The compound that was known as N’Diayène, the motherhouse of Ramatoulaye, and of all her progeny and family, centered around a big, shed-like structure, painted the color of earth and standing on a foundation of bricks. The central part of the house was taken up by three large rooms, flanked by two smaller ones under the eaves. The roof was of tiles and had been extended outward by a sheeting of zinc to form a veranda. There were also two huts of mud and straw, whose crumbling walls were held in place with old fishing nets, and five other cabins, of wood and tarpaper. Standing before the gate in the wall which surrounded the entire compound was a latticework screen – the m’bague gathié, or ‘protection from dishonor’ – which prevented passers-by from looking into the central courtyard. Behind the main house was a smaller courtyard for the women and the lean-to which served as a kitchen.
On a big iron bed in one of the three principal rooms of the house, the baby Mame Sofi had called Strike waved his hands and feet in the air in a fretful, cycling movement. Houdia M’Baye, Anta’s mother, knotted the cloth around her waist, watching her last-born child. The bed, shared at night by all of the children, was covered with a patchwork spread of a dozen different materials and colors. The only other furnishings in the room were two wooden trunks, doubling as chairs, and a big clothes cupboard. Hung from nails above the door was a collection of fetishes to bar the entrance to misfortune or an evil eye – there were bits of paper cut out in the form of arabesques, sashes and bracelets, and animal horns still bearing tufts of hair.
Houdia M’Baye took the baby in her arms and went out into the central room. In addition to being the living and dining area for the whole house, this was also N’Deye Touti’s room, and it bore the stamp of the girl’s personality. The two doors, one opening on the central courtyard, and the other on the smaller courtyard at the rear, gave ample light to the walls, and she had pinned snapshots and photographs from magazines everywhere. The bed was covered in a gaily colored, striped material, and the table was littered with books.
Crossing through this room, and passing the curtain which closed off Ramatoulaye’s room, Houdia M’Baye went out to the veranda. She had brought nine of ‘God’s bits of wood’ into the world, and her successive pregnancies had made her dull and listless. And now she was a widow; her husband, Badiane, had been one of the victims of the very first fighting in the strike. His other wives had already gone back to their families, but although Houdia M’Baye would have liked to return to her own village, she had been unable to make the journey, because of the strike and because she was again on the point of giving birth. When the baby was born he should have been named Badiane-the-Little, but Mame Sofi had insisted on calling him Strike, and now the absurd, circumstantial name seemed likely to stay with him.
A white-headed cat rubbed against Houdia M’Baye’s legs, arching its back, and she pushed it away. Indolently, the cat strolled off, its yellow eyes flickering over the brood of children coming into the courtyard. There had been no distribution of water all day, so once again they had gone unwashed. Their scaly, dried-out skin was streaked with dirty cracks, and their eyelashes were caked back against their brows. Houdia M’Baye studied them all anxiously, but her primary concern was for N’Dole, her next-to-last. The child wobbled unsteadily forward, on a pair of rickety legs. His shining belly was so distended that it appeared to precede him, giving the impression that the skin might, at any moment, burst like a too full bladder.
‘You’ve been eating dirt again,’ Houdia M’Baye said.
N’Dole rummaged in a nostril with one of his fingers, then sucked thoughtfully at the snotty, filthy object, keeping a safe distance from his mother.
‘Stop that!’ she cried. ‘Stop eating that!’
‘I’m hungry,’ the child screamed, bursting into tears.
‘Wait until Ramatoulaye returns – you will all have something to eat. But why have none of you washed?’
‘There was no water, Mother,’ said Abdou, the eldest boy, reaching out to seize the cat by the tail.
‘Let that animal alone, Abdou; he’ll scratch you.’ Her tone was empty, as though her mind was already somewhere else. ‘And Ramatoulaye doesn’t like people to tease her cat.’
