Every weekend for sixteen years, Pierre Le Fou sat outside a cafe by Gate 43 in Charles de Gaulle airport. He passed through to the gates with a 4:25 flight to Vienna, which he never boarded. For two hours, Le Fou would read at the terminal cafe, smoke Gitanes, order coffee with rolls. After he watched his plane depart, Le Fou -- on foot -- took his leave. Le Fou was as astute as he was beguiling. 
Despite ritual punctuality, he was a languid man -- draped over the plastic chairs, only exerted the slightest effort to turn the page of some obscure newspaper. 
Nothing about Le Fou, other than his flagrant waste of money, struck anyone as particularly odd. Though, as his little ritual became known, Le Fou became an urban legend around the liminal corridors of de Gaulle. Soon, the culture vultures descended upon him. 
I was one such journalist. Pierre had rebuffed several others -- an American, sniffing around for an al-Qaeda connection (this was around 9/11, mind), and a South Korean, who wanted to do a profile on Le Fou for a popular series on Westerners back home. Over the years, the one question people ask me at dinner parties, weddings, funerals, on the street, my niece's Christening, is:
Why me? My honest answer is what Le Fou told me. "I like the English". He would never surrender further elucidation, as he was often and annoyingly prone to do. I lived in Bagnolet at the time, sur la rue de Victor Hugo. A tiny flat, but one that I could afford with my wages as a young foreign correspondent. It was a Saturday. The paper paid for my ticket -- a quick flight to Brussels -- and I went to find the cafe by Gate 43. Lo and behold, le petit Pierre Le Fou! One leg hung lazy over the other, beady eyes under heavy shades scrolled a paper, a thin scarf curled over the open collar of a salmon pink Polo. Even the cut of his checkered trousers sold the dream. The Platonic Le Fou, alive in the flesh -- the embodiment of a bizarre and eccentric Frenchman. 
I introduced myself to Le Fou as Tom Fleischer. Now, dear reader, I am Tom Fleischer. But, as I said it to him, the syllables fell out alien and wrong. As if mon nom were from a foreign, inscrutable language. 
Le Fou tolerated my French. I began my whole spiel; why I was there, who I was, how I wanted the article to be, et cetera. Le Fou nodded along. Like many well-educated Europeans, I could tell Pierre was assessing my Anglican nature against my continental education. A panic-swept red rashed over my face. Dearly, I wished to impress him. 
He was Pierre Le Fou! Enigma! Why does he pay for planes he never boards? Why Austria? Why this time -- this cafe? I had too many questions -- everybody did -- but, before I could hit him with any of them, Le Fou had one for me. 
With the tender but firm touch of an older man, Le Fou held my wrist. Through thick lime-green lenses, I saw two eyes that had either seen God or would soon. A bare terror in them. Thick, bloodshot eyes -- contorted around naked pupils. The man was in agony. He asked me something I won't forget. 
"Do you know the story of the Leper-Messiah?"
I didn't. I was honest. 
Le Fou recalled the tale: 
"Atop a jagged mountain in the Empire of Glass, reigned the Opaque King. His blue-fire eyes haunted across the annals of his dominion. Desolate spikes of crystal shards erupted out across the land, conquered even the horizon. A most beautiful wasteland, where ice waterfalls glitter like diamonds in the harsh burn of an electric sun. His reign was one of peace, yet there is always peace when not even a blade of grass may prosper. Toward the twilight of life, the Opaque King was tormented by nightly visions. Doves and flames. Churned earth, molten rock. Saplings, corpses, the moon. One night, the King wept. His tears were heard around the lonely valleys, the vacant foothills. Drew forth a solitary stranger. The stranger forged over the sharp slopes, the dagger steps, battled the nights to the tall mountain. And he climbed. Heaved through all hours, tightened and clenched through pain, exhaustion and rain - if it were a mound, the stranger's pure will would have flattened it alone. The mountain stood no chance.  
