Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series) (24 page)

Little by little, the fruit had been transformed into a veritable candle, whose highly flammable wick quickly caught fire from the caress of a few sparks that Fogar drew from two carefully chosen flints.

Bex soon understood the reason for this complicated procedure.

The candle, set upright on a flat stone, gave off as it burned a loud, prolonged sputtering that sounded exactly like booming thunder.

The chemist approached, intrigued by the strange properties of the combustible fruit, which flawlessly parodied the fury of a violent storm.

Suddenly a stampede echoed under the trees, and Bex saw a band of black animals, fooled by the mendacious thunder, rushing back to their burrows as fast as their legs would carry them.

When the herd was within reach, Fogar, flicking a stone randomly, struck one of the rodents dead, which remained inert on the ground while its fellows dove into their countless holes.

After putting out the vegetable wick, whose noisy carbonization was no longer needed, the adolescent picked up the rodent, which he held up to Bex.

The animal, vaguely resembling a squirrel, bore a thick, coarse black mane over nearly the entire length of its spine.

Examining the hairs, the chemist noted certain strange nodes, which could no doubt produce the dual sounds that so piqued his curiosity.

As they were leaving, Fogar, heeding his companion’s advice, picked up the snuffed-out candle, only a small portion of which had been consumed.

Back in Ejur, Bex wished to verify his young guide’s claim then and there.

He chose several hairs with different-looking nodes from the rodent’s back.

Then, needing some kind of support, he sliced off two thin wooden slats, which he clamped together and drilled simultaneously to create minuscule, evenly spaced holes.

That done, each solid hair was easily guided through the double surface, then amply knotted at both ends so as to hold it firmly.

The boards, spread as far apart as they would go, were kept in place by two vertical risers, which, pulling the hairs taut, transformed them into musical strings.

Fogar himself provided a certain thin, flexible branch that, plucked in the heart of the Behuliphruen and sliced lengthwise, offered a perfectly smooth and slightly viscous inner surface.

Bex carefully trimmed one section of the twig into a fragile bow, which silkily attacked the strings of the minuscule lute he had so rapidly created.

As Fogar had predicted, all the hairs, vibrating separately, simultaneously produced two distinct and equally resonant notes.

Enthused, Bex convinced the young man to exhibit the inconceivable instrument at the gala, along with the vegetal candle he could so easily relight.

Encouraged by his successes, Fogar sought out new marvels that might further enhance the appeal of his demonstration.

One evening, seeing a sailor from the
Lynceus
washing his laundry in the currents of the Tez, he was surprised by the resemblance between one of his sea creatures and the soapsuds floating on the water.

His laundry finished, the sailor, for a laugh, gave his soap to Fogar, accompanying the jocular gift with a friendly jape regarding the young Negro’s skin color.

Clumsily, the adolescent dropped the wet cake, which slipped through his fingers, but which, carefully retrieved, inspired him with a double plan for the gala.

First, Fogar intended to place on the soap itself the white-shelled animal, which, mistaken for an inert block of lather, would impress the audience by suddenly revealing its status as a living being.

Then, wishing to exploit the strangely slippery properties of this previously unknown substance, Fogar thought to toss the cake of soap at a given target after he made it unstable with a little water.

In this connection, the young man recalled a gold ingot that Bashkou had found at the bottom of the Tez, one day when the river was more limpid than usual. Diving quickly, the sorcerer had latched onto the shining object, which since then he guarded with jealous solicitude.

Given its cylindrical form and rounded ends, the ingot would be ideal for the meticulous experiment Fogar had in mind.

But the sorcerer was too attached to his discovery to let it go for even a moment.

Figuring the Tez must surely harbor other ingots identical to the first, Fogar planned his own dive into the fresh water, from which he confidently expected a fruitful yield. Like a gambler on a lucky streak, he envisioned only success and already imagined himself in possession of several precious cylinders, their brilliant shine and unusual provenance inspiring lively commentary and further embellishing his cot, which was already richly decorated with odd creatures.

