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

by Andrew Nicoll

  Even in the middle of the night it was packed with people: people pouring off the trains that came from every corner of the empire, people shoving through the doors to travel, well, any place in the world, I suppose. But not, as it turned out, to Albania.

  “It is a well-known fact that there are no railways in Albania,” the Professor said—and he said it almost triumphantly.

  “Oh, everybody knows that,” Sarah said. “In fact, Otto was just remarking on that to me on our way to the station.” And she gave my hand a little squeeze.

  “I didn’t notice that—and my hearing is remarkably acute, perhaps by way of a natural compensation for my lack of sight.”

  “I was whispering,” I said, “so as not to alarm the camel.”

  “This is a more than usually jumpy camel,” Max said.

  Now I could see that the Professor was not pleased. I suppose that might have been because Sarah had chosen to stand by me and, maybe, put him in his place a little when he wanted to get one over on me, but it seemed as if he felt snubbed or slighted somehow, as if this whole adventure had been his idea all along, his ball to play with, and I was stealing it from him. I didn’t want to fall out with the Professor. He was the only one of us who could speak Turkish after all, and by God we needed somebody who could do that, but aside from that he knew stuff: which spoon to use for chilled monkey brains, how to bow—who to bow at—stuff like that. And he was a thinker. You could see him thinking. It gave me the creeps. So I wanted the Professor onside—for Sarah’s sake if nothing else—but there’s only ever room for one king at a time.

  The Professor turned his spectacles up to the sky and he asked, “Since we are all agreed there is no train service to Albania, why are we here?”

  “We’re here because of the telegraph office. We need to send a telegram to the Albanoks, that Prime Minister bloke—what was his name?”

  “Ismail Kemali,” said the Professor.

  “Him. And it needs to be in Turkish. Tell him that His Excellency, the Heaven-born, beloved of Allah, has generously consented to take the throne, that he is hastening to his country with all speed. That, for reasons of urgency, His Supremacy will travel with only a tiny retinue, that a full accounting of the Treasury will be demanded of old…”

  “Ismail Kemali.”

  “Him. And his life depends on it and, above all else, to watch out for impostors and pretenders. Tell him that all future correspondence from His Magnificence the Heavenborn et cetera, will be sent using Code 17c of the codebook and, if it’s not in Code 17c, then it’s a fake and a phony and must be utterly disregarded.”

  “I don’t know Code 17c,” said the Professor.

  “There is no such thing. I just invented it, so it will be hard for anybody to send it and just as hard for them to decode. So tell him that you are sending the exact time and place of our arrival but in code. Give them a few spurts of random letters, enough to keep them guessing.”

  “You seem to have thought of everything,” said the Professor.

  Sarah said, “It is a very clever plan,” which probably wasn’t helpful.

  The Professor was very sniffy. He said, “They charge by the word in the telegraph office, you know. How is this to be paid for?”

  “There’s plenty of cash in the strongbox,” Sarah said.

  “And it’s locked,” he said triumphantly.

  But then there was a terrible crunch from behind the camel, and Max said, “It’s open now.” My mate Max.

  We went to look. The box was stuffed with sacks of money, kronen and kronen of the stuff, and, I must admit, in a strange way it salved my conscience to see how much was in there. I didn’t feel nearly as bad about taking the boss’s cash when I saw how much he’d stashed away when he was always telling us how hard up he was.

  Tifty said, “I’m thinking hats. Something with feathers.”

  “After we get back,” I said. I took out one of the bags, closed the lid again and pushed the broken padlock back into place as best I could. It was no security. My mate Max was all the security I needed. I asked Tifty to hold out her bag and I emptied half the coins into it. “Would you please take the Professor to the telegraph office and help him send the message?”

  “Darling, we’ll be delighted—won’t we, Professor?” And she held out her arm and waited for him to find it, “But what will you be doing?”

  “We have to get a ticket for the camel.”

