The shutters on the window banged back noisily, and the morning light swept across the sleepy face of the man who had pushed them open. He yawned. Leaning his naked torso across the low, iron railing, he looked out, to the right and to the left. It was still very early, and only a few men who worked for the city were going about their business. Buses were coming in from the native quarters, loaded, and returning empty. Dakar was waking up.
For a long moment the man remained leaning out, gazing absently down the length of the rue Blanchot. He shivered suddenly and contracted his muscles to warm himself.
From behind him, the voice of a man still half asleep called out irritably. ‘Beaugosse, Beaugosse! Close that window, damn it!’
All the familiar noises of the Avenue William-Ponty – the thin patter of Turkish slippers, the clack of wooden heels, the coughing of motors, the bark of a dog who had doubtless just been kicked – began to fill the room in the union office where the three men had been sleeping. The one who was called Beaugosse turned his back to the window. The other two were still rolled in sleep on their camp beds, smothered in army blankets.
‘Come on, get up!’ Beaugosse said. ‘It’s five minutes after six; and we have to get things cleaned up. It’ll be seven o’clock before you know it. And, Deune, tonight you are going to leave those sandals outside. You’ll asphyxiate us!’
‘That’s right, you are going to leave your sandals outside the door.’ It was a gentle, almost musical voice from the second bed that was speaking now. ‘But you, Beaugosse, are going to close that window.’
The occupant of the bed on the left turned over and curled up even tighter, as if this embryonic position would help him to stay warm. He was no longer asleep, but he was determined to take advantage of these last minutes.
On the white and yellow tiles of the floor an old sheet of newspaper held an untidy heap of cigarette butts, used matches, little balls of paper, and a pair of sandals. Clothing and caps were strewn across the chairs.
‘You played cards until two o’clock in the morning, instead of going to bed at a decent hour,’ Beaugosse said, beginning to take his cot apart.
‘If you’re going to carry on like this, I’ll never stand a watch with you again,’ the voice from the first bed said. A black arm came out from beneath the cover, and the fingers groped along the floor in search of a cigarette. Then the cover was thrown back, and a face appeared, or at least the upper part of a face: a high-arched, protruding brow, above bloodshot eyes swimming in cavernous sockets. ‘Throw me my matches,’ Deune said.
Beaugosse, still in his shorts, went on shaking out his blanket. His real name was Daouda, but he deserved the nickname Beaugosse. In the midst of a generally unpleasant world, he was extremely pleasant to look at. Four months earlier he had graduated from the trade school, with a diploma as a lathe operator. His first contacts with the other workers had been difficult, because of his passion for clothes. His entire salary seemed to be spent on the gratification of a desire to be always ‘in style’, and he insisted on being properly dressed, no matter what the circumstances or the place. In spite of this, however, he had been appointed assistant to Alioune, the local director of the strike committee, because he had received an elementary education.
‘Beaugosse, give me the box of matches,’ Deune repeated.
‘It’s empty,’ Beaugosse said, throwing the matches at him and missing, so that the box smashed against the plaster wall.
Deune stretched out his legs, and the thick toes and dirty, broken nails of his feet appeared from beneath the cover. Beaugosse put on a pair of trousers of a light fabric, cut in the baggy, Turkish fashion, and studied the holes in his socks sadly, muttering to himself in French.
‘Shit; what luck! The last pair I have!’
The gentle voice from the heap of blankets on the second bed said, ‘Only people who eat every day can afford to worry about shoes and socks.’
‘You only say that, Arona, because you never had a pair like this!’
‘Wa lahi! By my father’s sash, that’s the truth!’
Deune, still comfortably stretched on his back, watched Beaugosse and tried to repress a smile.
‘Come on, Arona, get up,’ Beaugosse said. ‘It’s your turn to clean out the latrine. It’s twenty minutes to seven now, and if I know Alioune he’ll be here at seven on the dot. I don’t want to have my head chopped off because of you.’ Shaking his head unhappily, he pulled on the worn-out socks.
