Little by little, the women of Thiès had been forced to sell everything they owned of any value, and they were beginning to be disturbed by the lack of buyers. It was impossible now to find a market for their best headcloths, or for the waistcloths, of fine cotton from the most highly skilled weavers of the city, which had been the symbols of their virginity and were the pride of the entire family. The merchants were turning down even the rarest fetishes – those which protected their owner from the evil eye and turned away the Jinn and any other form of misfortune.
But the women had arrived at a degree of apathy where even such wounds to their pride as this no longer seemed of any great importance. They would turn away silently, with the rejected object clutched in their hands, and return to their homes, making a detour through the empty lots in the hope of finding something of value among the litter. It was a hope that they knew was vain, however; there was not an empty lot in Thiès that had not already been scoured by the bands of emaciated children.
Several of the wives of the strikers had fallen into the habit of meeting at Dieynaba’s house. Dieynaba herself had nothing left of the supplies she had accumulated for her stall in the market place, and she passed her days sucking fruitlessly at the stem of an empty pipe but the other women were encouraged just by the strength of her presence. She listened quietly to their endless complaints and their cursing at the ‘owners of the machines’ and always urged them not to give up now.
After the evening meal – on the days when there was a meal – the women would gather in a circle around the elders, and then their talk would go on far into the night. Sometimes an uneasy silence would fall, broken only by a mournful sighing, and then, in an effort to avoid the dark shadow of hunger and the dejection about the future which weighed on all of them when they were together, someone would begin to sing. First one woman would sing a verse or two, then another would take up the theme, and soon everyone was adding a stanza of her own thoughts and feelings, and the song echoed through the darkness. And it was always a song which was a kind of vow by the women to their men.
*
One day Mariame Sonko, the wife of Balla, the welder, came back from the market place where she had found a little hoard of old, but still edible, cassava roots. In the courtyard outside the house she saw Dieynaba, surrounded by women and a swarm of children who had just cut off the head of a vulture they had caught in a trap. Dieynaba held the bird up by the feet, and the blood dripping from its neck fell on her own feet, spotting them with red.
‘Here is what we will have to eat today,’ she announced. ‘A vulture! Have any of you ever tasted a vulture? It lives on carrion and offal, but we can do the same thing! We’ll eat it, and at least we won’t starve.’
They seasoned the flesh of the bird as best they could and served it with the cassava roots, but even so it was tasteless; they could only bring themselves to swallow it by adding salt to every mouthful. Mariame hesitated after every bite, half expecting the spasm of pain in her stomach which would be the signal for a violent death, but nothing happened. Maïmouna, the blind woman, refused to touch the fetid meat. Her surviving twin was suffering from cramps in the stomach as it was, and she was afraid that it would taint her milk.
Later that same night, after everyone else had gone to bed, the girl Penda returned home; she had gone off with a man and stayed with him for several days. It was very late, and the sleeping earth was cool and fresh beneath her feet. Penda often went off like this, and for a long time no one had even tried to restrain her. From her earliest childhood she had demonstrated a resolute independence which only increased as she grew up. As a young girl she had seemed to develop a hatred for men and had turned away everyone who had wanted to marry her. When her mother died, she had been adopted by Dieynaba, her father’s second wife, who had given her an unused cabin next to her own house. She had lived in it for several years now – or at least she had always come back to it after her periodic escapades.
When she went into the cabin that night she heard a frightened voice calling, ‘Who’s there?’
‘Who do you think it is? It’s me – the owner of this hut!’ Penda’s voice was rough – she had never been known to be overly gentle. ‘Light a light,’ she said, ‘so I can see who you are, and you can tell me what you are doing in my house …’
‘Dieynaba said that I could stay in your cabin while you were away,’ Maïmouna said, clutching her baby against her breast.
Penda could see nothing in the darkness of the hut, but the creaking of the bed betrayed the other woman’s smallest movement. ‘Light a light,’ she repeated. ‘I can’t see a thing in this hole.’
‘I can’t – I am blind.’
‘Don’t try that kind of story with me. I know you’ve got a man in here.’
‘Except for Adama, who is my baby daughter, and myself, there is only God in this cabin.’
Penda groped her way across the hut, bumping against the walls and swearing. ‘Vrai! Light a light, you numbskull!’
‘I tell you I can’t; I am blind. But I don’t think there are any matches here anyway. There have been none left anywhere for days.’
At last Penda located the bed and, feeling about with her hands, caught hold of Maïmouna’s ankle. Her fingers traveled over the other woman’s leg and felt the body of the wailing child.
‘Lie down now,’ Maïmouna said. ‘You can see that I am alone, and the morning will soon be here. I’ll lie down at the bottom of the bed, with the child between us … unless you want me to sleep on the floor?’