  In my humble opinion, everybody ought to run away from home and join the circus at least once in their lives. It is an education. It broadens the mind. It equips a person for taking his place in the world. Of course, me taking my place in the world meant running away from the circus to become a king but, on solemn reflection and after some years of careful thought, I can tell you, if you’re running off to become a king, then a circus is a great place to start. They’ve got everything in a circus: talented people, tools, rope, chain, clothes for every occasion and, if you wrap them all up in a big bundle, then a camel is ideal for carrying the whole lot around with you.

  We had a look in the luggage, me and Max and Sarah, and we dug out the ringmaster’s uniform—a shiny black claw-hammer coat and one of those silk hats that packs away flat in case you have to carry it from place to place on a camel at any time, but pops back up to full size again if you bang it on your knee.

  Max gave me a rub-down to get the worst of the dust and the camel hair off my coat and Sarah tied my tie and gave my mustaches a bit of a twirl. “You look lovely,” she said. “Like a bridegroom.” And that made me look down at her a bit quickly, even though she still had a good grip of my whiskers.

  Her eyes were damp and shining in the lamplight and I could see she was scared, poor kid, as if all that we were daring had suddenly come home to her. “Otto. My Otto,” she said, “you’ve always been a king to me.” And then, with a final brush of my lapels, she sent me off.

  “Wait here,” I said. “Look after the camel.”

  Now, I’m a performer. I know how to put on a show. But, until then I had never been an actor. I was Otto Witte the circus acrobat, but by the time I got to the top of the railway-station steps, I was somebody else. When I pushed those big doors open, when I walked into that glorious, glittering hall, swinging my cane, clattering it down on those polished tiles, I had forgotten who Otto Witte was. I forgot I ever knew him. Otto Witte was a decent bloke who didn’t let people push him around and didn’t push anybody else around either. But the bloke in the railway station had never heard of Otto Witte. The bloke in the railway station walked right through the middle of the hall, right to the first ticket window, right up to the front of the queue and banged his cane on the counter.

  “A thousand apologies, madam,” I said to the lady at the front of the queue. “A thousand apologies. Imperial business.”

  The man behind the counter was gaping at me and he did not look pleased. He had a fancy uniform with a lot of brass buttons and a good set of whiskers—but mine were better. He was all set to jump down my throat, but if there’s one thing an acrobat knows about it’s timing, so I waited, just a tiny moment, and the very instant he opened his mouth to speak, I said, “Where the hell is my camel car?”

  He just looked at me.

  I said, “Are you deaf, man? Where the hell is my camel car?”

  When we move camp we undo all the guys around the big top and then we take down the mast in the middle, and when that happens all the canvas folds and sags and collapses. That’s what happened to the little chocolate soldier in the ticket booth.

  “Your camel car?” and then he said, “Sir,” which I liked a lot.

  “My camel car!” and we said that to each other, back and forth another couple of times.

  “Your camel car, sir?”

  “My camel car!”

  Until I said, “You’ve got no idea what I’m talking about; have you?”

  “I’m very sorry, sir. I don’t.”

  “Get me the stationmaster,” I said. “
Get him now. In fact, get him yesterday!”

  “Yes, sir,” he said. “Who shall I say is calling? Sir?”

  I rolled my eyes and tutted. I was doing my best to look like somebody who expected to be recognized by railway clerks across the empire. “Tell him it’s the Graf von Mucklenberg, Keeper of His Imperial Majesty’s Camels.”

  The little man got up from his stool and dashed away from behind his window. Then he came back and pulled down the linen blind.

  The people in the queue behind me gave an angry groan. I turned round and scowled at them. “A thousand apologies,” I said again. “Imperial business. For your King and Emperor.” They just took it. I was amazed, but they took it. It was a horrible moment. The dreadful realization that if you say, “Because I say so!” loud enough, people will do as they’re told. They will stand in line or stop standing in line. They’ll let somebody else jump to the front of the queue and take what should be theirs and, if you yell at them loud enough and long enough, they will shoot some bloke they’ve never seen before, spike his kids on bayonets and swear it’s all the work of God. It starts with jumping the queue and it ends up with bombers circling overhead and cities on fire.