Abdou obeyed her and went to join his brothers and sisters, who had formed a little circle in a far corner of the courtyard. Houdia M’Baye remained where she was, rocking the baby in her arms, thinking. This ceaseless hunger, which swelled the bellies of the children while it defleshed their limbs and bent their shoulders, called up pictures in her mind, pictures of an earlier, happier time. In eight years of life together, her husband, Badiane, had deceived her only once – and once in eight years was nothing to speak of. Badiane had had two other wives, but in spite of this there had always been contentment and harmony in the house.
The story of that single deception went back to the early days of their marriage, just ten or twelve moons after she had become part of the family of N’Diaye. The day it happened, it was her turn to do the cooking, and it was also the day Badiane received his pay. All the preceding night she had been planning the ingredients for the couscous she would prepare, and when she returned from the market in the morning she was carrying such an incredible quantity of condiments, and spices of every sort, that every housewife in the district had come by to observe and marvel. The entire day had been spent in preparation and cooking. From time to time the neighbors handed little bowls or gourds across the walls, asking to taste the sauce; and all of the children had gathered in the courtyard near the kitchen, waiting impatiently for the moment when they would be given the big cooking pot to scrape.
At last the night had come, and with it came the return of the men. Their nostrils had caught the pungent scents from the kitchen as soon as they entered the door, and with shouts and laughter they gathered around the enormous vessel containing the couscous and the caldron in which the sauce still simmered.
‘This,’ said Deune, who was famous for his appetite, ‘this, woman, is not worthy of a beggar’s palate – but tonight I will be your beggar!’
As silently as if the sight of the couscous had robbed them of speech, the men plunged their hands into the common vessel, their agile fingers forming the meat and grain into little balls, dipping them swiftly in the sauce and carrying them to their mouths. Houdia M’Baye had watched every movement, listening with delight to the compliments and expressions of appreciation and thinking to herself that tonight she would surely be the happiest of wives. Suddenly then, she heard Badiane’s voice.
‘Woman,’ he said, ‘it is very good.’ He belched loudly and began again, speaking now to his neighbor. ‘But tell me, Deune – haven’t you noticed that there seems to be something missing?’
Houdia M’Baye had not even waited to hear the answer. In the depths of humiliation and deception, she fled to her room and spent the entire night forming plans to return to Kaolack, her native village. ‘Never again will I try to please a man!’ she told herself. ‘Never again!’
It was a long time before Houdia M’Baye brought herself to recognize that Badiane’s remark had been intended simply to tease her, and in the meantime it had become a sort of family joke. ‘Haven’t you noticed that there is something missing?’ It was a joke that belonged to a happy time, but now it had taken on a sinister meaning. The ‘something missing’ was their daily bread.
Suddenly Houdia M’Baye recalled the tone of Ramatoulaye’s voice, that very morning, when she had said, ‘Real misfortune is not just a matter of being hungry and thirsty; it is a matter of knowing that there are people who want you to be hungry and thirsty – and that is the way it is with us.’
Strike began to cry, and Houdia M’Baye interrupted her journeying in the past to give him her breast – now nothing more than a slack and empty parcel of flesh. The baby seized at it with his tiny fists, sucking greedily, his eyes closed, his head jerking awkwardly back and forth. The breast was already so riddled with scars and pricks that it seemed to have been stuck with pins, and he hurt her. She moved him from one arm to the other and put his mouth to her other breast, but she knew that it would serve no purpose; her milk was exhausted. The thought of the strike ran through her like a sickness. She tried to shift her stiffening legs and glanced over at the corner of the courtyard where the children had gathered.
‘Stop eating that dirt!’ she cried again; but the only answer she received was a slight turning of emaciated heads, a glimpse of sunken eyes.
The heat was becoming intolerable again. The cat had gone back to sleep, and Strike moaned feebly in her arms. From far off she could hear the grinding sound of the motor of a truck stalled in the sand, and from somewhere close at hand the bleating of Vendredi, El Hadji Mabigué’s ram. Then, just outside the wall of the compound, there was the cry of a water carrier. ‘Kiô dieu n’da n’do?’ ‘Water, water, who will buy?’
