The battle between the women and the policemen in the courtyard of N’Diayène was of short duration. Overcome by sheer weight of numbers, the police beat a hasty retreat, and after they had gone the crowd that had gathered in the compound also began to disperse. Some of the women, however, formed into little groups and began patrolling the streets of the neighborhood, armed with bottles filled with sand. Still caught up in the excitement of the fight, and a little drunk with victory, they accosted every man who appeared in their path.
‘Are you a soldier?’
‘Me? No!’
‘Are you from the police?’
‘Of course not!’
‘Well then, what are you doing here?’
And if the man’s reply was slow in coming, a dozen bottles would be brandished in front of his face, while the women shouted, laughed, and hurled insults at him.
Night had fallen, and Mame Sofi took advantage of the darkness to direct her group toward the house of El Hadji Mabigué. The general disorder that prevailed in the area delighted her, and she had an old grudge against Ramatoulaye’s mercenary brother. Two servants were on guard before the door of the house and barred the entrance to the women. ‘Mame Sofi,’ one of them said, ‘you have no right to force your way into other people’s homes. El Hadji is not here now – he is ill. This afternoon N’Deye Touti insulted his second wife, then Ramatoulaye cut the throat of his ram, and now you are here, looking for an argument. Are you all just trying to cause trouble?’
‘Listen to the slave talk!’ Mame Sofi cried. ‘Don’t you know that it’s because of his precious Vendredi that the slaves of the toubabs came and attacked us? Well, you can tell that old she-goat that Ramatoulaye is still safely at her house, and Vendredi is safely stowed away in the children’s bellies!’
The man tried to calm her and placed a hand on her shoulder. ‘Very well, I have heard, and I will tell him. But now, good wives, return to your homes in peace,’
‘Don’t touch me!’ Mame Sofi screamed, and then, turning to the women, ‘Come with me – we’ll see what’s in the kitchen!’
A heavy bottle hit the servant squarely in the forehead. He clasped his hands to his face and fell back against the wall, shouting for help, while the women raced through the courtyard and fanned out through the room on the ground floor of the house. Mame Sofi, paying no attention to three men who were seated on the steps praying, stationed herself in the middle of the courtyard.
‘Mabigué!’ she cried. ‘Come out! Come out if you are a man! You only have courage when you’re hiding behind the toubabs! You made them close down the fountains; now come out here and see if you are man enough to make me close my mouth!’
‘There is nothing here but some millet,’ a woman called from the kitchen.
‘That’s all right – take everything that can be eaten!’
*
In the meantime, Ramatoulaye, Bineta, Houdia M’Baye, and a half dozen other women who were too old or too exhausted from the battle with the police to join the groups in the streets gathered in the courtyard at N’Diayène.
‘The sons of dogs!’ one of them said, seating herself on the rim of the old mortar. ‘They tossed me around as if I were a sack of flour.’
‘They did the same thing to me, but I still can’t help laughing when I think of that one with the neck of a bottle sticking out of his mouth!’
‘And, Bineta, that Mame Sofi is really something! Your husband must have his hands full with her! Do you know what she did? When one of them fell down, she grabbed him by his you know what I mean … you could hear him yelling even with all the other noise. Then Mame Sofi said to me, “Piss in this pig’s mouth!” I tried, too, but I couldn’t do it – I was too embarrassed. I got out of there, but I had to knock Mame Sofi out of the way to do it. He got away after that, but I still have his cap!’
Proudly the woman held up a red military fez, and it was passed around like a trophy of war.
Ramatoulaye sat by herself, saying nothing. This vulgar gossiping irritated her, and although she was not in the habit of brooding over her thoughts or her actions the things she had done that day astonished her. The reasoning behind it all was still vague in her mind, and the unaccustomed effort of seeking for reasons tired her.
Without knowing really to whom she was speaking, she asked suddenly, ‘What about the children?’
‘They have eaten.’
‘And the baby, Strike?’
‘He’s sleeping – I took care of him.’
It was N’Deye Touti who answered. She came out of the main house and walked over to the circle of women clustered around the mortar like a gathering of witches in the darkness of the courtyard. She had taken no part in the fighting and disapproved strongly of what her aunt Ramatoulaye and the other women had done. She had learned at school about the workings of the law, and she had been taught that no one had the right to take the law in his own hands. And for N’Deye there was no questioning the truth of anything she learned at the school.
One of the women rose, pressing her hands against the aching muscles of her back. ‘I think I’ll go to bed,’ she said, ‘and dream of how those black policemen are going to remember what happened tonight.’
‘They’ll be back though …’
‘How do you know they will come back, N’Deye?’
‘I just know it.’
‘But how?’
‘Because …’
‘Because of what?’
