PART II

I

... Three years had passed....

Three times the terrible spring and the cold weather season had come

again; three times the “season of thirst,” with its cold nights, its wind

from the desert....

... Jean was lying asleep on his _tara_ in his whitewashed lodging in

Samba-Hamet’s house. Near him lay his yellow dog, motionless, with open

eyes, his paws straight out in front of him, his head on his paws, his

tongue hanging out thirstily; he resembled in attitude and expression

those hieratic pictures of jackals in Egyptian temples.

And Fatou-gaye lay on the ground at Jean’s feet.

It was noon, the still hour of the siesta.... It was hot, very hot,

extraordinarily hot. Call to mind the most overpowering noons you have

known in July, and imagine a far greater heat and an intenser light.

It was a December day. The wind blew very softly from the desert, with

its unvarying regularity. Everything was withered and dead. The wind

traced upon the sand thousands and thousands of little wavy fluctuating

streaks, like tiny ripples on the great sea without water.

* * * * *

Fatou-gaye was lying face downwards, resting on her elbows. The

upper part of her body was bare (her indoor costume), and her smooth

back sloped upwards in a graceful curve from her shapely hips to the

extraordinary erection of amber and coral which crowned her head.

Around Samba-Hamet’s hut there was silence, the rustling movements of

lizards, the buzzing of flies, the shimmering of sand.

Fatou, half asleep, with her chin resting on her two hands, was singing

to herself. She sang airs she had never heard sung, which were,

nevertheless, not of her own composing. They were the expression, in

strange, drowsy music, of her languid dreams, her voluptuous lassitude;

reflex action, the effect produced upon her young negro girl’s brain by

all that weight of circumstances, manifesting itself in song.

In that sonorous hour of noon, in that feverish half-sleep of the siesta,

how plaintive are the vibrations of such a song, the vague, unconsidered

result of circumstances, a musical paraphrase of silence, heat, solitude,

exile.

* * * * *

Jean and Fatou have made peace. As usual, Jean has forgiven her. The

trouble about the _khâliss_ and the earrings of Galam gold is all over.

The money has been procured elsewhere and sent to France. It was Nyaor

who lent it, in large silver coins with very ancient effigies, which he

had kept locked up with many others in a copper chest. The debt will be

paid as soon as possible. True, it is another weight on Jean’s mind, but

at least his dear old parents, who had counted on him, will not lack.

Their minds will be at ease. The rest is not so important.

Sleeping on his _tara_ with his slave lying at his feet, Jean has a

certain superb nonchalance, a certain counterfeit air of Arab prince.

There is no trace remaining of the little mountaineer from the Cevennes.

He has acquired something of the beggarly majesty of those men who dwell

in tents.

These three years in Senegal, which have already thinned the ranks of the

spahis, have spared him. His face is bronzed; his strength has developed;

his features are more refined, and their original delicacy and beauty

still more accentuated.

A certain lack of moral tone, periods of indifference and oblivion, a

kind of insensibility of the heart, alternating suddenly with painful

awakenings—such are the sole effects that these three years have

succeeded in producing upon him. The climate of Senegal has gained no

further hold upon his powerful nature.

He has by degrees developed into a model soldier, punctual, vigilant,

brave. And yet he still wears only humble, woollen stripes on his

sleeve. The gold stripes of quartermaster, which have often been dangled

before his eyes, have always been refused him. To begin with, he has

no influence, and then, above all, there is the scandal of living with

a black woman.... To get drunk, to go on the racket, to be brought back

with a broken head, to commit drunken assaults by night with one’s sabre

on passers-by, to roam from tavern to tavern, to stoop to all kinds of

degradation—that sort of thing is all very well.

But to have turned from the path of virtue—simply for one’s own private

pleasure—a small captive living in a respectable house, and provided with

the sacrament of baptism—such a thing cannot be tolerated....

Formerly Jean used to receive very violent reproofs on this subject from

his superior officers, combined with terrible threats and insults. He had

uncovered his proud head to the storm, and then he had listened with the

stoicism demanded by discipline, concealing under a certain semblance of

contrition a wild desire to avail himself of his riding whip.

Yet, for all that, he did not alter his course of conduct by a hair’s

breadth....

A little more dissimulation was practised, perhaps, for a few days. But

he kept Fatou.

His feelings on the subject of that little creature were so complicated

that wiser men than he would have wasted their energy trying to analyse

them. As for Jean, he surrendered himself without understanding, as if to

the beguiling charm of a love-philtre. He had not the strength to part

from her. The veil that lay upon his past and his memories grew gradually

denser; now he followed unresisting the dictates of the perturbed,

irresolute heart that separation and exile had led astray....

And day after day, day after day, always that same sun! To see it rising

every morning at the same hour with relentless regularity, bare of

clouds, with none of the freshness of dawn—this sun, yellow or red, which

the flatness of the landscape rendered visible, as at sea, from its first

appearance above the horizon, and which, scarcely risen, began to convey

to head and temples a painful, impressive sensation of burning heat.

* * * * *

For two years now Jean and Fatou had lived together in Samba-Hamet’s

house. In the spahis’ quarters, the authorities, tired of opposition,

had finally acquiesced in an evil they were powerless to abolish. After

all, Jean Peyral was a model spahi; only it was an understood thing that

he would always remain wedded to his modest woollen stripes, and that he

would never attain higher rank.

Fatou had been a captive, not a slave, in Cora’s house—a fundamental

distinction laid down by the regulations of the colony, and of which she

had grasped the meaning at a very early day. As a captive she had the

right to go away, although her mistress had not the right to turn her

out. Once she had gone away of her own choice she was free—and she had

availed herself of this right.

Moreover, she had been baptized, and this gave her still greater freedom

of action. Her small head, as cunning as a young monkey’s, had realised

this fact, and had fully grasped the situation. For any woman, who has

not renounced the religion of Maghreb, to give herself to a white man is

an ignominious act, punished by all the execrations of the mob. But in

Fatou’s case this fatal barrier of public opinion no longer existed.

It is true that her comrades sometimes called her “Kaffir!” and this

hurt her feelings, curious child that she was. When she saw bands of

Khassonkés arriving from the interior, recognising them from afar by

their high headdress, she would run to them, shy and moved, hovering

about these tall men with their manes of hair, anxious to talk to them in

the beloved language of their common country. (Negroes have the love of

their village, of their tribe, of the corner of the earth where they were

born.) And sometimes at a word from a spiteful little comrade, the black

men from the Khassonké country would turn away their heads with contempt,

throwing at her with an indescribable smile and curl of the lips the word

“Kaffir” (infidel), which is the equivalent of the Algerian _roumi_ and

the Oriental _giaour_. Then little Fatou would go away, ashamed, and with

a swelling heart....

But, nonetheless, she preferred to be a Kaffir, and to possess Jean....

... Poor Jean, sleep long on your light tara; draw out this noonday hour

of rest, this heavy dreamless sleep, for the moment of waking is full of

gloom....

Oh that awakening from the torpor of the midday sleep! Whence came that

strange lucidity of mind which made this moment so terrifying?...

His ideas began to waken, mournful, confused, incomplete—at first

mere inconsequent shadowy conceptions, full of mystery, like traces

of a previous existence. Then suddenly dawned conceptions of greater

and agonising clearness. Radiant memories of old days, impressions of

childhood, came back to him, rising from the depths of his irrevocable

past, memories of thatched cottages, of the Cevennes on summer evenings,

mingled with stridulation of African crickets; the agony of separations,

of lost happiness, a swift and harrowing survey of his whole past, the

events of life seen from beneath, like things beyond the tomb—the other

side of existence, the obverse of this world.

... In these moments, especially, he seemed to be conscious of the rapid

and inexorable flight of time, which the tonelessness of his spirit did

not usually permit him to grasp. He woke up, hearing against the resonant

_tara_ the faint throbbing of the arteries in his forehead, and he seemed

to be listening to the pulsations of time, the vibrations of a great

mysterious time-piece of eternity. He had the sensation that the moments

were gliding by, passing, passing with the speed of objects falling into

empty space, while the stream of his life bore him ever onwards, and he

was powerless to stem it....

He rose abruptly, now wide awake, with a wild longing to be gone, in an

agony of despair at the thought of the years that still lay between him

and his return.

* * * * *

Fatou-gaye had a vague instinct that this instant of awakening was a

dangerous and critical time when the white man evaded her influence. So

she was on the watch for this moment, and when she saw Jean open his

mournful eyes, and then suddenly start up with a bewildered look, she

would quickly come and kneel beside him to minister to him, or she would

put her supple arms round his neck and say,

“What is the matter, my white man?” in a voice which she rendered as soft

and languishing as the sound of a griot’s guitar.

... But these fancies of Jean did not last long. When he was wide awake

his usual indifference possessed him once more, and he saw things again

in their normal aspect.

II

... The operation of dressing Fatou’s hair was a very important and

complicated one. It took place once a week, and on this occasion the

whole day was given up to it. In the early morning Fatou set out for

Guet n’dar, the negro village, where in a hut with peaked roof, built

of thatch and dry reeds, dwelt the hairdresser of most repute among the

Nubian ladies.

Fatou remained there for several hours, crouched on the sand,

surrendering herself into the hands of this patient, painstaking artist.

The hairdresser began by pulling down Fatou’s previous arrangement of

hair, unthreading the beads one by one, loosening and disentangling the

thick locks. Then she reconstructed that amazing edifice, introducing

coral, gold coins, copper spangles, balls of green jade and balls of

amber—balls of amber as big as apples, Fatou’s maternal inheritance of

precious family jewels, brought secretly into the land of captivity.

The most complicated part to dress was the back of the head, the nape of

the neck. There Fatou’s woolly masses had to be divided into hundreds of

little corkscrew curls, starched and rigid, carefully ordered, resembling

rows of black fringes.

Each of these corkscrew curls was rolled separately round a long straw

and covered with a thick layer of gum. To give this coating time to dry,

the straws had to remain in place until the next day. Fatou stayed at

home with all these straws sticking out of her hair. She looked that

evening as if she had put her head into a porcupine’s skin.

But what a splendid effect the next day, when the straws were removed!...

Over this erection was thrown, in Khassonké fashion, a piece of a very

transparent kind of gauze made by the natives, covering it like a blue

spider’s web, and this headdress remained firmly fixed day and night for

a whole week.

Fatou-gaye wore dainty little sandals of leather, like the cothurnus of

the ancients, with thongs passing between the first and second toes.

Her dress consisted of the scanty, tight-fitting _pagne_, which the

Egyptians of the time of the Pharaohs bequeathed to Nubia. Above this she

wore a _bou-bou_, a great square of muslin with a hole for the head, and

falling like a peplus below the knees.

For ornaments she had heavy silver rings, riveted on wrists and ankles,

and besides these, scented necklets of soumaré, for Jean’s slender means

did not suffice for the purchase of necklets of amber or gold.

Soumarés are plaits, consisting of several rows of threaded little

brown seeds. These seeds that ripen on the banks of the Gambia have a

penetrating, aromatic odour, an odour peculiar to themselves, one of the

most characteristic odours of Senegal.

Fatou-gaye was very pretty with this towering, barbaric headdress, which

gave her the appearance of a Hindu deity, decked out for a religious

festival. Her face had none of the characteristics, the flat nose, the

thick lips, of certain African tribes, which in France are taken for the

generic type of the entire black race. She was of a very pure Khassonké

type, with a little, straight, delicate nose, with thin, rather narrow,

very sensitive nostrils, a well-shaped, charming mouth, splendid teeth,

and above all, great, lustrous, blue-black eyes, expressing, according to

the mood of the moment, a curious gaiety or a mysterious malice.

III

Fatou never did any work. Jean had presented himself with a perfect

odalisque.

She knew how to wash and mend her _bou-bous_ and _pagnes_. She was always

as spotless as a black cat, dressed in white, partly from an instinct of

cleanliness, partly because she realised that Jean would not tolerate her

otherwise. But apart from this care of her person, she was incapable of

any work.

Since the poor old Peyrals were no longer able to send their son the

small sums that little by little they had saved for him, since “nothing

had gone well with them,” as old Françoise had written, so that they had

even been obliged to have recourse to the spahi’s slender purse, Fatou’s

budget was becoming very difficult to balance.

Fortunately, Fatou was a steady little person, whose mode of life was not

extravagant.

Throughout the Soudan, woman is in a position of great inferiority as

compared to man.

Several times in the course of her life she is bought and sold like a

head of cattle, and at a price which is estimated at inverse ratio to her

ugliness, defects, and increasing age.