‘Abdou,’ Houdia M’Baye called. ‘Go and bring that water carrier here.’
Abdou dashed out immediately, almost knocking over N’Deye Touti and Anta, who were just coming through the gate.
‘Why doesn’t the little fool look where he’s going?’ N’Deye Touti said irritably. She took Strike’s little fists in her hands and carried them to her lips, whistling softly, trying to make him laugh. ‘I have some milk for you,’ she said, holding out a can of condensed milk to Houdia M’Baye, and then, when the baby went on crying, she said, ‘All right, all right – I’ll leave you alone, you ungrateful little man!’
‘Has Providence been more favorable today?’ Houdia M’Baye asked.
‘Yes. We have some rice, some earthnut cakes, and the can of milk.’
‘Is Ramatoulaye coming back?’
‘Aunt Ramatoulaye is coming with Aunt Bineta,’ Anta said.
At the sight of the can of milk, the other children had gathered eagerly around their mother. ‘This is for your brother,’ Houdia M’Baye said, ‘but you will all have something to eat soon.’
At this moment Abdou came back, followed by the water carrier. He was a member of that indeterminate race which the purebred Ouolofs called Toucouleur; a very tall man made even taller by a slender tin jug he carried on his head. He was wearing nothing but a sweaty undershirt and baggy trousers cut off to a ragged edge around his knees.
‘How much do you ask for the jug of water?’ Houdia M’Baye asked.
‘Five pieces, of five francs each, woman.’
‘Five pieces? The price has gone up again?’
‘Woman, I must now go all the way to Pikine to find water, and Pikine is far.’
‘That makes two times in a single month that the price has been raised. What will happen to us – you know that we cannot pay such a price. Give me just half of it, then, for two pieces of five francs.’
‘But I can’t sell my water that way, woman. You know that I sell it only by the jug.’
The other women had come into the courtyard while the discussion was going on. Bineta went directly to her cabin, and Ramatoulaye, hot and out of breath, dropped her basket and sat down by one of the veranda posts, wearily caressing the cat, which had leaped onto her outstretched legs. Mame Sofi listened to Houdia M’Baye’s explanation of the crisis with the water carrier and stared fixedly at the man for a long moment. Then she said, ‘Follow me.’
The Toucouleur was forced to bend almost double to cross the veranda and enter the house. Mame Sofi led him into the dining area and pointed out a huge earthenware jar, standing in a shallow basin filled with sand.
Lifting the jar’s raffia cover, she said, ‘Pour it in there.’
With no apparent effort the man brought the mouth of the heavy jug against that of the jar, and a crystal sheet of water began to flow from one vessel to the other. The children gathered expectantly around the jar, their eyes riveted to the sight, pushing at each other to get a better view, their mouths open, a tip of each tongue protruding.
‘Just wait a minute,’ Mame Sofi admonished. ‘You will all have a chance to drink.’ When the water carrier had straightened from his task, she said, ‘Wait for me outside – I will be there in a minute. Now, children, come over here.’
As they approached, she filled an old chipped cup from the jar and passed it to each one in turn. Then she went out to the veranda again, carrying water to the astonished women.
When each of them had had a proper share she turned to the Toucouleur and said abruptly, ‘Do you believe in God?’ Her expression gave no slightest hint of trickery.
‘Who, me?’ the man stammered, disconcerted by this unexpected question.
‘Yes, you.’
‘Ouai, of course I believe in God.’
‘Al Hamdou lilah,’ Mame Sofi said, as if the answer had relieved her of a great burden. Then she added, ‘I owe you five pieces, of five francs each.’
‘Ouai, Koni!’ The exclamation seemed to burst from the dumbfounded man. ‘But, woman! I didn’t say that I would sell you my water on credit!’