Arona stretched lazily and began to murmur some verses of the Koran. Deune had sat up. With one hand he was scratching his loins, and with the other attempting to knuckle the night’s mucous deposits from his eyes. At last he stood up, dropping the blanket, and Arona turned away.
‘Nakedness in the morning brings bad luck,’ he said. ‘At least cover up your backside; it’s as black as the bottom of a pot!’
Deune paid no attention to him and walked across the room toward the window. Beaugosse threw his blanket at him. ‘Are you crazy?’ he demanded. ‘Do you want them to slap a summons on us? This is hardly the time!’
‘Ha!’ Deune said. ‘How did I ever get in a spot like this – between a true believer who doesn’t like to see anyone naked in the morning and a black toubab! If anyone doesn’t want to see, all he has to do is mind his own business and not look at me!’
‘If you go on like that,’ Arona said, sitting up and putting his feet on the floor, ‘your heirs will be simple-minded.’
‘You’ve been listening to the women again. And how do you do it with your women, by the way?’
‘That’s enough of your dirt,’ Beaugosse said.
Deune changed the subject. ‘Beaugosse,’ he said, deceptively softly, ‘you know, I saw the little Portuguese last night. She has some coffee ready for you!’
‘What?’ Beaugosse demanded in surprise. ‘I don’t remember asking her to do that.’
‘I know, I know. But you like coffee, and so do I, and so does Arona. If this girl is willing to provide us with it, especially during the strike, why should we stop her?’
‘Listen, Deune,’ Beaugosse said. ‘You are older than I am, and I respect you for that – but I don’t like your doing this!’
Arona, who had finished dressing and was looking for his sandals, came over to him. ‘Now wait a minute, little one,’ he said quietly. ‘This is a good child … I mean, at this particular time, she is really something special. She brings us water, for instance. Perhaps because of what is happening, but also because of you. It hurts me, too, to exploit her, to use her this way, but I ask you – have we the right to refuse her?’
‘Do you realize what you are making of me right now?’ Beaugosse demanded. ‘A prostitute!’ He repeated the word in French. ‘Now I understand,’ he went on, at last. ‘Now I understand all of those meals that are brought to us.’ Beaugosse was a young man of principles, and the matter troubled him.
Deune opened his mouth to say something, but Arona stepped on his foot.
‘Very well,’ Beaugosse said. ‘I’ll go out. I’ll do the latrines myself, Arona, but when I come back everything had better be in order here!’
‘Certainly, corporal,’ Deune said, digging his elbow into Arona’s ribs.
When the boy had gone out, they both began to laugh, but they did as he said and bathed and shaved and swept out the office.
Beaugosse came back carrying an aluminium coffee pot, three cups, and some bread and sugar. Deune whistled joyfully and ran his tongue across his lips. ‘We’re going to have a feast! It’s a blessing from heaven to have a … well, you know what I mean …’
‘I haven’t any idea what you mean,’ Arona said, taking a cup and three lumps of sugar.
‘Three lumps for one cup?’ Deune said. ‘That’s not coffee; it’s syrup.’
They divided up the bread, and Beaugosse spread out a newspaper on the desk so they could eat more comfortably. Deune was chewing thoughtfully and looking out at the sky, when quite suddenly he said, ‘It’s odd. It’s very odd, and I still don’t really understand …’
‘What’s odd?’ Arona asked.
Deune stared into his empty cup, holding his chin in his hands. ‘This business of the help we’ve been getting from outside. I don’t understand it. The support from the French unions, for instance. You have Europeans who have come all the way from up there, just to break the strike, and then there are other Europeans who send us money to go on with it. Don’t you think it’s odd?’
‘There are other things that are even odder – those guys from Dahomey who sent us money. I certainly never expected that!’