One day Jean asked his friend Nyaor,

“What have you done with your wife Nokhoudounkhotillé, the one who was so

good-looking?”

And Nyaor replied, with a quiet smile,

“Nokhoudounkhotillé talked too much, so I sold her. With the money I got

for her I bought thirty sheep who never talk at all.”

The hardest work done by the negroes, the task of pounding millet for the

kouss-kouss, devolves upon the women.

From morning till night, throughout Nubia, from Timbuctoo to the coast of

Guinea, in all the thatched huts, under the burning sun, the negresses’

wooden pestles are noisily pounding in the mortars of khaya wood.

Thousands of braceletted arms weary themselves at this task, and the

chattering, quarrelsome workers mingle with this monotonous sound their

chorus of shrill voices, which seem to come from the throats of monkeys.

The result is a very characteristic hubbub, audible from afar in the

thickets and desert tracts leading to these African villages.

The result of this eternal pounding, which has been practised by the

women for generations, is a coarse flour of millet, which is made into a

flavourless kind of gruel called _kouss-kouss_.

_Kouss-kouss_ is the basis of the nourishment of the black races.

Fatou evaded this traditional labour of the women of her race. Every

evening she paid a visit to Coura n’diaye, the woman griot, the ancient

poetess of King El Hadj.

In return for a small monthly payment Fatou had the right to sit among

the little slaves of the old favourite around great calabashes, smoking

with hot kouss-kouss, and to satisfy the appetite of her sixteen years.

From her raised position on her _tara_, where she lay upon fine mats

of complicated design, the old cast-off favourite presided with

imperturbable dignity.

Yet these repasts were uproarious scenes well worth witnessing. These

small, naked creatures crouched on the ground around huge calabashes,

all dipping their fingers at the same time into the Spartan brew. There

were cries, wry faces, grimaces, tricks that would have made an ouistiti

jealous, untimely invasions of great horned sheep; cats stealthily

stretching their paws out and then slily dipping them in the gruel;

intruding yellow dogs pushing their pointed noses into the dish, and then

bursts of laughter, incredibly comic, displaying magnificent white teeth

set in gums as red as peonies.

Jean had always to be back in barracks at four o’clock, but by the time

he returned to his lodging after retreat had been sounded, Fatou was

always dressed again, and her hands were clean. Beneath her towering

headdress, which resembled that of an idol, she had assumed once more a

serious, almost melancholy, expression. She was no longer the same person.

It was dreary at eventide in this desolate quarter, in this isolated

corner of the dead-alive town.

Jean would often remain leaning on his elbow at the big window of his

bare, white room.

The sea breeze fluttered the scraps of priests’ parchments which Fatou

had hung by long threads from the ceiling, as a protection to them during

their sleep.

Before him lay the wide landscape of Senegal—the Point of Barbary, an

immense plain, with the heavy vapours of twilight brooding above it in

the distance, the deep gateway to the desert.

Or else he would sit in the doorway of Samba-Hamet’s house, facing that

characterless rectangle of ground, surrounded by old brick buildings in

ruins, a kind of square, in the middle of which grew that meagre, yellow

palm, of the thorny species, the only tree in the quarter.

Here he would sit smoking the cigarettes which he had taught Fatou to

make for him.

Alas! even this form of distraction he would soon have to think of

relinquishing for lack of funds.

He followed with his large, brown, lustreless eyes the coming and going

of two or three little negro girls, who were chasing one another,

gambolling wildly in the evening air, like moths in the dim half light.

Sunset in December almost invariably brought to St Louis fresh breezes

and great curtains of clouds that suddenly darkened the sky, but never

burst. They passed over, high above, and glided away. Never a drop

of rain, never the slightest sensation of humidity; it was the dry

season, and in all nature not one drop of water vapour could have been

found. Still, it was possible to breathe on these December evenings;

the penetrating coolness brought respite and a sensation of physical

relief, but at the same time created an indefinable impression of deeper

melancholy.

And when Jean was seated at nightfall in front of his lonely threshold,

his thoughts travelled far afield.

These flights which his eyes, darting hither and thither like a bird,

would make each day on the big geographical maps that hung on the

walls of the spahi’s barracks, he would often resume again in spirit,

especially of an evening, traversing a sort of panorama of the world, as

it presented itself to his imagination.

First he must cross the great sombre desert, which began just behind his

house.

It was this first part of the journey that his imagination was most

slow in accomplishing. It would be delayed in an infinity of mysterious

solitudes, where that interminable waste of sand impeded his progress.

Then he had to cross Algiers and the Mediterranean, reach the coast of

France and ascend the valley of the Rhône, to arrive at last at that

spot, marked on the map with little black shadings, which he envisaged as

blue-tinged peaks, seen among the clouds: the Cevennes.

Mountains! His eyes had been so long accustomed to the lonely plains; it

was so long since he had seen any mountains that he had almost forgotten

what they were like.

And forests! The great chestnut woods of his country, moist and shadowy,

where real streams of living water ran, where the soil was earth,

carpeted with moss and delicate grasses.... He felt that it would be a

relief merely to see a small clod of damp, mossy earth—instead of the dry

sand blown about by the desert wind.

And his beloved village, which in his imaginary journey he beheld at

first from above, as if he were hovering over it, the old church, which

he pictured under snow, with its bell doubtless ringing the Angelus (it

was seven in the evening), and close by, his cottage—the whole scene

enveloped in a bluish haze, on a cold December evening, with rays of pale

moonlight glancing upon it.

Was it possible? Somewhere all this actually existed; it was not a mere

memory, a vision of the past; it existed; it was not even so very far

away; actually at this moment people were living in that very spot, and

it was possible to go there.

* * * * *

What were they doing, his poor old parents, at this very moment when he

was thinking of them? Seated in a corner by the fire, no doubt, in front

of the wide fireplace, by the cheerful blaze of branches gathered in the

forest. He saw again all the objects familiar to him from childhood, the

little lamp lighted on winter evenings, the pieces of old furniture;

the cat curled up asleep on a stool. Among all these friendly things he

sought to place the well-beloved owners of the cottage.

Nearly seven o’clock! He had the very picture before him. The evening

meal was over; his parents were seated in a corner by the fire, grown

older, no doubt; his aged father in his usual attitude, leaning on his

hand his fine grey head—the head of an old cuirassier turned mountaineer

again—and his mother probably knitting, moving her long needles very

rapidly in her capable, quick, hard-working hands, or spinning, with her

distaff of hemp held very upright.

And Jeanne—she was with them perhaps. His mother had written that she

would often come and keep them company on winter evenings. What was she

like now? “Changed and grown still prettier,” he had been told. What was

that face like now, that face of the grown-up girl he had never seen?

* * * * *

By the side of the handsome spahi in his red jacket sat Fatou with her

high headdress of amber and copper spangles.

Night had fallen, and in the lonely square the little negro girls

continued to chase one another, flitting hither and thither in the

dusk—one of them entirely nude—the other two looking like white bats with

their long floating _bou-bous_.

The cold wind incited them to run; they were like kittens in our country,

who feel an impulse to gambol wildly when the dry east wind is blowing,

which brings us frost.

IV

A pedantic digression concerning music and a class of people called

Griots.

* * * * *

In the Soudan the art of music is confined to a special hereditary caste

of men called griots, who are wandering musicians and composers of heroic

songs.

It is the griots upon whom devolves the duty of beating the tom-tom for

the _bamboulas_, and of singing at festivals the praises of persons of

quality.

When a chief feels a craving to hear the praises of his own glory,

he summons his griots, who seat themselves before him on the sand

and extemporise in his honour a long series of special couplets,

accompanying their strident voices with the sounds of a small, very

primitive guitar, whose strings are strung over serpent skin.

The griots are at once the laziest and the most philosophical people on

earth. They lead a roaming life, and take no thought for the morrow.

From village to village they wander, either alone or in the train of the

great warrior chiefs, receiving alms here and there, treated everywhere

as pariahs, like the gipsies in Europe—sometimes loaded with gold and

favours, like courtesans in our country—excluded during their lifetime

from religious ceremonies, and after death from burial grounds.

They know plaintive romances with vague mysterious words, heroic songs

which hold a suggestion of melody in their monotony and something of the

warlike march in their well-marked vigorous rhythm; dance music full of

frenzy; love songs like transports of amorous fury, or the roaring of

maddened beasts.

But in all this negro music, as in that of all primitive races, the

melody varies little; it consists of short, mournful phrases, scales of

more or less unequal intervals, beginning with the highest notes within

the compass of the human voice and descending abruptly to the very

lowest, in a dragging, plaintive wail.

The negro women often sing at their work, or during that listless

half-sleep, which constitutes their siesta. In that intense stillness of

noon, a stillness more impressive out there than that in our fields of

France, this singing of Nubian women, with the eternal stridulation of

grasshoppers for its accompaniment, has a charm of its own. But it would

be impossible to transport this singing from its exotic environment of

sun and sand. Heard in other surroundings it would no longer be itself.

The more primitive, the more elusive the melody appears by reason of

its monotony, the more difficult and complicated is the rhythm. As the

long wedding processions one meets at night meander over the sands,

they sing, under the leadership of the griots, concerted choral music,

weird in character, and the persistent, syncopated accompaniment seems,

as if of its own sweet will, to bristle with rhythmic difficulties and

eccentricities.

A very simple instrument, reserved for the women, plays an important

part in this ensemble; it is merely a long-shaped gourd, with an opening

at one end; this gourd is beaten with the hand, now on the side, now on

the opening, and two different tones are thus produced, one sharp, one

dull. It yields no other sound, but the result obtained in this manner is

nonetheless surprising.

It is difficult to describe the sinister, almost diabolical effect, of

a distant clamour of negro voices, half-drowned by hundreds of these

instruments.

The persistent counter-rhythm of the accompaniment and the startling

syncopations, perfectly understood and observed by the performers, are

the chief characteristics of this form of music—inferior perhaps to our

own, certainly very different from it, and such as our European tradition

does not enable us wholly to appreciate.

V

BAMBOULA

A passing griot raps out a tattoo on his tom-tom. This is the summons,

and a crowd gathers around him.

Women come running; they form themselves into a close circle, and begin

to intone one of those obscene songs which rouse them to passionate

excitement. One of them, the first arrival, breaks away from the crowd

and hurls herself into the unoccupied centre of the circle, where the

tambour is sounding. She dances, jingling her _grigris_ and beads; her

steps, which are slow at the beginning, are accompanied by gestures

appallingly licentious. Soon the pace is accelerated until a state of

frenzy is reached, which might be likened to the antics of an insane

monkey, the contortions of one possessed.

When she comes to the end of her strength, she retires breathless and

exhausted, her black skin gleaming with sweat. Her companions receive her

with applause or derision. Then another takes her place, and so on, until

all have had their turn.

The old women are distinguished by a more cynical and reckless effrontery

of indecency. The child that is frequently carried on their backs is

tossed about in a terrible way, and utters piercing shrieks, but on these

occasions the negresses have lost even their maternal instinct, and no

consideration restrains them.

In all the districts of Senegal the rising of the full moon is the time

especially dedicated to the bamboula, to the evenings of the great negro

festivals, and above that vast expanse of sand, in the infinite depths

of these shimmering horizons, a moon rises that seems larger and ruddier

than elsewhere.

At the close of day the people gather together in groups. On these

occasions the women wear bright-coloured _pagnes_, and bedeck themselves

with ornaments of fine Galam gold. Their arms are covered with heavy

bracelets of silver, and their necks with an astonishing profusion of

_grigris_ and beads of amber and coral.

And when the red disk of the moon appears, ever magnified and distorted

by mirage, casting up the horizon broad, blood-red streaks of light,

a frantic clamour bursts from the whole assembly. This announces the

festival.

At certain seasons of the year the square in front of Samba-Hamet’s house

became the scene of fantastic _bamboulas_.

On these occasions, Coura n’diaye would lend Fatou some of her precious

jewels to wear at the festival.

Sometimes she herself graced it with her presence as in old days.

And then there would be a general murmur of admiration when the ancient

griot stepped forward, decked with gold, her head held high, with a

strange light rekindled in her dim eyes. Her body was shamelessly

exposed; her bosom, wrinkled like that of a black mummy, and her breasts,

which hung down like pouches of skin, empty and withered, displayed the

wonderful gifts of El Hadj, the conqueror; necklets of jade of the pale

green of water, and besides these, rows upon rows of great beads of fine

gold of rare and inimitable workmanship. Her arms and ankles were covered

with gold; she wore gold rings upon all her toes, and upon her head an

antique erection of gold.

