cold nights such as this,

possessing the clear splendour of our own winter nights, but with greater

transparency and luminousness.

A death-like stillness pervades the whole country. The sky is greenish

blue, sombre and deep, with an infinity of stars. The moon shines bright

as day, and defines the outlines of things with surprising sharpness,

tinging them with rosy light.

In the distance, farther than sight can penetrate, stretch swamps

overgrown with the depressing vegetation of the mangrove tree. Such is

all this region of Africa, from the left bank of the river as far as the

inaccessible borders of Guinea.

Sirius is rising; the moon has reached its zenith; the silence is

awe-inspiring.

Out of the pink sand rise the tall, bluish euphorbiæ, casting a short,

hard shadow. The moon outlines the smallest shadows of the plants with a

set and frozen precision, intense in its immobility and mystery.

Here and there are clumps of brushwood, blurred obscurities, forming

great gloomy patches on the luminous, pink background of the sands; then

sheets of stagnant water, with vapour floating above them like white

smoke, feverish miasma, more noxious and subtle than that of the day

time. There is a penetrating sensation of chilliness, strange after the

heat of the day; the moist air is all impregnated with the odour of great

swamps.

Here and there by the roadside lie large skeletons, contorted with

pain, carcases of camels, swimming in a black, fetid fluid. There they

lie, grinning at the moon, shamelessly displaying their flanks, torn by

vultures, their bodies hideously disembowelled.

* * * * *

From time to time the cry of a swamp bird breaks the immense silence.

* * * * *

At long intervals a baobab stretches its massive branches into the still

air, like a great dead madrepore, a tree of stone, and the moon defines

with surprising sharpness the contours of its structure, rigid like a

mastodon’s, conveying to the imagination the impression of a thing inert,

petrified and cold.

In the midst of its polished branches perch black masses: the inevitable

vultures. Whole families of them roost there confidingly, sleeping

heavily; they suffer Jean to approach, with the indifference of fetish

birds, and the moon casts blue reflections and metallic gleams on their

great folded wings.

And Jean is full of wonder at this first revelation at dead of night of

all the intimate details of this land.

* * * * *

At two o’clock there bursts forth a chorus of yells, as of dogs baying

the moon, but more savage, more grating, more weirdly sinister.

Sometimes at night at St Louis, when the wind blew from the direction

of the cemetery, Jean had fancied he heard in the far distance similar

lamentations. But to-night this lugubrious music was close at hand,

there, in the brush. The dismal yelping of jackals mingled with piercing

strident caterwaulings of hyenas. A battle was in progress between two

wandering packs on the prowl in search of dead camels.

“What is it?” Jean asked the black spahi.

It was, perhaps, a presentiment: a kind of horror seized him. The thing

was undoubtedly there, quite near him, in the brush, and the sound of

these voices made his flesh creep and his hair stand on end.

“Those who are lying dead,” replied Nyaor-fall with expressive pantomime,

“those who are lying dead on the ground, these beasts find them and eat

them.”

And when he said “eat them,” he made as if to bite his black arm with his

magnificent white teeth.

Jean understood and shuddered. Afterwards, whenever he heard at night

these dismal concerts, he remembered the explanation which Nyaor’s

mimicry had made so clear, and he, who in broad daylight was seldom

afraid, shuddered and felt chilled to the bone by one of those vague and

gloomy forebodings that assail the superstitious mountaineer.

The noise grows fainter and dies away in the distance; it breaks out

again, somewhat muffled, at another point of the horizon, then it ceases

and all is still again.

The white vapours that hang above the sleeping waters grow denser with

the approach of morning. One is penetrated and chilled to the bone by the

glacial dampness of the swamps. It is a curious sensation, to experience

cold in this country. The dew falls. Little by little the moon glides

down the western sky, is obscured, extinguished. The heart is wrung by

the solitude.

At last, low on the horizon, appear the thatched roofs of the village of

Dialamban, where at dawn the spahis are to pitch their camp.

XXV

The land surrounding the camp of Dialamban is desolate—never-ending

swamps of stagnant water, alternating with plains of arid sand, yielding

a growth of stunted mimosas.

