The stars were strewn across the sky like some golden seed sown by the wind. The earth cooled beneath the touch of a night breeze from the north, heralding a change in the season. The insects and the birds of the tropics sang their nocturnal hymns.
The darkness was so thick that it was impossible to make out the features of the man who was walking, quickly and surely, through the tangle of alleyways, the jungle of straw huts and wooden cabins. He was whistling a cheerful little tune and stopped from time to time to listen to the mewling of a cat or the sonorous snoring from a nearby house. He was very tired, and his mind was occupied with the thought of where he might go to rest. ‘I would go to the office, but I don’t like to wake the men … But if I go to Uncle Bakary’s, I think it would please him …’
When he came to the end of a pathway he seemed to know well, he stopped and lit a cigarette lighter. The flame fell across a section of the wall of a modest house which had been opened out and shored up with timbers. Between the timbers there was a little window. The man knocked on the wooden shutter and then moved over to stand before the door of the house, which was hung with an old blanket.
‘Who is there?’ a voice from the interior called, and the words were followed by a spasm of coughing.
‘Ibrahim Bakayoko, son of N’Fafini Bakayoko and of Niakoro Cissé.’
‘Lémé, lémé! My child, my child!’ old Bakary cried. ‘Come in, quickly! When did you arrive?’
‘Your threshold is the first I have crossed, Uncle.’
‘You have done well. It is to me that you should have come first. Have you eaten?’
‘Yes, Uncle, I have eaten.’
The two men went into the cabin, and by the light of a candle set in the middle of the floor Bakayoko could make out the sleeping form of an old woman, lying with her back to him.
Bakary sat down on the edge of the bed. ‘If you have eaten, there is no need to wake your aunt Fanta now. But how are all of your people – your mother, your wife?’
‘When I left they were well; but for some time now I have had no news, except for a letter from Ad’jibid’ji, telling me about the Diara affair.’
‘Yes, we know about that. It was a sorry business, my son … but it has turned out well, it seems. For an old man like me, who is not accustomed to the new ways, it is still surprising to see that the young people can understand each other so well and act together.’
Bakary had been studying the man before him as he spoke. On entering the house, Bakayoko had placed his short upper tunic, of the type called a froc, in a corner with his walking stick and pack, and now he was wearing only a pair of white trousers, striped in black. His soft sandals were the kind worn by Peul shepherds, with leather straps that laced high on the ankles. A straw hat with a wide brim to shade his eyes from the sun hung down across his back, supported by the thong knotted beneath his chin.
‘I must let you sleep, and I am tired myself,’ Bakayoko said. ‘I will sleep in front of the door.’
‘Sleep here,’ Bakary said, indicating the ground beside his own bed. ‘I will get you a cover.’
‘Thank you, Uncle, I have everything I need. Pass the night in peace.’
Bakayoko lifted a corner of the blanket, which served as a door, and looked out at the stars. ‘I can still get two hours of sleep,’ he thought. ‘That’s better than nothing.’ He took a large square of cloth from his pack and spread it out on the ground, unlaced his sandals, placed the straw hat beneath him as a pillow, and stretched out. Three minutes later he was asleep, for he was among those men who can sleep whenever they will.
*
Although Bakary rose early the next morning he could find no trace of Bakayoko’s visit. He looked through the other rooms of the little house and questioned his wife, Fanta, but she had neither seen nor heard anything. ‘I know I wasn’t dreaming,’ he told her and went off to the union office in search of news.
Lahbib was there, but he knew nothing of Bakayoko’s arrival, and when the word of Bakary’s story got around, the younger men began to make fun of him, saying that he was getting so old he was beginning to have visions. Bakary never liked being called old, particularly when the young men, who spoke the word in French, accompanied it with others whose meaning he could not understand. And this morning the situation was made worse when Samba was sent to look for Bakayoko and returned without having found any sign of him.
The union office was already beginning to be crowded, since this was the final reunion of the strike committee before the meeting with the representatives of the company in the afternoon. All of the delegates were there, including the group from Dakar of which Beaugosse was a member. When Edouard, the personnel director, who had been appointed intermediary between the strikers and the management, arrived, the door to the office was closed.
