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Authors: Jonathan Carroll

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BOOK: Outside the Dog Museum
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Hassan bent down and, picking it up, held it out for me to see. When I reached for it, tentatively, he snatched it back and shook his head.
“Watch.” He put it in his mouth whole, chewed not very long, swallowed. Gone.
Thank God I’d been around Venasque enough to see plenty of astounding things. Otherwise I’d have obeyed my guts at that moment and started running.
“That didn’t happen. You didn’t eat your car. You just ate your car!”
“I ate my car, Mr. Radcliffe. Right in front of you.”
“You ate your car. It was that big and then it was this big and then you ate it! I saw. I saw you do it.” I began to hyperventilate. The inside of my head grew light and pink and full of dizzy. I couldn’t stop talking. Venasque said never doubt miracles—only your own reaction to them.
“This is a very fucking seriously scary situation, Your Highness. You just shrunk a big fucking
car
and ATE it! I mean, that is not what I wanted to
see
today, okay? So will you pretty pretty pretty please tell me what you’re doing so my head doesn’t detach in the next minute? Pretty please? I want to get out of this country. I
really
want to get out—”
“Shoosh. Shoosh. Calm. Everything is all right. I only did that so you know and can believe me. I am now going to give you the choice.” He raised his left arm out to the side. “Money here.” Right arm out, other direction. “Magic here. I will pay you with whatever you choose.”
“What magic? What are you talking about?”
His elbows came in close to his sides, both hands pointed at me like a cowboy holding two guns. “It’s simple: I’ll give you the money you asked for,
or
I’ll give you one wish and guarantee that it’ll come true. Nothing else as payment—only one wish, but for whatever you want.”
“You can do that?”
“You saw what I can do. Yes, I have that power.”
“Why didn’t your father use it to save himself?”
“Because it is not allowed. I told you. We can use it only to help Saru. If you build the museum, you are helping the country.”
My mouth was terribly dry. I kept trying to lick my lips but without
any luck. I looked at the sun. I looked at Hassan. His hands dropped to his sides and he shrugged. “Either is yours if you choose to do it.”
I licked my lips with a tongue like pumice. “Promise on the honor of your father.”
He put up his right hand and closed his eyes. “I promise on the honor of my father that I can do this.”
“I’ll also want an ironclad contract that says if you
can’t,
you pay cash.”
“Agreed.”
Venasque, my life, the breakdown, work—all crossed my mind like the vein network seen in an eye when, looking into a light, you catch a certain angle. Everything interconnected, everything of a piece.
“I’ll do it for two wishes.”
He shook his head. “Impossible.”
“But I’d use the first one for someone else. It wouldn’t be for me. That’s fair. One for me and the other for another.”
“Who is this other, Fanny?”
“No, someone else.”
“Claire Stansfield?”
“You know about her?”
“Fanny tells me everything,” he said proudly. “You are disgracing yourself, bargaining like we are in the market! I am not selling eggplants or rugs. I will not invite you into my shop for a glass of mint tea while we discuss terms. I offer you the miraculous, Harry Radcliffe. One wish. If you’re a good man, you’ll accept and give it to her. Help your friend with it.”
“Why give me this choice, Hassan? Why not pay money? You can afford it. Why even offer a wish?”
“Because I promised my father before he died. It was his idea. He thought you were a good man and deserved the chance to be given the choice. I argued against it but he prevailed. He was my father and I honor his wishes.”
“He really liked me, didn’t he?”
I said it to bait him, but to my surprise he answered solemnly, “He liked you very much. He thought you had a very talented back of your head.”
“What does that mean?”
“It is an old belief in Saru. We say there are two men inside each of us, except they are not aware of the fact they share the same space. One looks in one direction, one the other.”
“You mean like the Janus figure?”
“No, as far as I understand, Janus is one man alone looking both forward and backward over his life and taking it all into consideration. Here they say the point of life is getting the two ‘sides’ of your head, the men inside, to realize they are there and that it would be much more effective if they worked together. We believe that’s why people behave so strangely—sometimes the man in front decides, sometimes he sleeps and the man in back decides. The man in the front of your head is logical and pragmatic, the one at the back is a dreamer, an artist. People say here, ‘A good front,’ or ‘Radcliffe has a very talented back of the head.’ It’s a quick way to describe a person’s character.”
“Sounds like watered-down Freud to me.”
“It’s not so different, except they were saying it here a thousand years before Sigmund Freud.”
“Touché. I’ll do it.”
“You don’t want more time to decide?”
“I’ve decided. How do we do this?”
“Say, ‘I accept the wish and will do what I can.’”
“That’s all?”
“Only that.”
“Sounds a little skimpy for this deal. You give me a cosmic wish, I give you a billion-dollar building, and that’s all I have to say?”
“It’s a deal between God, you and Saru. He does not need a thirty-page contract.”
“Or a notary public, huh? One last thing—what if my wish was for you to die, Hassan? What would happen then?”
“Nothing. I am protected for now.”
“You’re sure?”
He wasn’t. The flash across his eyes said he wasn’t sure of anything.
“Is
that your wish? That I die?”
“I don’t know you well enough to want you dead, Sultan. ‘I accept the wish and will do what I can.’”
Nothing happened. The sky didn’t crack, no oceans roared. The only thing I felt was some sweat rolling slowly down my back. “What happens now?”
He put out his hand and we shook, hands tightly gripped; looking each other in the eye. “Now you can make your wish. Or whenever you like. It will happen.”
Still shaking, I looked down at our hands and thought how appropriate—hands. I said to Hassan and Whomever Else was in on this, “I wish that Claire Stansfield is given back her hand.”
“Say it again, Radcliffe. Say it for yourself this time.”
