40
PARTISAN REV.IEW
The caouadji had covered his face with his burnous and did
not answer. Soon the stench had been left behind. They were on flat
grour•d. Ahead the path was bordered on each side by a high mud
wall. There was no breeze and the palms were quite still, but behind
the walls was the sound of running water. Also, the odor of human
excrement was almost constant as they walked between the walls.
The Professor waited until he thought it seemed logical for
him
to ask with a certain degree of annoyance: "But where are we go–
ing?"
"Soon," said the guide, pausing to gather some stones in the
ditch.
"Pick up some stones," he advised. "Here are bad dogs."
"Where?" asked the Professor, but he stooped and got three
large ones with pointed edges.
They continued very quietly. The walls came to an end and
the bright desert lay ahead. Nearby was a ruined marabout, with its
tiny dome only half standing, and the front wall entirely destroyed.
Behind it were clumps of stunted, useless palms. A dog came running
crazily toward them on three legs. Not until it got quite close did the
Professor hear its steady low growl. The caouadji let fly a large stone
at it, striking it square in the muzzle. There was a strange snapping of
jaws and the dog ran sideways in another direction, falling blindly
against rocks and scrambling haphazardly about like an injured insect.
Turning off the road, they walked across the earth strewn with
sharp stones, past the little ruin, through the trees, until they came
to a place where the ground dropped abruptly away in front of
them.
"It looks like a quarry," said the Professor, resorting to French
for the word "quarry," whose Arabic equivalent he could not call to
mind at the moment. The caouadji did not answer. Instead he stood
still and turned his head, as if listening. And indeed, from somewhere
down below, but very far below, came the faint sound of a low flute.
The caouadji nodded his head slowly several times. Then he said:
"The path begins here. You can see it well all the way. The rock is
white and the moon is strong. So you can see well. I am going back
now and sleep.
It
is late. You can give me what you like."
Standing there at the edge of the abyss which at each moment
looked deeper, with the dark face of the caouadji framed in its moon–
lit burnous close to
his
own face, the Professor asked himself exactly
what he felt. Indignation, curiosity, fear, perhaps, but most of all