Jean used to take long, solitary walks, with his rifle over his shoulder,

shooting or dreaming—ever the same vague reveries of the mountaineer.

It amused him, too, to paddle a pirogue up the banks of the yellow river,

or to plunge into the mazes of the creeks of the Senegal.

There were swamps, extending further than the eye could see, where the

warm, still waters lay asleep; banks, whose treacherous soil would not

support a human foot.

White herons stalked solemnly among the monotonous verdure of the

mangroves. Enormous blowing-lizards crawled upon the mud; great

waterlilies, white or rose-coloured, unfolded their beauty to the tropic

sun, to delight the eyes of alligators and fish-eagles.

* * * * *

Jean Peyral came near falling in love with this country.

XXVI

The month of May had come. The spahis were gaily packing up their

kit. With enthusiasm they struck their tents and put together their

equipment. They were going back to St Louis to take possession again of

their great white barracks, newly repaired and lime-washed, and to pick

up again all their old pleasures—mulatto women and absinthe.

The month of May! In our land of France, the lovely month of flowers

and greenery! But in the dismal plains of Dialamban May had brought no

verdure.

Trees and herbage, every plant not rooted in the yellow water of the

swamps, remained blighted, withered, lifeless. For six months not a drop

of rain had fallen from the sky, and the land was stricken with dreadful

thirst.

And all the time the temperature continued to rise; the strong breezes

that used to spring up each evening had ceased; the rainy season was at

hand, the season of sultry heat and torrential rain; the season to which

each year the Europeans in Senegal look forward with apprehension, as

bringing them fever, anæmia, and often death.

Nevertheless, it is necessary to have lived in “the land of thirst” in

order to appreciate the delights of this first shower of rain, the joy

experienced in exposing oneself to the big drops of this first burst of

storm.

O the first tornado!... In a leaden, impassive sky like a gloomy vault, a

strange weather sign appears, rising above the horizon.

It rises and rises, assuming unusual and terrifying shapes. At first one

might imagine it to be the eruption of a gigantic volcano, the explosion

of an entire world. It forms itself into great arches across the sky,

ever rising higher, one above the other, with sharply outlined contours,

in opaque, heavy masses. One might imagine them vaults of stone about to

precipitate themselves upon the world, and the whole is lighted on the

under side with metallic gleams, livid, greenish or copper-coloured. And

it continues to rise without a check.

The artists who have painted the deluge, the cataclysms of the primeval

world, have never conceived scenes so fantastic, skies so terrifying.

And still there is not a breath of air. Nature lies prostrate, without a

tremor.

* * * * *

Suddenly a terrific onslaught of wind, like the crack of a heavy whip,

beats to the ground trees, herbage, birds. It whirls the maddened

vultures round and round, upsetting everything in its track.

It is the tornado, bursting its chains. All things tremble and reel;

nature is convulsed under the terrible might of the hurricane passing on

its way.

For perhaps twenty minutes all the sluices of heaven are opened upon the

earth. Rain, as of the great flood, refreshes the thirsty soil of Africa,

and the wind blows furiously, strewing the earth with leaves, branches,

and _débris_.

* * * * *

Then suddenly all is peace. It is over. The final gusts of wind put to

flight the last copper-coloured clouds, and sweep away the tattered

shreds of the cataclysm. The hurricane is over, and the sky is once more

clear, impassive, blue.

The first tornado took the spahis by surprise, while they were on the

march. There was a laughing, noisy stampede. The village of Touroukambé

lay in the way, and they made for it, helter-skelter.

Women who had been pounding millet, children playing in the brush, hens

pecking up food, dogs sleeping in the sun, all of them had hurried home,

and were herded together beneath the narrow, peaked roofs.

