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.