On the Wing (18 page)

“Of course. Fifteen cubic feet per hour. Three hundred sixty cubic feet per day. It adds up. By morning, you will have run up quite a bill. You will owe us a considerable sum, and the owner is very strict about payment.”

“I told you that I don't have much money—”

“If you cannot pay, you cannot leave.”

“What am I going to do?”

“Perhaps you could telephone your parents back in—where was it you originated?”

“Babbington.”

“They might be willing to wire you some money.”

“Mmm,” I said doubtfully. “They might.”

“Or maybe you know some wealthy eccentric who would do so.”

“Hmmm.”

“You will have the whole night to think of someone who will pay.”

“Okay,” I said. “I'll try.”

“Try very hard. Make a list of the people who like you enough to pay to have you released from your room.”

“Is there a light in here?” I asked.

“I'll bring you a candle,” he said. “It will be a dollar. I'll add it to your bill.”

*   *   *

WORKING BY CANDLELIGHT, in the venerable tradition of imprisoned writers, I began to make a list of the people back in Babbington who might be willing to pay my ransom. My parents were at the top of the list, of course, but after I had listed their names I imagined myself calling them under the watchful eye of Frieda's father.

“Hi, Mom,” I would say, as if nothing were wrong.

“Who is this?” I could hear her asking.

“It's me, Peter.”

“Oh. What a coincidence. I used to have a son named Peter.”

“This is your son named Peter.”

“I haven't heard from Peter in ages. He's missing.”

“Mom, I know I haven't written, but—”

“He said he would send me a postcard every night. I haven't received one for several days now, so I guess he's been eaten by a bear.”

“Please, Mom—”

“Hello?” said another voice.

“Hi, Dad,” I said. “It's Peter.”

“I suppose you're calling to ask for money.”

“It's funny you should say that,” I would say, and I would lay the matter before him, tell him the whole story, and wait for his response.

“Well?” Frieda's father would ask after I hung up.

“He says they won't pay.”

“Didn't you tell him you were rotting in a dungeon?”

“I did. He accused me of letting my imagination run away with me.”

“Don't you know anyone else who can send you some money?”

I thought about it. Porky White might be able to send me some money. May Castle was supposed to have money. If she did, I supposed she would be willing to send me some. What about my grandparents? I'd never really considered what their resources might be. Did they have savings? Probably. They were frugal, or at least not foolish with their money. Then there were all my friends of my own age. They'd be willing to chip in. They might even be willing to canvas the town, take up a collection, go door to door. It might be exciting for them. It would make them feel that they were a part of my adventure, that they were with me in my hour of need. For a couple of minutes, I savored the thought of all of Babbington filling my friends' buckets with cash to ransom me, but then, with a deep sigh, I recognized the trouble with asking any of those people back home for money: I was going to be embarrassed. I would lose face. I'd be the butt of jokes for all the time that I was away, and when I came home the jokes would have been refined to a sharp cutting edge. I might not want to go home at all with that kind of reception waiting for me. The whole thing was becoming too disturbing. I was in an agitated state. I needed some distraction, something that would calm me. I decided to do my homework.

Before I left Babbington, my French teacher, Angus MacPherson, had assigned me the task of translating Alfred Jarry's
Gestes et Opinions du Docteur Faustroll.
When I began the translation, at a time that now seemed long ago, I found that I felt excluded from the book and from the world of Doctor Faustroll, as I might have felt excluded in a dream when I found myself trying to get to a place and discovered that I couldn't manage to get there, that the very air seemed too thick for me to part and pass through, or when I found myself moving along a wall, searching with my fingers for a door that would let me into a place where I knew that everyone was having a good time.

