The Alchemaster's Apprentice (6 page)

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Authors: Walter Moers

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‘No, not to the egg
itself,
’ said Ghoolion. ‘I’m speaking metaphorically. This egg was really destined for the Zaan of Florinth. I was informed that Florinthian glass daggers were wielded and several assistant chefs had to be drowned in soup before the Zaan’s head chef could be prevailed on to defraud his lord and master of the egg. He bamboozled him by serving him an ordinary sturgeon’s egg with his eyes blindfolded, claiming that it enhanced the flavour. The Zaan of Florinth has been susceptible to such tricks ever since the ceiling of his throne-room fell on his head.’
Echo’s curiosity revived at this account of the caviar’s adventurous provenance. He explored the bowl with his tongue, searching for the invisible egg. All at once, his palate was rocked by a minor gustatory explosion. A frisson of pleasure ran down his spine.
‘Mm,’ he said. ‘So that’s what invisible caviar tastes like. Heavenly!’
‘Now look at your tongue,’ said Ghoolion, holding out a silver spoon for him to see himself in it. Echo leant forwards, smiled at his distorted reflection in the convex metal, opened his mouth - and recoiled in horror. His tongue had vanished.
‘No, you haven’t lost it.’ Ghoolion smirked. ‘It’s temporarily invisible, that’s all. It’ll reappear as soon as the taste of the caviar has faded.’
Echo stared at the spoon open-mouthed, frozen with fear. What if Ghoolion were wrong? It was as unthinkable for a Crat to live without a tongue as without a tail. But, sure enough, the more the taste faded the more clearly he could see his tongue once more. He breathed a sigh of relief.
‘True aesthetic pleasure should sometimes be accompanied by a touch of nervous titillation,’ said Ghoolion, who was already preparing some new concoction in a cast-iron frying pan. ‘Bee-bread wouldn’t be worth eating but for the risk of biting on a Demonic Bee that hadn’t had its sting removed, nor would a steamed Porcufish if one didn’t have to take care not to puncture oneself on its lethally poisonous quills. Are you feeling relieved at having your tongue back? That, too, is an aesthetic pleasure beyond price.’
He put a plate in front of Echo.
‘Don’t worry, your hair won’t fall out and you won’t grow horns either. This is fried Sewer Dragon’s knilch.’
Echo eyed the next course mistrustfully. ‘What’s a Sewer Dragon, if you wouldn’t mind telling me? And what is its knilch?’
‘A Sewer Dragon is a creature that lives exclusively in sewers. As for its diet and physical appearance, I’d sooner not go into them at dinner time. Because of its unusual habitat, the Sewer Dragon has developed an organ that digests like a stomach, detoxifies like a liver and filters like a kidney: the knilch. What is more, it actually
thinks
with its knilch as well! The knilch is a superorgan unique in the annals of Zamonian biology. Fresh Sewer Dragon’s knilch is such a delicacy, head chefs fight duels over it with filleting knives.’
Echo emitted an involuntary belch, feeling faintly nauseous. He tried to imagine a Sewer Dragon but thought better of it when his inner eye pictured a creature with matted fur and several fleshy pink probosces.
‘Why are things that naturally arouse disgust considered by gourmets to be supreme delicacies?’ Ghoolion asked. ‘Live oysters? The diseased livers of force-fed geese? The brains of baby calves? The aborted offspring of the Cloak-of-Invisibility Sturgeon? Sewer Dragon’s knilch?’ He answered his own question. ‘The thrill of overcoming an aversion, that’s what appeals to them, just as transcending the norm is the alchemist’s supreme motivation. Not only cooking is related to alchemy; eating is too. Eat this Sewer Dragon’s knilch, analyse its constituent flavours with your tongue and taste buds, and you’ll be halfway to becoming an apprentice alchemist! Shut your eyes!’
Echo complied. He sank his teeth in the peculiar organ and chewed with deliberation. There was no taste he could identify, nothing that reminded him of any particular food. It was like eating something cooked on another planet.
‘I can’t taste anything familiar. It smells strange. It tastes strange too - unusual but interesting.’
Echo swallowed the last morsel.
Ghoolion levelled a triumphant finger at the little Crat. ‘Then you’re a gourmet! A born gourmet
and
a budding alchemist!’
‘Am I?’
‘Beyond a doubt! A culinary ignoramus would have spat out a Sewer Dragon’s knilch at once. It tastes extraordinary - like nothing else. Ordinary folk prefer familiar tastes - they’d sooner eat the same things all the time - but a gourmet would sample a fried park bench just to know how it tastes. It’s the same with the alchemist: nothing strange, novel or surprising can deter him. On the contrary, he goes looking for such things. Are you ready for the next course?’
And so it went on, hour after hour: noodles baked in gold leaf, catfish and buttered shrimps, gurnard with twelve sauces, spider crab in paprika and brown sugar, brill encased in zucchini scales, sautéed lobster in aubergine boats, grouse livers with essence of morel, pigeons in aspic, Midgard rabbits’ tongues in lavender sauce, stuffed marsh-hogs’ tails on a bed of blue cabbage, wishbone meat in lemon-balm jelly, chilled sea-slug soup with shaved crayfish tails. The portions were minute, often no more than a mouthful, to ensure that every course left Echo wanting more. And as for the puddings!
