As soon as the news of Beaugosse’s return to Dakar became known, a crowd began to gather in the Place M’Both, in front of the union building. While the members of the committee met inside to hear the delegates’ report on the breakdown of the talks at Thiès, the people in the square stood about waiting restlessly. They knew already that the meeting had ended in a defeat for the strikers, and their faces were hard and determined, their fists clenched against their thighs.
For several days the atmosphere in the city had been growing steadily more oppressive. Since the fire and the attack on the spahis, the authorities had considerably augmented the security forces, and now soldiers and sailors as well as police and militiamen patrolled the streets constantly. Protective cordons of troops formed a virtual barricade between the native quarters and the residential and commercial avenues of the European quarter, and the enforced segregation had created strain and unrest on both sides of the wall.
For the strikers and their families, life became more difficult with each succeeding day. Their bodies grew weaker and the lines in their faces were etched more deeply; but for many of them the ordeal they were passing through was taking on an even greater significance than the rites of initiation to manhood that they had undergone in their youth.
Alioune had succeeded in persuading a considerable number of the men that their old feudal customs had no place in a situation like this. Now, husbands, sons, and even fathers could be seen every morning, leaving their homes in search of water and returning at night, triumphantly pushing a barrel or carrying a sackful of bottles. At last the men had found something to do which not only occupied the long, empty hours but helped to relieve the scarcity of food and thereby made it possible to carry on with the strike. They sought out their friends among the fishermen on the ocean front, and small fish caught with a line or tuna trapped in the great nets began to replace the vanished meat and rice on their tables.
The union building had become the center of all activity. Benches and chairs were crammed into every possible corner, and blankets, sheepskins, and strips of matting were strewn on the floors to provide places to sleep. Since the electricity had been cut off, they were forced to work at night by the light of strips of cloth set in bowls of palm or fish oil.
And there was a great deal of work to be done. A campaign to demoralize and undermine the unity of the strikers – and particularly of their wives – had been undertaken by the men who were their ‘spiritual guides’, the imams and the priests of other sects. After the prayers and religious services all over the city, there would be a sermon whose theme was always the same: ‘By ourselves, we are incapable of creating any sort of useful object, not even a needle; and yet you want to strike against the toubabs who have brought us all of these things! It is madness! You would do better to be thanking God for having brought them among us and bettering our lives with the benefits of their civilization and their science.’
Infuriated by the workers’ resistance to their injunctions, the imams turned the full force of their wrath on the members of the strike committee, accusing them of responsibility for every crime they could think of – atheism, alcoholism, prostitution, infant mortality. They even predicted that these infidels would bring about the end of the world.
But there was another matter that was more serious than this …
Alioune had gone to see Gaye, the secretary of the metal- workers’ union, which was a branch of the powerful Confédération Générale du Travail, in the hopes of obtaining a promise of mutual assistance. He had not been well received.
‘You don’t belong to the C.G.T., and I don’t have anything to do with the men on the Dakar-Niger,’ Gaye had said. ‘You wanted your independence, and you have it …’
‘There is something you don’t understand …’
‘Just let me finish, Alioune. You don’t want to go by the union’s general policies, and we won’t have anything to do with separatists and deviationists. Your union is autonomous, and that’s the way you wanted it, so don’t come crying to me about it now.’
Alioune knew that Gaye had only to say the word and the other branches of the confederation would join with the trainmen, but he also knew that he would not do it without attaching his own conditions.
A day or so before ‘the marchers’, as the women of Thiès were now known all along the line, were expected to arrive in Dakar, Gaye came to see Alioune at the office of the strike committee.
‘Well,’ he said. ‘It seems that the women will be here tomorrow or the day after. What about this matter of mediation you were asking for?’
‘You know perfectly well, Gaye, that it isn’t a matter of mediation. The management on one side and ourselves on the other; that’s all we want. We could accept your mediators for the meeting itself, but we would have to talk to the other branches of the confederation first.’
‘That’s just what I thought you would say! You want to involve everyone else, but keep the settlement in your own hands! Well, that’s not the way it’s going to be. We’ve already talked it over – the masons, the coal miners, the men at Shell Oil, even the civil servants – and we have agreed to a meeting, with the governor-general, the deputy, and the Imam presiding. Now it’s up to you.’
Alioune knew that he was trapped. Gaye had brought together a group that was too powerful to fight against alone.
