The Mule

by David Quantick

  ‘I see,’ I said. ‘Thanks for the advice.’

  ‘You’re welcome,’ said Frant. ‘Ah, here we are.’

  He rapped on the Perspex window separating the driver from his passengers.

  ‘Ici, s’il vous plaît,’ he shouted.

  The cab pulled over and Frant got out. I paid and followed suit. We were on a nasty grey street outside a grey-walled bar.

  ‘Where are we?’ I said.

  ‘Patience,’ said Frant irrelevantly, and went into the bar.

  The bar was empty apart from a couple of very old men who were engaged in conversation with two young girls. A CD jukebox played something with loud drums and louder accordions. Frant approached the bar.

  ‘Une bière et un apéritif,’ he said to the barman.

  ‘I don’t want a drink,’ I said.

  ‘The beer is not for you,’ said Frant. ‘It’s for my friend.’ Frant sat on a bar stool and sniffed his aperitif. ‘He should be here any minute,’ he said.

  ‘Who?’ I said.

  ‘I told you,’ said Frant, ‘my friend.’

  Frant was obviously enjoying being mysterious so I ordered a coffee and a sandwich and took out the notebook again.

  ‘I don’t know why you don’t just throw that away,’ said Frant.

  ‘It’s interesting,’ I said. ‘I never knew much about rock music, but it’s a whole fascinating world.’

  ‘I doubt that,’ said Frant. Just then his phone started ringing. Its ringtone was the Anvil Chorus from some opera or other and to my tired mind it sounded louder than the jukebox. As Frant fumbled for the mobile, the sound of an enormous choir singing along to clanging anvils mixed in with accordions created a special audio hell. Finally, to my intense relief, he got the thing out and answered it.

  ‘Yes?’ he said. ‘Oui?’ he added, presumably for clarity.

  I couldn’t hear a voice at the other end, but whatever it was saying, it wasn’t good. Frant’s eyebrows began a small Mexican wave, and his eyes narrowed.

  ‘Quoi?’ he said, ungrammatically. ‘Qu’est-ce que c’est que vous dites?’

  I had a feeling that Frant’s friend wasn’t going to come through. Frant swore a few times in French and English then put the phone away.

  ‘We are betrayed,’ he said.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said.

  ‘My friend has gone to the police.’

  ‘Excuse me?’ I said. ‘I beg your pardon? What?’

  ‘You heard me,’ said Frant.

  ‘I know,’ I said, ‘I’m just a bit confused. Are you telling me that this mysterious friend of yours, who half an hour ago was willing to provide us with tickets and visas and false passports and God knows what else—’

  ‘We don’t need passports,’ said Frant sullenly. ‘I explained

  that.’

  ‘Whatever,’ I said. ‘All that and now he’s turned round and gone to the police?’

  ‘Apparently they were leaning on him,’ Frant said.

  I said nothing. I wondered what kind of business Frant’s associate ran. Perhaps he was constantly running fake academics and fantasy writers in and out of the country on a kind of underground railway for idiots. More likely he had other, equally dubious sidelines and this had led the police to

  him.

  ‘So are you saying that this man has traded us in?’ I asked.

  ‘I presume so,’ said Frant. ‘And while I was careful not to mention the Von Fremdenplatz documents by name—’

  ‘Oh no,’ I said, perhaps a little too sarcastically, ‘you should never mention the Von Fremdenplatz documents by name.’

  ‘I fear the police may have our names.’

  ‘Oh great,’ I said.

  ‘Which of course they will have transmitted to the American authorities in case we decide to flee independently.’

  ‘You’re joking,’ I said. ‘So now we’re wanted by the police of two continents.’

  ‘It would appear so,’ said Frant.

  I took out my phone.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Frant said.

  ‘I’m turning myself in,’ I said. ‘I can’t take this any more. I’m tired, I’m on the edge of my nerves and I’m wanted by the police of two continents.’

  ‘Yes, you said that,’ said Frant absently. ‘I strongly advise you not to call the police.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘What could possibly be worse than the situation we are now in?’

  ‘Well, you could be in jail,’ Frant said.

  ‘I am going to be in jail,’ I said. ‘Of that there is no doubt.’

