The White Man with Negro Feet

     I ran into a white man who had Negro feet.  He was walking on
water up the Seine, downstream from the Pont des Arts.  A young dream,
in the impeccable uniform of an old homeless lady, was waiting for 
the white man with Negro feet.  It offered him a huge black egg on a 
spoon.  The white man with Negro feet jumped up to the bridge, took 
the egg between his lips, and gulped it down whole.
     The white man with Negro feet has been following me.  Every time
I turn around he picks up a five-franc piece which he claims I've lost.
He hands it back to me politely; I thank him politely; and my pockets
fill up with coins.  Soon I have so many that I have to interrupt my
stroll.  Fortunately a truck drives past, carrying a lion's cage.  I hail
the driver and he stops.  I enter the cage, lock myself in, and have
myself conveyed like the finger of the pyramid that's gilded with gold 
standards.
     The white man with Negro feet knows a sphinx of fatal beauty,
well-fed, and pushing forty.  When the white man with Negro feet
encounters the sphinx, he becomes nervous and smiles as if implying:
"I don't mince my infant words.  I'm quite familiar with the diamond
board for diving into the alcohol lake that's swallowed up the
treasures of the monkeys."
     The sphinx has majestic breasts.  It offers the hospitality of its
twin fruits of white flesh to any passing cloud.  Its langorous eyes stop
the pigeons in mid-flight.  I myself had to lower my eyes and hide them
behind my hands in its presence.  It sings magnificently and the white
man with Negro feet accompanies it on a harp with his black feet.
     One morning the white man with Negro feet woke up to find himself
transformed upon an immense Swiss cheese.  His head was a huge fly's
head and on his back he had huge fly's wings.  A large slice had been
cut from the cheese and in each hole you could see a tiny hermit who
every now and then would strike his bell, fall to his knees, and pray.
When the hermits noticed the white man with Negro feet, they squeaked
like terrified mice because he looked so horribly ugly and enormous
to them.  The white man with Negro feet flew off sorrowfully and hid
his face in a veil and his wings in a haversack.
     As proud as a fertilized ruby, I meet the sphinx on the sidewalk
of lightning.  It tells me it's seen the white man with Negro feet; his 
head was veiled, he had a haversack on his back, and he was squatting
in a corner of a courtyard of the Louvre, loudly sneezing from behind
and thereby ejecting the black egg he had gotten from the young dream.
When the white man with Negro feet had left his corner, he went to sniff
the fragrance of the black egg, but failed to detect anything unusual,
anything that might explain the evil spell cast upon the white man with
Negro feet, transforming his lovely head into a fly's head and causing
huge fly's wings to grow on his back.  While he sniffed the black egg,
a hot air balloon came down into the courtyard of the Louvre.  Three 
people, who were alike as two eggs and as the second and a third egg, 
and each of whom was wearing a beehive on his head, that is to say a 
kind of boot resembling an Adam's apple and around which buzzed thousands 
of little white and black eggs, alighted from the cockpit of the balloon 
to inspect the black egg.  The thousands of little white and black eggs 
interrupted their buzzing all of a sudden, and the beehive, that is to 
say, the kind of boot resembling an Adam's apple, began to resemble an 
Eve's apple.  The three men took snapshots of the egg and pinpointed its 
exact whereabouts on maps.  With grave expressions on their faces, they 
stepped back into their balloons to leave the courtyard of the Louvre.
     During the sphinx's tale, I distinctly felt seismic jolts that were
growing sharper and sharper.  Terrifying fissures opened in the sidewalk
and the thunder at the heart of the earth rumbled like Russian rumbas
followed by atomic dwarfs from the New World.  Did nature wish to halt
the melody of terrestrial life?  Did it want to turn terra firma into a
terrine?  Like a tender maiden in an evening gown soaked in the resin of
spindles, I made preparations to terminate my career in giblet hides.
Nature's greed heaped disgust on me.  The earth is not a pleasant bosom.
A fog surrounded us; the sphinx glanced at me knowingly as if to say:
"I still hope we'll meet again soon."  Then we were a plain with a vase-
covered railroad as far as the eye could see.  A train, which also was
part of us, violently bashed and smashed the vases.  When the page turned,
the train stopped and the sphinx and I got off the train.  Arm in arm,
leg in leg, we had a ball in the lovely terrestrial night.  A transparent
chalice full of fire-buds lit up a black harp that was preening its feathers.
     The old homeless lady in the impeccable uniform of a young dream met
the white man with Negro feet and said: "I can turn liquid and easily pour
myself into a bottle.  I can make myself flat as a bottle cap.  Stuffed and
suspended from the ceiling, I could embellish it.  Carved up, I would make
a good winter coat.  Dried and grated, I would make excellent snuff.  C'mon,
have a sniff of snuff."  And the white man with Negro feet grated and sniffed
the old homeless lady in the impeccable uniform of a young dream and sneezed
and awoke.  A young dream in the impeccable uniform of an old homeless lady
was standing before him and once more handing him a black egg on a spoon.
     In a pure, blue sky the white man with Negro feet flows serenely.
His lovely body shines in the light.  Between his black feet he holds a
white egg.  Sometimes he drifts so low that we can feel the air moving
and we can discern around his mouth the lace that veils him chastely.

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