‘That is true – you did not say it, but I must owe you for this water just the same. I live in this house, so you will have no trouble finding me. And if, for some reason, I do not pay you in this world, then I shall pay you in the other, before I can hope to enter Paradise.’
The water carrier was completely taken aback. ‘If this is a joke,’ he said, ‘it is not to my liking. Don’t waste my time, woman. Give me my money and we will say no more about it.’
The flesh of Mame Sofi’s face was normally soft and glossy, but when she was angry it became somehow harder, tougher, more like the hide of an animal. It looked like that now. With one hand clutched to her throat, and the other still distractedly stroking the cat, Ramatoulaye watched the scene in amazement, wondering what would happen next. She did not approve of what Mame Sofi had done, but at the same time she could not help thinking that today at least there would be water to drink and food to eat, since there was water to cook the rice. N’Deye Touti, who had come back to the veranda after changing into a work dress, looked on indifferently – an argument over some water seemed of little interest to her. Houdia M’Baye was terrified. She could not take her eyes from the water carrier’s powerful hands; she was sure that at any moment one of them would crash against Mame Sofi’s head. Her arms tightened protectively around the baby. Bineta, too, had come out of her cabin and gone to stand beside her husband’s first wife, watching silently, a plug of tobacco wedged carefully between her teeth and her lower lip.
‘I swear that I will pay you,’ Mame Sofi was shouting. ‘On the tombs of my mother and my ancestors, I swear that you will be paid! But it cannot be today – I haven’t a sou. But by the sash of my father, who was the best of men, that water will not leave this house! You say you believe in God, and yet you would let these children die of thirst?’ She swept an arm toward the little group that had gathered to watch the spectacle from a safe distance.
The poor man’s efforts to speak made him look like a goat, chewing on its cud. His face was contorted with nervous tics. Sensing her advantage, Mame Sofi moved toward him, her great hands planted resolutely on her buttocks. Her waistcloth was stretched tight across her body, revealing the outlines of her ham-like thighs and knees.
‘I tell you that you will be paid,’ she said, ‘and I tell you again that it cannot be today.’
‘Woman, pay me for my water and stop insulting me! Oh, if only you were like other women! If you will not pay me, let me take what is left of the water. That woman,’ he pointed to Houdia M’Baye, ‘has two pieces of five francs. I will take those to pay for the water you have already used.’
‘Two pieces – for what little we drank? And tonight you will come back and ask for more!’ Mame Sofi moved closer to the man and clapped her hands together within an inch of his face, so loudly that he jumped.
‘I shall pray to God,’ he swore, ‘that this water should be the last you will ever drink! Let it poison your offspring for a hundred generations and make all your descendants into blind men and cripples and lepers!’
‘Bastard! Son of a she-dog! If I were a toubab I would have you dragged through the streets by the heels!’
The children and the other women all descended on the water carrier now. Bineta seized his undershirt and ripped it open from top to bottom, while Mame Sofi slapped him hard across the face, screaming at the same time, ‘Help! Help! Everyone, help! A man is attacking us!’
From all the neighboring courtyards men and women came running to help, and the Toucouleur fled precipitately, leaving to the victorious women not only the water but his undershirt and the tin jug.
Then peace returned to a rejoicing N’Diayène. There was water enough for everyone, and the chipped cup was passed around again.
*
N’Deye Touti prepared the milk for Strike, as Ramatoulaye had ordered, but as soon as the baby was fed she began to dress to go out. Leaving the topmost buttons of her blouse open, and pushing the sleeves up above her elbows, she adjusted her skirt and considered her sandals critically. They were too large for her small, well-shaped feet. She lifted her shoulders in resignation and picked up a green, polka-dot foulard to wear on her head, knotting it carefully beneath her chin.