‘Neither did I. I never would have thought of them. But you know – now, even if it was just for their sake and had nothing to do with us, I’d like to see that louse of a Dejean get beaten.’
The coffee pot was empty. Arona leaned back against the wall. Beaugosse had been listening to them, saying nothing, but occasionally shaking his head, as if he were thinking what fools they were.
Deune began pulling apart some butts, looking for enough tobacco to roll another cigarette, and went on. ‘I used to make fun of people from Dahomey before – and do you know why?’
Arona opened his eyes wide, seemingly in perfect candor. ‘No,’ he said, ‘why?’
‘Because I thought I was better than they are, that’s why. Do you remember the talk Bakayoko gave, on “the pitfalls of citizenship”? Well, now I understand what he was talking about, and I’m ashamed of myself. Bakayoko is right – this strike has taught us a lot of things.’
‘Bakayoko, Bakayoko!’ Beaugosse exclaimed. ‘All day long I hear nothing but that name – as if he were some kind of prophet!’
‘Ha! Ask N’Deye Touti …’
‘That’s enough of that, Deune! Keep her name out of this! To listen to you, anyone would think that man was running the strike all by himself. It’s Doudou who’s the secretary-general, after all!’
‘All right, all right, Beaugosse; you don’t have to shout. Everybody knows that.’
The interruption had come from the door, and all three of them turned around. Alioune, the local director, came in, followed by several workers. Alioune was not much older than Beaugosse. He was wearing a green tunic and a heavy cap, which he placed on the desk.
‘Anything new last night?’
‘Nothing at all.’
‘Well, the guard is getting spoiled. By the way, Beaugosse, the little Portuguese told me yesterday that her family had killed a pig for some occasion or other, and that she was going to prepare a catioupa.’
Deune and Arona looked at each other, and Deune, unable to contain himself, burst out laughing.
‘What are you laughing at?’ Alioune asked.
Beaugosse bit his lips.
‘Well, in any case,’ Alioune continued, seating himself on a corner of the desk. ‘I know that you eat pork, and so do I, for that matter, and so does Deune, on the sly.’
Deune seemed unable to control his hilarity. Every time he looked at Beaugosse he burst out laughing again, and Alioune was forced to wait until the fit had passed before he could go on.
‘Idrissa also eats it, so the noon meal would seem to be taken care of. The others will have to go home. One more thing, Beaugosse: N’Deye Touti is in the city this morning with Bineta and Mame Sofi. They are going back at noon. As for you, Deune, your wife said to tell you that everything is all right.’
‘Do you know what she told me day before yesterday? – “If you go back to work before the others, I’ll cut off your thing! ”’
‘From what I know of my cousin, she’s quite capable of it,’ Alioune said.
‘I don’t think I’ll have lunch here,’ Beaugosse said abruptly. ‘I’m going back to the house. Deune, what are you muttering about now?’
‘I wasn’t muttering, I was singing. Listen – it’s the striker’s song!’
‘Never mind – I’ve heard enough of it. I’ll see you tonight.’
‘Don’t kid him too much, Deune,’ Alioune said, when Beaugosse had gone. ‘He’s only been in the shops for a few months, and besides, he’s having a rough time with N’Deye Touti.’
‘Ah, so that’s why he doesn’t like to hear Bakayoko’s name mentioned!’ Idrissa said.
They didn’t pursue the subject of Bakayoko and Beaugosse and N’Deye Touti, however, because now the workers were beginning to come in, one by one, hoping for news.
*
It was a habit with Ramatoulaye on her walks never to move far away from the millet or bamboo fences. In this way she could pause before the entrance to each house and greet its inhabitants; and invariably the greeting became the occasion for an interminable exchange of courtesies and news. She knew everyone, by their first names and their family names; she knew all of their relatives, and the blood lines of all the men, for generations back. She was, in fact, a walking encyclopedia of every family in the district.
