The Stranger - Max Frei [27]
I found the little box at the bottom of one of the drawers, and tip-toed back out. My hands trembled slightly, for some reason. I felt a foreboding in my heart. What if it didn’t want to talk this time, either? Never mind, Juffin would think of something. He would shake the soul loose from it. I wonder what the soul of a box looks like? I cleared my throat, and the heavy feeling in my chest began to dissipate.
The dessert that goodhearted Kimpa decided to regale the exhausted heroes with exceeded my wildest expectations. This meant that the interrogation of the box was postponed for another quarter of an hour.
Finally, Sir Juffin made his way into the study. I followed behind, squeezing the smooth body of our singular and precious witness in my cold, moist hands. No denying, I was nervous. Something told me the little box was ready to talk to us, and this unnerved me all the more. I had always been fond of horror films, but now I would have been glad to watch The Muppet Show. Just for the sake of variety.
This time, the preparations for communicating with the box were far more elaborate than before. Sir Juffin rummaged around for a long time in the drawer where he kept the candles. Finally, he chose one, bluish-white, with an intricate design formed by tiny dark-red smatterings of wax. For five minutes or so he tried to start a fire using some kind of awkward flint stone, the workings of which I couldn’t fathom. At long last his efforts met with success. Placing the candle by the far wall, Juffin lay on his stomach in the opposite corner and gestured to me to join him. This I did. The floor in the study was bare and cold; there were no rugs. I thought: perhaps these inconvenient little rituals qualify as a kind of bribe to the “powers of the unknown.” Are the “powers of the unknown” really so petty?
Everything was ready. The little box occupied a spot exactly in the middle, between us and the candle. I had to exert very little effort to reach the little box’s memory. The box seemed even to have been pining for the opportunity to talk to someone. The “picture show” began with a bang—we just had to watch.
Sometimes my attention wandered. I had never had to perform this feat of concentration for more than an hour at a time in the past. When this happened, Juffin silently handed me a cup of Elixir of Kaxar. Once in a while he also took a nip of the herbal infusion. I don’t know whether he really needed it, or was just taking advantage of the situation.
The box, a clever little thing, showed us only what we were really interested in! True, Sir Juffin had often said that objects are inclined to remember first those events in which magic is present. He must have been right. But I liked to think that the little box was very much aware of what we were seeking. They say that we become sincerely attached to someone we help without expecting anything in return. Judging by my involuntary tenderness toward the box pilfered from Makluk’s bedchamber, this was certainly the case.
It started with the fracas involving the tub, which the injured party had told us about recently. There was the fragile old man with the handsome, weary face of an ascetic, the capricious expression of a spoiled child frozen on it. Our acquaintance Maddi is holding the washbowl. The old man’s little finger dips into the water. His lips curl in displeasure. The servant gets up off his knees, goes toward the door. The face of the sick man, contorted with rage, assumes a kind of demonically cheerful expression . . . he pitches and scores! The washbowl made from the finest china (we must presume) strikes the forehead of the unlucky fellow and smashes to smithereens.
Stunned, blinded by water and a thin stream of his own blood, Maddi executes an agile sideways leap worthy of an Olympic medal—if the Olympic Committee recognized the sideways leap as a full-fledged sport. The fatal mirror lay in the direct path of the poor Maddi, and blocked his flight. Nevertheless, everything turns out all right—no broken noses or missing teeth. No