Da Vinci's Bicycle - Guy Davenport (e novels to read TXT) 📗

But if it had been the month of Floréal in the Year 120, first pentatone of the Harmony, the sillima trees a water of hsiao chung and chinkled pyrite, we might have seen a scout of the Hordes and two little girls in Romany finery dancing with a ginger bear.

VI

The air rich with the peculiarly Parisian aroma of roasting chestnuts, quagga droppings, and baskets of marigolds, two little girls in Romany finery shimmy down the Elysées behind their elder brother tapping a timbrel above his head as he strides.

He twirls it high and brings it down with a clash and a hoodah! against the naked brown of his thigh. An elder recommends to his gaffers over their wine that they eye the nisser and the kobold, outriders as they read the emblems of the Chrysanthemum Horde.

They and the Goldenrods are of the Phalanstery Nora Joyce, them skirts as dazzled in the tuck and ruff as a margery prater all the colors of pepper from Floréal to Vendémiaire, Paraguay green, English blue, and a red to grace the boot of a Manchu khan.

Chilimindra and Gazella the girls, Crispin the brother, Strummel Jark the bear. Police of the Gardens and Corporals of Fine Tone salute as they pass, children all, clad by tribe, or naked except for the boondoggle of their clan and their doggy dignity.

Farther back, coming through the Arc, bouncing to drums, a zebra patrol enters the Elysées with a fanfare of E-flat trumpets. The colors out front are those of the XXI Hungarian Typhoons, Company Marie Laurencin, Magyar reds and pinks.

The guidons jig from under the arch, Phalanx Petulengro, Apollinaire, Souza Andrade, Marcel Griaule, Max de Bégouën. Chilimindra, Gazella, and Crispin, ten, eleven, and twelve, are champion makers of fudge, masters of zebras, of cobbling and of knots.

They are masters of horns and flowers, of printing and dancing, of the cello and cartography, of crystals and snakes, of polyhedral tensegrities and cetacean speech, of history and embroidery. They are companions palatine of the Great Bear of the Dnieper.

The circle on Fourier’s tomb means friendship, the hyperbola ambition, the ellipse love, the parabola family. The Little Hordes are two thirds boys and one third tomboys, the Little Bands are two thirds girls and one third shy mama’s boys.

Their mounts are zebras for the Hordes and quaggas for the Bands. The Grand Hordes, of Vestals in rawhide, prancing to trumpets, of naked Spartans with javelins and winebowl hairdos, of the Pioneers Major and Minor, are mounted all on tarpans.

VII

It was in Huffman’s Meadow out from Dayton on the way to Xenia that we mastered flying around a honey locust and Mr. Root the editor of Gleanings in Bee Culture saw us. We came through the film first in wild winds over the sands at Kill Devil Hill.

We came over the sands at Kitty Hawk, our huffer and zinger made of iron with feet that kicked in its heart where lightning burst the blood of blue grandfather scum rotted and gunked from the time of the chicken lizards. Our wings were made of cloth.

Our wings were made of splinters and knitten flax, our eyes were another’s and nothing was wholly right for shape or go. We could rock in rising and settling like a hornet, ride like a bee, but the figure eight of the wasp, or a clapfling proper, we could not do.

You cannot forage until you can twist your loop, shimmer of red on the up, shake of green on the down, with wood to chew on every bought, and a pear gone wine beyond the briars, and a liquor of roses sweet as wives drenching all, wind and light combing light.

Ogotemmêli lifted his head, cupping his hand behind his ear. There was something interesting in the air. Dougodyé, he said. I hear the step of Dougodyé. A young shepherd approached in sunglasses, a French undershirt, and wide baggy Dogan trousers.

Innekouzou’s cow, he said with a grin, has thrown twin calves. Give me a sou. Amma numo, said Ogotemmêli, vira aduno vo vaniemu! Come, Brother Griollu, lead me to the baobab, where we can drink beer for the blessed ancestors. Twin calves, I’ll be bound!

We must go honor the sign of twins, a blessing that refreshes me to hear. He went into his house with blind caution and came back in his Phrygian cap, his checkerboard tabard of goat’s wool, and a sou for Dougodyé. The armpit drums and Ogo fife had begun.

They walked between granaries and houses, by altars, to the great baobab. Everything that reaches up to God must be firmly rooted, Ogotemmêli said, bowing to the bows which he knew were being made to his rank, his blind steps sure. Twin calves!

A woman with many beads of cowries and beaten gold nummo put a gourd of cool beer into his long fingers. Elders with staves came gravely to the tree, talking of other twins in other days, holding cups to the calabash. This too, said Ogotemmêli, is worship.

VIII

Quagga, brother of the Herero and Himba, ran in gray herds silver through the mimosa. The mares pranced out before, smelling for lioness, foals and yearlings swirled girlishly behind, and the stallions, maned and haughty, confidently trotted at the rear.

Orangutans furiously pulled grass and put it on their heads as the quaggas streamed by. O moon, cried the orangutans, O moon. Elephants rolled their trunks, by which they meant that you never go to the waterhole except to find there a family of nickering quaggas.

They come to the water as picky as antelopes, their honest eyes looking at everything, their nostrils atick with the dusty smell of elephant, green fragrance of water, blunt odor of rhinoceros, the far stink of panther and the carrion cough of hyena.

Stepping to trumpet