The audience in the union hall had listened to Tiémoko’s story in total silence, and in telling it he had recovered some of his normal self-assurance. Before sitting down, he summed up the case against his uncle.
‘Diara is a worker, like all the rest of us, and like the rest of us he voted for the strike – for an unlimited strike, until we won what we were asking for – but he has not kept his word. He got help from the union, enough to live on, as we all did, and he has used it, but he has not repaid any of it since he went back to work. But more than this, he has informed on the women who are supporting us so valiantly, and he has forced them to get off trains whenever they have tried to use them. That is why I wanted some of the women to be here today, although there were a lot of people who didn’t agree with that idea.
‘That is all I have to say, and now it is up to others to say what they think. But let no one forget that while we are talking here, many of our comrades are in prison.’
When Tiémoko sat down, the silence was so profound that it seemed almost as if the big meeting hall had suddenly emptied. Diara had drawn his legs back under his chair and sat so stiffly he might have been made of stone. Looking at his father, Sadio saw that his eyes were empty of all feeling, lost in a faraway past where there was no strike, no place of judgment, and no accused.
Suddenly a woman’s voice was heard. ‘I would like to say …’
Several irritated voices called, ‘Quiet!’
‘Who spoke down there at the back?’ Konaté demanded.
‘It’s one of these silly women!’ someone said.
‘But I told the women to come,’ Tiémoko said. ‘They have important things to say. Come forward, Hadi Dia.’
A woman with heavily tattooed lips and a face crisscrossed with scars rose and walked to the front of the hall. For an occasion such as this, she had obviously thought it a good idea to put on all of the best clothes she owned. Tiémoko made a place for her beside him on the bench.
‘Hadi Dia,’ he said, ‘tell everyone now what you have already told your neighbors. You can speak here without fear and without shame.’
The woman had a hare lip, and when she opened her mouth to speak the people nearest her could see the gaps between her teeth. ‘It was the other day … that is, it was about two weeks ago … I was with Coumba, her sister Dienka, and the third wife of … of …’
‘The names are not important. Go on.’
‘We took the “smoke of the savanna” to go to Kati. Diara asked us to show our tickets, and when we got to Kati he came back to us with a toubab soldier. He said something to him in the toubab language, and the soldier took away the tickets we had to come back, but he didn’t give us back the money for them. I told the whole story to my husband when we got home.’
‘Hadi Dia, is all of what you have said true?’ Konaté asked.
‘Ask Diara.’
‘All right, Hadi Dia, you may return to your seat. And you, Diara, have you anything to say?’
The accused remained motionless and silent, while the woman went back to her own place. It was the first time she had ever spoken at a meeting of the men, and she was filled with pride. Another, older woman went up to speak, going this time directly to the stage. Her name was Sira, and she spoke rapidly and confidently.
‘With us, it was on the way to Koulikoro – you all know the place where the train goes up a little rise between here and Koulikoro – he stopped the train and made us get off. Eight women alone, right in the middle of the brush! I tell you, he is nothing but a slave of the toubabs! Tiémoko is right – he should be crucified in the market place!’
‘Thank you. Sira,’ Konaté said, ‘but you should tell only what you have seen. Go back to your seat.’
Two more women came forward and told of happenings that were more or less similar to the first ones, and after that there was a heavy silence in the hall. The idea of women addressing a meeting as important as this was still unfamiliar and disturbing. The men gazed absently at the stage, waiting for something to happen, their glances wandering from Konaté to Diara, and then to the unhappy figure of Sadio.
Suddenly a masculine voice said, ‘I would like to speak,’ and a towering, muscular workman got to his feet. His head was curiously shaved so that his hair formed a ring around his skull, and he seemed uncomfortable in his feast-day clothing. Everyone recognized him immediately as the first man who stopped work after the strike was called, and there was a murmur of approval from the audience. He was sure to have something to say, and it was right that he should speak.
He began by giving an account of his own actions during the strike, and of those of the men in his group, and only when he had completed this did he come to the case of Diara.
‘Diara has behaved badly toward all of us,’ he said. ‘Yes, as God is my witness, he has done wrong. I am as sure of that as I am that some day I will be alone in my grave. When I told the men who worked with me to put down their tools, they did it as if we were all one man; and here today we are all still agreed to go on with the strike. But you, Diara – you are one of our elders; you should have guided us and helped us. Instead, you took the side of our enemies, and after you had betrayed us you spied on our women. We are not ashamed to admit that it is the women who are supporting us now, and you have betrayed them, too. For my part, I say that we should put Diara in prison – yes, that is just what we should do – put him in prison.’
