Impressions of Africa (French Literature Series)

by Roussel, Raymond

  Darriand, who had himself activated this light, now slowly turned a silent crank, set at hand height in the left end of the wall. Soon, produced by a colored slide placed before the projector, an image appeared on the white screen, showing Seil-kor a ravishing blonde child of about twelve, full of charm and grace; above the portrait we could read the words “The Young Candiote.”

  At this sight, Seil-kor fell deliriously to his knees as if before a goddess, crying, “Nina…Nina…” in a voice trembling with joy and emotion. Everything in his posture showed that his senses, heightened by the intense emanations from the Oceanic plants, made him believe that the adorable girl he’d named so rapturously was an actual, living presence.

  After a moment’s pause, Darriand turned the crank again, setting in motion, by means of a hidden diaphanous strip on a system of sprockets, a series of views appearing one after another before the bright lens.

  The portrait slid left and disappeared from the screen. On the brilliant surface we now saw a region on the map of France marked with the word “Corrèze”; the capital of this region, a large black dot, carried a simple question mark in place of the word “Tulle.” Before this sudden question, Seil-kor nervously shook his head as if seeking some elusive reply.

  Under the title “Fishing for Electric Rays,” a moving scene replaced the geographic map. Here, wearing a navy-blue dress and sturdily armed with a long, flexible pole, the young girl Seil-kor had called Nina fell in a faint, gripping a white fish that flopped at the end of her line.

  Darriand continued his operation and the captioned views followed each other without interruption, profoundly afflicting Seil-kor, who, still on his knees, heaved sighs and whimpers that betrayed his growing excitement.

  After “Fishing for Electric Rays” came “The Martingale”: on the steps of an imposing building, a very young Negro, bouncing several silver coins in his hand, headed toward an entrance surmounted by the three words “Casino of Tripoli.”

  “The Fable” showed a page of a book propped against a huge Savoy cake.

  “The Ball” consisted of a merry party in which children moved by twos through a vast salon. In the foreground, Nina and the young Negro with the silver coins rushed toward each other, arms outstretched, while a woman with a benevolent smile seemed to be encouraging their tender embrace.

  Soon “The Valley of Oo,” a deep, green landscape, was followed by “The Bolero in the Shed,” in which we saw Nina and her friend dancing feverishly in the middle of an unadorned interior littered with carriages and harnesses.

  “The Guiding Path” depicted a tangled forest in which Nina advanced courageously. Next to her, as if to mark his retreat like Tom Thumb, the young Negro tossed a white morsel on the ground from the tip of his knife, having no doubt just cut it from a heavy Swiss cheese wilting in his left hand.

  Nina, after sleeping on a bed of moss in “The First Night of Advent,” reappeared standing in “Orientation,” her finger raised toward the stars. Finally, “The Coughing Fit” depicted the young heroine wracked by a horrible cough and sitting, penholder in hand, before an almost completely filled sheet of paper. In a corner of the scene, a page showed in cutaway was apparently an enlargement of the document under the girl’s hand: beneath a series of scarcely legible lines, the title “Resolution,” followed by an unfinished sentence, suggested the conclusion of a catechism exercise.

  Throughout this series of images, Seil-kor, in the grip of incredible agitation, had never stopped his violent thrashing, stretching his arms to Nina and tenderly moaning her name.

  Letting go of the crank, Darriand abruptly turned off the lamp, lifted Seil-kor to his feet, and pulled him outside, for the young Negro’s turmoil, having reached paroxysm, made one fear the deleterious effects of too prolonged a stay beneath the bewitching vegetation.

  Seil-kor soon came to his senses. Darriand having removed his paper trappings, he looked around him like a slowly awakening sleeper, then murmured softly, “Oh! I remember, I remember now…Nina…Tripoli…the Valley of Oo…”

  Darriand observed him intently, happily noting these first signs of a cure. Soon the hypnotist’s triumph was plain to all, for Seil-kor, recognizing everyone’s face, began replying rationally to a host of questions. The marvelously triumphant experiment had restored the poor lunatic to reason, leaving him full of gratitude for his savior.

