by Walter Moers
Timber-time was also - let’s face it - a time for advertising and promotion. It was a regrettable but undeniable fact that Zamonian literature, too, was subject to the law of supply and demand. Bookholm, the city of innumerable books, was a particularly difficult place in which to drum up public interest in a new work, and timber-time readings were directed mainly to that end.
The Master Readers of Bookholm belonged to a guild that had existed for hundreds of years. Its rules and regulations were stringent and its entrance examinations rigorous. Professional readers had been through the mill and knew their trade, many of them being former actors or singers endowed with powerful vocal cords and exceptional dramatic skill. It was common knowledge that Bookholm produced the finest readers in Zamonia. When a text demanded it, their voices effortlessly alternated between the highest soprano and the deepest bass. They could sing extempore like nightingales, howl like werewolves, snarl like wildcats and hiss like hobgoblins. They could fill their audiences with terror or move them to hysterical laughter.
All Zamonian authors dreamt of having their work read aloud by the Master Readers of Bookholm, but not all were granted that privilege. The Master Readers were a capricious, choosy bunch, and any writer spurned by them was considered to be second-rate, no matter how many prizes he had won or books he had sold.
I paused in front of a slab of black slate on which the evening’s readings were listed in chalk. I could choose between Infanticide by Hethlebem Deroh, Air Face by Rabocca Orkan, Rimidalv Vokoban’s Love and the Generation Gap, and Thanks But No Thanks by Goliath Ghork. Other offerings included The House of a Hundred Feet, Whispers and Shadows, Gone with the Tornado, A Pig for Two Pyras and The Unhilarious Sight Gag - and all in a single street, together with twenty other not quite so high-grade readings for which no charge was made, some of them even with free beer thrown in.
I darted from window to window, peering in at all the people gathered round the crackling fires with teacups or wineglasses in their hands, filled with eager anticipation. Ought I really to pass up such an opportunity for a trombophone concert?
‘Timber-time shmimber-time!’ Pfistomel Smyke’s voice re-echoed in my head. ‘Timber-time in Bookholm is a nightly occurrence. You won’t get to hear a performance by the Murkholm Trombophone Orchestra every day of the week.’
It was true: timber-time really was a nightly occurrence in Bookholm and I had every intention of staying on for a while. Smyke’s allusions to the concert had aroused my curiosity. ‘An event’, he’d called it, ‘not a tourist attraction.’ That I found particularly appealing for the very reason that I myself was a tourist. Timber-time was something for the masses; I was destined for higher things, having been personally invited by one of the city’s most distinguished inhabitants. I tore myself away from the café windows and almost instinctively headed in the direction of the Municipal Gardens.
The sun had set some time ago, the air was fresh and cool. I shivered a little, having forgotten to bring a warm shawl as the invitation advised. Almost everyone else was wearing one, which made me feel even more out of place, especially as I was the only Lindworm in the audience. The concertgoers were seated in the open air on folding chairs arranged in long rows in front of a conchiform stage. I could have been seated beside a roaring fire in some warm café or bookstore, a free glass of mulled wine in my hand, listening to some legendary performer reading aloud from A Pig for Two Pyras - a novel in which the subject of missed opportunities was addressed with exceptional skill.
Missed opportunities, I thought ruefully. At that moment I was missing a reading in three voices of The Unhilarious Sight Gag, the sensationally amusing memoirs of the great humorist Ribbald Larph, or a feast of verse by Zepp Hippo, a poet I idolised. Instead of that I was waiting, frozen stiff, for a concert of music for wind instruments that would probably bore me even stiffer. If it didn’t begin this minute I would simply stand up and - ah, the musicians were filing onto the stage at last! But my heart sank still further at the sight of them. I’d quite forgotten: they were Murkholmers - musicians from Murkholm, of all places! Not that I subscribed to the prejudices circulating about the inhabitants of that city, it was a well-known fact that the climate prevailing there tended to make them more melancholy than most. They were a bunch of depressive individuals afflicted with a deep-rooted death wish. They were even credited with criminal activities such as luring ships to their doom and looting them. No lively or uplifting music was to be expected from performers like these.
