Xala

by Ousmane Sembène

  ‘To the third’s place!’

  ‘At last!’ sighed Modu, putting his foot on the accelerator.

  The Badyen was the first to see him get out of the Mercedes, his suit crumpled, his hair ruffled, his face dirty, his shoes – like the car – covered in dust. A rapid but thorough inspection told her that the man had recovered his virility.

  ‘Alhamdoullilah!’ she cried, putting on a face to suit the occasion. ‘I knew you would “free” yourself! How did you do it? Which of your wives was it?’

  ‘Alhamdoullilah!’ he replied, reaching the verandah in a single energetic bound.

  Yay Bineta, the Badyen, followed close at his heels.

  ‘El Hadji, listen! N’Gone started her period last night,’ she said, entering the bedroom with him. She kept the door ajar.

  The room was lit by a bright light, down to the feet of the dressed tailor’s dummy. The furnishings were exactly as they had been. N’Gone woke up.

  ‘What did you say?’ exclaimed the man, staring at the Badyen.

  ‘I said N’Gone was not available at the moment. She started her period last night. N‘Gone, you tell him.’

  ‘It is true. It started yesterday. It’s given me a stomach-ache,’ N’Gone explained in French.

  El Hadji refused to believe them. Rearing like a stallion he confronted the Badyen in a silent duel. The latent repulsion he felt for the woman and which he had always kept in check welled up violently. His aversion was evident in the hardness of his look. It was this woman who had instigated this third marriage, he told himself. It was she too who had prevented him from having N‘Gone before they were married. If N’Gone had always managed to slip through his fingers, it was because she, the Badyen, was there in the shadows, advising and prompting her. El Hadji cursed himself for having been such a weak fool.

  ‘Do you want to see her linen?’ asked the Badyen, knowing very well that the man would not go so far as to insist on seeing this piece of cloth.

  El Hadji looked with severity at each of the two women in turn. ‘It is someone close to you.’ With this thought in his mind he hurried out.

  Yay Bineta ran after him.

  ‘El Hadji, believe us! It is true! Listen, I must speak to you.’

  In the car he ordered his chauffeur:

  ‘To Oumi N’Doye’s.’

  He could no longer hear what the Badyen was saying.

  At his second wife’s villa his arrival did not seem to cause surprise. Oumi N‘Doye dragged him off to ‘her’ room. They spent the whole day and night in bed, to the woman’s great satisfaction.

  The next morning, shaved, wearing a ‘Prince of Wales’ suit, and his black shoes well polished, El Hadji breakfasted with appetite: the juice of two oranges, eggs and ham, white coffee, bread and butter. The maid placed the bottle of mineral water on the table and withdrew. Oumi N’Doye was overjoyed to see her husband’s knife and fork at work. She was in a seventh heaven, thrilled with these pleasures brought to her outside her own moomé.

  ‘Shall I tell you something, El Hadji?’ she said, her head gently resting on one hand, her elbows on the table.

  El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye looked at his wife with an air of self-assurance. He wiped his lips with dabs of his serviette and said:

  ‘I am listening.’

  ‘I had heard you had the xala.’

  El Hadji did hot reply immediately. With a confident gesture he poured himself a glass of mineral water, looking at his wife.

  ‘Who did you hear it from, that I had this xala?’

  ‘People.’

  ‘What people?’

  ‘In the neighbourhood.’

  ‘What do you think, wife?’

  ‘Oh!’ she cried, her mouth round, her eyes lowered with just a hint of modesty. Then raising her head: ‘People have evil tongues. Why don’t you stay and rest here today? You work too hard. Your hair is going white.’

  ‘I am going to the office,’ he said, rising.

  ‘You will come back this evening? Just for a minute?’

  ‘Oumi, it is not your aye.’

  And he left her.

  The faithful Modu was at the wheel. The Mercedes had not been cleaned.

  ‘I’m sorry, boss, about. the car...’

  ‘Take me to the office, then you can see to it.’

