The Stranger's Woes

by Max Frei

  I immediately realized what was going on.

  “What? Are you trying to remember who it was that scared me not so long ago? Not going to work, pal. Just this morning I lost myself, but then I managed to find me again. I don’t think anything or anyone can scare me now. I’m in a very good mood tonight.”

  I raised my left hand. Sure, it had a long way to go to match the death-dealing hand of Shurf Lonli-Lokli, but I always made do with what little I had.

  “Do not waste your Lethal Sphere on me,” the creature said quietly.

  Now his face didn’t look like anyone or anything, although an infinite number of vaguely familiar faces appeared through the shimmering mist that surrounded the Tipfinger’s head.

  “Don’t waste it on you, you say?” I said, laughing, reveling in my own powers. “I’m a miser all right, but I can stand the loss of one for your sake.”

  “It is your choice—you gave me my life, you can take it back—but whoever takes away the life of a Tipfinger must replace him. This is the law.”

  The creature’s tone was listless and indifferent. It seemed that he didn’t care much about his fate. One of my hearts knew somehow that the Tipfinger wasn’t lying. The other heart was silent. It probably knew that no one was asking its opinion.

  “Fine. We’ll do without Lethal Spheres. I’m not bloodthirsty. Step out for a second. Let’s have a talk.”

  I was completely calm now. I didn’t feel like laughing, smiling, or even smirking. I was very tired and could think about only one thing: how great it would be to curl up on the rigid seat, close my eyes, and not open them until this wonderful vehicle delivered me back home to Echo. As for the Tipfinger, Mackie had told me that he could help me convince the World I was born in that I didn’t exist anymore. And I was beginning to guess what Mackie had meant by that.

  The creature came out of the driver’s cabin and sat down on the front seat. I noticed that his body, too, had no definite shape. The Tipfinger was neither thin nor fat. Or, rather, he was thin and fat at the same time. The outlines of his body, which was quite anthropomorphic, trembled and faded away.

  The doors of the streetcar closed and it finally began moving.

  “Is this streetcar going to Echo?” I said.

  “It will go where you want it to go,” said the creature.

  “Okay. That’s not too bad.”

  I gave a sigh of relief. God knows why, but I was still burdened by doubts, which I tried to ignore. I was so tired of uncertainties. I was generally tired.

  “If I understand correctly, you can take any shape?” I said.

  “Yes. I can look like whatever people around me want me to look like.”

  “More like what they don’t want you to look like,” I said. “You feed on our fears, don’t you? That’s what I’ve been told, anyway.”

  “This is also true.”

  “Well, it’s your business,” I said. “But I didn’t make the Universe, unfortunately. If I had my way, everything would have been much simpler and much more pleasant. Now, tell me something. If I’ve got this right, you can’t decide what you will look like. Our inner fears dictate the shape you take, whether you want it or not, right?”

  “Right,” the creature said.

  “And if I tell you to take my shape?” I asked. “I don’t mean to say that I’m scared of my own face. I’m simply asking whether you can become my double. Can you do this?”

  “I can,” the Tipfinger said.

  His tone was as listless as before, but now there was a glint of excitement in his eyes.

  “Excellent. Then I want you to take my form and go to some place with a lot of people. Downtown somewhere. But what’s important is that you become a dead Max, and the sooner you do it the better. Is this possible?”

  “It is.”

  “Great. Oh, hold on a second. I think poor Max has to die right on the job. There are a lot of people at the editorial office now. And there won’t be any problem identifying me. Gosh, I can just imagine what a ruckus there’s going to be there.” I couldn’t restrain a malicious smile. “That’s it, then. After they bury me—you, that is—you’re free to do whatever you want to forevermore. Got it?”

  “You are setting me free forevermore?” said the Tipfinger.

  Ah, where was his melancholy now! He stared at me with eyes that were already starting to resemble my own and laughed.

  “Thank you. I could not have counted on such generosity. I will do as you say. You can trust my word. You can trust any words uttered between Worlds. Did you know that?”