But in the meantime a crowd had begun to gather in the square outside and in all the neighboring streets – a crowd whose many colored garments seemed even more vivid in the morning sun, a crowd dominated by women and animated by the sound and movement of the children and the steady drumming of the tam-tams.
Bakayoko had to thrust his way across this shoal of people to reach the union building. They recognized him by the wide-brimmed straw hat, and he was constantly forced to pause by the press of hands held out in greeting. Samba N’Doulougou, who was on the porch, saw him approaching.
‘Hé, Bambara dyion! – you slave of Bambara! There you are at last! So old Bakary isn’t crazy after all!’
The staircase was crowded with strikers, obstructing the steps to the door, and Bakayoko’s passage was interrupted again by the numbers of men who wanted to shake his hand. Finally, however, he reached the top, and Boubacar, who was standing guard, seized him by the shoulders in a giant embrace.
‘Hé, Bambara dyion — you haven’t gotten fat!’
But before Bakayoko could answer, the sound of voices raised in chorus interrupted him, and they both stood motionless, listening. Led by Penda and Dieynaba, the women had formed into a solid rank and were improvising words to a chant dedicated to their men:
The morning light is in the east;
It is daybreak of a day of history.
From Koulikoro to Dakar The smoke of the savanna dies.
On the 10th of October, fateful day,
We swore before the world To support you to the end.
You have lit the torch of hope,
And victory is near.
The morning light is in the east;
It is daybreak of a day of history.
When the singing had ended, a great clamor of voices and the beating of the drums filled the air.
‘They are all here,’ Boubacar said. ‘The white man, too.’
‘A white man?’
‘Yes. The one they call the work inspector.’
Bakayoko listened to the voices from the streets for a moment longer and then pushed his hat back from his head and went into the office, followed by Boubacar.
A dozen or so men were seated around the table, and he went directly to an empty chair next to the one occupied by Edouard.
‘Excuse me for being late,’ he said as he sat down.
Doudou was presiding over the meeting. ‘Do you know Ibrahim Bakayoko?’ he said, speaking to the white man. ‘He is the chief of the trainmen’s group, as well as the delegate from the Sudan region. Bakayoko, this is Monsieur Edouard, the personnel director of the company, who was sent from Dakar as a mediator between the management and ourselves.’
Bakayoko cast a rapid glance at the other delegates around the table, satisfying himself that he knew them all except the handsome young man who was seated between Lahbib and Balla. Edouard seized the opportunity to study his neighbor. The thick lips, marked by little slanting ridges and pressed firmly together, gave the man’s face an expression of hardness which was borne out by the narrow, deep-set eyes. A long scar, reaching from the left side of his nose to the underpart of his jaw, seemed only to accentuate the severity of his features.
‘Shall we go on?’ Bakayoko said, not wanting to prolong the silence which had fallen in the room.
‘We are listening to Monsieur Edouard,’ Lahbib said.
The personnel director was ill at ease, and Bakayoko’s presence at his side embarrassed him even further. As he came into the room he had accidentally stepped on Samba N’Doulougou’s foot, and he could still hear the little man’s jeering words: ‘As if walking all over the colonies wasn’t bad enough, now they have to trample on the colonials!’
‘I was just explaining,’ he said, ‘that I am only here as an intermediary between the company and you. Your demands have been thoroughly and conscientiously studied in Dakar. There are some of them that we think are legitimate, but there are also some very real problems. The figures for last year’s operations are not good, and for that reason we must, for the time being, set aside the matter of family allowances. The matter of pensions will have to be studied in relation to the technical employment level of all parties concerned; and lastly, any increases in salary and payment of back pay on such increases must be considered in relation to the cost of living. If you are in agreement that, for the time being – and I repeat, for the time being – these three points can be set aside, we can adjourn this meeting to the company’s office right now. What do you think, Monsieur Bakayoko?’
