Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series)

by Roussel, Raymond

  At these words Handel let out a bellow of protest, claiming that, even on a mechanically devised motif furnished solely by chance, he was quite sure he could write an entire oratorio worthy of inclusion among his works.

  This assertion having provoked certain murmurs of doubt, Handel, stimulated by the libations of the feast, stood abruptly, declaring that he wanted, then and there and before witnesses, to establish honestly the skeleton of such a work.

  Feeling his way, the illustrious composer headed toward the fire-place and plucked from a vase several branches of holly left over from the previous Christmas. He lined them up on the marble mantelpiece, drawing everyone’s attention to their number, which rose to seven; each branch was to represent one note of the scale and carry some kind of sign that would make it identifiable as such.

  The maestro’s elderly housekeeper, Madge, an expert seamstress, was immediately sent for and ordered to provide—that very instant—seven thin ribbons of different hues.

  The ingenious woman, hardly put out by such a trifle, returned after a brief moment with seven ribbons, each partaking of one color of the prism.

  Corfield, at the great composer’s request, knotted a ribbon around each stem without disturbing the regularity of the alignment.

  This done, Handel invited his guests to contemplate for a moment the gamut spread before their eyes, each attendee attempting to keep in memory the correspondence of colors to notes. Then the maestro himself, his sense of touch prodigiously refined by blindness, proceeded to a minute examination of the clusters, scrupulously registering in his memory a given particularity created by the arrangement of leaves or the spread between their thorny points.

  Once he was sure, Handel gathered the seven branches of holly in his left hand and pointed toward his worktable, bidding Corfield bring his pen and inkwell.

  Guided out of the room by one of his faithful devotees, the blind maestro had himself led to the stairway, whose flat, white banister lent itself perfectly to his designs.

  At length, after shuffling the branches of holly, which no longer retained a trace of their initial order, Handel called for Corfield, who handed him the plume dipped in ink.

  Brushing haphazardly, with the free fingers of his right hand, one of the spiky clusters, which for him had individual personalities recognizable to the touch, the blind man approached the handrail, on which he easily wrote, in ordinary letters, the note indicated by the rapid contact.

  Descending one step and again shuffling the thick bouquet, Handel, by the same purely random process of touch, gathered a second note, which he inscribed a bit lower on the rail.

  And so his descent continued, slow and regular. At each step, the maestro conscientiously rearranged the sheaf in every direction before seeking, with his fingertips, the designation of some unpremeditated sound immediately inscribed in sufficiently legible letters.

  The guests followed their host step by step, easily verifying the rectitude of the process by checking the variously colored ribbons. Sometimes, Corfield took the plume and dipped it in ink before handing it back to the blind man.

  After ten minutes, Handel wrote the twenty-third note and descended the last step, which left him back at the ground floor. Reaching a bench, he rested a moment from his labors, telling his friends his main reason for choosing such an unorthodox form of notation.

  Sensing his end was near, Handel had bequeathed his entire house to the City of London, which planned to turn it into a museum. A large quantity of manuscripts, curios, and memorabilia of all sorts already promised to make any visit to the illustrious home highly worthwhile. Still, the maestro remained haunted by the constant desire to augment the attraction of the future pilgrimage site. This was why, seizing the propitious opportunity, he had that very evening made of the handrail in question an imperishable monument, by autographing onto it the odd and incoherent theme whose length was alone determined by the previously unspecified number of steps, which thereby added a supplemental peculiarity to the mechanical and deliberate aspect of the composition.

  Restored by these few moments of rest, Handel, accompanied by his friends, went back up to his study, where the evening ended on a gay note. Corfield volunteered to transcribe the musical phrase spawned by the whims of chance, and the maestro promised to follow its parameters strictly, reserving only two liberties for himself: the duration of the notes and the pitch, which could move unrestrictedly from one octave to the next.

  The very next day, Handel set to work with the help of a secretary accustomed to taking his dictation.

  Blindness had in no way lessened the famous musician’s intellectual faculties.

  In his hands, the theme with its bizarre contours acquired an engaging and beautiful grace, through ingenious combinations of rhythm and harmony.

  The same twenty-three-note phrase, repeated over and over but each time presented in different form, alone constituted the famous oratorio Vesper, a powerful and serene work whose success continues to this day.