‘Because you have no right to do what you did. When the policemen came, they wanted Ramatoulaye, and you attacked them while they were doing their duty. That’s an offense against the law.’
‘And what about Mabigué’s ram? Didn’t he commit an offense against the law?’
‘Yes, he did, and this wasn’t the first time he had done it, but you should have put in a complaint against him with the police. Now, after what you did today, they have two things against you – Mabigué’s complaint because you killed the ram, and the fact that you attacked the policeman. They’ll come back, all right, because the person who is responsible for all that is Ramatoulaye.’
‘Is what you say true?’
‘Yes, Aunt, it is true.’
Ramatoulaye remained silent for a moment. She could not argue with the words of N’Deye Touti, who had studied and learned at the great school, and she was disturbed. At last she got to her feet. ‘If they come back and want me, I will go with them. That will prevent any more trouble.’
‘You are mad, Ramatoulaye!’ Houdia M’Baye cried. ‘You will not go! Who knows if what N’Deye Touti says is true? To listen to her, anyone would think that she would be happy to see the police come back! Is this what they teach you at school, N’Deye – to turn your back on your own people?’
‘Don’t get so excited, Houdia,’ Ramatoulaye said. ‘The children have eaten, and that is the important thing. I can go down there, and perhaps if I explain to them they will understand …’
She was interrupted by the sound of footsteps at the main gate of the compound. It was Mame Sofi and the group of women with her, returning from their expedition.
‘Ramatoulaye,’ she said, ‘no one in this house is going to the police station. I heard what you said, and I heard what N’Deye Touti said. I don’t know how to read myself, and it is true that she is the only one here who can tell us what the white men write in their language, but I am sure it is not written in the mother of all books of the law that honest people should be deprived of water and starved and killed. And if you think that when you go down there they are going to reward you for it and say, “Here is a hundred pounds of rice, because your men are on strike”, then you are mistaken; and so is N’Deye Touti, in spite of all her learning.
‘But we have more important things to do than to stand around arguing. Here is what we brought back from El Hadji Mabigué’s. It’s only millet, but it will help.’
The women who accompanied her set the jugs and gourds they were carrying on the ground; and Mame Sofi had begun distributing the millet when a terrified voice was heard, calling to them from the street. ‘Ramatoulaye! Mame Sofi! There are spahis coming!’
‘Well,’ Mame Sofi said calmly, ‘we’ll give them the same kind of reception we gave the policemen!’
‘Are you crazy?’ Bineta said. ‘How are you going to fight against men on horses?’
‘Don’t worry, I have an idea. Horses are afraid of fire, aren’t they? All of you run and get some live coals and embers from your houses. Carry them in anything you can, but we’ll have to have them – there isn’t a match left here. We’ll need some straw, too. Now hurry!’
In less than a minute the women had spread out through the cabins in the courtyard and into the neighboring houses. Ramatoulaye herself, forgetting her earlier doubts, reappeared shortly carrying an armload of straw.
‘Now go out,’ Mame Sofi ordered, ‘and line up on both sides of the street. Don’t light any of the straw yet – wait until I give the signal.’
In the blackness of the night a file of slightly blacker forms slipped out of the courtyard and took up their positions beside the fences and the mud walls of the houses. The sound of hoofs on the hard-packed ground of the street, and the metallic jingle of bridles and stirrups, could be heard clearly now. It was a platoon of horse soldiers, coming to reinforce the police. No one had told the white sergeant who led them that the police had been routed a long time before.
From the moment they turned the corner in front of Mabigué’s house and started down the long alley that led to the compound of N’Diayène, the men of the platoon were forced to hold their horses to a walk. They leaned forward in their saddles, trying to see through the darkness, surprised and uneasy at glimpsing here and there a little pinkish glow or the sudden flash of a spark. When the whole length of the column was between the double row of women, Mame Sofi shouted, ‘All right! Now!’
In an instant there was pandemonium. Sheaves of flaming straw and pots of coals were flung at the horsemen from every corner of the darkness, while the women shouted at the top of their lungs and beat on tins, trying to frighten the horses with the noise. The animals reared and plunged, whinnying frantically, and the men swore. The spahis were veterans of a thousand parades, but they could do nothing to control their horses now. A fiery bundle of straw struck one of them full in the face and chest and he screamed in terror, trying to tear off his heavy jacket, which had already begun to bum. The men clung desperately to the necks of their terrified mounts, trying to calm them. One, then two fell to the ground and were instantly seized on by a dozen hands. The women had been joined by men from the nearby streets, and two of these succeeded in cornering one of the spahis against a fence, and a woman thrust a torch between the legs of his horse. The soldier managed to draw his sword. The blade flashed wickedly in the light of the flames, and a shout of ‘He has killed me!’ could be heard above the din, but no one paid any attention. Mame Sofi and her group of women had pulled the leader of the platoon from his horse, and when they had him on the ground they dragged him by his boots to a little ditch where the people of the neighborhood relieved themselves at night and thrust his head in the accumulated filth.
