by Zac Funstein
Everyone who knows the west coast of Cape Breton also knows how steeply the dunes opposite the sandy sanatorium path fall down too-it is here where they were at their steepest my colleague fell. This will take some explaining so I ask you allow us to continue with my statement of events with my accustomed calm- without exciting myself.
I found myself, as previously stated, opposite the great chasm when, suddenly, at the top of the steps on the left, above us someone appeared, running in a tearing hurry, staring heavenward as if for guidance, then crouching down then so in one fell swoop, to my horror, they tumbled all the way down the steep, almost vertical sandhill opposite!
Before the cry of total amazement, half of shock, that I then came out with had died away, the man was already sitting in the dunes soft sand looking at this scurrying passer-by, then called out, shouted or perhaps it was more of a howl:
‘They are there! I'm very sorry, sir, I'm sure—but it makes us nervous…’
‘Who? What? Who is ‘they’?’ I shouted, staring up at the mass of the sandhill without seeing anything in the least bit threatening. I had examined where the source of his anxiety had been but there was nothing there. If anything showed itself that could justify the boundless consternation plus the daring flight of the individual still sitting up in the sand in front of us, a rather portly individual extremely well-dressed then it had gone.’
‘Who is after you? No-one as far as I can see! So tell us! Who's after you? What prompted you to jump like that? I really can't see anything at all up there!’
‘Felipe! That Czech!’
Felipe it transpired was not our nearest satellite but a member of his household analogous to the housekeeper that Mrs. Zelaya had known as Iveta Svobodová only this was someone known as Felipe Skalová.
‘They’re up there over the dune behind us! And there's no cover here, no shelter—not even an umbrella—with which to seek refuge!’
I usually carry an umbrella with us- this day was no exception. But the stranger in his distraught state had not noticed it, before I offered it to the aforementioned fool, I naturally gave the matter some consideration.
It was clear to us, juridically clear, that I was in the presence of a someone of importance/ quickly composing myself, I considered how, under such circumstances, I ought to behave towards him. Should I abandon the man to his fate, unable as I was to change one iota of his destiny, thus leave it up to his house-keepers- real or otherwise- to capture him, or should I strike up a conversation with him then- at the risk of ending up having unpleasant differences- try to get a better understanding of his situation?
As a human being I should have preferred the former; as a lawyer/ a wrong-solver I opted for the latter. I yielded to temptation so carried on engaging him.
‘My dear fellow,’ I said, ‘if you believe that being under an umbrella will protect you against your enemy this , please make use of mine.’
I had already opened up the silk umbrella so the legal entity had jumped up in the air with a shout. It was I deemed one of those childhood props that we use for comfort-most of us lose them in the transition to adulthood but this unfortunate fellow had kept his as some teenagers remain addicted to cuddly-toys.
‘Heaven, sir, has led us here to you!’
The recently fallen took hold of my support then tipping his bowler- hat to us said:
‘Allow us to introduce myself. My name is Nováček, Circuit Judge to the Supreme Court in the province of Ontario…’
This made us picture Rossi Circuit Judge a revolving action automatic classified as a ‘Restricted’ firearm in Canada. If it were not so then I am sure they would allow us to hunt with it in Alberta but that is another story.
I sprang away from him dumbfounded:
‘That isn't possible!’
‘Sir?’
‘You? You, are Circuit Judge Nováček? It isn't possible-not here tumbling as you did!’
‘But I am him! If you can call it a pleasure, I do have the pleasure of being the person so named.’
I mastered myself with difficulty in as much as I now had this to say to myself, namely that it was beyond all doubt now that I was in the presence of an unfortunate wretch.
‘Yes, my name is Nováček I would consider it an honour if you would now acquaint us with yours.’
What could I do? I introduced myself- gave my title. Judge Nováček immediately tipped his felt-hat to us again, took my grasp then shook it warmly exclaiming:
‘Oh, my dear colleague, see how fate brings people together! A little while ago I wouldn't even have considered it, truly. So we've known each other now for a good while! Did we not in the case of Johann Müller, the self-styled gangsta, former Crips exchange rulings/ engage in professional correspondence? Oh, how pleased it makes us!’
The Crips are a primarily, but not exclusively an African-American gang. They were founded in Los Angeles, California, during Watergate by someone called Raymond Washington-I know little more.
This was indeed how things stood- I could see quite clearly there/ then all my correspondence with the Court of Justice in Toronto. Müller had been fired for dangerous driving whilst employed as a chauffeur-though the charges were hotly denied. Johann-his tattoos rippling on their workout trained surface had cut an impressive personality in court.
My singular companion (already we were walking next to each other) did not stop at simply stating these facts, but immediately immersed himself, setting out verbally all the considerations that had previously been put in writing. I answered him as if there were really no more doubt as far as I was concerned that Müller really was the Circuit Judge official claimed to be. Strolling towards Eskasoni we became more intent in talking shop. We had almost reached near where the men's bathing huts had once been-were nearing the steps that lead up from the beach to the top of the dunes when my colleague, who, despite his earlier exaltation had just shown himself to be an extremely clear as well as perceptively legal, all of a sudden, getting stuck in the sand, looked round, becoming faint, groaned:
‘Ye gods, we're in the middle of it again!’