  Soreau, traveling through Russia, had taken these historical notes on Czar Alexei Mikhailovich:

  Toward the end of 1648, Alexei, barely out of childhood and already emperor for the past three years, allowed his two favorites, Pleshcheyev and Morozov, to govern as they liked, though their injustice and cruelty were creating widespread discontent.

  Pleshcheyev in particular, hated by all who knew him, left a trail of implacable resentments.

  One December morning, news spread throughout the palace: Pleshcheyev, howling in pain on the floor of his suite, was writhing in horrible convulsions, eyes bloodshot and frothing at the mouth.

  When the czar, his doctor in tow, entered the favorite’s rooms, a horrifying spectacle greeted him. Lying on the carpet, Pleshcheyev, his limbs contorted, face and hands completely blue, had just breathed his last.

  On the table were the remains of the breakfast the dead man had just eaten. The doctor approached and, in a leftover bit of liquid at the bottom of a cup, recognized the peculiar smell of a very virulent poison.

  The czar, launching an immediate investigation, summoned all of Pleshcheyev’s servants; but no confession could be obtained, and in the days following the most thorough search yielded no results.

  Alexei then devised a method that would lead the guilty party to incriminate himself. Very conspicuously, he retired alone to his chapel to pray God for inspiration. He emerged an hour later and sent for the suspected servants, who soon made their silent entrance into the holy place.

  Facing one of the walls, Alexei showed the newcomers a precious stained-glass window whose transparent mosaic depicted Christ in agony on the cross at nightfall. Almost at the horizon, the sun, about to disappear, was represented by a perfectly regular red circle.

  On Alexei’s orders, two servants unattached to the group climbed to the window by scaling the sufficiently protuberant stone border. Using their knives, they pried off the lead strips soldered to the circumference of the radiant star, then managed to grasp the glass disk with their fingertips, bringing it gleaming and intact back to the czar.

  Before employing this bizarre object, Alexei recounted a dream he’d just had in that very place during his meditation and solitude: he was praying God to reveal the name of the murderer when a sudden light made him raise his eyes. He then saw, on the now incomplete window, the image of Jesus come to life. Christ’s eyes stared ardently at him, and soon his supple, living lips articulated this sentence: “Detach from the window this sun that lights my torture. Crossing through this prism sanctified by my agony, your gaze will strike down the guilty man, who for his punishment will suffer the tortures of the poison poured by his own hand.” After these words, Christ’s image regained its initial immobility, and the czar, dazzled by this miracle, prayed for a long time afterward to give thanks to the Lord.

  The group of servants had listened to this story without moving a muscle.

  Alexei, now silent, slowly brought the red sun up to his eyes and looked
one by one, through the diaphanous disk, at the expectants lined up before him.

  It was with good reason that the czar had counted on the effects of religious exaltation to accomplish his goal, for his words had profoundly affected his audience. Suddenly, stricken by the accusatory gaze that shone behind the colored glass, a man faltered with a cry and collapsed into the arms of his comrades, his limbs contorted, face and hands turning blue, just like the dying Pleshcheyev. The czar approached the unfortunate, who confessed his crime before expiring in horrible agony.

  Greece had furnished Soreau with a poetic anecdote during his stay in Athens, where he spent his free time on a guided tour of the beauties of the city and surrounding countryside.

  One day, deep in the Argyros woods, the guide led Soreau to a shady crossroads, asking him to try out the echo there, celebrated for its astonishing purity.

  Soreau obeyed and called out a series of words or sounds that were immediately reproduced with perfect exactitude.

  The guide then told him the following tale, which suddenly endowed the place with unexpected interest: In 1827, Kanaris, the idol of all Greece and the author of its independence, had recently taken his place in the Hellenic parliament.

  One certain summer evening, the famous mariner, in the company of a few close friends, was walking slowly through the Argyros woods, enjoying the charm of a renowned dusk and discoursing on the future of the country, the happiness of which was his sole concern.

  Reaching the echoing crossroads, Kanaris, who had come to this place for the first time, received from one of his companions the standard revelation about the acoustic phenomenon tested out by every passerby.

  Wishing to hear the mysterious voice for himself, the hero stood in the designated spot and called out at random the word “rose.”

