by Gideon Defoe
‘Eureka!’ he cried, and he pointed at his coat as if by way of explanation. Marx and the pirates looked at him blankly. ‘Valkyries! Viking mania! The opera! From what I’ve heard, operas nowadays are stuffed full of hefty statuesque blonde ladies.’
‘And the opera was in London when we were suffering mishaps there, and now it’s here, where our troubles have followed us, which is more than a little suspicious,’ exclaimed Engels.
‘That’s what operas do. They move about. They’re like tramps, you see,’ said the albino pirate knowledgeably.
Marx called over a waitress and asked for a copy of the day’s newspaper. They turned quickly to the ‘What’s On’ section.
The Pirate Captain looked up from the newspaper with a gleam in his eye. Gleams in the Pirate Captain’s eye could be mainly split into three groups: gleams caused by his eyeball reflecting some sort of treasure, gleams caused by the unhealthy amount of copper in his diet and gleams caused by his spying an opportunity to put on a disguise.
‘Well then,’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing for it. I shall have to disguise myself as a crowned head and use my natural charm to win the confidence of this Wagner chap. It won’t be easy. And obviously I’ll miss your company as I chomp on those little canapés made from wafer-thin beef. But you know me – I don’t think twice before putting myself in the path of danger by talking to sultry princesses about court gossip.’
The pirates all marvelled at the sacrifices that their Captain was willing to make. They made a collective mental note to describe him as ‘magnanimous’ in the future.
‘Pirate Captain,’ said Marx, ‘I feel responsible for putting you in this position. I’m coming with you.’
‘Yes, why not? You can be my butler. And Jennifer can be a lady-in-waiting. It’s important to show I’ve got a staff.’
‘Can’t I be another crowned head?’ said Marx, with a bit of a pout. ‘I’m not being a butler. Butlering goes against all my principles.’
‘Oh, this sort of thing happens on all our adventures,’ replied the Captain, grinning again. ‘You say something like “I’d rather die than wear that butler suit”, and before you know it, we’re being announced in the ballroom of this opera house with you in a butler suit.’
‘There’s no way you’re getting me in that butler suit,’ said Marx.
Nine
The Spoon-Worm Fury
‘His Royal Imperial Excellency the Crowned Head of Bootyopia,’ announced a statuesque blonde. ‘And his elderly butler, Carruthers.’
The Pirate Captain smiled a dazzling smile at the assorted crowned heads who were milling about at the opera’s champagne reception. He waved a little flag that he’d designed himself and puffed out his chest to show off the six rows of gleaming medals he had pinned to his coat. The pirate with long legs had suggested that he should go a bit easier on the latter, but the Pirate Captain said that he didn’t want some other crowned head outdoing him on the medal front.
‘I can’t believe I’m wearing this butler suit,’ said Marx.
‘It looks very fetching,’ said Jennifer encouragingly, doing a little curtsey to a passing prince.
The Pirate Captain waved regally, then chanced a few winks and a bit of pointing to show how at ease he was in such exalted company. The room was a throng of blue-blooded lubbers from all across Europe. Most of the conversation seemed to be about the difficulties of running a big castle, how fun it was riding about in gold carriages and how good congenital blood diseases were.
‘Hello, I don’t think I’ve met you,’ said a cheerful-looking crowned head, bounding up to the Captain. It said ‘Poland’ on his sash. ‘Bootyopia. Where is that exactly? Is it one of those Baltic ones? Or is it in the middle where all those mountains are?’
‘Yes, that’s it. Around those parts,’ said the Pirate Captain vaguely.
‘Unusual name, Bootyopia.’
‘It’s like Ethiopia, but with “Booty” rather than “Ethi”,’ the Captain explained. ‘It’s named after the fact that we have more treasure per capita than any other country.’
‘I like your flag.’
‘You see.’ The Pirate Captain shot Marx a triumphant look. ‘My butler has been saying it’s too cluttered.’
‘Oh, no, not at all,’ said Poland. ‘I especially like the lamb jumping over the boat. Do you actually have lambs that size in Bootyopia, or is it some sort of metaphor?’26
‘They’re actually that big. You get the most amazing chops out of them.’
