The Foreign Legion by Clarice Lispector

Author:Clarice Lispector [Lispector, Clarice]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780811225069
Publisher: New Directions
Published: 1992-04-15T00:00:00+00:00

AFRICA

A trip to the settlements of Tallah, Kebbe and Sasstown, within Liberia, accompanied by the journalist Anna Kipper, Captain Crockett and Captain Bill Young. No missionary had ever set foot here. Some of the inhabitants worked at the air-base and talked a smattering of English as if it were a local dialect (in Monrovia alone there are twenty-four or twenty-five dialects). In the midst of conversation they pause to say with infinite care and pleasure: hello—they listen to the resonance of what they have just said, laugh among themselves, and then go on conversing. They love to wave goodbye. Their skin is of a uniform matt black which seems to repel water like the feathers of the swan which never gets wet. Some of the children have a navel the size of an orange. One of the women in our party is examined attentively by a black youth and, lost for words, the woman ends up by waving goodbye. The youth is delighted and, with the utmost care as if delicately presenting her with some gift, he makes an obscene gesture. The black women paint their faces with streaks of ochre, and tinge their lower lip with a colour reminiscent of gangrene and verdigris. One woman, whose baby I admire, says: baby nice, baby cry money—her voice is so mellifluous that it sounds like water filling a pitcher. Captain Young gives her a nickel. Baby cry big money, she protests, upsetting the pitcher with a voice which explodes into laughter. The natives laugh a good deal, even those with sad faces; there is no trace of mockery or ambition in their laughter; their laughter is a mixture of fascination, humility, inquisitiveness and merriment. One of the girls stares at me closely. And startling everyone, she blurts out a lengthy speech, a harangue without malice in which I cannot make out a single r or s, only variations on the scale of 1, the undulating rhythms of a rigmarole. I have recourse to the interpreter. He gives me the briefest summary possible: she likes you. The girl then breaks into another rigmarole which this time fills several pitchers with singing rain. The interpreter points to my headscarf. I take it off and show the girl how it is worn. When I look up, I am surrounded by little groups of young black girls, half-naked, all very serious and quiet. None of them pays any attention to what I am showing them and I start to feel awkward, surrounded as it were by black does. The painted stripes on their opaque faces are watching me. The gentleness is contagious. I also calm down. One of them then glides forward, and as if carrying out some ritual—they are much given to observing formalities—she takes my head in her hands, runs her fingers through my hair and examines it with the utmost concentration. All the other girls look on. I dare not move lest I should startle them. When she has finished, there is still a moment of silence.

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