Xala (8 page)

Two or three days previously Rama had gone as usual to meet her flancé, Pathé, at the hospital. Pathé had finished his studies in psychiatry a year earlier and was now practising. It was the end of the day. A male nurse went up to Pathé:

‘Doctor, the registrar wants you. It's urgent.'

Pathé set off down the passage. At the entrance to the waiting-room he came face to face with El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye. The two men knew one another.

‘Nothing serious, I hope?' inquired Pathé reacting in a purely professional manner.

‘No, nothing,' El Hadji replied hastily. Then: ‘Doctor, I don't see you at Adja's villa any more. I hope you haven't quarrelled with Rama.'

The doctor smiled. He looked so young his superiors all marvelled at his precocity.

‘No, I've been busy.'

‘That's a relief. We'll see you soon then.'

Pathé opened the registrar's door.

‘Did you see him?' asked the registrar, tidying his table.

‘Who?'

‘El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye.'

‘Yes. Has he made a donation to the hospital?'

‘No such luck. He came about something quite different: his third wife.'

‘Pregnant already?'

‘Alas, no. You must be joking. He hasn't been able to manage an erection for nights now. He thinks someone has made him impotent, so he came for a pick-me-up. Those were his words.'

They laughed.

‘It's purely psychological,' said Pathé.

‘Perhaps. He was all right before his wedding night. But on the night itself he couldn't consummate the marriage. He is convinced that it's a
xala.
You know what that is?'

‘I've heard of it.'

‘Well then, you have a case of
xala
.'

‘What can I do? It wasn't me he came to consult. If you think science is powerless...'

‘Don't speak too quickly, Pathé. Science is never powerless. There are many fields still to be explored. Besides we are in Africa, where you can't explain or resolve everything in biochemical terms. Among our own people it's the irrational that holds sway. Why not see what you can find out about his visits to the marabouts.'

‘I'm not very intimate with him. I see his daughter of course.'

‘There you are! You have a foot in the camp. That's all, thank you. I'll see you tomorrow.'

Outside Pathé chewed over his anger. A host of ideas raged in his head. Should he talk to Rama?'

‘Lovely man, I'm here, here for you, even though you're late,' she
said to Pathé, who had changed into terylene trousers and an African shirt with short sleeves and embroidery round the neck.

‘I'm sorry I'm late.'

‘You'll have to pay a fine! You spoke in French.'

Pathé often forgot this rule of their language association. Members who spoke French had to pay a fine.

‘What fine do you impose?'

‘Later.'

Rama released the handbrake and drove off in a cloud of dust. She loved speed. At a pedestrian crossing she just missed someone and skidded towards the pavement. A policeman advanced on them. Very politely, he asked in French:

‘Your driving licence please, madam.'

Rama glanced at Pathé, turned, all feminine, to the policeman and said in Wolof:

‘My brother, excuse me, I cannot understand what you are saying.'

‘You don't understand French?' he asked in Wolof.

‘I don't understand French, my brother.'

‘How did you get your driving licence then?'

Rama chanced a glance at Pathé. He avoided saying anything to prevent himself from laughing.

‘Give me your licence,' ordered the policeman peremptorily in Wolof.

Rama hunted in her handbag and handed him her licence. Leaning forward the policeman examined Pathé's face and suddenly blurted out:

‘Doctor! Doctor! Don't you recognize me? You attended my second wife. You looked after her very well.'

‘Did I?' said Pathé modestly.

‘I recognize you. I don't know how to thank you. My wife is completely better now.'

‘You know, we get a lot of people at the hospital.'

Rama leaned over to Pathé and signed to him that he was breaking the rules of their language association.

‘Is this your lady, doctor?' asked the policeman in French.

‘No... a sister. I am going to examine her mother.'

Rama jabbed him in the side several times.

‘I hope her husband will be able to correct her!'

‘I hope so too,' agreed Pathé solemnly.

‘Thank the doctor for being so kind as to go with you to attend to your sick mother. If it weren't for him I'd take away your driving licence. You may go,' said the policeman to Rama in Wolof.

The policeman was a good sort really. He halted a mini which was coming from the opposite direction and signalled Rama to pass. Once they were out of sight they roared with laughter.

They went to the Sumbejin.

The sun, pale as twilight at this time of the year, sent its ochre rays obliquely onto the sea. On the bar terrace a few customers were enjoying the occasional breeze.

‘Why did you tell him all those lies?' asked Rama as she sat down.

‘I thought you didn't understand French.'

‘
Touché,
lovely man!'

They roared with laughter again.

The waiter, well trained at the hotel school, stood by them, erect and impassive. Rama ordered a coca-cola, Pathé a beer.

‘Foreign, sir?'

‘Local,' Pathé replied.

‘Do you think we will get married one of these days?'

Caught off his guard by the question but aware of its connection with the incident, Pathé was too intrigued to say anything. Then:

‘What's against it?'

‘That's not an answer. I want to know, yes or no, whether you still intend marrying me.'

The waiter brought their order.

‘My reply is yes.'

‘You know I'm against polygamy.'

‘What's eating you?'

‘You know about my father's third marriage?'

‘Yes.'

‘Apart from the enormous expense, do you know the rest?'

‘No,' replied the doctor, remembering what the registrar had told him less than two hours previously.

‘My father spent a fortune on this wedding, not to mention the car he bought his Dulcinea on condition she was a virgin. A virgin! I'm sure she's as much a virgin as I am.'

She paused, drank her coca-cola.

