If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead

by Andrew Nicoll

  The Professor knew there was something there. He felt the weight of it in the air against his skin or he heard it where the smell of Tifty’s perfume should be or something, but he knew and he put his hand out in front of him, but Max was too slow. Max was always slow, and he just waited that little bit too long so the Professor was left waving his arm about, snatching at nothing, looking like a cripple.

  “Sorry,” Max said, and gave him the paper and that was even worse somehow.

  “What am I looking at?”

  Max said, “It’s a picture of Otto.”

  But the Professor ignored him. “What am I looking at?” he said.

  It was Sarah he was talking to. She stood behind him, her lips close to his ear. She said, “It’s a newspaper picture of a man. He is not yet forty. He has sharp eyes, quite a nice nose, not too big, not too small, a thick neck—he looks strong—he has a fantastic mustache that curls like a great sea wave and he’s wearing a fez.”

  The Professor said, “It bears an astonishing resemblance to our own dear Otto,” and he said it like Moses coming down the mountain with the Law of God tucked under his arm.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I don’t even own a fez.”

  Tifty said, “Darling, according to the paper he’s wearing the fez because he’s another of those barbarous Turks. His name is Halim Eddine, the son of the Sultan, and they have offered him the throne of Albania.”

  “They must like him a lot.”

  “According to the paper they like him enough to give him the Imperial treasury too. And a harem.”

  “They must like him an awful lot.”

  “Darling, they’ve never met him. They’ve never even seen him—except in newspaper pictures.”

  “He looks just like you,” Max said. And the Professor said, “You could certainly fool me.”

  And Sarah said, “It’s just like the story in the picture show.”

  So I said, “Is it far?”

  I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that you never heard of anything so stupid in all your life as the idea of setting off to invade a foreign country on the say-so of a blind man. But it was obvious. It made perfect sense.

  I looked so much like that Turkish prince that even a blind man could see it, and if Professor Alberto von Mesmer could see it through his black eyeglasses then it was a racing certainty that those king-hungry Albanoks would see it too.

  “I don’t speak Albanian,” I said.

  Tifty said, “Darling, nobody speaks Albanian. Anyway, he’s a Turk.”

  “I don’t speak Turkish either.”

  Then the Professor said, “I don’t think they want you for your conversational skills. They want a king. In my experience, kings are far too grand to speak to anybody who is not a king. I should say that they have ministers for that sort of thing. And viziers. If you can look stern and unapproachable and if you have a vizier who can speak Turkish, I don’t see any problem. Luckily, my boy, I can speak Turkish. In fact, Turkish is one of thirteen languages I can speak.”

  So, as it turns out, I was right the first time. We were in Buda when this story began, not in Pest at all. It all started right there, at the back of the tent with Tifty, my mate Max, a blind man and his beautiful daughter.

  It occurs to me that I should say something about Sarah. I should paint you a picture. I should describe her to you. I should find some way to set her down in this book and press her between the pages like a precious flower so she will last forever. That’s what this is all about, after all. That’s what all this scribbling is for—so there will be something of me left poking out of the wreckage, and the best part of me is Sarah so there should be something of her too. I can’t do it. I am more and more filled with admiration for people who write books, the way they pack those descriptions in so you can see everything laid out there in front of you like a picture show, but it’s beyond me. And there’s more than that.

  God gave us memory so we can have roses in December, that’s what they say, but then, one day in late November, you discover that the smell of the roses has faded and it won’t come back. Sometimes I fear that I have forgotten her, the way I have forgotten my father’s voice, the way my mother’s face has gone. I see her in dreams but I cannot grasp her. How can I tell you? Should I say how tall she was, what her hair was like, her eyes, the shape of her mouth? It wouldn’t tell you a thing, friend. You’d be no wiser, so let me tell you this: she was like morning. Think of a girl who looks like morning, smells like morning, talks like morning, and that’s Sarah for you. Beautiful, and as smart as paint.

