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.