Haroun and the Sea of Stories (19 page)

‘Happy endings must come at the end of something,’ the Walrus pointed out. ‘If they happen in the middle of a story, or an adventure, or the like, all they do is cheer things up for a while.’

‘That’ll do,’ said Haroun.

Then it was time to go home.

~ ~ ~

They went quickly, because Haroun hated long goodbyes. Saying goodbye to Blabbermouth proved particularly difficult, and if she hadn’t leant forward without warning and kissed him, Haroun would probably never have found a way of kissing her; but when it was done, he found he wasn’t embarrassed in the least, but felt extremely pleased; which made it even harder to leave.

At the foot of the Pleasure Garden, Haroun and Rashid waved goodbye to their friends and climbed, with Iff, on to the back of Butt the Hoopoe. Only now did it occur to Haroun that Rashid must have missed his storytelling appointment in K, and so, no doubt, an angry Snooty Buttoo would be waiting for them when they returned to the Dull Lake. ‘But but but never mind,’ Butt the Hoopoe said without moving its beak. ‘When you travel with Butt the Hoopoe, time is on your side. Leave late, arrive early! Let’s go! Va-voom-varoom!’

Night had fallen over the Dull Lake. Haroun saw the houseboat,
Arabian Nights Plus One
, lying peacefully at anchor in the moonlight. They landed by an open bedroom window, and as Haroun climbed in he was overwhelmed by fatigue, and there was nothing for it but to flop into his peacock bed and go straight to sleep.

When he awoke it was a bright, sunny morning. Everything seemed as it had always been; of flying mechanical Hoopoes and Water Genies there was no trace.

He got up, rubbing his eyes, and found Rashid Khalifa sitting on the little balcony at the front of the houseboat, still in his long blue nightshirt, sipping a cup of tea. A boat in the shape of a swan was coming towards them across the Lake.

‘I had such a strange dream …’Rashid Khalifa began, but he was interrupted by the voice of Snooty Buttoo, who was waving energetically from the swan-boat: ‘Hoo! Halloo!’ called Mr Buttoo.

‘Oh, Lord,’ thought Haroun. ‘Now there will be screaming and shouting and we’ll have to pay our own bill.’

‘Hoo, somnolent Mr Rashid!’ called Buttoo. ‘Can it be that you and your son are still in your nightshirts, when I am coming to fetch you for the show? Crowds are waiting, tardy Mr Rashid! I trust you will not disappoint.’

It seemed that the entire adventure of Kahani had passed off in less than a single night! ‘But that’s impossible,’ thought Haroun; which made him remember the Walrus asking, ‘Why make a fuss about this particular impossible thing?’—and so he turned urgently to his father and asked, ‘Your dream—can you recall it?’

‘Not now, Haroun,’ said Rashid Khalifa, who then called over to the approaching Mr Buttoo: ‘Why so anxious, sir? Come aboard, take tea, we will quickly dress and be off.’ To Haroun he said, ‘Look sharp, son. The Shah of Blah is never late. The Ocean of Notions has a reputation for punctuality to preserve.’

‘The Ocean,’ Haroun urged, as Buttoo drew near in the swan-boat. ‘Please think. It’s very important.’ But Rashid wasn’t listening at all.

Haroun went off somewhat disconsolately to get dressed; and now he noticed a little golden envelope lying by his pillow, an envelope of the type in which grand hotels sometimes leave night-time mint chocolates for their guests. Inside it was a note written by Blabbermouth and signed by her, and by all his friends from the Moon Kahani. (Goopy and Bagha, who couldn’t write, had placed fishy lips upon the paper, sending kisses instead of signatures.)

‘Come whenever you want,’ the note said. ‘Stay as long as you like. Remember: when you fly with Butt the Hoopoe, time is on your side.’

There was something else in the golden envelope: a tiny bird, perfect in every detail, cocking its head up at him. It was, of course, the Hoopoe.

That wash and brush-up certainly did you a world of good,’ Rashid said as Haroun emerged from his room. ‘I haven’t seen you looking so pleased with life for months.’

~ ~ ~

You’ll recall that Mr Buttoo and his unpopular local government were expecting Rashid Khalifa to win them the people’s support by telling ‘up-beat, praising sagas’ and cutting out the ‘gloompuss yarns’. They had decked out a large park with every sort of happy decoration—bunting, streamers, flags—and they had put loudspeakers on poles all over the park, so that everyone could hear the Shah of Blah properly. There was a colourful stage plastered with posters that said VOTE BUTTOO, or, alternatively, WHO’S THE ONE FOR YOU?—NOT JUST ONE, BUTTOO! And a large crowd had indeed gathered to hear Rashid; but from their scowling expressions Haroun gathered that the people didn’t care for Mr Buttoo at all.