Nor was the Murkholmers’ mere appearance calculated to raise my spirits. What with their spongy, bloated faces, pallid skin and mournful eyes, they resembled rain clouds stuffed into black suits. They gazed sadly at the audience as if they might burst into tears or commit collective suicide at any moment. Feeling more and more as if I were attending a wake, I impatiently scanned the audience. Then I caught sight of Ahmed ben Kibitzer in the front row, his yellow eyes staring at me reproachfully, and seated beside him was Inazia Anazazi, the Uggly from that appalling bookshop! She was talking vehemently to Kibitzer and pointing an accusing finger at me. I sank still deeper into my uncomfortable folding chair. This promised to be a bundle of laughs.
The concert began with a toe-curling overture. The musicians blew out their cheeks, which made them look even more froglike, and the opening notes emerged from their instruments in a series of discordant toots utterly devoid of harmony.6 They even seemed to be playing out of tune on purpose, and many of them produced nothing but breathy sounds. I could scarcely believe my ears. Their playing was not only bad, it was a deliberate insult to their audience and, as far as I was concerned, the last straw.
I gathered my cloak together and was just about to ask my immediate neighbour to let me pass when the first harmonies came rippling through the chilly air and a few of the musicians played duets. The orchestra had merely been tuning up, it seemed, so I decided to give it another chance.
One trombophonist struck up an extremely charming, airy theme and the others joined in by degrees. All of a sudden they sounded perfectly coordinated. I looked around to see how my fellow concertgoers were responding: they had all closed their eyes and were swaying in time to the music. Perhaps this was good form here - at least it spared one the sight of those doleful, froglike faces - so I shut my eyes likewise and concentrated on the music.
In my mind’s eye I saw a lively swarm of Elf Wasps cavort through the air across an undulating landscape bathed in spring sunshine. The trombophone theme that conjured up the vision of those fluttering insects sounded almost harplike, it was so ethereal and melodious. The wasps formed up like dancers, and at each little variation in the music the scene changed: brimstone butterflies came flying along, a flock of hummingbirds joined in the Elf Wasps’ dance, dandelion seeds whirled through the air. I was overcome by springtime emotions and my black mood was blown away - in the literal sense. One of the trombophones emitted a new note, clear as a bell, and a many-coloured rainbow arched across the landscape.
I opened my eyes, somewhat embarrassed by the sentimental scenes that were flitting through my head. Rather sheepishly I looked around to see if anyone had noticed my brief spell of rapture. A surprising sight met my eyes: the entire audience was in a state of collective ecstasy. Everyone was humming the melodies and swaying in time to them like live metronomes. Then - quite without warning - the trombophonists lowered their instruments and the concertgoers awoke from their trance. Throats were cleared, feet shuffled, the musicians cleaned out their mouthpieces with elongated bottle brushes and leafed through their scores. And that hadn’t even been the overture. The concert itself had yet to begin.
The Trombophone Concert
An exceptionally fat Murkholmer rose to his feet, drew a deep breath, blew a clear note and held it.
For a long time.
A very long time.
A sensationally, impossibly long time from the pulmonary aspect. Without replenishing his lungs, without allowing the note to waver
or fade, he held it for minutes on end. It wasn’t a particularly remarkable note, neither low nor high but middling.
Shutting my eyes again, I saw an endless, absolutely straight ray of black light traversing an empty white void. I knew at the same time - don’t ask me how, dear readers! - that this was the legendary Baysvillean Primal Note, the first officially recognised note in Zamonian musical history.
As it rang in my ears, warm as milk, a story surfaced in my mind. A memory from my schooldays? A vague recollection of something I’d read? It was the legend of the primal note which the then ruler of Baysville, Prince Orian, had commissioned his court musicians to discover. In accordance with his wishes, this note was to form the basis of all Zamonian music, the yardstick against which all future compositions and performances were to be measured. Neither pretentious nor unduly self-effacing, neither radical nor borderline, it had to be a note which could - without sounding vulgar - be appreciated by all and sundry. Orian gave orders for this note to be found without delay.