Ghoolion produced a whole succession of sensational delicacies, accompanying each of them with some enlightening piece of information, exciting story or amusing anecdote. Echo had never felt so well entertained or so superlatively well fed. While devouring each course, he watched the Alchemaster busy himself at the stove and listened to his dissertations with rapt attention. The tyrant of Malaisea was showing him some entirely new sides of his personality: those of a perfect host and charming, omniscient raconteur who not only produced one gastronomic sensation after another but served them with the perfect manners of a head waiter in a five-star restaurant. Everything was cooked to a turn, perfectly seasoned, just the right temperature, and as decoratively arranged on the plate as a Florinthian florist’s market stall in springtime. Echo was so enchanted, he forgot all about the next full moon and his impending demise. And Ghoolion continued to produce course after course until, late that night, Echo pronounced himself defeated.
In the end, the Alchemaster picked up the half-unconscious little Crat, who now weighed twice as much as he had a few hours ago, and carried him into another room, which was kept at a cosy temperature by a big tiled stove. There he deposited him in a wonderful sleeping basket lined with plump cushions, and Echo, purring softly, drifted off into the land of dreams.
The Leathermousoleum
W
hen Echo woke up the next morning, it all came back to him in a rush: his contract, the next full moon, being stripped of his fat and stuffed … A prey to gloomy thoughts, he climbed out of his little basket and went slinking through Ghoolion’s sinister domain.
Although there were no stuffed Cyclopean Mummies or Hazelwitches on the top floor of the castle, the atmosphere was quite intimidating enough for Echo’s taste. The sunlight seemed to be robbed of its luminosity as soon as it streamed in through the tall windows, only to dissipate and disappear down the interminable passages. For the first time, Echo was unpleasantly struck by the absence of the hum of voices to which he’d been accustomed down in the town. Here, all that came to his ears was the melancholy music of the wind, to which motes of dust were dancing in the gloom.
Shivering, he made his way into the great hall, that prison for prisons filled with long, thin shadows cast by the bars of the cages it contained. He hurried past them with his head down. The cages were empty, but each told the story of one of Ghoolion’s victims and none had ended happily. The teeth and claws embedded in several wooden cages bore witness to their inmates’ desperate attempts to escape, and many an iron bar was encrusted with dried blood. Whether muscular bear or colourful bird of paradise, snake or polecat, Ubufant or Zamingo, all Ghoolion’s captives had ended up in his cauldron. The Ghoolionic Preserver had reduced them to a scent encased in fat and stored in the castle cellar. Echo could conceive of no grislier fate. Everything here reminded him of death.
But he was hungry nonetheless. Although he had sworn before going to sleep that he would eat nothing for the next three days, all the dishes he’d consumed had been digested. Moreover, Ghoolion’s opulent menu had stretched his stomach to such an extent that it now felt even emptier than before. It dawned on Echo that hunger was considerably easier to endure with an empty belly.
‘Ah, there’s my little gourmet!’ Ghoolion exclaimed brightly, as Echo came stealing into the laboratory. He was engaged in weighing some gold dust with little lead weights and a pair of alchemical scales. ‘Sleep well? How about a hearty breakfast?’
‘Nice of you to ask,’ Echo replied. ‘I had an excellent sleep, thank you, and I am feeling a trifle hungry - in spite of that banquet last night.’
‘Banquet be damned!’ Ghoolion said contemptuously. ‘That was nothing, just a taster. A few hors d’oeuvres.’
Echo wandered around the laboratory in a subdued frame of mind. Simmering in the cauldron was a large bird whose contorted foot, complete with claws, was protruding from the bubbling brew.
Ghoolion had noticed Echo seated beside the cauldron. ‘That’s a Doodo,’ he said. ‘Or rather, it
was
a Doodo. The last of its kind, I’m afraid.’
‘Perhaps I’m also the last of my kind,’ Echo said softly, averting his eyes from the gruesome sight.
‘That’s quite possible,’ said Ghoolion. ‘More than possible, in fact.’
Echo was beginning to fathom the Alchemaster’s thought processes. It would never have occurred to Ghoolion that his guest might be distressed by such a heartless remark. Echo’s feelings were a matter of supreme indifference to him. He simply said what he thought, no matter how hurtful.
Ghoolion jotted down some notes in a notebook, muttering to himself, then reeled off one alchemical formula after another. He seemed to have forgotten all about Echo, who preserved a tactful silence so as not to spoil his host’s concentration. After a while, however, Echo’s little stomach rumbled loudly enough to be heard all over the laboratory. Ghoolion broke off with a start and looked over at him.
‘Please forgive me!’ he exclaimed. ‘I’m rather behindhand with my work today, that’s whyI … Listen, how about helping yourself to some breakfast? You need only go up to the roof, where you’ll find everything to your satisfaction.’

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