The Stranger - Max Frei [142]
Then Lady Melamori appeared in the doorway and began complaining about life.
“Sir Max. Just Max, I mean. You can’t imagine!” (The poor thing still stumbled over my name.) “You can’t imagine how awful it is to have a big family!”
“I can imagine it very well,” I sighed. “As we speak, another unhappy victim of family ties is snoozing over at my house, while his three million relatives think he’s saving the Unified Kingdom.”
“You mean Melifaro? Lucky man! I have it worse. My relatives are influential enough to free me from duty if duty interferes with family gatherings. So there’s no one who can save me. I’m glad the End of the Year doesn’t come every dozen days!”
“Have a mug of kamra,” I suggested. “Sit down with me for half an hour. It won’t be the most exciting adventure in your life, but you’ll be able to relax. Maybe you’ll even be inspired to comb your hair.”
Melamori stared at her reflection in the convex side of the glass mug.
“Oh, how embarrassing! You’re right, Max. A half hour of ordinary life wouldn’t hurt right now.” She took off the small lilac turban she was wearing and began arranging her wild tresses. “Well, never mind. In three days it will all be over.”
“I suggest celebrating your return to ordinary existence with the most exhausting of strolls.” I had decided that a little pressure wouldn’t hurt. “Crowded places, brightly lighted streets, and no monkey business.”
“Not necessarily,” Melamori said with an unexpected smile. “I mean, crowded places aren’t absolutely necessary. Who, I wonder, could protect me from Sir Max, the Terror of all of Echo? Boboota’s boys? Anyway, it’s bad form to promise something at the End of the Year. So I make no promises. When the year ends, though—”
“I get it. Next year I’ll try to make as many promises to as many different people as possible so I won’t feel I’ve just escaped from a Refuge for the Mad. I’ll be just like everyone else.”
“Thanks for the kamra, Max. I’ve got to run. My parents have finagled Days of Freedom for me—alas, not Freedom from Care, but from ordinary human existence. If they discover that I’ve come here only to wish you good morning rather than fulfilling the duties of a son—”
“You mean daughter.”
“No, I made no mistake. I meant what I said: a son. My father, Korva Blimm, desperately wanted a boy. He is sure to this day that I was born a girl purely out of stubbornness. Someday I’m going to run away to your Wild Lands, I swear by the World.”
Melamori, gloomy again, gave a dispirited wave and left the office and the House by the Bridge.
I yawned, more out of a feeling of helplessness than from want of sleep. The World was clearly at sixes and sevens.
Even the indestructible Sir Lonli-Lokli was destined to drink of the bitter cup at the end of the year. Even if the report Juffin had dumped on him appealed to his lower bureaucratic instincts, the guy still had worries piled up over the year waiting on his doorstep back home. And everyone needs to sleep, even Lonli-Lokli.
So he wasn’t looking his best. It was the first time his impassive face had looked completely human to me. It seemed to suggest that the fellow was sick of everything.
After he had downed my kamra as well as his own, Sir Shurf boldly embarked on the last part of the report.
I wasn’t the only normal person in this pre-holiday bedlam, though. The life of our Master Curator of Knowledge, Sir Lookfi Pence, didn’t seem to have suffered any change. Before it was even noon he dropped by for a chat. Well, if the chap has time for this, it must mean everything is as it should be, I surmised.
“It seems that you, too, are burdened neither by promises, nor by reports, nor by relatives,” I said, looking at the cheerful boyish countenance