The old bedizened image set herself to sing. By degrees she became more

and more excited, waving her skeleton arms, which could scarcely support

the weight of the bracelets. Her hoarse, cavernous voice seemed at

first to issue from the depths of a lifeless corpse, but presently its

vibrations gained a shuddering intensity.

One listened, as it were, to a posthumous echo of the voice of the

poetess of El Hadj; and her dilated eyes, shining with an inner light,

seemed to reveal like a mirror glimpses of the great legendary wars waged

in the interior of the land, and of the great days of old; the armies

of El Hadj swooping down on the desert; the terrible massacres, when

entire tribes were given to the vultures; the assault on Ségou-Koro, all

the villages of Massina, covering hundreds of miles of country between

Medina and Timbuctoo, going up in flames in the sunshine, like grass in a

prairie fire.

* * * * *

Coura n’diaye was very weary when her songs were done. She returned home

trembling in every limb, and lay down on her couch. When her little

slaves had stripped her of her jewels, and had gently massaged her to

soothe her to sleep, she was left there motionless as a corpse, and she

continued prostrate for two days.

VI

Guet n’dar, the negro town, was built of grey straw on yellow

sand—thousands and thousands of little round huts half hidden behind

palisades of dry reeds, and all capped with roofs of thatch. All the

peaks of these thousands of roofs affected pointedness in all its

extravagance. Some stood upright, menacing heaven; others leaned sideways

and menaced their neighbours; others again were tun-bellied, collapsing,

seemingly weary of their long drying in the sun, and anxious to shrivel

and to roll themselves up like the trunks of old elephants. And all these

roofs stretched away out of sight, printing grotesque silhouettes of

horned objects upon the monotonous blue sky.

North and south through the middle of Guet n’dar, dividing the town into

two parts, runs a long sandy street, very straight and regular, widening

out in the distance, until it is lost in the desert. The desert does

double duty as landscape and horizon.

On either side of this vast opening lies a maze of tortuous alleys,

twisted like the paths of a labyrinth.

To this quarter Fatou has guided Jean, leading him, in negro fashion,

by one of his fingers, which she clasps in her firm, little black hand,

adorned with copper rings.

It is seven o’clock on a January morning, and the sun scarcely risen. At

this hour, even in Senegal, the air is pleasant and fresh.

Jean walks along with his proud, sedate bearing, smiling inwardly at the

absurdity of the expedition he has undertaken at Fatou’s desire, and of

the personage whom he is going to visit.

Good-humouredly he allows himself to be led along; the walk interests and

amuses him.

The weather is fine. The pure air of the morning, the sense of physical

well-being produced by this unusual coolness, has a soothing influence

upon him. And at this moment, Fatou seems to him very charming, and he is

almost in love with her.

This is one of those fugitive and singular moments when memory slumbers,

and this land of Africa seems to smile upon him; when the spahi

surrenders himself without gloomy afterthought to the life which for

three years has soothed and lulled him into a heavy, dangerous sleep,

haunted by sinister dreams.

The morning air is fresh and pure. Behind the grey palisades of reeds,

which border the narrow streets of Guet n’dar, are heard the first sounds

of the _kouss-kouss_ pounders, mingled with the sudden clamour of voices

of just awakened negroes, and the noise of jingling beads. At each street

corner are skulls of horned sheep (for the benefit of those versed in

negro customs, the heads of victims of the _tabaski_) set up on tall

poles, watching all the passers-by, and seemingly stretching out their

wooden necks for the sake of a better view.

And settled everywhere are great fetish lizards with sky-blue bodies,

swaying perpetually from side to side, with the curious twitching

peculiar to their species; their heads, which are of a beautiful yellow,

as if made of orange peel.

The air is full of the odours of negroes, of leather amulets, of

_kouss-kouss_, and of soumaré.

Small negro children begin to show themselves at the doors; their round

bellies with projecting navels are adorned with a row of blue beads; they

smile from ear to ear, and their pear-shaped heads are shaven, except for

three little tails.

They all stretch themselves, gazing at Jean with a look of astonishment

in their great, shining eyes, and sometimes the most daring of them say,

“Toubab! toubab! toubab! good-morning!”

* * * * *

All this savours of the country of exile and of remoteness from home; the

smallest details of the smallest things are strange. But there is such

magic in these tropical sunrises, such limpidity in the air this morning,

such a sense of well-being produced by this unusual coolness, that Jean

replies gaily to the good mornings of the negro babies, smiles at Fatou’s

remarks, surrenders himself, and forgets.

The person whom Jean and Fatou were going to visit was a tall, old man

with sly, crafty eyes, called Samba-Latir.

When they were both seated on mats on the ground in their host’s hut,

Fatou began to speak, and expounded her case, which was, as will be seen,

a serious and complicated one.

For several days she had been meeting, always at the same hour, a

certain very ugly old woman, who looked at her in a curious way out of

the corner of her eye, without turning her head.... At last yesterday

evening, she had returned home in tears, assuring Jean that she felt that

she had been bewitched.

And all night long she had been obliged to hold her head in water to

counteract the immediate effects of the spell.

In the collection of amulets that she possessed, there were charms

against all kinds of ills or accidents; against bad dreams and vegetable

poisons; against dangerous falls and the venom of insects; against the

wanderings of Jean’s affections and damage by white ants; against colic

and alligators. But there were as yet no amulet against the evil eye and

the spells that people cast upon you in the street.

Now amulets of this kind were known to be a specialty of Samba-Latir, and

it was for this reason that Fatou had had recourse to him.

Samba-Latir had the very thing. He drew from an old mysterious coffer

a small red sachet, attached to a leather cord; he hung it round

Fatou-gaye’s neck, pronouncing sacramental words—and the evil spirit was

exorcised.

It only cost two silver _khâliss_ (ten francs). And the spahi, who did

not know how to bargain, not even for an amulet, paid without a murmur.

Nevertheless he felt the blood rising in his temples as he saw the two

coins vanish, not that he cared about the money—for he had never learnt

to appreciate the value of money—but just now two _khâliss_ was a heavy

tax upon his slender spahi’s purse. And above all, he said to himself

with a remorseful pang, his old parents no doubt denied themselves many

things which cost less than two _khâliss_, and were certainly more useful

than Fatou’s amulets.

VII

Letter from Jeanne Méry to her cousin Jean.

My dear Jean,—It is almost three years now since your

departure, and I am always expecting you to talk to me about

your return; I myself have faith in you, you see, and I know

that you would never deceive me. But that does not prevent the

time from seeming very long. There are nights when I feel very

unhappy, and all kinds of ideas come into my head. Besides

this, my parents say that if you had really wanted to do so,

you could have taken leave and paid us a visit. I am pretty

sure, too, that there are people here in the village who stir

them up, but it is true, all the same, that our cousin Pierre

came home twice while he was doing his term of soldiering.

There are people who spread a report that I am going to marry

that big gaby Suirot. What an idea! How odd it would be to

marry that great booby who plays the gentleman. I let them

talk, because I know that no one in the world can be the same

to me as my dear Jean.

You can be quite easy; there is no fear of their persuading me

to go to balls; I do not mind their saying that I give myself

airs. To dance with Suirot or that great blockhead Toinon

or others like him—no, thank you. In the evening I sit very

quietly on the bench in front of Rose’s door, and there I think

and think of my dear Jean, who is worth all the others put

together, and you may be sure I am never weary of thinking of

him.

Thank you for your portrait; it is just like you, although they

say here that you are greatly changed. I myself think that your

face is still exactly the same—only you do not look at people

in quite the same way. I have put it on the big mantelpiece and

arranged my branch of palms all round it, so that when I enter

the room it is the first thing I see.

My dear Jean, I have not yet ventured to wear that beautiful

bracelet made by the negroes which you sent me, for fear of

Olivette and Rose. They think already that I play at being a

lady, and that would make it worse. When you are here and we

are married, it will be different, and then I shall also wear

Aunt Tounelle’s beautiful necklace of little links, and her

chain for scissors.

If only you would come! For you see I am wearying for the sight

of you. I seem gay sometimes when I am with the others, but

afterwards my sorrow grows heavier and heavier, and I hide

myself and weep.

Good-bye, my dear Jean. I embrace you with all my heart.

JEANNE MÉRY.

VIII

Fatou’s hands, the backs of which were deep black, had pink palms.

For a long time this discovery dismayed the spahi; he disliked seeing

the palms of Fatou’s hands, which in spite of himself made upon him an

unpleasant impression like the cold paws of a monkey.

Nevertheless these hands were small and well-modelled, and joined to the

rounded arm with a very delicate wrist.

But this discolouration of the palms; these parti-coloured fingers had

something not human about them, and inspired him with horror.

That and certain strange, falsetto intonations which escaped her

sometimes when she was highly animated, together with certain restless

movements, recalled mysterious resemblances which troubled the

imagination.

In the end, however, Jean had grown accustomed to these things, and no

longer troubled his head about them. At times when Fatou seemed to him

charming, and he was still in love with her, he would call her laughingly

by a curious Yolof name, which signified “little monkey-girl.”

Fatou herself was very much mortified by this pet name, and would assume

staid airs and a serious expression which amused the spahi.

One day (it was exceptionally fine that day; the weather almost cool, the

sky very clear)—one day Fritz Muller, who was going to pay Jean a visit,

had noiselessly climbed the staircase and halted on the threshold.

There he was very much entertained by the following scene, which he

witnessed from the door.

Jean, smiling the good-tempered smile of a child who is enjoying himself,

appeared to be examining Fatou with great attention—stretching out her

arms, turning her round, inspecting her from all points of view without

uttering a word—and then suddenly, with an air of conviction, he thus

expressed the conclusions at which he had arrived,

“You’re exactly the same as a monkey.”

And Fatou, deeply injured,

“Ah, Tjean! You not say that, my white man. First a monkey not knowing

how to talk—and I knowing very well.”

Thereupon Fritz Muller burst out laughing—and then Jean followed his

example, especially when he saw the dignified, ceremonious manner

that Fatou endeavoured to assume by way of protest against these

uncomplimentary conclusions.

“In any case, a very pretty little monkey,” said Muller, who had a great

admiration for Fatou’s good looks.

(He had lived a long time in the negro realm, and was a good judge of the

pretty girls of the Soudan.)

“A very pretty little monkey! If all those in the woods of Galam were

like her, one might grow accustomed to this accursed country, which

assuredly has never been visited by the good God.”

IX

A white hall, all open to the evening wind, two hanging lamps around

which flutter large ephemerae dazzled by the flame; an uproarious company

of men in red uniforms—coal-black kitchen wenches bustling around—a great

supper party of spahis.

It has been a day of festivities—military festivities—a review at the

barracks, races on desert-bred horses, camel races, races of oxen with

riders, pirogue races—all the usual programme of a festal day in a little

provincial town, with the addition of strange Nubian local colour.

All the fit men of the garrison, sailors, spahis, riflemen, were to be

seen parading the streets in uniform; mulattos, men and women in gala

dress; the ancient Signard ladies of Senegal—the half-bred aristocracy,

erect and dignified with their high headdresses of cotton foulard, and

their two corkscrew curls in the mode of 1820—and the young Signard

ladies in dresses of the fashion of to-day, yet in spite of this, odd,

faded, suggestive, somehow of the coast of Africa. Besides these, there

were two or three white women in dainty gowns, and behind them, as if to

serve as a foil, a crowd of negroes, decked with grigris and barbaric

ornaments—all Guet n’dar in holiday dress.

All the animation and life that St Louis could produce; all the

population the old colony could muster in its dead-alive streets—all were

out-of-doors for a single day—ready to return on the morrow to their

listless existence in those silent houses, each in its coat of white

limewash, like a corpse in a winding sheet.

And the spahis who have paraded by order all day long on the Place du

Gouvernement are roused to a high state of excitement by this unusual

stir.

This evening they are celebrating the award of promotions and decorations

brought by the last mail from France; and Jean, who as a rule holds

himself a little aloof, is present at this supper party, which is a

regimental affair.

The black kitchen wenches are kept very busy waiting on the spahis, not

because the spahis have eaten a great deal, but because they have had a

prodigious quantity to drink, and are all intoxicated.

A great many toasts have been proposed; much conversation has

passed, extravagantly simple, or extravagantly cynical—much wit

has flashed—spahis’ wit, smacking strongly of its origin, a medley

of disillusionment and innocence. Many remarkable songs have been

sung—appallingly suggestive, originating no one knows where, in Algiers,

India, or some other spot—the solos comically discreet—the choruses

terrible, and accompanied by the crashing of glasses and the thumping

of fists enough to break down the tables. Old jokes have been made,

ingenuous and well-worn, exciting bursts of youthful, joyous laughter,

and words uttered capable of bringing a blush to the cheek of the devil

himself.