Today, however, Ramatoulaye did not pause at all. Her sturdy legs pumped steadily forward, beneath a long, shapeless cloth which bulged in front from the mass of amulets she wore around her neck. Her arms, as far up as her elbows, were circled with fetish bracelets of red and yellow and black.
Since the beginning of the strike Ramatoulaye had become more withdrawn, and perhaps more stern. There was no longer time for gossiping. Her responsibilities had become very great, because the house of which she was the eldest was large: there were no less than twenty of ‘God’s bits of wood’. It would never have occurred to Ramatoulaye to count the members of her household in any but the old way; to give them names might attract the attention of some evil that would fatefully alter their lives.
Although it was only nine o’clock in the morning the heat was already oppressive. Ramatoulaye passed a group of quarreling children, but today even this could not distract her. She turned to the left and entered the Place de Djouma, a vast stretch of hard-packed sand dominated by the mass of the cathedral-mosque. The crescents atop its twin minarets glittered fiercely in the sun, pointing to the sky. On every side of the square there were sheds with roofs of tile, and unfinished buildings, slashed with sand-paved streets and alleys.
Ramatoulaye wiped her face with a corner of her dress. The handkerchief around her head was soaked with sweat, and sand clung to her feet. On the stone bench before the mosque there was a large group of women, telling their morning beads, and out of courtesy she made a genuflection. Some of the women returned the greeting with a gesture of their rosary, others just by bowing their heads, and then they returned to their dialogue with the All Powerful. Ramatoulaye crossed one of the streets and entered a building known to every housewife in the neighborhood as ‘the hen roost’.
Hadramé the Moor’s shop had received its nickname because of the dirt that pervaded everything in it, but it was the largest one in the whole district. There were three entrances from the street, and an enormous wooden counter, covered with a mixture of grease and dust, ran the entire length of the store. On either side of a haberdashery showcase there were scales, of different sizes. At one end of the counter there were fly-specked jars of sweets, and at the other a sort of cage of metallic gauze, containing loaves of stale bread. A cockroach was climbing slowly up its inner frame. The whole rear wall of the shop was covered by rickety shelves, held together with wire and piled with rolls of cloth of every kind, from the cheapest calicoes to silks, side by side with boxes of candles and squares of tallow. Between the counter and the row of shelves there was a narrow pathway, littered with bags of rice and salt and cases of tinned sardines and tomatoes. The floor surrounding the big cask of oil was thick with grease. And, as if this glut of merchandise was not enough, Hadramé had succeeded in wedging three tailors into a corner at the back. They sat in the shop all day, measuring, cutting, and sewing.
Ramatoulaye entered by the center door. ‘Have you passed the night in peace?’ she asked, and since the tailors, bent over their work, did not reply, she called, ‘Hadramé, Hadramé!’
One of the men stopped his pedaling to look up, and when he recognized her, he said, ‘Hadramé is in the back, Rama. He will be here in a minute.’ Then he returned to the murmur of his sewing-machine.
The sun, coming through the doors, sketched geometric patterns on the floor, but the light at the back of the shop was the murky green of an aquarium. Ramatoulaye was ferreting about in the jumble of merchandise, rapidly growing impatient, when suddenly her glance came to rest on the pair of scales. Like the spark of a flint in darkness, an idea flashed through her mind – an old idea, as a matter of fact, stored for a long time in the back of her head. She walked over to the scale, but just as she was about to put her hand on the balance to test its accuracy the red curtain which screened a door at the rear of the shop was drawn aside, and Hadramé came in. He saw her gesture, and his expression hardened.
‘Hadramé,’ Ramatoulaye said, without any prefatory greeting, ‘I want ten pounds of rice. No oil, no sugar – just rice.’
‘Just rice!’ the shopkeeper repeated, shaking his head so violently that the uncombed thickets of his hair seemed to jump. ‘I told you yesterday, Rama, that I couldn’t do anything more for you, or for any of the strikers’ families. I can’t even give you any more credit, or they will cut off my own supplies. As it is, they want to close my store. And I have to live myself!’
