by Max Frei
“Drat it!” he said. “It’s not working. I still can hear fairly well.”
“Plug your ears with beeswax,” I said. “Let’s stop by some store where they sell candles. Show me the way. Beeswax is a versatile material.” I decided to stick to the classical canon: what was good for Odysseus should be good for us.
“How do you know so much?” said Melifaro.
“Comes with the territory,” I said.
“There’s a place where they sell candles and slabs of soft beeswax around the corner there,” said Kofa. “Just what we need.”
When he came out of the shop, he was in the greatest of moods.
“So?” said Melifaro. “Just don’t tell me this monster was right for once. This will break my heart.”
“I can’t hear a word you’re saying!” said Kofa. He was yelling, like many people who are hard of hearing.
“See?” I said. I was very glad that my years of reading had begun to pay off.
I still think of the port in Echo as a labyrinth that only the initiated know their way around. Well, maybe a couple of geniuses like Sir Kofa can find their way in it, too. Unfortunately, as soon as we climbed out of the amobiler, he put on the old pirate cloak, so I could only hope he was somewhere close by. Nevertheless, Melifaro was also one of those few geniuses: he was navigating the motley sea of people here so effortlessly that it made me envious.
“Where did you say that sinning karuna was docked?” he said.
“At the very end of the Main Pier of the Right Bank,” I said.
“Really? I should’ve asked sooner. We could’ve parked the amobiler much closer,” he said. “Kofa, you should’ve known better, too! You know that to this barbarian a port is just a port. He doesn’t care which gate he arrives at.”
Melifaro was talking into empty space, as if he were praying. I’d never seen a more moronic dialogue: Melifaro couldn’t see Kofa, and Kofa couldn’t hear Melifaro.
“Quit grumbling, Sir Melifaro!” Kofa’s yelling came from behind me and slightly to the left. “It’s a five-minute walk; you won’t even break a sweat.”
“So you can hear everything?” I said.
There was no answer.
“He just noticed my indignation,” said Melifaro. “You could have guessed that yourself.”
A few minutes later, I began thinking we were bound to wander around huge barrels, tarred planks, and gloomy, broad-shouldered men forever. Melifaro was sending my confused face a look out of the corner of his eyes as he jumped over the numerous sacks that were blocking our way.
“Don’t fret, buddy. We’re almost there. There’s the Tobindona now, see?” he said as we were covering the final leg before the finishing line.
“Yes, I see,” I said. “She’s a real beauty!”
“Yeah, yeah,” said Melifaro. “They all seem like beauties to you, as long as they can float. A very ordinary karuna. Nothing special.”
“You, sir, are a snob,” I said.
“No, I’m not a snob. I’m almost an expert. When you have someone like Anchifa for a relative, you’re bound to become an expert in those matters.”
“Right. Your pirate brother probably let you on board his old one-mast tub once and let you take the helm for a few seconds. I’m sure it was at least a hundred years ago, and he never again repeated that experiment. I can just imagine what his poor vessel looked like after your brief visit.”
“You’re one heck of a clairvoyant, Max! Believe it or not, that’s almost exactly what happened—only not a hundred but eightysomething years ago. He still won’t let me on board his Filo. It sounds like a joke, but I’ve honestly never been on board since!”
“Your Anchifa is a very wise man,” I said. “Hey, look, we’re here. What do we do now? Do you have a plan?”
“Absolutely. A great plan, too. We get on board and then take it from there,” said Melifaro. Well, what else would you have expected from him?
Without waiting for an invitation, we went up to the deck of this beautiful—whatever that snob Melifaro said—two-mast ship.
“Hey! Captain!” yelled Melifaro. “Anybody here? We’ve got to talk to you!”
“No need to shout, sir. I’m right here.”
A very tall, stooping man approached us. Neither his looxi of thin black leather nor his jauntily tied multihued headband made him look like a sailor. Even I looked like an old salt of the sea compared to this Jacques Paganel.
“My name is Kao Anlox,” said the captain. “At your service, gentlemen.
Would you be so kind as to introduce yourselves?”
