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

by Andrew Nicoll

  “So we can get out?” said the Professor.

  “We need to talk about that.” I gave the knees of my trousers a good brush. “There’s one window in one side of the tower but I can’t see out of it. Well, I can see out, but I can’t see down so I don’t know what’s outside. I think I could get the window open, but we need to think about that carefully. There are four sides to the tower. Three of them look down into the castle courtyard and only one of them faces out to the town, so we need to consider—”

  “Forgive me, but there is nothing to consider,” said Arbuthnot.

  “We have no choice,” said Kemali.

  The Professor shook his head. “If you attract their attention by breaking the window, they will shoot us.”

  “But they’re going to shoot us anyway,” said Sarah. They were finishing one another’s sentences again.

  I looked at Max.

  “Whatever you think best, mate.” That was all he said. My mate Max.

  I knew what I was going to do. There was no choice. They were right, even if Max had to stay. Even if I had to stay with him. “Max,” I said, “I need to go in again, backward this time.”

  He stood there like a rock with his arms held out while I did a handstand on his upturned palms. By God he was strong, but so was I in my way. I stayed there, straight as a candle, as Max raised his arms up to shoulder height and then higher still until he was standing with his arms raised high over his head and me, upside down above him, as if he was reaching up to a mirror or I was reaching down to one. I found the lip of the passage with the toe of my boot. I tipped and tilted. I folded my body into the tunnel and I began to crawl backward. Max gave a relieved grunt as my weight came off his palms. He wouldn’t have done that five years before.

  I crawled. I scraped my palms. I wished I’d brought my gloves. I scraped my knees. I crawled. I crawled backward and uphill until my boots bumped the window and then I kept on crawling, with my feet resting against the glass so my legs bent—as far as they could in that narrow place—and everything was tensed up and then I started to push. The glass cracked like a breaking bone. I kept on pressing. The glass broke—plink. Inside the tunnel the air was suddenly fresher. I felt for the break in the glass with the tip of my toe and tapped at it, over and over, a dozen tiny kicks, until it fell out. I poked my toe into the gap and carefully worked it round the edge. More tiny kicks. I knew I was going to have to kick that window right out of the frame and I wanted all the glass gone. What could have been sillier than to stick myself in the leg and bleed to death, upside down in that little shaft, with all my friends corked up inside? So I took my time. Four panes, each one carefully kicked out and cleared away and each one scattering a hundred sparkling, tinkling bits of glass out into the sky and down to the ground and yet nobody came. There was no shout of alarm, no sound of angry Austrian sailors running up the stairs to come and shoot me in my tunnel, and that made me feel good. They hadn’t seen. They hadn’t noticed.

  All the glass was gone. I braced myself. I kicked backward—hard, again and again. The wood splintered and I kept kicking until there was nothing left to kick.

  It was time to leave. I began to crawl backward again. My foot caught on what was left of the window. I dragged my toe over it. And the other one. Both my boots were sticking out into the air and the weight was pressing on my knees as I crept up the rough stone tunnel. Backward a little further. My knees came out. I kept on wriggling and pushing, working against the stone walls with my hands, flapping like a landed fish. A loose nail from the broken window frame caught in my trousers and I felt them rip but I kept on, bouncing my thighs out into empty space until at last I had my backside sticking out the window with the broken window frame and the edge of the stone wall digging into me. It wasn’t comfortable, but at least it meant I could bend my legs.

  I lay there, half in and half out of the window, rough stone and bits of broken wood sticking into my guts, my ass hanging out into fresh air, kicking at the wall, trying to find a toehold, gradually sliding backward into nothing, with those jagged bits of timber clawing at me as I went. And there was nothing there. There was absolutely nothing to stand on but I kept on squirming my way backward out of the window, more out of desperation than hope, because if I couldn’t find a way to get Sarah out of there, then I might as well throw myself off the tower and pray that I hit Varga on the way down.

  My shoulders were through the gap. There was nothing keeping me from falling into the air but my elbows and the flats of my hands and by now I was sliding, properly sliding, out the window. I caught hold of the bottom of the window frame with my fingertips and I wished like blazes that I’d worn my fancy gloves, but there was still nothing to stand on. So I did the only thing I could do.