Suddenly a spahi in the midst of this crazy uproar lifts his glass of

champagne, and proposes this startling toast,

“To those who fell at Mecké and Bobdiarah.”

A very strange toast this—not originating in the brain of the author of

this story! Quite unforeseen this health that has been proposed! Is it a

tribute to the memory of the dead, or a sacrilegious jest. He was very

drunk the spahi who proposed this funereal toast, and there was gloom in

his irresolute eyes.

* * * * *

Alas! in a few years’ time who will remember those who fell in the defeat

at Bobdiarah and at Mecké, those whose bones lie blanched already on the

sand of the desert?

The people of St Louis who saw them march away may remember their names.

But in a few years’ time, who will be able to call them to mind and to

say them again?

* * * * *

So the glasses were drained to the memory of those who fell at Mecké and

Bobdiarah. But this strange toast was followed by a moment of intense

silence and astonishment, and it cast a gloomy veil upon the spahis’

banquet.

Jean, especially—whose eyes had been sparkling with animation at the

infectious gaiety of his comrades, and who, as it happened, had been

laughing heartily all this evening, Jean relapsed again into his dreamy,

serious mood, hardly knowing why.

“Fallen there in the desert!” ...

Without grasping the full meaning of it, the idea of it chilled him, like

the sound of a jackal’s voice; it made his flesh creep....

He was still very much of a child, poor Jean, not yet inured to war,

not yet a seasoned soldier. Nevertheless he was very brave; he was not

afraid, not in the least afraid, of fighting. When there was talk of

Boubakar-Ségou, who was prowling with his army through Cayor, almost up

to the gates of St Louis, he felt his heart leap. Sometimes he dreamt

about it. It seemed to him that it would do him good, that it would rouse

him to see shots fired at last, even it they were directed only against a

negro chief. There were times when he was dying of impatience....

It was solely with the idea of fighting that he had become a spahi—not

in order that he might pass a languid, monotonous existence in a little

white house, held spell-bound by a Khassonké girl....

Poor fellows, drinking to the memory of the dead, laugh, sing, be very

merry and foolish, and snatch the fleeting moment of joy.... But song and

uproar ring false in this land of Senegal, and yonder in the desert there

are assuredly places already marked out for some of you.

X

“In Galam” ... who can divine what mysterious echoes these words may

awaken deep in the soul of an exiled negro?

The first time Jean has asked Fatou (this was long ago, in the house of

his mistress),

“Where do you come from, child?”

Fatou had replied in a voice full of emotion,

“From the country of Galam” ...

Poor negroes of the Soudan, dwelling in exile, driven forth from their

native village by great wars, or great famines, those vast catastrophes

that come upon these primitive countries—sold, carried away into slavery,

they have sometimes traversed on foot, under the lash of their master,

stretches of country more extensive than the whole of Europe. But the

picture of their native land has remained graven ineffaceably in the

depths of their black hearts....

Sometimes it is far-away Timbuctoo or Ségou-Koro, with its great palaces

of white clay mirrored in the waters of the Niger, or merely a humble

village of straw, lost somewhere in the desert, or hidden away in an

obscure cranny of the mountains of the south, and left in the wake of the

conqueror a heap of ashes and a charnel house for the vulture....

“In Galam!” ... the words are repeated musingly, mysteriously.

“Galam!” Fatou would say,

“Tjean, one day I shall take you to Galam with me.” ...

That ancient, sacred land of Galam, which Fatou had only to close her

eyes to see again—the land of Galam, a country of gold and ivory, a

country in whose tepid waters grey alligators lie asleep in the shade of

tall mangrove trees, where the elephant roams through the deep forest,

trampling heavily upon the soil in his rapid stride.

Once Jean used to dream of this land of Galam. Fatou had told him very

remarkable tales about it, which had excited his imagination, sensitive

to the fascination of new and unknown things. That was over now. His

curiosity concerning all this land of Africa had abated and worn itself

out. He preferred to continue his monotonous existence at St Louis, and

to hold himself there in readiness for the blissful moment of his return

to the Cevennes.

Besides, to go away over there to that country of Fatou’s—so far from the

sea—the one cool thing in Africa, the source of refreshing breezes, and

above all, the means of communication with the rest of the world—to go

away into that land of Galam, where the air must be hotter and heavier—to

plunge into that stifling atmosphere of the interior—

No. He no longer desired it. At present he would have refused, had a

proposal been made to him to go and see what was happening in Galam. He

dreamed of his own country, of its mountains and its cool rivers. The

mere thought of Fatou’s country made him feel hotter, and gave him a

headache....

XI

Fatou could never catch sight of a n’gabou (hippopotamus) without running

the risk of falling down stone dead. This was a kind of spell cast upon

her family by a sorcerer from the country of Galam, and all methods of

breaking it had been tried in vain. There were numerous instances among

her ancestry of persons who had thus fallen down stone dead at the mere

sight of these great beasts, and this curse had pursued the family

relentlessly for several generations.

For this is a kind of spell that is fairly common in the Soudan. Some

families cannot endure the sight of a lion; others that of a sea-cow;

others—these are the most unfortunate—that of an alligator. And it is an

additional affliction that in these cases even amulets are of no avail.

One can imagine the precautions that Fatou’s ancestors were obliged to

take in the land of Galam—they had to refrain from country walks at times

when the hippopotamuses chose to be abroad, and especially to keep away

from the great grassy swamps where these monsters delighted to sport.

As for Fatou, when she heard that there was a young tame hippopotamus

living in a house in St Louis, she always went far out of her way to

avoid passing through this quarter of the town, for fear of succumbing

to a terrible, consuming curiosity to look upon the countenance of this

beast, which she persuaded her friends to describe to her in minute

detail each day—a curiosity which, as will be readily divined, was

likewise connected with the spell.

XII

The time passed slowly in monotony and heat. All days were alike—the same

routine of duty at the spahis’ barracks; the same sun beating down on the

white walls; the same all-pervading silence. There were rumours of war

against Boubakar-Ségou, the son of El Hadj, which gave the men in red

something to talk about, but went no further. Nothing ever happened in

the dead-alive town; tidings of Europe came from afar, as if blurred by

the heat.

Jean was passing through various moral phases; he had his moods of

exaltation and of depression. As a rule he was conscious only of a vague

sensation of boredom, a weariness of things in general; then, from time

to time home-sickness, which seemed dormant in his heart, would overwhelm

him again and make him unhappy.

The winter season drew near; the breakers off the coast were calmer, and

there were already breathless days, when the surface of the warm sea lay

smooth and shining like oil, reflecting in its vast mirror the strong,

torrid light.

* * * * *

Was Jean in love with Fatou-gaye?

He himself hardly knew, poor fellow.

He looked upon her, however, as an inferior being on the same level,

perhaps, as his yellow dog. He did not trouble to try to fathom what

there might be in the depths of that little black soul—a soul as black as

its outer Khassonké covering.

She was deceitful and mendacious, little Fatou, with an incredible blend

of malice and perversity; Jean had known this for a long time. But he was

aware, too, of her absolute devotion to him, the devotion of a dog to

its master, of a negro to his fetish, and without positively knowing to

what height of heroism this sentiment might raise her, he was touched and

softened by it.

Sometimes his intense pride was roused, and his white man’s dignity

rose in revolt. The faith he had plighted to his betrothed, and had

betrayed for the sake of a little black girl, accused him to his honest

conscience. He was ashamed of his weakness.

But Fatou-gaye had grown very handsome. When she walked with her lithe,

well-moulded figure swaying from the hips with that grace of movement

which the African women seem to have borrowed from the great felidæ of

their country; when she passed by, with her drapery of white muslin

floating like a peplum over her bosom and rounded shoulders, she had the

perfection of an antique statue. When she lay asleep with her arms above

her head, she displayed the curves of an amphora.

Under that high headdress of amber her delicate face, with its

regular features, had at times something of the beauty of an idol of

polished ebony; her great, half-closed, lustrous, blue-black eyes,

her dusky smile, slowly revealing her white teeth, all this had a

negroid fascination, a sensual charm, a power of material seduction,

an indefinable something which seemed to savour simultaneously of the

monkey, the young virgin, and the tigress—and all this would race through

the spahi’s veins with a strange intoxication.

Jean had a kind of superstitious horror of all these amulets; at length

there were moments when this profusion of _grigris_ vexed and oppressed

him. He had no faith in them, to be sure, but to see them everywhere,

these negro amulets, to know that nearly all of them possessed the

supposed virtue of holding and enmeshing him; to see them hanging from

his ceiling and on his walls; to find them hidden under his mats and

under his tara—charms everywhere, little objects, old and witchlike, with

a malevolent air about them, and weird in shape—to wake up in the morning

and feel them being stealthily slipped on to his breast—it seemed to him

that in the end all this would weave in the air around him invisible,

shadowy shackles.

And then he was short of money.

He said to himself very firmly that he would send Fatou away. He would

make use of these last two years to win at last his gold stripes; he

would send his old parents a small monthly remittance to make their life

more comfortable; and he could still save sufficient money to bring back

wedding presents to Jeanne Méry, and to make a respectable contribution

towards the expenses of their marriage feast.

But whether it was due to the power of the amulets, to force of habit, or

the inertness of a will stupefied by the atmosphere, Fatou continued to

hold him in the hollow of her little hand—and he did not drive her away.

He often thought of his betrothed. If he were to lose her he felt

that his life would be ruined. The memory of her had a radiance. This

“grown-up” girl, of whom his mother had told him, who “was prettier every

day,” wore for him an aureole. He tried to form an idea of her face, now

that she had come to womanhood, imagining the development of the features

of the fifteen-year-old child whom he had left. She was the centre of all

his plans for future happiness. It was very precious, this possession of

his that was waiting for him over there, very far away, in safe keeping

at home.

The image of her, as she was in past days, had already become a little

fainter; that of the future was still a little remote, and there were

moments when he lost sight of her altogether.

And his old parents! How much he loved them too! For his father he felt a

profound and filial love—a veneration which amounted almost to worship.

But perhaps it was his mother who still had the warmest place in his

heart.

Take sailors and spahis—all those forlorn young men, who spend their

lives far away on the wide ocean, or in the countries of exile, in

the midst of the roughest and most abnormal conditions of life. Take

the worst of them; choose out the most reckless, the most unruly, the

wildest, look into the deepest, most sacred corner of their heart. In

that sanctuary you will often find an old mother enshrined—an old peasant

from anywhere you please—a Basque in a woollen hood, or a good Breton

housewife in a white cap.

* * * * *

XIII

It is the beginning of Jean’s fourth winter season.

Days of overpowering heat without a breath of air. The livid, leaden sky

is mirrored in a sea as smooth as oil, where numerous families of sharks

are disporting themselves. All along the coast of Africa the monotonous

expanse of sand lies blindingly white under the reflection of the sun.

These are the days when the fish are engaged in mortal conflict.

Suddenly, without visible cause, the smooth, polished surface of the sea

is ruffled with wrinkles, spreading over an area of several hundreds of

square yards. Bubbles and little whirling eddies appear. This disturbance

is caused by a great shoal of panic-stricken fish, just below the surface

of the water, fleeing with all the speed of their million fins before a

school of ravenous sharks.

These days, too, are dear to the heart of the black pirogue men, the days

they choose for long voyages and races.

On days such as these, when, to our European constitutions, the air

seems too heavy to breathe, when life ebbs away, and activity of any

description is beyond our strength—on days such as these, if you happen

to be lying asleep on a river-boat, in the shade of a moistened awning,

you will often be wakened out of your unquiet midday sleep by the

shouting and whistling of the rowers; by the noise of water rushing by

under the feverish strokes of the paddle.

This is a company of pirogues, passing by, striving in fierce contest

under a leaden sky.

And the negro population has roused itself from sleep, and is standing

in crowds on the beach. The spectators encourage the competitors with

loud clamour, and out there, as with us, the victors are received with

clapping of hands, and the vanquished with shouts of derision.

XIV

Jean did not put in more time at the spahis’ barracks than was required

for the exact discharge of his duties, and often his comrades would take

his place. His commanding officers shut their eyes to these arrangements,

which permitted him to spend nearly the whole of his day in his private

lodging.

He was now generally liked. The charm of his intelligence and integrity,

the charm of his personal appearance, of his voice and bearing, gradually

brought everyone under an influence which was unconsciously exercised.

