Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series) (23 page)

Hidden in the wings, Darriand would himself repeat, as the echo, the names of the flowers called out, uncorking a few seconds in advance a given vial filled with an extremely volatile compound, whose emanations would suddenly strike the spectators’ sense of smell from all sides.

For the kleptomania scene, Soreau, as Prince Savellini, would don an ample fur coat, which during the crossing had allowed him to brave on deck the ever-sharp winds of the high seas.

Carmichael, assigned the role of narrator, would briefly explain the subject being depicted by each of the six groups.

T
HERE WAS IN EJUR
a captivatingly original phenomenon known as Fogar, the emperor’s oldest son.

Barely fifteen years old, this adolescent astounded us all with his sometimes terrifying strangeness.

Fogar, who was drawn to all things supernatural, had received from the sorcerer Bashkou various magic formulas that he had then adapted in his own way.

An instinctive poet like his father, the young man was a fanatical water-lover; the ocean in particular exerted an irresistible charm on his young mind. He would spend hours sitting on the beach, contemplating the shifting currents and dreaming of the secret marvels buried in their liquid depths. An excellent swimmer, he took sensuous delight from bathing in the element that so fascinated him, diving below for as long as he could so as to furtively experience the mysterious sites that occupied his precocious fancy.

Among other obscure practices, Bashkou had taught Fogar a way to put himself, with no outside help, into a lethargic near-death state.

Lying on the primitive cot that served as his bed, the young man, frozen in a kind of hypnotic ecstasy, could gradually suspend the beating of his heart by completely stopping the respiratory rhythm of his chest.

Sometimes, when the experiment ended, Fogar felt certain areas of his veins obstructed by his coagulated blood.

But this effect was predictable, and to remedy it the adolescent always kept within reach a certain flower that Bashkou had pointed out to him.

With a thorn from its stem, he opened the engorged vein and withdrew a compact clot. Then a single petal, crushed between his fingers, yielded a purple liquid, a few drops of which would seal the potentially lethal gash.

Haunted by his obsessive desire to visit underwater realms, which he couldn’t help imagining populated by dazzling phantasmagoria, Fogar resolved to cultivate the mysterious art that allowed him to suspend his vital functions.

His glorious intent was to dive protractedly beneath the surface, benefiting from the state of hypnosis that so perfectly annulled the workings of his lungs.

Through progressive training, he could remain for half an hour in that state of artificial death that served his designs so well.

He began by stretching out on his bed to impose a beneficial calm on his circulation, which eased his task.

After several minutes his heart and chest were immobile, but Fogar still retained a dreamlike half-consciousness accompanied by a kind of almost mechanical activity.

He tried to stand up, but after only a few, automaton-like steps, he fell to the ground for lack of balance.

Heedless of obstacles or dangers, Fogar wanted to try right away the aquatic expedition he’d dreamed of for so long.

He went to the shore, armed with a thorny purple flower that he set aside in a rocky recess. Then, lying on the sand, he delivered himself up to the hypnotic slumber.

Soon his breathing ceased and his heart stopped pumping. Then, like a sleepwalker, Fogar rose and entered the sea.

Supported by the dense salt water, he easily kept his balance and steadily negotiated the sudden descents that formed the continuation of the bank.

A gap in the rocks offered him unexpected access to a kind of long and winding labyrinth that he explored at random, going ever deeper.

Unencumbered and buoyant, he passed through narrowly sinuous galleries, where no diver would ever have risked his breathing tube.

After many detours, he emerged into a wide cavern, whose walls, coated in some kind of phosphorescent substance, shone with sumptuous brilliance.

Strange sea creatures abounded on every side of this enchanted lair, which was even more magnificent than the visions the adolescent had imagined.

He had only to stretch out his hand to grab hold of the most stupefying marvels.

Fogar took several steps toward a live sponge that sat immobile on a protruding ledge of one of the cavern walls. The phosphorescent effluvia, passing through the animal’s body, revealed inside the saturated tissue a miniature human heart connected to a circulatory system.

With infinite precaution, Fogar gathered the curious specimen, which, not being part of the plant kingdom, had no roots to keep it attached.