‘I am not alone here, monsieur,’ Bakayoko said and began filling his pipe.
‘You have all heard what Monsieur Edouard has proposed,’ Lahbib said. ‘He suggests that we suppress three of our demands.’
‘It seems to me that it would be advisable,’ Edouard said quickly, ‘and …’
‘It seems to me that there wouldn’t be much left of the things we have asked for,’ someone interrupted.
‘But I am sure that if you will restrict your claims now, the management will do everything in its power, after you return to work. Things will get better gradually, and all of the questions held in abeyance can be worked out by degrees. Ask your own delegates from Dakar – they will tell you that I am your friend, and that I am doing my best to arrange it.’
Lahbib looked at Doudou, who was even more uneasy, in his role as presiding officer, than the personnel director.
‘We could take a vote by a show of hands,’ he suggested.
Bakayoko lit his pipe carefully, holding the bowl turned down. The flame from the lighter threw craggy shadows across his jaw line.
‘Why vote yet, Doudou?’ he said, blowing a cloud of smoke toward the ceiling. ‘We still have a good many things to say.’
‘There isn’t much time,’ Edouard said.
‘That’s true enough, but it isn’t the people you are thinking about for whom there isn’t much time. How long have you been in Africa?’
‘Almost seven years.’
‘Seven years you have been the personnel director? Seven years when you knew that the company was robbing us every day, and you never lifted a finger? And now you expect us to believe that you have fallen from heaven to be our savior?’
Bakayoko paused for a moment and looked directly at his neighbor, but the expression in his eyes made it clear that he expected no answer. He turned back to his comrades and spoke clearly and distinctly.
‘The question that we must consider here is whether we intend to be responsible for what we have undertaken in this strike. We have made some mistakes, and doubtless we will make others, but is that any reason why we should abandon now those who have followed us and trusted us, those who have gone hungry, and those who have been imprisoned or killed?
‘This generous gentleman has come here to tell us that the question of family allowances must be thought of in terms of the figures for last year’s operations. Wouldn’t it be more accurate to say that they must be thought of in terms of the fact that some of us have more than one wife, and they don’t want to give us the allowance for that reason? He tells us also that to be entitled to a pension the old men must pass tests to determine their technical employment level. But when they were recruited to work on the line twenty or thirty years ago, did anyone ask them about their technical level? The back pay due to us on our salaries apparently represents a very considerable sum, but in spite of the fact that they could easily afford to offer three million francs to Doudou, this must be considered in terms of how little we can live on.
‘Let us look at it in another way. We are driving a train down the track, and ahead of us we think we see an obstacle which makes us afraid. Are we going to stop the train and say to the passengers, “I can’t go any farther; I think there is something up ahead that frightens me?” No – we are responsible for the train, and we must go forward and find out if the obstacle really exists. The gentleman beside me here is the obstacle which has made us afraid, but we cannot let ourselves be stopped by it. Is he sincere when he says he wants to help us? I don’t know, but don’t ask me if I believe it! He must know, however, that after the times we have been through since this strike began it is impossible for us to think that he has been on our side all along.
‘That is all I had to say, and I have said it in French so that he would understand me, although I think this meeting should have been conducted in Ouolof, since that is our language.’
Bakayoko’s pipe had gone out while he spoke, and when he had finished he relit it and leaned back in his chair, with a slow, almost languorous movement. His heart held neither spite nor malice, but he had traveled over a thousand miles among the strikers and their families, and the sufferings, the privations, and the tragedies he had witnessed had shaken him more than he realized. He was astonished to note now that his pulse was beating in the same rhythm as the drums in the street. Even though the door and windows were closed, he could hear them plainly.
Beaugosse had been watching him closely, as had all the others, and found himself admiring the man’s calm and self-assurance, in spite of the jealousy he felt toward him. As for Edouard, he had been more surprised than shocked by the harshness of Bakayoko’s words. He had also understood very well that his last phrase signified that his presence in the room was no longer desired. He had only to take his briefcase, get up, and leave, but he was incapable of doing it and sat rigid in his chair. It was at his own request that the management had appointed him as mediator, and he had done his best to merit the confidence they had shown him. But he had also tried to understand these men with whom he was sitting now, and they had answered by turning him away. He was frustrated and hurt by the failure of an effort in which he had honestly believed.
