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

by Andrew Nicoll

  There was nothing to be afraid of. Nobody could accuse me of stealing my own haberdashery. If the King of the Albanoks wanted to take down his curtains, that was nobody’s business but his own. Still, I felt like a hunted thief until I had them safely stuffed in my saddlebag.

  I went across to the fireplace and gave the bell pull a good jangle, waited a bit, jangled it again and, before long, Max came in.

  “You’re meant to knock,” I said. “You’re the one who’s all for keeping up appearances.”

  “There’s nobody around to see. What do you want?”

  “I want a shave and I want my boots polished. You don’t have to do it, but I can’t. If you won’t let me eat my breakfast in the kitchen, I can’t very well polish my own boots.”

  “Fair enough,” he said.

  “You don’t have to do it. Get the kitchen boy on it.”

  “Otto, mate,” he said, “I would be proud to polish the boots of my king. And I’ll bring some hot water for the shave.”

  That’s what he said. My mate Max Schlepsig said that. To me. He could have picked me up with one hand and flung me through the window if he’d wanted, but instead he offered to clean my boots. And he was as good as his word. In the time it took to go downstairs and turn the tap on the range, he was back with a bloody great jug of scalding water.

  I made sure to thank him properly because Max was my pal and a better man than I was and we were just playacting that servant stuff, but when I went to take the jug from him he said, “No, Otto. Let me. I mean it.”

  So I sat down in the big leather chair by the window and Max came and tucked a towel under my chin and wrapped my face in hot, wet cloths, as gentle as any mother with her child. I heard him mixing up the lather in a bowl sloppity-sloppity-slop, and then he took the damp cloths away and painted it on my chin, around my magnificent whiskers, up my cheeks, right to the edge of my ears.

  “This is going to be the best shave you’ve ever had,” he said. “If you took the circus cash box back to Vienna and emptied it out on the floor of the Imperial barbers, you couldn’t get a better one. When you stand up to get crowned today, the Albanoks will know they’ve got a king to be proud of. You’re a good bloke, Otto Witte, and a good friend to me, and we both know that I’m shaving you this way because I can’t kiss you and I’m doing it to show you that I love you because I can’t tell you.”

  Of course he didn’t say any of that. Max took his razor and passed it over my chin with never a word, over my cheeks and over my throat as gentle as a lover’s kisses. He said nothing at all, but that was what he meant.

  The little French clock on the mantelpiece was halfway through chiming nine when we heard the tiger purr of the Rolls-Royce outside.

  Zogolli and Kemali were sitting, top-hatted, in the back seat, gloved hands resting on silver-topped canes, clawhammer tailcoats tucked carefully under their backsides in case of creasing, and there was a gigantic Albanok brigand standing on the running board, wearing a jacket which a sheep had been wearing not long before, all strung about with bandoliers and bristling with pistols. He held on to the door jamb with one huge fist, and in the other he held a trace that led to a string of fine horses, trotting along behind.

  I flung open the door of the palazzo and stood in the hallway for a moment to let myself be seen in a striking and majestic pose but, most importantly, to make it look like somebody else had opened the door for me. I had worked hard on my reputation for kingly helplessness and I didn’t want to dent it by extravagant gestures like polishing my own boots or opening doors for myself.

  “Good morning, Prime Minister!” I said, rubbing my hands together. “Zogolli, right on time, I see. Well done.”

  I came down the steps, ready to offer my hand, but the giant brigand stepped off the running board and grabbed me first. He swallowed my hand in his, fell to his knees right there in the gravel and started blubbing like a girl and rolling his face around on the back of my hand as he jabbered at me in Albanok. I tried to haul him to his feet but he was having none of it, and he stayed there, rubbing tears and snot and kisses into the back of my hand, until Zogolli got out of the car and pried him off with the tip of his cane.

  “A thousand apologies, Majesty,” he said. “An overpouring of emotion.”

  The poor bugger was still on his knees and still blubbing, but at least he’d let go of my hand. I said, “Tell him that the king thanks him for his services in bringing these fine horses and send him to the kitchens for breakfast.”

  You would’ve thought that I’d offered him a dukedom, and he went off, bowing and scraping and showering me with blessings all the way.

  “Your Majesty has made a remarkable impression,” said Kemali, sweeping his top hat from his head with a graceful flourish.

  “Good morning, Mr. Prime Minister. Lovely to see you again. Did the Royal Fathers-in-Law treat you kindly?”

  “I found them congenial companions, if limited and somewhat profane conversationalists, but, so long as the slivovitz lasts, they are cheerful and harmless enough. Fortunately the castle is well supplied with slivovitz. Or it was. They are sleeping it off.”

  “Just so long as they don’t miss the coronation.”

  “Half the nation will be there, sir, the Royal Fathers-in-Law not least among them.”

  “Excellent news, Kemali. Shall we go?”

  By that time Max and Arbuthnot, my newly appointed Captain of the Guard, with three gold buttons stitched on his sleeve and a dusty mark where three stripes had been the night before, were waiting on the steps, each offering an arm to my grand vizier to help him into the limousine. You don’t get cars like that any more, cars built like a twostorey house at the back so as to make room for the hats. I miss that.

