The Stranger - Max Frei [267]
This fantastic city was already quite near, and I realized I could use the cable car to reach it. It was the only means of municipal transport, as I well remembered. I also remembered that I was never afraid of heights sitting in the flimsy little car. I simply wasn’t afraid of anything there at all.
I crawled into the cable car as it slowly floated past, and ten minutes later I was standing on a narrow, crooked little street that I had been familiar with since childhood. Melamori, I thought, here’s a place where we could walk after all! How is it possible? A place so marvelous, and I’m all alone. I’m going to explode, it’s so wonderful. It’s too much for just me alone!
I didn’t explode, of course.
I knew this city better than the one where I was born. It seemed to me that now I had really come home. I had finally returned, not in my dreams, but for real, and wide awake.
I don’t remember all the details of this mind-boggling stroll. I can only say that I conscientiously walked around the entire city, the name of which I don’t know to this day. It was no longer uninhabited. Occasionally passersby would come my way. Their faces seemed vaguely familiar, and many of them greeted me cordially with strange guttural sounds. None of it really surprised me. I just remember that by the time my legs were numb with weariness, I sat down at a table in an outdoor café, and someone served me a tiny cup of Turkish coffee. An inch above the surface floated a puffy cloud of cream. You could either eat it, or spare it and just admire it. I took out a cigarette and snapped my fingers mechanically. A neat greenish flame burned close to my face. The cigarette started to puff smoke, and I took a drag, as though I had always been certain of my ability to summon fire.
Getting used to magic was a trifling matter—as long as it happened with the same regularity as ordinary events.
I continued on my way, crossing the empty English park (this place was from another dream altogether!), and was soon gazing on the eleven Vaxari trees by the city gates. Then I was in Kettari again. The tiny red ball of the sun was just resting on the horizon. I realized I was as tired as though I had been walking for a few days. Sinning Magicians, how long had I been roaming around? But did it even matter? Now I needed to go home. And sleep, sleep, sleep—come hell or high water!
Sir Shurf Lonli-Lokli was waiting for me in the living room, sad and stern.
“I’m glad to see you in one piece,” he said. “When I got home, your absence didn’t seem strange. After all, we came to this city on business. But by the next day—”
“What? The next day! Gosh, how long was I gone?”
“To answer that question, I’d have to know when you left. I’ve been waiting for you for four days—but I was gone for a while myself.”
“Oh, my!” I groaned. “No time to sleep now. First, I have to figure this all out. Where is my only joy in life? Where is my sweet little bottle of Elixir?”
“In your traveling bag, I guess. I took the liberty of putting it in the closet, since you had managed to leave it right in the middle of the living room floor for all the World to see. For a while I thought maybe you had measured the room and made it the centerpiece for a special reason. Then I realized that wasn’t your style, and I cleared it out of the way.”
“Sir Shurf, what a nice treat!” I took a hefty gulp of Elixir of Kaxar. My weariness abated for a time. “Good Old Shurf, who’s not calling me ‘Lady Marilyn’ or braying like an insane donkey, but only lives to look after my welfare. I think I must have died and gone to heaven!”
“I don’t think it makes sense to call you ‘Lady Marilyn’ any more, just as it doesn’t make sense to stand on ceremony with someone who’s been with you through thick and thin, and has even gotten to know—”
“A very sweet and kind version of Shurf Lonli-Lokli,” I said with a laugh. “It’s for the best. Decorum has its place, but it’s only right that it should yield eventually to openhearted familiarity. But why no