‘Brother,’ someone in the hall said, ‘you know that the prison belongs to the white men.’
‘I know that, but we can build one!’
‘And where would we get the money? We don’t even have enough to feed a prisoner – not to mention that the toubabs would never let us do it anyway.’
‘Everything you say is true, man – I know as well as you that the toubabs have stolen all of our rights, even the right to have a prison of our own and punish our own; but that is no reason to defend a traitor! If we can’t put Diara in prison, we can at least do what the Koran teaches us to do – we can have him scourged!’
The man had begun to shout, and the muscles of his face and neck were contorted with anger. ‘We should decide right now how many lashes he will receive and who’ll be appointed to carry out the judgment!’
He sat down again, still muttering aloud, ‘You are a traitor, Diara, a traitor, a traitor!’
There was a turbulence of voices in the hall; everyone seemed to want to speak at once. Some were in favor of flogging, while others still thought that a means of imprisonment should be found, and one man said that Diara should be made to turn in all the money he had earned to the strike committee. Theories and ideas went from bench to bench, and all sorts of advice was hurled at the members of the jury. In the midst of the uproar, only the accused remained motionless, as if he were not even present in the room. Once or twice, as the hearing went on, he had asked himself, ‘Why did I do it?’ and the question disturbed him, because he could not provide an answer. Surely it had not been because he wanted money or jewels or fine clothes, richly embroidered and starched? Had his pride made him seek the stimulant that comes from holding power over others? He saw himself again, giving orders to the women, with the policemen at his side. Had it been the taste of flattery that had separated him from the others, or the sense of well-being that comes with a full stomach? Or had it been simply the cold emptiness of his own kitchen? The questions mingled and blurred in Diara’s mind and then disappeared completely, leaving him alone again before the crowd in the hall, his eyes wide open but unseeing, his lower lip trembling.
Fa Keïta, the Old One, had been present throughout the trial, with Ad’jibid’ji sitting quietly beside him. He had been asked to be a member of the jury, but he had refused because he had not believed, until the last minute, that the young people would actually carry out such a plan. Now he rose slowly to his feet.
‘I have a few grains of salt to contribute to the pot,’ he said, and then added, glancing in Tiémoko’s direction, ‘if, that is, you are willing to accept my salt.’
Konaté said, ‘Whatever you have to say, Old One, will be listened to with both ears.’
‘A long time ago,’ Fa Keïta said, ‘before any of you were born, everything that happened happened within a framework, an order that was our own, and the existence of that order was of great importance in our lives. Today, no such framework exists. There are no castes among people, no difference in the quality of grain or of the bread that is made from the grain; there are no weavers, no artisans in metal, no makers of fine shoes.
‘I think it is the machine which has ground everything together this way and brought everything to a single level. Ibrahim Bakayoko said to me, not long ago: “When we have succeeded in stirring up the people of this country, and making them one, we will go on and do the same thing between ourselves and the people on the other side of the ocean.” How all this will come about I do not know, but we can see it happening already, before our eyes. Now, for instance, Tiémoko has had this idea, which he took from a book written in the white man’s language. I have seen more suns rise than any of you, but this is the first time in my life that I have seen a … a … What is it called, child?’ he asked, leaning toward Ad’jibid’ji.
‘Tribunal, Grandfather.’
‘A tribunal,’ Fa Keïta repeated tonelessly. ‘And I think that Tiémoko has done well. We all wanted the strike; we voted for it, and Diara voted with us. But then Diara went back to work. You say that he is a traitor, and perhaps you are right. If we are all to win, then we should live as brothers, and no one should go back unless his brothers do.
‘I have heard you calling for punishment, but I know that you will not kill Diara. Not because some of you would not have the courage or the will, but because others would not let you do it, and I would be the first of them. If you imitate the hirelings of your masters, you will become like them, hirelings and barbarians. For godly men, it is a sacrilege to kill, and I pray that God will forbid such a thought to take root in your minds.
‘You have spoken also of flogging, of beating Diara. The child who is seated beside me is punished that way very seldom, although my father beat me often, and the same thing is probably true of most of you. But blows correct nothing. As for Diara, you have already beaten him – you have struck him where every human worthy of the name is most vulnerable. You have shamed him before his friends, and before the world, and in doing that you have hurt him far more than you could by any bodily punishment. I cannot know what tomorrow will bring, but in seeing this man before me I do not think that there is one among us who will be tempted to follow in his footsteps.’
In the stillness, some of the women could be heard sniffing, trying to hold back tears.