No doubt about it—we were in the middle of it again-whatever it was. That was the problem-this seemed a little obtuse. Whatever it had been set him into terrible torment. Something grabbed hold of the unfortunate man afresh as my new companion hysterically/anxiously pulled at my outstretched umbrella- I could do nothing more for Nováček than to tighten my grip them to proclaim to the squirming/ struggling man in an admonitory tone:
‘But my dear sir, please! Compose yourself! Compose yourself! This is too much. How has this harmless situation actually wronged you? Or what have you done to wrong it? Show some sense and convince yourself of this: this innocent dune cannot harm you remotely. Here see there is nobody here.’
‘This is terrible!’ groaned the judge.
‘Come on now. Who’s chasing you-get a grip upon yourself? Your reaction is quite unnecessary. Don't take what I say amiss.’
‘Yes. I take your point. I'll willingly, only too willingly, go along with your suggestion. Colleague, I'm entirely under your guardianship.’
Circuit Judge Nováček was a man of approximately midlife, corpulent, as we have already commented, otherwise without any external distinguishing marks. None of this gave me any reason to suppose that the man was a candidate to be assessed yet—I couldn't help it! Pulling myself up close to him, I said:
‘Don't take this the wrong way Nováček , but now I don't believe it happened by accident.
‘What didn't happen? Surely you don’t believe Müller was wrong or Ludmila Zdražilová.’
Ludmila was a housekeeper who was believed in collusion with Müller though no proof was ever established.
‘Your appearance just now. Your fall down the dune, that daredevil slide.’
Immediately there came an extraordinary change over him. Nováček once more took evasive action as when formerly grasping the umbrella:
‘It's quite true nevertheles
s. Staff are my deadliest enemy and I am blighted by them.’
I waved to my hosts daughter nearby, who understood my wave so responded in kind.
‘Thank you,’ said the judge. ‘And I have you to thank as well for, had I not fallen into the remit of yourself, I really don't know what would have become of us.’
‘Colleague,’ I said, ‘I am a law-abiding man and have attended to my official duties for many years now to the satisfaction of my official subordinates and the powers that be. I keep my medal for services rendered at home in a filing cabinet under lock/key- have never knowingly divulged any secret confided in us, scout's honour. Would you take it amiss, if I asked you how you came to be surrounded by the unfaithful?’
‘I would certainly not take it amiss,’ said Nováče. ‘On the contrary, from time to time I have the most pressing need to give vent to such. Afterwards you can form your own opinion, all the more so as I already know you to be a most capable lawyer from our official correspondence.’
‘I am most greatly indebted to you.
‘First of all,’ Nováče said, ‘I must tell you that my doctor Dr. Zdeněk Trnka has sent us to Cape Breton at the instigation of my wife because of my 'condition' as it is called, or because of my ‘bad disposition’ as the doctor, calls it.’
‘Is there any reason for this unusual condition?’
‘For years now this medico, who has known us from my youth, who grew up with us, has laughed at this penchant of mine; only at my wife's insistence did Dr. Trnka come to take the matter seriously. For once Zdeněk came to the conclusion that it was high time to do something to counter this regrettable state-of-affairs so here I am, on doctor's orders as you have learned so far without the least success. But I digress! In a word, I'm paying for the sins of my youth.’
‘Aha!’ I murmured, but immediately recognizing my meaning, the court official sighed:
‘No! No! Nothing like that-don’t give what you are trying to articulate form I know what is exactly going through you. If only it had been that! It was quite the opposite that led to my-how shall we put it-difficulty. I can assure you that it was not the usual that lead us astray in my younger days. I was far too staid for that- regret it today in worry, pain as we are here now. If only I'd gone off the rails in the days of my youth. If only I had curbed the danger of being thrown by it when I could! Do you like shopping Mr. Jeremiah L. Robitaille?’
‘Not especially I can take it or leave it if I’m honest,’ I replied.
‘I found that helped for a while:-clothes, luxury items. It's a repressed desire for poetry that's sent us off the rails.’
‘Czech poetry?’
‘Yes! Yes! That- all of that even though I am from a Prussian family Circuit Judges by Royal Appointment-not just for my own sins do I atone, but I have the accumulated debts of untold generations of my ancestors to pay for as well. Colleague, I am at times most unhappy!’
‘Colleague-if may borrow this familiarity- you interest us most mightily as a person for all that. I'm eagerly waiting for you to shed further on this-how this relates to your staff.’
‘Which I will-you will have no dread of that. My father was an official by royal appointment as I have already revealed- so was my grandfather, it would be ridiculous for us to doubt that my great-grandfather too fell into the same category, a provincial official, it goes without saying. My mother was a Polish matriarch as was my grandmother- my great-grandmother too, of course. They too were the issue of families of provincial officials. They knew nothing of poetry only paid attention to art insofar as it was obliging enough to tell them to get with it. They left it up to us to make amends for their collective neglect! Then came the change.’
