Formerly, on his first arrival, Jean had cast a general look of repulsion on this black population. In his eyes they all seemed alike; they all wore for him the same simian mask, and under that polished surface of oiled ebony he could not have distinguished one individual from another.
Little by little, however, he had grown accustomed to these faces. Now he could distinguish among them. When he saw the silver-braceletted, black girls go by, he would compare them; one he considered plain, another pretty, one refined, another degraded.
In the end the negresses had for him individual faces, just like white women, and he found them less repulsive than before.
XXIX
June! It was spring time indeed, but a tropical spring time—fleeting, feverish, full of enervating odours and the air heavy with thunder.
Butterflies and birds returned, life was renewed; the humming birds had cast off their grey dress, and arrayed themselves in their brilliant summer colours. The whole country turned green as if by enchantment; the leafy trees now cast a little shade, warm and soft, upon the moist soil; the mimosas, in full flower, looked like enormous bouquets, with pink or orange sprays, where the humming birds sang in tiny little soft voices, like the muted twittering of swallows. Even the clumsy baobabs had put on for a few days fresh leaves of pale, delicate green....
The plains were carpeted with strange flowers, wild grasses, daturas with large, scent-laden calyces. And the showers that watered all things were warm and fragrant, and at evening, above the tall grasses sprung up overnight, the ephemeral fire-flies danced their rounds, like sparks of phosphorus.
Nature had been so impatient to bring forth all this abundance that in a single week she had exhausted all her gifts.
XXX
In his evening walks, Jean invariably came upon little Fatou, Fatou with a head like a woolly, black lamb. Her hair grew quickly—like the grasses—and soon the skilful hairdressers would be able to make something of it.