  Gee, I said to myself. What’s with the elevated spirits?

  The creature’s indeterminate face had turned into my own. I smiled—I was a pretty handsome guy after all. Too bad this new Max was going to die almost immediately. Maybe I should have asked the Tipfinger to live out my boring life here and grow old? No, that would have been too much to ask. I didn’t want to entrust the remains of my reputation to this strange creature. Besides, there is something romantic in any sudden death. And I’ve always been such a show-off.

  My doppelgänger looked at me with unconcealed compassion.

  “You are very unlucky,” he said. “You didn’t know of the true power of words uttered between Worlds, and you gave me freedom by mistake. You also did not know that he who frees a Tipfinger must take his place. To kill me or to set me free—in fact it is one and the same. I do think you are going to like it, though. On the paths a Tipfinger roams you will find the most frivolous kind of power. Deep inside you have dreamed about this all your life, and now it will come to pass. Goodbye, Sir Max, and thank you.”

  Now both of my hearts were knocking against my rib cage. They knew I was in deep trouble. I had fallen into the most ridiculous trap, from which, it seemed, there was no way out. Damn it, I thought. I knew my chatterbox of a mouth would be the end of me.

  And then I was alone, and I felt that it didn’t matter. I was no longer Sir Max from Echo. I didn’t know who I was, and frankly, I no longer cared.

  “Time to go for a walk,” I said out loud, taking the driver’s seat.

  My streetcar moved along into the unknown. My passion for high-speed driving was still with me. The air, knocked flat onto the tracks, screamed as if in pain. Thick clots of darkness crawled onto the windshield, and I kept muttering faster, faster, not knowing what I was running from.

  At daybreak, I found myself standing outside in the middle of a street. It was a broad central street in a German town. I knew it was a German town from the signs on the stores. The tracks ended here. They just stopped as if they had been cut off.

  I stood on the smooth asphalt and watched indifferently as the magic streetcar disappeared, like an old ghost for which there was no need anymore. I felt no regrets about it. Something in me knew that now I could get to any destination I wished without boarding any dubious vehicles. These creatures, one of which I had just become, could open Doors between Worlds as easily as I had once opened the secret door to the Ministry of Perfect Public Order. I could go to Echo right this minute, but I didn’t want to go back there. I did remember that wonderful city, to which I felt connected both through my destiny and through necessity. Even the tender feelings I felt toward the people I had left behind were still with me. I missed them, but my feelings did not matter anymore. That morning I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that creatures like me were destined to be lonely, and I did not mind. It was the way it was.

  I was overwhelmed with my power, but I had no particular desires. There was only someone else’s vague but insistent thought that it was “time to go for a little spin,” and an irresistible urge to keep moving. I didn’t have the faintest idea of the rules of the game I had been sucked into, so I had to learn them fast, and learn them the hard way.

  I went for a walk. I no longer belonged to the World I was born in, but it seemed that this World belonged to me. The round cobblestones of the street that my new shoes were treading whispered their history to me. I have to a
dmit that it was too boring to listen to very carefully.

  I walked into a cozy pub. It was called Nuremberg or The Nuremberger—something like that. The old waitress looked at me with horror, and also with vague hope. I wish I knew whose face it was that smiled at her and ordered a cup of coffee.

  I finished my coffee and walked out into one of the narrow streets of old Nuremberg. A cold wind blew from the river. It resembled the minty wind of Kettari, the way the shadow resembles the object that casts it. But that mysterious resemblance left me cold. I didn’t care about the poor old Max who had fallen in love with the bridges of Kettari. Now I was much more interested in my recent discovery. Interesting, I thought. So that’s how it works. I’d better remember it.

  That morning I had discovered one of many fantastic new ways of traveling. It turned out that all I had to do was enter the first bar, restaurant, or even bakery I came across that had some geographical location for a namesake. I had to stay there for a while with my back turned to the window. That was important. Then, when I walked out, I would find myself standing under a different sky, on a sidewalk or street in the place the eatery had been named after. I was completely enchanted by this.