My habit as a reader, developed over the twelve years that I had been reading, was to find a way into a book, a way to insinuate myself into the goings-on. The obvious way in was through identification with a character, though there were other ways—playing the role of invisible spy, for one. Before entering
Faustroll,
I had expected to identify with Faustroll himself, the star. However, as I began my first attempt at translation, I found that another identification was urged upon me, almost forced upon me, as I made my way through the text, bit by bit, word by word, piece by piece, phrase by phrase. Faustroll remained distant, aloof, mysterious. Instead of identifying with him, I identified with Panmuphle, the vague and ineffective civil servant who first tried to serve him a warrant and later became his companion or sidekick, the guy riding shotgun on Dr. Faustroll's journey from Paris to Paris by sea. Within the book, or at least within my translation of it, my version of it, I was Panmuphle. Now, resuming my work, by candlelight, as Panmuphle, with frequent reference to my
Handy Dictionary of the French and English Languages,
I wrote:

On the Habits and Appearance of Doctor Faustroll

Perhaps it is because I was unable to serve notice on the elusive Doctor Faustroll that I have become somewhat obsessed with him. I would not have used that word, would not have said that I was obsessed with him, but my wife, dear Madame Panmuphle, assures me that
obsessed
is the word that describes my state. I would have said that I was being assiduous in my pursuit of the mysterious doctor, and in fact I did say so, and suggested
diligent
as an alternative, perhaps even
sedulous,
but she assured me that
obsessed
is the word, and so I defer to her, as I do in all things not directly connected with my official duties, wherein I defer to Monsieur le Mayor.

I began my diligent investigation by interrogating his proprietères, Mr. and Mrs. Jacques Bonhomme. From Mr. Bonhomme I learned that Doctor Faustroll was born in 1898.

“You are quite certain of that?” I demanded of my informant, assiduous in my effort to obtain the facts, and nothing but the facts. “Oh, yes,” he replied with ill-concealed annoyance. “It was when the twentieth century was minus two years old. The mysterious doctor was born at the age of sixty-three.”

“I must not have heard you correctly,” I said. “I thought you said that the mysterious doctor was born at the age of sixty-three.”

“That he was,” the gnome-like creature asserted, “and he has kept that age throughout his life. He is always sixty-three.”

“I see,” I said, though I most certainly did not. Because my experiences in the course of discharging my official duties have taught me the value of a skeptic's attitude toward the information the public gives to officials, I asked myself whether the person I was speaking to might be an accomplice of Faustroll, assigned the task of deceiving and misleading me. Even as I noted the age of sixty-three on my pad, I made the secret mark I use to indicate statements of questionable value.

“Please describe his physical appearance,” I said.

Without even a pretense at labored recollection, the wizened man launched into a description, his rapidity leading me to wonder whether he had been rehearsed. “He is a man of medium height, or perhaps I should say average height, unless it is the median height that I mean; I am never quite certain about the difference,” he said.

“Please, monsieur,” I said, “try to be more precise.”

“Very well,” he said, “to be exact, his height is 8 × 10
10
+ 10
9
+ 4 × 10
8
+ 5 × 10
6
atomic diameters.”

He intended to rush on, but I stayed him with an authoritative gesture and made him repeat the exact height. When I had it down, I bade him continue, employing another unambiguous gesture.

“His skin is the yellow of gold. His face is glabrous—”

“Glabrous?” I asked silently, through the medium of a raised eyebrow.

“Hairless, sir.”

“Ah,” I said. “Clean-shaven.”

“Except for a mustache as green as the sea, like that depicted in the portraint of King Saleh—”

“King Saleh?” I asked, interrupting. “Who is this King Saleh? A crony of Faustroll's, perhaps?”

“Please, sir,” said the doe-eyed daughter of the Bonhommes, who had until then remained silent, though hanging on my every word in evident awe of my office and person, “I know, sir.”

“Yes, child?” I said, in the tone of an adored uncle.

“He is the ruler of one of the kingdoms of the sea in the Arabian Nights entertainments, sir,” she said shyly, with a provocative pout.

“Thank you, my dear,” I said, tousling the little darling's hair. “That reminds me: what of his hair?”

