Impressions of Africa Read Online

The unattached head of a fifty-year-old, placed on a wide red disk with a metal collar that held it upright: this was Philippo. A short, thick beard added to the ugliness of his face, which was nonetheless made amusing and likeable by its intelligent wittiness.

Jenn, holding this solid disk—a kind of round table with no legs—in both hands, showed the public the bodiless head, which began to jabber gaily with the most inventive sort of volubility.

With every word his very prominent lower jaw emitted a spray of spittle that, spewing in a shower from his mouth, landed a certain distance in front of him.

We could find none of the customary subterfuges used in the classic talking head routine. There was no system of mirrors hidden under the disk, which Jenn manipulated freely and without any suspect precautions; moreover, the impresario walked to the edge of the stage and offered the round plate to whoever wanted it.

Skariovszki stepped forward to receive Philippo, who at that point, passing from hand to hand, carried on with each spectator a brief, impromptu, and droll conversation. Some held the platter at arm’s length, trying to avoid the sprays of sputum flying from the prodigy’s mouth, while his astounding repartee elicited continuous bursts of laughter from us all.

After making the rounds, Philippo returned to his point of origin and was handed back to Jenn, who had remained onstage.

Immediately the impresario pressed a hidden catch that opened the red platter as one unfolds an extraordinarily flat box, showing that it was actually composed of two parts held fast by a thin hinge.

The lower disk dropped in vertical profile, while, held up by Jenn, the circle that until then had acted as lid continued to support the bearded figure horizontally.

Below this, wearing the classic flesh-colored leotard, hung a minuscule human body that, through complete atrophy, had been able to fit in the narrow hiding place of the hollow plate, barely an inch thick.

This sudden vision completed the person of Philippo, a loquacious dwarf, who, displaying an outsized head, enjoyed perfect health despite the diminutiveness of his striking anatomy.

Still talking and spraying spittle, the astounding chatterbox gesticulated freely with his puppetlike limbs, as if to give full vent to his inexhaustible and exuberant gaiety.

Soon, gripping Philippo by the scruff of the neck, after releasing the metal collar that moved on several hinges with spring catches, the impresario, with his left hand, lowered the upper disk, its aperture allowing easy passage for the inconceivable body below, dressed in flesh tones.

The agile trinket, whose head, larger than Jenn’s, was the same size as the entire rest of his person, abruptly took advantage of this new freedom of movement to scratch furiously at his beard, without missing a beat in his moist verbiage.

As Jenn carried him off into the wings, he gaily gripped a foot in each hand and disappeared wriggling, a final gibe sending copious droplets of his abundant saliva far afield.

Immediately the Breton Lelgoualch, dressed in the legendary costume of his region, rushed forward while doffing his round hat, the stage floorboards echoing under the shocks of his peg leg.

His left hand clutched a hollow bone, cleanly pierced with holes like a flute.

With a strong Brittany accent, the newcomer, reciting some prepared patter, gave us the following details about himself:

At age eighteen, Lelgoualch, a fisherman by trade, used to ply his skiff every day off the coast of Paimpol, his hometown.

The youth owned a bagpipe and was considered the best player in the county. Every Sunday people gathered in the public square to hear him perform, with a charm all his own, a host of Breton folk tunes, of which his memory kept an inexhaustible reserve.

One day, at the Paimpol town fair, Lelgoualch was scaling a greased pole when he fell and fractured his hip. Mortified by his clumsiness, which the whole village had witnessed, he got up and resumed his ascent, managing to complete it through sheer force of will. Then he limped home, still making it a point of honor to conceal his suffering.

When, after too long a delay, he finally sent for the doctor, the injury had developed into gangrene.

It was deemed necessary to amputate.

Lelgoualch, apprised of the situation, faced his trial with courage and, thinking only of how to make the best of it, asked the surgeon to save him his tibia, which he planned to put to some mysterious purpose.

They did as he requested, and on a certain day the poor amputee, sporting a brand-new wooden leg, went to see an instrument maker to whom he entrusted a carefully wrapped package, accompanied by precise instructions.

