“—the best settlers have been not the professional colonials, but the European troops from the trenches.”[406]
This is in the preface.
The book opens with the awakening of the hero “Batouala” in the hut in which he sleeps with his eighth and favorite wife, Yassiguindjia. It recalls another awakening in another realistic piece of literature, “Old Bram” in “The Black Border.” The only difference is between the awakening of a wolf and the awakening of an old watch dog, “the friend of man,” a tamed wolf. The story revolves around the politics and desires of Batouala, Bissibingui and Yassiguindjia. Batouala is a wolf who cares for the pack; Bissibingui, a young wolf, as fierce, who cares but for himself and his desires. Yassiguindjia can only be described by one of the items with which she was purchased.
In “The Black Border” it is true we are in South Carolina, along the coast; but, as has been eloquently stated by a Scotch South Carolinian, in that region “there is Africa in every breath we draw.” With artistic power Maran pictures the sounds of the African dawn.
“Daylight broke. Although heavy with sleep still, Batouala—Batouala, the Mokoundji, chief of so many villages—was quite conscious of these sounds. He yawned, shivered and stretched himself. Should he go to sleep again? Should he get up? God! Why get up? He did not even wish to know why....
“Now merely to get up—didn’t that require an enormous effort? In itself a perfectly simple decision, so it seemed. As a matter of fact it was hard; for getting up and working were one and the same thing, at least to the whites.... Life is short. Work is for those who will never understand life. Doing nothing does not degrade a man. In the eyes of one who sees things truly, it differs from laziness. As for him, Batouala, until it was proved to the contrary, he would believe that to do nothing was simply to profit by everything that surrounds us. To live from day to day without thought of yesterday or care for the morrow, without looking ahead—that was perfect.”[407]
What a perfect picture of the Negro without “the power of a stronger hand,” which William Pickens saw so clearly the need of in 1903. And the philosophy of it! Moved to visit Africa in 1924, Dr. DuBois makes a discovery:
“I began to notice it as I entered Southern France. I formulated it in Portugal. I knew it as a great truth one Sunday in Liberia. And the great truth was this: Efficiency and happiness do not go together in modern culture.... And laziness; divine, eternal languor is right and good and true.”[408]
The Doctor praises the “manners” of the Africans.
“Their manners were better than those of Park Lane or Park Avenue, Rittenhouse Square or the North Shore.... The primitive black man is courteous and dignified.... Wherefore shall we all take to the Big Bush? No I prefer New York.”[409]