Xala (7 page)

He did not find their father either. Oumi N'Doye was beginning to worry. El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye had assured her he would be coming. Usually he kept his promises. He was beginning to neglect her. After the meal, which she took alone with the children, she went to her bedroom with her magazines, still hoping. She got herself ready, making herself attractive. She was counting on keeping the man for a good part of the night. She lay on the bed looking very desirable and listened for his arrival. She turned off the main light, leaving a night-light, which seemed more appropriate. Nothing. She returned to her reading. Now and again she thought she heard the sound of a car-engine. It grew as the car approached then, to her intense disappointment, died away again. According to her alarm-clock it was nearly 1.00 a.m. She could not sleep. She felt threatened.

Late in the night El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye returned to his third's house. All was quiet and peaceful in the villa. A shaft of light shone from under the door. El Hadji knocked.

‘Who is it?'

‘It's me, El Hadji,' he replied, recognizing the voice of Yay Bineta, the Badyen.

She let him in.

‘Have you passed the day in peace?' he asked.

‘In peace only,' said the Badyen returning his greeting, and she added, ‘N'Gone can't be asleep.'

El Hadji realized she was waiting for him.

‘Have you eaten?'

‘Yes.'

‘If you are still hungry, your share is there. Have you done something about your problem?'

‘Yes, I have seen a marabout.'

‘Alxam ndu lilay.'

El Hadji went into the wedding chamber. Nothing had been changed. The bed was in its place, the tailor's dummy dressed. As on the night before, N‘Gone was in her nightdress, ready. The night-light dimly lit the sculptural form of her slender body. The strong desire he felt for her faded away. As he had done the previous night, he tried desperately to excite himself mentally. Not a nerve in his body responded. He felt ill. He perspired. He, the stallion who usually flung himself on women, was like pulp. Regret and anger filled him. His body was taken over by bitterness. He felt the full extent of the seriousness of his predicament as a wounded male and was bewildered by it. He had dreamed of this moment as he lay in the arms of his other two wives, the moment when he would be alone with N'Gone. He had desired her with his whole body. He had carried his victim to the nest like a victorious bird of prey and now consummation seemed impossible, forbidden.

The
xala,
which had started off as a confidential matter to be discussed in whispers, had become, as the days then the weeks went by, a subject of general conversation.

El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye had consulted a host of
facc-katt
healers. Each had given his prescription. He had been anointed with
safara
– a liquid which the healer obtains by washing off verses of the Koran written on small planks of wood called
alluba
– and made to
drink it. He was given
xatim
(pronounced ‘hatim'), esoteric writings, to wear round his waist like fetishes. He was rubbed with ointments. He was made to cut the throat of a completely red cock. He did everything he was told to do in the hope of a cure. When they saw the Mercedes draw up in front of their grass huts or hot, cast-iron houses and out of it climb a man in European dress, the
facc-katt
all knew their patient to be a man of substance. He was required to pay high fees, nice fat ones. He always paid cash.

Each of the experts gave lengthy explanations. Some said he was the victim of the jealousy of one of his wives. She was described to him: a woman of average build, perhaps small. He began to accept that it must be Oumi N'Doye. Another of the charlatans used and abused Yalla's name: his head was swathed in a thick turban and he pulled all the time at his forked beard; he had a bony face and wet sheep's eyes, and accompanied each sentence with an unctuous smile. Gazing all the time at a blackish liquid in a champagne bottle, he informed El Hadji that his
xala
was the work of a colleague who wished him harm.

El Hadji mentally reviewed the members of the ‘Businessmen's Group'. It was a wasted effort.

The charlatan cleared his throat, making a strange noise as he did so, and returned to his contemplation of the bottle. No doubt at all, he could see the author of the
xala
: a well-built specimen, dark, but not excessively so.

Days and weeks passed. At his ‘office' El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye would spend hours lost in thought, his mind far away. His eyes no longer followed his secretary-saleslady, Madame Diouf. Before, whenever she turned her back, he would ogle her nicely rounded buttocks, her well-shaped thighs. His secretary's behind was a great source of jokes and laughter among his friends.

El Hadji suffered greatly from his
xala
. His bitterness had become an inferiority complex in the company of his peers. He imagined himself the object of their looks and the subject of their conversation. He could not endure the asides, the way they laughed whenever he went past, the way they stared at him. His infirmity, temporary though it might be, made him incapable of communicating with his employees, his wives, his children and his business colleagues. When he could allow himself a few moments of escape he imagined himself a carefree
child again. Remorse overwhelmed him like a tide of mud covering a paddyfield. He thought back over his third marriage in the vain hope of finding some explanation there. Had he been in love with N'Goner? Or was it simply old age urging him towards young flesh? Or was it because he was wealthy? Or because he was weak? Because he was a libertine and a sensualist? Was it that his married life with his two wives had been intolerable? He asked himself these questions but he was careful to avoid the truth.