Once at the crest of the sky, the stranger emerged to the frail old King. Asked what he could do to serve him. There was only one request for the stranger to fulfill. As of late, the King's visions were intolerable. With each slip into slumber, the Opaque King was gripped by the dreams of a life not lived, places seen but not found, the orange glow of brickwork in summer -- the King's world was slipping away. He was slipping away. Taken under by the vast tidal waves of time. 
For years, the King sought solace among the stars above -- but their playful pattern only made his eyes fools for their impermanence. Thus, the stranger was instructed to seek the one woman who could help the Opaque King, A mystic, known only in legend as the Leper-Messiah. She lived in an alcove of a great rock, somewhere in the now lost region of the Scarlet Divide. Ask her advice, and report back to the King, were the stranger's orders.
As failure was sacrilege, the stranger embarked upon this great voyage. A joyful spirit winded behind the stranger, as his path bounced with purpose. The sun set on his nascent life, and he turned in at the bottom of a quiet lake. A small fire crackled as he slept, calm waves lapped against numb pebbles, and the gentle moon perturbed ripples on the water. The next day, the next week, the next month -- the stranger walked. 
His thighs hauled like bison, blood-pumped locomotives along an ordained odyssey. Soon, the stranger would pierce the eclipse of the Empire of Glass, unto the Scorch Fields and Bad Lands. 
Cutting winds gave way to overcast mugginess, then the turgid warmth of a dry heat. The stranger, finally, came upon the Scarlet Divide. A megalithic canyon, high and wide -- cliff faces of red rock bore the markings of an ancient ocean, and turquoise sapphires glinted in rough brown soil. The stranger was a virgin to the Scarlet Divide, but it forced no awe into his heart -- for he foresaw him here, on this precipice, before one foot was laid in accordance to this journey. 
Down into the maw, the stranger waded through a clear little stream -- an offshoot from one of the canyon's main water arteries. Through the water, the stranger came to a damp, dark cave. 
Its teething entrance broke way into a waterlogged enclave with leering spires of rock and moss. The stranger shifted his body in the water, almost weightless against its soft push and pull. Sunlight, coming in through the mouth, ricocheted off the water in bright arcs across the cave walls. The permanence of its earthy visage lit up in a joy so transcendent, its name has been lost to time -- now, gratefully witnessed by the wanderer. Forward, he was carried by the sways of the current, toward the darker depths. 
The dance of light and water slashed over the face of the Leper-Messiah. She slumped, half-alive in grotesque death, before the wanderer. Once blonde hair had braided into wet, heavy knots that dangled to the side of an oblique neck. Hung was a taut face of bare and yellow teeth, but the eyes still held a vivid youth. She was alive, and her appearance startled not the wanderer -- for she was the Leper-Messiah.
A messiah is neither strong nor alive, in some sense. The wanderer reasoned that to be wreathed in pain is to be crowned in glory. The Leper-Messiah struck the wanderer, above all, as in a great and terrible pain. One that was so buried, indescribable and infinite as to constitute beauty. The light danced over greyed skin, and something dripped into the water. 
Finally, she spoke. An ancient language -- Hebrew -- for which the wanderer knew not, yet now understood in its totality. 
'Do you know the story of the Akedah?
The smallest kindling may start the biggest fires. Isaac carried the wood. Abraham lit the flame. It was a modest camp, nestled along a caravan path in Canaan. Nightfall had settled over Mount Moriah, and the plains lay open and quiet. Darkness gathered at the blurred edge of the fire. In that hollow glow, Abraham and Isaac were at rest. The locusts sang. 
A nubile mind floats on easy -- Isaac was quick asleep, wrapped in fur. Abraham watched over the boy, amid the flicker of flame. The boy seemed as new to him as the day he was born. Abraham held Isaac, in his leathery palms, as a newborn -- reaching and stretching, a dove ready to fly. He could soar, still, to the heavens and back! Live out his days of love and misadventure, harden with grief and mature in wisdom. Isaac could have a life, still, but -- it wasn't to be. Never was. 