  Darriand was roundly congratulated, while the porters removed the admirable projection device whose effectiveness had just been demonstrated so successfully.

  After a moment we saw appear at left, effortlessly dragged by a serf, a certain Roman chariot whose two wheels produced as they turned a constant and fairly high C note, sounding true and pure in the night.

  On the vehicle’s narrow platform, a wicker armchair supported the frail and puny body of young Kalj, one of the emperor’s sons. Next to the axle walked Meisdehl, a graceful, charming black girl who was conversing gaily with the impassive boy.

  Both children, aged seven or eight, wore red headpieces that stood out against their ebony faces. Kalj’s, a kind of simple dust-cap cut from the pages of some illustrated newspaper, displayed on its circumference in the lunar light a richly colored picture of cavalry-men charging, underscored by the name “Reichshoffen,” the incomplete remnant of an explanatory caption. Meisdehl wore a narrow bonnet of similar provenance, its red hues, due to abundantly depicted house fires, were elucidated by the word “Commune” legible on one of its edges.

  The chariot crossed the square, still emitting its shrill C, then halted next to the Incomparables’ stage.

  Kalj climbed down and disappeared to the right, taking Meisdehl with him, while the crowd gathered in front of the small theater to watch the final scene of Romeo and Juliet, performed with many new additions taken from Shakespeare’s authentic manuscript.

  Soon the curtains parted to reveal Meisdehl, lying on a raised bed in profile, as Juliet in the depths of her narcotic slumber.

  Behind the deathbed, greenish flames, colored with mineral salts, escaped from a powerful brazier hidden at the bottom of a dark metal container, of which only the edges were visible.

  After several moments, Romeo, played by Kalj, appeared to contemplate in grieving silence the corpse of his adored companion.

  Though they were lacking traditional costumes, the actors’ red bonnets, with their characteristic shape, would identify the Shakespearean couple.

  In the flush of a final kiss placed on the dead girl’s forehead, Romeo brought a thin flask to his lips, then flung it away after having downed its poisonous contents.

  Suddenly Juliet opened her eyes, rose slowly, and descended from her bed before Romeo’s frantic gaze. The two lovers fell into each other’s arms and exchanged many caresses, abandoning themselves to their trembling joy.

  Then Romeo, running to the brazier, pulled from the flames an asbestos thread, the end of which hung over the lip of the metal container. This incombustible wick bore fiery coals over its entire length, which, cut like precious stones and glowing red from the heat, looked like shining rubies.

  Returning center stage, Romeo clasped the curious ornament about Juliet’s neck, her skin enduring without a tremor the burning contact of those terrible jewels.

  But the lover beaming with hope and confidence was suddenly seized in mid-joy by the first throes of agony. With a desperate gesture he showed the poison to Juliet, who, contrary to events in the familiar version, discovered at the bottom of the flask a remnant of the liquid, which she greedily swallowed as well.

  Half-collapsed on the risers leading to the bed, Romeo, under the spell of the fatal potion, was on the verge of gripping hallucinations.

  Everyone had been waiting for this moment to gauge the effect of certain red lozenges: fashioned by Fluxier and thrown into the brazier one by one by Adinolfa, who was concealed behind the deathbed, they were designed to release clouds of smoke in various meaningful shapes.

  The first apparition soon emerged from t
he flames, in the form of an intense and precisely formed vapor that depicted the Temptation of Eve.

  In the middle of this vision, the serpent coiled around a tree trunk reached its head toward a graceful, relaxed Eve, whose conspicuously raised hand seemed to rebuff the evil tempter.

  The contours, at first very sharp, thickened as the cloud rose into the air; soon the details blurred into a shifting, chaotic mass, which promptly vanished into the flies.

  A second puff of smoke reproduced the same scene; but this time Eve eagerly stretched her fingers toward the apple, about to pluck it.

  Romeo turned his distraught eyes toward the hearth, its green flames infusing the stage with a tragic glow.

  Another thick, meticulously sculpted billow of smoke, escaping from the brazier, created before the dying youth a joyous bacchanal; women performed a feverish dance for a group of debauchees with jaded smiles; in the background lay the remains of a feast, while in the foreground the presumed host directed his guests’ admiration toward the lithe, lascivious dancers.