“I wish Claire Stansfield is given back her hand.”
 
WE LANDED IN VIENNA
about nine in the evening. I’d insisted on a commercial flight from Saru rather than return on the royal jet, mostly because I was tired of being surrounded by people I had to talk to. More than anything else, I wanted to be alone to let my brain work in silence. Too much had gone on in the last days without a chance to be properly processed and considered. It was as if my mind was a file room where recently, instead of putting things in their proper places, people had simply opened the door, thrown papers on the floor and walked out again. I may be a genius and have a very talented back of the head, but my mind works slowly and cautiously. It is an old man, looking at ideas under a magnifying
glass and bright light, turning them every which way before making any decisions.
On the flight back I sat in first class next to a man who kept telling me in happy bad English his name was Rabbit Hat when translated from German. Finally I told Mr. Hasenhüttl I heard him the first six times and didn’t care what his name meant.
Either he understood or caught the homicidal tone of my voice, which fortunately sent him back to his Saru Air magazine. Besides his unfortunate name and manner, Rabbit Hat also had the bad habit, or good revenge, of sucking his teeth with foul vigor. Just when you thought or hoped he’d gotten that poppy seed or piece of meat out and blessed silence returned, he went back to work in there with short wisps and whistles and hard sucks that kept me from doing anything, other than devising ways to torture and kill him. Luckily he got up at one point and spent what I guess was a long time in the bathroom because when he returned, I’d slipped into the sweetest little cat nap. Soon, however, dinner was served and this sucking monster, this Austrian from hell, decided I needed to be awakened for it. Tap Tap Tap on the arm. “Hello?” Tap Tap Tap. “Hello? Time to eat, Hello, you!” Tap—
“Stop that!” I jerked out of sleep like he’d stung me.
Pouting, he pointed at the table in front of me. It was down and on it sat a tray with a chicken leg hidden by a slice of pineapple topped by a zip of whipped cream, fat golden pellets of potato too geometric to be healthy, and other edibles that could only cause despair.
My gaze stopped on a fork and the idea of stabbing my neighbor in the head with it came and went. Instead I closed my eyes and prepared for the drop back into sleep.
Tap Tap Tap.
“I don’t
want
dinner. Leave me alone, please.”
Tap Tap—I grabbed his fingers before the third tap and held them.
“Don’t touch me again. Don’t talk to me. Don’t suck your teeth.” I rang for the stewardess. She came quickly, having been warned who I was by the Sultan’s people.
“Miss, this man is annoying me. I want you to find me another seat immediately.”
“I’m sorry, sir, but there are no free seats in first class.”
“Then I’ll move back to tourist. Just get me another seat
now.”
After she scurried off, Hasenhiittl said quietly in perfect, unaccented English, “Gee whiz, Radcliffe, I’d’ve thought you were tougher than that. You sounded like a faggot hair dresser. ‘Just get me another seat
now
.’” He imitated a swishy gay’s whining voice.
“Who are you? What do you want from me?”
“That would take a long time to explain. I’m Rabbit Hat. Or maybe Air Wair with bouncing soles. I don’t know—what do you think my name should be? Here comes your seat.”
Our backs were turned to the stewardess so it was impossible to see her coming, but a moment after he spoke she touched me on the shoulder and said she’d found a seat for me. I looked at Hasenhüttl and moved to get up, but he stood instead.
“I’m here to fuck you up, Harry. Plain and simple. Wishes aren’t free. There’s always a kick in the ass that comes along with them. I’m yours.” He told the worried-looking stewardess he’d be moving and not me.
As he slid past my knees, I asked, “Why are you telling me this?”
Having reached the aisle, he bent over me. “Because there’s no fear without knowing. You’re never really afraid until you’re sure. Now you know. Now it’s for sure. I’ll see you around.”
What did he look like? An overweight businessman in a dull suit, square eyeglasses, forgettable face. If he said he sold ink or tractors or was a politician in a Communist country, you’d believe it. Rabbit Hat was a good name for him. A big rabbit in a hat.
Several minutes after he left I got up, handed my untouched tray of
food to the stewardess, and went back. The tourist section was packed but they’d found him a place between two Arabs. He was reading a computer magazine and didn’t look up.
“Who sent you? Cthulu?”
He ignored me. The Arabs stared.
“Rabbit Hat, I’m asking you a question. Who sent you? What are you supposed to do to me?”
The plane bumped hard and I almost lost my balance. My man pushed his glasses up and rubbed his face. “Think you’d better get back to your seat, Harry. Looks like we’ve hit some turbulence.”
“Answer my question first.” The plane bucked again, swayed from side to side.
Pulling the glasses down, he looked at me coldly. “Answer your question? I’m not here to do what you like, friend. It was nice enough of me to warn you I’m around. I didn’t have to do that. I could’ve just started sprinkling tacks on your path and watched you dance down it barefoot. But now you know. Look, you read the fairy tales when you were a kid. Rub the lamp and a genie comes out, but so do a lot of other things! The greatest thing that can happen in life is your wish comes true. Or the
worst
thing that happens is your wish comes true. I’m the other side of the wish, honey. The dark side of the moon. I’m the one who can walk on your voice.”
I returned to my seat and watched a film I don’t remember a bit of because the headphones were tuned to a classical music channel and I didn’t change it.
Vienna airport is a nice piece of work. It’s well conceived and small enough so it doesn’t take forever to get out once your plane’s landed. I was one of the first off our flight, but lagged behind so I could watch my new nemesis and size him up better. He brushed past in the flow of others and walked quickly toward passport control. After a cursory glance, an inspector waved him through but I was stopped and they checked my passport thoroughly, even turning
it upside down and holding it to the light at one point.
BOOK: Outside the Dog Museum
13.14Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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