Fatou was there, seated at the door of the blockhouse with her child, in the humble, suppliant attitude she had continued to adopt since her return.
And Jean, his heart oppressed with solitude, came and sat beside her, and took the child on his knee with a feeling of tenderness towards his black family in its happiness, and of finding at Dialdé in Galam someone who loved him.
Near them the griots were rehearsing their warlike songs. They were chanting softly, in mournful, falsetto voices, accompanying themselves on small primitive guitars, consisting of two strings stretched upon serpent skin, producing a faint sound like the stridulation of crickets. They were singing these African airs that harmonise so well with the desolation of their country and have a charm of their own, with their elusive rhythm and their monotony....
Jean’s son was a delightful baby, but very solemn, and was seldom seen to smile. He was dressed in a blue bou-bou and a necklace, like a Yolof child, but his head was not shaved or ornamented with little tails of hair, as is usual with children of the country. As he was a little “white” boy, his mother had let his curly hair grow, and one lock fell across his forehead, as with Jean.
Jean remained there a long time, seated at the door of the blockhouse, playing with his son.
The last rays of daylight fell upon this singular picture; the child with his angel face, the spahi with his soldierly beauty, playing together alongside of those sinister dark minstrels.
Fatou-gaye was seated at their feet contemplating the pair with adoring eyes, crouching on the ground before them like a dog at its master’s feet.
Poor Jean had remained very much of a child, as is commonly the case with young men who have led a hard life, and whose precocious physical development has endowed them early with a mature and serious manner. He dandled his son on his knees with soldierly awkwardness, constantly bursting into peals of fresh, youthful laughter. But the child, the spahi’s son, did not laugh much; he put his chubby arms round his father’s neck and nestled close to his breast, looking about him with a very solemn air....
When night fell, Jean disposed of them both safely in the interior of the blockhouse; then he gave Fatou all the money he had left, three khâliss (fifteen francs)....
“See,” he said, “to-morrow you will buy kouss-kouss for yourself and good milk for him.”