The Stranger - Max Frei [91]
What’s more, no matter what Sir Juffin Hully said, my opponent was very close to getting what he wanted. Much too close for comfort!
When the silhouette of the intruder materialized like a shadow in the corner of my prison boudoir, I froze in horror. Of course, I had enough information at my disposal to prepare myself for this eventuality. But I wasn’t ready. I was completely unnerved.
To be absolutely honest, I was terrified. And I didn’t know how to bring myself to my senses, even though the appearance of the intruder was more funny than fearsome. The ghost of the Grand Magician was exceedingly small in stature. This was the result of his disproportionate physique—an enormous head; a powerful, muscular torso; and stumpy little legs with feet as small as a child’s.
A comical figure, to be sure; but the brown, wrinkled face of the intruder made an entirely different impression. He had huge blue eyes, a high forehead, and the finely chiseled nose and nostrils of a predator. His long hair, and a beard of the same length, branched out in a multitude of tiny braids—most likely, an ancient fashion. Well, it’s hard to keep up with the trends from a prison cell. Especially for a ghost, I thought. This observation was very much in my style, and it suggested that things weren’t really so bad.
Having mastered my fear, though, I realized that something worse was happening. I was paralyzed. I couldn’t budge. I stood there gazing dully at the reluctant recluse—I was lucky I didn’t fall flat on my face. Do something, you moron! shouted the clever little fellow inside me. Unfortunately, he didn’t have much influence over the rest of me. Do something already! This is for real! Move it!
Nothing helped.
I knew exactly what I needed to do: free Lonli-Lokli with a few energetic shakes of my hand. But even this rudimentary action was too much for me—this fatal thumbing my nose, so to speak, at the night visitor. I was helpless in this situation. It was no longer up to me. I realized that I was goner.
“Your name is Perset. You are a piece of life. I’ve been looking for you,” the ghost whispered. “I have come to you down a long road—one end was prison, the other the grave. And only the wind cried ‘Oooooooh!’; but still I came.”
He came, you understand. I’d rather he not speak at all, this unsung symbolist poet. A person who burdened his interlocutor with such trite and highfalutin turns of phrase upon first meeting was absurd. I decided to refuse the burden. Besides, I had written better dialogs when I was eighteen. I didn’t know how, but I was determined to get the better of him.
At that moment, something utterly bizarre began happening to me. I felt that I was starting to “harden” again. It seemed to me that I had turned into a small, hard apple—one of those that only a seven-year-old boy can munch on (since boys that age are known to chew on everything that comes their way).
Then I had a completely mad thought—I began thinking that there was no way a grownup man like my opponent was going to munch on the hard, bitter apple that I had somehow become. This delirious notion seemed to me to be so self-evident that there was no way around it. And this restored my belief in my own powers. To be honest, I had completely forgotten about my human nature and about the human problems that beset me. We sour green apples live our own inscrutable, carefree lives . . .
My guest began to grimace.