Ambiguous Adventure Read Free

are warned,” Samba Diallo took up the theme again. “One dies lucidly, for death is violence in triumph, negation imposing itself. From now on, may death be familiar to your spirits …”
    Under the morning wind, Samba Diallo improvised edifying litanies, with interpolations by his comrades, at the closed door of his cousin, the chief of the Diallobé. The disciples would go about so, from door to door, until they had collected victuals enough for their day’s nourishment. Tomorrow the same quest would begin again. While seeking God, the disciples would know no other way of supporting life than by begging, whatever their parents’ wealth might be.
    At last the chief’s door opened, and one of his daughters appeared. She bestowed a smile on Samba Diallo, but his countenance remained expressionless. The girl set down on the ground a large plate containing the left-overs from the evening before. The disciples squatted in the dust and set to on their first meal of the day. When they had eaten enough to satisfy their hunger, they put the rest in their wooden bowls, against possible future need. With his bent index finger Samba Diallo thoroughly cleaned the plate, and put the little ball of food, thus recovered, into his mouth. Then he got up and handed the empty plate to his cousin.
    “Thank you, Samba Diallo. May you have a good day,” she said with a smile.
    Samba Diallo did not reply. But Mariam wasaccustomed to his taciturn and almost tragic humor. When she had turned her back, Demba, the oldest one of the four disciples in Samba Diallo’s group, clicked his tongue and burst out laughing, striving after vulgarity.
    “If I had a cousin with such dainty dimples,” he began.
    Then he interrupted himself, for Samba Diallo, who had already taken some steps toward the outer portal, had paused, and was fixing his calm gaze upon the other boy.
    “Listen, Samba Diallo,” said Demba now. “I know that if it weren’t for you my food for the day would be considerably reduced. No one among all the disciples in this countryside would know so well, by inspiring these worthy folk with a salutary fear of Azrael, how to wrest from their selfishness the alms on which we live. This morning, in particular, you have attained a peerless tragic art. I confess that I myself have been on the point of stripping myself of my rags to make you an offering of them.”
    The other disciples burst out laughing.
    “And so?” inquired Samba Diallo, in a voice which he controlled with considerable effort.
    “And so, you are the strongest of all the disciples, but you are also the saddest, assuredly. They smile at you after they have fed you, but you remain morose. What is more, you understand nothing of any joke …”
    “Demba, I have already told you that nothing keeps you here with me,” Samba Diallo replied. “You can go away with someone else. I shall not hold it against you.”
    “What magnanimity, my friends!” Demba spoke mockingly to the other disciples. “What magnanimity! Even when he dismisses me, he dismisses me nobly. ‘Go,’ he says to me, ‘Desert me. And if you die of hunger I shall not hold it against you.’ ”
    The group broke into loud laughter.
    “Good, good,” declared Demba. “It is understood, great chief. You shall be obeyed.”
    Samba Diallo gave a start. Demba was seeking a quarrel with him: he could no longer have any doubt of it. All the disciples knew how much it displeased him when anyone called attention to his patrician origin. Certainly he was the best born of all those at the Glowing Hearth, the household of the teacher of the Diallobé. When he begged his food, and, as this morning, went to all homes from the most humble to the most prosperous, everyone, in bringing him the half-spoiled remains of the family meals, would show by a sign or a gesture that under his rags the countryside recognized and was already saluting one of its future leaders. His noble origin weighed upon him: not as a