It was at approximately this same moment that a frightened voice cried, ‘Fire! Fire!’
Some of the flaming sheaves must have fallen too close to one of the wooden hovels across the street from N’Diayène, and the greedy fire had found a willing victim. A pall of foul-smelling smoke spread rapidly over the scene, and flames began to leap up everywhere, wrapping the straw huts in crimson arms. One after another the wooden cabins and the mud-walled houses went up like hayracks. Blinded by the smoke, and burned by flying sparks and balls of fire, the terrified rioters ran off in all directions, trying to escape from the inferno, which was gaining ground with every second that passed.
Voices could be heard calling, ‘Water! Bring some water!’ but most of the crowd seemed to have been struck dumb as soon as they reached a place of safety and simply stared at the spectacle, fascinated. In the dancing light of the flames, their faces looked like the masks of witch doctors.
The sheets of tarpaper and the oil-soaked timbers from the railway yards burned like match sticks; the white-hot zinc of the roofs and the flattened tin cans that had been used for fences gave off a wave of heat that made the bravest and the most curious recoil. The rumor spread that a woman whose clothes were in flames had been seen to vanish into a courtyard surrounded by fire. There was no water in the neighboring districts, and the nearest street fountains were still closed.
‘Sand!’ someone shouted. ‘Get some sand!’
Men brought out shovels and wheelbarrows of sand, but they were just laughable toys. The conflagration went joyously on, devouring hovel after hovel and fence after fence, rumbling and leaping with pleasure. It had reached Mabigué’s house, and was beginning to mix the greens and ochers of the painted walls with its own reds and yellows, when the firemen, whose barracks were on the other side of the European quarter, arrived at last. The hoses were unstrung and put to work, but with only two water trucks there was little they could do. A few yards from the steaming skeleton of a gutted house the fire licked at another roof and started off again with renewed vigor.
At last, directed by the firemen, all of the men took up axes and picks and began to cut down whole rows of houses surrounding an entire section of the miserable buildings that formed the district. Within the vast trench they cut out, the fire was left to rage. Just before dawn, having devoured every stick of wood and scrap of cloth within its reach, it died of starvation. A thick cloud of oily smoke rose from the ashes and the charred debris.
*
Mame Sofi and Ramatoulaye returned to N’Diayène with the first light of the sun. They were weeping, coughing, and overcome by spasms of nausea. By some miracle, the wind had carried the flames away from the house, and the entire compound had been spared.
They found N’Deye Touti sitting on the bed in the central room, cradling Strike in her arms. Beaugosse, his face almost unrecognizable beneath a film of ashes, was sleeping on a strip of matting at her feet. Dazed and exhausted after hours of fighting the fire, he had come to N’Diayène to rest.
Some of the other women came into the room, and one of them lifted the cover of the big water jar. ‘There is none,’ Ramatoulaye said, and at the same moment three of the men came in: Alioune, Mame Sofi and Bineta’s husband, Deune, and the squint-eyed Idrissa. Their eyes were red with fatigue, and their clothing was in shreds.
Alioune went over to Beaugosse and grasped him by the shoulder. ‘Get up,’ he said, ‘I must talk to you.’
The young man sat up and rubbed his eyes with filthy hands. ‘Well, at least give me a little water so I can clean up,’ he said wearily.
‘There is no water,’ Ramatoulaye repeated. We couldn’t even bathe the dead.’
‘Beaugosse, you have to go to Thiès, right away. There is to be a meeting with the management down there, and we have to send a delegate. I can’t possibly go now, so I am sending you in my place. Come to the union office with me, and I’ll give you some money for the trip. You’ll have to take the first bus.’
As the men started toward the door, Ramatoulaye left the group of women and came over to speak to them. ‘Alioune, something has got to be done. If today is anything like yesterday, it will be the end of all of us. You must tell them, Alioune, that the women can do no more. You are not strong enough for this thing. We haven’t given up the fight, but it is no dishonor to be conquered when the enemy is stronger. Look at that baby Strike – no one has any more milk for him. We have no more rice, and even if we did we have no water to cook it in.’
