If You're Reading This, I'm Already Dead

by Andrew Nicoll

  He stood at attention and said, “Good morning. As the representative of His Excellency Ismail Kemali, Prime Minister of the interim government of the free and independent state of Albania and of the entire interim government of the free and independent state of Albania, I have been dispatched to offer greetings …”

  That was when his bicycle fell over with a clatter. He turned to look at it for a second but continued standing proudly at attention and flicked his eyes back to the front, “greetings and to inquire, respectfully, what is your business in the free and independent state of Albania?” Then he took a step backward, flung a salute that set his military cap rocking on his head and yelled, “Greetings!” which seemed to be pretty much the sum of his message.

  The Professor said, “What is your name, boy?”

  “Sir, Fatmir, sir.” And then he started off again, “As the representative of His Excellency Ismail Kemali …” until he finished with another shout of “Greetings!”

  “Very well, Fatmir Effendi, return to your masters with greetings and inform them that the heaven-born one, the great and powerful prince Halim Eddine, and I, Abdullah, his most unworthy and miserable servant, his vizier, the slave of slaves, are come at last. Tell them that the heavenborn one, the great and powerful prince Halim Eddine, has heard the anguished cries of the proud people of Albania, that he has wept for them, that his heart is sore for their sake, that he heeds their plea and that he has come to give them his wisdom and his strength and to take up the burden of the throne and crown, not for his glory but for theirs.” Then the Professor reached into his pocket, held out his hand and said, “And take this for your trouble.”

  The boy reached out but, before their hands met the Professor opened his fist and dropped three gold coins, ringing, on to the cobbles.

  Fatmir hunkered down, grabbed the money with more salutes and promises—“Yes, sir! I’ll tell them, sir. Yes, sir”—and cycled off, unsteadily, back to town. I watched him wobbling his way along the dock with one hand on the handlebars as he gazed in disbelief at his new-found wealth in the other.

  “Shrewd move, Professor.”

  “We speculate to accumulate, my boy. Now the word of your great wealth will spread through the town and the government—such as it is—will think us so rich that it will never occur to them that we have come to rob them.”

  Do you think I should have gone to the shelter? That’s a damned stupid question, isn’t it? Obviously you think I should have gone to the shelter. Of course you would. You’re picking your way through what’s left of my lungs and liver, all strung from the chandeliers in amongst a few broken bits of caravan so, obviously, you think I should have gone to the shelter. The truth is, I’m scared of the shelter. I’m scared here so it hardly makes a difference, but I’m absolutely terrified of the shelter. Last year, do you remember, in that really big raid we had—the first really big raid?—there was a direct hit on a shelter. God knows how many people died down there. Three hundred? Might have been four hundred. God knows. I always hated the shelters, but I couldn’t go back after that. Not after that. I hated them. They were never clean. Those attendants used to come round and squirt DDT out of contraptions like bicycle pumps to keep down the lice, but that just made me think of lice and, if you even think of lice, you can’t help but scratch and wonder if you’ve got them. I bet you’re scratching right now, just reading this. I always hated going down those steps anyway. It was like walking down into your own grave, burying yourself alive. I was always scared down there—just as scared as I am here, but here I can babble to you. Here I can make a noise to whistle the fear away. Down there it was a constant battle not to say anything in case it turned into a scream. I hated it. But sometimes something would happen. Somebody would tell a joke or say a nice thing or offer a cigarette. Something kind. That was like a candle, and whoever did it, man or woman, would be set apart a little. People would point them out and share in their kindness simply by giving them credit for it. Still, I hated it. And those bloody watering cans full of disinfectant. If the place was clean, they wouldn’t have to go to so much trouble killing germs, now would they? All that disinfectant swilling round just brings to mind public lavatories, and who wants to sleep in a public lavatory? It doesn’t matter what they do—they always stink of damp wool, armpits and piss, those places. It’s an old-man smell. I recognize it. I am an old man. I don’t want to have to smell other old men. And I don’t want to die like that, like those poor buggers in that shelter. Can you imagine what it must have been like, what they must have suffered? I said we deserved it, the bombs, for following that strutting lunatic into hell, but they didn’t deserve that. I try not to think about them, with their kids, and other people’s kids, people they didn’t know and cared nothing for, jammed in there, with those iron doors clanged shut behind them and then that bomb falling and they wouldn’t all have died in the blast, surely. They couldn’t have. Some would have, but some must have survived for a bit with people screaming all around them in the dark and stuff falling on them and things on fire rushing over them and the smoke coming creeping in to smother them and no escape anywhere, stuck inside there with the doors locked. People turn into animals at times like that. They claw and scratch and fight to try to save themselves. They don’t give a damn about anything or anybody else. Nobody’s to blame. You can’t blame them for it. You can’t. But I don’t want that. I couldn’t bear it. That’s why, when that bomb fell this afternoon, I came here, to my own place, with my own stuff. I should have started this story sooner. In the summer, when the days were longer, I could have sat outside on my step and written it. Now it’s winter. It’s nearly the end of the year. It’s nearly the end. I have been very foolish.