  If I wanted to, though, I could always take a train, a plane, or a car. My pockets were always full of everything I needed: money, ID, tickets, and other papers. These fraudulent documents proving that I belonged to the world of people appeared in my pockets just as I needed them, so I could fool anyone.

  It wasn’t so bad. No, not bad at all. In fact, what had happened to me exceeded my wildest notions of the miraculous. I envied myself.

  I could go to a cheap Mexican diner on the outskirts of Berlin, then walk outside into the sweltering heat and melting sidewalks of Mexico City. I could walk through the heat of that city and follow my feet to the cool New Yorker bar. The mustached bartender would shudder when he looked at me. I wasn’t surprised—everyone did that if I didn’t turn my face away in time. Where was my famous charm now?

  To hell with charm, though. I could have a cold beer in the New Yorker (remembering to sit with my back turned to the window), then push open the thick glass door and walk out onto the streets of the real New York, in the very heart of Greenwich Village. I would stop there and visit a neat little place called Club 88, not because I wanted to throw myself into a distant adventure but just for my own personal enjoyment. It’s not just by chance that the number in the name of the place is the number of keys on a piano. In the evening, a virtuoso pianist taps on the keys. Behind the bar, a black woman dressed in men’s clothing hums the blues in an oddly familiar raspy voice while she mixes cocktails and dumps out the cigarette butts from identical white ashtrays. The Club 88 regulars are not what you’d call yuppies. They smoke like chimneys, giving the lie to another Great American Dream. Naturally I sympathize with them. I only regret that my ever-changing face, obedient to their fears, scares these merry “outcasts.” The barstools next to mine are always empty.

  From New York, praise be the Magicians, I could go anywhere: every possible geographical location has been immortalized on the innumerable signs of New York cafés, bars, diners, and other eateries. Flattered, the international community pays New York back in kind. Almost anywhere in the world, you can find a bar or restaurant that bears the name of that new Babylon. And so New York became a transportation hub for me. I visited it more often than any other place. I rarely lingered a long time, however. Too many geopolitical temptations.

  In those days, I finally came to appreciate the World I had been born in, and which I had been none too fond of. I realized it was a magnificent place. The smell of lime trees in bloom on the outskirts of Moscow was to die for. Then there were the hot winds of Arizona, the bracing moist air of London at night, and the resinous breeze of the Baltic Sea coast, whose white sands were covered in thin, dry pine needles. Not to mention a bike ride through the empty Amsterdam streets on a Sunday morning, a merry flute player on the Charles Bridge, the rounded tops of the Carpathian Mountains, the aroma of Parisian coffee houses, the discontented chattering of an agitated squirrel, the round black eye of a swan about to tear off a piece of bread from the hand of a leisurely nature lover . . . I doubt I’ll ever sit down to make a complete inventory of all the wonders of the World. And who was the idiot who decided there were only seven?

  I had to admit that the World I was born in was all right. There was nothing wrong with it. There had been something wrong with me while I belonged to it. It really made no difference where I was. It just didn’t matter.

  If there is anything that matters, it is the creature out of whose heart you look at the world around you. I had the chance, a unique chance, to look at my former homeland with the eyes of a very peculiar and strange creature.

  There was, however, one false note in this wonderful symphony of my new existence. At times, that note sounded quite harsh.

  While I was enjoying the new possibilities and playing this exciting game, something deep inside me knew that Sir Juffin Hully wouldn’t have agreed to join me on my trip if I had invited him. I knew it even during the days when I accepted my strange destiny and was almost happy with it. I would probably have become completely happy, if the creature I had become had been capable of happiness.

  Back in those days, I would have forgotten my own name if it hadn’t seen it everywhere I went, on seemingly every sign, billboard, or notice. All those Maxes, Maxims, and Maximilians followed me day in and day out, as though there were no other names left in the world. Their ubiquity prevented me from forgetting myself completely.

