The Stranger's Woes (79 page)

Gee, I said to myself. What’s with the elevated spirits?

The creature’s indeterminate face had turned into my own. I smiled—I was a pretty handsome guy after all. Too bad this new Max was going to die almost immediately. Maybe I should have asked the Tipfinger to live out my boring life here and grow old? No, that would have been too much to ask. I didn’t want to entrust the remains of my reputation to this strange creature. Besides, there is something romantic in any sudden death. And I’ve always been such a show-off.

My doppelgänger looked at me with unconcealed compassion.

“You are very unlucky,” he said. “You didn’t know of the true power of words uttered between Worlds, and you gave me freedom by mistake. You also did not know that he who frees a Tipfinger must take his place. To kill me or to set me free—in fact it is one and the same. I do think you are going to like it, though. On the paths a Tipfinger roams you will find the most frivolous kind of power. Deep inside you have dreamed about this all your life, and now it will come to pass. Goodbye, Sir Max, and thank you.”

Now both of my hearts were knocking against my rib cage. They knew I was in deep trouble. I had fallen into the most ridiculous trap, from which, it seemed, there was no way out. Damn it, I thought. I knew my chatterbox of a mouth would be the end of me.

And then I was alone, and I felt that it didn’t matter. I was no longer Sir Max from Echo. I didn’t know who I was, and frankly, I no longer cared.

“Time to go for a walk,” I said out loud, taking the driver’s seat.

My streetcar moved along into the unknown. My passion for high-speed driving was still with me. The air, knocked flat onto the tracks, screamed as if in pain. Thick clots of darkness crawled onto the windshield, and I kept muttering
faster
,
faster
, not knowing what I was running from.

At daybreak, I found myself standing outside in the middle of a street. It was a broad central street in a German town. I knew it was a German town from the signs on the stores. The tracks ended here. They just stopped as if they had been cut off.

I stood on the smooth asphalt and watched indifferently as the magic streetcar disappeared, like an old ghost for which there was no need anymore. I felt no regrets about it. Something in me knew that now I could get to any destination I wished without boarding any dubious vehicles. These creatures, one of which I had just become, could open Doors between Worlds as easily as I had once opened the secret door to the Ministry of Perfect Public Order. I could go to Echo right this minute, but I didn’t want to go back there. I did remember that wonderful city, to which I felt connected both through my destiny and through necessity. Even the tender feelings I felt toward the people I had left behind were still with me. I missed them, but my feelings did not matter anymore. That morning I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that creatures like me were destined to be lonely, and I did not mind. It was the way it was.

I was overwhelmed with my power, but I had no particular desires. There was only someone else’s vague but insistent thought that it was “time to go for a little spin,” and an irresistible urge to keep moving. I didn’t have the faintest idea of the rules of the game I had been sucked into, so I had to learn them fast, and learn them the hard way.

I went for a walk. I no longer belonged to the World I was born in, but it seemed that this World belonged to me. The round cobblestones of the street that my new shoes were treading whispered their history to me. I have to admit that it was too boring to listen to very carefully.

I walked into a cozy pub. It was called
Nuremberg
or
The Nuremberger
—something like that. The old waitress looked at me with horror, and also with vague hope. I wish I knew whose face it was that smiled at her and ordered a cup of coffee.

I finished my coffee and walked out into one of the narrow streets of old Nuremberg. A cold wind blew from the river. It resembled the minty wind of Kettari, the way the shadow resembles the object that casts it. But that mysterious resemblance left me cold. I didn’t care about the poor old Max who had fallen in love with the bridges of Kettari. Now I was much more interested in my recent discovery. Interesting, I thought. So that’s how it works. I’d better remember it.

That morning I had discovered one of many fantastic new ways of traveling. It turned out that all I had to do was enter the first bar, restaurant, or even bakery I came across that had some geographical location for a namesake. I had to stay there for a while with my back turned to the window. That was important. Then, when I walked out, I would find myself standing under a different sky, on a sidewalk or street in the place the eatery had been named after. I was completely enchanted by this.

If I wanted to, though, I could always take a train, a plane, or a car. My pockets were always full of everything I needed: money, ID, tickets, and other papers. These fraudulent documents proving that I belonged to the world of people appeared in my pockets just as I needed them, so I could fool anyone.

It wasn’t so bad. No, not bad at all. In fact, what had happened to me exceeded my wildest notions of the miraculous. I envied myself.