  To go on. Give me a moment.

  I suppose the boy Fatmir must have taken a bit longer to get back up the hill on his bicycle than he took coming down, but before the sun was much higher in the sky he was back at the castle carrying his three gold coins and his news and, not many minutes after that, he was standing in the empty office of Ahmet Zogolli while his coins were slapped down on the desk next door.

  “Excellency, he’s come! This Halim Eddine—the Turkish prince. He is here, scattering gold coin like a dog scatters fleas.”

  Kemali took the coins from the table one by one and slid his spectacles down his nose, the better to examine them. He said nothing at all until he had studied each one closely and then he said, “This is interesting. Gold coin. All genuine, there is no doubt about that and—did you notice?—all of them Austrian. Now, why is our new-found Turkish prince handing out Austrian gold? Has Turkey run out of gold? Do the Ottomans mint no gold these days? Is the treasury of the Topkapi empty? And why did he give this gold to you? That seems remarkably ill-mannered. A prince meets the official envoy of government and hands out a tip as if to a servant? That is strange. And you had this from his own hand, you say?”

  Zogolli stood for a moment chewing on the pencil line of his mustache as Kemali rolled a gold piece slowly along the edge of his desk.

  Eventually Zogolli said, “Excellency, due to pressure of work and the important business of those telegrams which you specifically asked me to decode, I chose to delegate investigations at the harbor to a trusted lieutenant.”

  “Did I not also specifically ask you to go to the harbor?”

  “Excellency … pressure of work.”

  “Who went?”

  “The boy, Fatmir.”

  “Dear God. What an impression to make. Is he outside? Bring him in.”

  Zogolli hurried to obey and Fatmir stood in front of the Prime Minister’s desk, holding his official hat in his hands.

  “Boy, you met some people at the harbor today.”

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  “And one of them gave you this money.” Kemali held the gold out in the palm of his hand.

  “Yes, Excellency.”

  “Take them.” He waited while the boy picked up the coins, one at a time. “And give them to your
mother. Now listen. I have returned this money to you and nobody—I promise you—will take it from you again.”

  “Except my mother.”

  “Except your mother. I gave you the coins so that you would tell me the truth and only the truth. There’s no point making up stories because you think I’m going to give you some money if you tell me what I want to hear. The money is all yours. Now explain to me exactly what happened when you went to the harbor. Leave nothing out. Tell me everything you saw and everything you heard.”

  So the boy Fatmir told his story, about the six strangers with their camel, about his message faithfully delivered and all that was said in reply.

  And Kemali said, “What was done was well done. I wish I had more men like you. Go home now and make your mother happy.”