At this moment the door opened slightly, and Samba N’Doulougou said, ‘It’s old Bakary.’
Bakayoko gestured to the old man to come in and spoke a few words to him in a dialect which no one else in the room understood. Then, speaking to Edouard, he said in French, ‘Would you be so kind as to wait for us outside, monsieur? We still have a few things to discuss among ourselves.’
His forehead red with anger, the personnel director seized his briefcase and followed Bakary, who smiled broadly as he held the door for him, delighted that he had been entrusted with a mission he could talk about later.
When they were alone, Bakayoko asked in Ouolof, ‘Is there anyone who does not approve of what I said?’
‘I approve of him leaving,’ Balla, the welder, answered. ‘We’re old enough to know what we have to do.’
‘So do I – so do I,’ several other voices agreed.
‘I think we are all in agreement not to change anything in our list of demands,’ Lahbib said, and since there were no dissenting voices he added, ‘In that case, we can go over to the company’s office now. However, the delegation is supposed to be only six, and there are ten of us.’
‘We’ll have to select the ones to go,’ the delegate from Saint-Louis said.
‘There’s no necessity for that. They didn’t set any limit on the number of representatives they would have,’ Bakayoko said. ‘We’ll all go over together.’
As they got up from their places around the table, Bakary reappeared. ‘My son, the toubab you told me to accompany has left the building,’ he said.
‘So much the better, Uncle.’
One by one the delegates filed out of the office and down the narrow staircase to the street.
It was a ten-minute walk from the union building to the offices of the company, and the crowd had formed a noisy, living hedgerow along both sides of the streets. The women seemed the most excited and were constantly taking up again the refrain they had sung in the square that morning. Doudou marched at the head of the delegation, with Lahbib at his right and Bakayoko on his left. Lahbib was wearing a white drill suit of European cut and rumpled black tie; Bakayoko had put the big straw hat back on his head and had not abandoned his pipe. Behind them came Balla, Samba, Beaugosse, Boubacar, and the other delegates. The crowd closed in behind them as they walked, forming a long procession. A cordon of troops stood guard in front of the Dakar-Niger building. The soldiers parted to let the delegates pass and then reformed their ranks.
‘We’ll wait here until they come out,’ Penda shouted.
‘But they may be in there all afternoon,’ the sergeant of the militiamen said. He did not like the idea of being faced with this unruly mob of women.
‘We have been waiting for this day for months,’ Penda said. ‘We can wait an afternoon.’ Then she climbed up on a stone marker and gave a signal to start the singing:
The morning light is in the east;
It is daybreak of a day of history.
The other women took up the chorus, and the drums began to beat again.
The meeting between the management and the strikers was to take place in a conference room on the second floor of the building. Dejean, the director, and his closest associates had been there for some time, and the waiting was playing tricks with their nerves. With the exception of young Pierre, who had had the feeling for several days that he was watching a play whose plot he did not fully understand, every man there was living through a period he had never expected to see. It was probably Dejean, however, for whom the crisis was not only the most unexpected but the most totally incomprehensible. A discussion between employer and employees presupposes the fact that there are employees and there is an employer. But he, Dejean, was not an employer; he was simply exercising a function which rested on the most natural of all bases – the right to an absolute authority over beings whose color made of them not subordinates with whom one could discuss anything, but men of another, inferior condition, fit only for unqualified obedience.
Standing by one of the windows, holding the curtain aside, he could see the crowd that had invaded the street, their faces gleaming with sweat, their tunics and headcloths a weird medley of colors; and he could hear the insistent drumming of the tam-tams and the singing of the women.
In an effort to break the gloomy silence in the room, Victor returned to a subject they had already discussed. ‘We’ve got to get rid of Leblanc. It won’t do to let him be seen around here any more.’
