The 13.5 Lives of Captain Bluebear

by Walter Moers

  The closer it came, the louder the incredible roar it emitted, which might have issued from the throats of thousands of maddened buffalo, lions, elephants, and baboons. Underlying it was a bass note that made the whole desert resonate so violently that cactuses toppled over while the tornado was still dozens of miles away. By the time it was within a mile of me, I could make out the objects that circled it like satellites before being engulfed: boulders the size of houses, cactuses – even a camedary or two.

  From the

  ‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

  by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

  Tornado Stops [cont.] It is a traditional Zamonian custom to erect stop signs on the route of the Eternal Tornado [→Eternal Tornado, The]. These serve to guide those who leave sacrificial offerings for the whirlwind, which many of Zamonia’s inhabitants worship as a deity. They believe it to be an animate, supernatural being that can be appeased, or induced to grant wishes, by gifts. As mentioned above, the stop signs are occasionally misinterpreted as an invitation to ride aboard this meteorological phenomenon or construed as a challenge by death-defying adventurers. It is said that some naive souls are actually prepared to run the risk of travelling aboard a meteorological phenomenon that eats its way through the countryside while rotating at 5000 r.p.m. Sensible wayfarers, on the other hand, construe the stop signs as a warning – a kind of recommendation to quit the area as fast as possible.

  There’s still time, I thought. I can still stir my stumps and run for it before the torna –

  Before I could finish the word in my head the tornado picked me up by the scruff of the neck like a struggling rabbit. A gigantic hand made of dust, mud and desert sand hoisted me high into the air and whirled me in a circle around the midpoint of the tornado. It could not have been more than a few seconds before I was high enough to overlook the whole of the desert. Anagrom Ataf lay far behind. That was the last thing I saw before being sucked into the tornado’s interior. I was hauled backwards through a loose mass of sand, pebbles and desert scrub that engulfed me completely but was so well ventilated by the constant motion that I could still breathe. The most unpleasant thing was the peculiar sensation that overcame me as I sank ever deeper into this mixture of desert sand and pebbles. It was a very frightening sensation, a feeling of utter helplessness accompanied by a presentiment of death. At the same time, all the strength was sucked out of me. My body became heavy and ached all over, as if I were suffering from a bad bout of influenza. And then, quite suddenly, the tornado released me. I fell head over heels and came to rest on a firm surface. It was, as I discovered to my bemusement, a flight of stone steps.

  From the

  ‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

  by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

  Eternal Tornado, The [cont.] Eternal Tornado is the popular term for the last megatornado in the perpetuum mobile category still active in the →Demerara Desert. Unlike normal tornadoes, this whirlwind, which is approximately five miles high and half a mile in diameter, possesses certain characteristics no longer found in present-day whirlwinds. Among other things, it apparently goes on for ever.

  Another characteristic is the so-called mobile stability that exists in the heart of the tornado, hence the theory that relates it to another violent meteorological phenomenon, namely, the hurricane. One well-known feature of the hurricane is its calm centre, the so-called eye of the storm. Some authorities surmise that the Eternal Tornado originated in prehistoric times, when a hurricane and a tornado collided and became fused together. Although this would conflict with another meteorological theory [→Conventions Observed by Exceptional Natural Phenomena, The], it may be one of those popular exceptions that always prove the rule when scientists are at their wits’ end.

  This mobile stability, or zone of complete calm inside a raging whirlwind, is so pronounced in the case of the Eternal Tornado that many tornado experts espouse the possibility that a house of cards could be built inside it without collapsing. Although this may be something of an exaggeration, the physical conditions prevailing inside the tornado must be so stable that it would – in theory, at least – be possible to survive there (in very primitive conditions, of course). Purely in theory, be it noted, because no one would be insane enough to enter a whirlwind of his own free will.

