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

by Andrew Nicoll

  “I know,” said Varga. “Gorgeous.”

  And then she clapped her hands and said, “Your food is ready.”

  I wasn’t interested in food. I was trying to remember what I’d done with Varga’s pistol, and then I noticed Tifty’s gloved hand fluttering over the catch of her bag. I patted her gently. “Let’s have something to eat,” I said, and she took her hand away.

  Waiters arrived, with their round-cornered waistcoats and trousers like flapping sails. Don’t ask me for notes on what they delivered. I don’t remember that meal like I remember the lunch at Varga’s place. I was too scared. I had a frightened countess on one side, groping for a gun, a blind professor on the other side, trembling like a violin string—afraid even to hear a name spoken aloud—and I was sitting down to dine with a couple of maniacs, surrounded by their gang of assassins. I think I was entitled to be a little bit scared.

  “So you don’t want Albania, Mr. …”

  “Arbuthnot,” the Professor said.

  “Mr. Arbuthnot.”

  “Oh, I couldn’t care less about wearing the crown of Albania for myself, Mr. Witte, but it is of intense interest to the British Government who does. They feel I should not. I imagine they don’t want the second son of an earl getting ideas above his station and putting himself on a par with the dear old King Emperor. Downright snobbish of them, if you ask me, so I think it might be rather jolly to have the old fellow shaking hands with a former circus acrobat instead, but I need to know this: whose side are you on—apart from your own?”

  I remembered all that damned silly nonsense I’d said to Sarah on the night passage, stuff about how I would govern always and exclusively in the interests of the people of Albania, “Mostly my own,” I said.

  The long man said, “You sound like you’ll make a fine king. But here’s the thing.”

  “Can’t you hurry this up?” said Varga.

  “Yes, can’t you hurry this up?” said Mrs. MacLeod.

  He turned those eyes on her for a long moment. “Do you think you might like to dance, Mrs. MacLeod? I’m busy chatting to the king.”

  “Ooh, yes. Why don’t I dance? What a good idea.”

  Mrs. MacLeod stood up from her bed of carpets and cushions and walked to the edge of the veranda on kitten feet. It was as if a rocket had gone off. All the eating and drinking stopped, all the shouting and arguing, the backgammon and the gambling, everything stopped. Men stood up from their chairs. They moved their tables to the walls to make an arena for her. The place was silent. But there was something, a thrumming, like the noise a guitar makes the moment after it stops playing, a noise you could feel even though you couldn’t hear it.

  Mrs. MacLeod stood in the midst of them, like a candle ready to be lit, swathed from head to foot in Arab silks, waiting for the music.

  I said, “She told me they obey her. She did not lie.”

  “No,” he said. “This is why.”

  The music started, long, mournful chords, the sound of birds flying south for the winter. Mrs. MacLeod stood without moving.

  The music played on, saxophones and melodeons, tiny fairy bells and the twanging of a Jew’s harp, the music of blossom falling.

  Mrs. MacLeod raised her arms over her head and, suddenly, she was naked. Absolutely naked. Every scrap of silk that had covered her from the crown of her head to her ankles was suddenly lying in a pool about her feet—everything except for that little strip of cloth that hung across her nose and mouth and it only made her more naked than if she had been naked. The horns wailed. Drums beat. And she danced. She danced for every man in that place. She danced with every man in that place and she offered herself to each of them and none of them dared to touch her, but that noise, that plucked guitar noise, got louder and stronger. It was the sound of men watching her, the breath in their lungs, the sound of them wanting her.

  “It’s a remarkable thing, is it not?” said Mr. Arbuthnot.

  “Remarkable,” I said.

  “I’ve seen better,” said Tifty.

  “They follow her because she is a witch,” he said. “She charms them. Every man there is ready to have the flesh cut from his bones for her sake because he entertains the wild hope that she may love him. One day. For a day.” He turned his back on the dance. “As we were saying … you must understand, Mr. Witte, Albania is part of the Great Game. She has a coast, and anything that touches the sea touches Britain. The Turk has lost her and the Turk desires her. Germany desires what the Turk desires, and Russia desires the opposite. The Balkans are a running fuse, aimed right at the heart of Europe, Mr. Witte, and they are about to explode. I don’t mind that. Explosions interest me. But I need to know in which direction you will be pointed when you go off.”