‘Incredible. We only have normal-sized lambs, although we do have a lot of meat in our diet. That’s why we’re so heavy compared to other people,’ said Poland. ‘Do you export them? The lambs?’
‘No, mostly we’re famous for the export of our beards and our women. We’re said to have the glossiest beards and women in the whole of Europe. Have you seen my medals? I’ve got twenty-eight.’ The Pirate Captain pointed to his medals.
‘Oh, yes. Very nice. I’ve got twenty-three,’ said Poland.
‘This one is for fighting. This one is for fighting too. This one is for when Bootyopia won the Eurovision Song Contest. And this one is actually for when I won “Best In Breed” at Crufts. Heads up! Canapés.’27
‘So,’ said Engels, looking at the salon’s clock and helping himself to another croissant, ‘do you think they’ll need rescuing yet?’
The pirate with a scarf shrugged. ‘I tend to give the Captain at least an hour to get himself into trouble. Maybe a bit longer if he’s got Jennifer with him.’
‘Really? That’s pretty good. I usually only give Marx about twenty minutes.’
They both watched a couple of pirates who were sat in the corner seeing if they could fit an entire copy of Voltaire’s Dictionnaire philosophique in their mouths.
‘I’m sure they’ll be fine. Though the Pirate Captain does have a bit of a tendency to forget what he was in the middle of and start doing something else entirely. But like he’s always saying, it’s part of his charm.’ The pirate with a scarf paused and looked a bit rueful. ‘There’s a lot of stuff like that that’s “part of his charm”.’
‘Do you ever get frustrated with being a sidekick?’ asked Engels glumly. ‘Because I have to say, I’m starting to find it a little tiresome.’
‘Well, there’s not a whole lot of glory in the sidekick line of work,’ agreed the pirate with a scarf. ‘But that’s not what it’s about, is it? And besides, we’re in good company. All sorts of important historical characters have had sidekicks.’
‘Like who?’ said Engels with a frown.
‘Well, there’s Jesus. He had that friendly ghost version of himself. And Ulysses. He had that minotaur he rode about on. And, um, Hannibal. I think he had a talking elephant . . .’
‘Excuse me,’ said a lady intellectual, coming and sitting down next to them. ‘Do you know if your philosopher-pirate man will be gone long? It’s just he promised to show me his moral compass, and I’m very excited by the prospect.’
‘He’s off solving a mystery at the opera house, I’m afraid,’ explained the pirate with a scarf politely.
The lady intellectual looked stricken. ‘Goodness! But I have heard such terrible things about the opera!’
‘Yes, it is meant to go on a bit,’ agreed the pirate with a scarf. ‘But I wouldn’t worry, because the Pirate Captain is quite good at keeping himself occupied. He makes up little shanties about creatures. I actually think he’s at his happiest when he’s doing that.’
‘No, young man,’ said the lady intellectual, ‘I was referring to these awful rumours.’
‘Rumours?’
‘Have you not heard?’ The lady intellectual leant forward and continued in a conspiratorial whisper: ‘They say that the opera is haunted! Everywhere it goes, there is always one box reserved for a mysterious man. Hardly anybody has ever laid eyes on him. But apparently he’s a giant. Enveloped in smoke. Like a demon! My friend Evangeline was telling me the fiend breathes actual fire and h
as hands the size of suckling pigs. But then again, Evangeline talks a lot of rot, so you never know.’
Engels and the pirate with a scarf gave each other a worried look.
‘I do hope nothing evil befalls your captain,’ added the lady intellectual. ‘He has such nice shiny boots.’
The Pirate Captain was enjoying being a crowned head almost as much as being a philosopher. ‘At the moment Bootyopia is a parliamentary democracy, which to be quite honest is a bit of a bore,’ he explained to a gaggle of other crowned heads. ‘Apparently it’s considered unfair to cut a fellow’s head off on a whim. Ridiculous. But there are advantages, because with my role primarily as a figurehead, I have more time to mooch about the palace and pose for tapestries and the like.’
