Crandolin

by Anna Tambour

  In his response to the admirably succinct report, Riley made an enemy to the end of days, but that is another story.

  “You’re gonna drive this train,” he said to the almost naked Valentin.

  “I can’t,” said Valentin, who truly, scout’s honour, couldn’t even drive a car.

  “I don’t care if you can’t,” said the ex-top brush salesman of the state of Nevada, “You WILL.” And he lurched one leg of his walker, forward.

  Roundup

  THE TWO MEN detailed to take the crate of salted sprats onto the 2:07 express threw the crate into the back of the big black wagon with a degree of viciousness. They got in the van and drove around the town for a while, to cool off.

  “The way we’re treated,” said one.

  “Pawns.”

  “Exactly.”

  They were good and steamed up by the time they remembered that they had to get this crate on the train. The time was 2:07 and they were somewhere on the outskirts of town.

  The siren helped clear the way till it broke, so the driver put his hand on the horn and drove faster, all over the road.

  “It’s probably too late,” said the other one, but they were young enough that neither truly believed that.

  “Salted fish!”

  “What do they take us for?”

  “Do you think the rumour’s right?”

  “Diamonds?”

  “Yes.”

  “Pawns,” said the one who’d already said that.

  Pedestrians scattered. The van almost overturned on a curve, but as the policeman turned the last corner, they knew they weren’t too late. That crowd of people clutched belongings in the way people do when each is ready to push his way into something that doesn’t care who gets in and is in a hurry to leave though it’s only just come. The train was late, but it could come any second.

  The driver hit the brake and two policemen jumped out, threw open the back doors and manhandled the heavy, sharp-edged wooden crate of salted fish out, till they held it balanced between them.

  Just as each policeman had loosened his grip because he thought the other guy held the weight, the kvass barrel across the street sprang an explosive leak. The sweet, golden, irrepressible ferment shot out everywhere, on screaming pedestrians and on the street itself, slippery with freshly falling snow.

  Then, whether it was one policeman or two will never be determined, but one or both dropped the case, which smashed open. In seconds, a helpful crowd had gathered. Helpful as in the posters of the people Working for a Common Cause, only in this case it looked like that for the first moments, but quickly the scene turned into a case of Rampant Capitalism as each person kneeling in the road sorting fish from salt began to want to be more helpful than the others.

  In the midst of this the late train came and went with no one, including the two policemen, being close enough to hear.

  The citizens were throwing fish at the feet of the policemen in their enthusiastic sorting of excess salt, from fish, a model scene of cooperation, even if there was individual initiative.

  The work went so fast that within two minutes, there was not a single fish lost under a foot or wheel. The policemen put the crate together, threw the fish back in and sealed it up.

  “Think we missed the train?” said one.

  “What does it matter?” said the other with a grin. “They’re not passengers. They’re fish.”

  They picked up the crate and walked into the station. It was empty, but something was wrong.

  “Hear that?”

  “What is it?”

  “You think it’s a train?”

  It was a curiously thin, high, steam-engine scream.

  “Drop it!” yelled the stationmaster, running towards them.

  “Get them!”

  Valentin hung out of the engine car, screaming for all he was worth. He was so terrified that he could do barely more than in those nightmares when you open your mouth and nothing comes out. A dozen hands were clutching at him from inside.

  “Pull him in! Pull him in, you idiots,” shouted someone with a deep voice. “Pull him iiiiiin!”

  Inside the office of the train station, the Railway Work Unit 894685 and the station master were still lustily arguing—about what, they couldn’t say—but when one of them opened the door to spit, he heard “iiiiiin!”—and that call to arms inadvertently saved Valentin.

  The whole work unit raced to the train, whooping and blowing whistles. In moments, two policeman also jumped on the train.

  To the cheers of the station master and his staff of five, and the tearful relief of Valentin, the policemen arrested 7 tourists who were to become the principles in a celebrated International Incident (but that is another story).