‘Very well,’ he said. ‘Tomorrow night we’ll discuss it with the other unions and plan the meeting for the day after.’
‘Why wait?’
‘No reason, Gaye, except we work as a group here, and I have to discuss this with the other members of the committee.’
‘All right then. Tomorrow night.’
Alioune was still a victim of his anger and his sense of frustration when he rejoined his comrades. His desperate play for time had only been made in the hope that Bakayoko might arrive before the following evening and find some way of getting out of the trap.
‘I’d like to see him buried in molten lead!’ he said, as he came into the room where the others were gathered. ‘There’s no way of backing out of it now – he has everyone on his side!’
‘It is the will of God,’ Arona said.
‘Oh shut up with your talk about the will of God!’
*
When Bakayoko arrived that night, the union building and its little courtyard were already deep in shadow. Men were sleeping on army cots and on the ground, and here and there the glow of a cigarette pricked the darkness of a corner unreached by the feeble light of the lamp. Bakayoko sat down on the cot next to Alioune, who was wearily removing his canvas shoes. He listened without interrupting as Alioune poured out the story of his meetings with Gaye.
‘We are finished,’ he said, when at last he had heard it all. ‘We’ve been wrapped up as neatly as dough in the hands of a cook.’
‘It’s my fault,’ Alioune said. ‘Until now I’ve always just followed instructions from Thiès. I knew that one day or another we would go back, and that we might not even get everything we asked for – but I didn’t know that, just by talking with the others, I would be responsible for bringing the governor and the deputy into it.’
‘You did what you could. The thing that made us strong in the first months was that we were the ones who were controlling what was happening. Now it seems as if events were controlling us. But what can you do – we’re not rich enough – and we can’t pass out either titles or villas. But we can still hold onto our faith in the future; this is just a temporary halting place, and we will get what we are asking for yet. For the moment, the best thing we can do is sleep – I haven’t closed my eyes in two days, and I don’t imagine you have either.’
The silhouette of a crouching figure moved by them in the shadows. It was Deune, following his nightly habit of gathering up the cigarette butts.
‘Don’t waste time crying about it,’ he grunted. ‘If it doesn’t work this time, we’ll just start again another time.’
Stretched out on his cot, Alioune could hear Bakayoko’s regular breathing, but in spite of his own fatigue he could not sleep. He was thinking of a painful scene that had taken place that morning.
Beaugosse had come to the committee’s office, looking for his comrades. He had seemed embarrassed and uneasy, and before anyone had had a chance to say, ‘Good morning,’ he had announced, ‘I wanted to let you know that I’m leaving the D-N; so don’t count on me being here after today.’
At first everyone had thought it was a joke, and Deune had clapped him on the back and said, ‘He’s trying to be funny again.’
‘No, I’m not trying to be funny; I’m leaving. I’m going to work as a storekeeper in the tool sheds at the port.’
‘But why should you leave now?’ Idrissa demanded. ‘You’ve just come back from Thiès; you took part in the meeting there … and we still need you. There aren’t that many of us who know how to read and write! I don’t understand you …’
‘There’s nothing to understand. I’m leaving, that’s all. I have the right to do what I want for myself, don’t I?’
Deune had walked over to the window where the young man was standing. ‘But what you are doing now is not a good thing, little one,’ he said. ‘We’re not as intelligent as you are, and you make us wonder about a lot of things. Did you tell us the truth about what happened at Thiès?’
‘Yes, I told you the truth. You gave me a job to do, and I did it honestly. I’m leaving now for personal reasons.’
‘You’re betraying us; that’s what you’re doing!’ Deune’s rumbling voice had risen almost to a shout. ‘We were proud of you – we were proud that we could point to you and say, “Look at that little one; he is educated and intelligent, but he still prefers to stay with us and fight with us” – and now you’re quitting us. It isn’t easy to get a job in the port – you must have been to see the toubabs …’
‘Calm down, Deune,’ Alioune had said. ‘You’re exaggerating.’
‘I’ll say what I have to say! I trusted this boy; I voted for him to be our delegate at Thiès. And now he’s quitting us! You all remember that quitter who was tried by the men in Bamako, don’t you? You approved of that, didn’t you? Well, make him turn in his card right now!’
Without a word, Beaugosse had taken his wallet from a pocket of his linen jacket, drawn out a gray pasteboard card, placed it on the table, and left the office.