‘What about your national anthem?’ asked the Crowned Head of Prussia. ‘For some reason, I can’t seem to think how the Bootyopian anthem goes.’
‘Funny you should mention that,’ said the Pirate Captain. ‘I’m actually here to ask that Wagner fellow about writing me a new one. Something that reflects what a modern, thrusting state Bootyopia is – you know, something with a bit of a beat. Which one is he again?’
The Crowned Head of Spain got his butler to point towards where the composer was holding forth. He wasn’t much to look at. If the rest of the pirates had been there, they would probably have compared him to one of the more spidery fonts, like Monotype Corsiva. A pirate with a lot of experience in describing mouths would confidently say that Wagner’s mouth was ‘sucked in’ and had sardonic lips around it. The mouth-describer’s friend, who was good at describing chins, would say that Wagner’s chin was ‘wilful’ and ‘pointed’. Above both of these features was a pair of piercing blue eyes, which needed no further description.
‘. . . The idea came to me in a dream,’ Wagner was saying. ‘Mighty Thor appeared. He showed me the score for the greatest opera ever to grace the stage. It deals with important topical issues, such as “All midgets are untrustworthy, pitiful and loathsome” and “Women are teasing, meddling, capricious and mainly interested in gold”. It touches on betrayal and love and man’s struggle to realise everything he can be. All through the medium of bears, volcanoes, dragons and magic swords. I was shown all this, and then Thor said I was brilliant and flew off.’
‘Funny things, dreams,’ said the Captain, slipping expertly into the conversation. ‘I’ve got a book somewhere that tells you all about their hidden meanings. For instance, I have a recurring dream where I’m on a dark country lane, and I’m trying to run from something, but I can’t move my legs, as if they’re trapped in treacle. Then all my teeth fall out, and I realise I’m naked. I think it means I’m going to come into money.’
‘Sorry,’ said Wagner, ‘I don’t think we’ve been introduced.’
‘I,’ said the Pirate Captain, ‘am His Royal Majesty the King of Bootyopia, Terror of the High Seas.’
‘Terror of the High Seas?’ repeated Wagner quizzically.
‘Aaarrrr, yes. Because we do a lot of polluting.’ The Captain made a mental note to remember to change his catchphrase along with his disguise. ‘I feel quite guilty about it, really. But anyhow, I just wanted to say that I used to think opera was a terrible waste of time and effort, but you’ve won me round with this Ring Cycle of yours.’
‘That’s very kind of you,’ said Wagner. ‘Can I ask which bits of my operas are your favourite?’
The Pirate Captain puffed out a lungful of air. ‘Difficult to say, there’s so much of it that I like. Let me see. The instruments are good. What are those big ones, like a trumpet but bigger?’
‘Tubas?’
‘That’s it! Tubas. I love the tuba bits. Parumpum-pum-um! Brilliant stuff.’
‘I don’t think I’ve ever used tubas, Your Excellency,’ said Wagner. ‘I find them rather too bombastic and exciting.’
‘When I said “tubas”, I mean “the bits where you stick it to those filthy communists”. Because I hate communists,’ said the Pirate Captain.
‘Really, Your Excellency?’ said Wagner, fixing him with a stare.
‘Oh, yes. For example, if this butler of mine turned out to be a communist, I’d have him drowned in honey and then fed to stoats in the traditional Bootyopian fashion.’
Marx looked a little uneasy. The Captain gave him a cuff round the ear for effect.
‘The only thing that worries me,’ the Pirate Captain went on in a conspiratorial whisper, ‘is that nobody seems to be conducting a diabolical Europe-wide scheme to discredit the communists and create a general panic about them. Why, if someone was doing that, I’d probably give him a big chunk of Bootyopia and fund any operas he wanted to put on. No matter how boring they were. Assuming this person was an opera composer, that is.’
Wagner looked the Pirate Captain and Marx up and down. The Pirate Captain winked, flicked a speck of imaginary dust from one of his epaulettes and adjusted some of his medals. Just as he was starting to think he’d been too subtle, Wagner smiled.
‘Well, Your Excellency. I think we should talk. Perhaps I could give you a tour?’
‘That sounds delightful,’ said the Captain winking again, this time with both eyes at once.