Then the huts, already overcrowded, are invaded by the spahis, who step

into calebashes and upset the kouss-kouss. Some kiss the little girls;

others peep out-of-doors, like big children, for the pleasure of getting

wet and of feeling the rain from heaven trickling down upon their heated,

harum-scarum heads. The horses, tethered haphazard, are neighing, pawing

the ground, kicking out in terror. Dogs, goats, sheep, all the cattle of

the village, are huddled against the doors, yelping, bleating, leaping,

thrusting with heads or horns to force an entry—all demanding their share

of protection and shelter.

There is a discordant uproar—a mingling of shouts, bursts of laughter

from the negresses, the whistling of the storm wind, and the thunder

drowning all other sounds with its mighty artillery. Wild confusion

prevails beneath the black sky—darkness at midday, pierced by sudden

flashes of green lightning; rain in torrents, the deluge pouring down

at its pleasure, trickling in through all the chinks in the dried up

thatch—here and there administering an unexpected shower-bath to the

back of a curled-up cat, or to a startled chicken, or a spahi’s head.

* * * * *

When the tornado was over, and order re-established, the spahis took the

road again, marching along flooded paths. Across the sky flitted the last

little curious wisps of cloud, like little parcels of rags and scraps of

brown cloth, torn and twisted like curl papers.

Strong, unwonted odours rose from the parched earth, at its contact with

these first drops of water. Nature was preparing for new births.

XXVII

Fatou-gaye had posted herself since morning at the entrance to St Louis,

so that she might not miss the arrival of the column.

When she saw Jean pass by, she welcomed him with a discreet _kéou_,

accompanied by a very correct little bow. She did not wish to embarrass

him further while he was in the ranks, and she had the good taste to wait

two long hours before she came to pay her respects to him in barracks.

Fatou had changed greatly. In three months she had grown and developed a

swift maturity like the plants of her native country.

She no longer asked for coppers. She had actually a certain graceful

timidity, proper to a young girl.

A bou-bou of white muslin now covered her rounded breasts, as is the

custom with young girls who have come to marriageable age. A strong

scent of musk and soumaré hung about her.

Her head no longer displayed its five stiff little tails. She was letting

her hair grow, and would presently put herself into the skilful hands

of the hairdressers, who would pile up her locks into the complicated

erection which is proper to the head of an African woman.

At present her hair was still too short, and it stood out in a

dishevelled woolly mass, which gave an entirely new character to her

face. Formerly pleasing but comical, it had now become attractive and

quaint, almost charming.

She was a mixture of young girl, child, and little black devil—a very odd

little person.

“The child is pretty, Peyral, you know,” said the spahis smiling.

Jean had noticed, certainly, that she was pretty, but at present this

fact interested him very little. He tried to resume quietly his former

mode of life, his walks on the beach, and his long expeditions into the

country.

The quiet, contemplative months spent in camp had done him good. He had

almost regained his moral equilibrium. His memories of his aged parents

and of his young betrothed, trustfully waiting for him at home in their

village, held him once more with their wholesome charm and influence.

He had done with childish folly and bravado, and now he could not

understand how it was that Dame Virginie had come to number him among

her clients. He had vowed not only to give up absinthe, but likewise to

remain faithful to his betrothed until the blissful day of their marriage.

XXVIII

The air was charged with sluggish exhalations, seething with the vital

odours and scents of young, growing things. Nature was hastening to carry

out her vast plans of procreation.

Formerly, on his first arrival, Jean had cast a general look of repulsion

on this black population. In his eyes they all seemed alike; they all

wore for him the same simian mask, and under that polished surface of

oiled ebony he could not have distinguished one individual from another.

Little by little, however, he had grown accustomed to these faces. Now he

could distinguish among them. When he saw the silver-braceletted, black

girls go by, he would compare them; one he considered plain, another

pretty, one refined, another degraded.

In the end the negresses had for him individual faces, just like white

women, and he found them less repulsive than before.

XXIX

June! It was spring time indeed, but a tropical spring time—fleeting,

feverish, full of enervating odours and the air heavy with thunder.