‘I don’t know if I have the right to do this,’ Deune said, ‘but I’m going to do it anyway’. He picked up the card and tore it into little pieces.
The scene had troubled Alioune greatly, and as he lay there, trying to sleep, he could not help thinking about it again and again. Suddenly he realized that Bakayoko was sitting on the edge of his cot, lighting his pipe.
‘You’re not asleep, Alioune?’
‘No, I was thinking – about some difficult things. Did you meet Beaugosse at Thiès?’
‘Yes; he doesn’t like me. But I don’t like him either. Tell me; who will be the delegate for the masons?’
‘His name is Seydou. They trust him, and he is a good speaker,’ Alioune said curtly. He was annoyed by the way Bakayoko had spoken about Beaugosse, because he knew the story of N’Deye Touti and the boy. He lay down again and said very softly, as if he were talking to himself, ‘You know, the difficult thing about you is that although you understand the problems very well, you don’t understand men – or if you do understand them, you never show it. But you expect them to understand every word you say, and if they don’t, you lose your temper. Then they become timid, because they know they are not as intelligent as you are, and they don’t like to be made fools of. So the result is that no one dares to do anything when you are not around … I ought to tell you that I wrote a letter to Lahbib about it. You were already on the way here when it was sent, but now you won’t be surprised if he mentions it to you.’
‘You did well,’ Bakayoko said. He rapped the bowl of his pipe against the foot of the cot and was silent for a moment. ‘I wish I could make you understand something, too. When I am in the cabin of my engine, I take on a sense of absolute identity with everything that is in the train, no matter whether it is passengers or just freight. I experience everything that happens along its whole length. In the stations I observe the people, but once the engine is on its way, I forget everything else. My role then is nothing except to guide that machine to the spot where it is supposed to go. I don’t even know any longer whether it is my heart that is beating to the rhythm of the engine, or the engine to the rhythm of my heart. And for me, that is the way it has to be with this strike – we must all take on a sense of identity with it …’
A voice from the other side of the office interrupted him. ‘What you are saying is very interesting, but it is also tiring. Tomorrow is going to be a hard day.’
Then there was silence in the little room – silence and the heavy odor of sleeping men.
*
When it was announced next morning that the women of Thiès would arrive early in the afternoon, the city was galvanized into action. Everything that could be used to carry the precious water the men had brought in was filled, because ‘the marchers’ were sure to be thirsty. In every house and courtyard the women were busy sweeping, cleaning, and preparing lodgings. At N’Diayène, the central courtyard was transformed into one great kitchen. Knives in hand, all the housewives of the neighborhood were cleaning and scaling fish and tossing them into a collection of giant kettles.
‘I feel as if there were fish swimming around inside of me,’ Mame Sofi said. ‘Fish in the morning, fish at night – if this keeps up much longer I’ll have a fish tree growing in my belly.’
‘Stop grumbling,’ Bineta said. ‘If it weren’t for them we would all be dead by now, and the children with us. And the women of Thiès will be hungry. Someone told me that it’s a girl named Penda who is leading them.’
‘Ah! I know that one – she’s a prostitute. They shouldn’t have let a woman like that be the leader of honest women.’
‘Oh Mame Sofi, you and that tongue of yours! Can’t you ever find anything good to say about anyone?’
But Mame Sofi had already found another target for her malice. N’Deye Touti had just come out to the courtyard, carrying a little bundle of damp laundry.
‘Look at that! Just look at that!’ Deune’s first wife screamed.
‘What’s the matter now?’ Bineta and the others demanded, looking around to see what had annoyed Mame Sofi this time.
‘What’s the matter? Can’t you see? No one has enough water to drink, but our “Mad’mizelle” has enough to wash those indecent clothes of hers! It’s immoral to walk around like that; it’s only fit for the white women!’
‘Oh, let me alone, Aunt Mame Sofi! I had some dirty clothes and I washed them; that’s all!’
The neighbors had stopped their work and were watching delightedly. Seeing Mame Sofi in a good argument was a spectacle they had not enjoyed in a long time. But Ramatoulaye intervened.
‘Be quiet, both of you,’ she said. ‘N’Deye Touti, go fix the milk for Strike; and as for you, Mame Sofi, you would do better to get on with your work and not talk so much. A man just came by to say that the women of Thiès are already entering the city.’
