ALBERTO MORAVIA
401
The dance, for the Negro, is also a means of joining with, or better,
of freeing himself from his superficial individual form and blending with
the others
in
the same way that different pieces of various metals are
blended in a single crucible. I still remember, in this connection, a day
when, returning from a trip to Ibadon, we passed through the periphery
of Lagos. The road ran along an uninterrupted line of hovels fantastic–
aIly blackened and warped by the humidity, huts patched with bottoms
of tin cans and parts of boxes, low constructions painted red and
covered with roofs of sheet iron. Now and then, between one hovel
and another, a field opened out, land that could be used for building
although it had not yet been, in which some mangy grass grew, grass
that was shaggy and wild, very different from the more polite species
found in the European suburbs. We were attracted by a throng that
had gathered in one of these fields; we stopped the car and got out.
It
was a crowd all in blue, which is the color of the Yoruba tribe, one
of the four great tribes into which Nigeria is divided. All those blue
gowns, togas, trousers, shirts, tunics, head scarves, formed a great spot
of deep blue, perverse, harsh, and chemical under the low overcast
sky, framed by the red huts and large diffuse trees swarming in a green
that was almost black. Within the blue, like a troubled sea, black faces,
arms, shoulders were discernible here and there; or rather than black,
they were the color of a darkly toasted coffee. We scarcely had time
to get out of the car before the crowd rushed toward us, surrounded
us, engulfed us. A moment earlier, we had been in an almost free
space; a moment later, we were among the bodies of a hundred people,
our nostrils perceived their odor, our skin their sweat, against our
legs were their legs, against our chests theirs pressed; and hundreds of
eyes stared at us avidly.
An
old man, with a small skull cap on his head, explained to us
that there was a dancing contest and if we wanted to attend we were
most welcome. After hearing this explanation, I suddenly understood
the gaze of all those eyes with the form and density of boiled eggs
whose white has been disclosed through a hole, the yolk black; a
gaze that was ecstatic and, in an inoffensive way, cannibalistic. And I
also understood the sensation, of which I was unable to rid myself, of
having been surrounded and swaIlowed up not by a multitude, but by
a single palpitating warm body, with innumerable members, infinite
huge eyes, and yet at the same time, only one body. This body, or more
precisely, this momentary fusion of many bodies into one was an effect
of the dance. When we declined the invitation, the crowd, after having
pressed and squeezed up against us, imbuing us with their odor and their
