You may have heard of Samuel Cramer, half poet, half journalist, who had to do with a dancer called the Fanfarlo. But, as you will see, it doesn't matter if you have not. He was said to be going strong in Paris early in the nineteenth century, and when I met him in 1946 he was still going strong, but this time in a different way. He was the same man, but modified. For instance, in those days, more than a hundred years ago, Cramer had persisted for several decades, and without affectation, in being about twenty-five years old. But when I knew him he was clearly undergoing his forty-two-year-old phase.

At this time he was keeping a petrol pump some four miles south of the Zambesi River where it crashes over a precipice at the Victoria Falls. Cramer had some spare rooms where he put up visitors to the Falls when the hotel was full. I was sent to him because it was Christmas week and there was no room at the hotel. I found him trying the starter of a large, lumpy Mercedes outside his corrugated-iron garage, and at first sight I judged him to be a Belgian from the Congo. He had the look of north and south, light hair with canvas-coloured skin. Later however he told me that his father was German and his mother Chilean. It was this information rather than the 'S. Cramer' above the garage door which made me think I had heard of him.

The rains had been very poor and that December was fiercely hot. On the third night before Christmas I sat on the stoep outside my room looking through the broken mosquito-wire network at the lightning in the distance. When an atmosphere maintains an excessive temperature for a long spell something seems to happen to the natural noises of life. Sound fails to carry in its usual quantity, but comes as if bound and gagged. That night the Christmas beetles, which fall on their backs on every stoep with a high tic-tac, seemed to be shock-absorbed. I saw one fall and the little bump reached my ears a fraction behind time.

The noises of minor wild beasts from the bush were all hushed up too. In fact it wasn't until the bush noises all stopped simultaneously, as they frequently do when a leopard is about, that I knew there had been any sound at all. Overlying this general muted hum, Cramer's sundowner party progressed farther up the stoep. The heat distorted every word. The glasses made a tinkle that was not of the substance of glass, but of bottles wrapped in tissue paper. Sometimes for a moment, a shriek or a cackle would hang torpidly in space, but these were unreal sounds as if projected from a distant country, as if they were pocket-torches seen through a London fog.

Cramer came over to my end of the stoep and asked me to join his party. I said I would be glad to, and meant it, even though I had been glad to sit alone. Heat so persistent and so intense sucks up the will.

Five people sat in wicker armchairs drinking highballs and chewing salted peanuts. I recognised a red-haired trooper from Livingstone, just out from England, and two of Cramer's lodgers, a tobacco planter and his wife from Bulawayo. In the custom of those parts, the other two were introduced by their first names. Mannie, a short dark man of square face and build, I thought might be a Portuguese from the east coast. The woman, Fanny, was picking bits out of the frayed wicker chair and as she lifted her glass her hand shook a little, making her bracelets chime. She would be about fifty, a well-tended woman, very neat. Her grey hair, tinted with blue, was done in a fringe above a face puckered with malaria.

In the general way of passing the time with strangers in that countryside, I exchanged with the tobacco people the names of acquaintances who lived within a six-hundred-mile radius of where we sat, reducing this list to names mutually known to us. The trooper contributed his news from the region between Lusaka and Livingstone. Meanwhile an argument was in process between Cramer, Fanny and Mannie, of which Fanny seemed to be getting the better.

It appeared there was to be a play or concert on Christmas Eve in which the three were taking part. I several times heard the words 'troupe of angels', 'shepherds', 'ridiculous price' and 'my girls' which seemed to be key words in the argument. Suddenly on hearing the trooper mention a name, Fanny broke off her talk and turned to us. 'She was one of my girls,' she said. 'I gave her lessons for three years.' Mannie rose to leave, and before Fanny followed him she picked a card from her handbag and held it out to me between her fingernails. 'If any of your friends are interested ...' said Fanny hazily. I looked at this as she drove off with the man, and above an address about four miles up the river, I read: Mme La Fanfarlo (Paris, London) Dancing Instructress. Ballet, Ballroom. Transport provided by Arrangement.

Next day I came across Cramer still trying to locate the trouble with the Mercedes. 'Are you the man Baudelaire wrote about?' I asked him. He stared past me at the open waste veldt with a look of tried patience. 'Yes,' he replied; 'what made you think of it?' 'The name Fanfarlo on Fanny's card,' I said, 'didn't you know her in Paris?' 'Oh, yes,' said Cramer, 'but those days are finished. She married Manuela de Montaverde - that's Mannie. They settled here about twenty years ago. He keeps a kaffir store.'