‘And now,’ Fa Keïta said, ‘I apologize for having abused your kindness. Diara, lift up your head. You have been the instrument of destiny here – it was not you who was on trial; it was the owners of the machines. Thanks to you, no one of us now will give up the fight.’
The old man looked around him for a moment and then left the hall in silence. Ad’jibid’ji remained seated on the bench.
Tiémoko had listened avidly to Fa Keïta’s words, but even as he told himself, ‘This is what I should have said,’ he was angry with the Old One. He had moved the crowd with his gentle words and the calmness of his voice. ‘I should have struck harder,’ Tiémoko thought, ‘and answered him firmly. He has beaten me now, because I don’t know enough about these things, but it will be different next time. I must write to Bakayoko tonight.’
All of the earlier heat of argument seemed to have vanished from the hall. Men and women looked at each other furtively, and then one by one they began to walk silently toward the door.
While all of this was taking place, the eight members of the jury had not said a word. Now one of them rose and put on his cap, and two others followed his example. Konaté took the director of the Koulikoro committee by the arm, and the two men walked off together, conversing in lowered voices. Tiémoko himself started toward the door, and, as he passed the bench where Ad’jibid’ji sat, regarding him with a mixture of curiosity and dislike, he thought, ‘There is more in that child’s head than in all the rest of this hall.’ His irritation with Fa Keïta had turned against himself, and the line of his jawbone hardened. ‘It isn’t a question of being right,’ he muttered furiously, ‘it’s a question of winning!’
Soon after he had gone, there were just three people still in the meeting hall: Diara, his son Sadio, and Ad’jibid’ji, sitting quietly on her bench. Diara was unable to rid his mind of the thought of the woman Hadi Dia. He had held the votive lamb at her christening, and today she had denounced him; she had insulted him in public, and he knew that a wound like this would never heal. Sadio was still slumped in his chair. His fingers toyed mechanically with the papers scattered on the table, and tears ran down his cheeks. He was conscious that, from this day forward, his father could be reviled and insulted by anyone, perhaps even beaten, and he would have no defense. And he knew that wherever he himself went, people would look at him and say, ‘Your father is a traitor.’ Not one of the men in the hall, not one of his friends, had even spoken to him before he left. He was alone, desperately alone. He looked up toward the door and saw Ad’jibid’ji, who seemed to be following the silent drama on the stage with a kind of sadistic pleasure. Her eyes remained fixed on Sadio for a moment, and then turned to Diara, as if she were engraving the scene on her mind and wanted to be sure she missed nothing. From the intensity with which she regarded Diara, she might have been listening for the sound of his tears.
At last, Sadio got up and moved across the stage toward his father. A feverish trembling racked his slender body, and he seemed unnaturally tall beside the broken figure in the chair. He opened his lips to gulp in air, wanting to speak, and then he just fell to his knees at his father’s side. Diara bent over the figure of his son and cried aloud, like a child who has just been punished.
*
Fa Keïta had resolved, even before the trial was held, that he would make a retreat and address his troubled thought to the Almighty. He was angry with himself for what he considered a lack of resolution. He had firmly decided that he would not join with those who were going to the union building to try Diara, but he had allowed himself to be swayed by Ad’jibid’ji’s artful insistence. He could recall the scene even now. He had been seated in his own room, while the child knelt on a sheepskin at his feet. Her long, slender fingers had been imitating the rhythmic march of camels across the desert formed by the shaggy hide.
‘Grandfather,’ she had said, ‘please, let’s go. I promise to be quiet, and after this I will never go again.’
‘Never again?’
‘Not until petit père comes back.’
‘Are you afraid to go alone?’
‘No, but when I do, Grandmother scolds me, and I don’t like that.’
‘Why do you always want to go to these meetings?’
‘I have to start learning what it means to be a man.’
The Old One had laughed until the tears came, shaking his head at the child. ‘But you are not a man!’
‘Petit père says that men and women will be equal some day.’
‘And what will you do then, if you are to be the equal of a man?’
‘Drive one of the fast trains, just as petit père does. He says it’s the most wonderful trade there is, and I believe him.’
Mamadou Keïta had looked deep into the almond-shaped eyes which were studying him so intently. ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘We will go, but after that you will not go again until your father returns.’
‘I promise, Grandfather.’
It was because of this that Fa Keïta had been present when the trial was held, and he regretted now that he had gone. As soon as he entered the house he had water brought to him, so that he might purify himself.
‘I am beginning my retreat,’ he told old Niakoro.
‘What happened with Diara?’ she asked.
‘God knows. I left him with the others. Ad’jibid’ji was still there.’
