The result of this eternal pounding, which has been practised by the women for generations, is a coarse flour of millet, which is made into a flavourless kind of gruel called kouss-kouss.
Kouss-kouss is the basis of the nourishment of the black races.
Fatou evaded this traditional labour of the women of her race. Every evening she paid a visit to Coura n’diaye, the woman griot, the ancient poetess of King El Hadj.
In return for a small monthly payment Fatou had the right to sit among the little slaves of the old favourite around great calabashes, smoking with hot kouss-kouss, and to satisfy the appetite of her sixteen years.
From her raised position on her tara, where she lay upon fine mats of complicated design, the old cast-off favourite presided with imperturbable dignity.
Yet these repasts were uproarious scenes well worth witnessing. These small, naked creatures crouched on the ground around huge calabashes, all dipping their fingers at the same time into the Spartan brew. There were cries, wry faces, grimaces, tricks that would have made an ouistiti jealous, untimely invasions of great horned sheep; cats stealthily stretching their paws out and then slily dipping them in the gruel; intruding yellow dogs pushing their pointed noses into the dish, and then bursts of laughter, incredibly comic, displaying magnificent white teeth set in gums as red as peonies.
Jean had always to be back in barracks at four o’clock, but by the time he returned to his lodging after retreat had been sounded, Fatou was always dressed again, and her hands were clean. Beneath her towering headdress, which resembled that of an idol, she had assumed once more a serious, almost melancholy, expression. She was no longer the same person.
It was dreary at eventide in this desolate quarter, in this isolated corner of the dead-alive town.
Jean would often remain leaning on his elbow at the big window of his bare, white room.
The sea breeze fluttered the scraps of priests’ parchments which Fatou had hung by long threads from the ceiling, as a protection to them during their sleep.