  “I haven’t decided.”

  “I’d urge you to choose. It’s my turn to dance.”

  Tifty let her breath out in a long whistle and the Professor smashed the head of his cane down on to the table. “Don’t let him dance, Otto! Don’t let him dance. Don’t!”

  But the long man just laughed and, anyway, how could I prevent it?

  The woman was approaching. Mr. Arbuthnot stood up, took off his fine, blue cloak and wrapped it around Mrs. MacLeod, who sat down in his place.

  “Did you like that?” she asked.

  Sarah glared at me.

  “Oh, never mind her. You can tell me later.”

  “What’s happening?” said the Professor. “Tell me what’s happening.”

  “Nothing, Daddy. Mr. Arbuthnot is going to dance, that’s all.”

  “Sarah, don’t look at him. Look at me. Don’t look at him. Ignore it.”

  Let me tell you now that I don’t believe in magic. I know there is magic in the world, rainbows and babies and snowflakes and dandelions, the love of a man and a woman, sunrises and all that, but the rabbit out of a hat stuff, sawing girls in half and table tapping, no, I don’t believe in any of that. So don’t ask me to explain what I saw. All I can tell you is what happened, and if you don’t believe it, that’s all right because I don’t believe it either.

  Arbuthnot went out and stood in the middle of the courtyard, feet together, arms spread, and he raised his long wolf jaw to the sky and he began to blow. His lips were formed in a tight O and he blew, like a silent whistle at the bright noon sky. All around the courtyard the men lining the walls did the same, they turned their faces up to the sky and they blew. There were dozens of men there, more than a hundred, all of them blowing thin blue trails of tobacco smoke at the sky, cigarettes and hookah pipes all puffing upward and—this is the part I don’t believe—the sky darkened. The smoke rose and, as it rose, it thickened and gray clouds crept in over the rooftops and hid the sun.

  There was a fiddle playing, the same two wheezy seesaw notes over and over, in and out, like an old man in winter, in and out, in and out, in time with Arbuthnot’s breathing. Soon the whole place was breathing with him. I was breathing with him and the fiddles scraped and the clouds boiled over the sun.

  Two men carrying lamps came and stood with Arbuthnot. He looked down at them and smiled a welcome and then he began to turn, slowly at first, then faster and faster, and the men with lamps went round about him, faster yet, and their lamps swung out like comets as they danced, trailing smoke like incense. The fiddle music got faster and faster but fainter and fainter until it died away and, in its place, there was a single throbbing, rumbling note, like the music of a mill wheel turning, like a mechanical thing, ringing out from the throats of all those men. I have heard music like that since then—but only once—far away in the east when one day I came through the woods and found a waterfall plunging between velvet-green pine trees into a cavern which I could not see. I don’t know, maybe that’s what the music of heaven sounds like. From all around the room more men came out of the shadows to join the dance, leaping through the circle of fire, over and under amongst the swinging lamps, and the music went on and on and the smoke drifted like fog and the lamps swirled until they weren’t t
here any more and I was lying on my back in a field of cut corn looking up at the stars, and the sky went on forever and I could see everything. I could see the whole earth laid out in front of me until it curved away to the dark ocean; I could see the swirls in the skin at the tips of my fingers, the weave in the cloth of my shirt, the jewel eye of the tiny fly that was crawling there and it was exactly the same as the stars.

  I don’t know how long it lasted, but the music changed again. The singing faded and turned into a clash of knives and shrieks and howls and pot-lid clangs. The men in the circle were looking out at us with gargoyle faces, beckoning us to join the dance. Tifty was beside me, whimpering, rocking back and forward like a trapped thing. She put her hand inside her bag and gripped Varga’s pistol and I laid my hand on her arm—not to prevent her but for the love of her—just for the touch of another human being and to still my own fear. Sarah covered her face and sobbed and tears were running down from the Professor’s dead eyes and Mrs. MacLeod shrugged off her blue cloak and laughed and laughed and the music didn’t stop. It would not stop.