He went into his room, closing the door behind him, so that everyone would know that, for the week to come, he had withdrawn from the world of the living. Niakoro sat alone in the little courtyard, staring at the empty mortar where the grain had always been ground, and her mind went back to its interrupted wandering.
In the old days, the singing of the pestles had begun even before the morning star disappeared in the first light of dawn. From courtyard to courtyard the women had exchanged their unceasing, pounding rhythms, and the sounds had seemed to cascade through the smoky air like the song of a brook rushing through a deep ravine. To the sharp rap of one pestle against the rim of a mortar, another rapping had answered. The women at work in their homes in the early morning greeted each other thus, in a dialogue only they understood; and the same echoes which announced the birth of the day presaged a peaceful day. They had both a function and a meaning.
The old mortar in Niakoro’s courtyard had been a tree; its roots were still sunk deep in the earth. When the tree was cut down, the stump had been hollowed out to form the mortar, and pestles had been made from the branches. Mills, whether they be turned by wind or by water, have a language of their own; and the mortar has another. It vibrates beneath the blows of the woman who holds the pestle, causing the earth around it to tremble, and in neighboring houses the tremor is felt and runs through the bodies of others. But now the mortar was silent, and the only sound to be heard was the whispering of the trees, announcing a sorrowful day. Deprived of the oils from the pounded grain, the mortar and the neatly aligned pestles lay baking in the sun, from time to time emitting a little crackling sound, as a split appeared in the dry wood. And the women could only watch helplessly, as fissures ran up from the base of the stump and zigzagged toward the rim.
Niakoro was pondering on her unaccustomed solitude. All of the other women, led by Assitan, had left the house early that morning, going to the market at Goumé. Niakoro had been unable to conceal her apprehension at being left virtually alone in the compound.
‘But, Mother,’ Assitan had explained, ‘there is nothing left here to eat, and the nearest place where we can hope to buy anything is the market at Goumé.’
‘It’s a long way, you know.’
‘I know that, and we must go on foot. But if we leave at dawn we will be back in three or four days. There is enough food in the house for you, and Ad’jibid’ji will prepare it for you.’
‘Have you told Fa Keïta?’
‘No. He told me that he was planning to make a retreat. We will be back before he has completed it.’
‘If God is willing. And if He brings you safely to Goumé, do not forget to go and see the Soumaré family. He married one of our cousins, and they are people of a good house. They will be helpful to you. I shall entrust you to the keeping of the Almighty.’
‘We have confidence in His care,’ Assitan had said.
And after the women had gone, the children had left the house. Led by the oldest, they had come to ask her permission as she sat in the courtyard grating a cola nut in her lap.
‘Grandmother, we want to go to the river for water and to try to catch some fish.’
‘Very well, but be careful,’ she said, and the noisy group had gone off, laden down with old pots and jugs and makeshift fishing lines.
Now there was only Ad’jibid’ji to look after her, and she had gone up to the terrace.
Niakoro called out to her. ‘Ad’jibid’ji, what are you doing up there?’
‘I am cleaning petit père’s pipes, Grandmother.’
‘Bring them here, and I will help you – even if I do dislike the odor of tobacco.’
‘I’m almost finished, Grandmother. There is nothing left except the lighter.’
But Niakoro had had enough of being alone. With some difficulty, she managed to get to her feet and began climbing the stairway to the terrace. One hand, stretched out to the clay wall, steadied her on that side while she used the other in the painful process of bending her old knees to the rise of the steps. She was forced to pause for rest after every movement, and when at last she reached the top of the stairway, breathing heavily, she drew herself very carefully erect, her hands clasped to the small of her back. It was as if she were afraid that any sudden movement now might bring a total collapse of the fragile structure of her body.
‘Here I am, Grandmother,’ Ad’jibid’ji said. ‘I was just getting ready to come down.’ The child had sensed how much the old woman needed company and regretted her thoughtlessness of a moment before.
Niakoro had not been out on the terrace in a long time, and she looked around her curiously, but her weakening vision could take in only dimly the vista of rooftops, the slender spires of the minarets, the tower of the church, and the masses of flame trees and deodars. A fine mist of down from the silk-cotton trees floated in the air.
‘Where are the pipes?’ she asked.
‘Here, Grandmother.’ Ad’jibid’ji handed her a wooden bowl containing a dozen or more pipes of all shapes, made of ebony, of ivory, of clay, and of a rich red wood.
‘Does your father smoke all of those?’
‘Yes,’ Ad’jibid’ji answered, seating herself astride the low wall that ran around the terrace.
‘His throat must be as black as the bottom of a pot!’