  ‘I hadn’t finished,’ said Frant. ‘You could be in jail and never know what happened to the girl.’

  I put the phone down on the bar. ‘What girl?’ I said, trying and failing to sound casual.

  ‘You know very well what girl,’ Frant said. ‘The girl with whom you are clearly obsessed. The girl whom you met in the bar, the girl whom you so clearly offended that she ran away, the girl for whom you are still carrying a torch and the girl for whom you have done all this and come so far.’

  I don’t think I had ever heard anyone say ‘whom’ so much in one sentence. ‘Are you saying,’ I said, ‘that you know what happened to her?’

  ‘No, I’m not saying that exactly,’ Frant said, and I picked up the phone again. ‘I do not know where she is. What I’m saying is I know where she was.’

  I put the phone away. ‘Please explain,’ I said.

  ‘First,’ said Frant, ‘I want you to tell me everything you know about her.’

  ‘Why?’ I said. ‘No,’ I added, after very little thought. I don’t know why, but I didn’t want Frant anywhere near her, if you see what I mean.

  ‘If you don’t want me to help you …’ Frant said.

  I didn’t want him to help me, he was right. On the other hand, what other hope did I have? I didn’t know her name, her whereabouts or anything. I had come this far and I was more in the dark than ever. The only lead I had was in the mind of the man sitting opposite me, a man who had unwittingly done his level best to ruin my life. I had no choice.

  ‘I met her in the bar, as I told you,’ I said. ‘We had a few drinks and went to my apartment.’

  ‘Where you made love?’ said Frant.

  I flinched. ‘No,’ I said, ‘if you must know.’

  ‘I must know,’ agreed Frant, ‘else how can I build up a picture of this girl?’

  ‘And when she was in the bathroom I was unable to stop myself sneaking a look at the book,’ I went on.

  ‘There is nothing to be ashamed of in that,’ said Frant. ‘If the discoverer of Nineveh and Tyre had been a stickler for manners, there would be no winged lions in the Musée Britannique.’

  ‘It’s not called that,’ I said.

  ‘When in Rome,’ said Frant. ‘You merely displayed a scholar’s instinct for the truth. If only’ – and here he turned to the window to stifle a sigh – ‘if only you had taken the actual book.’

  ‘Whatever you say,’ I said. ‘When I was discovered, she flew into a rage and left. I never saw her again.’

  ‘And since then you have been obsessed by her,’ said Frant. There was, for once, no hint of mockery in his voice. ‘But does it not occur to you that all this seems perhaps a touch too easy?’

  I was unable to think of anything easy about the last few days. Words like ‘hellishly difficult’ and ‘unpleasantly dangerous’ sprang to mind instead.

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said. I didn’t like the way this conversation was headed.

  ‘I mean,’ Frant said, ‘that with all due respect, here you are, a simple fellow, neither attractive nor unattractive, with few attributes of note …’

  I really didn’t like the way the conversation was going now.

  ‘And here is this woman whom you assure me is the essence of female-hood,’ said Frant, ‘virtually jumping over the other customers at the bar to bed you.’

  ‘We had both had a few drinks,’ I said defensively.
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  ‘No doubt,’ said Frant. ‘That would have been necessary. Nevertheless, this beauty, this modern siren, turns up in a bar with a book in a mysterious language that she cannot understand and who does she run into? A translator.’

  ‘I did wonder about that,’ I said.

  ‘A translator, moreover, as I have said, whom she finds desirable,’ said Frant. ‘Hearts and minds are engaged and, if you don’t object to the simile, the fish is hooked. You are the fish,’ he explained.

  I was shaken, although I was trying not to show it. But still nothing made sense.

  ‘Why, though?’ I said. ‘I couldn’t translate the book. It’s not my area.’

  ‘No,’ said Frant, ‘but I could, and you knew me.’

  ‘How would anyone know that?’ I said. ‘I have never told anybody about translating your work,’ I said. ‘And then there’s the notebook.’

  ‘Ah yes, the notebook,’ said Frant.

  ‘I suppose you’re going to tell me that the notebook is irrelevant,’ I said, ‘just some childish drivel that has nothing to do with the wonderful world of fantastical languages.’

