“Black as a chimney-pot, solemn as an archbishop, blind as a bat.” Like many of Borak’s observations, that one had everything in it but the essential. The essential thing was the man’s enormous separation. Whether it was the infirmity of his great age or whether it was his “holiness” (which may account for many things), he was removed to a distance which could not be measured. He lived on another planet. He lived within another sky, the sky of his own skin. There was something majestic in the completeness of his immobility. Save for a faint, slow, rhythmical pulse of his swollen lower lip there was nothing visibly alive in him. Not once did the dead eyeballs, sustained in little cups of rheum, shift from the line of dead ahead. From the first to the last of that audience he remained in the attitude in which I imagine he must have been deposited, a sphinx thing in ebony, content with memories. Memories gorgeous or infernal. His lip fascinated me. I could not get my eyes away from that pendulous and extraordinary tissue, throbbing with faint, ordered convulsions in the orange light. It was as if the creature’s heart, appalled by something under the black sky of skin, had broken prison and escaped so far, only to be caught on the threshold and hang there eternally, beating. I had to shake myself. In a whisper, to Borak: “What’s that he was saying? The tall one.” “He says that his grandfather is bound on the pilgrimage to Mekka because he is tremendously holy, and he is tremendously holy because he has a huge sin on his soul. Not bad, eh? It has happened before.” Bou Dik’s voice was heard. “What then is that sin?” The dark orator looked around the circle beneath him. “It is known in Andiorou and Adar. It is known in Damagarin country and even in Manga country in the east.” He looked at Bou Dik. “Now I will recount thee that history, sidi.” His gaze returned to the fire. I shall not soon forget him as he stood there against the stars of the desert night, tall, glossy, vibrant, speaking out in a strong voice the story of the moribund flesh beside him. “Know thou then that it was in the years before the missionaries of God (to whom be the prayer) and of his Prophet (be his bliss eternal by the streams that never cease!) had brought to my tribe the Word and the Flame of Islam. Glory to the One God!” “Glory to the One God!” the echo rustled around the ring.