The court musicians of Baysville fanned out in all directions and tested all manner of notes from the ear-splitting crash of a blacksmith’s hammer on the anvil to the mute cry of fear uttered by an oyster whose shell has been prised open. But they were all either too loud or too soft, too piercing or too muffled, too high or too low, too thin or too full, too clear or too dull. The court musicians were in despair because their prince was notoriously merciless by nature. Any underlings who failed to obey his orders promptly enough were made to eat slivers of Florinthian glass.
At the end of his tether, one of the court musicians passed a house from whose windows was issuing just the note he and his colleagues had been looking for: neither too high nor too low, but clear, sustained and steady as a rock. A wholly irreproachable, straightforward note on which whole symphonies could be constructed.
The court musician, a young unmarried Norselander with a fine physique, entered the house. There he found a beautiful girl Norselander - likewise blessed with a perfect figure - playing on a recorder. He fell madly in love with her, just as she did with him, and took his beloved to see the prince, who, having heard her play the note in question on her recorder, proclaimed that the primal note had been found and officially recognised.
But that wasn’t the end of the matter, as you, dear readers, have doubtless guessed, for all Zamonian legends must have an unhappy ending. The prince, who also fell in love with the girl, made his rival eat a plateful of glass daggers which choked him to death on his own blood. The girl was so overcome with grief that she swallowed several sharp-edged objects and also died a most atrocious death. Last of all, smitten with an unendurable sense of guilt, Prince Orian of Baysville devoured his own crown jewels and likewise died in agony, a victim of severe internal bleeding. Ever since then, however, the primal note has formed the basis of all Zamonian music.
It was this brief but highly dramatic tale that unfolded before my mind’s eye as vividly as a theatrical production, having been summoned up by that sustained note on the trombophone, which now faded gradually away.
I opened my eyes. The fat instrumentalist removed the trombophone from his lips and sat down. I leant back in my chair. It was incredible: music capable of conveying a narrative without words! This was better than being read to; it was also better than any traditional music. Yes, it was a new artistic discipline: literary music!
Five more trombophonists rose to their feet. They quickly filled their lungs and blew five notes, only one apiece and always in the same order. It was a pentatonic scale, the simplest form of early music, the beginning of all tonal sequences, primitive but pure, and as touching as a delightful children’s song, as the singing of our distant ancestors.
Closing my eyes once more, I was immediately confronted by a primeval panorama. The red glare of the setting sun was bathing the volcanic landscape in a glow that made the rocks look like molten lava. And rocks were all there was; nothing - not a single living creature, not even a plant - obtruded its presence on the pure geology. Profound serenity overcame me. The sun had quickly set and the rocks were now overarched by a dark-blue sky. Little by little, new notes infiltrated the trombophonists’ playing, and at each one a star flared up in the sky, white and sparkling. Meteors went hissing through the darkness as the musicians proceeded to manipulate their valves more subtly still. Then a deep bass note rang out and an entire comet thundered across my imaginary firmament, trailing a pale-green tail. Trombophone after trombophone joined in, and the more the music swelled the greater the agglomerations of incandescent suns became until they formed whole galaxies and I knew, all at once, what kind of music was being played.
It was astronomical systemic polyphony, a bizarre aberration in the musical history of our continent ordained by an early Zamonian dictator named Slendro Pellogg the Enlightened. Feeling that his authority was threatened by the unbridled creative freedom inherent in the art of music, that pathologically bureaucratic despot aspired to subject it to as strict a set of rules as possible. Because the cosmic order struck him as the most suitable system, Pellogg decreed that the whole of Zamonian music should conform to the music of the spheres. As a result, musicians were compelled to spend years modifying and retuning their instruments in accordance with celestial maps and constellations, cometary orbits and phases of the moon. This musical and astronomical anomaly did not, of course, give birth to any cosmically harmonious music. Instead, because art and astronomy were mutually incompatible, it produced an insufferable din. To cut an unedifying story short, the leading musicians of the period stormed the tyrant’s palace and stabbed him to death with their tuning forks.