As Isaac dreamed of fireflies and lilypads, Abraham craned his neck -- above, constellations hung in their infinite majesty. Orion pointed to Egypt in the southwest, the Archer aimed at Babylon and Mesopotamia in the East. Mighty men tremble beneath the stars. Why, why now, should Abraham tremble in his conviction? His faith? Question his certainty? He was a mere man, in covenant with the Lord. That was the beginning and the end of it, the contours of his service and now his life. He interrogated himself. He was a servant. But, a father, no less. 
His Lord wanted Isaac's blood. This rose-cheeked cherub, asleep by a waning fire, was to be slain the following day. Abraham carried the knife. Isaac carried the wood. 
Disquiet, Abraham fought terrors of the mind, vanquished them -- slept. A brief armistice. 
Dawn hailed the drum beat of destiny. Abraham and Isaac climbed atop Mount Moriah. The sun was low, rising -- long shadows swept across the barren plains below. Harsh desert winds curled dust into storms, lashed out. 
Abraham's God was a righteous God. He was sure of it, though an undercurrent of instability remained. If his God were a righteous God, then following His orders would be a righteous act. Abraham had to weight that, as a mortal man, he could have no conception of reality's divine ordinances. Sacrificing Isaac -- could -- be righteously part of this cosmic grand design. Thus, Abraham erected the altar -- and Isaac carried the wood. It was done. 
As he fought every fibre of being, Abraham turned on Isaac. The boy struggled, fought in desperation, but Abraham bound him no less. 
Abraham's God was a righteous God. Isaac squirmed upon the altar. Abraham raised the knife.

Sandstorms raged below. 
He was poised to plunge. Abraham's body felt no longer his own -- animated by higher purpose. Muscles solidified in electric fervor, ligaments tightened his wrists around the blade -- Isaac screamed, cried, begged --
The knife arced back -- an angel. Luminous. Spherical. Indescribable. Appeared to Abraham. It didn't use words for it needn't. He understood. Abraham relaxed, relented -- Isaac's breathing slowed, eased. As Abraham stepped away, a ram ran through the bushes -- stopped and stared at the two. 
Abraham freed Isaac. They embraced, and sacrificed the ram together. Abraham's God was a righteous God.'
The cave was quiet. The seeker hadn't asked his question, but the Leper-Messiah had already answered it. With a silent nod, he left. For many months, the seeker traced his journey across the Ocean Ring and the Homonculi Boneyards. Soon, with a worldview deepened yet humbled by experience, the seeker returned to the Empire of Glass. Again, he climbed atop the jagged mountain. This time, though, the tumultuous hike was exuberant. The seeker was propelled with a holy imperative -- to enlighten the Opaque King. 
As the seeker reached the mountain's zenith, he collapsed in shock. A small grave. The Opaque King had died just days following the seeker's departure. With no heirs, the Empire of Glass died with him. Bereft, the seeker crystallised in his mind a new purpose: to carry on as a nomad -- toward the uncharted isles north."
Pierre Le Fou blinked at me, blank. My mind had been lost right around the ice waterfalls. 
"Tom? Were you listening?"
I snapped back to de Gaulle, the cafe, Gate 43. Answered Le Fou in the affirmative. 
"Good. Now. I ask one simple question. Are you the seeker, or the King?"
Dear reader, I did not have an answer to Pierre's question. I still don't. He dropped it, and we chatted over coffee and pastry. It was nice. Bizarre. Not forthcoming. But, nice. In 2006 and 2011, I did two follow-up interviews with Le Fou. Both at de Gaulle, at the cafe near Gate 43. Around Christmas, 2014, Le Fou got sick. We kept in touch. But, we knew it was terminal. In 2016, I got a phone call from Le Fou. Since I first met him, I had a wife and two children. A career. Left a flat in Bagnolet for a townhouse in Camden. Yet, I still wanted to impress him -- like an eager student. 
I knew, I just knew, that this would be my last phone call with Pierre. Our last conversation. It was. 
I asked him:
"Are you afraid of dying?"
"No."
"Why not?"
"Because I know that plane will reach its destination."