N’Deye, as everyone called her, was pretty, and she knew very well the stir she caused among all the boys in the district. Before the strike, she had gone to the teachers’ training school, which gave her a considerable advantage over the boys, but at the same time made her the public scribe for the whole neighborhood. And it was hard to fill out tax forms, and write letters applying for jobs, and even love letters, for all of your family and friends without beginning to feel more and more remote from them. She lived in a kind of separate world; the reading she did, the films she saw, made her part of a universe in which her own people had no place, and by the same token she no longer had a place in theirs. She went through the normal acts of everyday living as if she were dreaming, and it was a dream that was constantly filled with the image of some Prince Charming from her books. N’Deye was not at all sure who this Prince Charming would be, nor what color his skin would have, but she knew that he would come some day, and that he would bring her love. The people among whom she lived were polygamous, and it had not taken her long to realize that this kind of union had nothing to do with love – at least not with love as she imagined it. And this, in turn, had made her recognize what she now called the ‘lack of civilization’ of her own people. In the books she had read, love was something that went with parties and costume balls, weekends in the country and trips in automobiles, yachting trips and vacations abroad, elegant anniversary presents and the fall showings at the great couturiers. Real life was there; not here, in this wretched corner, where she was confronted with beggars and cripples at every turning. When N’Deye came out of a theatre where she had seen visions of mountain chalets deep in snow, of beaches where the great of the world lay in the sun, of cities where the nights flashed with many-colored lights, and walked from this world back into her own, she would be seized with a kind of nausea, a mixture of rage and shame.
One day she had made a mistake on the date of a film she wanted to see and gone into a theatre where a documentary film on a tribe of Pygmies was being shown. She had felt as if she were being hurled backward, and down to the level of these dwarfs, and had an insane desire to run out of the theatre, crying aloud, ‘No, no! These are not the real Africans!’ And on another day, when a film of the ruins of the Parthenon appeared on the screen, two men seated behind her had begun talking loudly. N’Deye had turned on them like an avenging fury and cried in French, ‘Be quiet, you ignorant fools! If you don’t understand, get out!’ N’Deye herself knew far more about Europe than she did about Africa; she had won the prize in geography several times in the years when she was going to school. But she had never read a book by an African author – she was quite sure that they could teach her nothing.
Now, as she approached the gate in the wall around N’Diayène, she suddenly remembered the day when she had experienced for the first time what she called her own ‘approach to civilization’. It was during her first years in school, at a time when she used to keep a diary, which she had long since torn up, because ‘nothing really interesting ever happens here’. It was also the time when her young breasts had first begun to form. One day, in the sewing class at school, she made herself a brassière, and as long as she was among her classmates she had worn it proudly, with no feeling of embarrassment, but when she went home for the holidays she had put it away. Beneath the covers at night, she would measure the growth of her breasts with a finger and torture herself with the thought that some day they would fall, and lie flat against her, like those of the older women. She would watch them secretly and observe how their breasts tossed about beneath the loose cloth they wore, and the thought that this might happen to her made her almost ill. One night, through forgetfulness, she had gone back to the house still wearing the brassière, and the sharp-tongued Mame Sofi had noticed it at once.
‘Ha! Come look, come look!’ she had called to everyone. ‘There is a cow in the house, walking on two feet, and all dressed up!’
In spite of the sympathy of Ramatoulaye, who had told her to keep the brassière if it gave her pleasure, N’Deye Touti had wept with shame. And ever since that day she had considered herself a prisoner in the place that should have been her home.
She was still thinking of this, when she heard a feminine voice calling her name. She turned around and saw a friend of hers, a girl named Arame, hurrying to catch up with her. Arame was the same age as she, but maternity had hardened her features, and there was little about her now to instill desire in a man. A baby, slung awkwardly across her hip, clutched at her waist with his skinny arms.
‘I went to N’Diayène to see you,’ she gasped, ‘but Houdia M’Baye told me you were going into town. I had to talk to you.’ Then, since N’Deye Touti said nothing, she went on with her story. ‘I want you to answer a letter for me. My husband wrote that he had sent me a money order a month ago …’
‘Where is he?’ N’Deye asked.
