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

by Andrew Nicoll

  “A moment, Kemali, I have business to conduct.”

  “Another of your little surprises, Majesty?”

  “I promise this is the last. I need you to translate.”

  I stood up on the steps of the throne, but I had to put down the orb and scepter and that damned cloak was so bloody heavy, so I shucked that off and laid the whole lot on the seat, and then, when I looked a bit more ordinary, except for my fancy new sword belt and my fancy new hat, I beckoned the boy with the saddlebags toward me.

  I said, “Citizens of the free and independent kingdom of Albania,” and Kemali translated.

  “As your king, We pledge to you in full and equal measure the love and loyalty you have pledged to Us this day.” I might easily have said “today,” but “this day” sounded much, much grander and it produced the applause I had hoped for.

  “First, We are happy to announce that the vile and craven Serbs have crumbled before the mere threat of war. Earlier this morning they informed our government that they have capitulated and will accede to all reasonable demands. Such is the terrifying might of the free and independent kingdom of Albania. Your strong sons will not be required of you. The national honor is restored. There will be no war.”

  God knows they were happy enough when I told them we were going to crack heads together but, when I told them we’d already won and there would be no fighting after all, well, they just went crazy with delight. Kemali merely raised an eyebrow.

  “Secondly, from this day, We make a solemn and binding covenant with you, Our people. We promise that your tongue, the language of the Albanian people, shall be Our language and the language of Our court and government.”

  Wild applause.

  “And, as a sign of Our especial favor, we wish to make certain gifts and grants. Whereas the heads of some of the nation’s most ancient and noble families have done Us the great honor of presenting their daughters to Us, these ladies are to be assured of the lasting love and regard of the Crown, honored henceforth as Sisters of the King and sent home …” the Royal Fathers-in-Law scowled and reached for where their pistols should have been, had they not been removed at the door, “sent home heavy with Our favor and each endowed with twenty thousand leks from Our private Treasury that they may secure good marriages.”

  The fathers-in-law put down their imaginary pistols, grinned their broken-toothed grins and clapped like crazy.

  When the applause had died down again I went on: “No king can rule without the good counsel of trusted friends. Therefore, We have chosen this day to found and institute a new order of knighthood open to the closest advisers to the throne, to those who stand as close as brothers to the king and only a little below him in honor, to those who are sworn to serve Us personally and with loyalty.

  “The members of this new Order of Skanderbeg—” by God they loved that and clapped until their hands were bruised—“will be charged with the sacred duty of speaking the truth to the king; they will be assured of access to Our Person at all times and granted the right to dine at Our table.” No more sitting alone in a swanky dining room for me.

  The applause went on and on until I had to hold my hands up for a bit of quiet. When I said, “The first Knight of Skanderbeg,” those Albanoks had no idea what I was taking about, but they understood me well enough when I called the name of “Ismail Kemali.”

  The grand old man, God bless him, was slow to answer my beckoning, but the cheers and the shouting went on and at last Zogolli and the fattest father-in-law dragged him forward.

  I reached into my saddlebag and brought out a scarlet curtain tie. “Will you swear your loyalty to me, as King of Albania, while you live? Do you promise to give true counsel when most needed, upon your honor as a Knight of Skanderbeg?”

  Good Kemali said, “I do.”

  “Say ‘Une nuk,’” I said.

  “Une nuk.”

  I laid the curtain tie across his shoulder, only now of course it wasn’t a curtain tie, it was the insignia of the Order of Skanderbeg, and every man in that huge crowd wanted a curtain tie across his shoulder as Kemali had one across his.

  Sadly I had only twelve curtain ties in my saddlebag: one for Kemali, five for the jilted fathers-in-law, one for Zogolli, who wept hot salt tears and repeated every word of his oath before giving me his “une nuk.” His eyes filled with tears and his big carrot nose filled with snot while he sniveled his loyalty as if I had done something for him, as if I had paid him some special service when, if only he had noticed, Kemali had loved him like a father for years. But Kemali was not God’s anointed. Kemali had no crown, and it’s the crown that makes the difference.