It was the middle of the day now, and the sun was doing its work. The crowd was already gathering, from the avenues and from all the streets and alleys, turning its back on the white stone buildings of the European quarter and moving towards the Moslem district. The avenue Gambetta was a black river of people. Trainmen were busy everywhere, handing out leaflets urging everyone to stop work for the rest of the day and come to the meeting. Sometimes the police tried to stop them, but the crowd always opened up and swallowed them, laughing happily at the frustration of their pursuers.
‘The marchers’ came in through the suburb of Hann, across the bridge at the entrance to the city. The strikers who had been assigned to maintain order tried desperately to keep the crowd formed in a double rank along the sides of the street, so that they would have room to pass. The mingling of sound from this mass of people – a drumming of thousands of heels, ringing of bicycle bells, creaking of cart wheels, shouting and singing, and the cries of cripples and beggars – could be heard as far away as the docks. A vast echoing dome seemed to cover the entire city.
‘Stop pushing! They’re going to pass right by here; you’ll see them!’
‘Is it true they walked all that distance without food or water?’
‘The poor things – that’s more than the men could do!’
‘They’re coming to see the deputy – to arrange with him about the strike.’
‘If you ask me, the strike is a matter for the men to settle themselves.’
‘You’re right there, brother – this is nothing but politics. These women are all Communists.’
‘But they aren’t doing anything except trying to help their husbands.’
‘And where will that get them? It’s just as the Imam says – they don’t know what they’re doing. Look around you, woman – there are soldiers everywhere. You wait and see; there’s going to be trouble at the meeting. I know what I’m talking about; I work in their offices.’
This was the sort of thing everyone was saying as they waited for the women to arrive. The air was filled with curiosity, speculation, excitement and fear.
The reception committee, with Mame Sofi and Bineta at the head of the women’s group, was stationed at a grade crossing near the bridge. In addition to the women, it was made up of Bakayoko, Deune, Arona and Idrissa, who seemed to be squinting even more than usual. Bakayoko was wearing the old, wire-brimmed straw hat again and, clinging to his arm, chattering excitedly, was a very old woman whom everyone called Grandmother Fatou Wade. No one knew how old she was; she was no longer sure herself, but wherever anything happened in the city, she could always be found.
‘Look,’ she said, proudly holding up a blue, polka-dotted waistcloth of the kind that had been made in the old days when all the dyeing of cloth was done at home with indigo. ‘This cloth is older than I am. It came to me from my mother, who got it from her grandmother. In those days, when they wanted to honor a guest they spread cloths like this on the ground, for the guest to walk on. I brought it with me today so we could receive these women properly.’
Just at this moment, from the angle of the avenue el-Hadji- Malic-Sy, a cry went up from a thousand throats, ‘They are coming! They are coming!’
With their arms linked together and their backs turned to the crowd, the trainmen, joined by contingents of men from the masons and dock workers, struggled to hold back the pushing, shouting masses of people. Mariame Sonko was at the head of the column of marchers, with Maïmouna, the blind woman, at her arm. In the group just behind them were Awa, Séni, and the young girl Aby, walking proudly and laughing. Boubacar and some of the men of the escort walked on either side of them, screening them from the crush with their bicycles.
As they approached the grade crossing, Grandmother Fatou Wade pushed forward to meet them. She waved the cloth above her head and then spread it across the street in front of Mariame Sonko, who paused in astonishment.
‘No, no!’ the old woman cried. ‘Come ahead, come ahead, and walk over the cloth. In the old times, that is how the warriors were received when they returned to their homes!’
There were shouts of enthusiasm from the crowd, and the other women began to follow her example. In a few minutes the pavement was strewn with handkerchiefs, headcloths, and even blouses, and the great, multicolored carpet made the arrival of the women seem like a kind of carnival.
While the other members of the strike committee were directing the marchers to the compound of N’Diayène, where food and water were waiting for them, Bakayoko went to talk to Mariame Sonko and Boubacar. It was only then that he learned about the death of Penda and Samba N’Doulougou.
One of the men with Boubacar was pushing an English bicycle whose handlebars had been turned up as high as they would go. ‘It’s Samba’s,’ he said. ‘We kept it, and I suppose I could ride it, but I can’t seem to bring myself to get on it. I don’t know …’
Bakayoko said nothing. The news of these deaths oppressed him, and for the first time he was afraid of losing his confidence in the future. ‘Penda, too …’ he murmured, and suddenly discouragement stabbed at him like the claws of a hawk plunging on its prey. Was all of the learning he had managed to acquire, all of the effort of a mind he had harnessed so rigidly to the service of this cause – was all of that to vanish now, before the specter of these two corpses?