  The policemen were not only delighted with the diversion. They also delegated work, assigning the train station staff to hose down and sweep up the mess of slush mixed with muddy trampled fish guts. That left the policemen free to load the 7 prisoners in the back of the big black van. They took off, siren singing.

  The members of the Railway Work Unit had had a busy day. They took off en masse to discuss its events for an hour or two, just as our other group of interest sidled in.

  It was only a matter of moments before the train they had arrived in, was on its way, not on the regular, shiny track, as there was no time to waste, but on a rust-red track—a Track to the Unknown.

  The time? Nobody noticed.

  Brothers in love

  “AND SO I think that the nature of love . . . ”

  Burhanettin and Faldarolo never stopped talking while they walked, these two men of the world—each accompanying the other on his lover’s Quest.

  The donkey followed at Burhanettin’s heels.

  Far enough behind the donkey not to be kicked, Ekmel followed, a picture of disconsolation. Only his stubborn attachment to life kept him trudging onwards—where to? He suspected that the noisy twosome were travelling for the sake of it, but as long as he possessed his attachment to Life (or, he sometimes wondered, is my reason, fear of Death?), he had no choice but to travel with them.

  First of all, these were strange and frightening lands. He was penniless and he didn’t know the way home. If he ran away, he could be eaten by wild beasts or, if set upon by brigands, beaten up for sport.

  Secondly, it had been many months since that night when Burhanettin had stolen him, Ekmel pined for his honey stores. Without him to protect and love them, the place would now be a scene of horror, as plundered as a pharaoh’s tomb—prey to mice, rats, ants, bees, and his wife’s male relations. As for his customer list, by now it wouldn’t be worth a memory.

  So Ekmel plodded behind, slumped when they stopped, bore the disinterest both men bestowed upon him, and Burhanettin’s casual cruelty. Ekmel couldn’t puff himself up in self-importance, or spout advice about love. Indeed, he considered himself well worth despising—Ekmel: now an ex- honey merchant who owns only one thing—a donkey who snaps at me when it doesn’t turn its back on me and kick.

  She didn’t actively dislike him. Her viciousness was a side-effect of over-protectiveness, for she was a fanatical follower of a religion of her own invention. You could see it in her eyes, the pain of love, the passion. She was devoted, helplessly, to Burhanettin.

  “Burhanettin,” Ekmel mumbled. “The Evil One himself, in a hard sweetmaker’s shell.”

  The donkey followed Burhanettin like a dog, stopping when he did, walking when he walked on. Shading him from the rain. All her attentions, he ignored. Sure, he tossed her helva nougats, but he tossed them. He didn’t hold them in his hand for her to nuzzle and eat while pulling into her nostrils the scent of his personal, sweet perfume.

  Burhanettin no longer dropped his head for her to take a horn of his moustache between her teeth and pull, in gentle playfulness—her lover’s kiss. She couldn’t complain of bad treatment. He didn’t yell at her like he did at Ekmel. He never, of course, kicked her as was his wont with Ekmel. Still . . .


  Yea, she followed him. She looked after him, though he did not notice her. She listened to him, though his “dear friend” to her was now nought but a bittersweet memory. And every day her ears drooped lower till they stuck out on two sides in such a sign of sadness that anyone who cared—alas!

  Ahead,

  “My patience is unmeltable as frozen fat,” sang Burhanettin, “I will not give up to the unknown. I will never go home without you.”

  “I have no home without you,” said the other man, who never sang.

  “Your eyes are like coals,” sang Burhanettin.

  And on and on.

  To be truthful, the other man mostly nodded, and Burhanettin talked and sang. The donkey had no eyes for the other man, and Ekmel didn’t notice this fine point. He was too miserable. And by now, sick of the taste of helva.

  Faldarolo had never had a companion, either as a musician or as a friend. But this man had acted as a friend does, restoring Faldarolo to such health that he was in no time able to walk with fervour.