  Eventually, in spite of his lovesick slobbering, I managed to shake him from my hands and the boy stepped forward, holding up his bag so I could choose another curtain tie. Only twelve curtain ties, and seven of them gone already.

  I called out “Sir Max Schlepsig, Knight of Skanderbeg,” and my mate Max came forward, looking like an embarrassed bear.

  “Me, Otto? A knight? You sure?”

  “Can’t think of anybody better. You might not be a nobleman, Max, but you’ve always been a noble man.”

  “That’s kind of you to say, but I’m more used to swallowing swords than carrying one round on my hip.”

  I leaned in close and whispered, “Shut up, Max. The world’s on its head. If I can be king, then you can damned sure be a knight. Now, do you promise to be loyal and always to tell me the truth?”

  “Always have,” he said, which was true. Asking Max to be loyal and true was like asking the ocean to be wet and salty.

  I threw the cloth across his shoulders. “You’re in,” I said. Then I called for “The Captain of the Royal Guard,” and Arbuthnot, looking as delighted as a man like Arbuthnot could ever look, fell to his knees and kissed my fingertips.

  “What a hoot,” he said. “I wonder what they’ll make of this back home. I’d rather have this than the Garter.” I remember that’s exactly what he said, although to this very day and hour I have no idea what he meant by it.

  Next I called for “The Countess Tifty Gourdas, Dame of the Order of Skanderbeg,” which sent a ripple round the church. I don’t know if the Albanoks were prepared for the idea of ladies close to the throne, but when they saw her walk to the steps they probably changed their minds, and when they saw her curtsy they were utterly convinced, because by God that woman could curtsy, and if I let my hand linger just a little longer than needful when I laid the sash of the order across that magnificent bosom, it was only by way of a fond farewell, that was all.

  And then Sarah. My Sarah. It had to be Sarah. The tenth curtain tie was hers. I announced, “The Most Serene Lady, Sarah von Mesmer, Dame of the Order of Skanderbeg,” and, I swear to God, that whole church sighed when they saw her mount the steps of the throne. Remember that crowd? Remember them all pressed in together, with Sarah at the front? She came up out from them, like Venus coming up out of the waves, and they sighed like the waves as she passed.

  All except one. All except her father.

  While everybody was watching Sarah, I was watching him hold on to her as she tried to come to me, clinging to her until she was too far to touch, clawing at the empty air where her scent hung, even as she turned and promised him, “I’ll be back, Daddy,” pounding his cane into the pavement in fury, glaring at me with his black, dead eyes.

  There she was, standing in front of me, so small and perfect, like a flower that suddenly appears where nobody ever planted flowers before.

  “Hello, Otto,” she said.

  “Hello, Sarah. You look nice.”

  “So do you.”

  “Would you like to be a Lady of Skanderbeg?”

  “I think that sounds lovely, Otto. Thank you very much.”

  “And do you promise to love me?”

  “Always and forever.”

  “And do you promise to roll about in that big bed with me for hours at a time and always on a Saturday morning?”

 
; “Do all the Knights of Skanderbeg have to promise that, Otto?”

  “Only you, my love.”

  “Only me?”

  “Always only you.”

  “In that case, I promise.”

  “And do you promise to tell me the truth?”

  “Most of the time.”

  “Fair enough. You’re in.”

  Thank God that Kemali had stopped translating long before it was time to lay the sash across her shoulder, but when the boy held up his bag and I reached in to take one out, I saw at once that there was just one left. It was another of those dreadful “forgotten-to-do-your-homework” moments and the urge to scrabble about in the bottom of the bag was almost overpowering. Kemali, Zogolli, Max, Arbuthnot, Tifty and the five fathers-in-law. Sarah was not the tenth knight, she was the eleventh and I had only one curtain tie left, and there was Mrs. MacLeod, with that gorgeous frozen aviary on her head, smoothing her dress down, smiling her wicked smile, sinuous as a vine, fluid as flame, ready to step forward to receive the honors that were her due.

  “The last place in the Order of Skanderbeg …”

  The pretty little toe of Mrs. MacLeod’s pretty little shoe peeped out from behind the hem of her dress.