  Comfortably ensconced in the right-hand corner behind the driver, El Hadji contemplated the future with optimism and assurance. He was preoccupied with the question of divorcing his third wife, N’Gone. He felt vindictive and was determined to satisfy his urge for revenge. Calculating the expense occasioned by the wedding he decided his only course of action was to get her pregnant and then repudiate her. The suspicion that the xala had been caused by the Badyen had become a certainty. That family had damaged his male honour. The whole town knew about his affliction. Happily he had regained his form.

  The car-washer, standing on the edge of the pavement with a pail of water at his feet, watched Modu manoeuvre to park the car. Rama had parked her Fiat in front. She too watched the chauffeur’s manoeuvring.

  Father and daughter entered the shop.

  ‘By my father’s belt Modu, you must pay me 500 francs today,’ said the car-washer after inspecting the car.

  ‘Two hundred francs. Not a centime more.’

  ‘You’re the chauffeur of a big man, Modu. You shouldn’t be stingy.’

  ‘Leave it then. Someone else will wash the car!’ Modu flung at him as he walked towards the shop.

  He came back carrying his stool.

  ‘Modu! Fear Yalla! I wash the car everyday for 100 francs. For today you must pay me at least a thousand francs. Look at that dirt! If you went to a toubab he’d charge you more than two thousand francs.’

  The young man wiped his index finger across the wing. A long line appeared underneath it. He showed it to Modu.

  ‘All right! I’ll give you 300 francs,’ the chauffeur agreed, settling himself not far from the beggar.

  ‘Is it you, Modu?’

  ‘Yes’.

  ‘You have been away two days.’

  ‘I was out of town with the boss.’

  ‘Nothing serious I hope?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Alhamdoullilah!’ said the beggar.

  He had not turned round. Modu could only see his hunched back, his prominent ears, his skinny neck. The beggar went on to ask:

  ‘Is El Hadji in his office?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘I will lower my voice then.’

  He intoned his holy complaint once more, in a carefully modulated voice. It was the never-changing chant sung with softer inflexions of the voice.

  Modu stretched out his legs and lit a cigarette. Leaning his head against the wall of the shop, he sat day-dreaming.

  In the ‘office’ Rama struggled to keep her self-control. She was in a state of agitation. She knew she was powerless to stop her father’s flow of words, which were so full of obvious lies she could not stand it. She kept her eyes lowered as her father spoke. El Hadji could only see her narrow, prominent forehead, which reminded him of his first wife, and the shining strips of scalp between the short plaits. Her father spoke hesitantly, the sentences did not come easily.

  ‘I know it’s your mother who sent you,’ he repeated, as if to insinuate collusion between mother and daughter.

  ‘I repeat, it is not so. Mother knows nothing about it. I came of my own accord. I know she is upset. At the moment she is eaten up with remorse about something. You must realize that I am old enough to know about certain things.’

  ‘Know about what things?’ asked her father, thinking of his xala.

  Rama refused to reply, thinking it would be her mother who would suffer as a result. She was on the verge of bringing up everything she reproached him with, the third marriage, the xala. Looking away, she watched the progress of a cockroach towards the files.

  ‘I know that mother is desperately unhappy,’ she said, fully conscious of the hypocrisy and falsenes
s of what she was saying, of lying to herself.

  ‘Your mother is ill?’

  ‘Physically, no.’

  ‘I’ll call round. Tell her that.’

  Their eyes met.

  ‘I won’t tell her. Mother doesn’t know that I have been to see you. I’m going.’

  ‘Do you need anything?’

  She had reached the door. She turned to look at him. The cockroach slipped in among the boxes and disappeared.

  ‘Thank you, father, but it’s mother who needs you.’

  A few days previously Rama had gone to see her grandfather at Gorée, accompanied by Pathé. Usually she went once a fortnight on Sunday, sometimes staying the night. The young girl’s presence brought a breath of fresh air to the old colonial-style house with its wooden balcony.

  Papa John had met them as usual in the garden, far from the tourists who invaded the island. It was cooler outside.

  ‘Maam (grandfather), your daughter sends her greetings,’ said Rama, as she always did.