  Anyway, the Professor got in and settled down while Zogolli and Kemali folded themselves in beside him like mismatched bookends and I waited, helplessly, for somebody to supply me with a horse.

  Max chose one for himself and naturally it had to be the size of a fire engine otherwise it wouldn’t take the weight, and he brought one for me that was nearly as tall, a great, high, stilt-legged beast that stood there, snorting fire and dancing as it waited for me to mount. Short of jumping up into the saddle with the sort of cartwheel leap that might have given me away as more of an acrobat than a king, I don’t think I could have made it into the saddle if Max hadn’t bent down and offered his cupped hands for me to stand in. And then we were up, riding side by side behind the Rolls. I felt like I was sitting on a moving, bouncing steeple, but I felt like a king, riding into battle, ready to fight, Max at my left hand and Arbuthnot at my right with his sword drawn and glittering. By God, that man could ride. I looked across at him and he was holding the reins in his left hand with barely a touch, textbook stuff it was, great seat, everything in the legs, you know, and I couldn’t help but smile as we trotted down the drive, through the gates and out on to the street.

  “Do you know where the Treasury is?” I asked him.

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it a Treasury, exactly. It’s more a sort of a warehouse affair, old man. It’s back up at the castle.”

  “So it’s not exactly the last word in modern security measures, then.”

  “A big door with a big lock and a couple of iron bars.”

  “Hear that, Max? A couple of iron bars. You could eat those for breakfast.”

  “But it is in the middle of a castle. I’m sure your crown will be safe enough.”

  The Rolls slowed to a crawl along the rutted mud street, and through the little oval window in the back we could see the top hats of Kemali and Zogolli nodding at each other with every bump. The horses were walking slowly, side by side, like they used to do in the park—do you remember?—when the toffs used to take their exercise under the trees and their wives would trot along in carriages at one side of the avenue and the actresses would sit in carriages at the other side, smiling and nodding and showing off their latest sparklers and there was nothing in the sky but blackbi
rds and rainbows and nothing falling to earth but cherry blossom.

  We had to stop and rein the horses in and make them stand while the car decided whether it was worth going through a particularly challenging pothole and Arbuthnot tilted his sword back to rest it on his shoulder while we waited.

  “This is boring,” Max said.

  “I’ve known better parades. Looks like they didn’t put enough posters out to tell the people we were coming.”

  “And that car stinks. All that smoke. To think you used to complain about my camel. I miss my camel.”

  “He’ll turn up,” I said.

  “Bloody Albanoks have probably eaten him—or something worse. I’ve seen their women, and my camel’s a damned sight more attractive than most of ’em, with a lot less of a mustache. It makes my heart sick to think what they might have done to that poor beast.”

  “He’ll turn up.”

  “Harmless, he was. And now he’s steaks or some bloody Albanok’s boyfriend.”

  “We’ll get you another camel.”

  “That’s not the point. Anyway, it would be another camel. Not the same camel. It wouldn’t be my camel. Damn fine camel that, once you got to know him.”

  “It was a very fine and heroic camel,” I agreed.

  “Never met a better one,” said Arbuthnot.

  The Rolls gave as much of a roar as a polite car like that will ever give and tiptoed carefully through the puddle.

  “This is boring,” Max said again. And he was right. We’d only been in town for a day, but already I had grown to expect cheering crowds and oompah bands wherever I went. That’s how it is. That’s how it gets a grip of you, like a drink or a dope fiend. It’s so sweet and so strong, like the applause you get for a backflip dismount off the trapeze, but it’s different because they do the same for the clowns, they do the same for the performing dogs, they do the same for everybody but there is only one king. Nobody else gets that love and want and longing, as much as you get from any woman, as much as a mother can give, but magnified ten thousand times with ten thousand screaming, joyful faces, all turned in one direction, all looking at the king like daisies turning toward the sun. You get a taste for it pretty damned quick, I can tell you, and once you’ve had it, there’s just about nothing you won’t do to get it again.

  Anyway, Max was right. It was boring to sit there, walking our horses behind a limousine as if we were on our way to a funeral, so I fell out of line, banged my fist on the roof of the car and yelled, “See you at the castle, Kemali. We’re going for a ride!”

  That horse of mine didn’t take much encouragement. A touch of the heels and he was off like a greyhound, down in the haunches and springing along under the trees with Max and Arbuthnot thundering behind, Max clinging on for dear life, Arbuthnot swinging his saber as easy as a gentleman with his walking cane in the park.

  We reached the street corner, where the hammered earth road turned to cobbles, and the horses tensed as they felt their feet sliding under them for a moment, but they clattered on, striking sparks from their shoes as they went, and the noise of their passing echoed back at us from the buildings like rolling thunder, on and up, through the narrow, winding streets, up the hill toward the castle and the Treasury.

  There was a final turn, then a long straight up the hill with my horse gasping under me, nostrils flaring, breath roaring like a furnace, his great heart pumping like a ship’s engine, hoofs drumming and clattering all the way to the arch where I lost my fez only the night before and where half a dozen blokes who looked a little like soldiers had managed to drag themselves out of bed to form a guard.