  “… will be filled by my most worthy vizier.”

  The smile on Mrs. MacLeod’s face folded its wings and died, like a pheasant in flight. Her little toe disappeared again and she turned to Professor Alberto, urging him forward with chilly whispers.

  He would not budge. She pushed, angrily, at his elbow. He did not move.

  Sarah went down to him and took his hand, but he said something to her and she let him walk alone, with a few shallow sweeps of the cane, to the foot of the steps.

  The place was hushed—as quiet as it had been at the moment of my crowning—and somehow the people seemed to realize that this new Knight of Skanderbeg was a little more important than the others.

  “Do you promise to be loyal?”

  He turned those terrible, shining spectacles on me again, those black sheets of glass, like the opposite of searchlights. “I solemnly promise and swear my loyalty to you, my king.”

  “And do you promise to tell the truth and always to offer sound counsel to your sovereign?”

  “I do.”

  I laid a curtain tie across his shoulder. “Hail, Knight of Skanderbeg.”

  That was when the explosions started.

  You probably don’t give a damn about explosions. Not any more. The whole town is on fire. There are explosions everywhere. The world is ablaze. Explosions are ordinary. Look out the window. Except if you are reading this, I probably don’t have a window. Or a roof. Or walls. Explosions are a cliché. The bombs are falling over there in the dark and, when they land, it’s nothing. It’s a burst pillow and a shower of feathers. A lot of noise. A flash and a bang. Explosions are nothing.

  But those explosions were not nothing. Not for the people at my coronation. They were like us. They had heard explosions before, remember. They knew what war was. But they thought it was over. More than that, they thought they had won. Hadn’t I told them we’d won without so much as a shot fired? Not that we were about to win, not like that shit we hear on the wireless every day about how a new army of little boys and grandfathers is going to sweep the Bolshevik hordes back on to the steppes or some unstoppable super-weapon is to be unleashed on the unsuspecting Allies and knock them from the skies of the Fatherland. None of that. No ifs, no buts, no maybes, I told them we’d won, and yet the sky was full of booms and bangs, just like our sky is full of American airplanes.

  I told them we had won and there would be no more war, no more bombs and bullets to break their windows and rattle their chimney pots, and half an hour later it all started again.

  There was just a moment after the first blast when the people inside that church stood and wondered what was happening. I looked up from laying a curtain tie across the Professor’s shoulder; I looked up and I looked into the crowd and I saw the fear on their faces.

  Imagine a man who has a tooth pulled. Imagine the agony of that, the pincers gripping the rotten tooth, the jaw wrenched this way and that, the fiery hot, screaming pain of it, the crunching, grinding noise, like a train wreck inside your head as it comes out by the root, torn out of living bone. But the agony reaches a crescendo, the tooth comes out like a cork from a bottle and the pain is past, an unpleasant memory, that’s all. And then the dentist says, “Now for the other one.”

  That’s the look I saw on their faces and, if they had any doubts that the toothache had come back, the second bomb settled the matter. From the same open window that let in the blackbird song, we heard it falling from the sky and screaming as it fell.

  They knew what it meant and they were ready to run. All they needed was somebody to tell them what to do, somebody who could say it was all right to break out of the formal dignity of the coronation and run away, weeping and screaming, or somebody who could tell them to do the other thing, to stand steady, to leave in good order, return to their homes, put their wives and children safely in the cellar, arm themselves and return to defend the nation. All they needed was a leader, a proper leader and, because I was their king, the poor bastards looked to me to tell them what to do. I stood there like a stunned ox as they looked at me, as the priests and the acolytes looked at me, as Kemali and Zogolli looked at me, as every single one of my loyal subjects looked at me, as Max and Sarah and all the Knights of Skanderbeg looked at me, down to the last, who turned his black eyes on me in glittering triumph and I said nothing. Absolutely nothing. I stood there with that crown on my head like an upturned bucket while my whiskers sagged and drooped and I said nothing. I said nothing because there was nothing to say. I said nothing because I knew I had been found out. I was exposed as a fake, like a conjurer when his rabbit sticks its ears out of a secret pocket and all the little boys in the theater point and shout. So I said nothing and, when the third bomb fell and they all began to move and heave, like fish in a net, when panic was hanging over them with all the weight of a summer thundercloud about to break, when they were ready to start trampling over other people’s children and their own grandmothers in a rush for the doors, the voice they heard was not mine.