‘Hadramé, you know I have always paid what I owe. And you are the one who bought our jewelry – you can give me five pounds at least.’
While she spoke, the Moor had walked away, and she could see the blue lines left on his arms and the back of his neck by the indigo dye of his tunic. At the other end of the counter he pulled up a stool and sat down, scratching the calf of his leg indifferently. Ramatoulaye remained leaning against the counter, gazing at the sacks of rice. When she looked up, her glance crossed Hadramé’s, and she thought, ‘If I stay, I’ll make him give me. I can persuade him, I know, if I just hold on.’
The designs sketched by the sun moved across the floor until they reached the counter, and several clients came and went, but Ramatoulaye never changed her position. Her silent presence began to wear on the shopkeeper’s nerves, and he got up and went into the little office at the back. Hidden behind the half-opened door, he watched the woman through a gap in the red curtain. It seemed to him that Ramatoulaye and her silence filled his shop from wall to wall. Finally he could stand it no longer and thrust his head around the curtain.
‘I cannot do it, Rama,’ he said mournfully. ‘I just cannot! They know everything I do here!’
Ramatoulaye did not reply.
‘Tell our men to go back to work,’ Hadramé said. From the sound of his voice he seemed really to be suffering. ‘You will all die of hunger. This strike is a war of eggs against stones!’
Ramatoulaye still said nothing, and Hadramé tried again. ‘I cannot – I cannot! They’ll close my shop! Tell the men to go back.’
‘Bilahi, Hadramé,’ Ramatoulaye said then, ‘you have no heart, and you also have a short memory! Give me two pounds – just enough to cheat the hunger.’
‘Valahi – I cannot,’ the shopkeeper said again, casting a pleading glance at the tailors, as though they might help him.
At this moment two boys came into the shop, breathless from running. The older one greeted Ramatoulaye politely and then spoke to the shopkeeper. ‘My father sent me for the rice,’ he said.
Hadramé weighed out the rice and emptied the balance from the scale into a square of cloth the boy had spread on the counter. As soon as they had left, Ramatoulaye resumed her pleading.
‘Hadramé, for the love of God, give me just two pounds of rice. Don’t listen to the toubabs! It’s true that the men are on strike, but what have we to do with that? We are just the mothers. And the children? What can they do?’
‘I cannot do it,’ Hadramé repeated, trying to avoid her eyes.
Ramatoulaye was at the end of her strength, and, without realizing it, she was almost shouting. ‘For us there is nothing – for us you can do nothing! But for Mabigué! Oh yes, you can do it for him!’
Hadramé grimaced, as if he had a cramp in his stomach. ‘Why don’t you go to see him?’ he said. ‘He is your brother, and he is the chief of the district.’
‘You and he – you are both on the side of the toubabs. But the strike will end some day, Hadramé; nothing lasts forever. I’ll be back – if they haven’t brought anything from the city, I’ll come back, Hadramé. Be sure that your hen roost is closed up well, or I shall have my rice.’
And with a polite farewell to the tailors, who had been watching her in astonishment, Ramatoulaye left the shop.
*
The sun’s rays flowed across the Place de Djouma like molten lead, transforming it into a furnace. Ramatoulaye branched off to the right and saw her brother Mabigué approaching, followed by his ram. She took shelter in the shadow of a fence and waited.
El Hadji Mabigué was dressed as if he were on his way to some ceremony. He wore both an inner and an outer tunic, and his red fez was wrapped with a scarf, in the fashion of Mecca. His soft Turkish slippers were lemon yellow, and he was protected from the sun by an umbrella of iridescent pink. Since he could not avoid his sister, he greeted her and inquired politely, ‘Does all go well with those of your house?’
‘We ate nothing yesterday, and I cannot yet say whether we will eat today.’