He was. held in the blinding grip of an intense hatred. He aged overnight. Two deep lines starting at the top of the nostrils curved around his mouth, widening as they did so. His chin broadened. the lack of sleep showed at the edge of his eyelids and bathed his eyes in a reddish lustre crossed by threads which according to the time of day or the place would take on the colour of stale palm-oil.

El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye had found in the President of the ‘Businessmen's Group' a sympathetic listener who also spared himself no verbal effort. He had for El Hadji's
xala
a throaty voice with a sympathetic ring to it which in our country always indicates a desire to be helpful.

‘We shall find a good marabout,' said the President, undaunted by their failure to do so.

‘As a friend,' he made a list of all the healers he knew. El Hadji placed his confidence in him. He had given up the struggle and was constantly on the verge of tears. A dense cloud took possession of his thoughts. Everything seemed to shake unsteadily. A skein of questions unwound itself in an endless thread through his mind.

Before his wedding night El Hadji had obtained the agreement of his two wives for him to spend thirty nights with his third. Thirty nights of feasting, one could say. Now he would have to return to the regular
moomé.
Each wife to have her
aye
. Adja Awa Astou first. Yay Bineta had given it her blessing. ‘Perhaps with this cycle of
moomé
you will find out who is responsible for the
xala
,' she said.

El Hadji returned with his shame to the unending rotation of the
moomé.
Adja Awa Astou was as self-effacing as the religious law required. Their chat did not extend beyond the hedge around the villa. The children had been well-behaved during his ‘absence'. The wife was careful not to touch on the
xala.
Did she even know about it? Her husband said nothing on the subject either. The two nights that
followed were identical. No sexual relations. The man showed no inclination for them. Her aye over, Adja Awa Astou watched her husband leave her for his six nights elsewhere, with his other wives.

 

 

Adja Awa Astou had no friends. She was lonely, very lonely. If she wanted to confide in someone or pour out her troubles, there was not a soul to whom she could turn. In her isolation she thought of her father. She missed Papa John terribly. There was a time when she used to go every Friday after the main prayer of the day to the Catholic cemetery to visit her mother's grave. The caretaker had noticed the regularity of this woman, who was always dressed in the same way with her head covered in a white scarf. He watched her suspiciously from a distance. Was she mad? A former nun perhaps? Or a thief? Then one Sunday Papa John, whom he knew well, came to see him because the everlasting flowers had been removed.

‘The lady in white put them over there behind the wall,' the caretaker told him, pointing them out to him.

‘Renée,' muttered Papa John to himself. Then aloud: ‘Does this lady come on Sunday mornings?'

‘No, on Friday afternoons. Her chauffeur told me she was her mother.'

Papa John returned to his island. He would have liked to see his daughter, speak to her. One Friday in the month of Ramadan (the Muslim month of fasting) the caretaker waited for Adja as she was leaving and said to her:

‘Madam, I don't see your father any more. I hope it is nothing serious?'

Adja Awa Astou looked at him with apprehension.

‘Since when has my father not been coming?'

‘I don't know the date, madam, but it's several Sundays.'

‘Thank you,' she said, giving him a couple of coins.

 

 

She returned to her villa and told her eldest daughter, Rama, to go and find out how her grandfather was. Thus it was that Rama travelled between them, the bearer of their messages to one another.

Adja Awa Astou was too modest ever to speak to anyone about her
husband's xala. She grew closer to her daughter, who began to return home early to keep her mother company so that she would feel less alone.

One evening she went to her daughter's room with a great urge to get things off her chest.

‘Mother! Sit down!' said Rama, putting aside her book. ‘I don't see father around any more, you know.' Adja Awa Astou looked round at the objects hung on the walls. ‘Your father is very busy at the moment,' replied her mother picking up a book. Holding the book in her hands gave her courage. But she still hesitated to speak. Good wife though she was, amenable, and an excellent mother, she could not hide her unhappiness. The question which had been on her mind for so long came tumbling out:

‘What are people saying?'

Rama looked at her mother. She was embarrassed but choosing her words carefully she said slowly:

‘They are talking about father's
xala
.'

Adja Awa Astou drew in her chin, her eyes fixed on the book. There was a long silence. ‘So everyone knows about it,' she said, speaking to herself. Slowly she raised her head and looked at her daughter:

‘What should I do?' she said, her voice full of entreaty.

Rama remained silent. Her own feelings were divided. She was deeply opposed to polygamy. She knew what it was that kept her mother in that state: it was for their sakes, the children's. She excused this weakness but was unable to say so.