Xala (16 page)

‘Boss, didn't you recognize Sereen Mada? It was him!' Modu told him after he had gone.

‘Who? Sereen Mada?'

‘Yes. Before he came in he told me not to say who he was.'

El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye rushed outside. Sereen Mada was nowhere in sight. El Hadji was petrified. He was oblivious to the noise of the lorries, the handcarts, the cries. He returned wearily to his ‘office' .

In the taxi Sereen Mada took his beads from his pocket. It was a long rosary with ebony beads encrusted with silver thread. He prayed furiously. His eyes were closed but his lips were busy. He was restoring El Hadji's
xala.

Modu returned to his place on the stool with a faraway look in his eyes.

‘What is happening, Modu?' asked the beggar.

‘Sereen Mada has just left.'

‘A courtesy visit?'

‘If you like,' replied the chauffeur, his head against the wall, his legs outstretched.

‘Be more explicit, Modu.'

Modu drew himself up. Crossing his legs, he leaned over to the beggar and put his mouth to his ear:

‘Perhaps you don't know, or do you? El Hadji has had the
xala
since his third marriage. Sereen Mada cured him. Now El Hadji can't pay him. I am sure Sereen Mada is going to give him back his
xala
later this evening.'

‘I have heard of Sereen Mada. They say he is a man of his word. The
xala
is nothing. I can remove it.'

Modu smiled sceptically. He scrutinized the beggar from behind. Sensing he was being watched, the latter did not move.

‘You don't believe me do you, Modu?'

‘It's not that,' replied the chauffeur. ‘El Hadji hasn't any money to pay you.'

‘I don't want to be paid.'

‘You would take away his
xala
for nothing? Free? Just like that?'

‘I didn't say that. I wouldn't ask him for money. But he would have to do my bidding.'

‘You worry me.'

‘If El Hadji does what I tell him he will be cured. He will become a man like you and me.'

More intrigued than ever, Modu gazed at the back of the beggar's neck. The beggar intoned his chant keeping a proud, distant pose.

El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye got his
xala
back. Not knowing which way to turn in the face of so much adversity, he sought refuge at his first wife's villa. It was in a family setting, with his
awa,
that he felt secure. As usual Adja Awa Astou asked for no explanation. She welcomed him as if she had expected him to return soon. She told the children their father was unwell and needed some peace and quiet. Obediently they went about the house on tip-toe.

For days on end El Hadji sat on the settee, his arms stretched out on either side of him, his mind far away.

His creditors besieged him. The National Grain Board began legal proceedings. ‘Automobile Credit' re-possessed the wedding-present car, the mini-bus and the Mercedes. The estate agent sent bailiffs to expropriate the villas. They were days of misery for this man accustomed to living in style.

Every morning and afternoon he saw the children set off for school on foot. Rama, whose Fiat had not been re-possessed as it was in her name, was kept very busy ferrying her younger brothers about.

Madame Diouf had laid a complaint before the Labour Tribunal. El Hadji failed to attend the two hearings. He was found guilty in his
absence for contempt of court and the matter handed over to the bailiffs. The latter were intransigent, refusing to allow him any time. Adja Awa Astou sold her jewelry to help out. He was besieged on all sides, completely isolated. Only Modu remained loyal. The chauffeur, who was a man of feeling, was reluctant to leave him, to abandon the slowly sinking ship.

Yay Bineta, the Badyen, came for ‘news' as she put it. After the exchange of traditional Wolof courtesies, Adja Awa Astou had left them, saying she had work to do. As soon as she was alone with him the Badyen attacked El Hadji in language full of innuendo. With great eloquence she told him how angry she and N'Gone had been. There she was, night after night, by herself in a cold bed. Was he not her husband? What then were his real intentions?

The Badyen watched him, unobserved, as she spoke. Her widow's instinct – the instinct of a woman left on her own – detected the smell of wrinkled skin emanating from the male sitting at the table beside her. Folds of malice appeared at the base of her nose, between her eyes.

‘Is it true the water and electricity are going to be cut off because the bills have not been paid? A man from the court came to see the villa.' Marriage wasn't just a question of
lef.
He had had more than enough time. What did he intend to do about it?

She was alluding to the
xala.
El Hadji did not reply. He was remembering the
seet-katt
's words: ‘It is someone close to you.'

That same day, after leaving El Hadji, Yay Bineta moved out with the third wife. The women hired a taxi, filled it with furniture and crockery and drove off, leaving the doors of the villa wide open. In accordance with the saying the wife was not leaving empty-handed, for want of sexual satisfaction.

Without warning her husband Oumi N‘Doye, the second wife, took her children and went to live with her parents in a poor district of the town. The bailiffs had come one morning and casually informed her that they would be back the next morning to take possession. Being a prudent woman, under cover of darkness and with the help of brothers, sisters, and cousins, she too had emptied her villa, going so far as to remove even the curtains, the fridge, and the carpets. Her father's house was too small to contain all her furniture and other household goods. For the children, used to comfort, the grand-parents'
slum house, the smallness of the rooms, the sandy yard, the meals taken sitting on a mat – meals which consisted every day, morning and evening, of rice eaten together from a single dish – were constant sources of friction between themselves and their cousins. Mariem openly quarrelled with her mother about the need to use public transport, the food, the lack of quiet to do her work, the fleas and the bugs. Slowly the family cohesion they had known when they lived in the ‘Villa Oumi N'Doye' disintegrated. The eldest boy talked of giving up his studies at the secondary school to join the police or the army.

