Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series)

by Roussel, Raymond

  Especially taken with the idea of having Jizme die by celestial fire, Talou had fully approved Chènevillot’s plan. Learning the nature of the execution awaiting her, the unfortunate had obtained two supreme favors from the emperor: to die on the decorated white mattress that her lover had once given her, and to wear around her neck, at the fatal instant, a chart showing three lunar phases; a remnant of the days when she held her dazzling receptions, it would relieve her hour of distress with memories of her once-omnipotent splendor.

  Chènevillot lined the mattress in question with an electrocution device that lightning alone would activate.

  XXI

  THE MONTALESCOTS HAD SOON grown accustomed to their new residence. Louise delved passionately into her amazing discovery, while curious Norbert explored the Behuliphruen or the right bank of the Tez.

  The ever faithful pet magpie won everyone’s admiration through its marvelous affection and intelligence; the bird, making new progress every day, reliably performed its mistress’s most varied commands.

  One day, walking along the Tez, Norbert was attracted by the extreme malleability of a vaguely damp, yellowish earth, of which he promptly gathered a supply. The young man could from then on occupy his time modeling, with his usual facility, delightfully fashioned statuettes, which once dried in the sun acquired the look and consistency of terracotta. Talou, clearly intrigued by these artistic pursuits, seemed to be hatching some plan, which a chance occurrence soon brought to full maturity.

  Since our arrival in Ejur, various animals, loaded onto the Lynceus to be slaughtered during the voyage, had contributed one by one to our board. Thanks to our parsimonious ship’s steward, who was exceedingly thrifty with the precious reserves, several calves still remained to share their companions’ fate. The provident cook finally started in on these survivors and one evening served us at dinner, alongside the appetizing slices of the first victim, a platter of finely seasoned calves’ lungs. Talou, who by instinctive curiosity had always been partial to our European fare, carefully tasted this dish, whose provenance and appearance when uncooked he immediately wanted to know.

  The next day, a sad and anxious Sirdah came to see us on her father’s behalf, bearing his laborious directives that she annotated with numerous personal commentaries.

  In her opinion, Talou loathed Louise, whose image was still linked in his mind with that of King Yaour. Brother and sister had been mixed up in the same fierce dislike, and the emperor offered them a double exeat only on condition that they perform impossible marvels, whose every detail he had meticulously elaborated in advance with cruel and malicious refinement.

  Among the crates and bundles smashed open during the wreck of the Lynceus was a huge shipment of toys addressed to a dealer in Buenos Aires. Talou had ordered a demonstration of all these items, which were new to him, and took particular interest in the wind-up toys, whose key he turned himself. He had been especially delighted by a certain railroad that, due to its complex network of easily detachable tracks, rolled with remarkable ease. It was partly this amusing invention that engendered the plan Sirdah had come to detail. Inspired by his last dinner, Talou demanded that poor Norbert create a life-sized statue, fascinating to look at and light enough to roll over two tracks made of that same raw, inconsistent matter the steward had prepared for us the night before, without damaging them in the slightest. In addition, without this time setting any weight requirements, the emperor demanded three articulated sculptures, whose mechanism only the trained magpie would activate, with its beak or claws.

  If these conditions were fulfilled—in addition to a successful demonstration of the device Louise was working to complete—the siblings would win their freedom and could join our detachment when we left for Porto Novo.

  Despite the harshness of this ultimatum, Louise, rather than giving in to despair, understood that her duty was to encourage and guide Norbert.

  The first thing was to find a material light, pliable, and resistant enough to be used to erect an almost weightless statue. We rummaged haphazardly through the luggage taken from the ship, and Louise suddenly let out a cry of joy on discovering several large parcels stuffed with uniformly black whalebone corset stays. Reading the labels, we saw that the shipment had been sent by a liquidation firm, which had probably sold off part of its excess inventory at a discount to some American manufacturer.

  The stakes being too important to stand on ceremony, Louise made away with the merchandise, prepared to reimburse the addressee later on if need be.

  To choose the fascinating subject the emperor demanded, the young woman had only to search her memory, copiously enriched by her countless readings. She recalled an anecdote related by Thucydides in his History of the Peloponnesian War, in a brief preamble in which the illustrious chronicler seeks to compare the Athenian character with the Spartan mentality.

  Here is the substance of the classical tale translated by so many generations of schoolboys:

  A rich Lacedemonian named Ktenas had in his service a large number of helots.

  Instead of despising these slaves, whom his compatriots considered mere beasts of burden, Ktenas wanted to raise their moral and intellectual level by educating them. His noble, humanitarian goal was to make them his equals, and in order to force the laziest among them to study he resorted to severe punishments, not hesitating at times to use his power over life and death.

  Without a doubt, the most recalcitrant of the group was a certain Saridakis, who, as ungifted as he was apathetic, shamelessly let himself be overtaken by all his comrades.

  Despite the harshest reprimands, Saridakis made no progress, vainly devoting hours on end to the simple conjugation of auxiliary verbs.

  Ktenas saw in this manifestation of utter inability the chance to strike fear into the minds of his pupils.