I could go to a cheap Mexican diner on the outskirts of Berlin, then walk outside into the sweltering heat and melting sidewalks of Mexico City. I could walk through the heat of that city and follow my feet to the cool
New Yorker
bar. The mustached bartender would shudder when he looked at me. I wasn’t surprised—everyone did that if I didn’t turn my face away in time. Where was my famous charm now?

To hell with charm, though. I could have a cold beer in the
New Yorker
(remembering to sit with my back turned to the window), then push open the thick glass door and walk out onto the streets of the real New York, in the very heart of Greenwich Village. I would stop there and visit a neat little place called
Club 88
, not because I wanted to throw myself into a distant adventure but just for my own personal enjoyment. It’s not just by chance that the number in the name of the place is the number of keys on a piano. In the evening, a virtuoso pianist taps on the keys. Behind the bar, a black woman dressed in men’s clothing hums the blues in an oddly familiar raspy voice while she mixes cocktails and dumps out the cigarette butts from identical white ashtrays. The
Club 88
regulars are not what you’d call yuppies. They smoke like chimneys, giving the lie to another Great American Dream. Naturally I sympathize with them. I only regret that my ever-changing face, obedient to their fears, scares these merry “outcasts.” The barstools next to mine are always empty.

From New York, praise be the Magicians, I could go anywhere: every possible geographical location has been immortalized on the innumerable signs of New York cafés, bars, diners, and other eateries. Flattered, the international community pays New York back in kind. Almost anywhere in the world, you can find a bar or restaurant that bears the name of that new Babylon. And so New York became a transportation hub for me. I visited it more often than any other place. I rarely lingered a long time, however. Too many geopolitical temptations.

In those days, I finally came to appreciate the World I had been born in, and which I had been none too fond of. I realized it was a magnificent place. The smell of lime trees in bloom on the outskirts of Moscow was to die for. Then there were the hot winds of Arizona, the bracing moist air of London at night, and the resinous breeze of the Baltic Sea coast, whose white sands were covered in thin, dry pine needles. Not to mention a bike ride through the empty Amsterdam streets on a Sunday morning, a merry flute player on the Charles Bridge, the rounded tops of the Carpathian Mountains, the aroma of Parisian coffee houses, the discontented chattering of an agitated squirrel, the round black eye of a swan about to tear off a piece of bread from the hand of a leisurely nature lover . . . I doubt I’ll ever sit down to make a complete inventory of all the wonders of the World. And who was the idiot who decided there were only seven?

I had to admit that the World I was born in was all right. There was nothing wrong with it. There had been something wrong with
me
while I belonged to it. It really made no difference where I was. It just didn’t matter.

If there is anything that matters, it is the creature out of whose heart you look at the world around you. I had the chance, a unique chance, to look at my former homeland with the eyes of a very peculiar and strange creature.

There was, however, one false note in this wonderful symphony of my new existence. At times, that note sounded quite harsh.

While I was enjoying the new possibilities and playing this exciting game, something deep inside me knew that Sir Juffin Hully wouldn’t have agreed to join me on my trip if I had invited him. I knew it even during the days when I accepted my strange destiny and was almost happy with it. I would probably have become completely happy, if the creature I had become had been capable of happiness.

Back in those days, I would have forgotten my own name if it hadn’t seen it everywhere I went, on seemingly every sign, billboard, or notice. All those Maxes, Maxims, and Maximilians followed me day in and day out, as though there were no other names left in the world. Their ubiquity prevented me from forgetting myself completely.

Once, on the menu of some diner in Germany, I saw something called Strammer Max in Mirrors. Curious, I ordered it. The mirrors turned out to be a cold fried egg on a piece of rye bread. In addition, there was a thick slice of finely cut ham on the plate. It wasn’t particularly tasty, but it had a positive effect on me. Sir Max from Echo woke up somewhere in the depths of my soul for a few minutes, and said in a very persistent tone that he wanted to go home. Soon, I said, brushing him off like a nagging child. Sir Max retreated into the darkness, but from then on, his formerly sound sleep of a baby became the light, anxious sleep of an old man.

It was in that diner that I decided to commit to paper everything that had happened to me as Sir Max from Echo. I covered several napkins with my writing and liked what I had written. I somehow felt that as soon as I finished writing, the wonders and mysteries would let me go back to the same place that that guy, who had become almost unfamiliar to me, wanted to return to. And then he would be happy, and I . . . I would be free forever and ever.