One month later, Lelgoualch received in a black, velvet-lined case the bone from his leg transformed into a strangely resonant flute.

The young Breton quickly learned the new fingerings and began a lucrative career playing the tunes of his region in music halls and circuses; the weirdness of the instrument, the provenance of which was explained at each performance, attracted crowds of curiosity seekers and increased his earnings far and wide.

The amputation was now twenty years in the past, and ever since then the flute’s resonance had continued to improve, like a violin that mellows over time.

Finishing his story, Lelgoualch raised his tibia to his lips and played a Breton melody full of gentle melancholy. The pure, silken notes sounded like nothing we’d ever heard; the timbre, at once warm and crystalline, indescribably limpid, marvelously suited the particular charm of the calm, lilting tune, whose evocative contours transported our thoughts straight to Armorica.

Several refrains, by turns joyful or patriotic, amorous or stirring, succeeded this initial romance, each one retaining a distinct unity that emitted intense local color.

After a sweet final lament, Lelgoualch withdrew with an alert step, his wooden leg once more clattering over the boards.

The equestrian Urbain then made his appearance, in a blue jacket, calfskin jodhpurs, and turned-down boots, leading a magnificent black stallion full of fire and vigor. An elegant bridle was the only ornament on the animal’s head; no bit fettered its mouth.

Urbain took several strides onto the stage and positioned the splendid steed to face us, introducing it by the name Romulus, which the circus folk jocularly nicknamed tongue and hoove.

At the equestrian’s request to the audience to supply him a word at random, Juillard called out “equator.”

Immediately, slowly repeating one by one the syllables that Urbain prompted aloud, the horse distinctly pronounced “E…qua…tor…”

The animal’s tongue, instead of being square like those of its peers, had adopted the pointed form of the human organ. This peculiarity, noticed by chance, had convinced Urbain to attempt to educate Romulus, who, like a parrot, had learned over two years of work to clearly replicate any sound.

The equestrian resumed the experiment, now soliciting complete sentences from the audience that Romulus repeated after him. Soon, dispensing with its prompter, the horse volubly reeled off its entire repertoire, including a volley of proverbs, portions of fables, curses, and truisms, recited haphazardly and with no sign of intelligence or understanding.

At the end of this preposterous speech, Urbain led Romulus offstage, the animal still muttering a few nonsensical observations.

Man and horse were replaced by Whirligig, slim and lithe in his clown costume and face powder. Using both hands and his teeth, he carried separately, by their edges, three deep, finely woven baskets, which he set down on the stage.

Ably mimicking a British accent, he introduced himself as a lucky devil who had just enjoyed huge winnings at two different casinos.

As he spoke he showed off his baskets, filled respectively with coins, dominoes, and dark blue playing cards.

First taking the basket of loose change, which he carried to the right, Whirligig, scooping out copper coins by the handful, erected on the edge of the platform a curious construction that rested against the partition.

Coins large and small swiftly piled up under the clown’s nimble fingers, which were apparently quite used to the exercise. We soon made out the base of a feudal tower with a wide portal, its upper portion still missing.

Without pausing for breath, the agile worker pursued his task, accompanied by a metallic clinking full of resonant gaiety. Here and there, narrow loopholes dotted the vaulted walls that rose before our eyes.

Reaching the level marked by the top of the portal, Whirligig pulled from his sleeve a long, thin, flat rod, its brownish color easily confused with the grimy hue of common coinage. This rigid beam, placed like a bridge over the two jambs of the opening, allowed the clown to continue his task on a firm and ample support.

The coins continued to pile up and, when the basket was empty, Whirligig designated with a proud gesture a tall, artistically crenellated tower, which seemed to be part of some old façade of which only a single corner appeared, like a stage set.

With a pile of dominoes pulled in bunches from the second basket, the clown then went on to build, at the far right of the stage, a kind of wall balancing upright.

The uniform rectangles, placed in single file, were laid over each other symmetrically, showing many black backs with an occasional white front.

