Макс Фрай - The Stranger

“What was that?” Melifaro tugged on the sleeve of my Mantle of Death. “Puff on that pipe one more time, please.”

“If you want to boss me around, you’d better learn to smoke,” I growled.

“When I was eighteen I swiped my older brother’s pipe, smoked nearly all the contents of the snuffbox, and got terribly sick. Please, Max. Give us some light! What are these things?”

I went right up to the nearest ‘cupboard’ and took a mighty draw on the pipe.

Holy cow! It wasn’t a cupboard at all, but a cage! And a person was trapped inside it. He seemed to be sleeping. In any case, the fellow didn’t react when we appeared right in front of him, and the clouds of tobacco smoke that enveloped him didn’t faze him, either.

“He’s neither alive nor dead,” Melifaro observed after a brief silence. “Try sending him a call, Max! Very curious sensation. It’s like talking to a sausage.”

I immediately regretted it. The ‘curious sensation’ turned out to be one of the most uncanny and horrible experiences of my life. I suddenly felt as though I myself was a large, living sausage that had somehow preserved the very human characteristic of being able to contemplate his essence and his fate. I was a sausage that dreams of the moment he will be eaten. I couldn’t extricate myself from the sticky spiderweb of nightmarish sensations. A slap in the face, fairly powerful, made me drop my pipe, then sent me reeling to the opposite wall where, I banged my knee against the corner of yet another cage.

“What’s wrong, Max?” Melifaro asked in a trembling voice. “What is happening to you? Who taught you to do that? What is it?”

“I don’t know,” I murmured, fumbling around for my pipe, which had gone out. Now a good draw on the pipe was just what I needed. Sausages don’t smoke, I knew that for certain. The foul taste of the substance that they mistakenly consider to be tobacco here in Echo convinced me I was a human being, and a moment later, I even remembered who I was.

“You know, friend, I sometimes surprise myself,” I admitted. “I’m afraid of myself. I’m a danger to my own existence—that’s what I think.”

“Maybe you’re just some former Grand Magician? And Juffin gave you a good whack, so you lost your memory?”

“I hope not. Speaking of good whacks, thanks for slapping me around there. You seem to have saved my life. You ever tried that with the deceased? Maybe it would work on them, too.”

“Nonsense, Max. I wanted to slap you around a long time ago, and now there was a reason. But really, what happened to you?”

“I sent him a call, and I probably tried too hard. Some hundredth degree of your blasted magic, instead of the second. It’s always that way with me. My whole life I’ve always put too much salt on my omelets, too. That’s the sort of thing that happens to me.”

“Hey, look over there, Max! There’s another curious spectacle.”

I turned around to look. That cage contained a person, too. I puffed on my pipe so we could see it better. Sinning Magicians! It was a piece of meat that still hadn’t lost the outline of its human form. A piece of aromatic meat dressed in a skaba and a looxi!

My nerves were ready to snap. We seemed to have unraveled this cursed affair, and much more quickly than we had anticipated. But I still felt no sense of relief.

“Do you see what I see, Melifaro? He cooks them! He cooks them, somehow, the swine! Send a call to our boys. We need Lonli-Lokli here. The sooner the better.”

“Yes,” whispered Melifaro. “And I really need the bathroom. I feel sick. We just ate what he cooked.”

“Go ahead and hurl,” I replied with a forced calm. “Don’t be ashamed. But I don’t think they fed us human flesh. I have a feeling the hunchback has only one Speciality of the House.”

“Lonli-Lokli will be here soon,” Melifaro reported. “I requested that he bring a few boys from the Police Force. What is this filth we’ve dug up, Max? Let’s go look at the rest.”

“Are you sure you want to? Go without me, then. I don’t want to barf after a good meal. I wasn’t raised that way. My mother thought that after visiting a good restaurant you shouldn’t even do number two for a week.”

“Still joking, Mr. Bad Dream? How would you have known about expensive restaurants living in the Borderlands? It can’t get worse than it already is. But what if there are live people in the other cages?”

“Maybe there are. Go take a look. I’ve seen enough.”

I turned away from the loathsome House Special and puffed on my pipe with genuine pleasure. Honestly, it wasn’t so bad after all, this local tobacco.

“Max, I was wrong!” Melifaro’s voice sounded improbably loud. “It just got worse! Come here and shed some light. Come on, puff on it one more time. You can close your eyes if you don’t want to look.”

I looked, of course. I had always known that my curiosity would be my undoing. A piece of meat in a looxi—that’s disgusting enough. But when above the belt there’s meat, and below, a pair of legs . . . Nevertheless, I didn’t get sick. My stomach is quite a reliable piece of equipment. No matter what kind of filth crosses its path in life, it continues to function. All of a sudden, though, standing upright became too much for me, and I sank to the ground with a dull thud, like an overloaded shopping bag.

Only then did I realize we were no longer alone.

The rest was like a dream. A second that seemed to last a whole lifetime—that’s what they usually say. “A whole lifetime” is an exaggeration; but that a few hours fit into the span of this second is something I’ll stake my life on.

In the doorway, I saw a darkness thicker than that which surrounded it and a short, stooped silhouette. The chef was hurrying to restore order to his kitchen. He was enraged, and wasn’t thinking about the consequences. One split second was enough for me to become this person, then to stop being him, and to realize—he’s a madman.

Itullo the hunchback was armed with a hatchet and a silk noose, which they use here to kill turkeys before plucking and roasting them. The hunchback had come to kill us, filthy rotten little boys who were making mischief with his frying pans. From the very start he didn’t stand a chance; but madmen don’t bother their heads with such trifles.

I turned around and looked again at the monstrous creations of this kitchen wizard. There are many ways to meet one’s death, but people shouldn’t have to die like that. Not that way.

I wanted to fly into a rage. I wanted to desperately, but it didn’t happen. I remained utterly calm. It was almost a matter of indifference to me. The breathing exercises that Lonli-Lokli had taught me turned the nervous Max into an extremely steady and composed beast. That meant there would be no show. As long as I was calm and good, spitting was useless. It would flop.

The hunchback did try his best to enrage me, poor thing! He charged at me, flourishing his implements of destruction, the tools of his trade. I think the certainty of this “culinary genius” that he could really kill me and Melifaro with his paltry weapons was the last straw for me. Truly, what was there to be angry about? I grew downright cheerful.

Since I hadn’t managed to lose my temper, I decided at least to scare Itullo a little, and to amuse Melifaro, who was looking terribly serious just then.

I winked conspiratorially in the darkness and spat juicily at the distorted face of our hospitable host. Then I drew back my right hand for a good blow to the throat of our attacker with the back of my palm—it was already clear that there would be no getting around a fight.

What does a snake feel when it sinks its teeth into the flesh of a stranger that disturbs its repose? At that moment, I knew: it feels nothing in particular. Nothing, really, at all.