‘Doctor Michel is going to take care of it,’ Isnard said. ‘I telephoned him and he knows all about it. That jackass – sending money to the Negroes! That’s a real case of sunstroke.’
‘Good,’ Dejean said absently. ‘I know Michel – he’ll do whatever has to be done; he knows the ropes. But it won’t be just a case of sunstroke – Leblanc had another disease long before he arrived in Africa. It will cost the company less that way.’
He leaned closer to the window, trying to get a better look at a man in a pith helmet who was having difficulty trying to force a passage through the crowd.
‘It’s Edouard,’ he said, and then added, ‘Name of God, he’s alone!’
The door had scarcely closed behind the personnel director before he was surrounded by the others. He took off his helmet and wiped his forehead.
‘It was that bastard of a Bakayoko who ruined everything,’ he sputtered. ‘The others understood why I was there; they were even beginning to listen to my advice, but as soon as he came in the whole thing changed! He’s just against all white men – one of those dirty nationalists. He even sent some old gorilla with me to watch me. But the last straw was when he told them they shouldn’t be speaking in French …!’
The anger Dejean had been trying to stifle for days burst out at last. ‘Ah, that one …! He’s going to find out what I’m made of! He’ll speak French, and so will they! I should have had him hanged in 1942! If only the directors had listened to me …!’
Since he understood little of what they were talking about, Pierre had gone back to the window and was watching the spectacle in the street. Some, groups of men and women were dancing, and the young man remembered having been told at school in France that, for the Negroes, the slightest pretext was good enough as an occasion for singing and dancing. Thinking of the letter he would write to his family at home, he tried to catch some of the words to the song that came up to him from the crowd. He turned to the group of men standing around the green-covered table.
‘Do you understand what the women are singing? It may have something to do with the strike.’
‘Don’t be a fool,’ Isnard snapped. ‘It’s just shouting and yelling, as usual. What do you think they know about the strike? They’re just making noise because they like to make noise.’
Pierre did not answer. He had just noticed that the crowd was opening up to make way for a little group of ten men and then closing in again behind them.
‘There they are!’ he cried.
They all raced to the windows then and pulled the curtains aside. The windows were closed, but in spite of this the shouts and the singing, which seemed to have become a kind of hysterical chanting, invaded the room. In a voice he strove to keep calm, Dejean called the others back to order.
‘Take your places, gentlemen,’ he said. It was not until he had seated himself in his own chair at the head of the table that he realized he had broken the frame of the eyeglasses clenched in his fist.
Just as Pierre was sitting down – last, since he was the junior among them – there was a rap on the door and Lahbib came in.
‘Good day, gentlemen,’ he said; but the only answer he received was a vague murmur which might have been a series of groans. Without waiting to be invited, the delegates from the union took their places in the empty chairs. Balla, the welder, found himself seated next to Dejean, who was presiding. It was the first time he had ever been this close to the director, and he glanced down at his hands and then looked furtively around at his companions, as if reassuring himself that they were still there. Doudou, between Lahbib and Bakayoko, was seated directly across the table from Isnard. After the brief scuffling noises of chairs being moved, a weighty silence ensued. The personnel director thought it his duty as mediator to speak first.
‘We will use French for this meeting,’ he said, looking at Bakayoko.
‘Since we are all Frenchmen,’ Victor added, with a mirthless smile.
It was Lahbib who answered. ‘Since there is no intermediary language, we will use French.’
But Edouard insisted. ‘Do you agree, Monsieur Bakayoko?’
Bakayoko was sitting in the relaxed position which seemed to be his habit, leaning slightly to one side and far back in his chair.
‘I am not alone in this strike,’ he said, looking at the personnel director, but since your ignorance of any of our language is a handicap for you, we will use French as a matter of courtesy. But it is a courtesy that will not last forever.’
They all stared at him. Dejean’s face turned purple, and Victor half rose from his chair.
‘Be careful what you say – your words may cause you trouble!’
‘Monsieur,’ Bakayoko said, ‘we are here for a discussion among equals, and not to listen to your threats.’