  Romeo, as if recognizing the vision, murmured these words: “Thisias…the orgy in Zion…!”

  Already the vaporous scene was rising and beginning to dissipate. After it had drifted away, a new cloud of smoke, originating in the usual place, reprised the same figures in different postures; this time joy gave way to terror, and dancers and libertines, jumbled together on their knees, bowed their heads before the apparition of God the Father, whose infuriated face hovered in mid-air above them all, motionless and terrible.

  A new emergence of sculpted fog, succeeding the interrupted gyrations, was greeted by this cry from Romeo: “Saint Ignatius!”

  Now the smoke formed two superimposed subjects, to be viewed individually. On the bottom, Saint Ignatius, thrown to the beasts in the Roman circus, was but an inert, mutilated corpse; on the top, a little to the rear, Heaven, populated with haloed figures and depicted as an enchanted isle surrounded by calm waters, welcomed a second image of the saint, more transparent than the first, which represented his soul separated from his body.

  “Pheor of Alexandria!”

  This exclamation of Romeo’s was directed toward a phantom that, in its sculpted nebulosity, had just emerged from the brazier following Saint Ignatius. The new figure, standing amid an attentive crowd, looked like some illuminatus preaching the good word; his simple robe flapped around his ascetic body, apparently wasted by fasting, and his emaciated face contrasted sharply with his voluminous temples.

  This presentation inaugurated a storyline rapidly continued by a second emission of purely delineated smoke. There, in the middle of a public marketplace, two groups formed two perfectly regular squares, one made up solely of old men, the other solely of youths. Pheor, following a violent harangue, found himself facing the anger of the young men, who had thrown him to the ground without pity for the feebleness of his scrawny limbs.

  A third aerial episode showed Pheor on his knees, in an ecstatic pose provoked by the passage of a courtesan surrounded by an entourage of slaves.

  Little by little the smoke that composed these human groupings spread a drifting, impalpable veil over the stage.

  “Jeremiah…the stoning…!”

  After these words, inspired by a dull, fleeting eruption above the hearth showing Jeremiah stoned by a massive crowd, the exhausted Romeo fell dead before the horrified eyes of Juliet, who, still wearing the necklace that already glowed less brightly, succumbed in turn to the potion’s hallucinatory power.

  A light suddenly shone at left, behind the backdrop, illuminating an apparition visible through a fine painted grille, which until then had seemed as opaque and homogenous as the fragile wall surrounding it.

  Juliet turned toward the flood of light, crying, “Father…!”

  Capulet, played by Soreau, stood in a long golden robe, silky and floating; his outstretched arm pointed at Juliet in a gesture of hatred and reproach, clearly related to her guilty elopement.

  Then darkness fell anew, and the vision disappeared behind the again unremarkable wall.

  Juliet, kneeling in a supplicant posture, stood up, wracked by sobs, to remain for a few moments with her face buried in her hands.

  A second luminous image made her raise her head and drew it to the right, toward an evocation of Christ, who, mounted on the legendary donkey, was only slightly concealed by a second painted grille, forming a pendant to the first.

  It was again Soreau, having rapidly changed, who played the role of Jesus, his presence seeming to admonish Juliet for having betrayed her faith by voluntarily summoning death.

  The divine, immobile specter, suddenly growing dim, vanished behind the wall, and Juliet, as if stricken by madness, smiled softly at some enchanting new dream beginning to form.

  At that moment a bust of a woman’s head appeared onstage, mounted on a small trolley that an unknown hand pushed laterally from stage left using a stiff rod hidden at floor level.

  The pink and white bust, much like a barber’s dummy, had wide blue eyes with long lashes and a magnificent head of blonde hair separated into thin braids that hung naturally on all sides. Certain of her braids, which we could see because chance had placed them over her chest or against her shoulders, bore numerous gold coins up and down their outer surface.

  Enchanted, Juliet moved toward the visitor murmuring the name “Urgela…!”