  I let go and I fell for about a hundred years or the time that it took to drop a hand’s breadth, where I clung to the window ledge and dangled, reaching out with my toes—and they found something solid. There was something there.

  I pulled myself up again a little, put my feet flat against the wall and hung there, like a monkey, looking down between my legs to get the lie of the land, and there it was—one of those little, pointless bits of masonry they put into old buildings and, if anybody ever knew why, he’s long dead. It was only a tiny ribbon of stonework and it stuck out from the wall by about half the width of a shoe, those parts where it hadn’t already dropped off on to the heads of unsuspecting Albanoks, but half the width of a shoe is about three times the width of a slack rope. For a man like me that was as good as the king’s highway. I put my feet down on the ledge and tested my weight on it. It held, so I turned round. Hands together on the window ledge, I let go with my left, held my weight on my right and swung round so my toes, which were pointing in, were pointing out and my back, which had been facing thin air, was against the wall.

  I hung there quite comfortably, with my heels on the ledge, supporting myself against the castle wall. It was nothing for a bloke like me. In fact, if anybody had bothered to organize the Albanian All-comers Standing-on-a-Ledge Championships, I reckon I could probably have reached the finals. That sort of thing is bread and butter for a circus acrobat. Anyway, I surveyed the situation.

  Luckily I was on the one side of the tower that faced outside the castle. To my left I could see the other tower and, streaming out from it, high above and far away downwind, like a kite on a string, the glinting silver shape of the tethered Zeppelin.

  The whole town was spread out in front of me: the mansions of the very finest families, the trees along the avenues, the palace that had been mine for a night, all the broken jumbled rooftops, all the little winding streets tumbling down the hill to the harbor and Varga’s yacht and the blue sea and the gulls, flying free, all the way to the edge of the world. And I could see how to get there. The wall beneath me was cracked and broken with odd stones missing here and others standing proud there. I could reach them. I could plan a route all the way down to the trees that crowded round the bottom of the tower, then branch to branch down to the bushes at the bottom and I could wait there until dark and I could get away. I could get away. But the others couldn’t. Maybe Arbuthnot could, but not Max or the Professor or Kemali and not Sarah. She couldn’t escape. I turned round and I climbed back up the wall. I climbed so high that I could stand on the broken window ledge and breathe, big breaths that filled my lungs while the salt wind blew in from the sea and shook my magnificent whiskers and the clouds raced past and the sun shone and the blood sang in my veins and the birds sang.

  “Goodbye,” I said, and I swung my legs up and I dropped into the tunnel, down and back into the cell.

  They were all gathered round the bottom of the shaft, waiting, hopefully and Max was there to catch me by the boots and lower me down to the floor.

  And then they saw my face. “There’s no way out,” I said. “I’m sorry. I tried my best, but there is no way out. I’m sorry. We’ll think of something else.”

  We didn’t think of anything else. T
he Professor tapped round the walls with his cane, measuring the place, but he didn’t find any secret passages, and Arbuthnot kicked the door a couple of times but the guards always answered and, even if they hadn’t, it wouldn’t have mattered since we were stuck on the wrong side of a thick lump of wood. It didn’t take long to run out of ideas and, after that, well, there was really only one thing to think about and we tried hard not to think about that.

  All the light in the room came from the shaft that led to the window. Eventually, because there was nothing else to do, we sat down on the floor and watched that odd yellow rectangle moving across the opposite wall. It crept along like the moving finger that terrified that bloke in the Bible, changing shape as it went, growing in brightness as the shadows darkened and deepened in the rest of the room until, at the end, there was just a single point of light down in the corner and we all sat there, as if we were gathered round a deathbed, and watched it go out. Hope went with it. In the sudden dark of the cell we could hear the border guards of Right Now calling out and telling us to have our papers ready for inspection and we knew that, when that spot of light appeared again on the wall, it would be the end.

