Макс Фрай - The Stranger

YOU NEVER KNOW WHEN YOU’LL LUCK OUT. TAKE IT FROM ONE WHO knows. For the first twenty-nine years of my life, I was a classic loser. People tend to seek (and find) all manner of excuses for their bad luck; I didn’t even have to look.

From earliest childhood I couldn’t sleep at night. As soon as morning rolled around, though, I slept like a lamb. And as everyone knows, this is exactly the time when they hand out the lucky tickets. Each morning at dawn, fiery letters spanned the horizon spelling out the most unfair of all possible proverbs, “The early bird catches the worm.” Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed!

The horror of my childhood was waiting, night after night, for the moment when my mother would tell me, “Sleep tight—don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Time seemed to drop its anchor under my blanket; endless hours were eaten away by my vain attempts to fall asleep. To be sure, there are also happy memories, of the sense of freedom that descends upon you when everyone else is asleep (provided, of course, that you learn to move around quietly and cover the traces of your secret activities).

But most tormenting of all was to be woken up in the morning right after I had finally dozed off. This was what made me despise kindergarten, and eventually all my years at school. True, I did get assigned to the afternoon shift two years in a row. For those two years, I was nearly an A student. That was my final (and only) brush with glory as a star pupil—until I met Sir. Juffin Hully, of course.

With time, not surprisingly, the habit that prevented me from merging harmoniously with polite society became more firmly entrenched. At the very moment when I was absolutely convinced that an inveterate night owl like me would never shine in a world ruled by larks, I met him. Sir Juffin Hully.

With a wave of his hand he put me at the maximum possible distance from home, and I found a job that corresponded absolutely to my abilities and ambitions: I became the Nocturnal Representative of the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of the city of Echo.

The story of how I came to occupy this position is so curious that it deserves a space of its own. For the time being, I will limit myself to a brief account of those distant events.

I should begin by saying, I suppose, that dreaming has always constituted an important part of my existence. Waking up from a nightmare, I was always certain deep down that my life was truly in grave danger. Falling in love with a girl from a dream could easily make me break up with my real-life girlfriend (in my youth, my heart couldn’t accommodate more than one passion at a time). If I read a book in a dream, I would quote from that book to my friends as if I had read it in real life. And once, after I had a dream about a trip to Paris, I felt no compunction about claiming that I had actually been there. It wasn’t that I was liar; I simply didn’t see, nor did I understand, nor even feel, the difference.

I should add that I met Sir Juffin Hully in my dreams. Little by little, you could say, we became acquainted.

Sir Juffin could easily be taken for Rutger Hauer’s older brother. (If your imagination stretches that far, try to augment his striking image with a pair of light, slightly slanting eyes.) This effervescent gentleman, with the mannerisms and flair of an emperor of the Orient or a ringmaster in a circus, immediately won the heart of the boy I once was, the boy I remember still.

In one of my dreams we began nodding hello to each another. Soon we would chat about the weather, like regulars in a café. Such superficial banter continued for several years, when out of the blue Sir Juffin offered to help me find employment.

He announced that I had, as he put it, an extraordinary bent for magic, which I simply had to develop if I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life in an asylum. He then offered his services as a coach, employer, and considerate uncle, all rolled into one. This absurd announcement was nevertheless very attractive, considering that until then I hadn’t discovered a single latent talent in myself. Even in my dreams I realized that no matter how you looked at it, my career wasn’t going anywhere. Sir Juffin, inspired by my apparent willingness, plucked me out of reality like a dumpling from a bowl of soup. Up until then, I was certain that I had been a victim of my own imagination—how strange we humans are, when all is said and done!

I will, I think, postpone the saga of my very first journey between worlds—if only because I remembered almost nothing during the earliest days of my sojourn on Echo. In fact, I couldn’t make sense of anything that had happened. Quite frankly, I suspected that it was all a protracted dream, if not a convoluted hallucination. I tried not to analyze the situation, but to concentrate on solving the problems at hand, since there seemed to be plenty of them. For a start, I had to undergo an intensive period of adaptation to my new life, for I had arrived in this World far less prepared than an ordinary newborn. From the first moments of their lives babies squall and dirty their diapers without disrupting the local traditions. But from the very first I did everything all wrong. I had to sweat like a horse before I could even pass for the village idiot.

When I found myself in the home of Sir Juffin Hully for the first time, he was absent from the premises. Indeed, being the Most Venerable Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force of the Capital of the Unified Kingdom was a busy job, and my protector had been detained somewhere.

The Head Butler, Kimpa, who had strict instructions from his master to give me the red-carpet treatment, was somewhat perplexed. Until now he had welcomed only respectable people to the house.

I began my new life with a question: where to find the bathroom. Even this turned out to be a faux pas. Every citizen of the Unified Kingdom older than two knows that the bathroom facilities of every dwelling occupy the basement and are reached by a special staircase.

And my attire! Jeans, a sweater, a vest made of thick un-dyed leather, and heavy blunt-nosed boots, all succeeded in shocking the old gentleman, usually as unflappable as an Indian chieftain. He looked me up and down from head to foot for ten seconds at least. Sir Juffin swears that Kimpa hadn’t fixed his stare on anyone for so long since the day of his wedding, two hundred years before, to the now-departed Mrs. Kimpa. The result of this inspection was that he suggested I change my clothes. I didn’t object—I simply couldn’t disappoint the expectations of the old fellow with ruffled feathers.

What happened next was painfully awkward. I was given a pile of colored fabric. I bunched up these masses of formless material in my hands, damp from agitation, and blinked my eyes wildly. Luckily, Mr. Kimpa had led a long and undoubtedly colorful life. In his time he had seen many wonders, not excluding cretins like me who lacked the most rudimentary of skills. So as not to bring shame upon the good name of his “Most Venerable Master” (as he called Sir Juffin), Kimpa set to work. In ten minutes, I looked fairly presentable from the point of view of any local resident of Echo; though, in my own humble opinion, I looked and felt extremely clumsy. When I was convinced that all these drapes and folds wouldn’t inhibit my movements, and wouldn’t tumble to the floor when I took a step or two, I regained my composure.

We then undertook the next test of my nerves: dinner. In a noble gesture, Kimpa deigned to keep me company at the meal. The time was thus put to good use. Before tasting each of the dishes, I would observe the performance of my teacher. After I had scrutinized the spectacle, I attempted to put the accumulated wisdom into action; that is, I dispatched toward my mouth the corresponding utensils filled with the necessary ingredients. I even went so far as to copy the expressions on his face, just in case.