‘The designs of Providence are unfathomable,’ El Hadji Mabigué said, turning up the pink, delicately lined palm of a hand that was soft and plump as a woman’s. The ram, Vendredi, stood quietly at his side. He had magnificent curling horns, and his fleece, white at its roots and yellowed by the sun at its tips, had been carefully combed and brushed. He had been castrated, to make him more sleek, and his imposing bulk was the terror of every woman in the neighborhood.
Mabigué made a gesture of farewell, but Ramatoulaye detained him. ‘I don’t like to ask favors,’ she said, ‘and especially of you, but I have just come from Hadramé’s shop, and he refuses to give us any more credit. Will you guarantee him the price of a hundred pounds of rice? You know the position we are in – and I know that you can do it.’
‘I?’ Mabigué’s face was an astonished mask of soft, black wax. ‘I? Lah ilaha ilaha! He doesn’t even give me credit! Hadramé is not a good neighbor, and I have been meaning to speak to the authorities about having him moved to another district.’
Ramatoulaye stared at him, thrusting out her tattooed lower lip imperceptibly. ‘Mabigué, God loves only the truth! If you had said, “I do not wish to”, I would have believed you; but when you say, “I cannot”, you are lying. I have just come from the shop. Your younger son was there, and Hadramé gave him rice, in your name.’
Mabigué was taken aback. The loose sleeves of his tunics flapped like the wings of a long-legged bird preparing for flight. Shifting his umbrella from one hand to the other, he stammered, ‘God is my witness that I paid for that rice!’ Then, toying nervously with the wristband of his tunic, he added, ‘All this could probably be arranged, if the men would just go back to work.’
‘The men have not consulted their women, and it is not the task of the women to urge them to go back. They are men, and they know what they are doing. But the women must still eat, and the children, too.’
‘I know, I know. But if the women should refuse to support them, they would soon return to the shops. Do you really think that the toubabs will give in? I know better – I know that they will have the last word. Everything here belongs to them – the shops, and the merchandise in the shops, even the water we drink. This strike is like a band of monkeys deserting a fertile plain – who gains from that? The owner of the plain! It is not our part in life to resist the will of heaven. I know that life is often hard, but that should not cause us to turn our backs on God. He has assigned a rank, a place, and a certain role to every man, and it is blasphemous to think of changing His design. The toubabs are here because that is the will of God. Strength is a gift of God, and Allah has given it to them. We cannot fight against it – why, look, they have even turned off the water …’
Exhausted and unnerved by this tirade, Ramatoulaye interrupted him brutally. ‘You are in league with them, Mabigué – and you are a fornicator as well!’
‘Asta-Fourlah! May God forgive you! It is true that I am your brother, but I am also an El Hadji, and I must ask you to remember that I have made a pilgrimage to Mecca and to use my proper title before pronouncing my name.’ He paused a moment, and when he spoke again his voice was heavy. ‘Out of courtesy first, but also in your own interest!’
‘You are a thief, in addition, Mabigué. You stole my allotment by saying that I was an illegitimate child, so by your own words there is no relationship between us. Do you know what I wish? …’
Mabigué raised his eyebrows.
‘I wish that you should not be present at my funeral, and that if my house should be destroyed by fire you would fan the flames rather than throw water on them! And as for that one …’ she turned towards the ram. ‘If he enters my house again, I will kill him with my own hands. And now, as God is my witness, I have spoken my last word. I shall never speak to you again.’