I almost burst out laughing. This wannabe traveler had the manners of a provincial intellectual. Melifaro was enjoying it, too, apparently. Nevertheless, he managed to compose himself enough to continue.
“We are from the Secret Investigative Force, Mr. Anlox. Do you know why we’re here, or must we explain?”
“Of course I know,” said the captain, smiling a disarming smile. “You’ve come to claim the chest that used to belong to old Zoxma Pu. I’m sure my dissolute acquaintance Zekka Moddorok took up his old bad habits and was caught like a fool. Well, that is his problem now. As for the chest, you see, Zekka and I simply took what belonged to us.”
“How interesting,” said Melifaro, shaking his head. “Are you saying that some of your belongings were in that chest?”
“Indeed. You see, in his day, Zoxma meant to give those things to us as gifts. We were good friends. When Zekka and I became apprentices at the Order of Green Moons, we were sent to work in the kitchen. Those were the rules: each apprentice was to do household duties for several years. Old Zoxma and I were almost on the same footing. He was an apprentice, too—to his son, Sir Chorko. It was humiliating for him, but the old man had blown all his money, and the pay at the Order was good. Zoxma hardly talked to his son at all but readily conversed with us. At first, he did it demonstratively, out of spite toward his son, but we soon became friends. Of course he talked a great deal about his past, being a pirate and all that. I think that was when Zekka decided to become a burglar. He thought it was very romantic. I, on the other hand, lost my head over the old man’s stories about faraway lands. For many years, I tried to become a sailor but failed for various reasons. And now I have this beauty, my Tobindona.”
“Very nice, but you were talking about the chest,” said Melifaro.
“Of course. Zoxma was about to give us his old talismans as gifts. According to him, he kept them in a red chest in the basement of his house on the Street of Steep Roofs. He talked about it all the time! I’m willing to believe that the old man only mentioned it in the beginning to aggravate Sir Chorko, but Sir Chorko couldn’t have cared less about what his father planned to do with his old junk. In any case, Zekka and I had gotten used to the idea that the things belonged to us. At the beginning of ’83—I mean the year 3183 of the Epoch of Orders—Zoxma told us that he would give us the things on the Last Day of the Year. We were so excited! We thought that the old man’s talismans would turn our lives around. Perhaps that would have been the case, but at the end of the year, the Residence of the Order of Green Moons was burned to the ground and all our friends perished.
“Zekka and I were spared by pure chance: we had been sent to the marketplace to get groceries the day before. We had gotten a little carried away and stayed in a tavern until late—it wasn’t often that we had the chance to walk outside the Residence—and by the time we returned, the Royal Guard had already surrounded the place. We had to flee.
“Then we each took our own path and met again, for the first time since then, less than a dozen days ago, again by chance. I went to have something to eat at the Drunken Rain, and Zekka was already sitting there. We recognized each other and started talking. It turned out we didn’t have much to brag about—neither of us. Poor Zekka had just gotten out of Xolomi and was living on his mother’s generous allowance—not a healthy situation for a grown man, don’t you think?My situation was better. At least I’d nev
er been to jail and I had a decent job. But that isn’t enough to make you really happy with your life, is it?”
I nodded without even thinking about it: I couldn’t have agreed with him more. I was beginning to like this pleasant, awkward Mr. Kao Anlox more and more. I also began to realize why Captain Giatta had decided to drop everything and journey to the ends of the earth with this fellow. He had the crazy eyes of an eternal teenager—another devastating kind of personal charm. Besides, there were other charms—the “ordinary magical things”—that intensified his personal charisma. I should be keeping that in mind. I did, but the more Kao Anlox talked, the less important that information seemed.
“Zekka and I stayed in the Drunken Rain all night. We talked and talked, and then we talked some more. At some point, we remembered old Zoxma Pu. The times when we helped him in the kitchen were good times, probably the best times of my and Zekka’s lives. We were very young, and we thought an incredible future lay before us—well, different from everybody else’s, at least. It turned out we couldn’t have been more wrong. Perhaps many people can say the same about themselves, and it’s very sad.”
