After Jean had thus rid himself of Fatou-gaye, he was conscious of a deep feeling of relief at having carried out this act of vengeance. When he had neatly arranged in his soldier’s wardrobe the small quantity of baggage he had brought with him from Samba-Hamet’s house, he felt freer and happier. He seemed to have advanced a step nearer to his departure, to that blissful, “final discharge” which was now only a few months away.
At the same time he was sorry for Fatou. He had intended to send her his pay once more, to enable her either to set up house anew or to leave the town.
But as he preferred not to see her again, he had entrusted the spahi Muller with this errand.
Muller had visited Samba-Hamet’s house and had seen the woman griot. But Fatou had gone.
“She was in great trouble,” said the little slave girls in Yolof, forming a circle round him and all talking at once. “In the evening she would not eat the kouss-kouss we had made for her.”
“During the night,” said little Sam-Lélé, “I heard her talking aloud in her sleep, and even the Laobé dogs yapped, which is a very bad sign. But I could not understand what she was saying.”
She had undoubtedly gone away a little before sunrise, with her calabashes on her head.
A macauco woman, Bafoufalé-Diop by name, the woman griot’s chief slave, a person of a very inquisitive disposition, had followed her from a distance, and had seen her turn off by the wooden bridge, over the narrow arm of the river, in the direction of N’dar-toute.
“She had the look of knowing quite well where she was going.”