  That third bomb fell, and in the silence that came after—as if that wasn’t nightmare enough—I heard that mad sing-song voice again: “One, two three! That sounds like my cue!”

  All around the walls men were emerging from the crowd and throwing back their cloaks or dumping heavy coats to reveal naval uniforms—and rifles.

  One of the golden priests caught a rifle butt across the shoulder as they herded him into the middle of the church. There were angry gasps and a scream or two and a couple of courageous Albanoks went to help him and things were looking as if they might get pretty ugly when the crowd parted and that little shit Varga came walking toward me, carroty whiskers blazing, a salt-stained sea-cloak flung back off his shoulders and a pistol in his hand.

  “Varga,” I said, “great to see you. We hoped you were dead.”

  “Shut up, you fraud.” He walked slowly up the church, pausing at every step to strike threatening poses and jam his pistol up somebody’s nose until at last he reached the steps of the throne and it was my turn. “Shift, camel boy. Stand there.”

  I went down the steps, Varga went up and he began to address the crowd. “People of Albania, I imagine that for the most part you are too ignorant and stupid to understand a word that I am saying. However, I am relying on the fact that, even in this backward and barbarous country, one or two of you must have been to school. You can pass the word to your stupider countrymen.”

  Nothing happened so Varga waved his pistol around a bit. “Well, go on then!”

  Here and there in the crowd, men began whispering to their wives, who began whispering to their neighbors. Word spread. They were not happy. Varga seemed satisfied.

  “Stupid Albanians,” he said, “it is my unpleasant—but delicious—duty to inform you
that this man—” he pointed down at me—“is not a king.”

  He waited a moment for the news to spread. “I met him a few days ago when he presented himself to me as the Graf von Mucklenberg, Keeper of the Camels to the Emperor of Austria. Feel free to translate, darlings.”

  I felt my ears redden as the whispers burned around the church.

  “And a few days later, after an act of gross piracy when he stole my lovely, lovely yacht, he presented himself to you as the Turkish prince Halim Eddine.” Varga spoke slowly so the translation, in all its awfulness, could sink in.

  “In fact, he is neither of these people. In fact He is Otto Witte, a circus performer of some small note, wanted by the police in connection with the theft of a cash box and a camel.”

  The whispers turned into gasps. I knew that Kemali was standing behind me somewhere, but I couldn’t look at him. I kept my face to the front. Those hundreds of sad eyes were easier to endure.

  “Consequently,” said Varga, “we won’t be needing this any more,” and he reached out from his place at the top of the steps, gripped the golden horns of the golden goat on top of the crown of Skanderbeg and lifted it from my head.

  The whole church drew in its breath with a hiss and it seemed that Varga had gone too far, but he pointed his pistol here and there in the crowd, just to show who was boss, and he said, “Calm yourselves, my dears, calm yourselves. You have a crown—of sorts—now all you need is a king and, oh fortunate people, a king has been provided for you, a real king, a proper king, a man of noble blood, a man who has never stolen even a single camel in his entire life. Most importantly of all, he has been chosen for you by the Emperors of Germany and Austria-Hungary, thereby ensuring you of the continuing love and friendship of the most powerful sovereigns in Europe. Here, catch!” And he tossed the crown toward the priest who crowned me, who caught it with tears in his eyes.

  There were furious mutterings in the crowd but Varga dismissed them with another wave of his pistol, “Oh, shut up, you noisy, nasty, ungrateful, stupid stinky Albanians. This is for your own good. Look what happens when you’re left to run your own country—you end up with a circus troupe in charge! But be of good cheer, because you’ll soon have a lovely new king and a nice new government. Just as soon as we’ve shot the old ones.”