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man. There’s no bar in Libreville, so tonight we had to …”
    Even at night it was hot. Nothing stirred in the other huts. The door in front of them opened and the shadowy figure of a naked black came out, waved a greeting, and disappeared into the deeper darkness of the village.
    Not until later did Timar realize that this was Maria’s husband: you sent him away while you were visiting his wife.
    A match flared and an oil lamp lit up in the hut.
    â€œGo on,” Bouilloux said. He stepped aside for the others.
    Inside it was hotter yet—a cloying, human heat. There was a bitter smell that made Timar gag. He had only had an intimation of it before, when some sweat-soaked blacks had gone by.
    With one hand, the woman who’d just lit the oil lamp wrapped a piece of cloth around her naked body. Bouilloux tore it off and threw it in the corner.
    â€œGo get your two sisters! Especially the little one, hey?”
    The whites seemed at home in the hut, except for Maritain perhaps. He looked ill at ease. There was a table, two old deck chairs, and a ratty cot that retained the damp impress of human bodies.
    Three of the men sat down anyway, after drawing up the covers.
    â€œSit, boys!”
    Timar had never been so hot before—not even in the midday sun. The heat seemed unhealthy to him, a feverish heat, the heat of a hospital. He felt physical disgust at the touch of things, at the walls themselves. And he kept looking to Maritain, who was still on his feet, too, though farther inside the hut.
    â€œThey’re not the equal of Adèle!” Bouilloux shouted out to him.
    â€œCome on, have a drink—it’ll do you good.”
    A glass was passed from hand to hand to Timar, one of three unwashed glasses. Bouilloux and the one-eyed logger had the others.
    â€œTo Adèle’s health!”
    It was straight Pernod. Timar gulped it down because he didn’t have the courage to stand up against the others. He drank pinching his nostrils, nauseated by the glass as well as the liquid.
    â€œVery clever to pretend you don’t get it. But we’ve all had her.”
    Something would have happened then if the door hadn’t swung open. Maria came in first, an obliging smile on her lips. Behind her was a very slender young girl. The man nearest to the door grabbed her immediately.
    Confusion followed. The hut wasn’t big enough for everyone inside. They were all pressed up against each other.
    The black women hardly said a thing. Some isolated words and broken phrases. Mostly they laughed—you could see their shining white teeth. Maria took a bottle of crème de menthe from under the mattress and they drained it after the Pernod.
    There was a single awkward moment. The one-eyed logger had asked, “What are they saying in the village about Thomas’s death?”
    The three black faces lost their smiles, their welcoming appearance, even their submissiveness. The women said nothing, staring at the ground. Bouilloux restored the good mood with a loud cry, “Enough, enough—fuck that dirty black! Cheers, boys! You know what I say we do? Let’s go for a ride in the jungle!”
    Once again, as at dinner, there was a brief exchange of glances. Timar suspected that Bouilloux’s words held a deeper meaning, that they’d hatched a plot.
    â€œJust a moment! Listen, Maria—a hundred francs if you can scare up a bottle of whiskey. Or anything.”
    She found the whiskey, though there wasn’t a sound or light or whisper from the village. Everyone seemed to be asleep. From the huts, you couldn’t help but hear what was going on.
    Bits and pieces of conversation. They squeezed back onto the truck.
    Near the trunk of a kapok tree stood a black woman no one had noticed until then.
    â€œHey you! Climb in!”
    The noise of the starter and the engine made it impossible to hear anything more.
    Timar didn’t want to see a thing. Stubbornly he