Fatou-gaye had a vague instinct that this instant of awakening was a dangerous and critical time when the white man evaded her influence. So she was on the watch for this moment, and when she saw Jean open his mournful eyes, and then suddenly start up with a bewildered look, she would quickly come and kneel beside him to minister to him, or she would put her supple arms round his neck and say,
“What is the matter, my white man?” in a voice which she rendered as soft and languishing as the sound of a griot’s guitar.
... But these fancies of Jean did not last long. When he was wide awake his usual indifference possessed him once more, and he saw things again in their normal aspect.
II
... The operation of dressing Fatou’s hair was a very important and complicated one. It took place once a week, and on this occasion the whole day was given up to it. In the early morning Fatou set out for Guet n’dar, the negro village, where in a hut with peaked roof, built of thatch and dry reeds, dwelt the hairdresser of most repute among the Nubian ladies.
Fatou remained there for several hours, crouched on the sand, surrendering herself into the hands of this patient, painstaking artist.
The hairdresser began by pulling down Fatou’s previous arrangement of hair, unthreading the beads one by one, loosening and disentangling the thick locks. Then she reconstructed that amazing edifice, introducing coral, gold coins, copper spangles, balls of green jade and balls of amber—balls of amber as big as apples, Fatou’s maternal inheritance of precious family jewels, brought secretly into the land of captivity.
The most complicated part to dress was the back of the head, the nape of the neck. There Fatou’s woolly masses had to be divided into hundreds of little corkscrew curls, starched and rigid, carefully ordered, resembling rows of black fringes.
Each of these corkscrew curls was rolled separately round a long straw and covered with a thick layer of gum. To give this coating time to dry, the straws had to remain in place until the next day. Fatou stayed at home with all these straws sticking out of her hair. She looked that evening as if she had put her head into a porcupine’s skin.
But what a splendid effect the next day, when the straws were removed!...