‘He cleans them all the time, and when I wrote to him I asked if it would be all right if I did them for him.’
‘Did he give you his permission?’
‘No. He hasn’t answered yet. It was in the letter I wrote the day before yesterday, but I’m sure he will say yes.’
‘Ad’jibid’ji, why doesn’t your father ever address his letters to me?’
The child stopped swinging her legs back and forth against the wall and turned to look at her grandmother, seated at the top of the staircase sucking thoughtfully at her cheeks.
‘I don’t know, Grandmother,’ she said aloud, but to herself she answered, ‘Because you don’t know how to read. Except for a little Arabic, I’m the only one in this house who knows how to read.’
‘Your father told you in one of his letters that you should look after me, but you don’t do it. You haven’t written him that!’
‘Yes, Grandmother. I did tell him that you had said I didn’t look after you properly.’
‘I don’t believe you.’
‘You can ask him when he comes back.’
The old woman sighed. ‘If God is willing,’ she murmured.
‘If God is willing,’ Ad’jibid’ji repeated, without much conviction.
‘Hé!’ Niakoro said irritably. ‘You were born only yesterday, and you think you can take care of me! I took care of your grandfather, your father, and your “little father”, too!’
Ad’jibid’ji could see where this discussion would lead. She jumped down from her perch on the wall, settled herself beside Niakoro on the steps, and began plucking away the little threads of silk-cotton that had lighted on her shoulder and her headcloth.
‘Grandmother,’ she said, ‘why do we say, in Bambara, M’bé sira ming – I drink tobacco? Ming means to swallow, but in Ouolof nane means to swallow water, but touhe means to inhale smoke; so there are two different words, like there are in French. Why doesn’t Bambara have two words, too?’
At first old Niakoro thought the question was senseless, but then she decided that it was impudent, and she said so sharply. This child upset her. Knowledge should not belong to children, but to their elders.
‘Have you asked your father that?’ she demanded.
‘No, I just thought about it yesterday. I asked Mother, but she doesn’t understand either Ouolof or French. She only speaks Bambara and her own family’s language, Foulah.’
‘And you, do you speak Ouolof?’ the old woman asked, in that language.
‘Just a little. You and petit père speak it better, but after all I am a Bambara, not an Ouolof.’
Niakoro’s jaw dropped in astonishment. ‘Where did you learn to speak Ouolof?’
‘Petit père taught me.’
‘Hé! You mean that you can understand everything I say to your father?’
Ad’jibid’ji laughed delightedly. ‘Of course!’
‘Well then, since you are such a little miss-know-it-all, tell me this – what is it that washes the water?’
‘Why, it’s the water, of course.’
‘No, my child, it may be true that water washes everything else, but the water must itself be washed.’
‘Grandmother, that is impossible.’
‘No, child, it is not. The water is washed.’
‘Then it must be water that washes the water.’
‘N’té, n’té,’ the old woman said, shaking her head.
‘I will find out then,’ Ad’jibid’ji said stubbornly. ‘I will find out, and I will tell you.’ Mechanically, her mind occupied with this new problem, she began arranging her father’s pipes.
In this manner, sometimes explaining things to each other and sometimes arguing, Niakoro and Ad’jibid’ji passed the first three days after the women left the house. Mamadou Keïta remained behind the closed door of his room, lost in his meditations.
On the morning of the fourth day, Ad’jibid’ji, scarcely awake and still stretched naked on her bed, heard an angry knocking which seemed to shake the entire house. She leaped up and went out of the room, pausing in front of her grandmother’s door.
‘They have been knocking for quite a while,’ Niakoro said. ‘It must be your mother and the others coming back. Providence has been good to them. I will be there in a minute.’
In the meantime the knocking had become even louder. Ad’jibid’ji lifted the bar which secured the iron panel of the gate and found herself confronted by a policeman and three militiamen. She had been trying to shield her eyes from the glare of the sun, and before she realized what was happening they had pushed her aside and forced their way into the courtyard.
‘Where is Mamadou Keïta?’ one of the militiamen demanded angrily.
‘Ask her quietly,’ the policeman said.
Ad’jibid’ji had recovered her wits. ‘I don’t know where he is,’ she said in French, before the interpreter had had a chance to open his mouth.
‘Oh, so you speak French! Well then, child, tell us where the Old One is.’
Ad’jibid’ji was suddenly conscious of her nakedness and lowered her eyes. When she raised them again to look at the policeman, they held a flicker of hatred.
‘I don’t know where Grandfather is,’ she repeated.
‘Would you like some candy?’