‘Sleep wherever you please!’ Penda snapped, and those were her last words that night. After hunting vainly for matches in all of her usual hiding places, she went back to the bed and lay down, but it was a long time before she closed her eyes. The baby was still moaning feebly.
Maïmouna slipped out of bed very early in the morning and cautiously made her way out of the cabin, with the sleeping child in her arms. For a moment she stood outside, listening, and when she heard the creaking of the pulley she knew that the women had already gone to the well. Dieynaba was there, crushing some leaves from a bush between her twisted fingers and stuffing them into her pipe in place of tobacco. When the blind woman had located her, she told her the story of Penda’s return.
Mariame Sonko, who had been hunting for some live coals to rekindle the fires before they went out entirely, came over to them just as Maïmouna was completing her account.
‘That foster daughter of yours isn’t very friendly!’ she said. And a few minutes later, when they returned from fetching the day’s supply of water, all the other women heard the story, and Penda’s return was the sole topic of conversation.
The sun was already high in the sky when the girl came out of her cabin.
She was wearing only a brief cloth, wrapped tightly around her firm young body and knotted on the left side.
‘Has everyone passed the night in peace?’ she asked.
‘And only in peace,’ Dieynaba replied. ‘We return your greeting, Penda.’
Penda walked nonchalantly over to Mariame Sonko’s house and picked up a jug of water which had been standing near the door. Without a word to anyone, she poured it into a basin and carefully washed her face and rinsed out her short-cut hair. As she was drying her hands she said casually to Maïmouna, ‘You’re the blind woman who is sleeping in my house?’
From the manner in which she spoke, it was impossible to tell whether she was simply stating a fact or whether she wanted Dieynaba to know that she disapproved of what she had done in her absence.
‘Yes, I am,’ Maïmouna said, her dead eyes seeming to be searching for her friend, Dieynaba. ‘Is it so unpleasant to sleep in the same room with a blind woman, or are you one of those people who believe that the sight of someone like me when you wake up will bring you misfortune in the day?’
Penda had finished washing and was drying off her body with the cloth around her waist. For a moment she looked at the blind woman without answering and then said to Dieynaba, ‘It seems to me, Mother, that you might have let me know … written to me …’
Dieynaba’s lips were drawn tight around the stem of her pipe. ‘And where would I have sent the letter,’ she asked, ‘even if I knew how to write?’
Penda lifted her shoulders and walked back across the courtyard. Some drops of water in her hair flashed in the sunlight. When she came to the door of her cabin, she turned back to the blind woman.
‘You will stay here with me,’ she said, ‘but remember that I don’t like beggars or people who are not clean … I won’t call you “blind woman” any more.’
‘My name is Maïmouna, and it is true that I prefer it to being called “blind woman”. I thank you for your kindness.’
But Penda had gone into the house and closed the door, without waiting for an answer.
The walls of the cabin were covered with a material the color of red earth, printed with a design of palm trees in green. Photographs of movie stars and singers, and prints and drawings of white women from fashion magazines, were pinned to the material everywhere. Near the foot of the bed a trunk which was propped up on some old tin cans formed a kind of dressing table. Penda removed the toilet articles from its top and began transferring the contents of a battered straw suitcase into the trunk. When she had finished, she hung a mirror on the wall behind the dressing table and carefully combed her hair and studied her eyebrows to see if they needed plucking. Satisfied with her own appearance at last, she straightened up the room, stretched out on the bed again, and promptly went to sleep.
*
The long days of the strike passed slowly. Penda and Maïmouna grew accustomed to each other’s presence in the cabin, but they seldom spoke unless it was absolutely necessary. One night, however, Penda said suddenly, ‘Who is the father of your twins?’
The blind woman did not answer. She was no longer very sure herself whether she wanted to remember that man. Her infirmity had deprived her forever of her normal status as a woman. What man would have wanted to sleep with a blind woman? But that was in the past, and her entire life was centered now on the child who remained to her. Her eyes may never have seen it, but her hands knew and loved every curve of the wasted little body.
Penda was leafing through the greasy pages of an old fashion catalogue. When Maïmouna did not reply to her question, she said, almost as if to herself, ‘I’ll find out for you!’ and then she added angrily, ‘Men are all dogs!’
Relieved that the subject had been changed, Maïmouna said, ‘I don’t think that they are all dogs.’
‘If you could see their faces after they’ve had their fun with you, you would know better.’
‘It’s true that I can’t see them, but when I hear one of them speak I can tell a lot about what kind of man he is.’
‘Hé! Well, in that case perhaps you can tell me how you let yourself get in this fix?’
Maïmouna was silent again. Cradling the baby gently in her arms, she asked, ‘Is she pretty – my little Adama?’
Penda looked at the sickly child, whose eyes exuded a yellowish pus.