  What temporarily alarmed me far more than the discovery of a flight of stone steps inside the tornado was the fact that I couldn’t see very well. My vision was blurred, and everything looked less well defined than usual. I should point out that my eyesight is normally as keen as that of an eagle looking through an electron microscope; I can tell the sex of an ant at fifty yards without any technical aids, even in twilight. Now, however, I saw just about as well as an owl in daylight. Everything seemed to be shrouded in a pall of mist, and I had to screw up my eyes to focus them a little better. Some tornado dust had lodged in them, presumably, but I hoped this was only temporary. I tried to stand up but failed to do so with anything like my normal agility. My limbs felt as heavy as lead.

  It was only with a supreme effort that I managed, groaning, to stand more or less upright. The fall had evidently taken more out of me than I thought. I felt as if I were suffering from lumbago, and every muscle in my body ached.

  Beneath me were the stairs on which I’d landed so painfully. I walked – or rather, hobbled – to the edge and found myself peering down a shaft several miles deep. The stairs went spiralling down it, lower and lower, and the walls of the shaft were lined with small, single-storeyed houses, evidently built of mud.

  Overcome by a terrible fit of vertigo, I instinctively staggered back a few paces. When I turned round, I was standing only a few feet from one of the primitive little houses.

  The centenarians

  Out of the crudely constructed doorway stepped an old man. By ‘old man’ I don’t mean a sprightly senior citizen in his prime, or aged between sixty and seventy, but a really old man. This one must have been at least a hundred years old, possibly a thousand. He had shoulder-length grey hair and a white beard that almost reached his knees. His face was a mass of wrinkles, and he was leaning on a stick.

  He subjected me to a stare of the kind that only very old people can give – so long and piercing that you wonder if they’re still staring at you or have died in the interim. I soon found the situation embarrassing, so I tried to break the ice with a little conversation.

  ‘Er … How do you do? Could you tell me where I am, please?’

  My voice made a noise like the door of a prison cell opening after decades of oil deprivation. I gave a start, it sounded so croaky and unfamiliar. Feeling awkward, I cleared my throat, which probably still had bits of tornado lodged in it.

  The old man looked at me pensively but without surprise. Then he gave a gentle smile and said, ‘You’re in Paradise.’

  Of course! That was the answer: I was dead. The whirlwind had broken my neck. I must have suffocated in the mass of pebbles or died of shock. No idea what had finished me off, but I had certainly kicked the bucket. I was dead, I was in heaven, and this old man was none other than … God! Looking the way he did, who else could he be?

  He had now shuffled to the edge of the stairs. Cupping his hands around his mouth, he called out, so loudly that his voice went echoing down the shaft, ‘A new arrival! A new arrival!’

  Some more men came out on the stairway. They all had long white hair and yard-long beards and were at least as old as the one I took to be God. Not a word was spoken as they came toiling up the stairs, a laborious and painful process. I myself refrained from speaking because my own voice frightened me. The old men clustered round me and fondled my head with their bony hands in what appeared to be a well-meant form of ritual greeting. Two of them solemnly approached me bearing a large mirror.

  ‘Look in the mirror!’ one of them commanded. His tone, though friendly, brooked no refusal. Looki
ng at the greybeards’ faces, I detected the sort of tense expectancy displayed by parents watching their children open Christmas presents.

  Hesitantly, I looked in the mirror. I had to screw up my eyes before I could make out my reflection, and then … My fur had turned snow-white and was so long on my head that it straggled down my neck to my shoulders. I had a yard-long beard, and there were big, dark blue bags under my eyes. At a rough estimate, I had aged at least a century. I opened my mouth to give a horrified cry, but before I could do so my knees turned to jelly and I lapsed into merciful unconsciousness.

  WHEN I CAME to, I was lying on a comfortable mattress with five of the old men standing round me. One of them handed me a cup of tea. They had evidently carried me into one of the houses. Near the bed on which I was lying stood a table and two chairs. There were also a small stove and a cupboard containing some crockery.

  ‘Feeling better?’ asked the greybeard who’d brought the tea. ‘It’s normal – happens to everyone. It’s the shock.’ The others eyed me sympathetically.

