Xala by Ousmane Sembène Page B

and Morocco. Household utensils made of plastic, pewter and tin were heaped up to the ceiling. Delicacies, preserved tomatoes, pepper, milk and sacks of onions blended their odours with the smell of damp
walls and obliged the secretary-saleslady to use up two cans of aerosol a week.
    He had made a den for himself in a corner, calling it his ‘office’. He had furnished it with metal cupboards that had slots labelled with the months and the years.
    Â 
    Â 
    Madame Diouf came to tell him it was midday. Since the Badyen’s departure, he had been turning things over in his mind. He did not have a lunch engagement. He wanted to be alone. He could relax when he was on his own. He went to ‘his’ restaurant, where he went for business lunches or when he took a girl out. The owner of the restaurant, a Frenchman, knew him well and welcomed him with obsequious courtesy, congratulating him on his marriage and offering him an aperitif. As he showed him to his table he said:
    â€˜Africa will always be ahead of Europe. You’re lucky you can have as many wives as you need.’
    It was a simple meal: a grill with a salad, rosé d’Anjou, cheese. After coffee he felt like a siesta. Where? At his third’s? His second’s? His first’s, the only villa where he would get any rest? On second thoughts he would do better to go to a hotel.
    Modu had gone home. He’d have to go on foot! It was very hot and he would meet people he knew on the way. He took a taxi instead.
    â€˜El Hadji!’ said the manager, a Syrian, welcoming him with hands outstretched in the Muslim way. ‘You can have the same room with air-conditioning. What name if “anyone” asks for you?’
    This was where El Hadji always came when he wanted to relax.
    â€˜I’m alone today,’ he replied, entering the lift.
    â€˜Sick?’
    â€˜No. I need to think.’
    â€˜Here you are at home.’
    He turned on the air-conditioning and the room filled with cool air. He soon dozed off.
    How long had he been asleep? He looked at his watch. Seven in the evening. ‘All this time!’ he said to himself. When he reached the entrance he found Modu waiting for him. His employer’s behaviour puzzled him. Why does a man go and sleep in a hotel when he has three villas and three wives? If El Hadji had had a rendezvous with a
girl he, Modu, would have known about it. Because of the gossip he knew about the xala. A good marabout lived near his village. Could he find a way to tell El Hadji about him?
    â€˜The “office” is closed, boss,’ said Modu, so as to discover where to drive him.
    They stood face to face. Modu, who was a down-to-earth sort of man, could see the distress in his employer’s eyes, which were encircled by thin folds of skin, a sign of tiredness. They had the yellow colour of old African ivory. Modu stood aside and opened the car door. The Mercedes drove off towards the village of N’Gor.
    When they reached the foot of the twin humps El Hadji told him to drive to the top. The car went up the circular track to the lighthouse.
    El Hadji got out of the car and walked a little way along the path. He looked into the distance, his face grim, his shoulders sagging. Below him, like an enormous lake, shimmered the surface of the sea. The spray, like a net curtain being shaken by invisible fingers, folded and unfolded itself, catching the reflections of the light. The sea seethed and roared. Calmly he retraced his steps, skirting the caretaker’s hut. He stopped again. In the distance, Dakar. From afar like this the buildings, roofs and treetops gave the impression that the town was carved out of a single, whitish mass of rock into an irregular lacework with touches of shadow. The fronts of the buildings were lit by the moon’s rays and a row of winking luminous dots lined the main street.
    Vultures were gliding above in the sky.
    El Hadji had stopped for no particular