And she turned and left him, to go on with her quest, looking in at all of the shops and stopping at every street fountain. As she walked, the events of the morning whirled through her head, and she muttered constantly to herself: ‘Ah – I no longer even know what I am doing! How could I have told Hadramé that I would be back? And if I went back, what could I do? I’m not capable of setting fire to his shop – I must have said that in a moment of anger. But why should I have threatened him? Is all this because of the strike – or is it perhaps because I am evil? No, I know that is not so, I am not evil – it is just that we are hungry. And Mabigué – that old she-goat! I didn’t lie to him – I don’t want him at my funeral, and I will be sure that everyone knows it. He is the lowest creature I know … But it is enough to drive one mad – no rice, not even any water – but I can’t go back empty-handed, with a whole family to take care of. Once, I would have found a way out – I would have sold candles, I would have found some way; but now … and all because of the strike … I don’t know about the strike … It is hard, yes, but the thing is that it gives us too much to think about …’
The sun was at its zenith, and Ramatoulaye was walking on her own shadow when she came to the street fountain in her neighborhood.
A child was waiting there, sitting comfortably on the stone shaft of the fountain, with a straw basket over her head in place of a hat. She was the ‘watcher’, appointed by the women and charged with alerting them when the water was turned on. From beneath the mouth of the fountain stretched a queue of weirdly dissimilar objects, over a hundred feet in length. There were old baskets, frying pans, big stones, and earthenware jugs; and each object represented the place in line of a family. Around the fountain itself a sort of platform of hard clay had been formed by the constant pounding of wet feet in the earth, and from the platform a web of tiny trenches reached out to the gates of the nearby courtyards. Now the trenches were dried out and filled with refuse, old rags and bits of paper, and the skeletons of rats, decomposing in the sun.
‘Still nothing, Anta?’ Ramatoulaye asked.
‘Nothing,’ the child said, lifting the basket and revealing a dark face marked with even darker stripes, where the rays of the sun had filtered through her makeshift hat.
‘You heard no sound from the pipe?’
‘No, and I’m sitting right on top of it. I would have heard it even if I had been sleeping.’
‘And if the noise was in your own backside?’
For a moment the child was embarrassed, but then she put down the basket and smiled. ‘It’s not the same thing. When the noise comes from the pipes you can hear it in your head.’
Anta got down from her perch, turned the handle of the pump, and put her ear against the fountain. Ramatoulaye did the same, but neither of them heard a sound.
‘It’s after noon,’ Ramatoulaye said, straightening up, ‘and I don’t remember ever having seen a distribution of water in the afternoon. Come with me, and we’ll walk over and see if we can find Mame Sofi.’
Obediently the child followed the woman, walking beside the fences.
*
A rain of blows came down on the horse’s meager flanks, and the driver cracked his tongue as loudly as his whip, trying to force the animal on. On the third attempt the wheels ground against the slight ridge that marked the footpath. The horse whinnied pitifully and dropped his head. A gluelike foam dripped from his mouth, and his nostrils flared open. The cart was in no better shape than he: the axles were ungreased, and the wheels struck the angles of a dance. At every jolt, the occupants – the driver and three women – were hurled against each other, shoulder to shoulder. The horse pulled with every ounce of strength he had, the harness stretched and groaned, biting into old, blue-painted scars, but both his hoofs and the wheels of the wagon slipped and sank into the sand at every step.
Relentlessly, the sun sought out their faces, the backs of their necks, their arms, their legs – every corner where their flesh was naked. The waves of heat rising from the sand distorted their vision, and from a nearby dumping ground fragments of broken glass, old tin cans, and empty bottles threw back a merciless light. They sweated as though they were in a great vat, hermetically sealed and heated from every side.
In a desperate effort to escape from this hell, the man lashed out again, under the horse’s belly, and the frightened animal plunged forward. The three women had not exchanged a word; they were too busy trying to hold their soaking garments away from their skin.
Mame Sofi was seated beside the driver, and the other two – Bineta, the second wife of Mame Sofi’s husband, and N’Deye Touti – were on the seat in the rear, with their backs to her. Her great protuberant eyes and the sweat, rolling in sheets down her black and shining face, made her look like a seal emerging from the water. The leather cords that held the fetishes and amulets around her neck showed through the opening of her blouse, seeming glued to her skin.