In the end, in spite of everything Jean had won for himself confidence

and esteem, and had attained a kind of privileged position, which allowed

him almost complete liberty and independence. He knew how to perform the

duties of a punctual, well-disciplined soldier, and at the same time to

remain almost entirely his own master.

XV

One evening Jean returned to quarters when retreat was sounded.

The old barracks no longer wore their habitual air of dejection. Men

were standing in groups in the courtyard, talking excitedly. Spahis were

running up and downstairs four steps at a time, as if possessed with wild

joy. It was obvious that there was something in the air—something new.

“Great news for you, Peyral,” cried Muller the Alsatian, “you are off

to-morrow, off to Algiers, lucky fellow.”

Twelve new spahis had arrived from France by the steamer from Dakar;

twelve of the senior spahis (of whom Jean was one) were to have the

privilege of completing their term of service in Algiers.

To-morrow evening they were to leave for Dakar.

At Dakar they would embark on the French mailboat for Bordeaux, thence

they would proceed by the southern route to Marseilles, with halts on the

way, affording those among them, who were possessed of hearth and home,

an opportunity of dispersing and of paying them a visit. At Marseilles

they would embark on the mailboat bound for Algiers—a land of Cockayne

for spahis, where the last years of their service would pass like a dream.

XVI

Jean returned home along the dreary banks of the river. The starry night

descended upon Senegal, a night hot, heavy, amazing in its tranquillity

and luminous transparency.

The current flowed with soft, whispering sounds. The tambour, the

_anamalis fobil_ of spring, which he was hearing in this same place

for the fourth time, and which mingled with the memories of his first

enervating pleasures in this dark country, came to him, faint, from a

great distance. Now these sounds were to herald his departure....

The slender crescent of the moon; the great stars, twinkling in a

luminous haze, low on the level sky line; the fires alight on the

opposite bank in the negro village of Sorr—all these cast upon the tepid

water long trails of wavering light; heat dominated the atmosphere,

brooded over the waters. There were gleams of phosphorescence everywhere,

for all nature seemed impregnated with heat and phosphorescence. A

mysterious calm hovered over the banks of the Senegal, a tranquil

melancholy pervaded all things....

The wonderful, unexpected news were true. Jean had made enquiries, his

information was correct. His name was on the list of those who were to

go; to-morrow evening he would sail down this river, never to return.

This evening no arrangements could be made connected with the departure;

the offices at the barracks were closed; everyone was out. The

preparations for the journey must be put off till to-morrow; this evening

there was nothing to do but to dream, collect his thoughts, indulge in

desultory reverie, and bid farewell to all that belonged to that land of

exile.

His head was distracted with troubled thoughts, incoherent impressions.

In a month’s time, perhaps, he would be paying a flying visit to his

village, embracing, in passing, his dear old parents—seeing Jeanne,

changed, grown-up and serious—and all this with the speed of a dream.

This was the main idea ever recurring from minute to minute, and each

time administering a shock to his heart, so that it beat faster.

But he was unprepared for this meeting. There were all kinds of painful

reflections mingling with this great, unlooked-for joy.

What impression would he make, returning after three years, without

having gained even the modest stripes of sergeant; bringing home no

presents after his long sojourn abroad; destitute as any vagabond;

without a sou in his pocket; without even having had time to provide

himself with a new outfit to enable him to make a respectable appearance

in the village?

No. This departure was too sudden. The prospect elated and intoxicated

him, but nevertheless he should have been allowed some days of

preparation.

And then, Algiers, that unknown country, made no appeal to him. To have

to go and acclimatise himself elsewhere!

Whatever happened, he would have to serve out far from home this term of

years that had been carved out of his life. So why not complete it here,

on the banks of this great, gloomy river, whose very melancholy was now

familiar to him?

Alas! unhappy man, he loved his Senegal! Consciousness of this fact now

dawned upon him; he was bound to it by a number of private and mysterious

ties. Wild with joy at the thought of returning home, he yet clung to

the country of sand, to Samba-Hamet’s house, even to that atmosphere of

infinitely dreary melancholy, even to that excess of heat and light.

He was not prepared for so sudden a departure.

* * * * *

The influences of his environment have filtered little by little into the

blood running through his veins; he feels himself restrained and held a

prisoner by all kinds of invisible ties, shadowy fetters, amulets of dark

significance.

In the end, the ideas in his troubled head grow confused; the

unlooked-for deliverance fills him with apprehension.

In this hot, oppressive night, heavy with thunderous emanations, strange,

mysterious influences contend around him; one might imagine the powers of

sleep and death striving with those of dawn and life.

XVII

It is a sudden affair, this despatch of a draft of soldiers.

The next evening, with all his kit hurriedly put together, all his papers

in order, Jean is leaning on his elbow against the railing of a ship

sailing down the river. He smokes his cigarette, while he watches St

Louis fading away in the distance.

Fatou-gaye is crouching on the deck by his side.

With all her _pagnes_ and talismans hastily packed into four great

calabashes, she was ready at the appointed time. Jean had to pay her

passage to Dakar with the last _khâliss_ of his pay.

He did this willingly, glad to humour this last fancy of hers, and to

keep her with him a little longer.

The tears she shed, the “widow’s complaints” she uttered, after the

custom of her country, were sincere and heart-rending. Jean, touched

to the heart by her despair, has forgotten that she is ill-natured,

untruthful, and black.

The wider his heart expands with the joy of his home-coming the greater

is the pity he feels for Fatou, a pity, moreover, not unmixed with

tenderness.

At all events he is taking her to Dakar with him; it will give him time

to think over the question of her disposal.

XVIII

Dakar is a kind of colonial town roughly constructed on a foundation of

sand and red rock, an improvised port of call for the mailboats bound

for that western point of Africa called Cape Verde.

Great baobabs grow here and there on the desolate dunes; flights of

fish-eagles and vultures swoop through the air overhead.

Fatou-gaye is here provisionally installed in a mulatto hut. She declares

that she will never return to St Louis. There her plans end. She does

not know what is to become of her, and Jean is equally ignorant. He has

racked his brains in vain, poor fellow, without hitting upon the vestige

of a plan. And he has no more money!...

It is morning; the mailboat on which the spahis are to embark sails in a

few hours. Fatou-gaye is crouching beside her four miserable calabashes,

which represent her entire fortune, never uttering a word, not even in

answer. Her eyes are fixed and immobile in a kind of dreary stupefaction

of despair, a despair heart-rending in its sincerity and depth.

And Jean is standing beside her, twisting his moustache, not knowing what

to do.

Suddenly the door is flung open noisily, and a tall spahi enters like the

wind, in great excitement, with animation in his eyes, and an expression

of agitation and anxiety.

This is Pierre Boyer, who has been Jean’s comrade and room-mate at St

Louis during the past two years. Both intensely reserved, they have

seldom conversed, but they like each other, and when Boyer went away on

service to Goree, they shook hands cordially.

Removing his cap, Pierre Boyer murmured a hasty excuse for his wild

intrusion, and then he seized Jean’s hands and said effusively,

“Oh Peyral, I have been looking for you since before dawn.... Listen to

me a moment. I want to talk to you. I have a great favour to ask. Listen

first to what I have to say, and do not be in a hurry to reply....

“You, lucky fellow, are going to Algiers.... I alas! together with

several others from Goree am leaving to-morrow for the outpost of

Gadiangué in Ouankarah. There is fighting in those parts. About three

months to be spent there, and there’s promotion to be won, no doubt, or

else a medal.

“We have the same amount of service to put in; we are both of the same

age. It would make no difference to your return.... Peyral, will you

exchange with me?”

Jean had already understood; he had divined his purpose with the first

words uttered. He gazed into vacancy with his eyes wide open, dilated as

if with the torment he was inwardly enduring. A tumult of hesitating,

contradictory thoughts surged in his head; with folded arms and bowed

head he went on thinking—and Fatou, who had likewise grasped the

situation, had straightened herself and sat with heaving breast, awaiting

what verdict might fall from Jean’s lips.

Then the other spahi continued, speaking volubly, as if to prevent Jean

from uttering that word “No!” which he dreaded to hear.

“Listen, Peyral, it will be to your advantage, I assure you.”

“What about the others, Boyer?... Did you ask them?”

“Yes, they refused. But I expected that. They, to be sure, have their

reasons. It will be to your advantage, Peyral, you see. The Governor of

Goree is interested in me, and he has promised you his protection, if

you accept. We thought of you first” (with a look at Fatou), “because

it is well known that you are fond of this country. On your return from

Gadiangué, you would be sent to complete your service at St Louis; that

has been arranged with the Governor. I swear to you that it would be so.”

... “In any case, we shall never have time,” interrupted Jean, who felt

that he was lost, and was clutching at a straw.

“Oh yes,” ... said Pierre Boyer, with a ray of joy already brightening

his eyes. “We shall have plenty of time; there is all the afternoon

before us. You will have nothing to bother about. Everything has been

arranged with the Governor; the papers are ready. All that is required is

your consent and your signature—and then I go back to Goree and return

here in two hours’ time, and everything will be settled. Listen, Peyral,

here are my savings, three hundred francs; they are yours. Perhaps the

money may be useful to you when you return to St Louis and settle down,

or on some other occasion. Do what you like with it.”

“Oh, thank you,” replied Jean. “I don’t take money for this sort of

thing.” ...

He turned away his head disdainfully, and Boyer, aware that he had made

a false step, took his hand and said,

“Don’t be angry, Peyral.”

And he held Jean’s hand in his, and they both stood there, facing each

other, troubled and silent.

Fatou, for her part, had realised that a word from her might ruin all.

She had merely thrown herself on her knees again, softly muttering a

negro prayer, and had wound her arms around the spahi’s legs, clinging to

him.

Jean, vexed that another man should witness such a scene, said to her

roughly,

“Come, Fatou, let me go, I beg you. Have you suddenly gone crazy?”

But to Pierre Boyer the pair did not seem ridiculous. On the contrary, he

thought the scene touching.

A ray of morning sunshine glided across the yellow sand and slid in

through the open door, casting a red light on the spahis’ uniforms,

illuminating their pleasant, vigorous faces, clouded with anxiety and

indecision, making the silver bracelets flash on Fatou’s supple arms,

wound snake-like around Jean’s knees; emphasizing the dreary bareness

of this African hut of wood and thatch where these three forlorn young

creatures were deciding their own fate....

“Peyral,” continued the other spahi, speaking low, in a gentle voice.

“You see, Peyral, I am an Algerian. You know what that means. My good old

parents live at Blidah, and they are waiting for me. They have no one

but me. You, Peyral, will understand what it means to return to one’s

home.”

* * * * *

“Very well, then, yes!” said Jean, pushing his red cap to the back of his

head, and stamping on the ground, “Yes! I agree. I will exchange with you

and stay.”

* * * * *

The spahi Boyer clasped him in his arms and embraced him. Fatou, still

grovelling on the ground, uttered a cry of triumph, then hid her face

against Jean’s knees, with a kind of wild animal’s roar, ending in a

burst of hysterical laughter, followed by sobs.

* * * * *

XIX

Time was short. Pierre Boyer departed with the same mad haste with which

he had come, carrying with him to Goree the precious document to which

poor Jean had affixed a true soldier’s signature, large, correct, and

legible.

When the last moment arrived, all the papers were in order, countersigned

and initialled, the baggage had been transhipped, and the exchange

effected. The whole affair had been patched up in such haste that the two

spahis had scarcely had time to think.

At three o’clock precisely the mail boat sailed with Pierre Boyer on

board.

And Jean remained behind.

XX

But when the thing was done and past recall, when Jean found himself

standing there on the sea-shore watching the ship’s departure, a frantic

despair seized his heart—a terrible agony, mingled with terror at this

thing that he had done; rage against Fatou, a horror of the black girl’s

proximity, and a need, as it were, of chasing her from him—together with

a newly kindled, immense, and profound love for his cherished home, and

the dear ones who were waiting for him there, and whom now he was not to

see....

It seemed to him that he had signed a compact to the death with this

sombre land, and that this was the end of him.

And he rushed away across the dunes, hardly conscious of where he

was going—urged on by a longing to breathe the air, to be alone, and

especially to follow with his eyes as long as possible this ship that was

speeding away....

* * * * *

When he set out, the sun was still high and scorchingly hot; in the full

light, these desert plains had an impressive majesty. He walked for a

long time by the desolate shore, over the ridge of the sandhills, or

along the top of the red cliffs, so that he might command a more distant

view. A high wind blew upon him, and ruffled the immense stretch of sea

that lay at his feet, and still he saw the ship speeding onwards.

He was so distraught that he no longer felt the sun burning him.