The negotiations had started badly, and now a thick wall of silence seemed to rise up as the men on either side of the table took each other’s measure.
It was Dejean, mastering his anger, who broke through it first. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Let’s get down to this list of grievances.’
‘They are not grievances,’ Lahbib said. He was too simple a man to amuse himself with a game of words, but he respected them and did not like to see them misused.
Dejean went on as if he had not even heard him. ‘Re-evaluation of salaries …’
‘A twenty per cent increase all along the line,’ Doudou said automatically and began distributing some sheets of paper to his comrades, although he knew perfectly well that at least half of them did not know how to write.
‘Annual paid vacations, pensions, family allowances …’ Dejean continued.
‘Payment of back wages, based on the settlement with French railway workers in July 1936; contractual bonus of six thousand francs to the trainmen, at the same rate of interest paid by French trainmen,’ Doudou said, spreading a year-old copy of the Journal Officiel on the table.
‘That’s all?’ Dejean demanded. ‘Don’t you think it’s a little too much?’
‘And you, monsieur?’ Bakayoko said. ‘Don’t you think this thieving has lasted long enough?’
‘You are not in charge here!’
‘If you look at the list of delegates, you will find my name.’
‘I’ll warn you just once more – if you go on in this manner I shall adjourn the meeting.’
Doudou leaned toward Lahbib and said in Ouolof, ‘It would be better if Bakayoko would be quiet. The red-eared men are going to get angry with him and use it as an excuse to send us all away. They’re just waiting for the chance.’
‘It’s true, Bakayoko,’ Balla said. ‘Don’t answer him again, or they’ll break up the meeting.’
Pierre had followed the earlier discussion excitedly, and now, almost without thinking, he demanded, ‘What are you saying? I can’t understand you.’
‘If we are content, we speak French and you understand. If we are not content, you can’t understand,’ Balla said, summoning up his best French. Pleased with this answer, he looked around the table at his comrades, seeking their approval.
Bakayoko’s heavy lips sketched a smile. He leaned back in his chair, took his tobacco pouch from his pocket, and began to fill his pipe.
‘It doesn’t really seem as though you came to this meeting with good intentions,’ the personnel director said unhappily, ‘so how can we expect that anything will come of it?’
‘We must all do our best to see that something does, Monsieur Edouard,’ Lahbib said earnestly.
‘Very well then,’ Dejean said. ‘Let us consider this matter of good intentions. You certainly must recognize that the matter of family allowances cannot be considered.’
‘Why?’ Doudou asked.
‘Simply because you are all polygamous,’ Victor said. ‘How do you think we could possibly recognize all of those children?’
‘And with the money you got, you would just go out and buy more wives and have more children,’ Isnard interrupted. ‘The Dakar-Niger isn’t nursery school, for God’s sake!’
‘But in France everyone gets it!’ It was Beaugosse who had spoken, somewhat to his own surprise. Crossing the square amid the enthusiastic acclaim of the crowd a few minutes ago, he had suddenly felt the surge of a courage and spirit he did not know he possessed. ‘The time of the knights has returned to us,’ he had thought, ‘the time of the Damels, the warrior-knights of Sénégal.’
But Victor just snorted, ‘In France there are no such things as concubines!’ and Beaugosse could think of nothing to answer.
‘Then we are not to have the family allowances?’ Doudou asked.
‘No, no, and again no!’ Dejean intervened angrily. He knew that he was going to be forced into some sort of compromise; the peanut season was over, and the harvest had to be brought into the factories and terminals at Dakar, Rufisque, and Kaolack. The manufacturers, the merchants, and even the stockholders in the railroad had already been bringing pressure to bear on him. But to give in on the question of family allowances was much more than a matter of agreeing to a compromise with striking workers; it would amount to recognition of a racial aberrance, a ratification of the customs of inferior beings. It would be giving in, not to workers but to Negroes, and that Dejean could not do.