  After a bit Kemali said, “From the moment we raised the flag of Skanderbeg, I knew in my heart it could end in only one way. It doesn’t matter. Albania will be free. I know that. Maybe tomorrow I will do one more thing to help make her free. And I think we could have chosen a far worse king for my country; indeed, I am certain that a far worse king has been chosen for her now. I regret nothing.”

  Arbuthnot sighed. “God save us from enthusiastic amateurs. Does anyone mind if I smoke?” and before anybody could answer, he struck a match and lit a cigarette. “Anyone else? I think I have enough to go round. And one for the morning.”

  “I was saving my cigar,” Kemali said. “But I think I may smoke it a little with you. For the company. I have matches.”

  “I’d take a smoke if you had one to spare,” said Max.

  “If I may,” said the Professor.

  I saw their faces in the flare of the match, the deep, velvet black of a cellar darkness behind them like an Old Master painting and the line of Sarah’s nose and the curve of her cheek where she lay with her head in the crook of my arm and a narrow band of light that marked the edge of her beautiful body and I thought about the bullets tearing into her and the match went out.

  She kissed me then in the dark, very gently and sweetly, and we went away together to a corner and held each other. That was all. On the other side of the room we saw those three little red lamps of burning tobacco and they might have been stars or the lights of ships so far away were they, so black was it, and we kissed and we kissed like kids. That was all.

  “You went outside,” Sarah whispered.

  “No, I didn’t. There’s no way out.”

  “Yes, there is. You went in feet first when Max lifted you in and you came out feet first when he lifted you out. There isn’t room to turn around in the tunnel so you must have been outside.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Stop trying to think up a lie. I’m clever enough to spot which way your toes were pointing so I’m clever enough to spot a lie.”

  “I got outside, but there’s no way down.”

  “No way down for you or no way down for an old cripple and a girl like me?”

  “My darling, there is no way down.”

  “Otto, you could have gone. You should have gone.”

  “You know I couldn’t. You know that, don’t you? And you know why.”

  Then she kissed me some more. “Yes, Otto, I know. Because there is no way down. Not for me.”

  “And not for me either.”

  “But what about the others?”

  “Max would never fit in the tunnel. Kemali would never make it. Arbuthnot might have one chance in a hundred but not in the dark. I’ll tell him in the morning if I must, but there’s no need. Something will turn up before then. Tifty will come to get us, just you wait and see.”

  Poor kid. She wept and trembled against me then, very quietly, trying not to make a fuss, hiding her face in my shirt in the merciful darkness while my silent tears rolled down and soaked my magnificent whiskers.

  Time passed. It does. Whether we want it to stay so a moment of joy can last forever or hurry away so that pain can be past, whether we want to delay the moment of parting or make Christmas come a day early, nothing changes it. Time passed. It passed for us at the same ticking pace that it passed for that little bastard Varga down in the dungeon drinking his way through my coronation champagne. Time passed and the room grew chill. The wind picked up and began to howl down the shaft from the window, whistling and moaning as it came and as cold as the moon.

  “The Bura,” said the Professor.

  He was standing behind me as I looked up the shaft watching the clouds race by, all torn and scrappy and silvered with moonlight, and I knew he was doing that thing again, where his head would click like one of those old-fashioned clockwork dolls and a stream of words would fall out.

  “The Bura is a violent katabatic wind—from the Greek for ‘downhill’—observed in the evening, which blows down the eastern side of the Adriatic. It is produced by cold air from inland mountains rushing toward the relatively warmer coastal areas, usually in the winter months, although it can arise unexpectedly, depending on weather conditions, threatening shipping and causing structural damage to buildings.”

  And, just then, just when the Professor’s clockwork ran down, a black line like a pencil score appeared across the clouds, just for a moment, appeared and disappeared again with a sound like a whip crack.

  “Poor Zogolli,” Kemali said. “They will be sure to shoot him too, once they find out that he knows only half the combination to the vault. Still, he may be warmer than this when they do it.”

  “And we will be still colder before too long,” said the Professor, and then it happened again, that dark line across the sky and the whistling sound of a whiplash, as if the clouds were ripping open.