Soon a large section of wall, rising in a flawless vertical line, showed, against a white background, the black silhouette of a priest in a long cassock, wearing his traditional hat. Sometimes lying horizontally, sometimes upright, depending on the requirements of the priest’s outline, the dominoes created their design by cleverly alternating their black or white faces; they looked as if they’d been glued together by their narrow edges, so precisely were they stacked.

In several minutes, Whirligig, working with neither mortar nor trowel, finished a wall a full ten feet long, which, stretching to the rear of the stage in a slightly oblique direction, formed a rigorously homogenous block. The original motif was repeated over the full width of the mosaic, and we now saw what seemed like whole parade of vicars walking in small groups toward an unknown goal.

Approaching the third basket, the clown picked up and unfolded a large black drape, which, by two corners, each fitted with a ring, was easily suspended from two hooks attached before the performance to the backdrop and to the left wall of the stage.

The black cloth, which hung to the floor, thus formed a wide slanting corner; the axis of the domino wall stretching from the coin tower abutted against it.

Freshly exposed to the air by Whirligig’s action, the visible side of the cloth was covered with a damp coating, a kind of shiny glue.

The clown gracefully positioned himself before this huge target, against which, with remarkable skill, he began to toss the playing cards that he pulled from his reserve by the fistful.

Each light projectile, spinning on its axis, infallibly landed with its blue back against the cloth and remained prisoner of the tenacious coating; the performer demonstrated great precision in symmetrically aligning his cards, which, black or red, high or low, lodged one beside the other without regard for value or suit.

Before long, diamonds, clubs, spades, and hearts, succeeding each other in narrow bands, sketched against the black background the shape of a roof. Then came a complete façade pierced by several windows and a wide door, on the threshold of which Whirligig, using an entire deck, carefully rendered the silhouette of a behatted clergyman emerging from his home, who seemed to be greeting the colleagues heading in his direction.

This tour de force completed, the clown turned to us to offer this explanation of his triple masterpiece: “A fraternity of reverends leaving the tower of an old cloister to visit the parish priest in his rectory.”

Then, still lithe and agile, he folded up the black cloth with all the cards still attached and demolished in several seconds the evocative wall and brown tower.

Everything was soon returned to the solid baskets, with which Whirligig vanished like a sprite.

After a moment, the Belgian tenor Cuijper appeared onstage, squeezed into a tight frock coat.

He held between his fingers a fragile metal instrument, which he displayed to the audience as best he could by turning it slowly to alternately expose each of its sides.

It was a squeaker, similar, though slightly larger, to those little tin nasal attachments puppeteers use to imitate Punch’s voice.

Cuijper briefly related the story of this trinket of his own invention, which, amplifying his voice a hundredfold, had shaken the Théâtre de la Monnaie in Brussels to its foundations.

We all remembered the fuss the newspapers had made about Cuijper’s Squeaker, which no instrument-maker ever succeeded in replicating.

The tenor jealously guarded a certain secret regarding the composition of the metal and the shape of its many circumvolutions, which endowed the precious toy with fabulously resonant qualities.

Wary of providing opportunities for theft and indiscretion, Cuijper had manufactured only a single specimen, the object of his constant surveillance; we were therefore gaping at that moment at the very squeaker that, for an entire season, had allowed him to sing the lead roles on the stage of the Monnaie.

These preliminary explanations over, Cuijper announced the grand aria from Gorlois and placed the squeaker in his mouth.

Suddenly, a superhuman voice, which sounded as if it could be heard for miles around, burst from his throat, making every listener jump.

This colossal force in no way undermined the charm of its timbre, and the mysterious squeaker, the source of this incredible volume, clarified rather than garbled the elegant pronunciation of the lyrics.

Never straining for effect, Cuijper, seemingly without trying, stirred the air currents around him; yet no shrillness clouded the purity of his sound, which evoked both the delicacy of a harp and the loudness of an organ.

By himself he filled the space better than a huge choir could have done; his fortes would have covered the rumbling of thunder, and his pianos retained a formidable amplitude, while giving the impression of a light murmur.