  When the boy was gone, walking home this time because the bicycle belonged to the government and was not to be used for profitless private journeys, the Prime Minister turned to Zogolli and said, “Call out the guard, summon the band and have my hat brushed. It is time we went to meet this Halim Eddine to welcome him into his kingdom.”

  We waited. We got back on the boat. We got off the boat again. We looked in the water, trying to see some fish. Some of us went on the boat again. Sarah ran out of pebbles to throw in the harbor. We stared at the little flies dancing quadrilles together over the abandoned fish crates. We looked out to sea in search of something interesting. I remember there was a long white cloud in the shape of a dragon, with a long snout and a long neck, wings and everything, and I stood there, watching it and, just about the time that it turned into an elephant lying on its back, we heard the music.

  The kindest critic would have to say that it was far from the greatest music in the world—in fact, I reckon Spindelleger’s Circus could’ve put together a better band—but there was something familiar about the strange combination of clarinets and accordions. God knows what tune they were supposed to be playing but, they thumped it out con gusto, with plenty of cymbals and a good deal of bass drum as if to prove that it was meant to be a military band, playing a tune for marching. And yet it made me think of hayfields and starlight and I couldn’t remember why.

  “Brass bands will be provided,” said Mrs. MacLeod, with triumph.

  “For those who can pay,” said Sarah. Her mood had not been sweetened by the wait.

  Max suggested we should line up and I agreed, so we put the girls at the back, the camel, Max and the grand vizier in the second row and me standing out a little in front, looking bored witless.

  “How’s my fez?” I said. Everybody thought it was fine.

  The delegation of loyal Albanoks took their time coming along the quayside, with the band oompahing away in front, a straggle of official-looking men in morning coats and top hats behind and an honor guard of bashi-bazouks squashed in between. They looked pretty much what I had expected from the state of the town, with an odd collection of rifles on their shoulders, swords trailing along and striking sparks off the cobbles and an assortment of uniforms that could have come straight out of our own dressing-up bag. Still, I counted at least sixty—not including the band—and any one of them was better armed than all of us put together.

  But I wasn’t too concerned about them. Soldiers are soldiers, they obey orders; I was more concerned about the men giving the orders—the men in the top hats.

  Kemali was easy to spot. He was there, in the middle, a mild-looking man who had had the courage to turn his back on the Turkish Empire and somehow keep his mad little country free of the Serbs. I liked him at once. All around him his colleagues were shambling and tripping, pretending that they knew how to march in line—something even the soldiers were none too sure about—but not him. He walked along as if he was taking a stroll in the park, with never a thought for the band or the soldiers or the trails of kids and townspeople who had come out to see the show.

  God in heaven, it was slow progress and then, when they finally arrived, the band had to step aside and queue up along the harbor wall, still oompahing away, so the politicians could push their way to the front and the soldiers could form up in rows for inspection. And then we stood and looked at one another for a bit, Kemali and his little band of patriots and me and my mates, waiting for a break in the music so the speechifying could begin. I tried to look kingly while Zogolli chewed his little mustache ragged and Kemali looked at me like an indulgent uncle, rolling his eyes toward the band as if to say, “Children! What can you do?”

  At last, with a final fart of the euphonium, a drum roll and a clash of cymbals the music curled itself into a ball and died of exhaustion.

  Kemali waited for a moment, until he was sure there would be no surprises from the horn section, then he stepped forward, a thin smile showing through his velvet beard, and he took off his shining top hat with a wide sweep of the arm but, before he could open his mouth to speak, Zogolli pushed himself forward.

  “I have the honor to introduce His Excellency Ismail Kemali, Prime Minister of the free and independent state of Albania.”

  Of course I didn’t understand a word of it, but I was employing my patented “Angry Hungarian Father” method of translation so I harrumphed in a profound and kingly way which was intended to signify, “That’s nice.”

  Then Kemali himself took another pace to the front, continuing that long, slow sweep of his arm to edge Zogolli out of the way with a look that said, “We’ll talk about this later,” leaned forward in a gentle bow and he said, “Honored sir, on behalf of the government of the free and independent state of Albania, my colleagues and I welcome you to our nation. I invite you now to inspect the honor guard.”