‘She is a beautiful girl,’ she said. Then she hurled the old catalogue across the room and went out to the courtyard.
*
It was a few days after this conversation that Lahbib asked Penda to take over the distribution of rations to the women.
‘Why not give the rations to the men,’ she asked, ‘and let them take care of it themselves?’
‘We tried it that way at first, but there were all kinds of arguments, and we were afraid that the trouble the wives were causing would make the men decide to go back to work. That’s why we thought it would be better to give the rations directly to the women.’
‘That’s reasonable enough, but what about arguments between the women? Aren’t you afraid of that?’
‘Oh, we know that will happen, but it’s not such a serious problem. They would argue, whether there was a strike or not.’
Penda laughed. ‘That’s true, too. All right, I’ll do it for you.’
Twice each week, after that, Penda supervised the ration distribution, assisted by two other women, one of whom was older than she and the other very young and constantly laughing about something. The three women stood behind a table, set up in an open field not far from the union building. Each of them held a two-pound measuring scoop and transferred the rice in this from the big sacks behind them to the receptacles handed to them by the women. Before coming up to their table, the queue filed in front of Lahbib, who checked off their names on his list. He had two assistants also; Samba N’Doulougou and the herculean Boubacar. There were constant arguments among the women, and it required no less than three men to maintain a semblance of order.
As she measured out the rice, Penda studied the long line of housewives thoughtfully. The light of day in the field betrayed their misery far more clearly than the uncertain light of the evening fires and revealed to everyone the frayed and threadbare stuff of their blouses and waistcloths and the patches in the handkerchiefs around their heads. They always formed in the line in groups made up of the members of their own family, or the people of their own district, exchanging whatever news there was, consoling each other, quarreling, lamenting the present, and hoping for a day when at last they could satisfy the hunger of their children.
At a moment when her two assistants were busy, but there was no one in the line in front of her own station, Penda noticed Awa, the first wife of Séne Maséne, waiting a few paces away. She leaned across the table and called, ‘Come forward, Awa.’
Awa was a large, square-jawed woman who seemed to take a perverse pride in her widespread reputation for maliciousness. She planted herself in front of Lahbib, her eyes glittering and her nostrils flaring like a cat preparing for battle, and repeated her husband’s name loudly enough for everyone to hear, ‘Séne Maséne, foreman carpenter.’
‘Pass,’ Lahbib said, without lifting his eyes from the list of names.
‘Do you think I’m going to let myself be served by a whore?’
Lahbib looked up at her angrily. ‘I might have known it,’ he said. ‘This is the third time in two weeks that you’ve tried to start a fight. Penda, give her her ration!’
Penda filled her scoop to the exact level, ready to empty it into Awa’s container, but the woman just stood there with her hands on her hips, glaring at her. Then she turned to the crowd in the line behind her and said in broken French, ‘I don’t want that this whore should serve me!’
‘Listen, Awa,’ Boubacar said, ‘take your ration and get out of here.’
Penda leaned forward. ‘Awa, I don’t speak French, but I don’t have to to know what you said – and I’m going to give you your ration, and no one else. Lahbib, tell the others to go on ahead – she’ll stay here.’
‘I won’t even speak to the likes of you!’ Awa shouted, and then, before the men had had a chance to intervene, she was screaming like a sow in a slaughterhouse. Penda had reached across the table, seized her by the neck, and spat full in her face. It took both Lahbib and Boubacar to separate them.
‘I don’t want your rice,’ Awa screamed, trying to adjust her disordered clothing, ‘and my husband is going back to work!’
Samba N’Doulougou pulled at Boubacar’s sleeve. ‘So much the better,’ he whispered. ‘That will be one troublemaker less.’
The incident was quickly forgotten. Everyone was too hungry now, and there would be time to gossip about it later.
In the days that followed, Lahbib often congratulated himself on having enlisted Penda’s help. She kept the women in line, and she forced even the men to respect her. She came to the union office frequently to help with the work, and one day, when one of the workmen had stupidly patted her on the behind, she gave him a resounding smack. A woman slapping a man in public was something no one had ever seen before.
In the evenings, Penda would usually remain in her cabin with Maïmouna, looking through old magazines and saying nothing. But one night, recalling the promise she had made the blind woman, she said, ‘I am still looking for the father of your twins.’
‘And what good would it do you if you were to find him?’
‘Me, personally? None at all – but I’d like to find him so I could spit in his face.’
‘You don’t seem to like men very much,’ Maïmouna said, ‘and yet you are helping them with the strike … I wonder why …’
Sometimes, before going to sleep, Penda had asked herself the same question. ‘Why did I ever get myself involved in this business? I’ve got nothing to gain from it …’
But she always fell asleep before finding the answer.