  ‘You always say the same thing. Renée...’

  ‘Why can’t you accept your daughter’s new faith, maam? It’s twenty years now. She isn’t called Renée any more. She has also been to Mecca. She’s Adja Awa Astou now.’

  ‘That is why your father has taken a second and a third wife. Are you in favour of polygamy?’

  ‘I am against it and he knows I am.’

  ‘Yet you are a Muslim.’

  ‘Yes, a modern Muslim. But maam, that isn’t the problem. It’s to do with your daughter. You don’t even know your three youngest grandsons.’

  ‘When Africa was Africa it was for the young to visit the old. I haven’t set foot on the mainland for two years.’

  ‘So even on All Saint’s Day you don’t visit grandmother’s grave any more? There is no cemetery on Gorée.’

  ‘I’ll make my last crossing feet first then. Renée can come and keep me company.’

  ‘Alas, no. Muslim women don’t accompany the dead.’

  ‘We’ll meet before God, then,’ said the old man. Turning to Pathé: ‘I haven’t offered you anything, doctor.’

  ‘You shouldn’t talk to him like that,’ Pathé said to Rama when the old man had disappeared into the house.

  Rama stuck her tongue out at him and called:

  ‘Maam, I’ll give you a hand.’

  Left alone Pathé lit a cigarette. Rama returned with a tray, Papa John with the ice-bucket. The grandfather and his granddaughter had pastis, Pathé a beer.

  ‘Your good health,’ said the old man, spilling a few drops onto the ground as he raised the glass to his lips.

  The conversation was relaxed. Papa John spoke about his life on the island. He talked about old times and the Feast of St Charles. He had hoped Rama would come to take him to the church. That year the feast had passed unmarked. There had been nothing to distinguish that Sunday from all the other Sundays. Holiday-makers, including many Europeans, had come to sunbathe on the warm sand of the beach. Papa John couldn’t understand it at all: these Europeans who abandoned God’s house for idleness. Hadn’t they brought Catholicism to this country?

  Nostalgically the grandfather evoked the pomp of the Feast of St Charles in the old days. There would be crowds of people, men and women, young and old, come from the four corners of the country, filling the tiny church. They came for a religious festival but the flags showed it was the island’s feast-day as well. A band would march through the crowded. streets, cheering the whole of Béer (the Wolof name for Gorée). After mass the women in long dresses, elbow-length gloves and English-style hats, and the men in frock coats or tails, top-hats and carrying gold-knobbed sticks, would make their way in a garden-party atmosphere to the town-hall for apéritifs. Those were the good old days. These recollections of the past made Papa John sad, his old eyes filled with tears. Island families were selling their houses to foreigners. The Europeans, the technical advisers, the directors and managers of companies who lived on the island now, did not go to church.

  When her grandfather walked with them to the ferry, Rama tried to persuade him to visit her mother. She was convinced it was only absurd pride that made them maintain their positions.

  ‘And how is your father?’ asked Papa John.

  Rama hesitated uncertain how to reply. Was the question a trap? The vengeance of an embittered old man? Had her grandfather got wind of El Hadji’s xala? Erect, looking straight ahead of him, Papa John waited for the reply to his question.

  ‘I haven’t seen my father since his third marriage.’

  ‘Aren’t you living at home any more?’

  ‘Yes, I am. But I never see my father.’

  ‘Then you know nothing of his xala?’

  ‘I know that mother is very unhappy. If you came to see her now she would be very happy.’

  ‘Why doesn’t Renée come and live here?’

  Papa John fell silent. He had stopped. The young couple did likewise.

  ‘The house is hers. She can return to it whenever she likes. My last crossing will be feet first,’ he repeated, setting off again.

  They reached the jetty without exchanging another word.

  The young couple embarked. The old man returned to his house alone, wrapped in his pride.

  Depressed, Rama had nothing to say. Pathé understood how she felt. He too said nothing.