  You’ll just have to imagine her standing there with me and her dad and Tifty and Max, and me saying, “Is it far?”

  It was time for the show and, as far as I remember, everything went to plan. Tifty went round and round the ring on her big gray pony, doing all the tricks she usually did, standing up on his back, balancing on her head with her legs in the air, bouncing from one side of him to the other as he cantered along and then the big finish when she jumped him through a ring of fire, and of course she was always careful to make sure that all the men in the audience got a good look at her legs and her gorgeous bum.

  We had a talking-dog act—Doctor Schmidt’s Incredible Canine Choristers, they were called—and all the usual stuff you’d expect from a show like ours: clowns throwing buckets of confetti into the audience, dancing girls, the tiger leaping from one upturned barrel to another and snarling at the whip, elephants, camels, me with my acrobatic act, jumping, tumbling, balancing, swinging, climbing up and down ropes—all the stuff that looks easy until you try it. Max was good. Max was great. He had a real act. He could swallow a sword a foot long, haul it out again and then bend it round his neck while he lifted a dumbbell with his free hand; he could take on Tifty’s pony in a tug of war—and win. I wasn’t in bad shape, but my mate Max was a giant.

  And then there was Professor von Mesmer and Sarah. They always had a couple of spots. He did his Human Encyclopedia act, where people would yell out questions from the audience: “Who won the Battle of Austerlitz?” or “What’s the biggest warship in the world?” or “What’s the capital of Burma?”

  We didn’t have too many university professors at our shows and old Alberto was fast enough on his feet to cope with most of the customers. If he got something wrong, then nine times out of ten they wouldn’t know any better or dare to challenge him in front of a tent full of people, and if they did he would always have an answer like, “Yes, sir, it is a commonly held belief that the Great Ongo-Bongo was the fifteenth Mexican Emperor, but in fact he was never crowned. Next question, please!”

  By God, he had a convincing manner—exactly what I needed for my grand vizier. And he had Sarah.

  I can see them now, Sarah standing on the edge of the ring in her pretty dress, walking amongst the audience as dainty as a blackbird going from branch to branch in a garden, and the Professor in his black suit, his hair slicked down with oil and those black glasses glittering over his eyes like pools of tar. He commanded respect. In fact, the truth is, I was more than a little afraid of him. He could see things with those blank eyes, see inside things, see into them, and when Sarah went through the crowd, holding up watches and pens and scarves and saying, “What’s this?” or “What color is this?” he knew every time. Now, I’ve seen mind-reading acts before that and I’ve seen them since, but never like that. If they had some sort of code, I never spotted it. Nobody spotted it. If Sarah called out to him or if she picked on some little kid from the crowd and let them ask the question, it made no difference, Professor von Mesmer would guess it anyway, whatever they were holding up, whatever color it was, however many there were. If it wasn’t a miracle, it was something very close to one, and it was the same as every other night. Ordinary. I can’t recall a single thing about it.

  But I remember how we all gathered at the Professor’s caravan after the show. We had to talk. We had to think. We were conspirators. We had to decide if we were going to d
o this thing. It was outrageous and daring and dangerous. I had the most to gain by it if it worked and my head would be loosest on my shoulders if it failed. I didn’t fancy doing it without them, but they couldn’t even begin it without me, and a chance like that never comes twice in a man’s life.

  We were all sat around in the last of the evening, lights springing up in the houses on Buda hill behind us, like stars coming to life at heaven’s back door. The Professor sat there on the steps of his caravan, Tifty over there, her coat wrapped round her shoulders and Max beside her, thinking that she might be feeling the cold, with Sarah going round amongst us all with the coffee pot until she sat down next to me and gave my hand a little squeeze in the shadows.

  The Professor took a sip of his coffee and he said, “You asked how far it is to Albania, I think.”

  I nodded to him to signal my agreement—not that he would have seen me since it was getting along for dark and he was stone blind anyway.

  “Very often, if a man asks a question like that he means something else altogether. Not ‘How far is it?’ but ‘How long will it take to get there?’”