All this my mind’s eye saw enacted in images as clear as crystal: Pellogg staggered through the grounds of his palace, bleeding from dozens of tuning-fork wounds, and ended by tumbling into a goldfish pond whose waters turned pink. The trombophone music swelled to an almost unbearable cacophony and from the despot’s corpse my gaze once more travelled upwards to the sky above, where chaos raged, planets and stars danced wildly to the blare of the orchestra, and the entire universe became distorted into a maelstrom of stars and planets that went whirling off into a black void. At that moment the trombophone music abruptly ceased.
My eyes shot open. I was seated on the very edge of my chair, panting and bathed in sweat despite the chill evening air.
All the concertgoers were talking excitedly. I saw the Uggly dabbing Kibitzer’s brow.
‘That was simply magnificent,’ gasped the dwarf beside me. ‘I’ve heard it dozens of times and it still works. No, what am I saying? It gets better and better!’
‘It becomes stronger every time, the sensation of being whirled along in a vortex of stars,’ someone behind me exclaimed. ‘For one glorious moment I thought I was a star myself!’
It was incredible: we had all shared the same vision. These concertgoers were obviously regular attenders who heard the same music, saw the same images and dreamt the same stories again and again. Had I not been there myself, I would never have believed such a form of artistic mediation possible. Then, if not before, I ceased to regret having come and resolved to thank Pfistomel Smyke in person the next morning.
The orchestra struck up once more. The notes sounded flutelike, almost nasal, and I readily shut my eyes. I saw granite castles silhouetted against grey, overcast skies; pennants fluttering in the wind above mounds of slain warriors clad in blood-encrusted armour; quarrelsome ravens perched on gibbets with corpses dangling from them; charred skeletons on smouldering pyres. I had evidently been transported to the Zamonian Middle Ages.
It was a mystery to me how the musicians managed to coax such notes from their trombophones. They sounded like the primitive wind and string instruments of those days: squawks and monotonous wails, discordant caterwauling and the mournful drone of bagpipes. All at once I was looking out across a delightful landscape, an endless expanse of vineyards under a radiant summer sky, and in their midst a mountain that resembled the cloven skul
l of a giant filled with dark water.
This could only be Grapefields, Zamonia’s largest wine-growing area, and the mountain was the Gargyllian Bollogg’s Skull. Once again I knew something without knowing how I had learnt it. This was the story of Ilfo Guzzard and his legendary Comet Wine. Until then I had known it only through the medium of Inka Almira Rierre’s poem ‘Comet Wine’, but now my brain became filled with all the details of that gruesome medieval drama.
Once every thousand years the Lindenhoop Comet travels through our solar system and comes so close to our planet that its light transforms a whole summer into one long, brilliantly illuminated day.
Ilfo Guzzard, the most influential wine grower of the Zamonian Middle Ages, owner of numerous vineyards in Grapefields and an amateur alchemist, was convinced that vines planted shortly before this nightless summer were bound to yield a wine more mature than any that had ever been bottled. In short, he aimed to produce a Comet Wine.
The comet drew nearer, the longest of all days dawned, and the heat of the sun and the light from that celestial body lent Ilfo’s vines a quality surpassing all his expectations. They grew far more quickly and their grapes attained the size of watermelons - the pickers had to pluck them with both hands, one at a time, and carry them, groaning, to the wine press. Their juice was viscous and heavy, full-bodied and delicious, and the wine they yielded was the best of all time. And Ilfo Guzzard possessed a thousand barrels of it! One day he summoned all his employees - vine pruners and grape merchants, planters and pickers and coopers - to a meeting in his courtyard. Then the gates were shut. Taking an axe, Ilfo proceeded to chop holes in every last barrel. His employees thought he had lost his wits and tried to restrain him, but Ilfo would not be restrained. He didn’t rest until the last barrel was smashed, the last drop had seeped into the ground and the whole courtyard was awash with Comet Wine.