XXXIV
A moment later Jean was running towards the market of Guet n’dar.
In the end Fatou had confessed, and had told him the name of the merchant to whom she had sold the watch. He had some hope of finding his poor old watch still there, and of being able to buy it back; he had just drawn his monthly pay, and this sum of money should be sufficient for the purpose.
He walked very rapidly; he ran; he hastened to reach the market, as if, while he was actually on his way, some black purchaser were standing there bargaining for the watch, and on the point of carrying it off.
On the sands at Guet n’dar tumult prevails. A confused throng, composed of every type of negro, is gathered together, uttering a babel of all the languages of the Soudan. There, throughout the year, is held a great market, crowded with people from all parts of Africa, and every imaginable article is offered for sale—precious things, absurd things, merchandise useful and fantastic, the most incongruous wares, gold and butter, meat and unguents, live sheep and manuscripts, prisoners and porridge, amulets and vegetables.
One side of the picture is framed by an arm of the river, St Louis in the background, with its straight lines, its Babylonian terraces, its white limewash splashed with brick red, and here and there the yellow crest of a palm tree, erect against the blue sky.
On the other side lies Guet n’dar, the negro ant heaps, with its thousands of pointed roofs.
Close by caravans are halting, camels lying on the sand, Moors unloading their bales of ground nuts and their fetish pouches of wrought leather.
Pedlars of both sexes are crouched on the sand, laughing and quarrelling, jostled and trodden upon, they and their wares, by their customers.
“Hou! dièndé m’pât!”... (women selling sour milk out of goatskins sewn together, with the hair on the inner side).
“Hou! dièndé nébam!” (butter sellers—women of the Peuhle tribe, with great, three-cornered chignons, ornamented with copper discs—diving with both hands for their merchandise into vessels of hairy goatskin—rolling it between their fingers into little grimy balls, sold at a halfpenny each—then wiping their paws on their hair).
“Hou! dièndé kheul!... dièndé khorompolé” (women selling simples, little bundles of enchanted herbs, lizard tails, and roots with magic properties).
“Hou! dièndé tchiakhkha!... dièndé djiareb!”... (women squatting on the ground selling grains of gold, fragments of jade, amber beads, silver frontlets—all spread out on the ground on pieces of dingy linen and trodden upon by the customers).
“Hou! dièndé guerté!... dièndé khankhel! dièndé jap-nior...” (women selling pistachios, live ducks, absurd eatables, meat dried in the sun, sweet pastes, devoured by flies).
Women selling salt fish, pipes, things of every description; old jewels; old dirty verminous pagnes robbed from the corpse; Galam butter, used for frizzling the hair; little old tails of hair, cut or torn from the heads of dead negresses, and plaited and gummed ready for use just as they are.
Women selling grigris, amulets, old guns, gazelles’ dung, old copies of the Koran, annotated by pious Marabouts of the desert; musk, flutes, old silver-handled daggers, old iron knives that have already been plunged into men’s vitals; tom-toms, giraffes’ horns, and old guitars.
Beggars and vagabonds, the dregs of negro humanity, sit about under the gaunt, yellow cocoanut palms; old leper women stretching out hands covered with white ulcers for alms; old moribund skeletons, their legs swollen with elephantiasis, with big fat flies and maggots feeding on the open sores.
On the grounds ordure of all kinds.
And overhead, darting down its perpendicular rays, burns one of those scorching suns that seem to be almost on one’s head, the radiating heat roasting one, like a brazier too close to one.
And always, always, the desert for horizon—the infinite flatness of the desert.
It was there, before the wares displayed by one Bob-Bakary-Diam, that Jean halted with beating heart. Hastily he cast anxious, scrutinising glances upon the hugger-mugger of objects scattered about in front of him.
“Ah, yes, my white man,” said Bob-Bakary-Diam in Yolof, with a quiet smile, “the watch that strikes! Four days ago the girl came and sold it to me for three silver khâliss. Very sorry, my white man, but as it was a watch that struck, I sold it the very same day to a Trarzas chief, who left with a caravan for Timbuctoo.”
All was over then! He must think no more of the poor old watch. He was overwhelmed with despair, heartbroken, as if he had lost someone very dear to him, through his own fault.
If only he could have thrown himself into his old father’s arms and asked his forgiveness, it would have been some comfort. Had the watch but fallen into the sea, or into the river, or in some corner of the desert! But to have it thus sold and profaned by that miserable Fatou! It was beyond endurance. He could have wept, almost, if his heart had not been too full of rage against the creature.
It was this Fatou who for four years had wasted his money, his dignity, his very life. In order to keep her he had sacrificed promotion; for her sake he had remained in Africa—for the sake of this ill-natured, perverse little creature, black of face and black of soul, all strung about with charms and amulets.
He worked himself up, as he strode along in the sun; her spells inspired him with a kind of superstitious horror, while her spitefulness and impudence, the audacity of her last exploit, roused him to frantic rage.
He returned home, walking rapidly, his blood boiling, his head burning, grief and anger seething within him.