*   *   *

I STRETCHED. I rubbed my eyes. How long had I been working? I had no way to tell. I was tired, but that might have been the result of effort, excitement, and worry as much as the passage of time. I blew out the candle and stretched out on the pallet. I may have slept. I'm not sure. I may only have slipped into a state halfway between waking and sleeping without fully sleeping. I heard a scratching sound. I took it to be rats. I felt a certain satisfaction in the thought that there were rats scratching somewhere nearby. A dungeon ought to have rats. The rats would play a big part in the story of my imprisonment when I told it back at home, in Babbington—

“Boy!” said a voice, low but very near my ear. “Wake up!” I was being shaken. “Wake up!”

I blinked in the direction of the voice. Frieda was shaking me. She had a flashlight with her, and for a moment she shone it at herself, then snapped it off again.

“I wasn't asleep,” I asserted.

“You were sleeping like the dead,” she said.

“Did you come to lift my spirits?” I asked. I will confess, despite the fact that you may ridicule me for it, that my first thought was that she had come out of a spirit of charity to give me a slice of pie and show me her breasts.

“I came to help you escape,” she whispered.

“Really?” I said, hiding my disappointment.

“Really,” she said. “This farce has gone on long enough. I'll get you out of here and you can be on your way. Come on. Follow me.”

She led me out of the room and we began edging along the narrow corridor. We came to an intersection and turned to the left. We came to another intersection and turned to the right. We came to another intersection, and she hesitated. I wondered whether she knew where she was going. I didn't want to ask. I didn't want to seem to suggest that she might be getting me into a situation worse than the one I had just left. I tried indirection.

“This is like Theseus trying to find his way out of the Labyrinth,” I said. “Except that he was able to follow the string that Ariadne had given him. That's how Ariadne helped him find his way out—she gave him a roll of thread—a clew of thread—to unwind as he went in. In Mrs. Fendreffer's class, back at home—”

“Are you suggesting that I don't know where I'm going?”

“No! No, no. Of course not! I—”

“Boy, if you don't shut up my father is going to hear you.”

“You don't have to worry about that, Frieda,” I said. “Sound couldn't carry very far in a castle. The thick walls, the solid stone—”

She made a sound something like a snort and something like a laugh. “This is not a castle,” she said.

“Aren't we all the way up the mountain, in the castle? Isn't this a dungeon?”

“It's a cellar. The cellar of the inn. And that thing you see up the mountain? That's no castle. It's a water tower.”

“A water tower?”

“A water tower.”

“And your father—”

“My father is my father. He's an imprudent man who has gambling debts. He needs money. When he saw you approaching the inn, he said to me, ‘Frieda, here comes a little fool who could be the answer to my troubles.' He played you like a fish. At first, I thought,
Fine. Let the boy pay to get father back on his feet.
But then, tonight, when I was lying in my bed, I thought of you calling your mother, back at home, and I thought of my own mother, dead now for nearly two years, and I thought of the pain I would have brought to her if I had called her and said that I was a prisoner, and I knew that I couldn't let it go on.”

“But—but—what about the tyrannical owner, Mr. Klam—”

“The only Klam I've ever heard of,” she said, pushing against a door and opening the way into the dawn, “is the one you told us about, the one with the banner.”

“Oh.”

“There you are,” she said. “Do you see the path?”

“Yes,” I said. “It's veiled in mist, but I can see it.”

She put a hand on my shoulder. “Let me give you a piece of advice,” she said.

“I'd rather see your breasts,” I said, under my breath.

“What?” she said.

“Never mind,” I said. “What's the advice?”

“Don't go through life making water towers into castles,” she said.

Chapter 16

Dreams of a Professional Fool

AS A WAY of making our trip more of an adventure for her trusty sidekick, Albertine had not told me where we would be staying for any of our nights on the road. It was her way of providing an element of surprise for me, while ensuring that there would be none for her. It was the way we both liked it.