  And so they did, keeping each other company on each other’s Quest.

  As love was the cause, it was natural, Faldarolo realised, for Burhanettin to speak of love.

  Faldarolo protected his love with the greatest zeal. He never spoke of her specifically, considering that vulgar. And to him, it would be a great injustice to expose her to a man who blithely spoke all day of love, sang openly of it!

  Faldarolo had always been a man of the highest sensitivities, which allowed, or possibly forced upon him, his fine attunement to the delicate needs and wants of his Beloved.

  He distrusted the crude way that Burhanettin, master confectioner though he might be, sang of his love. And furthermore, Faldarolo was sickened by the way Burhanettin turned love into something to be talked about abstractly, like men in a café talk about singers. The more the sweetmaker talked—and he talked all the time that he didn’t sing (and his singing voice was not a joy to hear)—the more Faldarolo thought that ‘love’ as the sweetmaker knew it, was a drum that you hit, and you call that music. Sometimes Faldarolo burned to say, “Love! if you only knew it. You haven’t suffered!”

  But Burhanettin was a master of something, and Faldarolo respected professionalism. As for that frightening brigand—all wiry muscles and dark mutterings, Faldarolo thought him an odd servant for any master. The man had the look of a filthy cutthroat, and he didn’t deign to treat his master with deference, even after he was kicked into work. It was a wonder that Burhanettin hadn’t abandoned him. But this Burhanettin was kindness itself.

  Kind, but crude and repetitive. Sometimes Faldarolo envied the brigand, for the man didn’t have to pretend to listen to Burhanettin’s ceaseless chatter. The sweetmaker was a bore, and not just a bore, but a boring bore. The kind of bore you can’t drown out. The kind that after an hour, makes you feel that his words are drills, into your teeth, into your ears and skull. Yet even in the head-ringing agony of a Burhanettin-induced headache, the musician maintained an appearance of interest and alertness and brotherhood, all the while keeping his ears and eyes open to find what he was looking for but never spoke of in any way—the Master who could restore the bladder-pipe to health.

  Burhanettin was certainly chatty, though hiding behind loquaciousness was caution. He didn’t know how much he should trust this travelling suitor. What if, when Burhanettin found Her, this man would want her, too? Burhanettin noticed that this gentleman was very secretive—a mistake. For by the stars, it is folly to think you can hide anything from a master of 117 secret recipes!

  Burhanettin slid his eyes over to his companion’s face and figure. He is handsome as the day is long. The day he realised this was the longest day in summer.

  In this thought, Burhanettin wasn’t quite objective. Faldarolo was so handsome that women who had seen him through a filigree wall had been known to faint. But then Burhanettin would have been able to achieve that, too. Burhanettin, Master of 117 varieties of sweets for every taste, was a fool to forget the variety of tastes that make a swoon, but his thoughts of potential reasons for jealousy made him unobjective.

  So you know now the secret thoughts of these four travellers, but not their secret actions.

  Their actions were curious if anyone had watched, and it just so happened that two brothers did.

  The two brothers travelled as pilgrims. They were dressed in the garb that pilgrims wear who seek answers from the Sand Dragon in the Desert of the Cinnamologus. They sighed so much when anyone was within earshot, that even the most sighing pilgrim didn’t want to hear them sigh, and they were quickly deserted on the road—the better to trail those two elegantly garbed gentlemen and the one they feared—that frightening serving man. What a companion! His looks made each of the brothers quail, but each thought that if they watched for long enough, they might slip in while he was sleeping, or then again, he might murder the two gentlemen himself, when they could swoop down and take what he could not carry, for he’d have to carry it on his back, that much they saw.