‘You’re on,’ snapped Mr Buttoo. ‘Much-praised Mr Rashid, you’d better be good; or else.’

Haroun watched from the side of the stage as Rashid went smiling to the microphone amid generous applause. Then he gave Haroun a real shock, because his first words were, ‘Ladies and gentlemen, the name of the tale I am going to tell is
Haroun and the Sea of Stories
.’

‘So you didn’t forget,’ Haroun thought with a smile.

Rashid Khalifa, the Ocean of Notions, the Shah of Blah, looked across to his son and winked.
Did you think I’d forget a story like this one?
said the wink. Then he began:

‘There was once, in the country of Alifbay, a sad city, the saddest of cities, a city so ruinously sad that it had forgotten its name.’

~ ~ ~

As you will have guessed, Rashid told the people in that park the same story I’ve just told you. Haroun decided his father must have asked Iff and the others about the bits at which he hadn’t personally been present, because his account of them was so accurate. And it was plain that he was okay again, the Gift of the Gab had returned, and he had the audience right in the palm of his hand. When he sang Mali’s songs they all sang along, ‘You can chop suey, but you can’t chop me,’ and when he sang Batcheat’s songs they begged for mercy.

Whenever Rashid was talking about Khattam-Shud and his henchmen from the Union of the Zipped Lips, the whole audience stared very hard at Snooty Buttoo and his henchmen, who were sitting behind Rashid on the stage, looking less and less happy as the story unfolded. And when Rashid told the audience how almost all the Chupwalas had hated the Cultmaster all along, but had been afraid to say so, well, then a loud murmur of sympathy for the Chupwalas ran through the crowd,
yes
, people muttered,
we know exactly how they felt.
And after the two falls of the two Khattam-Shuds, somebody started up a chant of, ‘Mister Buttoo—go for good; Mister Buttoo—
khattam-shud
,’ and the entire audience joined in. On hearing this chant, Snooty Buttoo understood that the game was up, and went slinking with his henchmen off the stage. The crowd allowed him to escape, but pelted him with rubbish as he fled. Mr Buttoo was never seen again in the Valley of K, which left the people of the Valley free to choose leaders they actually liked.

‘Of course, we didn’t get paid,’ Rashid told Haroun cheerfully as they waited for the Mail Coach to take them out of the Valley. ‘But never mind; money isn’t everything.’

‘But but but,’ said a familiar voice from the driver’s seat of the Mail Coach, ‘no money is nothing at all.’

~ ~ ~

It was still raining cats and dogs when they returned to the sad city. Many of the streets were flooded. ‘Who cares?’ Rashid Khalifa cried gaily. ‘Let’s walk home. I haven’t had a good soaking in years.’

Haroun had been worried that Rashid would be depressed about returning to the apartment full of broken clocks and no Soraya, so he gave his father a suspicious look. But Rashid skipped out into the wet, and the wetter he got, as they walked through shin-deep muddy water, the more boyishly happy he became. Haroun began to catch his father’s good mood, and soon the two of them were splashing and chasing each other like little children.

After a while Haroun noticed that, as a matter of fact, the city streets were full of people fooling around in the same way, running and jumping and splashing and falling and, above all, laughing their heads off.

‘Looks like this old city finally learnt how to have fun,’ Rashid grinned.

‘But why?’ Haroun asked. ‘Nothing’s really changed, has it? Look, the sadness factories are still in production, you can see the smoke; and almost everybody is still poor …’

‘Hey, you, long-face,’ shouted an elderly gent who must have been at least seventy years old, but who was dancing through the flooded, rainy streets, waving a rolled umbrella like a sword. ‘Don’t you sing those Tragedy Songs round here.’

Rashid Khalifa approached this gentleman. ‘We’ve been out of town, sir,’ he said. ‘Has something happened while we’ve been away? A miracle, for example?’

‘It’s just the rain,’ replied the old bird. ‘It’s making everybody happy. Me, included. Whee! Whoopee!’ And he skipped away down the road.

‘It’s the Walrus,’ Haroun realized suddenly. ‘It’s the Walrus, making my wish come true. There must be artificial happy endings mixed up with the rain.’