I remembered then that in the Romantic age it had pleased Cramer to fluctuate between the practice of verse and that of belles lettres, together with the living up to such practices. I asked him, 'Have you given up your literary career?' 'As a career, yes,' he answered. 'It was an obsession I was glad to get rid of.' He stroked the blunt bonnet of the Mercedes and added, 'The greatest literature is the occasional kind, a mere after-thought.' Again he looked across the veldt where, unseen, a grey-crested lourie, known by its cry as the go-away bird, was piping "go away, go away.' 'Life,' Cramer continued, 'is the important thing.' 'And do you write occasional verses?' I inquired. 'When occasion demands it,' he said. 'In fact I've just written a Nativity Masque. We're giving a performance on Christmas Eve in there.' He pointed to his garage, where a few natives were already beginning to shift petrol cans and tyres.

Being members neither of the cast nor the audience, they were taking their time. A pile of folded seats had been dumped alongside. Late on the morning of Christmas Eve I returned from the Falls to find a crowd of natives quarrelling outside the garage with Cramer swearing loud and heavy in the middle. He held a sulky man by the shirt-sleeve, while with the other hand he described his vituperation on the hot air. Some mission natives had been sent over to give a hand with laying the stage, and these, with their standard-three school English, washed faces and white drill shorts, had innocently provoked Cramer's raw rag-dressed boys. Cramer's method, which ended with the word 'police,' succeeded in sending them back to work, still uttering drum-like gutterals at each other.

The stage, made of packing-cases with planks nailed across, was being put at the back of the building, where a door led to the yard, the privy and the native huts. The space between this door and the stage was closed off by a row of black Government blankets hung on a line: this was to be the dressing-room. I agreed to come round there that evening to help with the lighting, the make-up, and the pinning on of angels' wings.

The Fanfarlo's dancing pupils were to make an angel chorus with carols and dancing, while she herself, as the Virgin, was to give a representative ballet performance. Owing to her husband's very broken English, he had been given a silent role as a shepherd, supported by three other shepherds chosen for like reasons. Cramer's part was the most prominent, for he had the longest speeches, being the First Seraph. It had been agreed that, since he had written the masque he could best deliver most of it, but I gathered there had been some trouble at rehearsals over the cost of the production, with Fanny wanting elaborate scenery as being due to her girls.

The performance was set to begin at eight. I arrived behind the stage at seven-fifteen to find the angels assembled in ballet dresses with wings of crinkled paper in various shades. The Fanfarlo wore a long white transparent skirt, with a sequin top. I was helping to fix on the Wise Men's beards when I saw Cramer.

He had on a toga-like garment made up of several thicknesses of mosquito-net, but not thick enough to hide his white shorts underneath. He had put on his make-up early, and this was melting on his face in the rising heat. 'I always get nerves at this point,' he said. 'I'm going to practise my opening speech.' I heard him mount the stage and begin reciting. Above the voices of excited children I could only hear the rhythm of his voice and I was intent on helping the Fanfarlo to paint her girls' faces. It seemed impossible. As fast as we lifted the sticks of paint they turned liquid. It was really getting abnormally hot. 'Open that door,' yelled the Fanfarlo. The back door was opened and a crowd of curious natives pressed round the entrance. I left the Fanfarlo ordering them off, for I was determined to get to the front of the building for some air.

I mounted the stage and began to cross it when I was aware of a powerful radiation of heat coming from my right. Looking round I saw Cramer apparently shouting at someone, in the attitude of his dealings with the natives that morning. But he could not advance because of this current of heat. And because of the heat I could not at first make out who Cramer was rowing with; this was the sort of heat that goes for the eyes. But as I got further towards the front of the stage I saw what was standing there. This was a living body. The most noticeable thing was its constancy; it seemed not to conform to the law of perspective, but remained the same size when I approached as when I withdrew. And altogether unlike other forms of life, it had a completed look.

No part was undergoing a process; the outline lacked the signs of confusion and ferment which are commonly the signs of living things, and this was also the principle of its beauty. The eyes took up nearly the whole of the head, extending far over the cheek-bones. From the back of the head came two muscular wings which from time to time folded themselves over the eyes, making a draught of scorching air. There was hardly any neck. Another pair of wings, tough and supple, spread from below the shoulders, and a third pair extended from the calves of the legs, appearing to sustain the body. The feet looked too fragile to bear up such a concentrated degree of being.

European residents of Africa are often irresistibly prompted to speak Kitchen Kaffir to anything strange. 'Hamba' shouted Cramer, meaning 'Go away.' 'Now get off the stage and stop your noise,' said the living body peaceably. 'Who in hell are you?' said Cramer, gasping through the heat. 'The same as in Heaven,' came the reply, 'a Seraph, that's to say.' 'Tell that to someone else,' Cramer panted. 'Do I look like a fool?' 'I will. No nor a Seraph either,' said the Seraph.