‘In Madame Caspar …’
‘Arame! You know perfectly well that it’s not Madame Caspar – it’s Madagascar!’
Arame shrugged. ‘He’s been made a sergeant-in-chief, or something like that, and he wants me and the children to come and join him.’
‘Well, why don’t you go?’ There was a note of envy in N’Deye Touti’s voice.
‘Vaï, vaï! Do you think it’s that simple? I went to the district military office – the one they’ve had since the strike – and they told me that I’m not even married, according to the toubab’s laws. The marriage in the church doesn’t count unless you’re married in one of their offices, too. It’s as if I had been living with my husband all this time and never been married. If you could have seen me! In front of all those toubabs – I was so ashamed! It seems I have to go to the city hall, and even to the central military office. They gave me some papers to fill out – that’s why I had to see you. I want you to write to my husband and tell him about all this, and that the children have nothing to eat, and they aren’t well. I’m not well myself. And don’t forget to tell him about this awful strike, and that we have to live for three days on one day’s food, and …’
‘Wait a minute, Arame! I’m not writing the letter now. I’ll come to your house in a little while.’
‘No, I’ll come to see you. One of the soldiers gave me some paper with the stamps already on it, so I don’t have to pay the tax, thank God. But if you come to my house my husband’s family will want to write the letter themselves – they do it all the time. It makes me furious, but there’s nothing I can do.’
N’Deye Touti was getting restless. Arame’s prattling irritated her, but the girl didn’t seem to notice. ‘Have you seen Beaugosse?’ she asked. ‘He was at your house, looking for you. I wish I could be at your wedding – it will be a wonderful one.’
‘What makes you think we are going to be married?’
‘Everybody knows that he’s courting you – and he’s very good-looking, and always well dressed, so he must be rich.’
‘You’re talking nonsense.’
‘Well, what is happening?’
‘Nothing,’ N’Deye Touti said, speaking Ouolof for the first time. ‘Before there can be a wedding I have to give my consent.’
‘Well, if I were you I would marry him. He will be working again, and you know how to read and write, so you can work, too. I wish I had gone to school. When do you think the strike will be over – is there any talk yet of going back? You know that man – the Bambara – don’t you? I can’t think of his name. Everybody says that he could end the strike if he wanted to. Is that true?’
‘I don’t think so. His name is Bakayoko.’
‘Is it true that he is courting you, too? Personally, I wouldn’t want to marry a foreigner.’ Arame shrugged again. ‘Look – there’s Beaugosse coming now. My, he looks handsome. Don’t you think so, really?’
‘Do you want me to tell him that you think so?’
Beaugosse was wearing a new tunic, a plaid of black, white, and red, woven into squares as large as a man’s hand. He was carrying his hat under his arm.
‘Good evening, Beaugosse,’ Arame said, with a smile she hoped would be noticed. She turned to N’Deye Touti. ‘I’ll keep your place at the fountain.’
When she had gone, and the two young people were alone, they walked on slowly, not saying anything. Children were playing silently in the gutters, the air was soft, and in the sky the clouds spun out toward the ocean, like shining threads.
The women were now gathered at the street fountain where Anta had waited through the morning – women of all ages, seated on the vessels which they hoped to fill with water, or standing about, talking quietly. N’Deye and Beaugosse greeted them politely and, almost unconsciously, hastened to be away from the spot. When they came to a little flagstone bridge in the middle of an open area that was used as a sports field, N’Deye sat down on the low parapet.
‘Arame told me you had been to the house,’ she said.
‘Yes. I left the others on duty at the office this morning.’ Beaugosse’s voice was serious, but he seemed ill at ease. He was standing before her, studying the crumbling masonry of the bridge.
