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.