  ‘The shock, tee-hee!’ tittered the smallest of them. ‘It knocks everyone sideways.’

  ‘I had a terrible nightmare,’ I said, still rather bemused. ‘I dreamed I was terribly old – as old as you are – and …’ I stopped short, aware that I was being tactless, but the old men continued to smile understandingly. The bearer of the teacup acted as their spokesman. His name, I soon discovered, was Baldwyn Baobab.

  ‘I’ve got some news for you,’ he said. ‘Bad news and good news. You grow older very, very quickly when you enter the tornado. You age decades in a few seconds – seventy or eighty years on average. I’m sure you experienced that sensation – it’s thoroughly disagreeable. That’s the bad news. The good news is, once you’re inside here you hardly age at all – only around a minute a year. You can work out for yourself how long a year of life takes: for ever! No matter how old you are, you generally live for another umpteen thousand years – unless, of course, a piano falls on your head. It isn’t immortality, exactly, but you won’t come closer to it anywhere else. Once you get used to it, you feel you’re in Paradise. But don’t ask me how it works, old boy. To discover that, you’d need more than one brain.’

  From the

  ‘Encyclopedia of Marvels, Life Forms and Other Phenomena of Zamonia and its Environs’

  by Professor Abdullah Nightingale

  Eternal Tornado, The [cont.]. The perpetual motion tornado is a meteorological phenomenon that can recur again and again because of exceptionally stable temperatures and atmospheric conditions, which cause it to follow a course known as the Abdullian Double Tornado Pretzel [so called after Professor Abdullah Nightingale, the celebrated amateur tornadologist]. In this mode, the tornado always follows the same course, a series of loops in the shape of a double pretzel some two thousand miles across.

  Interesting, but what bearing did it have on the fact that I’d become a doddering old man within the space of a few seconds?

  A stable time vacuum prevails inside the Eternal Tornado. In other words, time is propelled outwards and away from the centre of the whirlwind – like moisture in a salad drainer – by the immense centrifugal force it exerts. In the eye of the storm, on the other hand, time is subjected to extreme condensation, with the result that it passes at breakneck speed. Anyone insane enough to penetrate a tornado’s outer wall of sand would age decades within the space of a few seconds.

  One of the advantages of old age is that you don’t get worked up over things so easily, not even over the belated arrival of information from an encyclopedia implanted in your brain. At least I now knew how matters stood. What I still failed to understand was why anyone inside a tornado should age by even a minute a year.

  While the tornado is changing its centrifugal direction, an annual process that takes about sixty seconds to complete, the time vacuum fills up with time. This means that, should any living creature happen to be inside the tornado at that moment [an improbable state of affairs, since, as we have already mentioned more than once, no one would be idiotic enough to enter a tornado in the first place], it, too, would be bound to age by one minute.

  I informed the old men of Nightingale’s scientific explanation, which they greeted with nods and murmurs of approval.

  They gave me some readily digestible porridge to eat (one of the tornado inhabitants’ favourite dishes), and we drank a few cups of tea together. Once I had regained some of my strength, I actually succeeded in getting back on my wobbly legs.

  ‘This will be your home from now on,’ one of the old men said with a sweeping gesture. ‘You can choose another house if you don’t care for this one. There are still a few vacant in the lower section.’

  ‘Come,’ said Baldwyn, ‘we’ll give you an exclusive guided tour of Tornado City.’

  Tornado City

  Conditions inside the whirlwind were remarkably stable, as I have said, and approximated to those prevailing in a modern jumbo jet subjected to periodic spells of turbulence. The floor and walls vibrated incessantly but quite gently. A few teacups and old men fell over when the city gave an occasional jolt, but that was all. The deafening external roar produced by the tornado was muffled by its thick integument of sand. All I could detect was a subdued hum, though this might have been because my hearing had deteriorated with age.

  From time to time, probably when it rounded a bend, the tornado emitted some mighty creaks and groans. When this happened a few of the loosely laid stairs became telescoped and one or two of the houses teetered a little, but no one took any notice.