  Now there was nobody in the whole empire quite as grand as the stationmaster of Budapest. Of course, these days, he’d look downright ordinary alongside real heroes like Goering or Himmler but back then he only had to compete with the likes of the Emperor and a couple of archdukes and he had the uniform to do it.

  The stationmaster was like the captain of an ocean liner—king in his own country and the only appeal over his head was direct to God Almighty. And, like the captain of an ocean liner, he sat up on his own bridge, looking out over the whole railway station from a glorious office, lined with polished oak and mahogany and studded with polished brass, brass rails around the tops of the desks to stop his pens falling off, brass lamps, brass door knobs and big brass buttons studding the banister of the stairs that led to his door, just in case there were any naughty schoolboys who might take it into their heads to slide down it.

  In the ordinary course of things I would never have given a great man like the stationmaster of Budapest a moment’s thought. If I had troubled to think about him at all, it would have been the same way that I thought about the Archbishop. I knew he existed. I knew there must be somebody called “the Archbishop of Budapest.” The town was full of churches and every church had a priest and somebody had to be in charge of them all, so it made sense to imagine that there must be an archbishop in a fancy palace some place, but I gave him no thought since the Archbishop was not likely to send his card round and ask for an acrobatic performance. I suppose he might have sent his card round demanding a private show from Tifty, but that would have been none of my business. And, in just the same way as there was somebody called “the Archbishop of Budapest,” there must be somebody called “the Stationmaster.” They had a railway station and plenty of trains and somebody had to be in charge of them, but I didn’t expect him to ask me in for a drink.

  And yet, there I was at the bottom of those stairs, about to be shown into the holy of holies.

  The man from the ticket office left me on the landing. “Wait here, sir,” he said, “and I’ll announce you.” But I had no intention of doing that. The Graf von Mucklenberg, Keeper of the Imperial Camels, was not the sort of man to wait about on the back step.

  I watched the ticket clerk while he knocked on the door, waited politely and went in. Then I counted to seven and I ran up the stairs after him. The door bounced on its hinges and the glass rattled and I said, “Mr. Stationmaster, where is my camel car?” like a bomb going off in the office.

  The ticket man was standing on the gorgeous Turkey rug in front of the stationmaster’s desk and he flinched at the sound of my voice as if it had been a pistol shot in his ear. I could read the horror in the shaved hairs on the back of his neck and he looked at me and he looked at the stationmaster and, when I put my cane on his shoulder, he stepped aside, as meek as a lamb and I was confronted with the Magnificence.

  The buttons on his uniform were gleaming like the portholes on an ocean liner, he had a set of whiskers like a frozen hedge and I knew then that there was nothing in the world standing between me and the throne of Albania that was half as big, half as terrifying, as the stationmaster of Budapest.

  “That’ll be all, Barna,” he said. “Hurry along, you have passengers waiting. I’ll deal with the gentleman.”

  I heard the door closing quietly behind me and I tried very hard to remember that I was not Otto Witte.

  The stationmaster said, “How can I help you, Mr. …”

  “Graf!” I said. “Graf von Mucklenberg, Keeper of the Imperial Camels.”

  The stationmaster stood up from behind his desk and made a sharp bow. There was a fancy gilded inkstand on his desk and he almost had an eye out on the big black pen that was sticking out of it. He said, “You do my humble railway station too much honor, Erlaucht,” and then, smooth as silk and soft as butter, he said, “May I see your credentials?”

  Such a simple thing. So obvious. So straightforward. What could be more natural or less offensive? What could be more ordinary? Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  I did the only thing I could do. I gaped like a codfish and I flapped my jowls at him. “Credentials? Credentials? Are you asking to see my papers? Some form of bona fides, is that it?” I’d been paying attention to the Professor and now I was off and running. “I’ll show you my credentials, sir. My ‘credentials’ are standing outside your railway station right now. Or do many of your passengers turn up looking for a third-class return for one of His Imperial Majesty’s camels?”

