Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series)

by Roussel, Raymond

  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 re
quest, 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.

  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.