‘If it is the Walrus,’ said Rashid, doing a little jig in a puddle, ‘then the city owes you a big vote of thanks.’

‘Don’t, Dad,’ said Haroun, his good mood deflating all at once. ‘Don’t you get it? It isn’t real. It’s just something the Eggheads got out of a bottle. It’s all fake. People should be happy when there’s something to be happy about, not just when they get bottled happiness poured over them from the sky.’

‘I’ll tell you what to be happy about,’ said a policeman who chanced to be floating by on an upturned umbrella. ‘We remembered the city’s name.’

‘Well, out with it, tell us quickly,’ Rashid insisted, feeling very excited.

‘Kahani,’ said the policeman brightly as he floated off down the flooded street. ‘Isn’t it a beautiful name for a city? It means “story”, you know.’

~ ~ ~

They turned into their own lane, and saw their house, looking like a soggy cake in the rain. Rashid was still hopping and bounding gaily along, but Haroun’s feet grew heavier with each step; he was finding his father’s cheerfulness simply unbearable, and he blamed the Walrus for it all, for everything, for all that was bad and wrong and fake in the whole wide motherless world.

Miss Oneeta came out on to her upstairs balcony. ‘O, too fine, you are returned! Come, come, what sweets and celebrations we will have!’ She was wobbling and bobbling and clapping her hands for joy.

‘What is there to celebrate?’ Haroun demanded as Miss Oneeta came scurrying down to join him and his father in the rainy street.

‘To speak personally,’ Miss Oneeta replied, ‘I have said good-riddance to Mr Sengupta. And I also have a job, in the chocolate factory, and as many chocolates as I require are free of charge. And also I have several admirers—but listen to me, how shameless, talking like this to you!’

‘I’m happy for you,’ Haroun replied. ‘But in our life it is not all songs and dances.’

Miss Oneeta put on a mysterious expression. ‘Maybe you have been away too long,’ she said. ‘Things change.’

This made Rashid frown. ‘Oneeta, what are you talking about? If you have something to tell …’

The front door of the Khalifa apartment opened, and there stood Soraya Khalifa, as large as life and twice as beautiful. Haroun and Rashid couldn’t move. They stayed frozen like statues in the pouring rain with their mouths hanging open.

‘Was this the Walrus’s work, too?’ Rashid murmured to Haroun, who just shook his head. Rashid answered himself: ‘Who knows? Maybe so and maybe no, as our friend the Mail Coach driver would say.’

Soraya had come out to join them in the rain. ‘What Walrus?’ she asked. ‘I don’t know any Walrus, but I know that I made a mistake. I went; I don’t deny. I went, but now, if you want, then I am back.’

Haroun looked at his father. Rashid couldn’t speak.

‘That Sengupta, I swear,’ Soraya went on. ‘What a skinny, scrawny, snivelling, drivelling, mingy, stingy, measly, weaselly clerk! As far as I’m concerned he’s finished with, done for, gone for good.’

‘
Khattam-shud
,’ Haroun said quietly.

‘That’s right,’ his mother answered. ‘I promise. Mr Sengupta is
khattam-shud
.’

‘Welcome home,’ Rashid said, and the three Khalifas (and Miss Oneeta, too) fell into one another’s arms.

‘Come inside,’ Soraya suggested eventually. ‘There is a limit to how much rain a person can enjoy.’

~ ~ ~

That night, when he went to bed, Haroun took the miniaturized Butt the Hoopoe out of its little golden envelope and put it on the palm of his left hand. ‘Please understand,’ he said to the Hoopoe, ‘it’s really good to know you’ll be here when I need you. But the way things are just now, I honestly don’t need to go anywhere at all.’

‘But but but,’ said the miniaturized Hoopoe in a miniaturized voice (and without moving its beak), ‘no problem.’

Haroun put Butt the Hoopoe back in its envelope, put the envelope under his pillow, put the pillow under his head and fell asleep.

When he woke up there were new clothes laid out at the foot of his bed, and on his bedside table was a new clock, fully operational, and telling the right time. ‘Presents?’ he wondered. ‘What’s all this?’

Then he remembered: it was his birthday. He could hear his mother and father moving about in the apartment, waiting for him to emerge. He got up, dressed in his new clothes, and took a closer look at his new clock.

‘Yes,’ he nodded to himself, ‘time is definitely on the move again around these parts.’

Outside, in the living room, his mother had begun to sing.

The End

About the Names in This Book