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.
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 request, 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.
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.
As long as the sound remained strong and quick, the two lovers could freely revel in their intoxication, without fear of discovery by the benighted sleeper.
A progressive decrescendo would warn them of impending danger well in advance of his awakening.
Ghiriz prepared the dish in question for that very evening and set it on a silver plate-warmer in the middle of the table copiously laid for his master.
At the sight of this new and unfamiliar delicacy, the charmed Shahnidjar lifted the serving dish in both hands and voluptuously inhaled its strange emanations.
Immediately overcome by a leaden torpor, he sank back into his chair, eyes closed and head slumped to one side.
Ghiriz uttered the triple incantation, and the serving dish, clattering back onto the table, emitted a loud and rapidly oscillating ring.
When her poet told her of the Chinaman’s efficacious ministrations, the beautiful Neddu trembled with joy and proposed a nocturnal escape into Shahnidjar’s vast gardens.
The Negro Stingo, the Mooress’s faithful serf, was placed on guard next to the merchant, with orders to warn the two lovers the moment the telltale ring gave signs of faltering.
Protected by their sentinel’s absolute devotion, Ghiriz and Neddu ran outside without a second thought.
A long night of ecstasy was theirs to enjoy, in an enchanted Eden amid the rarest of flowers; then they peacefully drifted to sleep in the rising dawn, rocked by the murmur of a waterfall.
The sun had already followed half its course when Stingo ran up to sound the alarm, warning that the magic jingling had begun slowing down and would soon stop.
Jolted awake, the two lovers, filled with voluptuous memories, envisioned in horror the prospect of a new separation.
Neddu could think only of slipping Shahnidjar’s yoke and fleeing with Ghiriz.
Suddenly a zebra appeared, having wandered there by chance.
Startled by the presence of these unexpected humans in its path, the animal tried to turn back.
But at his mistress’s order, the Negro leapt forward and seized the charger by the nostrils, quickly dominating it.
Ghiriz had understood what Neddu was thinking; lithe and light, he leapt onto the zebra, then helped his companion up behind him.
The next moment, the two fugitives, with a wave of farewell to Stingo, galloped away on their swift mount. The Mooress, laughing at her newfound poverty, brandished a purse containing a few gold pieces, the only fortune left them to meet the costs of this perilous journey. Ghiriz, having given all his savings to Keou-Ngan the day before, could add nothing to their modest nest egg.
That evening, after a mad, headlong dash, the exhausted zebra collapsed in the thick of a gloomy forest.
Convinced they had outwitted any pursuers, at least momentarily, Ghiriz and Neddu sought to appease their hunger, whetted by fatigue and the whipping wind.
The two lovers divided up the chores. Ghiriz was to gather a provision of succulent fruits, while Neddu would look for a freshwater spring where they could slake their thirst.
A certain hundred-year-old tree, its giant trunk easily recognizable, was chosen as meeting point, and each one set off in the gathering dusk.
After many twists and turns, Neddu came across the desired spring.
The young woman wanted to return right away, but in the rapidly fallen darkness she became increasingly lost and anxiously wandered for hours without managing to find the huge tree they’d designated.
Frantic with distress, Neddu began to pray, vowing to fast for ten days running if she could only get back to Ghiriz.
Comforted by this appeal to the supreme power, she resumed her walk with renewed courage.
Soon afterward, without quite knowing by what mysterious path, she suddenly found herself beside Ghiriz, who, bleary-eyed and not daring leave their appointed rendezvous, had been waiting for her while calling out her name.
Neddu fell into the poet’s arms, thanking Allah for his prompt intervention.
Ghiriz displayed his harvest of fruits, but Neddu refused to eat her portion, relating the details of her successful vow.
The next day, the two fugitives continued their path on foot, for in the night the zebra had broken its bonds and escaped.
For several days, the couple went from village to village, wandering haphazardly.
Neddu began to feel the tortures of hunger. Though desperate, Ghiriz didn’t dare urge her to break her promise for fear of calling divine fury down upon her.
By the tenth day, the young woman was so weak that she could barely walk, even when leaning on her lover’s arm.
Suddenly she stumbled and fell prostrate onto the ground.
Ghiriz, shouting for help, saw a shopkeeper come running from her grocery stand at the side of the road.
Sensing that death was about to steal his mistress, the poet made a quick decision.
