THE LITTLE NEGRESS
Sometimes my imagination is fascinated by the yellowing of old ocean charts, and in my feverish brain I hear the roaring of monsoons. What then? Must I, in order to have an interest in this present life, exhume that which, perhaps, I led before my birth, between two black suns?
It was a vague region, abounding in stars and in the diffused sobbing of an ocean. There was a scratching at my door, and I said, "Come in."
A young negress in a loose blue loincloth, reaching halfway down her thighs, entered. She crouched down on the ground, and held out her thin clasped hands toward me. And I saw that her bare arms were covered with the blows of a lash.
"Who did this to you, Assumption?" I asked.
She did not answer, but all her limbs trembled, for she did not understand, and wondered, perhaps, whether I too was about to inflict some brutality upon her.
Gently I removed her garment, and saw that her back also was wounded. I washed it. But she, frightened by such kindness, fled for refuge under the table of my cabin. My eyes filled with tears. I tried to call her back. But her glance, like that of a beaten dog, shrank from me. I had a few potatoes, and a little butter. I mashed them to a pulp with a wooden spoon, and placed it in a bowl at some distance from the crouching Assumption. Then I lighted my pipe.
At the end of an hour the poor creature began to move. She put one arm forward, then the other, and then a knee. I thought she was directing her attention toward the food in order to eat. But to my astonishment, I saw her crawl on hands and knees toward a corner of the room, where I had left a few flowers lying. She rose up quickly, and with a sudden movement seized them.
* * * * *
It was perhaps a hundred and fifty years after this adventure occurred, that I met Assumption again. At least I was convinced that it was she. It was in Bordeaux at the Restaurant du Pérou. She was drying the glass of a gloomy student who had not found it clean enough.