  The echo repeated the sound faithfully, but, to everyone’s astonishment, an exquisite and penetrating smell of roses spread through the air at that same instant.

  Kanaris renewed the experiment, successively naming the most aromatic flowers; each time the clear and sudden response arrived wrapped in an intoxicating breath of the corresponding scent.

  The next day the news spread from mouth to mouth, and only enhanced the Greeks’ enthusiasm for their savior. As they saw it, nature itself had seen fit to honor the victor by sowing on his path the delicate and subtle essence of its most marvelous petals.

  A more modern episode reminded Soreau of his time in Italy.

  This one concerned Prince Savellini, an incorrigible kleptomaniac who, despite his vast wealth, prowled around train stations and any other populous area; each day, his phenomenal skill yielded an abundant harvest of watches and purses.

  The prince’s folly led him especially to rob the poor. Dressed with supreme elegance and adorned with priceless jewels, he would venture into the impoverished neighborhoods of Rome, seeking with discernment the grimiest pockets in which to plunge his ring-laden hands.

  Arriving one day in a street of ill repute, a refuge for prostitutes and pimps, he spotted from afar a crowd that immediately made him quicken his steps.

  Coming closer, he noticed thirty or forty sinister-looking hoodlums bunched around two of their own, who were lunging at each other with flashing knives.

  For an instant the prince felt faint; never had he been offered such an opportunity to satisfy his vice.

  Drunk with joy, clenching his jaw to keep his teeth from chattering, he took several wobbling steps on his trembling legs, his chest hammered by the dull pounding of his heart, his breathing labored.

  Aided by the bloody spectacle that gripped everyone’s attention, the kleptomaniac could practice his art uninhibited, rifling through the blue canvas or corduroy pockets with unparalleled dexterity.

  Small change, cheap watches, tobacco pouches, and trinkets of all sorts poured in an unending stream into the deep inner cavities with which the prince had lined his luxurious fur coat.

  But then, several policemen, attracted by the ruckus, descended on the group and seized the two combatants, whom they hauled off to the police station along with the prince, whose own maneuvers had not escaped their notice.

  A search of the Savellini palace brought to light the countless robberies the poor lunatic had committed.

  The next day the horrible scandal broke in the newspapers, and the noble kleptomaniac became a legend throughout Italy.

  Aided by Chènevillot, who promised to handle the artificial construction of all the props, Soreau threw himself into the task of realizing the six promised tableaux.

  For the Feast of the Gods, a black cord, indistinguishable against a similarly colored backdrop, would suspend Mercury in mid-air; the ship’s steward would take charge of setting a richly laid table.

  The legend of Lake Ontario required more complicated efforts. Lent by Olga Chervonenkhov, the she-ass Milenkaya, wearing in her jaw the two end bits of an illusory seton, would play her part before fake bran; made from small shreds of yellow paper, it would not risk tempting the beast and revealing the falseness of the restraint. Soreau had chosen to depict one of the fruitless attempts to deliver the bewitched. Stella Boucharessas would play the charitable Ursule trying in vain to catch the fleeting pike; next to her, Jeanne Souze, face and hands darkened, would assume the role of the faithful Maffa. In front of the donkey, Soreau as Boreas would chase forward a goose taken from the steward’s hen yard; the creature’s wings would be held apart by an invisible armature, and its feet, adhered to the floor by a tenacious glue, would hold a pose of rapid flight. Among the troupe’s accoutrements, they found for the juggler a perfectly executed papier-mâché boar’s head; this ornament normally served as a prop in the third act of a certain operetta, in which all the characters attended the masked ball of a rich, flamboyant foreigner.

  For the scene of Handel composing, Chènevillot received very precise instructions from Soreau, who had seen in London, with his own eyes, the famous handrail piously conserved in the South Kensington museum.

  The apparition of Czar Alexei was easy to recreate; so was that of Kanaris, the only complication being the requisite addition of strong and varied perfumes.

  This latter problem could only be solved by Darriand, who, pursuing his discovery of ocean vegetation, had conducted numerous studies of plant scents.

  The able scientist, planning new projects to occupy his time while traveling, had equipped himself with essences of all kinds, which, artfully blended, could provide the most diverse aromas.

  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.

  XV

  THERE 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.