  The stationmaster spread his hands in a gesture of helpless resignation. “Forgive me, Erlaucht, but until this moment I had no idea that His Majesty possessed even a single camel.”

  I gave him a look that was intended to convey contempt and disbelief of his astounding ignorance but he went on, apparently without even noticing.

  “Unless I have some form of identification, then for all I know, Erlaucht, you could be on the run from a traveling circus with a stolen camel.”

  Well, you can imagine how I felt. Here I was, on the way to a foreign country I’d barely heard of until that afternoon, gambling my life—and the lives of my friends—on persuading everybody that I was the rightful King of the Albanoks, and the stationmaster of Budapest had seen through me right away and spotted me for a simple camel thief. I felt the color drain right out of my face and, I can tell you now, most of it was heading straight for my trousers. I very nearly fell flat right there—but I didn’t. I gripped on to the edge of his fancy desk and I leaned right forward, right in his whiskery face, so what was nothing more than panic he read as blind fury. I was gritting my teeth together so as not to be sick and I said, “I know your game. You’re playing for time. You had no more idea that I was coming than that little ticket clerk of yours did. You’ve fouled up. You were well warned. The Palace doesn’t make mistakes with stuff like this. I’ve known them long enough to know that. The Palace. Does Not. Make. Mistakes. So you’ve made a mistake. You’re responsible. You’re to blame. They sent you the telegram. They told you what to do, but you made an ass of it. Somebody dropped it down the back of a sofa. Somebody lit their pipe with it. Well, I was ready to help you out. I was ready to meet you halfway, but not now. Now you’re going to send a telegram to Vienna. You can do that, can’t you? If I stand over you to make sure you get it right? Surely there must be somebody in this shitty little railway station who can get something right! You’re going to send a telegram back to Vienna in it and you’re going to tell the Emperor that you’re really very sorry but you seem to have mislaid his instructions and does he really want you to put the Graf von Mucklenberg on a train with His Majesty’s camel? And then you’re going to write, ‘PS I resign.’”

  By the time I’d finished with that lot there was hardly a breath in my body and there was quite a lot of spit on the stati
onmaster’s nose. He didn’t wipe it off.

  But he still wasn’t sure. He still couldn’t decide if I was Franz Josef’s right-hand man or just a common-or-garden camel thief, so I gave him one last shove. I reached across his desk, opened his cigar box and took one out.

  The stationmaster picked up his pen, “How many in your lordship’s party—not counting the camel?”

  That was how we came to be on the night train out of Budapest: me, Otto Witte, acrobat of Hamburg; my mate Max; Professor Alberto von Mesmer; Sarah and Tifty. And the camel.

  I had pulled it off. I could hardly believe it myself and—I have to admit—I was pretty well bursting with pride. I had defeated the stationmaster of Budapest, and if I could do that, the rest would be simple. How wrong can you be?

  There was one more tiny hitch before we got on the train. There I was in the stationmaster’s office, sitting in an easy chair, smoking a fat cigar, his fat cigar—a fat cigar he lit for me with his match—legs flung out in front of me, as happy and exhausted as I was in the cellar of the beer hall. And then the stationmaster looked up from his desk and said, “I am preparing tickets for sleeping cars for you, your four companions and all necessary accommodations for His Majesty’s camel.”

  “Very good,” I said, and I took another tug on his cigar.

  “Where would you like to go, Erlaucht?”

  And I was baffled again. Another damned stupid, obvious question. “Please may I see your papers?” and “Where would you like to go?” and I had no answer. The stationmaster was teaching me some valuable lessons on my road to becoming the king.

  “Hasn’t this been explained to you?”

  “As you pointed out, Erlaucht, there appears to have been some kind of clerical mix-up. If you could just refresh my memory …”

  It seemed I had only two weapons in my armory. I could either rage like a lunatic at this man, or I could wait. I breathed his delicious cigar smoke deep into my lungs, held it in my mouth and puffed a smoke ring toward his molded ceiling. “His Majesty’s camel is intended as a gift for the newly installed King of Albania.”