Riveted for two more years to this country, when at this very moment he

might have been on yonder ship, sailing over the sea, on his way to his

beloved village....

Good God! What were these sinister influences, spells, and amulets that

had held him back?

Two years! Would the time ever be fulfilled? Would there indeed be an end

of it, a deliverance from this exile?...

And he ran towards the north in the direction the ship had taken, that

he might not lose sight of her yet. Thorny plants tore him; a swarm of

large, wild crickets, disturbed among the grasses that flourish in the

winter season, flew against his breast like hail....

He was very far away, alone in the midst of that austere landscape, the

silent and melancholy region of Cape Verde. For a long time he had seen

ahead of him a great solitary tree, larger even than the baobabs, with

dense, dark foliage, a tree so huge that it might have been taken for

one of those giants of the flora of the ancient world, remaining there

forgotten through the centuries.

Exhausted, he sat down on the sand under the dome-like shade, with bowed

head, and burst into tears.

When he rose to his feet, the ship had disappeared, and it was evening.

At evening the mournful country grew stiller and colder. In the twilight

the great tree appeared as a mass of absolute blackness, rearing itself

aloft in the midst of the vast African solitude.

Before him in the distance lay the pacified sea, infinitely calm; beneath

him, at his feet, the cliffs descending in terraces to the great Cape

Verde; flat stretches of land, intersected by straight ravines bare of

vegetation—a wide landscape of a heart-rending dreariness of aspect.

Behind him, on the side verging upon the interior, rose mysterious ridges

of low hills, stretching away out of sight, and distant outlines of

baobabs, resembling silhouettes of madrepores.

Not a breath of air disturbs the dense atmosphere; the sun, already

obscured, sinks down among heavy vapours, its yellow disk strangely

magnified and distorted by the mirage.... All over the sand the daturas

open their great white calyces to the influence of evening; the air is

heavy with their unwholesome perfume and charged with the maleficent

scent of belladonna. Moths flutter about the poisonous flowers.

Everywhere among the tall grasses is heard the plaintive call of the

turtle doves. This whole land of Africa is shrouded in a deadly vapour,

and already the horizon is vague and sombre.

Yonder, behind him, lies that mysterious interior of the land, which once

inspired his dreams, ... but now, between this and Podor or Medina or the

country of Galam or mysterious Timbuctoo, there is nothing, absolutely

nothing, that he would care to see.

He knows, or can imagine, all the melancholy, all the suffocating heat of

this land. His thoughts are elsewhere now—in a word, this whole country

fills him with dread.

His one desire is to break away from all these nightmares, to depart, to

go hence at all costs.

* * * * *

Tall, wild-looking African shepherds pass by, driving before them to the

village their lean herds of hump-backed cattle.

That simulacrum of the sun, which the Bible would have called “a sign

in the heavens,” fades slowly like a pale meteor. Night is here.... All

things are veiled in unhealthy vapour, and the silence grows intense....

Beneath the great tree it is still and dark as in a temple.

And Jean dreams of his cottage, with the aspect it wears at this hour on

summer evenings; of his old mother and his betrothed. And it seems to him

that all is over; he dreams that he is dead, and that he will never see

them again.

* * * * *

XXI

The die was cast, and he must go where he was sent. Two days later Jean

embarked, in his friend’s stead, on a small warship for the distant

outpost of Gadiangué in the Ouankarah. Some troops and munitions were

being sent to reinforce that forlorn outpost. The surrounding country was

disturbed. Caravans no longer passed by; there were conflicting negro

interests, strife between rapacious tribes and predatory chiefs. It was

thought that this state of affairs would come to an end with the winter

season, and when the force returned in two or three months’ time, Jean

would be sent back to St Louis, there to complete his service, as the

Governor of Goree had promised the spahi Boyer.

The little vessel was overcrowded. First of all, there was Fatou, who had

succeeded in securing a passage by dint of importunity and subterfuge,

claiming to be the wife of a black rifleman. She was there in the

capacity of follower, with her four calabashes and all her possessions.

There were about ten spahis from the garrison of Goree, who were being

sent into the exile of camp for a season; besides these, some twenty

native riflemen, dragging their entire families along with them.

These native troops brought with them a remarkable equipage—several wives

and children to each man, millet in calabashes for food, and in addition,

clothing, household utensils—all packed in calabashes—with amulets in

heaps and domestic animals in herds.

At the time of departure the deck was a scene of violent commotion and

confusion. At first sight it seemed as if this medley of people and

things would never be reduced to order.

Not so, however. After they had been an hour under way, the kit was piled

up in miraculous order, and all was still. The negresses who were on

board lay asleep on deck, rolled in their _pagnes_, packed as tightly and

lying as quietly as fish in a tin, and the ship glided smoothly towards

the south, cleaving its way steadily towards regions of ever intenser

heat and ever bluer skies.

XXII

A night of intense calm on the equatorial sea. In the midst of absolute

stillness, the lightest rustlings of the sails are audible—from time to

time a negress, sleeping on deck, utters a groan; the vibrations of the

human voice are startlingly loud.

All things lie in a tepid stupor. The atmosphere is sluggish with the

dull torpor of a slumbering world.

The milky, phosphorescent sea reflects in its vast mirror the hot

transparent night. One might fancy oneself between two mirrors, opposite

one to the other, eternally reflecting each other, or imagine oneself

suspended in vacancy, for no longer is there a distinguishable horizon.

In the distance the two planes are merged in one. Sky and water, both are

blended in cosmic, vague, infinite depths.

And the moon is very low in the sky, a great disk of red, rayless fire,

hanging in the midst of a world of pale, flax-coloured, phosphorescent

vapours.

In the earliest geological ages, before day was divided from night, the

universe must have been permeated with this same expectant calm. The

pauses between the acts of creation must have been fraught with this

same indescribable immobility in those epochs when the worlds were yet

nebulous, when light was still diffused and vague, when the brooding

clouds were vapourous lead and iron, when infinite and eternal matter was

sublimated by the intense heat of aboriginal chaos.

* * * * *

XXIII

The voyage has lasted three days.

At sunrise the whole world is bathed in a dazzling golden light.

And on this fourth day the rising sun reveals in the east a long line of

green—which is at first likewise tinged with gold, changing to a shade so

unnaturally vivid that one might compare it to the precise and delicate

colouring on a Chinese fan.

This line is the coast of Guinea.

The troopship has arrived at the Diakhallémé outlet, and is approaching

the wide entrance to the river.

The land there is as flat as Senegal, but its natural characteristics are

different. With it begins a region where the leaves never fall.

The whole country is covered with wonderful verdure, a verdure already

equatorial, a verdure that never dies—an emerald green whose vividness is

never matched by that of our own trees, even in the radiant month of June.

Further than the eye can see there is nothing but this one interminable

forest, of an unvarying flatness, mirrored in the warm, stagnant water,

an unhealthy forest whose damp soil teems with reptiles.

XXIV

In this country, too, there was a melancholy stillness, yet it was

restful to eyes accustomed to those desert sands.

At the village of Poupoubal on the Diakhallémé the vessel halted, unable

to sail further up the river.

The passengers disembarked and waited for the canoes or pirogues which

were to convey them to their destination.

XXV

At nine o’clock one night in July, Fatou and the spahis from Goree took

their places in a canoe manned by ten black rowers, under the orders of

Samba-Boubou, a skilful skipper, a pilot with experience of the rivers of

Guinea. They were bound for the outpost of Gadiangué, which was situated

several leagues higher up the river.

It was a night without a moon, but cloudless, hot, and starry—a night

characteristic of the equator.

They glided up the calm river with surprising speed, borne towards the

interior on the swift current, aided by the indefatigable efforts of the

rowers.

In the darkness both banks slid past mysteriously; the trees, massed

together in the gloom, flitted away like great shadows. Forest after

forest sped by.

Samba-Boubou led the chorus of the rowers; his mournful, shrill voice

would pitch upon a wild, high note, then trail plaintively down to the

depths of the base, and the choir would take up the burden in slow,

solemn tones; during the long hours the same strange phrase was repeated

again and again, with the same response from the rowers. For a long time

they sang the praises of the spahis, their horses, even their dogs;

then of the warriors of the family of Soumaré, and then of Saboutané, a

legendary woman of the banks of the Gambia.

And when the regular movement of the oars flagged under the influence of

weariness or sleep, Samba-Boubou made a hissing sound between his teeth,

and this snake-like noise, repeated by all the rowers, rekindled their

ardour as if by magic.

Thus they glided at dead of night through the whole length of the sacred

wood of the Mandinga religion, and overhead the ancient trees stretched

out their massive grey branches, angular shapes like structures of

gigantic bones, rigid as stone, their outlines vaguely revealed in the

diffused starlight, until they passed out of sight.

Mingled with the singing of the negroes and the sound of the flowing

water were the weird voices of monkeys screaming in the woods, or the

shrieks of birds of the swamp; all the calls, all the mournful cries

that are heard at night in the echoing forests. There were human cries,

too, sometimes—death cries heard from afar, fusillades and the muffled

sounds of the war tom-toms. Here and there, when the canoe passed by the

outskirts of some African village, the glare of great incendiary fires

could be seen in the sky. War was already being waged through all this

region. Sarakholes against Landoumans; Nalous against Toubacayes; and

right and left villages were going up in flames.

And then, league after league, all was still again with the silence of

night and the deep forests. And ever the same monotonous singing, the

same sound of the oars cleaving the dark waters; the same fantastic

voyage as through a land of shadows; the river bearing them ever onwards

on its swift current; silhouettes of tall palm trees ever gliding past

overhead; forest ever succeeding forest.

The speed at which they travelled seemed to increase from hour to hour.

The river had dwindled surprisingly; it was now a mere stream, flowing

through the woods, and carrying them deeper into the interior. The night

was profound.

The negroes’ songs of praise continued. Samba-Boubou still uttered

his weird head note, with which mingled the shrieks of monkeys, and

the chorus still made its sombre response. They sang as if in a kind

of dream, and they rowed furiously, with superhuman strength, as if

galvanised, in a feverish anxiety to reach their goal.

* * * * *

At last they come to a place where the river flows between deep banks

formed by two chains of wooded hills. Lights appear high up on a great

rock which stands out in front of them; the lights seem to be moving

hastily down to the banks. Samba-Boubou kindles a torch and utters a

rallying cry. The garrison of Gadiangué are here to greet them. They have

reached their destination.

Gadiangué is perched there on the summit of this perpendicular rock, and

is reached by steep paths, where negroes show them the way with torches.

A large hut has been made ready for the spahis, and they lie down on mats

to sleep until morning, which is not far off.

XXVI

The first to awake after barely an hour’s sleep, Jean opens his eyes

and sees the white light of dawn filtering between the planks of the

hut, shining upon the young men, who are lying half-naked on the

ground, their heads pillowed on their red jackets—Bretons, Alsatians,

Picards—almost all of them fair-haired men from the north. In this moment

of waking, Jean had a kind of prophetic vision, a mournful, mysterious,

comprehensive foreknowledge of the destiny of all these exiles, their

lives menaced by an ever-lurking death and recklessly cast away.

Close to him lay a graceful feminine form with two black,

silver-braceletted arms curving towards him as if to embrace him.

Then, little by little, he remembered that he had arrived the previous

night at a village in Guinea, lost in the midst of vast savage regions,

that he was farther than ever from home, in a place where even letters

would not reach him.

Quietly, so that he might not disturb Fatou and the still sleeping

spahis, he approached the open window and gazed out at this new country.

He was overlooking a precipice some three hundred feet deep. This hut

that he was in seemed suspended in the air above it. At his feet lay a

landscape with the characteristic features of the interior, as yet but

vaguely revealed in the pale light of dawn.

There were steep hills, covered with masses of verdure, such as he had

never seen before.

Below, right at the foot of the precipice, flowed the river which had

brought him thither, a long, silver ribbon upon the mud, partly veiled

by a white cloud of morning mist. The crocodiles that lay on the banks

looked like small lizards, seen from such a height. The air was filled

with an unknown scent.

The exhausted rowers were sleeping down there, where they had halted the

previous night, lying in their canoe upon their oars.

XXVII

There was a clear stream flowing over a bed of dark pebbles, between

walls of wet, polished rock. Trees formed an arch above it; the landscape

had a freshness that one might have associated with any other place

rather than an obscure corner in the heart of Africa.

Naked women, of the same reddish-brown colouring as the rocks, their

heads ornamented with amber, were everywhere washing _pagnes_, and

excitedly recounting the events and combats of the night. Warriors armed

to the teeth were fording the stream on their way to battle.

* * * * *

Jean took his first walk around the village, whither his new fate had

brought him for an indefinite period.