A bit higher up, three equally bizarre samples were affixed to the wall.

The first, of very elongated shape, bore a row of five tentacles that looked like the fringe on a chair or article of clothing.

The second, flat and flaccid like supple fabric, looked like a thin triangle adhered to the wall by its base; everywhere, powerful arteries formed red striations which, along with two round eyes as fixed as black dots, gave the floating ensemble the appearance of a pennant representing some unknown nation.

The last sample, smaller than its two neighbors, carried on its back a kind of very white carapace, which, similar to solidified soap foam, was notable for its fine, light quality.

Adding this triple booty to the original sponge, Fogar turned to head back.

At that moment, he picked up a large, gelatinous block in a corner of the grotto. Finding nothing particularly interesting about the object, he put it down haphazardly on a nearby rock whose surface bristled with jagged edges and spears.

Seeming to awaken on contact with these excruciating darts, the block quivered and, as a sign of distress, raised a tentacle like an elephant’s trunk, divided at its extremity into three divergent branches.

Each of these branches ended in a suction cup like those on the terrible arms of an octopus.

The deeper the spears sank into the animal’s flesh, the more it suffered.

Its exasperation soon produced an unexpected display. The suction-cupped branches began spinning like the spokes of a wheel, their initially reasonable momentum steadily increasing.

Changing his mind at the sight of this strange appendage, Fogar retrieved the block, now judged worthy of attention. Free of the darts that tormented it, the animal abruptly stopped its maneuvers and fell back into its original inertia.

The young man reached the exit of the grotto.

There, an object floating at eye level blocked his path.

It was like a metal plate, round and lightweight, held in suspension by the density of the water as it slowly descended.

Sweeping his arm, Fogar tried to brush the obstacle aside.

But hardly had he touched it when the fearful, hypersensitive plate folded in on itself, changing shape and even color.

Eagerly grasping this new specimen, to which he had originally attached no value, Fogar began ascending by way of the tortuous corridor he’d taken earlier.

Supported by the water pressure, he rose with minimal effort to the beach, where he took a few steps before collapsing to the ground.

Little by little his heart and lungs resumed their functions, and his lethargic slumber gave way to complete lucidity.

Fogar looked around, only dimly recalling the details of his solitary voyage.

The experiment, more prolonged than usual, had increased the number of coagulated blood clots in his veins.

Moving swiftly, he went to fetch the purple flower that he’d brought in anticipation.

The usual operation, followed by immediate suture, saved him from the elongated clots, which he carelessly tossed on the sand.

Immediately a shudder ran through the group of sea creatures, which had remained scattered and immobile on the beach since the adolescent’s collapse.

No doubt used to feeding on the blood of their prey, the three samples from the vertical wall, obeying some terrible instinct, seized greedily upon the dull, petrified, compact rolls and devoured them.

The impromptu meal was accompanied by a soft, gluttonous burp emitted by the strange mollusk with the white carapace.

Meanwhile, the block with three rotary branches, the sponge, and the flat grayish disk lay unmoving on the smooth sand.

Now completely revived, Fogar ran back to Ejur, then returned to the beach with a container that he filled with sea water before tossing in his guests from the undersea grotto.

In the days following, Fogar, thrilled with the yield from his dive, planned a curious exhibit of his discoveries at the gala.

He had closely studied the six specimens, which remained alive even out of their element but stayed completely inert.

This inertia annoyed Fogar, who, rejecting the more commonplace idea of presenting his subjects immersed in the sea, wanted to show them off on dry land, like some carnival lion tamer.

Remembering the enthusiastic way half his troupe had wolfed down the blood clots he’d thrown on the sand, he decided to repeat the same method of overstimulating them.

His demonstration would therefore have to include a lethargic slumber, in which the young Negro would recline lazily on his cot before everyone, amid his various, symmetrically arranged animals.

For the sponge, an easy solution was provided by chance.

In his first attempts to accustom his charges to fresh air, Fogar, proceeding gradually, would occasionally pour a certain quantity of seawater on the living tissues, which otherwise would have perished from dehydration.