The final note, begun softly, then artfully swelled and broken off at its apex, provoked a feeling of stupor in the crowd that lasted until Cuijper left the stage, his fingers once again twiddling the curious squeaker.

A shiver of curiosity revived the audience as the great Italian tragedienne Adinolfa came onstage, dressed in a simple black frock that heightened the fatal sadness of her physiognomy, itself darkened by her beautiful velvet eyes and opulent chestnut hair.

After a brief announcement, Adinolfa began declaiming in Italian ample and mellifluous verses by Torquato Tasso. Her features expressed intense dolor, and certain vocal outbursts were nearly like sobs; she wrung her hands in distress while her entire person shook with pain, intoxicated by exaltation and despair.

Soon real tears sprung from her eyes, showing the devastating sincerity of her phenomenal emotion.

Sometimes she knelt, bowing her head beneath the weight of her grief, then again rose, fingers clasped and stretched to the heavens, to which she seemed to be fervently addressing her heartrending imprecations.

Her eyelashes dripped constantly, while, sustained by her striking impressions, Tasso’s stanzas echoed bitterly, spoken in a savage and gripping tone that evoked the cruelest emotional torments.

After a final, emphatic verse, each syllable of which was hammered out one by one in a voice made hoarse by the effort, the brilliant tragedienne slowly stepped offstage, holding her head in both hands, shedding her limpid and abundant tears until the end.

Immediately two red damask curtains, pulled by an unseen hand, emerged simultaneously from the wings of the empty stage, which they masked completely by joining together at the midpoint.

V

TWO MINUTES PASSED, during which Carmichael went to stand at the front left of the theater, from which a bustling, unseen activity could be heard.

All at once the curtains opened onto a tableau vivant imbued with picturesque cheer.

In a rich timbre, Carmichael, designating the immobile apparition, pronounced this brief apostrophe:

“The Feast of the Olympian Gods.”

In the middle of the stage, behind which hung black drapes, Jupiter, Juno, Mars, Diana, Apollo, Venus, Neptune, Vesta, Minerva, Ceres, and Vulcan, seated in full regalia at a sumptuously laid table, smilingly raised their brimming goblets. Ready to gaily toast the entire group, Mercury, played by the comic actor Soreau, appeared to be suspended in midair by the wings of his sandals and hovered above the banquet without any visible attachment to the flies.

Closing once more, the curtains blotted out the divine assembly, then parted anew after several moments’ commotion to display a fairly complex scene in an entirely different setting.

The left half of the stage showed a tranquil waterway hidden behind a line of rosebushes.

A woman of color, who by her costume and finery seemed to belong to a savage tribe of North America, stood motionless in a light boat. Alone with her on the frail skiff, a little white girl held in both hands the handle of a fishing net; with a sharp jerk of her snare, she was yanking a pike from the waves. Lower down, one could see caught in the mesh the head of the fish trying to dive back into its element.

The other half of the stage depicted a grassy bank. In the foreground, a man who seemed to be running at breakneck speed wore on his shoulders a papier-mâché boar’s head, which, completely obscuring his own, made him look like a wild pig with a human body. An iron wire forming a wide arc was attached by its two ends to the encircled wrists that the runner held out before him at different heights. A glove, an egg, and a wisp of straw, the spoils of a fictional theft, were strung on the metal wire at three different points of the graceful curve. The runaway’s hands were open toward the sky, as if juggling the three objects frozen in their aerial path. The arc, inclined on a slant, gave the impression of rapid, irresistible momentum. Seen in rear three-quarters view and seemingly drawn by an invincible force, the juggler appeared to be rushing toward the rear of the stage.

Set back from him, a live goose held a pose as if taking wing, thanks to a kind of glue that attached its phenomenally widespread feet to the ground in mid-stride. The two white wings were extended broadly as if to power this headlong flight. Behind the bird, Soreau, dressed in a flowing robe, represented wrathful Boreas; from his mouth escaped a long funnel of blue-gray cardboard that, striped with fine longitudinal lines copied from those great breaths that draftsmen put before the lips of swollen-cheeked zephyrs, artfully depicted a tempestuous wind.