‘It’s too early for that – and policemen don’t usually walk around with pockets full of candy!’
At this moment Niakoro called out, ‘Ad’jibid’ji, who are you talking to?’
‘Some militiamen, Grandmother. They are looking for Fa Keïta.’
Niakoro came out to the door of her room. ‘Sons of dogs!’ she muttered. But the policeman had given his men an order to search the house, and the three militiamen simply knocked the old woman out of their way. She fell heavily to the floor, and Ad’jibid’ji ran to her side, trying to help her up.
‘Miserable dogs!’ Niakoro raged. ‘Have you no shame?’
The policeman, one hand resting on the holster of his revolver, his legs spread wide, barred the door while the others searched. In just a few moments they reappeared, dragging Fa Keïta. He was wearing only a waistcloth, and his arms were held behind him, apparently causing pain in his back and shoulders, since he was moaning feebly, but he made no attempt to struggle. He opened his mouth to speak to Niakoro, but one of the militiamen slapped him hard across the back of the neck.
‘Be silent!’ he ordered.
Old Niakoro hurled herself at the man, but a violent blow of his elbow directly over her heart left her stunned and breathless. She fell back against the wall, gasping, her eyes opened wide in terror. Ad’jibid’ji then threw herself at the policeman, her little hands stretched out like a cat’s, ready to scratch, but before she had moved more than a few steps his heavy boot caught her in the pit of the stomach. She turned slowly around, clutching at her middle, doubled over with pain, and fell at her grandmother’s feet. Mamadou Keïta tried to free himself to help them, but he was rapidly subdued and carried off. There remained in the gloomy corridor only the prostrate figure of Ad’jibid’ji and the old body of Niakoro, still held up by the wall, but sliding gently to the ground, like an emptying balloon. When at last she fell, the light of morning from the open door lay coldly across the wrinkled, half-lifeless face.
She was groaning, ‘Ad’jibid’ji, Ad’jibid’ji,’ but it was no more than a breath, a sighing of the wind in the leaves.
The child was lying on the hard ground, with her legs bent up beneath her. Niakoro tried to reach the motionless form with her hand, but she no longer had sufficient strength.
‘Ad’jibid’ji … Ad’jibid’ji …’
Finally the sound of her voice spanned the gap of consciousness and reached the ears of the little girl. In spite of the pain in her back and the fiery girdle which seemed to circle her waist, she tried to pull herself up.
‘Grandmother,’ she whispered, ‘are you dead, Grandmother?’
‘No, no, I am not dead … but try to find someone to help …’
Niakoro knew that her end was approaching rapidly. A final spasm of pain racked her body. ‘Ad’jibid’ji … go look for someone …’
‘I can’t get up, Grandmother … I can’t walk …’ She managed to push herself up on one elbow and lifted her eyes, wide and frightened as those of a wounded doe. When she saw the old woman’s face she said, ‘They have killed her. The dogs have killed her …’
‘Ad’jibid’ji … Ad’jibid’ji!’ Niakoro said again, and this time it was a cry of anguish. Beneath the faded cloth, the old legs grew suddenly rigid, and her forehead cracked against the beaten earth.
*
Returning from the river, where he had been bathing, Tiémoko was thinking about the letter he had written to Bakayoko. He had told him about the recent developments, but he could not tell him about his own disquiet. Since the trial he had remained almost constantly alone, prey to a disagreeable sense of constraint, almost of anguish. No one had attempted to return to work since Diara had been accused and judged, so in that sense he had achieved the goal for which he was fighting, but he knew that this was not enough. His physical strength and his brutal manner of dealing with the renegades had served him well in the past, but for the future he must read, study, and educate himself. The knowledge of his own ignorance gave him no rest, and for four days now he had closed himself up at home, surrounded by piles of books, while his wife, like all the wives of the strikers, roamed the countryside in search of food.
He stopped by the union office and found Konaté and a handful of the other men.
‘Tié!’ Konaté said. ‘You are beginning to behave like the serpents, hiding away in the rocks some place, until you decide to come out and strike!’
Tiémoko shook hands with everyone, but made no reply.
‘In any case,’ Konaté went on, ‘your idea about Diara was successful – there have been no more strike-breakers. But Diara is ill. I went to see him last night.’
‘I’ll go and see him later, but I have to go to Bakayoko’s first.’
‘Have you heard the news?’
‘What news?’
‘You can tell Fa Keïta that the management has agreed to a meeting for negotiations, and we must begin preparing for a return to work.’