‘Be patient, woman, for just a little longer. There is a meeting with the management at Thiès tomorrow, and after that everything will be normal again, and … well, we can try to forget …’
After the four men had left, N’Deye Touti decided to go out herself. She was sure that the policemen would come back soon, and she had no wish to be present at still another battle. Her feet carried her, almost automatically, to the burned-out area across from N’Diayène, and she found that she was walking in a black dust littered with charred and shapeless refuse. N’Deye Touti had grown up in this very spot; she had played in these tortuous alleyways, these vermin-ridden courtyards and gloomy cabins. The memory was as sharp as the pain of an open wound, and she was almost ready to bless the fire which had destroyed the witnesses to her childhood and her shame. She had a vision of houses painted in clear, fresh colors, of gardens filled with flowers, and children in European clothes playing in tidy courtyards.
But what she saw around her was something else again. Men and women were already prowling busily through the ruins. Stakes had been set out here and there, marking the limits of what had been a house or a court, and boxes and trunks and empty cans were piled everywhere. In the midst of clouds of black dust, the women and the men were sweeping and digging at the wreckage, pulling out an old kettle or the framework of a bed, while naked children whose skin was the same color as the ashes ran about as if it were a holiday.
N’Deye Touti turned away from the scene and tried to conjure up another, happier vision. Titles of books and names unrolled before her eyes and stopped for a moment at that of Bakayoko. She was curiously drawn to this hard man who seemed sometimes to live in another world, but who was he, after all? A workman. Was she to be the wife of a workman, a workman who was no longer young? What, then, was the purpose of having gone to school? A lawyer, or a doctor perhaps, and love – a love that would carry her far from this cemetery of the living, far away, to the other side of the European quarter, where there were pleasant villas surrounded by gardens, not huts of wood and zinc shut up behind rotting fences or meager hedges of bamboo stalks.
Suddenly N’Deye Touti stopped, disconcerted. Just a few paces from her, three white men were standing with their backs to her, talking animatedly, and she recognized them at once. There was the director of the public health services, an officer of the native constabulary, and the chief of police of the district – the same man whose troops had fled before the bottles of Mame Sofi and her band of harpies. They had climbed up on a little hillock to get a better view of the area, where their men were working with the victims of the disaster. N’Deye Touti hesitated for a moment. She would have liked to go over and speak to them, to show them that she understood their language, but she was much too timid. She moved into the shelter of a section of wall and listened.
‘It will be finished by tonight,’ the public health man was saying. ‘They can sleep in their own holes. It wasn’t as bad as the last one. I don’t even think there was anyone killed.’
‘Yes, one,’ the chief of police said.
‘Well, it’s their own fault,’ the officer said. ‘They started the fire themselves when they attacked the troops with those torches. Why doesn’t the public health service move them all out of the city and settle them in the outskirts, the way they do in South Africa and the Belgian Congo?’
‘There was a plan for something like that, but it would take time, money, and patience. They’re as proud as the devil, you know – and, after all, we’re not in South Africa.’
‘They’re nothing but savages,’ the officer said. ‘Good God! Look at the woman over there! Look what she’s doing – in plain view of everybody! Savages! We ought to arrest her and slap a fine on her, just as an example to the others.’
‘And what would she use to pay the fine?’
N’Deye Touti’s eyes had followed the officer’s gesture. Not more than a dozen yards from where she stood, a woman was squatting on the ground, with her skirt drawn up around her buttocks. This lack of modesty in front of white men seemed like another wound to the girl’s pride, and she felt ashamed and ill, but suddenly her attention was caught by the sound of a familiar name.
It was the chief of police who was speaking. ‘Well, I’ll leave you now,’ he said. ‘I have to go and arrest this Ramatoulaye.’
‘You’re going to pick her up?’ the public health man asked. ‘I wouldn’t advise it. I’ve known this district for ten years, and if you push the women around too much there’s liable to be trouble. I don’t think they know very much about the strike, but if they get involved in it and join forces with the strikers God knows where it will end.’
‘Shit! I know all that as well as you, but I have a complaint against her, and on top of that there was the riot. I have to go. You come with me, captain – my men are probably already there.’
As the three men came down from their vantage point they saw N’Deye Touti, who had been too startled to move.
‘What the devil are you doing there?’ the chief of police demanded. Even if the girl couldn’t understand him, she would know what he meant from his tone of voice. ‘Go on, get out of here!’
N’Deye was so humiliated and frightened she could think of nothing to say, but she could still hear the white men talking as they walked away.
‘Did you see those eyes?’ the officer said. ‘And those breasts? A real little filly — just the way I like them!’
‘Bah! Tell one of your men to find out where she comes from, and send her a couple of pounds of rice. Right now they’ll go to bed with you for less than that.’ It was the chief of police who had spoken. He turned around and, seeing that N’Deye Touti had not budged, he shouted, ‘Are you still there? Do you want my boot up your ass?’
Tears of rage and shame flooded the girl’s eyes. She had a feeling that the earth was trembling beneath her feet, and she was forced to lean against the wall for support. She heard the public health inspector say, ‘I’ll let you go on alone from here. I’m not about to have a bunch of wild women throwing stones at me!’ Then she turned and ran, not even seeing where she was going.