A strong hand clapped him on the shoulder, and a laughing voice rang in his ears. ‘Man, we are going to win!’
‘Man, we are going to win!’ he answered; but as he walked along with the column his head was bowed.
*
Never before had such an enormous crowd assembled at the racecourse in Dakar. In addition to the strikers, there were the dock workers, the fishermen from N’Gor, from Yoff, and from Kambaréne, and the workers and office staffs of all the big factories. Seen from the height of the grandstands, the assortment of head covering – turbans, fezzes, tarbooshes, white and khaki pith helmets, and brightly colored handkerchiefs, starched and knotted at the corners so that they stood up like rabbit’s ears – made the crowd resemble a moving mosaic, dotted here and there with the blacks and whites of umbrellas and parasols.
Soldiers, militiamen and policemen were standing guard before the gates to the field itself, and at the foot of the stands there was an imposing array of security forces. The first delegation to arrive was the group led by the Imam. He was followed by El Hadji Mabigué, in his finest tunic and wearing all of his medals. As they made their way across the field to the stands, stopping every now and then to respond to the greetings of the faithful, he held an umbrella carefully above his master’s head. A non-commissioned officer of the police conducted them ceremoniously to the places reserved for them in the central pavilion of the grandstand.
A few minutes later a murmur of excitement rippled across the crowd, as the women of Thiès came in through the main entrance gate. Their long journey together had been an effective training school; they marched in well-ordered ranks, ten abreast, and without any masculine escort now. They carried banners and pennants printed with slogans, some of them reading, EVEN BULLETS COULD NOT STOP US, and others, WE DEMAND FAMILY ALLOWANCES.
Behind them came the mass of the strikers, led by the members of the committee. They, too, were carrying banners: FOR EQUAL WORK, EQUAL PAY – OLD AGE PENSIONS – PROPER HOUSING, and others. In spite of their brave appearance, no one could help noticing the fatigue and hunger in their faces and bodies.
Bakayoko and Alioune were standing together, near one of the betting booths of the racetrack.
‘Take a look at your protégé,’ Bakayoko said ironically.
Standing beside a tree a few feet from them was Gaye, accompanied by the personnel director, Edouard, the chief of police of the Moslem quarter, and young Pierre. With them, and dressed as they were, in European fashion, was Beaugosse.
‘Look,’ Edouard said, gesturing towards Bakayoko. ‘It’s our orator friend.’
‘Is he going to speak?’ Pierre asked.
‘I hope not,’ Gaye said.
Bakayoko turned his back to them.
‘Don’t worry about Beaugosse,’ Alioune said. ‘He’ll come back to us. I know what’s wrong with him.’
They were interrupted by the arrival of Grandmother Fatou Wade. ‘I have been looking for you, my son,’ she said to Bakayoko, ‘to ask you something. Do you still have your mother?’
‘No, Grandmother. She was murdered by the police while I was away from home.’ Bakayoko looked at the old woman steadily as he spoke. She reminded him of Niakoro. He remembered the words Bakary had said to him and a little twinge of regret caught at his heart.
‘From today on, then, I will be your mother,’ the old woman said, taking his hand and holding it for a moment. ‘My husband died in the first war and my oldest son in the second. And now they have taken my other son. Look here – this is all I have left of them.’
She untied a knot in a corner of her waistcloth and took out three medals: a Croix de Guerre, a medal for service in the colonial armies, and a medal awarded to soldiers who had been wounded in the service of France. ‘Since there has been no food, I’ve tried to sell them, but none of the shopkeepers will buy them. I wonder why the toubabs give out such things – to me, they are just symbols of death.’ She sighed and put the medals in Bakayoko’s hand. ‘If you stay in Dakar, my son, come to live with me. There will always be a place for you.’
She walked off and left them, sucking at her cheeks as Niakoro had done, filled with joy at having found a son to replace her own.
‘Alioune,’ Bakayoko said, ‘if they should try to stop me from speaking later on, round up some of the men – and especially some of the women – and tell them to shout like they have never shouted before!’
