Читать книгу The Sahara - Pierre Loti - Страница 19

Table of Contents

In the southern quarter of St. Louis stood some old brick houses, Arab in appearance, which were lighted up at evening, and whose lamps continued to cast their red rays upon the sands at a time when all that dead-alive town lay asleep. Strange odours of negroes and alcohol, all blended and intensified by the torrid heat, issued thence. Here also at night broke forth an uproar as from hell itself. In that quarter the spahis reigned supreme. Thither betook themselves these unfortunate, red-jacketed warriors, to raise a racket and to forget their troubles; to absorb, actuated either by habit or bravado, incredible quantities of alcohol, and wantonly to spend the sap of their lusty youth.

A dishonouring intimacy with mulatto women lay in wait for them in these vile dens, and extravagant orgies were held, in a delirium caused by absinthe and the torrid heat of Africa.

But Jean avoided with horror these haunts of vice. He was very steady, and was already putting aside the little he could save out of his soldier’s pay, against the blissful moment of his home-coming.

He was very steady, and yet his comrades did not rally him on the subject.

Handsome Muller, a tall Alsatian, who set the tone in the spahis’ barracks by virtue of a past full of duels and adventure—handsome Muller thought a great deal of him, and every one was always of the same opinion as Fritz Muller. But Jean’s real friend was Nyaor-fall, the black spahi, a gigantic African, of the magnificent Fouta-Diallonké tribe, a strange, imperturbable figure, with a delicate Arab profile, and a mysterious smile always hovering on his thin lips—a splendid statue in black marble.

This man was Jean’s friend; he used to take Jean home to his native dwelling in Guet n’dar; he would make him sit beside his wives on a white mat, and offer him negro hospitality: kouss-kouss and gourous.