Almost without realizing what he was doing, Tiémoko began to draw up a plan of action and outline it for the others. ‘At least half of the workers have left the city and gone out looking for food,’ he said. ‘We’ll have to get them together again quickly. All the rest of you, start right now; go to all the houses in Bamako and send the children to look for their fathers. I’ll go to see the Old One.’
He left immediately, and as he walked he tried to think of what he would say to Fa Keïta. With the others he could bluff his way through, but he knew that these tactics would have no chance of success with the old man. Since the beginning of the strike he had thought of him almost as a personal opponent, and during Diara’s trial he had been unable to rid himself of the consciousness of how widely their views were separated.
The door of the Bakayoko house was open, and as soon as he went in he saw the two bodies stretched on the ground.
‘Assitan! Assitan!’ he called, and when no one answered he cried out, ‘Fa Keïta! Fa Keïta!’
Two or three frightened children followed him in from the courtyard and, seeing the bodies, began crying loudly. Stepping over Ad’jibid’ji, Tiémoko opened the door at the end of the corridor and ran through the rest of the house, calling for Fa Keïta and Assitan. When he was sure that no one was there, he went back to the courtyard.
‘Go to the union hall,’ he shouted to the children, ‘and tell Konaté to come here at once!’ Then he bent over and lifted the bird-like weight of Niakoro’s body in his giant arms.
A quarter of an hour later the house resembled an ant hill crushed beneath a careless heel. In little compact groups people came and went through the doors and moved from one room to another. An old crippled woman told Tiémoko that the women of the household had departed some days before, but no one knew anything of the whereabouts of Fa Keïta. Two of the neighbors had carried Ad’jibid’ji to her bed and were gently massaging her bruised body. The child wept and moaned and called constantly for her father, but she had not yet been able to tell them what had happened.
At about noon the women returned from Goumé, and, as soon as they saw the crowd of people in the courtyard and recognized the anger and fear on their faces, they knew that misfortune had descended on the house. With Assitan and Fatoumata in the lead, they dropped their baskets and jugs at the gate and ran down the corridor to the central room, where the old women who had been her neighbors had already taken up their death watch around the body of Niakoro.
Fatoumata uttered a shriek which seemed to mount to the heavens and fell backward as if she had been struck by a hammer. She pounded her head against the ground and her body writhed convulsively, but her wailings went on. From the courtyard and from all the other rooms of the house the voices of the other women were heard, lifted in ritual lamentation.
In the meantime, Ad’jibid’ji had recovered consciousness sufficiently to tell her mother about the circumstances of her grandmother’s death and the arrest of Mamadou Keïta. Cries of rage from the men and the cursing of women calling down the wrath of heaven on the authors of this outrage mingled then with the tears for the dead.
Old Niakoro was buried that same afternoon, with the men accompanying her body, and the women, as ancient Bambara custom decreed, remaining at home to observe the rituals of lament.
After the burial ceremonies, the strikers returned to the union office to await news of the preliminary negotiations with the company. Very late in the evening a telegram arrived from Dakar: ‘Uncle refuses. Treatment must continue.’
On the following morning there was a mass exodus from Bamako. Men, women, and children departed for the surrounding fields and the brush; the men because there was nothing for them to do in the city and they ran a constant risk of being rounded up by the police, the women in the hope of finding food in some of the nearby villages.
As the days passed, the union hall was silent and empty. A chalky dust powdered the benches, a window with a broken hinge slammed against the clay wall at every gust of wind, and lizards basked in the sun on the steps of the porch. Only Konaté and Tiémoko came by occasionally, and sometimes then, scarcely speaking to each other, they took long walks beside the river or around the station and the freight yards.
One day they decided to go to see Assitan, and when they arrived at the Bakayoko house they found that Fatoumata and the two other wives of Mamadou Keïta had entered on a period of forty days of mourning. The elders among the women of the neighborhood were keeping watch over their room to insure against any temptation to succumb to the weaknesses of flesh.
From behind a protective screen Fatoumata spoke to Tiémoko. ‘Tié! Don’t lie to us. You know as well as I that Fa Keïta is dead. The toubabs have taken him into the brush and killed him.’
‘No,’ Tiémoko said. ‘That is not true. He is in prison with the others. There is no reason for you to be in mourning. There are other men in the same place where Fa Keïta is, and their wives are not in mourning.’
‘But the elders have already purified us.’
‘This is stupid, Fatoumata,’ Tiémoko said angrily. ‘Who is going to feed your children? Everyone has gone out to the brush. We all sympathize with your grief, but you and the children still must eat.’
He was interrupted by one of the old guardians. ‘Mourning cannot be abandoned,’ she said sternly. ‘The time must be fulfilled.’