  And then the courtyard was empty and we were sitting on the veranda, Mrs. MacLeod was wrapped in cloth again and the sky was clear and I was asking the long man, “Who are you?”

  “I think the Professor knows,” he said.

  “I know. God help us, I know who you are.” He gripped his cane very tightly and he said, “They call themselves the Companions of the Rosy Hours.”

  “Just a name. Just one of many,” said Arbuthnot. “But I see one of your companions is gone. You are only five. The Fregattenkapitän seems to have slipped his moorings.”

  My heart sank. “He’s gone and stolen his boat back.”

  “Quite impossible. My brothers have been looking after it since the moment you arrived and our young friend ran ahead to show you the way here. Varga cannot take the boat and he cannot leave the city. If you want him returned to you, that will be done.”

  “Everything is provided for those who can pay,” said Mrs. MacLeod. “Would you like his throat cut instead?”

  “I don’t care if he lives or dies, but I need somebody to sail me to Albania.”

  “Oh, I can do that,” said Arbuthnot. “But, Mr. Witte, please believe me, there is a gale coming. It’s going to blow through the whole of Europe and I don’t know what will be left after it has passed. You may sail through it with me but, I promise you, you will not sail through it without me.”

  “Then it seems I have no choice,” I said, and I shook his hand.

  The Professor held his head in his hands. “Better sell your soul to the devil. These people are maniacs. They are demons.”

  “Oh, it’s far, far worse than that,” said Arbuthnot. “Some of them are poets.”

  You know, writing this story down has given me a wonderful opportunity to look back and consider how little I knew in those days. The fact is, I knew damn all about damn all and I bet you’re just as bad. If this little pile of paper survives, if it’s not incinerated in the blast or exploded into a million bits and scattered from here to Cologne, if it’s not varnished with brains and completely unreadable, then you might learn something. But you probably won’t.

  Everybody thinks they know it all, and even those wise enough to know different have to find out for themselves.

  Napoleon thought it might be a good idea to invade Russia until he found out it wasn’t. You and I might think that is a useful example. Certainly, any time I have been tempted to invade Russia, I have held the image of Napoleon before my eyes until the fever passed off. Our great leader, on the other hand, decided to try the experiment for himself and, as it turns out, Russia is just as big, just as cold and just as unfriendly as it used to be, and Moscow has been moved a good deal to the right since Napoleon got there, which explains why we didn’t.

  Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking I’ve got a brass neck to complain about other people invading Russia when I was on my way to grab Albania, and I take your point. But, in my defense, I have to say that a few friends and a camel on a stolen boat isn’t much of an invasion force. I know it’s only a matter of degree, but circumstances count for a lot. I’m no lawyer, but it seems to me there’s a big difference between finding a few coins lying in the street and bursting into a man’s house, whacking him on the head and stealing his wallet. You are free to disagree if you like, but back then Albania was just lying in the street, waiting to be picked up.

  But the point I wanted to make was that wisdom and experience come with age, at just the sort of time when you are too feeble to do anything with them, when you couldn’t invade Albania even if you wanted to and, anyway, you can’t because you don’t like to be too far away from a toilet.

  And I say “tend to come with age,” because it didn’t take me long to work out that Arbuthnot was wise beyond his years. He was certainly younger than me and much, much younger than the Professor, but he had worked out that stuff about poets being worse than devils and I have found that to be generally true. Not that I have known many poets. They turn up only rarely in music halls and circus tents, but I know what he meant: that it’s all right to dream of a better world, so long as you don’t actually get off your backside and do something about it.

  You might dream of a world where all property is shared and kings are abolished, as poets do. Or you might dream of a world of order and neatness, you might think that things would run so much more smoothly if only people could be good and decent and clean and hard-working and reasonable and respectable. That’s all fine. But if you do something about it, there’s always going to be somebody who’s difficult and awkward and uncooperative, somebody who wants to paint a different kind of picture or write a different book, somebody who wants to earn more than is polite or grow a slightly bigger nose than you might like, and pretty soon that person is going to have to get a smack.