  Once, on the menu of some diner in Germany, I saw something called Strammer Max in Mirrors. Curious, I ordered it. The mirrors turned out to be a cold fried egg on a piece of rye bread. In addition, there was a thick slice of finely cut ham on the plate. It wasn’t particularly tasty, but it had a positive effect on me. Sir Max from Echo woke up somewhere in the depths of my soul for a few minutes, and said in a very persistent tone that he wanted to go home. Soon, I said, brushing him off like a nagging child. Sir Max retreated into the darkness, but from then on, his formerly sound sleep of a baby became the light, anxious sleep of an old man.

  It was in that diner that I decided to commit to paper everything that had happened to me as Sir Max from Echo. I covered several napkins with my writing and liked what I had written. I somehow felt that as soon as I finished writing, the wonders and mysteries would let me go back to the same place that that guy, who had become almost unfamiliar to me, wanted to return to. And then he would be happy, and I . . . I would be free forever and ever.

  I’m still not sure what I did while traveling throughout the planet. My memory still can’t cope with the chaos of things that happened to me during my wanderings. It is unable to sequence the episodes and put the elements of the mosaic into a single, coherent picture that it can store away. What is clear is that it is much easier for me to recollect the events that happened after I had the Strammer Max and began to take notes.

  That day I built the first flimsy rope bridge that connected me to my past. The mosaic pavements of Echo slowly began to take shape as objective reality, however unreachable. I no longer needed to dash away from a TV screen showing another installment of Mad Max. I no longer needed to stare at the neon sign of the Max Men’s Clothes department to remember that it had once been my name. Now I didn’t forget for a second who I had once been. And that was a lot.

  More and more often now I paid attention to the obvious fear in the eyes of my random interlocutors. What’s more, I derived less and less pleasure from it. I felt weary of my strange obligations. But for the time being I wasn’t able to retire. Once you take the place of a Tipfinger you’ve set free by mistake, you are obliged to travel the world with a whole pack of intimidating personas. And quit whining—this isn’t the worst thing that can happen. Some only get to wander around the dank basements of some ancient castle as ghosts. Would you rather do that?

  I learned a great deal about human fea
rs. The most ridiculous and ludicrous of my discoveries was connected with bicyclists. My own bitter experience proved that most bicyclists are afraid of hitting pedestrians. They rarely realize the true depths of their fear, but feeding fuel to their panic was part of my job. Once I was outside, some bicyclist always hit me. I don’t think that anyone or anything could really hurt me in those days, but the regular collisions with bicyclists were extremely annoying. Thank goodness automobile drivers didn’t have such fears. Well, they did, but far less frequently. I was run over by a car only four or five times, not more.

  Sometimes I got into bigger trouble. I will never forget one tall, blond girl from the Red Elephant restaurant in the center of Erfurt, Germany. A force, which it was best not to antagonize, enticed me to follow the young woman into a dark alley. The alley was so narrow that two people couldn’t walk through it if they were holding hands. They could only walk single file. I had to kill the blond girl because for the entire evening she had been possessed by the thought that the man she was staring at through the thin walls of her glass would follow her into the alley and kill her there. Blood, she thought, would clash with her light-green jumper.

  Sometimes, though, I think that I remained seated on the barstool on the second floor of the Red Elephant, and that she just dreamed the assault. I don’t know how I managed to crawl into her nightmare, but it seemed quite plausible. At least I like to think it was.

  Nevertheless, that bloody sacrifice—real or imaginary—did me a great deal of good. It was that night, when I was having a dinner on the second floor of the Red Elephant, that I first sensed that my incredible but meaningless new life was coming to an end. I had almost finished my notes. I reread them, and recalled Echo and the people who were waiting for me there with piercing clarity. There was no doubt that good old Sir Max had woken up and was now groping around, bewildered, in the farthest reaches of my inner being. He still needed time to shake off the sweet and perilous stupor, and time was something we both had. We could frivolously squander this precious treasure, the way he—no, the way I—had squandered the crowns I had earned at the service of His Majesty King Gurig VIII, wandering in and out of the antique shops of the Right Bank. I was even more heedless about time than I was about money, for you always feel it’s easier to spend something that doesn’t belong to you.