‘It is a sacrilege to speak like this to women afflicted,’ said another, and all of the old women began murmuring among themselves.
Tiémoko shrugged irritably and motioned to Konaté to follow him. ‘It’s idiotic!’ he said. ‘We’ll have to starve them to get them out of there. Let’s go and see Assitan. Maybe she can do something.’
They walked across the courtyard to where Assitan was kneeling in the shade of the drying room, crushing herbs for the evening meal in a little stone mortar. Beneath the handkerchief knotted around her head, beads of sweat stood out on her forehead.
By the ancient standards of Africa, Assitan was a perfect wife: docile, submissive, and hard-working, she never spoke one word louder than another. She knew nothing whatever of her husband’s activities, or, if she did, she gave no appearance of knowing. Nine years before, she had been married to the eldest of the Bakayoko sons. Her parents, of course, had arranged everything, without even consulting her. One night her father had told her that her husband was named Sadibou Bakayoko, and two months later she had been turned over to a man whom she had never before seen. The marriage had taken place with all of the ceremony required in a family of ancient lineage, but Assitan had lived only eleven months with her husband when he was killed in the first strike at Thiès. Three weeks later she had given birth to a daughter, and once again the old customs had taken control of her life; she had been married to the younger Bakayoko, Ibrahim. He, in turn, had adopted the baby and gave her her curious name, Ad’jibid’ji. Assitan continued to obey. With the child, and the child’s grandmother, Niakoro, she had left Thiès to follow her husband to Bamako. She was as submissive to Ibrahim as she had been to his brother. He might leave her for days at a time, he might even be absent for months, he faced dangers she knew nothing of, but that was his lot as a man, as the master. Her own lot as a woman was to accept things as they were and to remain silent, as she had been taught to do.
‘Hé, woman, what are you preparing for tonight?’ Tiémoko asked, with the easy familiarity of an old friend.
‘Hé, man, it is just what is left from yesterday. You will stay, of course?’
‘Whenever I see you at work I can see also that there is no danger that Bakayoko will ever take a second wife.’
‘Ah, man, I would ask for nothing better than to have a “rival”. At least I might be able to rest a little then … and, besides, I am getting old. Every time he goes away I wish that he might return with a second wife, someone younger …’ Assitan plunged both hands into the mortar, withdrew the greenish herb paste she had been mixing, and put it into a cooking vessel.
‘Assitan,’ Tiémoko said, ‘you must tell the other women to give up their mourning. Fa Keïta is not dead.’
‘I don’t know if there is anything that I can do. If my husband were here it would be different … but I am only a woman, and no one listens to women, particularly now.’
Assitan rose and walked over to the main house, and the two men followed her. Ad’jibid’ji was seated on the bed in the big central room, alone.
‘We never see you at the union hall any more, Ad’jibid’ji,’ Konaté said. ‘Are you on strike?’
‘I promised Grandfather not to go there again …’
‘It is a good thing to keep to your promises.’
‘… until petit père comes back.’
‘Ah,’ Konaté said, seating himself on the edge of the bed. ‘And how are you feeling?’
‘I’m much better now.’
‘Good. Remember that you are our soungoutou – our little daughter.’ Ad’jibid’ji was silent for a moment and then, speaking to her mother, she said suddenly, ‘Mother, what is it that washes the water?’
‘Washes the water? What put that idea in your head?’
‘It was Grandmother who asked me, and I promised to find out, so that I could tell her. Now I want to know for myself.’
‘For yourself?’ Her daughter never ceased to astonish Assitan. She shook her head and turned to the men. ‘Do you know the answer to that?’
‘I don’t,’ Tiémoko said.
‘I may have known once,’ Konaté said, ‘but I have forgotten.’
‘I’ll ask petit père, or Grandfather. Grandfather is not dead, is he?’
There was a silence in the room, and then Tiémoko said, ‘Woman, we must leave you now. It’s too bad that Fatoumata will not listen to reason. It just makes more work for you.’
‘That is the way of things. Pass the night in peace.’
When the two men had gone, Assitan sat down beside the child. ‘Ad’jibid’ji,’ she said, ‘you must not ask older people about things they do not know. It isn’t polite.’
‘But it was Grandmother who asked me, and Grandmother was an older person.’
‘But you must not ask visitors about it again.’
‘Very well, Mother.’ Ad’jibid’ji wiped away a tear, and Assitan looked at her in astonishment. Ad’jibid’ji never cried.
‘Come with me; we’ll go and prepare the evening meal. We have eaten nothing since yesterday.’
The child rose obediently and followed her mother out of the room.