The weather is fine. The pure air of the morning, the sense of physical well-being produced by this unusual coolness, has a soothing influence upon him. And at this moment, Fatou seems to him very charming, and he is almost in love with her.
This is one of those fugitive and singular moments when memory slumbers, and this land of Africa seems to smile upon him; when the spahi surrenders himself without gloomy afterthought to the life which for three years has soothed and lulled him into a heavy, dangerous sleep, haunted by sinister dreams.
The morning air is fresh and pure. Behind the grey palisades of reeds, which border the narrow streets of Guet n’dar, are heard the first sounds of the kouss-kouss pounders, mingled with the sudden clamour of voices of just awakened negroes, and the noise of jingling beads. At each street corner are skulls of horned sheep (for the benefit of those versed in negro customs, the heads of victims of the tabaski) set up on tall poles, watching all the passers-by, and seemingly stretching out their wooden necks for the sake of a better view.
And settled everywhere are great fetish lizards with sky-blue bodies, swaying perpetually from side to side, with the curious twitching peculiar to their species; their heads, which are of a beautiful yellow, as if made of orange peel.
The air is full of the odours of negroes, of leather amulets, of kouss-kouss, and of soumaré.
Small negro children begin to show themselves at the doors; their round bellies with projecting navels are adorned with a row of blue beads; they smile from ear to ear, and their pear-shaped heads are shaven, except for three little tails.
They all stretch themselves, gazing at Jean with a look of astonishment in their great, shining eyes, and sometimes the most daring of them say, “Toubab! toubab! toubab! good-morning!”
All this savours of the country of exile and of remoteness from home; the smallest details of the smallest things are strange. But there is such magic in these tropical sunrises, such limpidity in the air this morning, such a sense of well-being produced by this unusual coolness, that Jean replies gaily to the good mornings of the negro babies, smiles at Fatou’s remarks, surrenders himself, and forgets.
The person whom Jean and Fatou were going to visit was a tall, old man with sly, crafty eyes, called Samba-Latir.
When they were both seated on mats on the ground in their host’s hut, Fatou began to speak, and expounded her case, which was, as will be seen, a serious and complicated one.