26 Libya probably has the most boring flag of any country: a green rectangle with no insignia. The biggest flag in the world is flown in the capital of Brazil, and weighs 600 kg, as much as two fat manatees.
27 On attending the Bayreuth Opera Festival, Tchaikovsky remarked: ‘Cutlets, baked potatoes and omelettes – all are discussed much more eagerly than Wagner’s music.’
Ten
On The Island Of Love-Starved Jellyfish
Engels and the pirates hurried down to the opera house, though not so fast that they got a stitch. There was some debate about what the best way of getting into the opera would be. Some of the pirates suggested disguising themselves as moles and burrowing their way in. Some of them suggested putting mushrooms on the wall and waiting for it to rot away. A few of them suggested blocking out the moon, though they were a bit vague about how this would help. But eventually, Engels pointed out that seeing as it was an opera, perhaps the easiest way to get in would simply be to buy tickets. When they arrived at the box office, the pirate with a scarf, always keen to take care of the boat’s finances, got some of the pirates to walk on their knees, so that they only had to pay children’s prices, and he made sure he got a discount for the pirates who had eyes or bits of limb missing.
‘You’ve no idea how hard it was to get hold of the bears,’ said Wagner, as he led Marx, Jennifer and the Pirate Captain through the bowels of the opera house, ‘for the scene set in the dragon’s forest. You can’t have an enchanted forest without bears.’
‘Can they sing?’ asked the Pirate Captain.
Wagner pulled a face. ‘No. We tried training them. Like all bears, they love dancing, but we can’t get them to sing more than “Arooo” and “Rarrgh”. It’s a shame.’
The Pirate Captain couldn’t help but agree. He’d spent many a happy evening with the crew debating what a bear would sound like if it could sing. And at the back of his mind, he had a good idea that before long he’d be facing some sort of terrible peril, and it would go down a lot easier if there was a chorus of bears singing away in the background.
‘In Bootyopia, pigeons have taken the ecological niche of bears,’ the Captain started, but Wagner groaned and held up a hand to cut him off.
‘If you tell me one more thing about Bootyopia,’ he said, rubbing his temple wearily, ‘I’m going to pull out my own eyebrows. There isn’t a Bootyopia. You’re not the Crowned Head of Bootyopia. And this isn’t your harmless old butler. You’re the Pirate Captain, and this is the communist Karl Marx. I don’t know who the young lady is, but I must say she has lovely cheekbones.’
Jennifer beamed. The Pirate Captain always felt that the best way to deal with difficult situations like this was just to plough on regardless and pretend nobody had said anything untoward.
‘So, ano
ther interesting fact about Bootyopia is that we have the lowest average precipitation of any—’
‘Captain!’ exclaimed Wagner.
The Pirate Captain pouted. ‘How did you know?’
‘It wasn’t very difficult,’ explained Wagner. ‘Marx’s disguise is pretty good – he has that sort of servile look about him anyway. But, Pirate Captain, your boots – not only are they emblazoned with anchors and the like, but they also have “Pirate Captain” written around the edges.’
‘Damn my vanity,’ said the Pirate Captain, nodding.
‘And the piratical roaring that peppers your conversation. That’s a bit of a giveaway.’
‘Damn the irrepressible pirate blood that runs in my veins!’
‘And the big skull and crossbones on your hat, which is, incidentally, a pirate’s hat.’
‘Damn my reluctance to take off my pirate hat!’
The rest of the pirates spent so long trying to decide if it was best to have salted popcorn on top of sugared popcorn or the other way round that the opera had already started by the time they made it into the auditorium. They did their best to stop their buckles and cutlasses rattling as they tiptoed to their seats.
Up on stage, next to a gigantic and menacing-looking volcano, a hefty, statuesque blonde was singing about how terrible the liberal bias in the media was these days. The key theme of the opera seemed to be how feelings made people soft and useless. To make the point clearer, Wagner had incorporated several characters dressed in tabards labelled with ‘Being Sad’, ‘Staring At a Sunset’, ‘Cooing Over Babies’ and other feelings, who were now being chased about by bears.