Once again Mame Sofi had assembled all of the neighbors before the gate of N’Diayène. She had realized that N’Deye Touti was not mistaken as soon as she saw the policemen forming a cordon around the compound. This time they were supported by constabulary troops, and their ranks stretched far back down the street. She hurled an insult at the interpreter who was walking toward the group of women, and the man stopped and said uneasily, ‘We’ve come for Ramatoulaye.’
‘You didn’t have enough yesterday?’ Mame Sofi shouted. ‘You want to taste the bottle again?’
The man stepped hastily backward and almost collided with the chief of police and the constabulary officer, who had just arrived. The chief of police took him by the arm and stepped forward with him.
‘Tell them that we don’t mean her any harm – we just want her to sign a paper and after that she will be free.’
The interpreter translated this, adding some comments of his own to the effect that Ramatoulaye would be treated with all the respect due to a person of her age, but the announcement was greeted with jeers and laughter from the crowd of women. The man turned back to the chief of police.
‘There is nothing to do,’ he said, glancing about for a possible escape route. ‘They say they won’t let us in. They are going to kill us all.’
It was as he was saying this that N’Deye Touti came back and joined the other women at the gate of her home. To anyone who knew how careful she was of her appearance, she was a strange sight. Her normally well-combed and braided hair was in wild disorder, her eyes glittered angrily, and her clothing was disarranged and covered with dust.
‘Ah, there you are at last,’ Mame Sofi said. ‘Well, tell these toubabs that we are not going to let them take Ramatoulaye. We’ll die here if we have to, but she is not going to the police! If they want to talk to her, they can bring their whole station house down here.’
Still breathless from running, the girl translated what Mame Sofi had said. The chief of police stared at her in astonishment.
‘I didn’t know you spoke French,’ he stammered.
‘Ha! A little while ago that one said that I was a real little filly – just the way he liked them – and you told him he could sleep with me for a handful of rice! What about your women? They’ll sleep with the zouaves for nothing!’
‘What? What?’ The chief of police was finding it hard to believe his ears.
N’Deye Touti, still caught up in the first flush of her anger, told the other women the story of her meeting with the three white men in the middle of the burned-out district, and the effect of her words could be seen immediately on the drawn and hungry faces around her. This time the women had gathered together everything they could find in the area that might serve as a weapon, and now their fists clenched around the handles of wrenches and knives as well as the necks of the inevitable bottles. For a moment it seemed that the battle might start again then and there, but suddenly there was a sound of voices at the rear and the crowd began to part, reluctantly making a path for Ramatoulaye. She was followed by Houdia M’Baye, who was carrying Strike in her arms. The child Anta was clinging to her mother’s skirt.
‘We must have no more of this,’ Ramatoulaye said. ‘Since yesterday we have been tossed about like grain in a winnow, and we cannot let it start again. There have been people killed, and there has been a terrible fire, and we have gained nothing from it – not even a few crumbs to eat. I will go with them. I heard what he said …’ She motioned to the interpreter. ‘They just want me to sign a paper, and that is not hard. I’ll take N’Deye Touti with me, and she can tell me what is written on the paper. In that way we can have peace again. I don’t want to see widows and orphans and mourning brought to the homes of my neighbors, just because of me. It would not be right.’
Then, addressing the chief of police, she said in her halting French, ‘All right, white gentleman … we go.’ She walked over to stand beside him, followed by N’Deye Touti.
‘Anta,’ Houdia M’Baye said. ‘Take care of your brother. I am going with her.’
‘So am I! So will all of us – we’ll all go with her!’ Mame Sofi cried. ‘We can’t believe what they tell us – we’ll go with her and make sure!’
And so a curious kind of parade began to form. At its head were the two representatives of the authorities, one on either side of Ramatoulaye; behind them came N’Deye Touti, her fists still clenched with anger, and Houdia M’Baye, who had difficulty walking, as she had been badly bruised in the battle the night before; and behind them, flanked by lines of policemen and soldiers, came the long procession of women. At every corner along the way, new groups fell into line, swelling their ranks.
It took almost twenty minutes to reach the police station of the district. At the door, the constabulary officer gave some orders and the soldiers formed a guard around the building. He watched them for a moment to be sure his instructions were carried out, and then he and the chief of police walked up the staircase with the two women and the interpreter.