The captain sighed and seemed to be holding back tears, but soon he composed himself and continued. “Of course, we also remembered about the mysterious pirate charms that the old man had been meaning to give us. It may sound silly, but we thought that had we gotten them back then, our lives would have turned out differently. Then we decided to try to get hold of them anyway, just like that, for good luck.
“We didn’t have much faith in the success of our undertaking. We were sure that the new owners of the house had long ago gotten rid of the chest, or peeked inside it and appropriated whatever they found. Yet we decided to take a chance. What if? we thought. What if this was our last chance to change our fates? These things are hard to explain, but we really thought the old pirate’s charms would help us change our lives, for better or for worse. Any change seemed better than no change.
“The next day Zekka and I used the Dark Path. We had learned a thing or two at the Order, even though we’d only spent a few years in it. We were happy beyond what words can describe, gentlemen, when we saw the old red chest! We took it and returned to Zekka’s living room, where our Dark Path had begun. Each of us chose the charm we thought belonged to us: we had agreed upon it years ago. Then we both realized we had nothing else to talk about, so I said goodbye to Zekka and left. It’s hard to explain, but we both realized that we had met only to finally get hold of the charms that had been promised to us a long, long time ago. Once we had gotten what we wanted, we lost interest in each other. It was as though someone had flipped a switch.”
“So what did you do after you left Zekka’s?” said Melifaro.
“Why, this, of course,” said Kao Anlox, making a gesture, as though he was trying to embrace everything around him. “I went straight to my boss at the Chancellory of Concerns of Worldly Affairs and told him I was quitting. I was so happy I then I went to the Old Thorn to have at least half a dozen bowls of the Soup of Repose. Poor Chemparkaroke almost had a heart attack. For the past forty years, he had been used to my coming once every two dozen days and ordering exactly one bowl of his wonderful soup. I think I managed to shock that old Murimak fox.
“The next morning, it was someone else who woke up in my bed. He had the courage to go to the port and rent the Tobindona and hire a crew. It was unbelievable how many people dreamed to go on an around-the-world journey with me! And none of them even asked me about the pay, which was the one thing I had been dreading most. Renting the Tobindona made quite a dent in my pocket, although the owner—bless his kind soul—agreed to rent it out to me for a quarter of the price. I’m afraid I hired more people than I needed, but I just couldn’t stop.
“Tonight I’ll have to pay for my carelessness. I’ll have to tell all those people that I simply cannot take them all. They might have to draw straws. You know, gentlemen, I think it’s Zoxma Pu’s charm that’s been helping me. Everything has been going oh so well for me ever since I got hold of it.”
“Are you saying you’re not completely sure that your charm is responsible for all your recent success?” I said.
“Well, to be frank with you, I took it just for good luck, or even as something to remember my youth and my friend by, as I told you already. I didn’t believe that Ukumbian pirates could do real magic. But now I’m beginning to think that old Zoxma’s charm does help me somehow—I mean really help me.”
“Do you have it on you?” said Melifaro.
“Yes, of course. Here,” said Kao Anlox, tugging at the end of his colorful headband.
“Would you be so kind as to take it off for a moment?” said Melifaro. “We need to get a closer look at this thing.”
“Here you go,” said the captain, untying the headband and handing it to Melifaro. “Will you give it back to me? I know it sounds silly, but without old Zoxma’s charm, I’ll lose all confidence in myself, and I’m leaving tonight. Oh, wait a minute, maybe I’m not going anywhere at all? You’ve come to arrest me, and I have no proof that Zoxma Pu promised to give Zekka and me his possessions. No matter how you slice it, it looks like a regular burglary.”
“We’ll see,” said Melifaro. He was waving the colorful headband in the air, trying to attract Kofa’s attention since he couldn’t hear a word of our conversation.
“I get it, I get it,” said Sir Kofa from somewhere behind my back. He approached us, taking off his magic cloak. Then he took out the beeswax plugs from his ears. “Hand over the rag, son. Let’s have a look.”
“Oh, I didn’t see you,” said Kao Anlox. “When did you arrive?”
“Just now,” said Kofa airily.