  We pulled up and jumped from our saddles, laughing and breathless and alive, by God, alive.

  The guards snapped to attention like clockwork soldiers and you could tell they were aching with pride, chests puffed up like pigeons as I walked down the line, whacking my riding crop off my boot as I went. “I saw the king on the day he was crowned. I was in the guard.” You could see it in their eyes—they were thinking what they would tell their grandchildren.

  “Well done,” I said. “Tell them well done.”

  “Well done,” Arbuthnot said, but he said it in Albanok, of course, and you could see them swelling and adding a little something extra to their stories. “Well done. That’s what the king said to me. He stopped on his way to his coronation, got down off his horse and singled me out for doing a good job.”

  And, you see, already a little bit of the love they were shining at me was reflecting back at them. Already, even then, I was becoming a legend. By God, it tastes good.

  “Now then,” I said, “have you men seen any sign of a camel?”

  They hadn’t.

  “There was definitely a camel here in the courtyard yesterday.” Looking round the place, there was every chance that the camel might still be there, hidden under piles of rubbish and old bonfires and broken bottles. “Perhaps we could detail a work party,” I said. “Get this place cleaned up a bit.”

  “Get this place cleaned up!” Arbuthnot said.

  “Now, where is the Treasury?”

  “You there, show the king to the Treasury,” although he said it in Albanok but I knew he was talking about me because he said “mbret.” They said something back to him, but it goes without saying that I had no idea what that was and then, right that very second, we heard the klaxon horn of Kemali’s Rolls—honk, honk and a long lean on the horn, honnnnnnk, as the car came squealing through the castle gates and into the courtyard.

  Zogolli wound down his window and leaned out. “Majesty, might I, that is, might one ask, what are you doing here?”

  “Isn’t it obvious?” I said. “The Treasury. The crown. I came for the fitting, to try on the crown.”

  And then Kemali leaned out of the Rolls and said, “But, Majesty, the Treasury is stuffed with cash. The Treasury is brimful of money, money which belongs to the people of the free and independent kingdom of Albania and to you, my king. We needed something rather more suitable, something with the most modern and impregnable security. The Treasury is no longer at the castle. We moved it.”

  I went to look out the window. I still have a window, which is a pleasant surprise, and the snowdrifts have gone, that little blizzard of ash all blown away, and God knows what blown with it, God knows who.

  There’s nothing much to look at out there. Nothing but fires, a long line of dark and the shape of the trees in the distance, very sharp, as if they had been stamped out of tin plate and, behind them, the flames reaching up to orange clouds. The searchlights are still sending up their beams. I don’t know why. The sky is so bright that they could just look up and see the bombers if there were any up there, but they’ve gone. I think they’ve gone. I haven’t heard any booming and banging for a while. Maybe it’s stopped. I think they’ll be back. They come when they like now. Americans by day, English by night. Or the other way about, I forget. I’ve seen them leaving their trails in the sky, ignoring us, flying away to the east, saving their bombs for somebody more important or more unlucky and, God forgive me, I’ve been glad that it’s their turn and not mine. God forgive me.

  But I don’t know why I’m telling you this. You’ve seen an air raid before, you’ve thought those thoughts too. “Not me. Them. Do it to them. Not me. Not my house. Not my wife. Not my kids. Do it to them.” It’s not very heroic. Not very kingly. And it’s how we ended up in this mess in the first place. We shouldn’t speak of it more. We won’t speak of it more. Anyway, that wasn’t what I wanted to tell you.

  When I was looking out the window just then, watching the fires burning, I caught sight of myself reflected in the glass and I knew it was me, of course, and yet I hardly recognized myself. I’m an old man. I knew that, but it still came as a shock. That’s not the face I see when I remember the farm. It’s not the face I wore in the circus. It’s not the face they saw at my coronation. I look at that face and I wonder, Is that me? Is it? How can I be that little boy on the farm? How can I be the ma
n that all those girls went mad for, the man all those Albanoks cheered for, the man Sarah loved? I wonder sometimes where all those other Ottos have gone, if they are still in me and I am still in them or if they’ve gone and they exist only in photographs, the way that I existed in the window a moment ago. Just a brief reflection in the firelight until the flare died down and I was gone again with nothing left to show but the steam of my breath on the glass. Where did I go? Where did the time go? The King of the Albanoks, where is he? And that little boy? How did he get inside this caravan with a city burning all around him? That poor little boy.

  Let’s not talk of these things.

  So we were at the castle, me and Max and Arbuthnot, when Kemali announced that he had moved the Treasury. I suppose I should have been pleased. After all, you can bet that old Franz Josef didn’t keep his crown jewels in the kitchen cupboard, but I liked the homespun innocence of keeping the cash in a leaky old back room. Still, it seemed the Albanoks had decided to grow up a little and that’s a bittersweet moment for any father looking at his children. Also, it made withdrawals more difficult in case of temporary cash-flow difficulties and other emergencies.