*
N’Deye Touti had followed the women of Thiès on to the field of the racecourse. She was upset, and in a bad humor. Just outside the entrance gate she had encountered Mame Sofi, who smiled at her sarcastically and said, ‘Which one are you looking for – Bakayoko or Beaugosse? They’re both inside. If you want to make yourself useful, you can help us take the collection after the meeting …’
She seemed unable to prevent herself from thinking about Bakayoko. She had tried to speak to him at N’Diayène, but he had been busy with the women of Thiès, especially the blind one. At one moment, however, he had put his hand on her shoulder and said, ‘Your eyes are still like two moons in a single night.’ She had drawn away, thinking that he would follow, but he had not.
‘Where are you going, N’Deye Touti?’
The voice startled her, and for a second she hoped that it might be Bakayoko, but it was Beaugosse.
‘I was looking for a place to sit,’ she said.
‘Come with us. Monsieur Edouard, this is the girl I was telling you about.’ He looked at N’Deye Touti. ‘These are my friends; they can be very helpful to you.’
The chief of police came over to her and said, ‘Mademoiselle, let us forget about what happened the other day. You are a sensible girl – and I am not always on duty.’
‘Oh yes,’ Edouard said, ‘after Beaugosse spoke to me about you, I talked to the directress of your school, and there is no reason why you can’t go back. Everything can be arranged; I’ll take care of it myself.’ He patted N’Deye Touti’s hand. ‘I’m delighted to see that you have chosen Beaugosse: he’s a fine young man and should have a splendid future. But, come, we had better take our places now. You come with us, mademoiselle.’
The central portion of the grandstand had been divided into sections for the Europeans and the various delegations and officials. As they made their way up the steps, there was a series of strident blasts from the whistles of the policemen at the entrance gate, and a platoon of troops of the ‘Red Guards’ swept on to the field, preceding the official cars. The red and white of their flowing burnooses contrasted vividly with the coal black of their splendid horses, and gold stars glittering fiercely on their tarbooshes.
The governor-general and the deputy, who was also the mayor of the city, got out of the first car, and a group of their assistants from the second. They walked rapidly up the steps and took their places in the first row of the stands, behind a battery of microphones.
The first three speeches were brief. It was the Imam, in his capacity as spiritual guide to a large part of the community, who opened the meeting by repeating the theme of all of his recent sermons. He warned the faithful in his audience against evil influences from ‘abroad’ and spoke glowingly of the governor and the deputy, thanking them for honoring the meeting with their presence, in spite of their heavy responsibilities. To give even greater effect to his words, he concluded by reading the first two verses of the Koran.
The governor spoke next, adopting a paternal tone and telling them how he had spent thirty years of his life in the study and administration of colonial problems. At this point he caught himself quickly and changed the phrase to ‘African problems’. This strike had been especially difficult for him, because it indicated that there had been regrettable misunderstandings on both sides, but he promised to study the demands of the strikers carefully. ‘I know you are all aware,’ he said, ‘that a great many things have changed for you since my appointment here – and always for the better. Still others will change in the future, and the changes will always be to your advantage. But time and patience are necessary, in order for such progress to be made and to be advantageous to everyone. The workers on the railroad can go back to their work tomorrow morning. Contrary to rumors spread by a few malcontents, no sanctions will be taken against the strikers, and I personally promise all of them that their requests will be studied and satisfied insofar as possible, in the near future.’ He concluded by reminding them that the ties which linked Africa to the homeland were the ties of blood shed in a common effort.
He was heard respectfully and loudly applauded, although a good half of his audience had not understood a word he said. Gaye, who followed him, had been charged with speaking specifically to the workers. He first went into a summary of his own union activities and then explained how the other unions had adopted an attitude of ‘wait and see’ toward the strike, since they regarded it as a ‘political maneuver’ and felt that any attempt at a ‘separatist’ policy in the workers’ movement must be avoided.
When he had finished, Alioune came hurriedly down the steps from the grandstand and went over to Bakayoko.
‘They are never going to let one of the trainmen speak!’ he said angrily.
‘All right, then, just do as I told you. Get everyone to shout until they can’t even hear the loudspeakers. Then we’ll see what happens.’