  He gave Saridakis three days to memorize once and for all the verb e?µ?. After that, the helot would recite his lesson before all his fellow students and in front of Ktenas, whose hand, clutching a stiletto, would run through the laggard’s heart at the first sign of error.

  Knowing that the master meant what he said, Saridakis cudgeled his brains and made heroic efforts to prepare for the supreme test.

  On the appointed day, Ktenas, assembling his slaves, placed himself near Saridakis, aiming the tip of his blade at the unfortunate’s chest. The scene was brief: the pupil made a stupid mistake in the dual of the aorist, and a muffled thud was suddenly heard in the midst of an anxious silence. The helot, pierced to the heart, spun a moment before falling dead at the feet of his inexorable judge.

  Louise unhesitatingly adopted this stirring model. Aided by his sister’s directions, Norbert managed to erect a lightweight statue on wheels, using the flexible stays. The nails and tools he needed for the task were supplied by Chènevillot, who himself built a well-calibrated bascule, made to receive the delicate and fragile train tracks at the last minute. To complete the work, so full of impressive vigor, Louise traced in white letters on the black plinth a large explanatory title, preceding the famous dual conjugation on the helot’s dying lips.

  The emperor’s other order, effigies with moving parts, demanded three new subjects.

  Louise was an enthusiastic admirer of Kant, portraits of whom vividly crowded her mind. Under her supervision, Norbert executed a bust of the famous philosopher, carefully hollowing out the inside of the block to leave only a wafer-thin layer of clay at the top of the skull. Chènevillot fitted the cranial cavity with a system of powerful reflector lamps, whose brightness was meant to symbolize the ingenious flames of some luminous thought.

  Next, Louise took inspiration from an old Breton legend that touchingly related the heroic and celebrated subterfuge of the nun Perpetua, who preferred to risk her own life rather than betray two fugitives hiding in her convent to the thugs pursuing them.

  This time it was an entire group of figures that Norbert had to model with skill and patience.

  Finally, the young man, his sister
’s docile instrument, portrayed the regent bowing before Louis XV; Louise, a student of history, liked the paradox contained in this humble sign of respect shown to a child by the most powerful man in the kingdom.

  Each sculpture was provided with a very simple mechanism, specially adapted to the beak or claws of the magpie, whose training demanded far more effort than they ever would have expected.

  Indeed, this new task was much more complex than the insignificant tours de force the bird had performed up until then. Its movements had to be executed in the correct order without guidance or prompting, and it was hard for the creature to retain such a long series of varied and precise instructions. Norbert helped his sister with the laborious instruction, which they had to get just right.

  Meanwhile, Louise actively pursued her chemical endeavors, whose final adjustments demanded a workplace built with very particular lighting conditions in mind.

  At her request, Chènevillot constructed a kind of very narrow cabin, whose walls, prudently devoid of openings, would let no sunshine through.

  Only a very attenuated yellowish light was to be allowed into the confines of the laboratory; but a tinted window, even with the densest coating, would surely have produced disastrous glimmers on the strange photosensitive plate Louise was preparing.

  The solution to the problem was found by Juillard, who had sat in on Louise’s conversations with the architect.

  The scholar’s crate of books contained a precious copy of The Fair Maid of Perth, from the first edition of the celebrated work. The pages, more than a century old, were completely yellowed and could serve to filter and muffle the blinding brightness of the African sun.

  Despite the incalculable price of this extremely rare item, Juillard unhesitatingly offered it to the student, who, finding it perfectly suited to her designs, thanked the kind donor warmly.

  Chènevillot trimmed the pages into tiles, which, laid down in multiple layers and held in place by a fine framework, composed the top of the cabin. A skylight cut in the middle of this light roofing allowed the prisoner to emerge once in a while for some fresh air, after having scrupulously covered her various utensils and ingredients. Prudence winning out over comfort in such a serious matter, it was through this one opening, the sole egress by design, that Louise would enter and exit, using two small folding ladders with flat steps that the architect fashioned for this purpose. The slightest infiltration of light could in fact compromise the success of the entire project, and a roof skylight was more likely than any side door to form a hermetic seal, aided by its own weight.

  The cabin stood on Trophy Square, not far from the Stock Exchange, from which Norbert’s precisely aligned statues separated it. Before installing the roof, Chènevillot had arranged the interior, which contained one of the folding ladders, a portable chair, and a worktable laden with the equipment necessary for the marvelous discovery.

  From then on, Louise spent the better part of her days shut up in the laboratory, among her concoctions, vials, and plants; she used the rest of her time to finish training the magpie, which faithfully kept her company inside the fragile hideaway.

  When people asked the young woman about the success of her chemical mixtures, she seemed cheerful and optimistic.

  XXII

  IT WAS DURING THESE events that Seil-kor reappeared at the head of his band of black porters, who were buckling under the weight of copious goods bought with the ransom money. Each contributor had paid to the best of his means, and the families of the poorest sailors, pooling their savings, had resigned themselves to adding their share as a group.

  After a long conference with the emperor, Seil-kor came to deliver the news. The letters we’d drafted had returned a sufficient sum, and on that score our freedom was guaranteed. But one unexpected condition remained to be fulfilled.