Pathé, wary of the young girl's unpredictability, waited for what was to follow. With his right hand he chased away a bee buzzing around his glass. Rama leaned over to him and with her index finger signalled him to draw nearer. Her elbow was resting on the table, her forearm vertical and her hand dangling free.

‘What's the matter?' asked Pathé.

She looked the doctor straight in the eyes.

‘What's the matter? My father's
xala
is the matter,' she replied straightening herself.

‘How did you find out?'

Hadn't she seen her father leaving the hospital? This confirmed what she had heard. Without taking her eyes off him, a narrow smile wrinkling the corners of her mouth into a look of mockery, she leaned over to him as before.

‘Father came to see me and as I am a
facc-katt
he said to me: “Rama, my dear child, I am impotent”.'

‘How, did you find out?'

‘So you know about it toot?'

Taken by surprise, Pathé could only splutter.

‘I saw father leaving the hospital,' she said. ‘The. whole of Dakar knows about the wedding and they also know about this other business now.'

‘It's true your father came to consult the registrar. But what does your mother say about it?'

‘Lovely man, do you really have any intelligence? My mother? She's just an “antique”. Didn't she accept the second wife?'

‘And your father?'

She showed him the cheek he had struck.

‘The last time I saw my father I received his hand here. Here. And it was on his wedding day.'

‘A well deserved present!'

‘You're intelligent, lovely man. For your punishment I want another coca-cola.'

Pathé called the waiter and ordered a second drink.

‘It's on my mother's account that I feel so angry about it. She's eaten up with guilt. When we're married I'll do everything I can to see she gets a divorce and comes to live with us.'

A cool breeze laden with iodine blew in from the sea.

The
xala
was all they could talk about and Rama could only think of her mother

 

 

‘What should I do?' The mother's question shook like a bell in her head. Rama thought about her conversation with Pathé. Perhaps there was a medical solution for her father's condition. It seemed doubtful though. But she did not know the reason for her doubt. She would have liked to answer her mother encouragingly, for her sake, to give her a little hope. But what if it turned out not to be true? If an excess of kindness born of affection were to raise her hopes too high, like the yeast the dough, her disappointment would be all the greater and her sense of having been let down all the more painful.

She looked at her mother. The woman's eyes reflected her complete confusion. She passed the book from one hand to the other. Her palms were damp with sweat.

‘There is nothing you can do, mother.'

Rama had chosen her words very carefully. She wanted to help her recover her calm.

‘I can't even go out. People stare at me like...'

The rest of her words were drowned in a smothered sob.

‘Did you cause this
xala,
mother?'

Was it that her heart had become cold and dry? Or was it an expression of sterile tenderness? Rama could not decide which it was. She kept her eyes on her mother. Adja Awa Astou's thin face lengthened towards her chin. The oblique slits of her eyes narrowed, silvery specks the size of pinheads shone in her left eye. Her lower lip trembled slackly for a moment. Then she said:

‘I swear by Yalla that it is not me.'

‘Why then? Do you feel you are to blame?'

‘Simply because I am his wife, the
awa
. In such cases the first wife is always blamed.'

‘You should have spoken to father about it during your
aye
.'

‘I can't talk to him about such things.'

‘Would you like me to talk to him?'

‘You have no modesty!' exclaimed Adja Awa Astou, getting to her feet.

The book fell to the floor. She went on furiously:

‘How can you talk. about such things to your father?'

She left the room, banging the door behind her.

Rama stared at the closed door in astonishment.

El Hadji Abdou Kader Beye followed the marabouts' instructions: he drank their concoctions, rubbed himself with their ointments and wore their
xatim
round his waist. In spite of all this – or perhaps because of it – there was no sign of improvement. He went back to the psychiatric hospital. Without restraint he opened his heart to the registrar, his voice full of emotion. He wanted ‘to go to bed' but his nerves betrayed him. Yet he carried out the treatment prescribed. The registrar made some notes and asked him to come again later. Day after day, night after night, his torment ate into his professional life. Like a waterlogged silk-cotton tree on the river bank he sank deeper into the mud. Because of his condition he avoided the company of his fellow businessmen, among whom transactions were made and sealed. He was weighed down by worry and lost his skill and his ability to do business. Imperceptibly his affairs began to go to pieces.

He had to maintain his high standard of living: three villas, several cars, his . wives, children, servants and employees. Accustomed to settling everything by cheque, he continued to pay his accounts and his household expenses in this way. He went on spending. Soon his liabilities outstripped his credit.

Old Babacar, his father-in-law, knew a
seet-katt
– a seer – who lived in an outlying district.

They went there.

The Mercedes could not reach the seer's house. Nothing but sandy alleys. They clambered across the sand on foot. The houses were part wood, part brick, with roofs made of corrugated iron, canvas. or cardboard, held in place by stones, steel bars, car axles and the rims of all kinds of wheels. Small children were playing barefoot with a football of their own concoction. On the slope opposite the wasteland a long line of women carrying basins and plastic buckets on their heads were returning from the communal tap on the other side of the shanty town, where the real town lay.

The
seet-katt
was a big fellow with an awkward manner. His skin
was rough and wrinkled. He had brown eyes and unkempt hair and wore only a pair of shorts cut in the Turkish style. He led them to the enclosure where he held his consultations. A sack served as the door. On the inside of the enclosure the ‘door' had been dyed red and animal teeth, cats' paws, birds' beaks, shrivelled skins and amulets had been sewn onto it. An assortment of bizarre-shaped animal horns lay in a circle around the sides of the enclosure. The ground was covered with fine, clean sand.