N’Deye Touti smoothed out her skirt and pulled it down to cover her knees. ‘Is there any news at the union office?’ she asked.
‘Nothing at all. This strike is just damned stupidity. It’s been going on for two months now, and we’re still right where we were when it started. I told Alioune at the beginning it would never work, but I didn’t realize myself … Listen, I read in the paper that there are jobs open as storekeepers, for Africans who know how to read.’
‘You mean you want to quit now? What would Alioune say?’
‘They’ll try to make me change my mind. But, look at it – at one of the stations they’ve just thrown a lot more people into prison; and besides, we’ll starve to death if it goes on!’
‘Do you have any news from Doudou, at Thiès? Or from Bakayoko?’
‘Bakayoko, Bakayoko!’ Beaugosse repeated. ‘That man is beginning to get on my nerves.’
‘You don’t even know him, so how can he get on your nerves?’
It was not so much the question as the mocking tone of N’Deye’s voice that made Beaugosse lose his temper. ‘You’ve never told me what there is between you and him,’ he said harshly.
N’Deye Touti brushed the foulard scarf back from her hair and drew her feet up to the parapet. Crossing her arms around her knees, she stared absently at the scene around her, as if seeking an answer. At the end of the avenue El-Hadji-Malic-Sy the sky was propped against an uneven wall of rooftops. The clouds were gathering into a long, ash-gray pool, ringed with little islands, shadowed in purple, and being pushed into the pool by the wind. On the highway, two cows were coming back from the fields, followed by a man waving a stick. Then a bus went by, sounding its horn, and the noise brought N’Deye Touti back to reality.
‘What were you saying?’ she asked.
‘I asked you what there is between you and Bakayoko.’
A light seemed to dance across the girl’s eyes. She smiled suddenly, and Beaugosse could feel his jealousy gnawing at him.
‘It’s hard to explain, you know. You want to marry me – you’ve already told me so – but he has told me nothing. And I can’t really tell you anything, because there are only two things I am sure of myself – I admire him, and at the same time I’m almost afraid of him. Is that love, or some kind of sickness? I don’t know.’
‘But you know that he is already married, and you’ve told me a hundred times that you hated polygamy.’
On the highway, the man and the cows had disappeared and been replaced by a cyclist, whose loose white tunic floated behind him like a sail. The clouds had all gathered now, in a vast, gray-black sea that threatened to swallow up the city.
‘I told you that I wasn’t at all sure of my feelings about him,’ N’Deye said, ‘but I am sure of one thing. I’ll never share my husband with any other woman.’
Beaugosse fidgeted irritably with his hat and then sat down on the wall beside her. The toes of her sandals pressed against his thigh.
‘After all, I didn’t ask you to marry me,’ N’Deye went on, ‘but with you men it’s always the same – you hardly know a girl, and you want to get married. Maybe if you had been in bed with me already, you wouldn’t be in such a rush to get married.’
‘You’ve been reading too many books.’
N’Deye burst out laughing. ‘You say I’ve read too many books, and Bakayoko says I don’t read enough, and the books I do read are bad ones!’
‘N’Deye! I wanted to talk to you seriously … and you’re just making fun of me.’
‘No, I’m not doing that, or at least I didn’t mean to. In fact, I wanted you to know … You know, I like you.’
‘And I love you. I’m going to see about that thing in the paper, and then in two months we can be married. You can’t go to the school any more, so …’
‘Now, wait a minute – let’s not go so fast! I told you I like you, and I do. You’re a very handsome boy … but let’s wait a little while.’
‘Wait for what? Until he comes back?’
‘You’re being stupid … but I have to see him again.’
‘To find out if he wants to marry you?’
‘He is against polygamy, too.’
‘Well, then … is he going to leave his wife?’
‘From what I know of him, it would surprise me very much if he did.’
‘But if he doesn’t want to leave his wife, and he doesn’t want to have more than one wife, and you won’t share him with anyone else anyway – then what? You are really confused!’