At his request, the shopkeeper rushed back with various foods, and Neddu, opening her eyes, feasted with delight on this restorative nourishment. Her strength replenished, the young woman resumed her walk, hoping to elude the many agents that the wealthy Shahnidjar, whose ardent passion she knew all too well, had surely sent after them.
But one thing gnawed at her without respite: remorse over having broken her fast before the promised time.
An encounter the very next day only heightened her anxieties, which suddenly gained terrible precision.
In the middle of the countryside, an apparent lunatic accosted her, flailing his arms and sowing panic in her heart with his predictions of a dizzying fall, punishment for her betrayal.
The next several hours Ghiriz and Neddu passed in silence, stricken by the singular prophecy.
That evening, at a bend in the road, the young woman let out a cry of terror and began flailing her arms, as if trying to ward off some horrible vision.
Before her, countless eyes without bodies or faces appeared two by two, staring harshly in anger and reproach.
Little by little, these spellbinding gazes drew her toward the edge of the road, which bordered a bottomless abyss bristling with rocky protuberances.
Unaware of this sudden hallucination, Ghiriz could not understand his beloved’s horror.
All at once, without even having time to hold her back, he saw Neddu pulled toward the precipice by an irresistible force.
The poor unfortunate plummeted over the edge, her body crashing against rock after rock, pursued in her fall by the ominous eyes that seemed to blame her for her offense against the Divinity.
Ghiriz, leaning over the chasm, wanted only to share his lover’s fate, and he leapt after her into the void.
Their two bodies came to rest side by side, united for all eternity in those unfathomable depths.
Fogar had listened attentively to Sirdah’s narration.
The illustrations now took on a clear and fully coherent meaning, which confirmed his plan to use them.
At the time of his misdemeanor, the adolescent had stolen not only the folio but also, as a precaution, a school primer in which every page contained the portrait of an animal captioned by its Latin name.
As the colored scenes of the Arabic tale might prove too few in number, this second volume, in which each picture stood alone, provided a copious supplement that would fully satisfy the plant’s demand for visuals.
Armed with the folio and the back-up primer, Fogar, now a conscious and informed observer, awaited the opportune moment.
When the time came, he placed successively before the enormous white reed, whose atomic transformations he’d been awaiting, all the Oriental engravings spread out in correct order.
When this series was finished, he opened the primer just in time to record one page.
The receptive phase having come to an end, the young man could verify the complete success of his operation, watching the images parade by sharply on the delicately impressed plant screen.
All that remained was to tend the plant, which from now on would reproduce ad infinitum the delicate images that were now an integral part of it.
Fogar surreptitiously returned the two volumes to their rightful place; Juillard, absorbed in some new study, had not even noticed their temporary absence.
Now possessing all the elements of his exhibition, the adolescent found an ingenious way to coordinate them.
He decided to group everything along his bed frame, which was a convenient place to obtain the lethargic, clot-generating slumber.
Chènevillot fitted the cot with the desired attachments, each one scrupulously adapted to the particular shape of a given animal or object.
The automatic colorations of the giant reed seemed ideal for distracting the audience during the boy’s voluntary syncope, which would necessarily last a wearisome amount of time.
Since, on the other hand, the first phase of the fainting spell held some real interest due to the gradual weakening of vital signs, it was best to let Fogar be the sole attraction until his absolute prostration made him a virtual corpse.
Toward that end, Chènevillot arranged the plant like a bed canopy and placed above it a bright electric spotlight.
By choosing a sufficiently dark time of day for the experiment, they could make the changing views bright or dim, depending on the malleable strength of the adjustable current.
Fogar, who wanted to do everything himself, insisted on controlling the lights. But in order for his blood to congeal, his lethargic slumber required complete rigidity of the arms and legs. Chènevillot therefore set the electrical current to be regulated by a horizontal wand, ending in a kind of crutch designed to fit under the sleeper’s left armpit. As such, the adolescent, still lucid enough when the first image came on, could, with an imperceptible movement of his body, brighten the beacon at the desired moment.
A small recess with a special light would serve to display in all its detail the inner structure of the strange, living sponge.
When Chènevillot had finished his labors, Fogar patiently practiced bouncing his wet soap off the three gold ingots attached to the foot of his bed, held in place by three solid supports with claws.
He quickly acquired remarkable skill at this difficult sport, performing true marvels of precision and balance.
Meanwhile, he tended his plant with utmost care.
The scrupulously preserved root now rested in an earthenware pot attached to the bed frame. Regular watering maintained the vitality of the tissues, whose endlessly repeated imprints retained all their clarity.