Butterflies and birds returned, life was renewed; the humming birds had

cast off their grey dress, and arrayed themselves in their brilliant

summer colours. The whole country turned green as if by enchantment; the

leafy trees now cast a little shade, warm and soft, upon the moist soil;

the mimosas, in full flower, looked like enormous bouquets, with pink or

orange sprays, where the humming birds sang in tiny little soft voices,

like the muted twittering of swallows. Even the clumsy baobabs had put on

for a few days fresh leaves of pale, delicate green....

The plains were carpeted with strange flowers, wild grasses, daturas

with large, scent-laden calyces. And the showers that watered all things

were warm and fragrant, and at evening, above the tall grasses sprung up

overnight, the ephemeral fire-flies danced their rounds, like sparks of

phosphorus.

Nature had been so impatient to bring forth all this abundance that in a

single week she had exhausted all her gifts.

XXX

In his evening walks, Jean invariably came upon little Fatou, Fatou

with a head like a woolly, black lamb. Her hair grew quickly—like the

grasses—and soon the skilful hairdressers would be able to make something

of it.

XXXI

Marriages were frequent during this spring time. Often at evening,

during those enervating June nights, Jean would meet these marriage

processions meandering across the sands in long fantastic trains. Every

one was singing, and the chorus of all these falsetto, monkey-like voices

had a syncopated accompaniment of handclapping and tom-toms. There was

something ponderously voluptuous, brutishly sensual in these songs and

this negro gaiety.

Jean used often to visit his friend Nyaor at Guet n’dar, and the scenes

of Yolof family life and domesticity disturbed him.... How lonely he

felt, cut off from his own people in this accursed country!... He thought

of Jeanne Méry, the girl whom he loved with the pure affection of

childhood.... Alas! he had only been six months in Africa.... More than

four years to wait until he saw her again!... He began to say to himself

that perhaps the courage to endure his solitary existence might fail him,

that soon at all costs he might need someone to help him to pass his term

of exile.... But whom?...

Fatou-gaye perhaps?... Oh come!... what profanation of himself!... Was he

to resemble his comrades, old Virginie’s customers?... To maltreat like

them little black girls?... He had a kind of self-respect, instinctive

modesty, which had hitherto preserved him from such degradation; he could

never stoop so low.

XXXII

He took a walk every evening. He took a great many walks.... Thunder

showers still fell.... The immense, evil-smelling swamps, the stagnant

waters saturated with feverish miasma covered a wider area every day.

This country of sand was now overgrown with tall, grassy vegetation....

The evening sun was pale as if exhausted by excessive heat and noxious

emanations....

At the setting of that yellow sun, when Jean found himself alone in

the midst of these desolate marshes, where so many strange new things

worked upon his imagination, he was possessed by inexplicable sadness....

He cast his eyes all around the wide, flat landscape, overhung with

motionless vapours; he could not understand what there was in the aspect

of things, so mournful and so abnormal, thus to oppress his heart.

Above the damp grass floated clouds of dragon flies, with great

black-spotted wings, while birds whose song was strange to him called

plaintively to one another among the tall grasses.... And the eternal

melancholy of this land of Ham brooded over everything.

In these twilight hours of spring time these African marshes are steeped

in a melancholy that no human tongue could express....

* * * * *

XXXIII

_Anamalis fobil!_ shrieked the _griots_, as, with eyes inflamed, muscles

taut, bodies dripping with sweat, they beat their tom-toms.

And the whole assembly, frenziedly clapping their hands, repeated

_Anamalis fobil!_ _Anamalis fobil!_ ... words whose translation would

blister these pages.... “Anamalis fobil!” the first words, the motive and

refrain of a diabolical song, delirious with licentious passion, the song

of the spring _bamboulas_....

_Anamalis fobil!_ the howling of frenzied desire of the sap of negroes

heated to excess by the sun, of burning hysteria ... the negro’s alleluia

of love, a hymn of seduction chanted likewise by nature, air, earth,

plants, and scents.

At the spring _bamboulas_, the young men mingled with the young girls who

had just arrayed themselves in the pomp of their wedding finery. To a

maddening rhythm, to a frantic melody, they all sang, as they danced upon

the sand, _Anamalis fobil!_ ...