  “That’s what I meant. So how long will it take to get there?”

  “But the question is, my boy, not how long it will take to get there, but how to get there.”

  “So, can we get there?”

  “Oh, we can get there, but again you are asking the wrong question. What you should be asking is whether we can get there before the dreadful Turk.”

  I was getting fed up with all this babble and him showing off how clever he was and how stupid I was, and I suppose it must have shown because Sarah gave my hand another little squeeze and she said, “Tell him the rest, Daddy.”

  “Yes,” he said. “Before you decide to embark on this great adventure, you should know something more about the Albanians.”

  And then he said nothing more. He just sat sipping on his coffee, and I was damned if I was going to play his stupid games any longer so I sat sipping my coffee too until Tifty said, “Professor, darling, tell us what we should know.”

  That was all it took. He said, “My boy, the Turks have been in Albania since the fall of Constantinople. They have ruled there these four hundred years, but the empire of the sultan is very nearly as old and decrepit as I am. It’s ripping apart at the seams and Albania is simply the latest bit to fall off. For centuries the Mussulmans have gone about the business of converting the natives at the point of a sword, forcing them to deny Christ, ruling by rapine, but they are the only people in that country with a shred of civilization about them. All the rest are bandits and brigands and warlords and smugglers and condottieri, and the Mussulmans are manning the barricades against them. There’s one little white-haired gentleman called Ismail Kemali who is trying to keep the lid on the pot. He’s made himself the Prime Minister.

  “But the thing you should know about the Albanians is that they hate the Turks. In fact, the only thing they like better than a Turk is a dead Turk, and the only they like better than a dead Turk is a Turk they can torture to death.”

  This was disappointing news. So I said, “We’d better get a move on!”

  It’s been quiet for a bit. No explosions. No whistling and screaming as the bombs fall. It’s not the end. I’ve seen this often enough to know how it goes. We get the thunder and lightning, then it goes quiet and then the next wave comes in. This is just the eye of the storm and it’ll go on until dawn—not that daylight matters very much these days. They come and go as they please.

  I found the courage to look out the window. Just pushed the shutters back a bit and then I went right outside. I opened the door and I went out and damn the blackout—as if my little lamp is going to make any difference to the bombers when the whole town is a bonfire. You should see it, friend. I could hardly believe it. It’s like a blizzard out there and I thought, It’s only November. It’s early for snow. And then I looked again and it wasn’t snowflakes, it was little wisps and curls of ash and bits of burned gray paper, some of them glowing orange round the edges, all blowing past like goose-down in a pillow fight. I went out in it, in the burning, scorchy smell of it, and I laughed and danced like a child in a snowstorm. I laughed and I howled and I snatched at the little bits of paper until I managed to catch one and I read it and it had the crooked cross in one corner and “Judentransport” written underneath. I let it go then. Something’s burning. Half the town is burning. It’s our own fault. We set the world on fire and we stood too close to the flames.

  I boiled the kettle and made myself a cup of hot water. It’s tiring, this writing business, and waiting to get blown to bits is exhausting. Even though I know I’m going to die, I’m still drinking hot water, still saving my silly spoonful of coffee-scented dust, still hoping for better days. We get a little bit of something and we hang on to it, hoard it, save it up for our old age and then, suddenly, we are old and we can’t enjoy it, and then we’re dead and some other bugger gets the lot. Every year there are thousands and thousands of bottles filled with champagne, millions of them maybe, but eventually every vintage runs out. Eventually there are just a few hundred left, then a few dozen, then a handful and, finally, just one. Everything gets to be too precious to use up, the last days, the last little bit of coffee, the last of life, the last of love, so we scrape them all together and keep them in a tin, thinking we can preserve them, and so they are wasted. A bottle of champagne on the cellar shelf is a dead thing. It’s not preserved. It’s wasted unless it’s in the glass and getting itself drunk by a pretty woman. That’s what it’s for. That what life is for. We forget that or we learn it too late.