There was certainly trouble brewing, and the little post of Gadiangué

foresaw a time when it would be obliged to close its doors to allow the

negro communities time to settle their own affairs—as one closes one’s

windows during a passing shower.

But in all this there was movement, vitality, originality even to

excess. There were forests, verdure, flowers, mountains, running

water—awe-inspiring, natural splendour.

There was no element of gloom in it, and it was all new and strange.

From the distance comes the sound of the tom-tom, the warlike music draws

nearer, until it is close at hand and deafeningly loud. The women at

their washing by the clear stream, and Jean himself, raise their heads

and look up into the blue space framed in polished rock. An allied chief

is passing by overhead with his fighting men, scrambling with monkey-like

agility over the trunks of fallen trees. He proceeds on his way with

pomp, with music heading the procession.... The arms and amulets of the

warriors in his train glitter in the sun, as they file past with swift,

light step, in the overwhelming heat.

It is almost noon when Jean climbs back along the green paths to the

village.

The huts of Gadiangué are grouped together in the shade of great trees.

They are of a good height, and have almost a certain elegance, with

their high pitched roofs of thatch. Women are sleeping on mats on the

ground; others, seated on the verandahs, are soothing small children with

long-drawn lullabies. And warriors, armed to the teeth, recount to one

another their exploits of the previous night as they wipe their big iron

knives.

* * * * *

No. Certainly, there is no element of melancholy in all this. The

intensely hot air is terribly heavy, but it has not the overwhelmingly

depressing quality of the air on the banks of the Senegal, and the vital,

equatorial sap circulates through everything.

Jean looks around him and feels alive. He is not sorry now to have come.

He has never imagined anything to equal this.

Later, when he has returned to his home, he will be glad that he has set

foot in this distant region, and he will look back on it with pleasure.

He regards this sojourn in the Ouankarah as a spell of freedom spent in a

wonderful hunting country, clad with verdure and forests. It seems to him

a period of respite from the terribly monotonous existence, the deadly

routine of life in exile.

XXVIII

Jean had a poor old silver watch by which he set as much store as Fatou

by her amulets—it was his father’s watch, which the latter had given to

him at the moment of parting. This, and a medal, which he wore on a chain

round his neck, were his most cherished possessions.

The medal bore the Virgin’s effigy. Once when he was ill his mother

had laid it on his breast, and though he was then but a tiny child,

he remembered the day when it had been placed there, and it had never

been removed. He was lying in his first little cot, suffering from

some childish ailment, the only one that had ever attacked him. He had

woken up and had seen his mother weeping by his side; it was a winter

afternoon; through the window the snow was visible, covering the mountain

like a white cloak. Gently raising his little head, his mother had hung

the medal round his neck. Then she had kissed him, and he had gone to

sleep again.

That was more than fifteen years ago. Since then the dimensions of his

neck and throat had increased greatly, but the medal remained in its

place. He had never suffered so acute a pang as one night, the first he

had ever spent in a place of ill-fame, when the hands of some girl had

chanced upon the sacred medal, and the miserable creature had burst out

laughing as she touched it....

As for the watch, it was some forty years since it had been bought,

secondhand, by his father, with his first savings out of his soldier’s

pay. Once upon a time, apparently, it had been a very remarkable watch,

but now it was somewhat old-fashioned, large and cumbrous, and it struck

the hour in a way that proclaimed its very venerable age.

His father still valued it highly. (Watches were not very common

possessions among the mountaineers in his village.)

The watchmaker in a neighbouring market town, who had repaired it before

Jean went away on service, had pronounced its works to be uncommonly

good, and his old father had entrusted this companion of his youth to his

care with all kinds of recommendations.

At first Jean had worn it, but with the regiment, whenever he looked at

the time, he heard bursts of laughter. The jokes made on the subject of

this “turnip” were so uncalled for that once or twice Jean had turned

quite red with rage and pain.

Rather than hear this watch disparaged he would have suffered all kinds

of insults to himself, and he would have welcomed blows in the face

that he could have repaid in kind. It pained him all the more, because

privately he was obliged to admit to himself that there was something a

little ridiculous about this poor, dear old watch. His affection for it

increased; it caused him inexpressible pain to see it thus held up to

derision, especially as he realised its oddity himself.

Then he ceased to wear it, to save it from these insults. He did not even

wind it, so as to give its works a rest, especially as the jolting it had

suffered on the voyage, and the great unaccustomed heat, had caused it to

indicate the most unlikely hours—in fact to go entirely off the lines.

He had put it away tenderly in a box, where he kept his most cherished

possessions, his letters, his little souvenirs of home. This box was a

fetish box; one of those absolutely sacred boxes such as sailors always

possess, and soldiers now and then.

Fatou had been formally forbidden to touch it.

Nevertheless, this watch attracted her. She had discovered how to open

the precious box. When Jean was away, she had found out by herself how to

wind up the watch, how to move the hands and make it strike. When she put

it close to her ear she would listen to the little cracked tones, with

the inquisitive air of an ouistiti which has found a musical box.

XXIX

At Gadiangué one never experienced a sensation of coolness or physical

well-being. Not even the nights were fresh, as in the winter season in

Senegal.

From morning onwards, the same oppressive, deadly heat prevailed in the

shade of that wonderful verdure. From morning onwards, before sunrise, at

whatever hour, in whatever place, always, always, the same temperature,

the temperature of a vapour bath, moist, overpowering, poisonous,

pervading these forests, the abode of chattering monkeys, green parrots,

and rare humming birds; these shady paths, these tall dank grasses, where

serpents glided. All the heat and heaviness of the equatorial atmosphere

was concentrated during the night under the foliage of the great trees;

and everywhere the air was steeped in deadly miasma.

As had been foreseen, at the end of three months, the country was quiet.

The war, the negro massacres were over. The caravans resumed their

journeys, bringing to Gadiangué from the depths of Africa gold, ivory,

feathers, all the products of the Soudan and the interior of Guinea.

And the order having been given to withdraw the reinforcements, a ship

was sent to wait for the spahis at the mouth of the river to bring them

back to Senegal.

Alas, poor fellows! not all of them had survived. Out of twelve that had

fared forth, two failed to obey the order of recall; two lay asleep in

the hot earth of Gadiangué, victims of fever.

But Jean’s hour had not yet come, and one day he set out on his return

journey along the route that he had taken three months before in

Samba-Boubou’s canoe.

XXX

This time it was high noon; the spahis were journeying in a Mandinga

pirogue, shaded by a moistened awning.

They kept close to the dense verdure of the banks, gliding beneath

branches and hanging roots of trees for the sake of the scanty shade,

warm and danger-haunted, which these cast upon the river.

The water seemed stagnant and motionless, heavy as oil, with wisps of

fever-impregnated vapour hovering here and there above its polished

surface.

The sun was at its zenith; it darted down its perpendicular light from a

sky of violet grey, leaden grey, dim with the miasma of the swamps.

The heat was so appalling that the black oarsmen, in spite of all their

pluck, were obliged to take a rest. The tepid water could no longer

quench their thirst; they were exhausted, and seemed to be melting away

in perspiration.

And then, when they halted, the pirogue, carried gently along by an

almost imperceptible current, drifted onwards. The spahis could study at

close quarters a whole strange world, the underworld that had its being

beneath the mangroves and peopled all the marshes of equatorial Africa.

In the shade, in the obscure network of great roots, this world lay

asleep.

There, two steps away from the canoe, which glided past without a sound,

stealing by so quietly that not even the birds were awakened—near enough

to touch it—lay dull-green crocodiles, their sleek forms stretched out

on the mud, yawning and grinning idiotically with gaping viscous jaws.

There were graceful white herons asleep likewise, snowy white balls,

standing on one leg, and to avoid contact with the mud actually perched

on the backs of the crocodiles in their trance-like sleep. There were

kingfishers of every shade of green and blue taking their noonday rest by

the water’s edge, in the company of sluggish lizards and great, wonderful

butterflies that had come to life in a temperature like a boiler’s,

slowly folding and unfolding their wings wherever they happened to

alight, resembling dead leaves when their wings were closed, brilliant as

mysterious jewels when their wings were spread, all glittering with blue

enamel and metallic gleams.

Above all, there were roots of mangrove trees, roots and still more

roots, trailing down everywhere, like sheaves of filaments; roots of all

lengths and thicknesses, falling in tangled masses from every direction.

You would have said thousands of nerves, tentacles, grey arms, eager to

enmesh and envelop all things. Great stretches of country were covered

with these entanglements of roots. And swarming all over the mud and the

roots and the crocodiles were colonies of great grey crabs, continually

brandishing their single pair of ivory white pincers, as if seeking in

dreams to clutch an imaginary prey. The somnambulistic movement of all

these crabs under the dense verdure was the only sign of life perceptible

throughout this sleeping universe.

* * * * *

When the black oarsmen had recovered their breath, they resumed, in low

voices, their wild singing, and rowed furiously. Then the spahis’ pirogue

cut through the quiet waters of the Diakhallémé and sped down the winding

river, gliding very swiftly through the heart of the forests.

As the canoe approached the sea, the hills and the great trees that had

characterised the interior disappeared. Once more they were in the midst

of the vast plain, with its inextricable tangle of mangroves covering it

like a mantle of uniform green.

* * * * *

The overpowering heat of noon was past, and some birds were flying about.

Nonetheless a perpetual stillness possessed this region; beyond the reach

of sight there was the same monotony, the same trees, the same calm.

There was nothing to be seen but a never varying border of mangroves,

recalling from a distance the familiar aspect of poplars by our

riversides in France. To right and left, at intervals, there opened out

new watercourses where the same silence brooded, watercourses which

vanished from sight in the remote distance, ever bordered by these same

curtains of perpetual verdure. All Samba-Boubou’s wide experience was

needed to pilot the pirogue through the labyrinth of these creeks.

No sound, no movement was perceptible, except, now and then, the

tremendous plunge of a hippopotamus, who, disturbed by the measured

cadences of the oarsmen, disappeared, leaving great swirling eddies on

the mirror of the warm clouded waters.

For this reason Fatou, lying for greater safety in the very bottom of the

canoe, with a double screen of leaves and wet cloths over her head, kept

her eyes tightly closed. This she did, because she had made enquiries and

knew what denizens one might expect to see on these river banks.

When she arrived at Poupoubal, she had accomplished the whole journey

without having dared to cast a single glance about her all the way. To

induce her to stir, Jean had to assure her very positively that they had

reached their destination, and that, moreover, it was black night, and

the danger, therefore, at an end. She lay, quite benumbed, in the bottom

of the pirogue, and replied in the querulous voice of a coaxing child.

She wanted Jean to take her in his arms and carry her himself on board

the ship from Goree, and this he did.

These wiles were generally successful with the poor spahi, who would

yield at times and spoil Fatou, simply because he felt the need of

someone to pet, someone to cherish, and Fatou was better than nothing.

XXXI

The Governor of Goree did not forget his promise to the spahi Boyer; on

his return Jean was posted again to St Louis, there to complete his term

of exile.

Jean was conscious of a certain emotion as the country of sand and the

white town came into sight; he had an affection for them, such as one

always feels for places where one has lived and endured a long time. And

then, in the first moments, he took a kind of pleasure in revisiting what

was almost a town, almost civilisation, and resuming former habits and

friendships. It was only by virtue of his prolonged deprivation of all

these things that they acquired the slightest importance in his eyes on

his return to them.

There is small demand for lodgings in Senegal. Samba-Hamet’s house had no

new occupants. Coura n’diaye witnessed the return of Jean and Fatou, and

opened the door of their former dwelling to them.

For the spahi, the days relapsed again into their former monotonous

routine.

XXXII

Nothing had changed in St Louis. In their quarter the same tranquillity

prevailed. The tame marabouts that lived on their roof clacked their

beaks, as they sunned themselves, with the same sound of dry wood, such

as is made by the cogged wheels of a windmill.

The negresses still pounded their everlasting kouss-kouss. Everywhere the

same familiar sounds, the same monotonous stillness, the same calm of

prostrate nature.

But Jean was growing more and more weary of it all.

Day by day he drew further away from Fatou; he was utterly out of conceit

with his black mistress.

She had grown more exacting and also more malicious, more especially

since she had realised her power over Jean—ever since he had stayed

behind on her account.

Scenes were frequent between them. At times she would exasperate him from

sheer perversity and spitefulness.

Latterly he had acquired a habit of striking her with his riding whip,

not very hard at first, but as time went on with increasing violence.

His blows sometimes left marks like parallel scorings on Fatou’s bare

back—black on black. Afterwards he would be sorry and ashamed.