‘Ouvai, ouvai,’ she said, passing her forearm across her forehead and upsetting the careful arrangement of her starched headcloth, which she had knotted so that two corners of it stood up arrogantly, like horns.
She turned toward N’Deye Touti. ‘You go to school – you must have some ideas about the strike?’
‘You know that I don’t, Aunt. It’s too complicated for me.’
‘Well, what do they teach you in school then?’
‘Everything – everything about life.’
‘And the strike is not part of life? Closing the shops and turning off the water – that is not part of life?’
Overcome with the heat, N’Deye Touti said nothing, and Mame Sofi changed the subject. ‘When is Bakayoko coming back? Does he still want to marry you? For my part, I think you would be better off with Beaugosse. With Beaugosse, we could have a real celebration, but with the other one … I’m not saying that he isn’t a good man, but he’s a little heavy-handed. Besides, he is already married, isn’t he?’
‘Yes, he is married.’
‘For a young girl, a married man is like a warmed-over dinner!’ She turned to the driver. ‘If that horse doesn’t move he is going to dissolve in his own sweat!’ Then, turning back to the girl, she said, ‘You’ll see – the men will consult us before they go out on another strike. Before this, they thought they owned the earth just because they fed us, and now it is the women who are feeding them. Ours …’ Mame Sofi said ‘ours’ because she shared Deune, the guard at the union headquarters, with Bineta – ‘I told ours the other night, “If you go back to work before the others, I’ll cut off the only thing that makes you a man”. And do you know what he said?’
‘No,’ said N’Deye Touti.
‘He said, “How would you do it?” “It’s easy,” I told him. “You sleep like a wooden leg, so all I have to do is wait for the proper time. A good shoemaker’s knife, and wham! One good slice, and there’s nothing left!” And all he said then was, “And what would you do after that?” Would you believe it?’
N’Deye Touti smiled, but Bineta shook her head disapprovingly. ‘You have no shame, Mame Sofi!’
At this moment, the cart, which had finally passed the dumping ground, turned into a cross street, and they saw Ramatoulaye and Anta coming to meet them.
‘Have you traveled in peace?’ Ramatoulaye asked.
‘And only in peace,’ Mame Sofi answered, trying to extricate her considerable bulk from the shaky cart. A corner of her white cotton skirt caught on a nail, and the driver reached over hastily to unhook it.
‘Good for you,’ Mame Sofi said. ‘If this miserable hearse of yours had torn the last rag I own I would have killed that dried fish you call a horse!’ She turned to Ramatoulaye. ‘Is there any water?’
‘Nothing. Not a drop. I told the child she could leave. And you? Has Providence been favorable?’
‘God be praised, we have ten pounds of rice, a can of milk for Strike, and some earthnut cakes – all thanks to our mad’mizelle N’Deye Touti.’
The latter, who had also climbed down from the cart, was a lovely girl of about twenty, in the full bloom of youth and health. Her skin was shiny smooth, and so black that it seemed almost blue. Her most striking features, though, were her eyes – shadowed by long, thick lashes – and her full, finely drawn mouth. Her lower lip had been slightly darkened with antimony. Her hair was carefully braided into a little crown at the top of her head, revealing a clear, high forehead. She was wearing a simple, one-piece dress, gathered in at the waist and cut low across the shoulders. Her breasts, in a brassière that was a little too tight, clung boldly to the material.
When Bineta had joined them, Mame Sofi announced, in a tone she might have used to issue a challenge, ‘We’re going to baptize this baby, and we’re going to name him Strike! The men will die of shame!’
‘And where are we going to find wood to make a fire?’ Bineta demanded. ‘And flour, and oil, and sugar? Mame Sofi, you can’t ask a blind man to jump across a ditch. We have more important things to do than to think of celebrations. First we have to manage to stay alive!’
No matter what they may have thought, or wished, they all knew that she was right, so they gathered together their belongings and turned back toward their homes, followed by Anta, the little ‘watcher’.