Gathering another purple flower, Fogar lay down on the banks of the Tez and waited for the lethargic sleep.

Attaining the curious state of semi-consciousness favorable to his designs, he rolled toward water’s edge and disappeared in the depths of the river at the very spot where Bashkou had spotted his ingot.

Kneeling on the riverbed, Fogar sifted through the sand with his fingers and, after patient searching, came upon three glinting golden cylinders that, no doubt washed along from distant regions, had been buffed into a clear, perfect patina.

The young man had just stood up and was about to rise back to the surface when suddenly he froze in surprise.

Right near him, an enormous plant, off-white in color and fully mature from top to bottom, rose vertically like a giant reed.

Now, on the screen formed by this plant, Fogar saw his own image kneeling in the sand, his body arched forward.

Soon the image altered, showing the same figure in a slightly different pose.

Then other changes occurred, and the stupefied adolescent saw his principal movements reproduced by the strange photosensitive plate, which had been functioning unbeknownst to him since his slow descent to the bottom of the river.

One by one the three ingots extracted from the sands appeared on the living screen, which faithfully recorded all the colors, although slightly attenuated due to the opacity of the liquid environment.

Scarcely had the group of scenes ended than they started over, unaltered and in identical order.

Without waiting for the end of this new cycle, Fogar dug into the silt around the huge white reed, which he was able to detach from the ground with its roots intact.

Several plants of the same type, but younger, were growing around the same area. The able diver uprooted a few of them, then finally swam up to the surface with his harvest and his ingots.

Revived and fully conscious, rid of his blood clots with the help of the purple flower, Fogar ran to shut himself in his hut so as to study his precious plants at leisure.

The first plant ceaselessly repeated the same series of images set in an unvarying order.

But the others, though rigorously similar in detail, appeared unable to capture light impressions.

Apparently it was only in a certain phase of their gigantic growth cycle that the snowy reeds retained the colored impressions that struck their tissues.

The young man resolved to watch for the right moment and put it to good use.

Indeed, the views fixed in the original plant, too murky in appearance, did not satisfy him.

He wanted to create clear, sharp images, worthy of being placed before his audience’s eyes.

Alone, Fogar gathered from the Behuliphruen a provision of humus that he massed in a thick layer against one wall of his hut.

It was there that he transplanted his monstrous reeds, which, like certain amphibious algae, easily adapted to this new, purely terrestrial soil.

From then on, the young Negro remained confined to his hut, jealously watching over his flowerbed, which he tended with unwavering care.

One day, cultivating his narrow clump, he was looking at one of the plants, which, already tall and slender, seemed to have attained a certain degree of maturity.

Suddenly something occurred within the plant fibers, which Fogar studied more closely still.

The white, vertical surface renewed itself at regular intervals following a strange molecular movement.

A series of transformations then took place over a fairly prolonged period of time, after which the phenomenon changed its nature, and Fogar, who expected it this time, saw his own features vibrantly reproduced by the picture-hungry plant.

Various poses and expressions from its sole model paraded by on the screen, which was continually shaken by an inner shuffling, and the adolescent was able to confirm the enigma that he had more or less divined: his arrival at the bottom of the Tez had coincided with the recording phase in the evolution of the first plant, which had greedily soaked up the images placed before it.

Sadly, the new series of views, though perfectly clear, was absolutely devoid of aesthetic interest. Fogar, ill prepared, had merely struck a number of strange poses, and his comic grimaces filed past with tedious monotony.

Noticing that another plant seemed close to entering its period of light receptivity, the young man resolved to prepare in advance a series of images worthy of the public’s attention.

A few days earlier, crossing back through the Behuliphruen with his provision of humus, Fogar had come across Juillard sitting under the dense shade.

The scholar was in his favorite place, the same one where Adinolfa had already discovered him absorbed in his old illustrated periodicals.

This time, pursuing research of a different kind, Juillard was leafing through a precious folio embellished with sumptuously colored engravings of Oriental subjects.

After taking a few moments to enjoy the dazzling illustrations, Fogar, without even attracting the thinker’s notice, had continued on his way.

