"Mack Reynolds - North Africa 01 - Blackman's Burden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

lips and nose were thinner than those of her neighbors.

Yes, it was strange that no man had taken her, though it was said that
in her shyness she repulsed any advances made by either the young men,
or their wealthier elders who could afford more than one wife. She was a
nothing-woman, really, come out of the desert alone, and without relatives
to protect her interests, but still she repulsed the advances of those who
would honor her with a place in their house, or tent.

She had come out of the desert, it was known, with her handful of
possessions done up in a packet, and had quietly and unobtrusively taken
her place in the Negro community of Gao. Little better than a slave or
Gabibi serf, she made her meager living doing small tasks for the
better-off members of the community.

But she knew her place, was dutifully shy and quiet-spoken, and in the
town or in the presence of men, wore her haik and veil. Yes, it was passing
strange that she had found no man. On the face of it, she was getting no
younger; surely she must be into her twenties.
 Up to their knees in the waters of the Niger, out beyond the point where
the dugout canoes were pulled up to the bank, their ends resting on the
shore, they pounded their laundry. Laughing, chattering, gossiping. Life
was perhaps poor, but still life was good.

Someone pretended to see a crocodile and there was a wild scampering
for the shore. And then high laughter when the jest was revealed. Actually,
all the time they had known it a jest, since it was their most popular one
—there were seldom crocodiles this far north in the Niger bend.

There was a stir as two men dressed in the clothes of the Rouma
approached the river bank. It was not forbidden, but good manners called
for males to refrain from this area while the women bathed and washed
their laundry, without veil or upper garments. These men were obviously
shameless, and probably had come to stare. From their dress, their faces
and their bearing, they were strangers—possibly Senegalese, up from the
area near Dakar, products of the new schools and the new industries
mushrooming there. Strange things were told of the folk who gave up the
old ways, worked on the dams and the other new projects, sent their little
ones to the schools, and submitted to the needle pricks which seemed to
compose so much of the magic medicine being taught in the medical
schools by the Rouma witchmen.

One of them spoke now in Songhoi, the lingua franca of the vicinity.
Shamelessly he spoke to them, although none were his women, nor even
his tribal kin. None looked at him.

"We seek a single woman, an unwed woman, who would work for pay
and learn the new ways."

They continued their laundry, not looking up, but their chatter dribbled