  Ever since the bloody battle against the Drelchkaffian troops, Talou, seeking solitude beneath the tall trees of the Behuliphruen, had spent many hours composing a number of resounding stanzas which, taking as their subject the victory over Yaour, were to enrich the “Jeroukka” with a supplementary canto entitled “The Battle of the Tez.”

  Upon his coronation, the emperor would have his troops sing the entire epic; but the new canto, which he’d finished only that morning, was still unfamiliar to the Negro warriors, and long hours of study would be needed to teach it to so large a group.

  Consequently, Talou assigned Carmichael the task of performing on the appointed day, in his resplendent falsetto, the most recent portion of the opus. Such a choice would have the further advantage of highlighting the unknown stanzas of the vast poem and underscoring this premiere, making it truly sensational.

  To sing “The Battle of the Tez,” the young Marseillais would wear his normal male garb, for Talou wished to be crowned king of Drelchkaff in the same costume he’d worn on the day of his victory, a striking outfit whose shape struck him as particularly majestic. The emperor, moreover, intended to figure in the program himself by singing Dariccelli’s Aubade.

  His explanation finished, Seil-kor handed Carmichael a large sheet of paper that he’d covered with strange but perfectly legible words, their perilous pronunciation faithfully indicated in French characters; it was “The Battle of the Tez,” transcribed only moments before by the young Negro under the emperor’s dictation.

  The tune was supplied by a single, brief aria, which Seil-kor easily taught Carmichael.

  Counting on fear to obtain a perfect rendition, Talou threatened that the slightest lapse in memory would be punished by three long hours of detention. During that time, Carmichael would practice the canto for a new recital subject to the same conditions, while standing perfectly still and facing the sycamores of Trophy Square under a Negro guard’s strict surveillance.

  Having obtained the young singer’s reluctant consent, Seil-kor, still relaying Talou’s mandate, demanded from us some simple advice on the role that Sirdah’s thirty-six brothers might play in the coronation ceremony.

  It seemed to us that children of that age, all designated as pages, could add to the picturesqueness of the scene by carrying the long train of their father’s gown at the moment when the latter strode majestically toward the altar. But only six at most could fit around the long hem, and so it was necessary to draw lots. Chènevillot therefore agreed to fashion a large gaming die that would serve to elect the winners from among the boys, split into six rows.

  As for the emperor’s ten wives, they were to perform the Luenn’chetuz, a hieratic dance intimately linked with certain rare and notable rites.

  To finish, Seil-kor showed us a long strip of tightly rolled parchment, covered with Talou’s rudimentary drawings of warring forces.

  During his campaigns, the emperor took daily notes using only images instead of words, setting down in sketches, while his memory was still fresh and precise, the various operations his troops had accomplished.

  Once back in the capital, he used this strategic guide to compose his verses; in short, we had before our eyes the true canvas of the “Jeroukka.”

  Having discovered in our baggage a recording barometer whose workings he’d had explained to him, Talou dreamed of seeing his drawings parade by automatically on the spindles of the precious instrument.

  La Billaudière-Maisonnial, accustomed to delicate work, volunteered to fulfill the imperial desire; he removed the fragile mechanism from the barometer casing and accelerated its movement, and soon an ingenious device, carrying the roll of parchment, was set to work near the Incomparables’ stage.

  XXIII

  SEVERAL MORE DAYS PASSED, during which Carmichael learned to parrot the barbaric text of “The Battle of the Tez.” Guided by Seil-kor, he had easily retained the strange tune adapted to the stanzas and felt confident that he was up to the task of singing this new fragment of the “Jeroukka.”

  At the Stock Exchange, the Carmichael had not stopped climbing in value ever since a Ponukelean song, with its prodigiously bizarre words and music
, had replaced the young Marseillais’s standard repertoire.

  As the great day approached, the speculations picked up momentum, and a final session, which promised to be intense, was scheduled for just before the start of the performances.

  Eager to contribute to the magnificence of the gala by weaving the emperor a rich sacramental cloak, Bedu assembled his famous loom, which had suffered no damage in the shipwreck, astride the Tez.

  He drew up a map of Africa surrounded by a vast area of ocean and marked all the territories now under Talou’s scepter in glaring red.

  The fact that the southern border of Drelchkaff was not clearly defined left the artist free license, and out of flattery he extended the kingdom all the way to the Cape of Good Hope, whose name he spelled out in capitals.

  Once the paddles were adjusted, the machine was set in motion, and soon a heavy ceremonial garment was ready to be placed over the sovereign’s shoulders at the solemn moment.

  Encouraged by this success, Bedu decided to prepare a surprise for Sirdah, who had always shown us such kindness and devotion.

  He designed a sumptuous pattern for a cape, to be decorated with many arresting scenes from the biblical Flood.

  The inventor intended to fine-tune the device on the very morning of the coronation and have it operate in Sirdah’s presence, for after her cure the girl would surely enjoy watching the vision provided by the magical workings of the miraculous machine.

  As Bashkou’s operation was to take place at nightfall, an acetylene beacon, found among the Lynceus’s gear and installed at water’s edge, would project onto the machine the dazzling beams emitted by its reflector.