  The brothers noted a chink in the armour of the serving man’s protection for the two otherwise well-guarded gentlemen. Every night when the big man in the front called a halt and the group stopped for the night, he walked a bit to the side and the donkey followed. The other gentleman walked to another side and sat down. The first man took something out of a basket on the donkey’s side—two pots. He opened them and peered into them and, even at long distance using their hands as tubes, the brothers could see that he secretly gloated. They argued about many things, but they agreed about that. It was the most blatant secret gloat that they’d ever seen, and possibly the greatest gloat in the land—a pot of gold at the end of the rainbow gloat. And there were two pots! And every night the second gentleman, the one dressed in magnificent, if very old-fashioned clothes, took something out of a large blue velvet bag that he carried slung around his neck. At first the older brother said that it was a preserved duck, but the younger brother said that no gentleman would carry a preserved duck slung from his neck.

  “Then it’s a goose.”

  “You’re a goose.”

  The older brother glared at the younger. “Then you say!”

  “It’s not a goose,” the younger blustered, though goose looked a pretty good guess. But who would carry a plucked, dead, bloody goose?

  “It’s a wand with rubies. See that shine?”

  “I’ll give you rubies.”

  They grappled silently in the dust for a while, and when they were winded, they sat up and watched companionably.

  “It’s precious.”

  “That’s for sure.”

  “We’ll find out soon enough, young one,” said the wiser one.

  “Water the steeds.”

  If you had been watching the two brothers, you might have laughed at him saying that, for the two beasts that carried the youths were dusty, shaggy, mangy bags of bones that you wouldn’t have wanted to saddle yourself with, for even their skins were bound to be worthless.

  But beneath those unprepossessing bodies beat—when the youths let them—the fastest, most daredevilishly adventure-loving donkey hooves in the land.

  Munifer’s bequest

  AS UNNOTICED as any unfortunate, Munifer tottered through the Great City’s gates.

  Sure, he could go to the city’s Quarter of Ill Repute, rent a room and make a new moustache. But that revelation of the hair that turned into an uncontrollable bush had been a shocking, unforgettable lesson: he’d been sold a bag of fakes!

  At another time, he would have been furious at the money he’d spent in his pleasure jaunts. Sometimes he’d wondered from one visit to another, how much the girls look alike, but—but this was not the time to be furious about that.

  Instead, he began to imagine, really feel, a crocodile’s jaws clasping closed around him. You might think that he would think to hide himself somewhere, but he was no hermit, and couldn’t imagine where. I have not even been a good man. When this thought burst upon hi
m, he began to think of the Life that Comes

  After the Last Breath.

  And that gave him an idea.

  “Sign here, Effendi,” said the notary.

  Munifer duly signed.

  The notary clapped his hands, and tea and water was brought.

  Munifer drank his scalding hot.

  The notary blew on his, all the easier to rest his eyes on this unusual public servant.

  “You are a man in full vigour,” he fished.

  The man in full vigour, though dressed in clothes that had never been well, sighed.

  “How generous to give away everything you possess,” said the notary.

  “To be generous is to be.” Munifer was sure there was something more to the saying, but he had always hated sayings, and all the pretence that is necessary in these meetings that pretend civility.

  “Loved. How true,” smiled the Notary. He prided himself on being an expert of the human soul, but this one was a puzzle he would have loved to take apart. Is this man a sinner of the Past, or of the Imminence? The notary licked his lips. Is this man before me planning a murder that might be famous tomorrow? He could also have asked himself How did this man come by his fortune? but he’d always loved murder more.

  Two sighs broke the thoughtful silence—Munifer’s, for somesuch reason; and the notary’s, for the regrets he bore. He’d always wanted to be a policeman, one who didn’t note, but caught.

  With more briskness than is normal in a notary, he got back to work.

  “The disbursement will commence immediately.”

  Munifer uncrossed his legs.

  The notary did not uncross his.

  Munifer had forgotten the notary, such was his grief. He had already handed the notary all his gold coins as part of the generosity (and for the bulk of the rest, he had told the notary where the rest of his fortune was, including the hoards—one thing about being Munifer. He had been paid so well that he had a problem thinking what to do with his wealth, so he had buried it like a squirrel).