XXXVI Anamalis Fobil!
Jean had dressed for the evening hastily, almost frenziedly.
That morning he had told Fatou to go at nightfall to the foot of a certain solitary baobab in the marshes of Sorr, and to wait for him there.
Then, before setting out, he had leaned on his elbow at one of the large windows of the barracks, troubled in mind, trying to think—to think, if that were possible, while he drew a few breaths of less oppressive air. He shuddered at the thing he was about to do.
If he had withstood temptation for several days, his resistance was due to the very complicated emotions struggling within him. A kind of instinctive horror still mingled with the terrible urgency of his senses. And superstition, too, played a part, the superstition inborn in a mountaineer, a vague dread of charms and amulets, horror of I know not what enchantments, what bonds of darkness.
It seemed to him that he was about to cross the fatal threshold, to sign some sort of sinister pact with that black race, that darker veils would descend, separating him from his mother and his betrothed and all that he had loved and regretted in his home overseas.
The warm twilight sank upon the river; the old, white town turned rosy in the light, blue in the shadows; long lines of camels were wending their way across the plain, moving northwards to the desert.
Already in the distance could be heard the griots’ tom-toms beginning, and the song of frantic desires. Anamalis fobil!—Faramata hi!
The hour of his assignation with Fatou-gaye was almost past. Jean set off at a run to join her in the marshes of Sorr.
A solitary baobab cast its shadow upon their strange nuptials. The saffron sky stretched above them its impassive vault, melancholy, oppressive, laden with electricity, with terrestrial emanations and vital elements.
To paint that nuptial couch would require warmer tints than any palette could provide—African words, sounds, rustling noises, and, above all, silence, all the odours of Senegal, tempest, sombre fire, transparency, obscurity.
And yet there was nothing to be seen, save a single, solitary baobab in the midst of a great, grassy plain.
Mingled with his delirious infatuation, Jean still felt a sort of secret horror, as he saw, contrasting with the background of dusky twilight, the intenser blackness of his bride; as he saw, close to his own, the glitter of Fatou’s rolling eyes.
Great bats flitted noiselessly above them, their silken-winged flight seemed like the rapid fluttering of black cloth. They flew so low that they brushed them with their wings, their bat-like curiosity greatly excited by Fatou’s garment of white cotton, which showed up on the parched grass.
Anamalis fobil!... Faramata hi!...