Beaugosse could not help thinking that there was something the girl did not want to tell him, and an agonizing feeling that he was somehow being betrayed mingled with his jealousy. For her part, N’Deye Touti felt trapped between her unresolved feelings about Bakayoko and her genuine desire not to hurt Beaugosse.
‘I met Bakayoko before I even knew you,’ she said slowly. ‘It was at Saint-Louis, during the Easter holidays. I went there with some of the girls from school, for the wedding of one of our classmates. I don’t know who had invited him, but he was there, too – and he’s not the sort of person who goes unnoticed. At night, when we all got together to talk, he always brought the discussion around to the problems of the workers. But he talked about all sorts of things – unemployment, the educational system, the war in Indochina; he talked about France and Spain, and even about countries as far away as America and Russia. Nobody seemed to know much about him, and everyone was asking where he came from. I remember that the first thing I asked him when I met him was, “Where do you come from?” and he said, “From the railway station,” and I thought he was joking.
‘On the afternoon of the day after the wedding all of the boys and girls who were there decided to go swimming and have a picnic on the beach. After we had been there for a while, I wanted to be by myself, so I went for a walk and came across him, lying in the sand, holding out a stick and watching the ants climb up on it, trying to get across. I had a daisy in my hand, and I was pulling out the petals, automatically. He looked at me rudely – or at least I thought at the time that he was being rude – and said, “Don’t you know that in this country we don’t decide such things by pulling the petals off a flower?”
‘“Well, what should we do then?” I asked him.
‘“Just say, ‘Shall I sleep with him, or shall I not?’ It’s more poetic, isn’t it?”
‘He was lying on his stomach in the sand the whole time and never even turned around when he spoke, but two days later, when we were leaving, he said to me, “There are so many beautiful customs right here that there is no reason to bring in foreign ones – especially when there is so much we still have to learn, about things that can be useful to our country.”
‘I don’t think I really understood what he meant, but at school, every time I saw a daisy, either a real one or just a picture in a book, I thought about him. Then, during the summer holidays, he came to the house with a friend of his, a great brute named Tiémoko. He came to see Alioune, and not because of me, but he recognized me and said, “Well, if it isn’t the girl with the daisy!” and Tiémoko made some stupid remark about what beautiful eyes I had. When he comes to Dakar now, I often see him … I can’t explain what happens, but whenever he is with me I can’t seem to say a word.’
‘Maybe it’s the effect of an amulet, or some kind of spell he has put on you.’
‘Oh Beaugosse, don’t be stupid! I’ve been out with him several times now, but it was a long time before I got used to his habit of sometimes not saying anything at all and other times saying things so sharp that they hurt; but I’ve learned a lot about him. He has even told me about his marriage.’
‘Well, if he can’t marry you, that’s just what I was saying … What are you laughing at? I don’t see anything funny about it.’
‘Laughter isn’t always a sign of gaiety. Have you noticed that in the whole time we have been talking we haven’t spoken a single word in Ouolof?’
‘Well, what of it?’
N’Deye burst out laughing again. ‘He has a daughter, Ad’jibid’ji, who always says that in French, and it infuriates her grandmother, his mother. But he doesn’t like it either if I always speak French. He’s not easy to get along with, you know …’
‘N’Deye, tell me something …’ Beaugosse hesitated. ‘Tell me …’
‘Tell you what?’
‘Have you ever been to bed with him?’
‘You want to know if I am a virgin? Is that really important to you?’
Beaugosse had regretted the question the instant he asked it. He was silent for a moment and then stood up, turning away from the girl. ‘I have to go,’ he said abruptly. ‘If I’m going to quit the railway and the union I have to let Alioune know.’
He strode off rapidly, his thoughts twisted bitterly around the image of Bakayoko. Who was this man whose shadow reached into every house, touching every object? His words and his ideas were everywhere, and even his name filled the air like an echo.