Hugh Cook: The Wazir and the Witch

So Chegory and Olivia had the Crab to themselves.

Chegory regularly brought the Crab those meals cooked for it by the master chef Pelagius Zozimus, and Chegory relayed to the kitchen any demands the Crab might have with respect to its menu.

And Olivia adorned the Crab in the manner described above, polished the unadorned parts of the Crab’s carapace with coconut oil, and persuaded Shabble to act as a globular mirror so the Crab could admire its changed appearance.

For her own amusement, Olivia recovered the frail shells of lesser crabs from the shore, and arranged them in niches around the cave ‘so you can pretend they’re statues of your mummy and daddy and all your brother crabs and sister crabs’. Often she sat beside the Crab, comfortably embraced by Chegory’s arms, and made up stories about those lesser crabs, telling of their loves and lusts, their griefs and sorrows, their victories and triumphs, their counters with malicious seagulls and hungry octopuses, their heroic quests and territorial disputes, and their secret love for the great Crab of the island of Jod.

The Ashdan lass also made the Crab a set of wind-chimes out of coconut twine and cards of copper stolen from the Analytical Institute. She even got the Crab its own drum, in case it wanted to participate in the latest youth cult; and, since the Crab had no hands, Olivia got the thing its very own drumstick.

‘Or,’ she said, ‘you could beat it with your chopsticks.’

This should not be taken as implicating Olivia Qasaba herself in active participation in the ‘drumming’ cult, for there is no evidence that she herself ever beat upon a drum; though it is inevitable that she was sometimes in close proximity to adolescent youths who were ‘drumming’.

By now the reader may be getting restless, and may be wondering why the historian has chosen to adduce so many trivialities concerning the Crab and its servants.

The answer is that these trivialities are not trivialities at all. Rather, they are important items of evidence which help explain why the Crab, this Power of Powers, played such a slight role in the politics of Injiltaprajura.

The Crab was not one of your active Powers which daily demand homage and sacrifice; which lust for praise, and burn incense, and the flesh of virgins; which build palaces and organize empires; which like to get drunk and be jolly; which collect gold and diamonds and all things rare and precious.

No, the Crab was not like that at all.

The Crab was a singularly retiring person, its demands being merely that it be fed at regular intervals and otherwise left in peace. While it was prepared to permit Olivia’s ministrations, it had never demanded them, nor did it praise or encourage them. And as for homage, or gold, or virgins, or palaces, or other such materialistic rubbish — why, the Crab had no use whatsoever for any such frivolities.

While this eremitic and philosophical Crab was loathe to take an active claw in Untunchilamon’s politics, it was nevertheless manipulated on occasion by the devious Justina Thrug and others — as we shall see in due course.

You will be assisted in seeing this if you will now clear from your field of vision all those distorted images and outright hallucinations practitioners of fiction and even other ‘historians’, so-called, have brought forward to gratify a debased public taste.

Pay no attention to the gross distortions of Greven Jing, the rambling inaccuracies of Thong Sai Stok, the pretentious pedantry of Morton Plum or the romantic mistiness of the anonymous author of Untunchilamon: An Account of the Isle of Many Splendours and the Unfortunate Contretemps which Occasioned Sundry Lapses of Public Order and Good Discipline in that Paradigm of Paradise.

This is the true history of the final days of the rule of Justina Thrug upon the island of Untunchilamon, and it is the only such history which is worth the price of the fooskin upon which it is written.

And remember: your historian was there!

Your historian will not, as a rule, intrude upon this narrative. I will not mention my arthritic fingers, for instance; or the outrageous price of fooskin; nor complain about the racket from the craftshop next door, where, from the sound of it, they are trying to reinvent the skavamareen.

But I will say this:

I was on Untunchilamon when the great troubles beset Justina Thrug. I myself have stood upon the balcony of the pink palace atop Pokra Ridge; I myself have looked down Lak Street to the waters of the Laitemata, and across those waters to the island of Jod where the white marble of the Analytical Institute stands like a block of chalk riding atop a bank of congealed blood.

And I have been to those places elsewhere mentioned in this history.

I myself have been to Manamalargo; and have ventured up the River Ka to the city of Bolfrigalaskaptiko. In that city, I myself have sat within a tent of mosquito netting, enjoying a meal of roast crocodile meat while watching a professional child beater clean the blood from his whips. In that same city, I have enjoyed the delights of non-insertive ecstasy in the House Without Fleas.

And, more to the point, I have interviewed many inhabitants of Bolfrigalaskaptiko. Their testimony justifies and supports the claim made in the first chapter of this history:

That Jean Froissart, a man of 32 who was much worried about his heart, left Bolfrigalaskaptiko in the company of Manthandros Trasilika.

The fat and fleshy Manthandros Trasilika planned to sail to Untunchilamon, to land at Injiltaprajura, to declare himself the rightful wazir of the place, to denounce Justina Thrug as a witch, and to order her immediate execution.

But, as stated at the end of the first chapter, the first trouble which would befall Justina Thrug would not come from Manthandros Trasilika but from the Inland Revenue Department; and nothing written above should be taken as altering or modifying that fact.

The head of the Inland Revenue was Dui Tin Char, a man of much mana and influence. He pretended loyalty to the Family Thrug, but his true loyalties were actually quite elsewhere.

Dui Tin Char was equipped by nature and breeding to take his place in the court of Aldarch the Third, the dreaded Mutilator of Yestron. But it was Tin Char’s misfortune to dwell far from Al’three’s sphere of influence. For, as our history opens, Aldarch the Third was busy laying waste to the continent of Yestron; whereas Tin Char was marooned upon Untunchilamon, that equatorial island which lies half an ocean away from Yestron.

Untunchilamon.

Island of blood!

Island of But we have been through all that. So, enough of the atmospherics. It is time for some solid facts and figures, some honest statistics, and as many of them as possible.

Well then:

Untunchilamon is an equatorial island which lay (and lies still) midocean between the continents of Argan and Yestron. Ships approach from the north, enter Untun-chilamon’s circumferential lagoon by the Galley Gate, then navigate through a maze of coral to the Laitemata Harbour at the island’s southern tip.

On the Laitemata lies Injiltaprajura, Untunchilamon’s sole city, a metropolis of some 30,000 souls. Here there is life; and water; and greenery; and mosquitoes by the millions; and caterpillars with stinging legs which sometimes drop from the trees to agonize the necks of the unwary. The rest of Untunchilamon is a wasteland desert known as Zolabrik.

To Injiltaprajura, then, come the ships; and they can only approach that city as described above because the shallows of the Green Sea lie to the south. Canoes can travel the Green Sea, and often do; but a ship would find no water deep enough to permit it a safe passage.

With that clearly stated (your encyclopedia will doubtless supplement this account should you wish to know more) let us return to the matter of Dui Tin Char, head of the Inland Revenue, and his relationship with the Family Thrug.