  ‘It is in that sense irrelevant,’ said Frant. ‘However, in the matter of finding the girl, who is unarguably the key to all this, it is of the utmost relevance.’

  ‘But it’s just a collection of rock music reviews,’ I said.

  ‘Give it to me,’ Frant said.

  I looked at him askance.

  ‘Just give it to me,’ he said. ‘I’m not going to hurt it.’

  I took out the notebook and laid it on the counter, my hand covering it. Frant prised my hand off and from his pocket took out the folded print-out of the translated Alice.

  ‘The difference between you and me,’ he said, ‘is that you are a translator. You work with the much-handled grubby coin of everyday language. Familiar words and phrases from other tongues are your sole stock in trade. You never have to worry about the out-of-the-ordinary because you never come across it.’

  You obviously haven’t worked with Madame Ferber, I thought. ‘What are you trying to tell me?’ I said.

  ‘I, on the other hand, do not merely translate the fantastical, I write it,’ said Frant. ‘I have created words, and dialects, and entire languages. Every day for me is a challenge, every blank page a mountain to climb. A mountain to be populated moreover by gryphons and manticores and gallimaufries.’

  ‘Please get to the point,’ I said, wondering how gallimaufries had suddenly got into it.

  ‘What I’m saying is that I am expert at noticing things, whereas you are not,’ Frant said. ‘Look.’

  And he placed the Alice pages next to the notebook.

  ‘Pick them up,’ he said. ‘Study them. Compare.’

  I did. I skimmed over the Alice text as best I could. I flicked through the pages of the notebook, in which there were no new reviews or interviews.

  ‘No,’ I said, ‘I don’t see anything. The two things are completely different. One’s a printed document, a palimpsest of a famous text. The other is a collection of handwritten transcripts of music paper articles. They’re as different as chalk and cheese.’

  ‘Really?’ said Frant. ‘Perhaps to the untrained eye …’

  He took a metal pencil from his pocket, twiddled the end and drew a tiny circle on the Alice print-out. I peered at it. Inside the circle was a tiny symbol. I took a closer look. The symbol was a monogram, the letters CCLF.

  ‘So?’ I said.

  Frant sighed and opened the notebook. He took his propelling pencil and again drew a tiny circle, this time on the inside back cover of the notebook. I picked it up, even though this time I knew exactly what I was going to see. Sure enough, in slightly clearer letters – this not being a print-out – was a stamp bearing a tiny monogram. The letters CCLF.

  ‘A connection,’ said Frant, looking about as pleased with himself as it was possible for a man to be without actually bursting.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘All right. I’m impressed. But it’s useless if we don’t know what it means. And we don’t.’

  Frant really did now look as though he were about to

  explode.

  ‘You might not know what it means,’ he said. ‘But I do.’

  I sat for a moment, full of frustration, anger and hope.

  ‘Please tell me,’ I said, ‘what does it mean?’

  ‘The acronym?’ said Frant. ‘CCLF?’

  ‘Yes,’ I said, after unballing my fists. ‘What does it mean?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said Frant. ‘Combined Colleges Literary

  Facility.’

  I stared at him for a moment. To say that I was disappointed would be something of an understatement.

  ‘Is that it?’ I said. ‘Combined Colleges blah blah blah? That could be anything.’

  ‘It could be,’ said Frant. ‘But it’s not.’

  ‘Then what is it?’ I asked. ‘Please, just tell me. I’m all ears.’

  And Frant, for once, explained.

  The Combined Colleges Literary Facility, despite its grand name, was one of the smaller cogs in the wheel of academic organisation.

  ‘What the CCLF does is put scholars at College A in touch with departments relevant to their research at Colleges B and C,’ said Frant. ‘And while once this was an important remit, nowadays with the introduction of the internet and the placing of so much data online, the CCLF has become almost a vestigial office.’

  ‘And you worked there?’ I said.

  ‘I dropped in from time to time to offer suggestions and help out,’ said Frant, meaning, I guessed, that he did some part-time work to pay for his hats. ‘But despite my best efforts, the CCLF has no power to speak of and very little relevance to modern scholastic life. But it continues to exist.’