Now that book drummed on his mind, as it seemed ideal for his plan.

Unbeknownst to Juillard, he absconded with the luxurious tome. A long look at the illuminations piqued his curiosity, and he went to find Sirdah to learn the meaning of the story they told.

The young girl had Carmichael read her the fairly basic text, then gave her brother the following synopsis of an Arabic tale called “The Poet and the Beautiful Mooress.”

In Baghdad there once lived a rich merchant named Shahnidjar.

Cultivating life’s pleasures with the utmost refinement, Shahnidjar passionately loved art, women, and fine foods.

The poet Ghiriz, a member of the merchant’s staff, was charged with composing many gay or plaintive stanzas and then singing them winsomely on cleverly improvised melodies.

Determined to see life through rose-colored glasses from the moment he awoke, Shahnidjar demanded from Ghiriz a daily serenade, which would gently clear from his brain its wan procession of pleasant dreams.

Precise and obedient, the poet went every morning at daybreak to the magnificent garden that surrounded his master’s palace. Arriving beneath the wealthy sleeper’s windows, he halted near a marble basin in which a slender jet of water rose through a jade tube.

Then, raising to his lips a kind of megaphone made of dull, delicate metal, Ghiriz began singing some new elegy that had blossomed in his fertile imagination. Because of a strange echo, his lightweight trumpet doubled each note with another one third lower, and so the poet performed a veritable one-man duet that heightened still further the charm of his renowned diction.

Soon Shahnidjar, now completely awake, appeared at the window with his favorite mistress, Neddu, the beautiful Mooress he loved so well.

At that very instant, Ghiriz felt his agitated heart pound violently. In a state of intoxication he looked at the divine Neddu, who for her part cast him long looks filled with burning desire.

When the serenade was over, the window pulled shut, and the poet, wandering beneath the azure sky, carried in his heart the dazzling vision—too fleeting, alas! Ghiriz passionately loved Neddu and knew he was loved by her.

Every evening, Shahnidjar, earnest admirer that he was, climbed a certain sandy monticule with his favorite to view the sunset, at a place where the vista stretched endlessly toward the west.

Reaching the crest of the arid outcropping, the good-natured merchant reveled joyfully in the magical spectacle offered by the bloodstained horizon.

Once the opulent fireball had completely disappeared, Shahnidjar climbed back down arm-in-arm with his companion, already dreaming of the delectable foodstuffs and choice wines that very soon would procure his well-being and jubilation.

Ghiriz watched for the moment of this retreat when, finding himself alone, he ran to kiss ardently the traces freshly embossed in the soft sand by Neddu’s diminutive feet.

These were the poet’s most intense joys, as he had no means of communicating with the Mooress whom Shahnidjar so jealously guarded.

One day, weary of pining from afar without the hope of approaching his beloved, Ghiriz went to consult the Chinaman Keou-Ngan, who practiced in Baghdad the dual trade of fortune teller and sorcerer.

Asked what the future could be of so star-crossed an intrigue, Keou-Ngan led Ghiriz into his garden, then released a large bird of prey that began describing majestic and widening curves in the skies above them.

Studying the paths of the powerful creature, the Chinaman predicted the forthcoming realization of the poet’s desires.

The bird came back to rest on the shoulder of its master, who returned to his laboratory with Ghiriz in tow.

Inspired by numerous documents spread before him, the Chinaman wrote certain instructions on parchment that the poet had to follow in order to reach his goal.

Taking the instructions, Ghiriz handed Keou-Ngan several gold coins in recompense for the consultation.

Once outside, the hopeful poet hastened to decipher the precious grimoire.

He found the recipe for a very complex culinary dish, the mere steam from which would plunge Shahnidjar into a deep and lasting sleep.

In addition, a magic formula was clearly inscribed at the bottom of the sheet.

Pronounced three times aloud, this incoherent string of syllables would give the dish laden with soporific ingredients a crystalline hum in harmony with the importunate chaperone’s drowsiness.