The place was filling with heat from the Seraph. Cramer's paint was running into his eyes and he wiped them on his net robe. Walking backward to a less hot place he cried, 'Once and for all -' 'That's correct,' said the Seraph. '_ this is my show,' continued Cramer. 'Since when?' the Seraph said. 'Right from the start,' Cramer breathed at him. 'Well it's been mine from the Beginning,' said the Seraph, 'and the Beginning began first.' Climbing down from the hot stage, Cramer caught his seraphic robe on a nail and tore it. 'Listen here,' he said, 'I can't conceive of an abnormality like you being a true Seraph.' 'True,' said the Seraph.

By this time I had been driven by the heat to the front entrance. Cramer joined me there. A number of natives had assembled. The audience had begun to arrive in cars and the rest of the cast had come round the building from the back. It was impossible to see far inside the building owing to the Seraph's heat and impossible to re-enter. Cramer was still haranguing the Seraph from the door, and there was much speculation amongst the new arrivals as to which of the three familiar categories the present trouble came under, namely the natives, Whitehall or leopards.

'This is my propery,' cried Cramer, 'and these people have paid for their seats. They've come to see a masque.' 'In that case,' said the Seraph, 'I'll cool down and they can come and see a masque.' 'My masque' said Cramer. 'Ah, no, mine,' said the Seraph. 'Yours won't do.' 'Will you go, or shall I call the police?' said Cramer with finality. 'I have no alternative,' said the Seraph more finally still.

Word had gone round that a mad leopard was in the garage. People got back into their cars and parked at a safe distance; the tobacco planter went to fetch a gun.

A number of young troopers had the idea of blinding the mad leopard with petrol and ganged up some natives to fill petrol cans from the pump and pass them chainwise to the garage. 'This'll fix him,' said a trooper. 'That's right, let him have it,' said Cramer from his place by the door. 'I shouldn't do that,' said the Seraph. 'You'll cause a fire.' The first lot of petrol to be flung into the heat flared up. The seats caught light first, then the air itself began to burn within the metal walls till the whole interior was flame feeding on flame. Another car-load of troopers arrived just then and promptly got a gang of natives to fill petrol-cans with water. Slowly they drenched the fire.

The Fanfarlo mustered her angels a little way up the road. She was trying to reassure their parents and see what was happening at the same time, furious at losing her opportunity to dance. She aimed a hard poke at the back of one of the angels whose parents were in England. It was some hours before the fire was put out. While the corrugated metal walls still glowed twisted and furled, it was impossible to see what had happened to the Seraph, and after they had ceased to glow it was too dark and hot to see far into the wreck. 'Are you insured?' one of Cramer's friends asked him. 'Oh, yes,' Cramer replied, 'my policy covers everything except Acts of God - that means lightning or flood.' 'He's fully covered,' said Cramer's friend to another friend. Many people had gone home and the rest were going. The troopers drove off singing 'Good King Wenceslas' and the mission boys ran down the road singing 'Good Christian Men Rejoice'.

It was about midnight, and still very hot. The tobacco planters suggested a drive to the Falls where it was cool. Cramer and the Fanfarlo joined us, and we bumped along the rough path from Cramers to the main highway. There the road is tarred only in two strips to take car wheels. The thunder of the Falls reached us about two miles before we reached them.

'After all my work on the masque and everything!' Cramer was saying. 'Oh, shut up,' said the Fanfarlo. Just then, by the glare of our headlights, I saw the Seraph again, going at about seventy miles an hour and skimming the tarmac strips with two of his six wings in swift motion, two folded over his face, and two covering his feet. 'That's him!' said Cramer. 'We'll get him yet.' We left the car near the hotel and followed a track through the dense vegetation of the Rain Forest, where the spray from the Falls descends perpetually. It was like a convalescence after fever, that frail rain after the heat.

The Seraph was far ahead of us and through the trees I could see where his heat was making steam of the spray. We came to the cliff's edge, where opposite us and from the same level the full weight of the river came blasting into the gorge between. There was no sign of the Seraph. Was he far below in the heaving pit, or where? Then I noticed that along the whole mile of the waterfall's crest the spray was rising higher than usual. This I took to be steam from the Seraph's heat. I was right, for presently, by the mute flashes of summer lightning we watched him ride the Zambesi away from us among the rocks that look like crocodiles and the crocodiles that look like rocks.

© Muriel Spark and Penguin Books