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.