Jogging With Roussel 16 part 3

Like a tongue of fluttering chromatic penumbra of  magnificently dissociative wings, the first leg began to jut from the hatch in the sphere, as if the frenzy of feastly birds laid out in a line behind had found a way in, and the pilot was being devoured, but then came a second leg and a rump, and then a torso and then a head, and it stood there stretching itself in the cool and immortal morning of all worlds to come, a phasmid of physical magic. Then, by turns, as if unaware of our watching, or perhaps because of it, it began to return to a more copasetic expression of representation, though one which could easily be called ‘An Angel of Eccentricity’,  for though we had been told that Fogar was elderly yet spry, we had no idea, that the gentleman was a Loa of Olympian complexions. Fogar, it seemed, contained an ageless secret, and was the commander if, of nothing else, then, himself, itself. When he was all done, Fogar resembled a young and elegant mulatto, part Arab perhaps, but with a crisp mustache, and Bex said he liked to style himself an Afribbean Marie Joseph Robert Anatole, Comte de Montesquiou-Fézensac lately of France, but in a winking sense the Côte d'Ivoire as well, for he wore an elegant ceremonial armor that bears some description. Entirely of ivory, the suit had been carved to the delicacy of lace, and through the myriad networks of absences, in every tiny space, there was a young and tender flower growing, though most of the blooms were no larger than the head of a tree-agate spat button, or a pin. 

From head to tow, in front and back, this floral tusk of elegance set one aback, for the grace of the design was remarkable! And the helmet all alone would set the tone, somehow it was a dolphin, and a dragon, and peacock made as a puppet-cage for mermaids, and they themselves like mirages of coral teeming with gems that were insects of exquisite delicacy, like thoughts externalized into automatons whose meaning were their very form. Fogar was exhibiting his competence for the role of Yazata, for in his deep and abiding omnibiology he possessed a certain knowledge of almost everything, and as he entered the room we all unconsciously bowed, for the regality of his person was the sublimity of nature herself, and there was no questioning its grandeur.

   Fogar laughed quietly, and when we looked there was an egg shaped hole in his chestplate revealing a cavity, where his heart and lungs were combined in a chrysalis lantern, and attended by aquatic snake, or worm-like things, centipede-bees striped like sea snakes, or a species as yet unknown, and living in the aqueous fluid of Fogar’s interior, and they made rays around the object as in a symbolist painting, and then the ivory returned, and the smell of flowers filled the room. ‘Nedda’ Yazata Zairi-Gaosha was on her knees weeping. Canterel stepped forward and bowed deeply. “I assure you our offer will do no harm to the world as such or your self. Will you lead the Qarmatians into an age of the Magi?” Suddenly Fogar’s image abruptly changed, and he resembled an ordinary black man of about fifty, wearing an ordinary olive coloured suit, but with a shirt with no collar, and a necklace of gold which bore a coin. On the coin was the word VERITAS, and that word only.

Fogar joined the astonished bunch, and they all sat down to table to discuss the strange temporal paradoxes and such which comprised the origins of this meeting, and when it was through, Fogar knew, that it was his time to shine in this trans-temporal adventure. And the preparations were made, and all the members involved began to learn their roles, for the historical romance which was about to unfold, and Fogar it could be said was found to be a master of languages.

The first thing to do, it was quickly deduced was to find the real man who had duped the Qarmati leader, and take him safely out of harm’s way, for the insertion of a greater feeler, if the antenna of temporal paradox was to hold sway. And so Canterel, by temporal espionage, slowly revealed the Mahdi pretender to be none other than the cousin of the famous heretic Mansur al-Hallaj, who called himself  Dadhãmi Vadare, a boy who had also been al-Hallaj’s intimate spiritual brother, a man who had renounced his own times, and returned to the faith of their forefathers, namely, a hybrid millenarian Zoroastrianism.

Canterel soon captured him in an alley of Al-Salamiyah, having Nedda trick him into entering a doorway with the promise of a particular book which was of significance to this erstwhile revolutionary scholar. Dadhãmi Vadare stepped into a special garden that Canterel had prepared in the Pliocene where he lived the rest of his life in a little version of the Taj Mahal with a library, and a half Neanderthal woman named Kuma, and their children were ancient calligraphers of the Kumaic Neanderthal script whose only works were written by them, and which Canterel keeps in the trans-temporal library, and they contain lovely poems about Borophagine dogs, and Glyptodonts, and the jungles around their equatorial garden.