  Then the stand, shaken side to side by the rod, communicated its jolts to the bust, whose hair violently swung about. The poorly attached gold coins fell in an abundant shower, proving that the unseen plaits in back were no less festooned than the others.

  For a moment the fairy spread her dazzling riches without measure, until, presumably pulled back by the same hand, she silently disappeared.

  Juliet, as if pained by this abandonment, looked about aimlessly, her eyes coming to rest on the still glowing brazier.

  Once more, a torrent of smoke rose above the flames.

  Juliet recoiled, crying out in stark terror: “Pergovedula…the two heifers…!”

  The intangible and fugitive shape evoked a woman with frizzy hair, seated before a monstrous repast composed of two heifers cut into large quarters and avidly brandishing an immense fork.

  The vapor, in dissipating, revealed behind the hearth a fearsome apparition, which Juliet designated by the same name, “Pergovedula,” spoken with heightened anxiety.

  It was the tragedienne Adinolfa, who had quickly stood up in a peculiar guise. Her face, thickly coated in ochre greasepaint, clashed with her mildew-green lips, which parted in a wide and horrifying rictus; her bushy hair made her look precisely like the vision that had just emerged from the brazier, and her eyes stared insistently at the terror-stricken Juliet.

  Billows of smoke, now in no specific shape, were still pouring from the brazier, masking Adinolfa’s face; by the time this ephemeral veil dispersed, she had vanished.

  Less brilliantly adorned by the necklace that was gradually fading, Juliet in her final agony collapsed onto the steps leading to the bed, arms hanging limp, head thrown back. Her eyes, now devoid of expression, ended by staring into space at a second Romeo who slowly descended toward her.

  This new supernumerary, played by one of Kalj’s brothers, personified the light and lively soul of the inert corpse stretched out near Juliet. A red headpiece, like that of his model, decorated the brow of this perfect double, who, with outstretched arms, came smiling to claim the dying girl and lead her to her immortal repose.

  But Juliet, seemingly deprived of sanity, turned indifferently away, while the ghost, contrite and dismissed, rose noiselessly back into the wings.

  After a few last weak and automatic movements, Juliet fell dead next to Romeo, just as the two stage curtains closed rapidly.

  Kalj and Meisdehl had astonished us all with their marvelously tragic pantomime and by the few French phrases they had uttered without a trace of error or accent.

  Returning to the esplanade, the two children made a pr
ompt departure.

  Pulled by the serf and faithfully escorted by Meisdehl, the chariot, once more emitting its shrill, continuous note, carried to the left the sickly Romeo, visibly exhausted by the strain of his lengthy performance.

  The high C was still ringing in the distance when Fuxier came toward us, his spread right hand holding against his chest an earthen pot from which a vine-stock jutted.

  His left hand carried a transparent cylindrical jar, which, furnished with a large cork stopper pierced by a metal tube, displayed in its lower portion a volume of chemical salts that had burgeoned into graceful crystals.

  Setting his two burdens on the ground, Fuxier took from his pocket a small covered lantern, which he lay flat on the potting soil brushing against the inner edges of the stoneware vessel. An electrical current, switched on within this portable beacon, suddenly projected a dazzling shaft of white light, which a powerful lens pointed toward the zenith.

  At that point, lifting the jar and holding it horizontally, Fuxier turned a key at the end of the metal tube, whose opening, carefully aimed at a predetermined portion of the stock, released a violently compressed gas. A brief explanation taught us that this element, when allowed contact with the atmosphere, provoked an intense heat, which, combined with certain very specific chemical properties, would cause a bunch of grapes to ripen before our eyes.

  He had barely finished his commentary when already the promised phenomenon occurred in the form of an imperceptibly small cluster. Possessing the power that legend ascribes to certain Indian fakirs, Fuxier performed for us the miracle of instant blossoming.

  Under the action of the chemical flow, the fruit buds developed rapidly, and soon a cluster of green grapes, heavy and ripe, hung alone on one side of the vine-stock.

  Fuxier set the jar back down on the ground, having sealed the tube with another twist of the key. Then, drawing our attention to the cluster, he showed us minuscule human figures imprisoned at the center of the diaphanous globes.