One day, as he was returning to his dwelling, he had seen from a distance

a Khassonké, a big, black gorilla of a man, beating a hasty retreat

through the window.

On this occasion he did not so much as say one word. After all, he was

indifferent to anything that she might do.

He had come to the end of any sentiment of pity, or tenderness even, that

at moments he might have felt. He had had enough of her; he was tired of

her; disgusted with her. He kept her, simply because he was too lazy to

get rid of her.

He had entered upon his last year; everything pointed to the end, to his

departure. He began to count the months.

Sleep had abandoned him, a common sequence to a long sojourn in these

enervating countries. At night he would spend hours leaning on his elbow

at the window, breathing in with rapture the cool air of his last winter

season—and above all, dreaming of his return.

The moon, in her quiet course over this desert land, generally found

him there at his window. He loved these beautiful, tropic nights, the

rosy glow upon the sand; the trails of silver on the gloomy waters of

the river. Each night the wind wafted to him from the plains of Sorr the

distant cry of the jackals—and even this doleful cry had come to be a

familiar sound.

When he reflected that soon he would be leaving all this for ever, the

thought seemed to cast a vague gloom upon the joy of his return.

XXXIII

It was several days since Jean had opened his box of treasures and looked

at his old watch.

He was on duty in barracks, when he suddenly thought of it with a feeling

of uneasiness.

He returned home, walking more rapidly than was his wont, and on his

arrival he opened his box.

His heart felt a sudden shock. The watch was nowhere to be seen.... In

feverish anxiety he ransacked the contents of the box.... No, it was no

longer there!...

Fatou was humming a tune with an air of indifference, watching him all

the time out of the corner of her eye. She was threading beads; arranging

colour effects for her necklaces; busy with great preparations for the

next day’s festivals, the bamboulas of Tabaski, at which one had to look

one’s best.

“You have put it somewhere else? Quick, Fatou, tell me.... I had

forbidden you to touch it. Where have you put it?...”

“_Ram!_” ... (I don’t know), answered Fatou unconcernedly.

A cold sweat broke out on Jean’s forehead, distracted as he was with

anxiety and rage. He took Fatou by the arm and shook her roughly.

“Where have you put it?... Come, tell me at once.”

“_Ram!_”

Suddenly a light dawned upon him. He had caught sight of a new _pagne_,

with a pink and blue zig-zag pattern, carefully folded, hidden away in a

corner in readiness for the next day’s festivities....

He understood. Snatching up the pagne he unfolded it and flung it on the

ground.

“You have sold the watch,” he cried. “Come, Fatou, be quick, tell me the

truth.” ...

He threw her on her knees on the floor in a furious rage and seized his

whip.

Fatou knew perfectly well that she had touched a precious fetish, and

that it was a serious matter. But she possessed the audacity that comes

of impunity. She had already offended so many times, and Jean had so many

times forgiven her.

Yet she had never before seen Jean like this; she uttered a cry; she was

afraid. She began to kiss his feet.

“Pardon, Tjean!... Pardon!”

* * * * *

In such moments of fury Jean did not realise his own strength. He was

subject to these fits of almost savage passion common to children who

have grown up in the woods. He rained blows upon Fatou’s bare back,

inflicting stripes from which the blood gushed, and with the falling of

the blows his rage increased.

At length he grew ashamed of what he had done, and throwing down the whip

he cast himself on his couch....

XXXIV

A moment later Jean was running towards the market of Guet n’dar.

In the end Fatou had confessed, and had told him the name of the merchant

to whom she had sold the watch. He had some hope of finding his poor old

watch still there, and of being able to buy it back; he had just drawn

his monthly pay, and this sum of money should be sufficient for the

purpose.

He walked very rapidly; he ran; he hastened to reach the market, as if,

while he was actually on his way, some black purchaser were standing

there bargaining for the watch, and on the point of carrying it off.

* * * * *

On the sands at Guet n’dar tumult prevails. A confused throng, composed

of every type of negro, is gathered together, uttering a babel of all

the languages of the Soudan. There, throughout the year, is held a

great market, crowded with people from all parts of Africa, and every

imaginable article is offered for sale—precious things, absurd things,

merchandise useful and fantastic, the most incongruous wares, gold and

butter, meat and unguents, live sheep and manuscripts, prisoners and

porridge, amulets and vegetables.

One side of the picture is framed by an arm of the river, St Louis in the

background, with its straight lines, its Babylonian terraces, its white

limewash splashed with brick red, and here and there the yellow crest of

a palm tree, erect against the blue sky.

On the other side lies Guet n’dar, the negro ant heaps, with its

thousands of pointed roofs.

Close by caravans are halting, camels lying on the sand, Moors unloading

their bales of ground nuts and their fetish pouches of wrought leather.

Pedlars of both sexes are crouched on the sand, laughing and quarrelling,

jostled and trodden upon, they and their wares, by their customers.

“_Hou! dièndé m’pât!_” ... (women selling sour milk out of goatskins sewn

together, with the hair on the inner side).

“_Hou! dièndé nébam!_” (butter sellers—women of the Peuhle tribe, with

great, three-cornered chignons, ornamented with copper discs—diving with

both hands for their merchandise into vessels of hairy goatskin—rolling

it between their fingers into little grimy balls, sold at a halfpenny

each—then wiping their paws on their hair).

“_Hou! dièndé kheul!... dièndé khorompolé_” (women selling simples,

little bundles of enchanted herbs, lizard tails, and roots with magic

properties).

“_Hou! dièndé tchiakhkha!... dièndé djiareb!_” ... (women squatting on

the ground selling grains of gold, fragments of jade, amber beads, silver

frontlets—all spread out on the ground on pieces of dingy linen and

trodden upon by the customers).

“_Hou! dièndé guerté!... dièndé khankhel! dièndé jap-nior ..._” (women

selling pistachios, live ducks, absurd eatables, meat dried in the sun,

sweet pastes, devoured by flies).

Women selling salt fish, pipes, things of every description; old jewels;

old dirty verminous pagnes robbed from the corpse; Galam butter, used for

frizzling the hair; little old tails of hair, cut or torn from the heads

of dead negresses, and plaited and gummed ready for use just as they are.

Women selling grigris, amulets, old guns, gazelles’ dung, old copies of

the Koran, annotated by pious Marabouts of the desert; musk, flutes, old

silver-handled daggers, old iron knives that have already been plunged

into men’s vitals; tom-toms, giraffes’ horns, and old guitars.

Beggars and vagabonds, the dregs of negro humanity, sit about under

the gaunt, yellow cocoanut palms; old leper women stretching out hands

covered with white ulcers for alms; old moribund skeletons, their legs

swollen with elephantiasis, with big fat flies and maggots feeding on the

open sores.

On the grounds ordure of all kinds.

And overhead, darting down its perpendicular rays, burns one of those

scorching suns that seem to be almost on one’s head, the radiating heat

roasting one, like a brazier too close to one.

And always, always, the desert for horizon—the infinite flatness of the

desert.

* * * * *

It was there, before the wares displayed by one Bob-Bakary-Diam, that

Jean halted with beating heart. Hastily he cast anxious, scrutinising

glances upon the hugger-mugger of objects scattered about in front of him.

“Ah, yes, my white man,” said Bob-Bakary-Diam in Yolof, with a quiet

smile, “the watch that strikes! Four days ago the girl came and sold it

to me for three silver _khâliss_. Very sorry, my white man, but as it was

a watch that struck, I sold it the very same day to a Trarzas chief, who

left with a caravan for Timbuctoo.”

* * * * *

All was over then! He must think no more of the poor old watch. He was

overwhelmed with despair, heartbroken, as if he had lost someone very

dear to him, through his own fault.

If only he could have thrown himself into his old father’s arms and asked

his forgiveness, it would have been some comfort. Had the watch but

fallen into the sea, or into the river, or in some corner of the desert!

But to have it thus sold and profaned by that miserable Fatou! It was

beyond endurance. He could have wept, almost, if his heart had not been

too full of rage against the creature.

It was this Fatou who for four years had wasted his money, his dignity,

his very life. In order to keep her he had sacrificed promotion; for her

sake he had remained in Africa—for the sake of this ill-natured, perverse

little creature, black of face and black of soul, all strung about with

charms and amulets.

He worked himself up, as he strode along in the sun; her spells inspired

him with a kind of superstitious horror, while her spitefulness and

impudence, the audacity of her last exploit, roused him to frantic rage.

He returned home, walking rapidly, his blood boiling, his head burning,

grief and anger seething within him.

XXXV

Fatou was awaiting his return in great anxiety. As soon as he entered she

saw that he had not recovered his treasure—the old watch that struck the

hour.

His aspect was so sombre that she thought he was probably going to kill

her.

This she could understand. For if any one had taken from her a certain

shrivelled amulet, the most precious one that she possessed, given her

by her mother when she was a small child in Galam—she, too, would have

thrown herself upon the thief and killed him if she could.

She fully realised that she had done something very terrible, driven to

it by evil spirits, through her besetting sin, her inordinate love of

finery. She knew perfectly well that she had been very wicked. She was

sorry to have caused Jean so much pain; she would not mind if he killed

her—but she would have liked to kiss him.

She was almost glad, now, when Jean beat her, because it was only on such

occasions that he ever touched her and that she could touch him, pressing

herself close to him as she pleaded for mercy. This time, when he should

seize her in order to kill her, when she had nothing more to risk, she

would gather all her strength and cling to him, striving to reach his

lips. She would clasp him in her embrace until she was dead—and death was

a thing of very little account to her.

* * * * *

If Jean could have interpreted all that was passing in that little gloomy

heart, doubtless, to his sorrow, he would have forgiven her yet again,

for it was never difficult to mollify him.

But Fatou did not speak, because she was conscious that nothing of all

this could be expressed; moreover, the idea of this supreme struggle,

wherein she would clasp him and embrace him and die at his hands, thus

ending everything—the idea of this had a charm for her. She waited for

him, fixing her great, lustrous eyes upon him, with an expression of

mingled passion and terror.

But Jean had entered without one word, without one glance at her, and

then she no longer understood.

He had even thrown away his whip as he entered, ashamed of the brutality

he had shown towards a girl, and loath to repeat it.

He merely set to work to tear down all the amulets that were hanging on

the walls, and to fling them out of the window.

Then he seized _pagnes_, necklaces, _bou-bous_, calabashes, and, still

without a word, he threw them out on to the sand.

And Fatou began to realise what was in prospect; she divined that all was

over, and was appalled at the thought.

When all her possessions were thrown out of the window and scattered

about the square, Jean showed her the door, saying through his clenched

white teeth, in a sullen voice that admitted of no reply, the one word,

“Go!”

And Fatou went, with hanging head, without a word. No, she had never

conceived a fate so terrible as to be thus driven away. She felt as

if she would go mad—and she went, without daring to raise her head,

powerless to utter a cry, say a word, or shed a tear.

XXXVI

Then Jean calmly began to put together all his own possessions, folding

his clothes neatly as if he were preparing his kit bag. He packed

carefully, having acquired unconsciously a habit of orderliness with the

regiment. At the same time he hurried over the task, for fear lest he

should be seized with regret, and waver in his resolve.

He found some small consolation in this terrible act of vengeance, this

satisfaction afforded to the memory of the old watch. He was glad to have

had sufficient resolution, and he told himself that soon he would be able

to throw himself into his father’s arms—confessing all, and obtaining his

forgiveness.

When he had finished he went down to Coura n’diaye, the woman _griot_. He

saw Fatou, who had taken refuge there, cowering motionless in a corner.

The little slave girls had gathered up her possessions from out-of-doors,

and had placed them in calabashes by her side.

Jean would not so much as look at her. He approached Coura n’diaye, paid

his month’s rent, and told her that he was not coming back. Then he threw

his light baggage on his back and took his departure.

* * * * *

Poor old watch! His father had said to him, “Jean, it is rather old, but

it’s a very good watch; they don’t make such good watches nowadays. Later

on, when you are rich, you can buy a new-fashioned one, if you like, but

then give me this one back again. I have kept it for forty years; I had

it when I was with the regiment. When I am buried, if you no longer need

it, do not forget to place it in my coffin. It will be company for me,

where I am going.”

Coura had taken the spahi’s money without offering any comments on his

sudden departure, with the indifference of an old courtesan who has

outlived all interest in life.

When Jean left the house he called his Laobé dog, who followed him, his

ears flat, as if he had grasped the situation and were sorry to go. Then,

without turning his head, Jean went his way through the long streets of

the dead-alive town in the direction of the barracks.

* * * * *