In the office of the chief of police, the two officials took their places behind the desk, and N’Deye Touti sat down on a bench beside the interpreter, but Ramatoulaye refused to be seated and remained standing defiantly in the middle of the room. The chief of police put one hand to his chin and began massaging the skin of his jawline reflectively. This was a nasty business. It was all very well for this hotheaded young soldier to announce what he would do if he were in the chief’s place, but if the thing got out of hand he wouldn’t be the one who had to pay for it! If he were to lock up the old woman now, it might touch off a riot that would run through the whole district. But if he were just to release her, it would be an admission of weakness that could cause other disorders. The chief of police lit a cigarette and waved his hand through the little cloud of blue smoke.
‘How long have you been going to the school, mademoiselle?’ he said, speaking to N’Deye Touti, and when she didn’t answer immediately, he went on, ‘I want you to understand one thing. It is your mother, or your aunt, whichever she is, who is responsible for what has happened. She is the one who killed Mabigué’s ram, she is the one who prevented the law from being carried out, and she is the one who incited the women to riot.’
N’Deye Touti’s thoughts were still on the shameful incident of the morning, and she made no reply. The chief of police grew angry. ‘If you have nothing to say, mademoiselle, get out of here! I have an interpreter and don’t need you.’
‘What is he saying?’ Ramatoulaye asked.
‘He wants me to leave, but I’m afraid if I do they’ll take you out by some other way.’
Ramatoulaye looked around the room. ‘There isn’t any other door,’ she said.
The interpreter leaned over to N’Deye Touti. ‘Go ahead and leave, my sister,’ he said. ‘I swear that I will tell you everything they say.’
Reluctantly the girl left the room and stood by a window in the lobby outside, looking out at the mass of people gathered in the square in front of the police station. The women were seated all along the sidewalks, and even in the square itself, holding up traffic and jibing at the soldiers on guard, mixing insults and vulgarities and laughing among themselves.
Houdia M’Baye saw N’Deye Touti at the window and called out to her. ‘Where is she? What’s happening?’
‘They told me to leave. I don’t know – I’m afraid they’ll take her out by some other door and take her to prison.’
‘Do you hear that?’ It was Mame Sofi’s piercing voice again. ‘The toubabs are trying to trick us again! They’re going to sneak Ramatoulaye out the back and put her in prison! Come on, get up, all of you! We’ll surround the building!’
In the midst of a babel of voices and waving of arms and fists the women surged forward, pushing the soldiers out of their way and forming a vast circle around the police station. No one knew exactly what was going on, and questions and answers flew back and forth: ‘Where are we going? – Have they taken the woman out? – No, she’s still inside, but the toubabs are planning to take her out the back way – Ah, those stinking toubabs! – Are you coming with us? – Sure, that’s why I came down here! – Do you know this Ramatoulaye? – No, I’ve never even seen her, but if there are this many women here just because of her, she must be someone…’
Houdia M’Baye came as close as she could to the building and called out again to N’Deye Touti, who was watching and listening to the spectacle, though her thoughts were still far away.
‘You had better go back and see what’s happening!’
The girl went back to the door of the office, and the two policemen on guard there, having seen her go in earlier with their chief, allowed her to pass.
Nothing seemed to have changed inside the office except that the chief of police and the constabulary officer had left their chairs behind the desk and were standing by a window, talking in lowered voices. Ramatoulaye still stood in the middle of the room, and the interpreter was still sitting motionless on the bench.
‘Have they gone?’ Ramatoulaye asked.
‘No, they are all around the building now. What have they been saying, brother?’
The interpreter motioned to the girl to sit down beside him and whispered in her ear. ‘He called for the firemen, to use their hoses on the women, and then he telephoned the Imam. He is coming over here right away.’
‘The pigs!’ N’Deye Touti cried, not realizing that she was speaking French.
The chief of police heard her and turned quickly back to the room. ‘What did you say?’ he demanded.
‘The firemen! To turn their hoses on people! No wonder you wanted me to go out! I’m going to warn them …’
The chief of police came around his big desk, almost running, and seized her by the arm. ‘You’re going to stay right where you are!’
Ramatoulaye hurled herself at him angrily, trying to free N’Deye Touti. ‘I don’t understand,’ she shouted. ‘I can’t understand what you’re saying, but let the child alone. You wanted me, and here I am, but let her alone or I’ll go home myself!’
The constabulary officer dragged her away and at last the two white men succeeded in pushing the old woman and the girl onto the bench beside the terrified interpreter.
‘Now,’ the officer thundered, ‘the first person who moves will have to reckon with me!’
*
In the square outside, the sirens could be heard long before the two water trucks from the fire department arrived and pulled up, with a violent screaming of brakes, midway between the police building and the ranks of the women. The firemen leaped to their tasks, and in a matter of seconds the hoses were unrolled, the nozzles screwed on, and two enormous jets of water sprayed over the crowd.
‘Stay where you are!’ Mame Sofi screamed. ‘There is no water for fires, but there’s plenty for us! Just stay sitting down and it can’t hurt you!’