It was now the turn of the mayor-deputy, and his speech was a great deal longer than any of the preceding ones. He spoke, in fact, for almost an hour, reading his text through a pair of heavy, horn-rimmed glasses perched carefully on his blunt nose. When he opened his mouth, the gold caps of his two front teeth sparkled brilliantly in the middle of his round and sweating face. His hair was turning gray and cut so short that it was little more than a stubble. He spoke in French, placing a considerable distance between each of his words.
‘I greet you, peaceful friends,’ he said, ‘and thank you for listening to me. When a child climbs to the top of a tree, he tells no one what he is about to do, but if he falls, he cries out and everyone comes running to help. That is the way it is with this strike. When the workers on the Dakar-Niger decided on it, they did so with no warning to the people best qualified to help them, and with no thought of the consequences of their action. And now, you see the results. There is no water and no food in our homes, and the shopkeepers refuse to give us credit. And yet, this strike is the work of a few black sheep, acting on the advice of foreigners, because such a way of acting is not in keeping with our habits or our customs.
‘When I was asked to come back here and take a hand in resolving this crisis, I thought at first of refusing, but in the end I accepted, because it is my duty to help you in any way I can. I have already proposed some decrees, and even some laws, to govern such situations, and I am sure that they will be granted, but time is needed in matters of this kind. If you, the strikers, are not concerned by this, at least do not stand in the way of others. Your strike endangers the progress of everyone and can even retard it. The management of the railway has already consented to some of your requests, and the rest will have to come from the National Assembly in Paris, since it is within their jurisdiction.’
The deputy paused to wipe his streaming forehead and clean his glasses.
‘Why doesn’t he speak in Ouolof?’ demanded Grandmother Fatou Wade, who was once again leaning on Bakayoko’s arm. ‘I can’t understand anything he’s saying.’
The Bambara did not answer. His teeth were tightly clenched, and the expression on his face was one of thinly controlled fury. He gestured suddenly to Deune, Alioune, Idrissa and Boubacar, who were standing near him, and the four men vanished into the crowd.
At last the deputy was concluding his speech.
‘… It seems that some of you have been thinking of calling for a general strike. In my capacity as mayor of this city, as well as your deputy, I forbid it. It would destroy everything we are working for. I am speaking now directly to the leaders of the unions, and I tell you this: you know that we do not have many votes in the National Assembly, and because of this we must always work carefully. We are trying to do our best, and so are the toubabs, but you will accomplish nothing by defying them. I have given my word that work will be resumed tomorrow, and then the discussions will go on. The rest is up to me. Once again, I ask you to have confidence in me.’
After acknowledging the applause for a moment, the deputy turned back to his chair, mopping at his face with his handkerchief; but he had not even sat down before Bakayoko was on the stand before the microphones. Gaye tried to interfere, seizing him by the arm.
‘You certainly aren’t planning to speak after the governor and the deputy!’ he cried.
In the crowd, however, a few voices could already be heard, shouting, ‘Baillika mou vahe, baillika mou vahe! Let him speak, let him speak!’
That governor whispered a few words in the deputy’s ear, and the latter turned to Bakayoko. ‘You may go ahead and speak,’ he said, ‘but don’t be long, young man.’
The crowd was roaring louder now. ‘Baillika mou vahe!’
Bakayoko swept the straw hat from his head, leaving it dangling across his back, and took up the stem of one of the microphones. When he began to speak, his words came slowly, almost as if he were matching his rhythms to the ponderous departures of his locomotives.
‘I thank you for having let me speak,’ he said, in Ouolof. ‘It would have been very strange if everyone had been able to speak here except the men who are on strike. What I have to say, then, I say in their name. For more than four months now we have been on strike, and we all know why. It has been a hard life in that time – without food, without water, without even fire. It is a hard path for a man, and harder still for the women and the children, but we chose it and we have trod it. There is no longer any water in the whole district where we live. But among the men who spoke to you before me, did anyone tell you why? No one is questioning the words of these men, but what did they tell you, and to whom were they talking, in a language most of you do not understand? The Imam spoke to you of God. Does that mean he doesn’t know that people who are hungry and thirsty are likely to forget the way to the mosque? You were told also that the governors have brought you many wonderful improvements and changes. It is true that I am young, but I haven’t seen very many of them, and I could call on the older workers to tell us what they have seen! We can’t feed our families with projects! And you were also told that there would be no sanctions against us – but did anyone say whether there would be sanctions against those who have killed women and children?’