One day, not having enough ocean liquid on hand, the young man made do with fresh water and began by sprinkling the sponge, which immediately contracted in horror to expel this fluid so inimical to its bodily functions.

An identical shower, administered on the day of the gala, would surely produce the same effect and stimulate the same response.

The gelatinous block proved particularly apathetic.

Luckily, Fogar, thinking back to the grotto, remembered the rocky protrusions that, as they painfully entered the animal’s flesh, had provoked the pinwheel movement of the three divergent stems.

He looked for an elegant way to imitate those jagged and irregular stone spikes.

A certain rustle then flooded his mind, and he recalled the gown Adinolfa had worn to inaugurate the Incomparables’ stage.

He charged Sirdah to ask the tragedienne for a few of the thickest jade needles that were sewn to the silk.

Adinolfa generously put the entire gown at his disposal, and it was an easy task to harvest what he needed from the abundantly garnished skirt and corsage.

A small amount of cement, borrowed from one of Chènevillot’s workmen, was spread in a thin, even layer over a swatch of carpet. Soon a hundred jade needles, planted in ten equal rows before the substance had a chance to set, raised their narrow, threatening points.

To make his display of the gelatinous block more interesting, Fogar thought to attach a captive to each of the suction cups at the tips of the three spinning stems, whose muscle strength and gyrational speed would be displayed more effectively.

At his request, the Boucharessas family vouchsafed the participation of three trained cats, who would suffer only a passing dizziness from the exercise.

The grayish plate, once out of the water, turned stiff as zinc.

But Fogar, blowing on it from various angles, caused many graceful and subtle ripple patterns that he planned to use on the day of the gala.

Wishing to obtain continual and prolonged transformations without tiring his lungs, the young man, as always through his sister’s translation, turned to Bex himself; the scientist, with a spare battery he’d reserved for a certain thermomechanical orchestra produced during his long working nights, fashioned a practical and lightweight propeller fan.

The advantage this device had over human lungs was the perfect regularity of its gentle, uninterrupted breath.

Fogar, constantly at Bex’s side, had watched intently as the inventor fit the various components into the clever breeze-making instrument.

With his curious talent for assimilation, he had grasped all the subtleties of the mechanism, and expressed in sign language his admiration for an especially delicate gear or cleverly placed ratchet.

Intrigued by this strange personality, which he’d hardly expected to encounter in a country such as this, Bex initiated Fogar into certain of his chemical secrets, pushing indulgence to the point of giving the young man a preview of his automatic orchestra.

Fogar remained petrified before the many organs, which under Bex’s manipulations produced long and varied flows of harmony.

Nevertheless, the relative poverty of one detail surprised him, and through Sirdah, who was also present, he asked Bex for certain explanations.

He was particularly amazed that each string could produce only one sound at a time. According to him, certain rodents, endemic to a specific part of the Behuliphruen, had a kind of mane, each hair of which, if stretched taut enough, would produce two simultaneous, distinct notes when bowed.

Bex refused to believe such nonsense and, with a shrug, let himself be led by Fogar, who, sure of his facts, wanted to show him the lair of the rodents in question.

With his guide, the chemist penetrated into the depths of the Behuliphruen and came to an area riddled with holes that looked like burrows.

Fogar stopped, then performed an astounding pantomime for Bex, tracing several zigzags of lightning with his finger and imitating with his throat the rumble of thunder.

Bex nodded in approving comprehension: the young man had just explained to him, perfectly clearly, that the rodents, now scattered about the thickets, were terrified of storms and would scamper in panic back to their burrows at the first threat of lightning.

Gazing upward, Bex noted the immutable purity of the sky and wondered what Fogar was hoping to prove; but the latter guessed his thoughts and signaled him to be patient.

The dappled clearing was shaded by tall, oddly shaped trees, whose fruits, which looked like giant bananas, littered the ground about them.

With his fingers, Fogar peeled one of the fruits, whose whitish and malleable pulp he kneaded until it lost its gently curved shape.

He thus obtained a perfectly regular cylinder, which he perforated lengthwise with a thin, straight twig.

In the resulting gap, he slipped a certain vine gathered from a tree trunk, then consolidated it all with some more rapid kneading.