  After his daughter’s departure El Hadji realized she was now a young woman old enough to marry. Why didn’t the doctor ask for her hand? El Hadji could visualize himself playing the generous father-in-law. He would give his consent without conditions of any kind and he would oppose excessive expense. For the celebration they would only invite a few close friends. ‘Is Rama still a virgin?’ he wondered. He quickly put the question out of his mind. He hadn’t intended it. Today, for the first time in three months since he had slapped her on the afternoon of his wedding, they had had a serious conversation. Rama had been the only one who had dared oppose the marriage. Pity she was a girl. He would have been able to make something of her had she been a boy. Being a fatalist he thought of his two meetings with his daughter as strange coincidences: the last occasion was the day before his xala and today’s was the day of his cure.

  He would go to Adja Awa Astou. It was a long time since they had talked. She was such a taciturn woman, so indifferent to the things of this life that you could bury her alive and she would not complain.

  His meditation over, he sent for Madame Diouf, to take stock of his business; it was time he turned his attention to more concrete matters. Madame Diouf told him where the gaps were and what they needed. The re-stocking of the shop had become a matter of urgency: there was nothing left. There were also the wages of his employees to be paid. She, Madame Diouf, had not been paid for more than two months. Why had she not reminded him? He sent for his chauffeur. The same story. They turned to the domestic side: petrol bills to pay, grocery bills (each wife had her own grocer), servants’ wages, water and electricity. It was thanks to the intervention of a cousin of Madame Diouf that the latter had not been cut off. The water and electricity bills would have to be settled straight away. As for the shop, it was empty. The retailers were going elsewhere. The manufacturers and other suppliers were all refusing to deliver goods. The picture was bleak. Finally, she had to inform him of an urgent meeting that evening, at the Chamber, with his fellow businessmen. If the rumour was true, it was he who was in the hot seat. Why? Why? She knew nothing more. El Hadji’s face took on a look of anger. He decided to go and see the President on the spot. Since the Mercedes was being washed, Modu hailed a taxi for him. He climbed in.

  In the spacious waiting-room of the ‘Businessmen’s Group’ offices, two old women and three men were already waiting. The President’s secretary liked him because he was always so courteous, and he was able to convince her of his need to see the President urgently on a matter of great importance.

  As soon as the door opened El Hadji stepped through, paying no attention to the grumbling
s of the others. The air-conditioning came to meet him. It was a very large room, with curios hanging on the walls and polished mahogany furniture.

  ‘You should have phoned me,’ remarked the President. He had a black baby face. ‘Today I receive the general public.’

  ‘So much the better,’ said El Hadji firmly. ‘Tell me what is going on. Why am I the subject of a meeting?’

  ‘First, have you been able to do anything about your xala?’

  ‘It’s finished. Over and done with.’

  ‘I am very pleased for your sake. As for this meeting, it is nothing to worry about. Your colleagues want to stop the rather serious prejudice you are causing them.’

  ‘What prejudice?’

  ‘Keep calm. In business you must have the Englishman’s self-control, the American’s flair, and the Frenchman’s politeness. Here it is just you and me. You know me well. But between you and the others, I am only an arbitrator. The thing is your colleagues are having difficulties for which they hold you responsible. Firstly, dishonoured cheques, and secondly...’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Let me finish. I am only putting you in the picture. Then you’ll be able to defend yourself this afternoon if necessary. I have been personally approached by the National Grain Board who, two weeks before your marriage, gave you a quota certificate for thirty tons of rice. This you re-sold, according to a practice which is perfectly acceptable. But where is the money? You did not pay the Grain Board on the due date. The Board, having been informed of your excessive spending, made further inquiries about you and suspended the Group’s credit. The consequences of this very soon became apparent. We have lost the advantages we had, thanks to you. None of your colleagues can have his quota now without paying cash. The National Grain Board expects to be paid for the thirty tons of rice or it will hand the matter over to the police or take you to court.

  The President had provided this explanation in a calm voice, like a pedantic professor giving an Algebra lesson to a class of mutes.

  El Hadji had listened in silence. At first he looked only at the President’s hand energetically, stressing certain points. As the President spoke El Hadji’s face clouded over. His look of discomfiture betrayed his misery.