  “Find those handcuffs,” I said. “They’re on the floor someplace. Use your matches if you have to. Use them all up—you won’t need them tomorrow. We’re getting out of here!”

  “There’s no need.” The Professor made a sweep of the floor with the tip of his cane. “I think these are what you want,” and there they were rattling on the stone floor, glinting like the pennies on a dead man’s eyes. “But you said there was no way out.”

  “There was no way out, but now there is. Sarah will explain. But it doesn’t matter any more. I’m getting out and I’m coming back. Max, get me into that hole. Sarah—I’m coming back! I’m coming back!”

  I went down the tunnel like a ferret down a rabbit hole, climbing and crawling as fast as I could go, with the handcuffs dangling from my teeth and scraping off the stones as I went.

  The wind was something ferocious—and colder than a witch’s tits—but up I went, spidering my way along the tunnel, toes and elbows, knees and fingers, until I reached the broken window frame.

  But I didn’t stop there. I waited, just inside the lip of the tunnel, inside the blackness, looking out at the angry clouds, and sure enough the whip crack came again—loud as a gunshot this time and so close that I felt the wind of it in my face.

  I flinched before it, but the next moment I squirmed forward so half my body was sticking out of the window, my arms held in front of me, my back arched, looking up to the furious sky, and then I could see it. High above me I could see the Zeppelin, pitching and yawing at the end of her tether like a salmon on a line as the Bura shrieked in my ears. It must have been hellish up there. They had let out their ropes so the machine rose clear of the castle towers, but they did not dare cast off into the teeth of that storm and now the Zeppelin was bouncing around up there, down by the nose as the rope tightened and slackened and swung. The next time that rope went past my window I was going to be ready for it, and it was coming, cutting through the air like a saber, hi
ssing like a cobra. I could hear it, bouncing and scraping off the castle wall down there in the dark, and then it stopped, suddenly, with a violin-string twang, and I knew the cable had snagged on that little bit of stonework where I stood earlier in the day, and I knew it wasn’t going to stick.

  I’m telling you this like it took forever. I’m telling you this like I stopped to think about it, like I measured up all the lines and the distances and the angles, but that’s not what it’s like for a man like me. Men like me, we’re used to ropes, we’re used to jumping and throwing and catching, we’re used to dangling out over a gap, we’re used to having our lives hanging by a thread, we’re used to walking in the hours between heartbeats and falling and reaching out and catching on and flying and flying and flying.

  I leaned forward to catch the rope. I leaned forward and I leaned a little more and a little further and then the rope came free and it hit me in the chest with all the force of a bloody train. I came out of that window like a worm wriggling on a hook, soaring upward as the line went tight and, every moment, hanging on like grim death. I’m not being funny, but a lesser man could never have done it. Max was strong enough but he was too big. He couldn’t have got through the tunnel and, anyway, he wasn’t fast enough, he wasn’t agile enough. I was quick and I was strong and, more than anything else, I thought of it. Not that it was my idea, but I’d seen it done in a show in Vienna once, although that was over a cage of tigers but no higher than the dress circle. The point is, I remembered.

  Hanging there on the cable, biting down on the chain of those handcuffs, I wished to God I hadn’t. The pain was monstrous. The wind had gone out of me, my chest was burning with the sting of the rope’s blow and a couple of ribs must have gone. I knew when the rope stopped moving it was going to hurt like a bastard, and it did. Have you ever played with your mother’s beads? Ever taken one end of the string in each hand and pulled it tight? Then you know that when you do that, all the beads bounce on the string, and that’s what happened to me. I bounced on the string like a bead. It was hell—like getting beaten with red-hot pokers—but I clung on like a limpet. Nothing gives a man strength like terror does. I was hanging on a bit of tarry rope four stories up, dangling over a castle ditch in a howling gale with a giant airship rolling about in the sky above me and, at the other end of the rope, the way out for me and my friends. I could see it down there, the top of the other tower where they had anchored the Zeppelin with a lamp to mark it, flaring in the gale. I was up and I had to get down.