Oumi N'Doye badgered her husband to face up to his children's future. But El Hadji was without work and did not know what to do.

‘Take them to live with you at Adja Awa Astou's,' suggested Oumi N'Doye.

When on his return to Adja Awa Astou's El Hadji raised the subject with his first wife in front of his daughter, Rama fiercely opposed the idea arguing:

‘We can't afford it. This house belongs to our mother. It is out of the question to have our half-brothers and sisters here.'

Adja Awa Astou was hurt by her daughter's hard words but deep down she realized she was right. Their present situation did not augur well for the days to come.

Reduced to a cypher, El Hadji no longer visited his second wife.

Now that she had fallen from her former position of economic superiority, Oumi N‘Doye tried to show she was a modern woman by going from office to office, firm to firm, in search of work. Through her change of fortune, too, she came to meet men who liked the easy life, men who could provide pleasure while they had money. So Oumi N'Doye often went out in the evening.

The sun and the moon played chase, weaving life. One day El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye was summoned to a meeting at the home of his third wife's parents. N'Gone wanted to ‘take back her freedom', in the words of the consecrated formula. Modu accompanied his former employer, as a friend. They drove to old Babacar's home in Rama's Fiat.

In the all-purpose living-room were gathered three notables, members of the parish, the girl's mother and Yay Bineta. The men were those who had attended the marriage ceremony in the mosque.
In a corner of the room near the window stood the tailor's dummy, still wearing the wedding dress.

‘El Hadji, you must realize, or at least you must have guessed the reason for this meeting. N'Gone wants to take back her freedom,' began the sacristan.

‘We are not going to waste time on that aspect of the affair,' said Yay Bineta, the Badyen, interrupting him. She spoke in a sarcastic voice that sounded like a trumpet, her eyes gleaming with determination. ‘We married our daughter, an innocent young girl, to El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye. And for four months El Hadji has been unable to prove himself a man. Since his wedding day he has avoided us. He has hidden from us day and night. Then he left us without water and electricity. But it's not this that we hold against him. We are so ashamed of the way this marriage has turned out that no one in this family dares go out during the day. So now we ask him for our freedom.'

Modu looked the Badyen up and down critically, suppressing the words of contempt that rose to his lips. The woman reminded him of an aunt, nicknamed ‘The Termite' because she eroded people from the inside, only leaving the shell. In an attempt to act as a moderating influence, he said.

‘Yay Bineta, you solve nothing talking like that. Yalla likes the truth only. El Hadji has not repudiated N'Gone. That is the truth! If since his marriage with your daughter El Hadji...'

‘Say straight out that El Hadji is not a man,' said Yay Bineta interrupting him.

‘That could happen to any man. Unfortunately it happened that El Hadji caught this
xala
from your daughter.'

‘Do you say we are responsible?'

‘Don't you accuse us,' yelled the mother, shaking her fist in Modu's face. ‘If you are not men... In fact, were you ever men? You don't keep a girl as if she were a gold coin. Even with a gold coin you do business.'

Modu did not reply. He was seething with anger. He kept himself under control. Born as he was where the spoken word is a red-hot iron, he said right out in Wolof:

‘You seem determined to take back your freedom whatever the cost. When you left you took everything with you.'

‘Ah! Ah! I was expecting that. However long it stays in the river the tree-trunk will never turn into a crocodile. What did we take? The car? You hadn't paid for it. Go and see “Automobile Credit” about that. The clothes? There they are.'

The Badyen pointed to the tailor's dummy.

‘Bineta, you are exceeding the bounds of politeness,' said the sacristan firmly, interrupting her. ‘I will speak to El Hadji. El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye, your wife N'Gone asks you to give her her freedom. There is no need for me to explain the reason for this request.'

El Hadji drew back: He stared at his fingers.

There was a long silence.

‘El Hadji, we are listening to you,' said another notable finally. He wore a fez with a red pompom. He continued: ‘According to Koranic marriage law, this woman has every right to demand this separation. No one can force her to remain your wife, especially as you are unable to make her your wife.'

‘For our part,' replied Modu, speaking for El Hadji, ‘we do not dispute her right nor the principle. May I point out to you, however, that in our presence and in this very house the verdict has already been given: divorce.'

‘What do you want? To be reimbursed?'

‘Yay Bineta, you don't have the means to reimburse us. When did you see the termite offer hospitality to the tortoise?'

‘You are only a servant, Modu. Your place is not here among us.'

Modu looked with compassion at El Hadji.

These quarrels had no meaning for El Hadji. At least, he did not see their relevance. He looked on without taking anything in. The tailor's dummy wearing the wedding dress and crown meant nothing to him now. Nothing at all. He could barely remember the choosing of the material, his conversations with N'Gone, what he had felt for her. It seemed to him he no longer had any feelings at all. He wanted to speak, to say something, but his words could not find their way past his throat.