But in spite of her words the wet and frightened women in the first rows began trying to crawl away, slipping and falling in the streaming gutters. In a few minutes only Mame Sofi and Houdia M’Baye were left, and the hoses were turned directly on them. After receiving the initial shock full in the chest and almost being knocked over, Mame Sofi leaned far forward, putting her head between her knees and grasping her ankles with her hands, so that only her shoulders and the top of her skull were exposed to the spray. Houdia M’Baye, however, did not have the same presence of mind, and the powerful jet struck her squarely in the face, knocking her head back like a blow from a giant’s fist. She opened her mouth to cry out, but no sound came forth, and the pitiful little snapping of the cartilage in her neck was lost in the roar of the hoses. For an instant she beat at the air with her arms, as drowning people do, then her hands seized convulsively at her blouse, tearing it open, and she fell on her side, her shriveled breasts drooping out from her body like gourds left too long in the sun.
The crowd had reassembled a few yards away, and when Houdia M’Baye fell the first ranks surged forward again. The powerful jets held them back for a minute or two, but the massed pressure of hundreds of bodies was stronger than any pumps, and they burst out of the clouds of water and raced across the square. The firemen fled in panic, while the policemen and soldiers, not daring to use their weapons, were pushed back against the walls of the police station and the neighboring houses.
Bineta and Mame Sofi knelt down beside Houdia M’Baye, staring in horror at the clay-colored face. Water still streamed down the cheeks, and a semblance of a smile contracted the lips above the naked gums.
‘She is dead,’ Bineta said.
Mame Sofi drew the soaking cloth over the wrinkled belly and thighs and stood up. ‘We’ll need a wagon,’ she said hoarsely. ‘Someone go get a wagon.’
A handful of men left the crowd in the square and came back a few minutes later with an old cart, on which they placed the body of Houdia M’Baye. As if the suddenness of death had calmed their anger, the women just stood where they were or gathered in little whispering groups. No one knew what to do next. Just five minutes before, all these arms and hands, united in a single force, had seized and overturned the water trucks, but now they seemed lost and helpless. The trucks lay on their sides in the middle of a little swamp, and the abandoned hoses still spurted little rivulets of water.
It was in the midst of this scene of silence and indecision that the Imam – the Sérigne N’Dakarou, they called him – made his appearance. His portly body was draped in a flowing white tunic, with a row of decorations across his chest, and his already imposing height was accented by an elaborate turban. He was an impressive figure, and the crowd parted automatically to make way for him. El Hadji Mabigué, also wearing a turban and a row of medals, was with him, and two of his followers walked behind them. He moved across the square with a stately, pontifical tread, his hands clasped behind his back under the tunic. When he came to the cart bearing Houdia M’Baye’s body, he stopped and lifted one hand, with the index and second fingers extended.
‘This is your work, women!’ he said. ‘You burn the homes of innocent people, and you obstruct the law – you are behaving like infidels! It is you who are responsible for the death of this mother, and you will answer for it before the Almighty. You are shameless and without pride in yourselves! What has happened, to make you abandon your homes and your children and roam the streets like this?’
In spite of the fact that the Imam’s voice was cracked with age, it retained sufficient authority to impose silence on the crowd, and the men and women in the first rows lowered their heads. He glanced around him briefly, shaking his head in stern disapproval.
‘I am going to see Ramatoulaye, and the white men, too, thank God. If I had not intervened for you, they would have put you all in prison. El Hadji Mabigué has withdrawn his complaint, at my request; now it is up to you to be reasonable. When I come out of this building I want you to be gone from here; and if you are not, there will be nothing further I can do.
‘It is time you understood that your husbands are just the instruments of a band of infidels who are using them for their own purposes. It is the Communists who are really directing this strike, and if you knew and understood the things that happen in their country you would pray to God that he might forgive them. They speak to you of famine, but in their own country there is constant famine. Their laws are the laws of heretics who permit a brother to sleep with his sister – tell your husbands that.
‘God has decided that we should live side by side with the French toubabs, and the French are teaching us things we have not known and showing us how to make the things we need. It is not up to us to rebel against the will of God, even when the reasons for that will are a mystery to us. It is always possible to fall into error, but I have done my best to help you with my little knowledge, and I tell you now to go back to your homes. I will tell the chief of police, as I have already told the mayor, that this will be the end of it. May the Almighty and His Prophet protect and keep you.’
With these words the Imam turned his back on them and walked slowly up the steps to the police station. The door had scarcely closed behind him when Mame Sofi broke the embarrassed silence which had fallen on the crowd.