He scarcely noticed that Lahbib was speaking again. ‘Polygamy is a matter which is of concern to us, too; but your concern with it now has never prevented you from making use of it when the need arose. When it is a matter of recruiting young men for work on the line, you don’t bother to ask them if their father has one wife or two. And the line itself was built by the hands of the sons of what you call concubines …’
Lahbib never finished the little speech he had been preparing for so long. Dejean had stood up and was shouting at him. ‘I know that pack of lies – I’ve heard it all before! You are led by a bunch of Bolsheviks, and you are sitting there insulting a great nation and a great people!
‘Monsieur le directeur,’ Lahbib said, ‘you do not represent a nation or a people here, but simply a class. We represent another class, whose interests are not the same as yours. We are trying to find a common meeting ground, and that is all.’
Seeing that Dejean was about to lose his temper again, the personnel director said hastily, ‘If we cannot arrive at an understanding here, why don’t we select one of your deputies to the National Assembly and ask him to serve as mediator?’
At the mention of the word ‘deputies’, Bakayoko, who had said nothing since his comrades urged him to remain calm, leaned forward in his chair.
‘Our deputies,’ he said, with an ironic smile which stretched his mouth to the line of the scar that split his face. ‘Our deputies. Do you know what we think of them? To us, their mandate is simply a license to profiteer. We know them, and that is what we think of them. There are some of them who, before their election, did not even own a second pair of pants. Now they have apartments, villas, automobiles, bank accounts, and they own stock in companies like this one. What do they have in common with the ignorant people who elected them without knowing what they were doing? They have become your allies, and you expect us to let them be the judges of our differences? Oh no, a thousand times, no! With that much – or should I say that little – imagination, Monsieur Edouard, you should have understood long ago that you can only negotiate with us.’
Dejean had apparently not even heard what Bakayoko said. He was still caught up in his anger with Lahbib. ‘Where would you be without France and the French people?’ he demanded suddenly.
‘We know what France represents,’ Bakayoko said, ‘and we respect it. We are in no sense anti-French; but once again, Monsieur le directeur, this is not a question of France or of her people. It is a question of employees and their employer.’
The heat and his own anger had turned Dejean’s face the color of red brick. He rose heavily from his chair, walked over to the windows, and opened the big central bay. The singing and the beating of the drums struck him like a blast of wind.
‘Can’t you make them be quiet?’
‘You can always refer the matter to their deputies,’ Bakayoko said.
Dejean did not answer. He closed the window and started back to the table, as if he were returning to his place, but when he passed Bakayoko’s chair he stopped abruptly and, before anyone could have stopped him, he slapped him hard across the face. The big trainman leaped to his feet, overturning his chair, and seized the director by the throat. Their neighbors hurled themselves at the two men, trying to separate them.
‘Take your hands off him, Bakayoko!’ Lahbib cried in Ouolof. ‘That’s what he was looking for! In the name of the workers, take your hands off him!’
Doudou was trying to tear Bakayoko’s clenched fingers from their grip on the director’s neck. ‘Can’t you see he’s already half dead with fear?’ he shouted. ‘Let him go!’
Clutching at his throat, Dejean staggered backward, his mouth hanging open. If Lahbib had not caught him, he would have fallen. The brief flurry of oaths, exclamations, and insults that had broken out around the table died down, but as Dejean collapsed back into his chair the silence was heavy with hatred and confusion.
Doudou began to gather up the papers scattered on the table. ‘Well,’ he said, in a voice muffled with apprehension, ‘what about our demands?’
It was Dejean who answered, still gasping for breath. ‘Nothing! Absolutely nothing! Zero! And I’ll have every one of you discharged!’
‘Unless you leave yourself!’ Bakayoko said, bending over to pick up his pipe.
It had been almost two hours since the cordon of police opened to allow the delegates to enter when it opened again so that they could leave. The noisy, motley crowd was waiting for them, and Bakayoko raised his arms for quiet.
‘You will know everything that happened! Let us pass now – we are going back to the union office. There will be a meeting in the Place Aly N’Guer in half an hour.’
In a fog of dust still hot from the last rays of the sun, the crowd stepped back to open a path.