He took the headband out of Melifaro’s hand. First he raised it up to his pipe and looked at the gauge, which displayed the precise degree of magic that had been used for making the object. He nodded and looked at the headband again. “I think we all need to have a cup of kamra, captain,” he said. “And we need to talk. I . . . don’t quite know what to do with you.”
“Maybe you shouldn’t do anything with me?” said Kao Anlox. “I didn’t mean any harm to anyone. I just wanted to go on a sea voyage. Maybe I would’ve even written an addendum to Sir Manga Melifaro’s Encyclopedia—the ninth volume, so to speak. There’s no harm in that!”
“You’re a bit too late, I’m afraid,” I said. “The ninth volume is standing before you.”
Melifaro shook his head. “Never mind him, Mr. Anlox,” he said. “But my father would be flattered to know that his erudite madness still has the power to agitate human minds.”
“Are you the son of Sir Manga?”
“The youngest,” said Melifaro.
The captain was on cloud nine. He all but forgot about his looming arrest and the consequences thereof and stared at Melifaro as though he were a pop star. I could have sworn he was going to ask for Melifaro’s autograph.
“If you don’t invite us for a cup of kamra this instant, I’m going to arrest you,” said Kofa. “This is your only chance to bribe us, captain.”
“Oh, I do beg your pardon,” said Kao Anlox, blushing. “I’m just so taken aback.”
He took us down to his cabin, which looked more like the cozy living room of a girl than an abode of an old sea dog. Then he sat us down on some soft chairs that were bolted to the floor, muttered some apologies, and disappeared behind the door. He probably went to make kamra himself: there was no one else on the ship, not even a cook.
“Well, gentlemen, what do you propose we should do with him?” said Sir Kofa.
“Let him go, maybe?” said Melifaro. “If Dad finds out I arrested one of his fans who was about to go on an around-the-world trip, he won’t ever speak to me again. It’s the only surefire way to fall out with him that I know of.”
“Yes, I think that would be only fair,” I said. “Since one of the accomplices suffered such a harsh punishment, the other may get off with only a scare. The arithmetic mean would be ap
proximately the right sentence.”
“So you both liked him after all, huh?” said Kofa. “Now that’s what I call a charm.”
“You like him, too,” I said. “It’s written on your forehead, even though you didn’t listen to him. I wonder why our captain didn’t just ask us to leave and forget about him forever? It should’ve worked in theory.”
“True,” said Melifaro. “He didn’t try to persuade us, yet I had the hardest time trying to ask him questions. Drat that personal charm of his!”
“The truth is that this young fellow honestly doesn’t realize the immense power of the thing he got hold of,” said Kofa. “That much is obvious.”
“That’s right, he did say he’d taken the headband ‘just for good luck,’” said Melifaro. “And only now has he begun to suspect—suspect, I say—that the charm was helping him.”
“And he’s convinced that he was able to hire all these folks for free because Echo is full of people who dream of around-the-world trips,” I said. “I don’t know if I should laugh or cry at such gullibility.”
“It’s definitely not worth crying over,” said Kofa.
“No, no. Please cry,” said Melifaro. “You’ll look terrific with your eyes all red and a swollen nose. All the girls are going to throw themselves at you.”
“I hope I’ve prepared some good kamra, gentlemen,” said Kao Anlox, coming in and putting down the tray with a pitcher and mugs on the table. “I’m usually pretty good at it.”
“Judging by the aroma, you are, indeed,” said Kofa with the air of an expert. Well, he was the greatest expert in these matters.
For a while, we drank our kamra without saying a word. I even went so far as to light up a cigarette. The captain seemed to be as absentminded as our Lookfi Pence. I’d have to wave the cigarette in front of his nose for a few minutes for him to notice I was smoking something not of this World.
“This is what I think, captain,” said Kofa. “On the one hand, you’re very lucky: neither I nor my colleagues are eager to arrest you, although that’s what we should do. I don’t know what Zoxma Pu promised you a hundred and fifty years ago, but that’s no reason for breaking into his grandson’s house and taking things, even such things as an old, useless chest. Where is it, by the way? And the rest of its contents? There must have been something else in it.”