‘It isn’t true!’ she said. ‘We’re not the ones who killed Houdia M’Baye. I’m going to stay right here and wait for Ramatoulaye. Stay with me – all of you!’
She seized the bridle of the old horse that had been harnessed to the cart and forced the animal back until they stood directly in front of the door, facing the policemen and soldiers, who had reformed their ranks while the Imam was speaking.
*
When the guard knocked on the door of the office, the chief of police and the constabulary officer glanced at each other in relief, and they both called, ‘Come in,’ at the same time.
Followed by El Hadji Mabigué and his two attendants, the Imam came into the room at the same slow and dignified pace he had used to cross the square. ‘Assalamou aleïkoum,’ he said, and then, holding out his hand to the two white men, he added in French, ‘Good morning, gentlemen.’
‘Ismaïla, draw up the chairs,’ the chief of police ordered.
The Imam sat down. ‘Ramatoulaye, sit down, too. I want to speak to you.’ And since Ramatoulaye remained standing, her gaze fixed on the figure of her brother, he went on irritably. ‘Woman, you are pigheaded and stubborn, and it is going to get you into trouble. You have drawn the anger of the toubabs down on you, which causes trouble for all of us, and you have even involved me and my position. You know that I was a friend of your father’s, and that I am a friend of your brother. You come from a noble and honorable family – I have told the mayor that – but your conduct is unworthy of an honorable woman.’ He had been speaking in Ouolof and switched abruptly to French, addressing the chief of police. ‘She is not really wicked, but just a little simple-minded. Her brother has withdrawn his complaint, and I have had a talk with the mayor about it. The people who are really responsible for all this are the Communists who are behind the strike – white men, so I am told. You should do everything you can to hunt them out. For my part, I plan to preach a sermon on the subject to the entire community next Friday.’
The chief of police leaned back in his chair. ‘If the complaint has been withdrawn, she is free to go,’ he said.
‘Not so quickly. I still want to teach her a lesson and make her ask her brother’s pardon; so pretend that you are not satisfied yet. That will frighten her.’
The Imam turned back to Ramatoulaye and said in Ouolof, ‘The chief of police has agreed that you may return home, but not until you have asked forgiveness of your brother, who has been kind enough to withdraw his complaint and promised that you will cause no more trouble.’
Ramatoulaye bit down hard on her tongue, in an effort to hold back the words that came to her lips, and remained motionless and silent. It was a direct affront to the Imam, in front of the white men, but in spite of his anger he tried to keep his voice on an easy level. ‘We are waiting, Ramatoulaye. I am well aware of your pride, and I promise you before God, who sees and hears everything we do, that not a word of what you say will leave this room.’
The chief of police spoke to the interpreter. ‘Tell her that as soon as she asks his pardon she can go.’
N’Deye Touti leaned forward on the bench. ‘Aunt,’ she whispered urgently, ‘do as they say and …’
But she was unable to complete the sentence. With the back of her hand, and without even turning to look at her, Ramatoulaye slapped her across the face. The girl fell backward from the bench and began to weep, putting her fingers to a thread of blood that ran from the corner of her mouth. Ramatoulaye leaned over her. ‘Get up, N’Deye Touti,’ she said. ‘I didn’t want to do that but I told you to stay out of this. I would rather lose my eyes and be burned alive over a slow fire than ever speak a word again to that man. If I had to do what I did to Vendredi again, I would do it gladly. People like those two are neither relatives nor friends. They would kiss the behind of the toubabs for a string of medals, and everyone knows it. Now stop crying and get up; we are going. I have seen enough of their faces!’
And before any of the men had even thought of interfering, she took the girl by the arm and went out, slamming the door behind her.
The crowd in the square had dwindled to a handful of men and women gathered around the cart, the others having gradually wandered off, in a silence that was rooted in both fatigue and fear. Ramatoulaye saw the rigid body, starkly outlined by the folds of the wet cloth, and tears flooded up behind the dam of her eyelids and spilled over to her cheeks.
‘She is dead,’ she said, ‘and I am living. And everything I did was done so that she and her baby would not die of hunger. What will her family say?’
‘They will understand,’ Mame Sofi said. ‘They will know that it was the will of God. No one can live beyond his hour, and it is not you who are responsible.’ She had turned to the man who had brought the horse and cart. ‘Do you know where the compound of N’Diayène is?’ and when he nodded, she said, ‘Take us there.’
As the little group formed to retrace the path the crowd had followed just an hour before, Ramatoulaye went over to Alioune, who was one of the men who had stayed with the cart.
‘Alioune,’ she said, ‘it can’t go on. If you won’t put a stop to it for your own sake, then do it for us. We can do no more, and there are too many dead.’
Alioune lowered his head. ‘We must wait for the results of the meeting at Thiès … Perhaps tomorrow …’