The Stranger - Max Frei [5]
“That’s Xolomi, Max. The Xolomi prison is there. A splendid little place!”
“Splendid?”
“From the point of view of the Head of the Minor Secret Investigative Force, such as I am, if you will remember, it is the most exquisite place in the World!” Juffin gave a short snort.
“Oh, I forgot who I was contending with . . .”
I glanced at Juffin. He twisted his face into an evil grimace, winked, and we both burst into laughter.
After we composed ourselves, we continued on our way until there it was, the Right Bank. Juffin began issuing abrupt commands: “Right, right, now to the left!” in response to which I assumed the dignified bearing of an army chauffeur, though where that particular bent came from I have no idea. A bit farther and we were on the Street of the Copper Pots.
“Over there is our House by the Bridge,” Juffin remarked, waving his hand toward the orange mist under some street lights. “But your visit there is yet to come. As for now—stop! We’re here.”
I halted the amobiler and stepped onto the mosaic sidewalk of the Right Bank for the first time. Oh, was it really the first time? But I suppressed the dangerous dizziness, nipped it square in the bud, and passed over the threshold of the Glutton Bunba Inn. Of course—it was the pub from my dreams, the very place I had met Sir Juffin Hully and frivolously accepted the strangest job offer anyone could ever imagine!
Without even thinking, I walked over to the familiar spot between the bar and a window onto the yard. A plump brunette smiled at me as though I was an old customer (this was Madam Zizinda herself, granddaughter of the original glutton named Bunba). But why “as though”? I was, indeed, an old, a very old, customer.
“This is my favorite little spot,” Juffin announced. “I’ll tell you a basic principle for choosing future colleagues. If they like the same food and, in particular, the same table you like, psychological compatibility with the team is guaranteed.”
Madam Zizinda, in the meantime, had placed pots with hot pâté on our table. As for the other events of the evening that followed, someday I will commit them to paper, when I sit down to write my tourist guidebook: The Finest Taverns of the City of Echo.
My second foray into society took place two days later. Sir Juffin returned home very early, even before dusk. I was just about to have breakfast.
“Tonight is your debut performance, Max!” Juffin declared, confiscating my mug of kamra without waiting for Kimpa to pour him his own. “We’re going to test your progress on my favorite neighbor. If old Makluk still says hello to me after our visit, we may conclude that you are ready for independence. In my view, you can already manage very well on your own. But I’m not being objective: I’m too eager to put you to work.”
“But just think, Juffin; he’s your neighbor! You’ll have to live with him afterward.”
“Makluk is kind and inoffensive. Moreover, he’s practically a hermit. He found society so unbearably cloying while he was the Long Arm for the Elimination of Irksome Misunderstandings at the Royal Court that now he can endure the company only of me and a few elderly chatterbox widowers—and that very seldom.”
“Are you a widower?”
“Yes, more than thirty years now; so it’s not a forbidden topic. For the first twenty years or so, though, I preferred not to talk about it. We marry at a ripe age, and, generally (we hope), for a long time. But we are accustomed to suppose that fate is wiser than the heart, so don’t fret!”
And so that I would fret as little as possible, he seized the second mug of kamra, which, I must admit, I had wanted very much myself.
We arrayed ourselves in formal dress and set off to pay our visit. Fortunately, visiting costume differed from everyday dress only in its richness of hue and ornament, and not in its cut, to which I had already grown accustomed. I was on my way to an exam, and my heart leapt about in