  He put his hat back on and I shook his hand, mumbled kindly at him through my magnificent mustaches and walked stiffly beside him, nodding from side to side as I went.

  What a crew they were. I walked up and down three long rows and I don’t think I found two hats the same amongst the whole bunch. Trousers too short, trousers too long, jackets with buttons missing, boots—they mostly had boots except for the boys—that hadn’t seen a polish for months. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry, but these poor buggers had held out against the Serbs and I felt suddenly very proud of them.

  And then, at the end of the last row there was a long, tall man with a wolfish jaw in a sergeant’s uniform, standing at “present arms” like a bloke who knew how to stand at “present arms.” I was surprised to see him. I did my best not to show it but I gave him a good going over anyway, tugged on his buttons a bit, brushed a lot of imaginary smuts off his uniform, straightened his belt up before I walked off to rejoin my mates, brushing my gloved hands together with a lot more harrumphing.

  I leaned over for a confidential chat with the Grand Vizier Abdullah, just so I could bring him up to speed on a couple of things. “So what do we do now?”

  “Well, we can’t stand on the pier all day anyway. I think it’s time we took the party indoors.” He turned his face toward the crowd—I’d seen him do it in the circus and he seemed to have an instinct for that sort of thing. “Prince Halim Eddine the heaven-born one is gratified by the welcome of the people and ready to begin discussions on high matters of state regarding the future of the throne of Albania to which he has been called in this time of the nation’s most need. All those who have business with the Heaven-born one may approach and they will have audience. Through me.”

  Naturally I had no idea about any of this stuff but I could tell that, whatever he was saying, it wasn’t making much of an impression. The politicians stood there with their hats on. The band failed to strike up. The ragged townspeople said nothing. The urchins picked their noses and a gull made an uncomfortably loud cry.

  I leaned in close to the Professor again and harrumphed a bit more. “Tell them that the proud people of Albania have endured too much and, within the month, as soon as I have carried out the necessary re-equipping of our gallant forces, we march on Belgrade to bloody the noses of the Serbs and restore the national honor.”
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  Then the cheering started. One voice at first, just one, from right at the end of the very back row of the honor guard, then a hat went up, then another and the cheering spread and the urchins took their fingers out of their noses and their mothers danced about and their fathers clapped and the music began.

  Poor Kemali had to shout to make himself heard. He was yelling at the top of his voice but I cupped my hand to my ear and made a great show of not catching him until the Professor was forced to shout too—confidentially—in my ear.

  “He says we should go up to the castle and have a chat.”

  Max tapped the camel on the back of the leg and got it on its knees. “Mount up,” he said, “Your Majesty.”

  “And throw money,” said the Professor, “but not much money.”

  So that’s what we did. We went up to the castle with the band playing and the soldiers waving their caps on their rifles and the girls dancing and the people cheering and me scattering coins as we went—but only a few and only every fifth time that I dipped my pockets—and waving at the crowd as if I had a toffee wrapper stuck to my fingers.

  Just before we reached the castle gates Sarah came dancing up close and tapped on the toe of my boot. “I think we might get away with this,” she said.

  “I think we might. I think we just might.”

  “Otto, what happened with Mrs. MacLeod?”

  “Nothing happened.”

  “Otto!”

  “She’s trying to make trouble, that’s all.”

  I don’t think she believed me. She was right not to.

  “Otto, you do know I love you, don’t you?”

  “Yes, Sarah. Yes.” And then the camel gave a lurch through the castle gate and knocked my fez off on the arch as we went so I was spared saying more. As I came into the courtyard Mrs. MacLeod was dancing with a tall sergeant and singing as she danced, “All things will be provided for those who can pay. All things will be provided for those who can pay,” over and over. It gave me the shivers.