Читать книгу The Sahara - Pierre Loti - Страница 12

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The spahi glanced at her absently.

“Fatou-gaye,” he said in a mixture of creole French and Yolof, “open the casket; I want to take out my money.”

“Your khâliss!” (your coins), exclaimed Fatou-gaye, opening her eyes so that the whites showed against the black eyelids. “Your khâliss!” she repeated with the mixture of fear and effrontery of children who have been surprised in a fault and are afraid they will be punished.

And then she showed him her ears, on which hung three pairs of exquisitely worked gold earrings.

They were ornaments of pure Galam gold, wonderfully delicate, such as are made by black craftsmen who possess the secret of this art, plying their trade in the shade of small, low-roofed tents, where they work mysteriously, crouching on the desert sands. Fatou-gaye had just been buying these trinkets, long-coveted, and that was what had become of the spahi’s khâliss, a hundred francs or so, accumulated little by little, the fruit of a soldier’s petty economies, and set aside by him for his old parents.

The spahi’s eyes flashed, and he made as if to strike her with his whip, but his arm sank harmlessly to his side. He soon regained his self-control, Jean Peyral; he was gentle, especially towards the weak.

He uttered no reproaches, knowing that they would be useless. It was his fault no less than hers. Why had he not been more careful to hide away this money, which he must now at all costs procure elsewhere?

Fatou-gaye knew how to soothe her lover with catlike caresses; how to clasp him in her black silver-braceletted arms that were shapely as the arms of a statue; how to lean her bare bosom against the red cloth of his jacket, rousing in him feverish desires that would bring about pardon for her offence. …

And the spahi sank with indifference on the tara beside her, putting off until the morrow the task of raising the money for which his old parents were waiting in their cottage overseas.