  Arbuthnot knew this. Arbuthnot had been to the top of the mountain and, while he was up there, he had a good look round at the world and decided that most of it was pretty bad and not worth keeping. But, instead of dreaming a new dream for those bits, he decided to concentrate on the bits he liked and dream the old dream about those as hard as he could—though it cost him his life. I liked him a lot.

  The Professor did not. I don’t say he was afraid of him, although, to tell the truth, I think I was, but he was wary. If the Professor had eyes, he would have kept one of them on Arbuthnot, the same as he would if we had gone sailing with a basketful of cobras.

  I don’t know how it happened, but the Companions of the Rosy Hours disappeared like water through a sieve and we were left to sail out of Dubrovnik, on Varga’s boat but without Varga. Just me, Arbuthnot, Max and his camel, Mrs. MacLeod, Tifty, Sarah and Professor Alberto von Mesmer.

  He banged my shins with his cane and sat down beside me. “Good evening, Mr. Arbuthnot,” he said.

  “It’s Otto.”

  “I know, but I wanted to know if he was near.”

  “He’s up at the front.”

  “You mean, he’s in the prow.”

  “He’s in the prow.”

  “And the woman?”

  “Mrs. MacLeod? She’s with him.”

  “Good. I must say Sarah’s making a surprisingly good job of steering.”

  “Max is steering,” I said. “Sarah’s with Mrs. MacLeod.”

  “Get her back, Otto. Bring her here right now.”

  “It’s all right. I’m watching and, anyway, Tifty’s with them. She seems to be having a dancing lesson with Mrs. MacLeod.”

  You bet I was watching. Clothes off or clothes on, Mrs. MacLeod was worth looking at, and when Tifty was trying to outdo her in a private show, well, that was something to see even if the camel stood between them with a look of haughty disdain.

  “With Mrs. MacLeod? That doesn’t reassure me, Otto.”

  “Honestly, she’ll be fine.”

  “My boy, you have no idea who you’re dealing with. Arbuthnot is a madman. He walk
ed alone through the deserts of Yemen—something no white man has ever done—and the savages there left him alone because they said he was touched by God.”

  “Maybe he is.”

  “He quotes Satan! All that ‘walking up and down on the earth’ stuff—that’s straight from the mouth of the Beast.”

  “He can sail!” I said. “He can get us to Albania.”

  “And what about Varga? What happened to Varga? He could sail but he simply vanished. That’s a little odd, don’t you think? A little convenient?”

  “I don’t care about Varga. For God’s sake, Professor, we stole his yacht and brought him here at gunpoint. You can’t be surprised that he ran off.”

  There was a burst of laughter from the prow.

  “What was that? What’s going on now? What are they doing? Where’s Sarah?”

  “She’s fine. I can see her. She’s having a good time.”

  And she was. She was having fun, just a little way away on the other side of the boat, and for all she thought of me she might as well have been on the moon, but my heart flew to her—sweet, ordinary, pretty Sarah standing there between those two glamorous women, like a snowdrop between two hothouse orchids. She looked around and smiled as if to say, “Look at me! See how clever I am!” but, although she danced as they danced, she was like a little girl tripping about in her mother’s high heels.

  Arbuthnot waved to me from the other side of the ship. “Mr. Witte, a word please. A moment of your time.”

  He sprang up, easy as an acrobat, just as I would have done, crossed the deck and lay down beside me. He was never one to stand when he could sit, Arbuthnot, and he didn’t believe in sitting if he could lie down.

  “What are you up to with my daughter?” said the Professor.

  “Nothing improper, I assure you. In fact, that’s exactly why I wanted this little chat, Witte. I’m afraid we have to throw the Graf von Mucklenberg over the side.”

  The Professor gripped his cane like a cudgel and I suppose I must have looked a bit put out because Arbuthnot said, “Not you, Witte, you understand, but the Graf has outlived his usefulness. He was a handy chap to have around in Budapest and Fiume, but by the time we arrive in Dirac he will have served his purpose. It’s time to hang him up in the wardrobe and put on Halim Eddine instead.”