  ‘What’s it got to do with me, though?’ I said.

  ‘The girl,’ said Frant. ‘She has in her possession not one but two items bearing the facility stamp. One is a mere item of stationery – the notebook – while the other – the Alice – is arguably one of the most important documents of the modern age. To have access to one of them might be a coincidence, but to be in possession of both leads me to a solitary logical conclusion.’

  ‘What?’ I said, perhaps irritably.

  ‘This girl, whoever she is, works in the facility,’ said Frant. ‘That’s how she came by a notebook with the CCLF stamp in it.’

  ‘But what about the Alice?’

  ‘That is more of a mystery, but not such a large one. After all, the CCLF is an obscure facility, almost a dead-letter office. Documents and books must often lie uncollected and uncatalogued on shelves and in obscure corners for years on end. You can imagine the treasures, and the mundanities, littering such a place. It makes perfect sense to me that some secretary might have ordered up, say, copies of Alice’s Adventures Through the Looking-Glass and then found among them, like a cuckoo in the nest, our translated Alice. Not knowing what to do with it, our hypothetical secretary would have stuck it in a cupboard or at the bottom of a drawer.’

  Frant looked more pleased with himself than usual, clearly enjoying playing the detective.

  ‘The photographs,’ I said. ‘How do they fit in?’

  Frant gave me an odd look. ‘What photographs?’ he said.

  I was puzzled for a moment and then I realised that I hadn’t told him about the photographs of the girl. I could picture them as clearly as ever. For a moment I thought about telling Frant about the photographs, but in a second moment I decided not to. It had nothing to do with his stupid books, anyway.

  ‘Nothing,’ I said. ‘I mean, the photos in the Von Fremdenplatz. Maybe there’s a clue there.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Frant, and began a monologue about how nobody could figure out where the photographs in the Von Fremdenplatz documents came from, never having been traced to any one particular photographer or agency. It was all thrilling stuff if you’re not a suspect in several criminal enquiries, so after a couple of minutes I decided to ret
urn Frant to the real world.

  ‘Are you saying that we can find the girl?’ I interrupted.

  ‘I told you,’ Frant said irritably. ‘I only know where she was, not where she is. But yes, the CCLF is a small place, and there cannot be many engaged there. A personal visit should swiftly unveil her employment details.’

  ‘Only thing is,’ I said, ‘we can’t exactly pop by for a chat right now, can we? What with being on the lam and so forth.’

  ‘Nevertheless, we can call them when we have a quiet moment,’ said Frant. ‘I have, as you must infer, had many dealings with the CCLF, requesting transfers of books, and I can assure you, in that department at least, my name opens doors.’

  I was spending a lot of my time with Frant refraining from pointing things out, it seemed. Now I refrained from pointing out that his name might open doors but he had been unable to do what this girl had done, namely stumble across the translated Alice. Life’s little ironies, I reflected. Then again, I could easily imagine Frant stumbling across a jumbo edition of the Von Fremdenplatz documents, bound in luminous pink vellum with a neon sign saying HEY FRANTY! TAKE A LOOK AT THIS, and not recognising it for what it was.

  ‘OK,’ I said. ‘We can call them up when we have, as you say, a quiet moment, and ask them about the girl. Fine. The problem as I see it is this: we don’t have a quiet moment.’

  ‘We could have done it if you hadn’t talked all that nonsense about photographs,’ grumbled Frant. ‘But I concede your point. It is time to move on before the net closes around us.’

  I looked around the bar. The old guys with the two girls had gone. In their place were some frightened-looking young guys, American by their get-up, who obviously thought they’d wandered into the wrong part of town. A couple of tables away, a man with an eyepatch and one ear was doing nothing to disabuse them of this notion, as he leered away at the blondest of the guys.

  ‘I think we’re still in a quiet moment,’ I said.

  At that exact moment, the air was rent with the scream of sirens. A loudhailer sputtered something angry and official in French.

  ‘No longer, alas,’ said Frant.

  We froze in our seats. There was little point making a break for it, as the police would have covered all the exits. In a futile gesture, I pushed the copy of the Von Fremdenplatz even further under my coat. The door of the bar burst open and three or four French cops strode in, looking determined.