  The old men had built the stairway and the houses themselves, using all kinds of materials found inside the tornado – a considerable achievement, given their advanced years. On the other hand, they’d had an immense amount of time to play with. They had dispensed with architectural folderols of any kind and subordinated form to function, so all the houses looked more or less the same. In old age, I discovered, one no longer sets much store by outward appearances.

  The storage depot

  ‘It really is pure heaven, this place,’ I was told by Abraham Kra, the man who ran the city’s main storage depot. Like many of Tornado City’s inhabitants, he had been travelling with a caravan when the whirlwind overtook him. (I had at first assumed that most of the inmates were victims of tornado stops, but it transpired that I was the only one.)

  The storage depot consisted of a longish row of houses situated in the central section of the staircase. It was chock-full of everything imaginable – foodstuffs, tools, shoes, clothes, bath mats, brooms, household goods – and functioned as a kind of department store whose wares were arranged in accordance with some system known only to Abraham.

  ‘All right, so we’re a bit unsteadier on our pins than we used to be and our eyesight isn’t what it was, but there isn’t much to see here anyway.’ To Abraham, every cloud had a silver lining.

  ‘So there are compensations,’ he went on. ‘The best of it is, we don’t have to worry about a thing. We don’t have to work either, if we don’t want to. It’s the perfect form of retirement. The tornado supplies us with all we need – more than we need, in fact. People leave the craziest things at tornado stops. Look: white whale caviar, nightingales’ tongues in aspic, unicorn goulash – things you only find in gourmet restaurants as a rule. We’ve got whole farms in here, complete with ducks and chickens, pigs and milch cows.

  ‘Not even the freshest food goes bad because nothing in here grows older. Of course, that only applies to the things that fly in through the hole in the top of the tornado and don’t pass through the wall. Here, this cask of milk sailed in two years ago – still tastes as fresh as if it had come straight from the udder.

  ‘People outside believe the tornado is a god, or something of the kind. They often bring their offerings from far away, and have done for hundreds of years. Even kings must have been among them, to judge by the gold and jewellery that comes sailing in here from time to time.

  ‘Wh
en the tornado sucks something up, we simply retire into our houses and wait for the shower of goodies to abate. You have to be really careful, though. Last year two of us were nearly killed by a camedary. I myself got a trombone on the head – could only see in black and white for a month afterwards.

  ‘Most of the stuff falls down the shaft, but a few things land on the stairs. We collect what we need. A lot of it is useless, of course. Last year it rained kayak paddles three times in quick succession. I suppose you couldn’t find a use for a couple of hundred kayak paddles?’

  It might be supposed that a person doesn’t find it too easy to get used to being eighty years older from one day to the next, but this isn’t so. You get used to it very quickly – within three or four days – for the simple reason, no doubt, that there’s nothing to be done about it. Being old isn’t so bad. It’s just that everything becomes a little slower and you act with greater deliberation.

  The inhabitants of Tornado City didn’t go out much. It was always a bit of a risk, using the stairs, because something could come whirling in at any moment. So we kept our walks to a minimum. The old men spent most of the time in their little houses, pursuing their various hobbies.

  I had made friends with Baldwyn Baobab, the first old man to find me on the stairs. I visited his home for a chat at least once a day, and we recounted our life stories.

  Baldwyn’s story

  One day Baldwyn told me how he had ended up in the tornado. ‘It was youthful folly, of course. I’d always liked taking risks, but my Reptilian Rescuer idea was by far the biggest risk I ever took.’

  I pricked up my ears at the words ‘Reptilian Rescuer’.

  ‘I’d heard that, however great a danger you were in, one of those dinosaurs would always rescue you in the nick of time. I’d shot the Wotansgard Falls in a canoe, waded blindly through the Graveyard Marshes of Dull, plunged into the raging waters of the Loch River – and every time I’d been saved at the very last minute by one of those ancient birds.’