XXXIV

_Anamalis fobil!_ All the big, milky buds on the baobabs had burst into

tender leaf....

And Jean felt this negro spring-time burning in his blood, flowing like a

consuming poison through his veins....

He was exhausted by all this renewal of life, because it was a life in

which he had no part. The blood that boiled in men’s veins was black; the

sap that rose in the plants was poisonous; the perfume of the flowers was

dangerous, and the insects were swollen with venom.

In him, too, the sap was rising, the sap of his two-and-twenty years,

but with a feverishness that exhausted the source from which it sprang,

and in the end this terrible renascence would have brought him to the

verge of death.

_Anamalis fobil!_ How rapidly this spring advanced!... June was scarcely

over, and already, under the influence of deadly heat, in an atmosphere

no longer endurable, the leaves were turning yellow, the plants were

dying, and the sere grasses drooped earthwards....

XXXV

_Anamalis fobil!_ ... There are in hot countries certain fruits of harsh

and bitter flavour—such as the gourous of Senegal—that are detestable

to the palate in our cool latitudes, but which, out there, appeal to

the taste in special conditions of thirst or ill-health. You may have a

passionate craving for them, and they may seem to you curiously delicious.

It was the same with that little creature with her shock of black sheep’s

wool, her body of sculptured marble, and her glittering eyes, already

fully aware of what they asked of Jean, yet downcast in his presence with

a childish presence of timid modesty.

This highly-flavoured fruit of the Soudan was precociously ripened by

the tropical spring, bursting with poisonous juices, rife with morbid

voluptuousness, febrile and foreign.

* * * * *

XXXVI

_Anamalis fobil!_

Jean had dressed for the evening hastily, almost frenziedly.

That morning he had told Fatou to go at nightfall to the foot of a

certain solitary baobab in the marshes of Sorr, and to wait for him there.

* * * * *

Then, before setting out, he had leaned on his elbow at one of the large

windows of the barracks, troubled in mind, trying to think—to think, if

that were possible, while he drew a few breaths of less oppressive air.

He shuddered at the thing he was about to do.

If he had withstood temptation for several days, his resistance was

due to the very complicated emotions struggling within him. A kind of

instinctive horror still mingled with the terrible urgency of his senses.

And superstition, too, played a part, the superstition inborn in a

mountaineer, a vague dread of charms and amulets, horror of I know not

what enchantments, what bonds of darkness.

It seemed to him that he was about to cross the fatal threshold, to sign

some sort of sinister pact with that black race, that darker veils would

descend, separating him from his mother and his betrothed and all that he

had loved and regretted in his home overseas.

The warm twilight sank upon the river; the old, white town turned rosy in

the light, blue in the shadows; long lines of camels were wending their

way across the plain, moving northwards to the desert.

Already in the distance could be heard the griots’ tom-toms beginning,

and the song of frantic desires. _Anamalis fobil!—Faramata hi!_

The hour of his assignation with Fatou-gaye was almost past. Jean set off

at a run to join her in the marshes of Sorr.

* * * * *

A solitary baobab cast its shadow upon their strange nuptials. The

saffron sky stretched above them its impassive vault, melancholy,

oppressive, laden with electricity, with terrestrial emanations and vital

elements.

To paint that nuptial couch would require warmer tints than any palette

could provide—African words, sounds, rustling noises, and, above all,

silence, all the odours of Senegal, tempest, sombre fire, transparency,

obscurity.

And yet there was nothing to be seen, save a single, solitary baobab in

the midst of a great, grassy plain.

Mingled with his delirious infatuation, Jean still felt a sort of secret

horror, as he saw, contrasting with the background of dusky twilight, the

intenser blackness of his bride; as he saw, close to his own, the glitter

of Fatou’s rolling eyes.

Great bats flitted noiselessly above them, their silken-winged flight

seemed like the rapid fluttering of black cloth. They flew so low that

they brushed them with their wings, their bat-like curiosity greatly

excited by Fatou’s garment of white cotton, which showed up on the

parched grass.

_Anamalis fobil!_ ... _Faramata hi!_ ...