Free Ambiguous Adventure by Cheikh Hamidou Kane

muffled innumerable voices, like the voice of the river on certain nights.
    But the voice of the river was less vehement, and also less close to tears. The voice of the river did not carryalong with it this refusal which was now being cried out in the voice of Samba Diallo; nor did it have the accompaniment of this nostalgic chant.
    For a long time, in the night, his voice was that of the voiceless phantoms of his ancestors, whom he had raised up. With them, he wept their death; but also, in long cadence, they sang his birth.
    * It was the custom that the child who had completed his studies in the Koran and returned to his parents should, in their honor, recite the Holy Book from memory throughout all of one night.

7
    ON THE HORIZON, IT SEEMED AS IF THE EARTH were poised on the edge of an abyss. Above the abyss the sun was suspended, dangerously. The liquid silver of its heat had been reabsorbed, without any loss of its light’s splendor. Only, the air was tinted with red, and under this illumination the little town seemed suddenly to belong to a strange planet.
    Behind his closed window, Paul Lacroix stood waiting. Waiting for what? The whole town was waiting too, in the same dismayed expectation. The man’s gaze wandered over the sky, where long lines of red rays were joining the sun, dying at a zenith invaded by invidious shade. “They are right,” he thought, “I really believe that this is the moment. The world is about to come to an end. The moment is fragile. It may break. Then, time will be blocked off. No!” Paul Lacroix stopped short of articulating this No. With a brusque gesture he pulled the green curtain that hung above the window down over the reddened glass. The office took on the appearance of a bluish-green aquarium. Paul Lacroix made his way slowly back to his chair.
    At his desk, Samba Diallo’s father had remained motionless, as if indifferent to the cosmic drama being played out outside. His white boubou had turned to violet. Its broad folds helped by their immobility to give him theappearance of a figure of stone. “Jean is right.” Lacroix thought. “He has the air of a knight of the Middle Ages.”
    He turned and spoke to him:
    “Does this twilight not trouble you? Myself, I am upset by it. At this moment it seems to me that we are closer to the end of the world than we are to nightfall.”
    The knight smiled.
    “Reassure yourself. I predict for you a peaceful night.”
    “You do not believe in the end of the world?”
    “On the contrary, I even hope for it, firmly.”
    “That is just what I was thinking. Here everyone believes in the end of the world, from the most simple-minded peasant to the man of great cultivation. Why? I have been asking myself; and only today, with this twilight, I have begun to understand.”
    The knight looked attentively at Paul.
    “Let me ask you a question in my turn: you truly do not believe in the end of the world?”
    “No, obviously. The world will not come to an end—at least not to the end that is expected here. That a catastrophe might destroy our planet—of that I do not speak.”
    “Our most simple-minded peasant does not believe in such an end as that, episodic and accidental. His universe does not admit of accident. In spite of appearances, his concept is more reassuring than yours.”
    “That may well be. Unfortunately for us, it is my universe which is true. The earth is not flat. It has no steep slopes which give upon the abyss. The sun is not a candelabrum set upon a blue porcelain dais. The universe which science has revealed to the West is less immediately human, but confess that it is more solid.”
    “Your science has revealed to you a round and perfectworld, in infinite movement,” said the knight. “It has reconquered that world from chaos. But I believe that in so doing it has laid you open to despair.”
    “Not at all. It has liberated us from fears—childish and absurd fears.”
    “Absurd? What is absurd is the world which