Bakayoko repeated his last sentences in Bambara, and then in French. He felt no fear at all. It was no longer the crowd he saw in front of him, but two shining rails, tracking a path into the future. Even his voice seemed turned to steel.
‘It seems that this strike is the work of a little group of black sheep, led by foreigners. If this is so, there must be a lot of black sheep in this country; and you, who know us all, look at me and tell me who are the foreigners. It seems also that we are incapable of creating anything by ourselves, but we must be of some use because, since we stopped working, the trains have stopped running. We are told that some of our demands will be satisfied, but which ones? We have asked for pensions, for family allowances, for raises in pay, and for the right to have a union which is recognized by the company. But not one of the men who spoke before me even mentioned a single one of these words. Why not? They are simple enough. Our deputy told us that he had come here to help us. Ask him then why he cannot apply in his own country the same social laws he votes for in a country far from here. Ask him how he lives, and how much he earns. But perhaps you find all of these questions boring and want me to be quiet now?’
There was a clamor of voices from the crowd. ‘No, no; go on!’
The governor and the European members of the delegations had understood very little of what Bakayoko was saying and, therefore, were undisturbed, but Gaye and the deputy were fidgeting uneasily in their chairs.
‘Since you want me to go on. I have one thing more to say. When we had our discussion with the management, they told us that our demand for family allowances could not be considered because our wives and our mothers are really only concubines. But when it was a matter of going off to be killed in the war, did anyone ask the patriots who volunteered if they were legitimate or illegitimate? Ask your deputy to answer that question, too.
‘I can’t speak any longer now, but before I go I still have one thing left to do. Monsieur le gouverneur, Monsieur le député, the old lady you see there before you is Grandmother Fatou Wade. She lost her husband in the first war and her older son in the second. They gave her these medals, which have no value to her, and now they have put her younger son in prison because he was on strike. She has nothing left. Monsieur le gouverneur, Monsieur le député, take back these medals and give her her son and her daily rice in exchange!’
Once again he repeated his words in Bambara and in French, and this time, when the Europeans understood what he was saying, their eyebrows came together and their expressions hardened. Bakayoko had opened his hand to show the medals as he spoke, and now he closed his fist around them again.
‘Mother,’ he said in Ouolof, ‘I have done as you asked. Now it is up to the rest of you – masons, carpenters, fitters, fishermen, dockers, policemen and militiamen, civil servants and office workers – to understand that this strike is yours, too, as the workers in Dahomey, in Guinea, and even in France have already understood it. It depends on you, workers of Dakar, whether our wives and our children will ever see a better life. There is a great rock poised across our path, but together we can move it. As for us – the trainmen will never go back to work until our demands are met!’
Bakayoko ran quickly down the steps of the grandstand, experiencing again his old familiar urge to get away and be alone after a moment such as this. On all sides of him he heard shouts and cries, gradually becoming louder and more distinct: ‘The masons will go out, too! … The dock workers want to vote! … The metalworkers! … Strike! Strike! …’ Then, above all the tumult, the chant of the women of Thiès could be heard:
The morning light is in the east …
Crossing the field, Bakayoko almost collided with Alioune. He took both of his friend’s hands in his.
‘Forgive me, brother,’ he said, ‘if I had to say these things, but it was the only way. After what we listened to out there, there was no hope of any honest discussion. Now we will have a common front – there will be a general strike. We had to do it – it was the only way.’
Outside the gates, the women of Dakar, with N’Deye Touti among them, were passing among the crowd, taking up a collection.
‘For the strikers …’
‘To help the women of Thiès return to their homes …’
‘For the children …’
And small change and coins, and even a few bills, were dropped into the brightly colored scarves and aprons and handkerchiefs that were held out to receive them.
The next morning a general strike was called. It lasted for ten days, the time required before pressure from all sides forced the management of the railroad to resume the discussions with the delegates of the strikers.
When the women of Thiès started out on their journey home, the drivers loaned them trucks, and, since the fishermen had voted to turn over an entire day’s catch to them, one of the trucks carried nothing but fish.
Maïmouna, the blind woman, remained behind, in the compound at N’Diayène. She still had milk and had begun to nurse the baby who had been called Strike. ‘I am nourishing one of the great trees of tomorrow,’ she told herself. At night she liked to sit in the courtyard, surrounded by the children, singing one of her old songs to them or telling them the story of the girl and the curious little man who had lost their lives on the road at the entrance to the city.