His father still valued it highly. (Watches were not very common possessions among the mountaineers in his village.)
The watchmaker in a neighbouring market town, who had repaired it before Jean went away on service, had pronounced its works to be uncommonly good, and his old father had entrusted this companion of his youth to his care with all kinds of recommendations.
At first Jean had worn it, but with the regiment, whenever he looked at the time, he heard bursts of laughter. The jokes made on the subject of this “turnip” were so uncalled for that once or twice Jean had turned quite red with rage and pain.
Rather than hear this watch disparaged he would have suffered all kinds of insults to himself, and he would have welcomed blows in the face that he could have repaid in kind. It pained him all the more, because privately he was obliged to admit to himself that there was something a little ridiculous about this poor, dear old watch. His affection for it increased; it caused him inexpressible pain to see it thus held up to derision, especially as he realised its oddity himself.
Then he ceased to wear it, to save it from these insults. He did not even wind it, so as to give its works a rest, especially as the jolting it had suffered on the voyage, and the great unaccustomed heat, had caused it to indicate the most unlikely hours—in fact to go entirely off the lines.
He had put it away tenderly in a box, where he kept his most cherished possessions, his letters, his little souvenirs of home. This box was a fetish box; one of those absolutely sacred boxes such as sailors always possess, and soldiers now and then.
Fatou had been formally forbidden to touch it.
Nevertheless, this watch attracted her. She had discovered how to open the precious box. When Jean was away, she had found out by herself how to wind up the watch, how to move the hands and make it strike. When she put it close to her ear she would listen to the little cracked tones, with the inquisitive air of an ouistiti which has found a musical box.
At Gadiangué one never experienced a sensation of coolness or physical well-being. Not even the nights were fresh, as in the winter season in Senegal.
From morning onwards, the same oppressive, deadly heat prevailed in the shade of that wonderful verdure. From morning onwards, before sunrise, at whatever hour, in whatever place, always, always, the same temperature, the temperature of a vapour bath, moist, overpowering, poisonous, pervading these forests, the abode of chattering monkeys, green parrots, and rare humming birds; these shady paths, these tall dank grasses, where serpents glided. All the heat and heaviness of the equatorial atmosphere was concentrated during the night under the foliage of the great trees; and everywhere the air was steeped in deadly miasma.