  But back then, back in Buda, I was ready for anything. I was ready to pop the cork on life and glug down every last drop. I was a guzzler in those days and I knew what had to be done.

  “I am very grateful for the advice,” I said, and when I stood up I found I was still holding Sarah’s hand. The Professor didn’t seem to notice that, but he noticed when she stood up beside me. There was a tiny movement of his head that made his glasses glitter in the firelight. I saw it. “Here’s what I think. I think we have to get to Albania as fast as we can. We have to get there before any other new kings get there to claim what is un-rightfully theirs much as it is un-rightfully mine. I think we have to tell those Albanoks that I’m coming, get them to put the kettle on and, above all else, warn them to look out for impostors. We need flimflam. We need something to dazzle the eye. We need to make a splash. A tiger would be good, but he’s probably too dangerous. An elephant would be ideal, but it’s big. The camel will have to do. We need money, so I propose we break into the strongbox, nab the cash and throw it on the camel with a lot of fancy dressing-up clothes and get out of here tonight. So are you in or are you out?”

  I might have said some other stuff too, about friendship, sticking together, the undeniable tidal pull of Dame Destiny and something about a yacht at Monte Carlo, but it pretty much added up to “Let’s grab what we can and run.”

  Sarah was standing beside me holding my hand, so I was pretty sure she was up for it, and if Sarah was coming, her dad wasn’t going to stay behind. Anyway, he’d been practicing for the role of grand vizier all his life and he wasn’t going to miss his chance, but there was still Tifty, and I didn’t want to land my mate Max in anything that he wasn’t up for. So, when I got finished, I was a bit upset to see that Max had gone. I couldn’t blame him. Max was a good, honest bloke. He’d never taken a penny in his life that didn’t belong to him, so the thought of stealing a camel and a cash box was too much to ask.

  But I was delighted to see Tifty stand up at the other side of the fire and button her red velvet coat. My friend, with the firelight licking up all around every curve of her she looked like she was getting ready to take coffee and cakes in hell, and then she put her big hat on and said, “Darling, I’m already packed.”

  So that was it. Me, a Hungarian countess with an odd line in exotic dance, a pretty girl and her blind father the mind-re
ader. “I’ll get the cash box,” I said.

  But then my mate Max turned up again. He said. “Done that. I left an IOU. I can write enough for that.” He had a big iron chest on one shoulder and he was tugging on a rope with a camel on the other end of it and he said, “We’re never going to get this on the train.” What a bloke he was. I bet Max could have punched that camel’s lights out and carried it all the way to Albania if he’d wanted to, but he did something better than that. He gave up his good name on my say-so. What a sacrifice. That’s love, that is. That’s real friendship. And there he was, walking off across the field into the darkness, singing lullabies to a fractious camel and carrying a box full of stolen money, so we followed on behind with our coats and our hats and our little bags of stuff, into the dark, as dark as the Professor’s eyeglasses, twisting through the narrow streets, up the hill and down the hill, with the camel walking ahead of us, polishing the cobbles with his carpet-slipper feet, with no sound but the tap-tap-tap of the Professor’s cane, all the way to the railway station.

  Imagine an opera house, the biggest, swankiest opera house you’ve ever seen, covered in curlicues and folderols and statues and columns and fancy carvings, with flowers and foliage chiseled over it. Imagine twisting iron pillars painted white and gold and varnished woodwork and mosaic pictures up the walls and arches and a domed roof and colored glass twinkling and cut crystal globes shining on blazing gas lamps. Now imagine that same opera house went out one night and met the fanciest wedding cake anybody ever saw, four stories high, with row after row of little Greek columns and covered in artificial roses and sugar Cupids. And the opera house and the wedding cake danced all night, they talked and they laughed and they had a great time, the way that wedding cakes and opera houses will, and then, nine months later, Budapest Railway Station was born. What a place. We stood together in the square in front, glad that people were too polite to mention a camel draped in dressing-up clothes, and admired it.