‘Aha!’ I re-uttered, but my legal colleague then said:
‘No! No! No! That's not it at all! You're just as mistaken as you were before. Do you know what we understand by the words ‘old liberal’ for that are how you strike us?’
I nodded with all the energy of a nodding porcelain toy or one of those self-powered Chinese fung shui pieces that wave goodbye to your luck then exclaimed.
‘I suppose that goes without saying too.’
‘It would have been silly not to have made this admission but this all begun when I had just reached the rank of the Czech equivalent of a solicitor's clerk. An ancient middle-of-the-roader like yourself must know how important beginnings are. Returning from a heated public rally still I did not have the faintest idea of how dangerous iambic pentameter was, but the year after I got more than an inkling of it. Rhyming verse is not for the timid! And the following day I had also a definite antipathy for many things and people I had formerly held high in my estimation. Poetry had broken in, do you know what it means when poetry breaks into the life of a solicitor's clerk in the Royal Slovakian Legal Service?’ Nováček replied.
‘No, thank God for it sounds an ambivalent pleasure.’
“True enough, but I didn't know either only today can I mention it,’mumbled the judge. ‘You've spent the whole working-day immersed in Lex Romana/ the statute book-you succeed only too well then the misery starts. You look over to your bookcase suddenly a desire takes hold of you that you can scarcely master, but you control yourself because it occurs to you how much you've invested in this jumble, and you control yourself too fortunately for the furtherance of your career and get on with preparing it occurs to you that you yourself have read more than your ancestors: not just Raumer but apart from that, Schiller and Goethe, Voltaire and Rousseau, Börne/ Stahl, Ranke -an incommensurable mixture of the latest liberal poets. You start to be immensely uncomfortable. You come over to yourself as unspeakably stupid, silly, tasteless’."
“I fail to see the relevance of all this I am ashamed to say I don’t know Schiller,’ Thiago interjected.
“Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller wrote short satirical poems in which both Schiller/ Goethe challenge opponents to their philosophical viewpoint. Zdražilová was had an actor when younger with a one-woman-show where this was reenacted herself playing a very soft Goethe.”
Deonilde when cornered in her sumptuous setting gained from the proceeds of GPR was more than candid.
“When first I made acquaintance with Macario Tejeda I never for a moment discerned that there was in him anything out of the ordinary. Yet now few will be found to deny his greatness. I do not speak of that greatness which is achieved by the fortunate politician or the successful soldier; that is a quality which belongs to the position occupied rather than to the man; and a change of circumstances reduces it to very discreet proportions. The President out of office is seen, too often, to have been but a pompous rhetorician, and the General without an army is but the tame hero of a market town. The greatness of Macario Tejeda was authentic.”
“It seems you were impressed with Macario.”
“God was not satisfied with all these marvellous things and, though they are perfect, good/ beautiful they must be surpassed. Big G must have a crowning effort to all their glory. So to defy imitation the creator brought forth his masterpiece calling it Tejeda. The incomparable/unsurpassable, the grandest achievement of his architecture. In his wisdom the great overlord provided everything for his needs/comfort. G made him pure, clean, strong, and beautiful, just a little bit lower than the angels.”
“What of the analogous staff Mrs. Zelaya?”
If Deonilde was going to continue gushing like this it was considered better to move on.
“In Edgar A. Myers, my butler, I undoubtedly found a nugget of the highest order. Edgar could be ubiquitous and self-obliterating at one and the same time. He was meekness incarnate, and yet he could coerce me into a predetermined line of conduct as inexorably as steel rails lead a street-car along its predestined line of traffic. Edgar was, in fact, much more than just a butler this was a valet- a lord-high-chamberlain/ a purchasing-agent/ a body-guard plus a benignant-eyed old godfather all in one. That man babied us. I could see that all along. But I was already an overworked I was glad enough t
o have that masked.
There were times, too, when his activities merged into those of a trained nurse, for when I smoked too much Edgar hid away my carcinogenic cigars (an unpleasant habit inherited from Mr. Zelaya who dies of emphysema), when I worked too hard Myers impersonally remembered what morning riding in the park had done for a former master of his. And when I drifted into the use of tablets containing chloral hydrate that dangerous little bottle had the habit of disappearing, mysteriously and inexplicably disappearing, from its allotted position in my bathroom cabinet.
There was just one thing in which Myers disappointed. That was in his stubborn unreasonable aversion to Knut Lindholm, my Swedish chauffeur. For Lindholm was helpful as Myers himself.
Knut understood his car, understood the traffic rules, understood what I wanted of him. “
“Was Knut there when you arrived?”
“No, Lindholm was, after a manner of speaking, a find of my own. I had met the Commissioner of Police, who had given me a card to stroll through Headquarters to inspect the machinery of the law. I had happened on Lindholm as the unfortunate was being measured ‘mugged’ in the Identification Bureau, with those odd-looking Bertillon forceps taking measurements. The inalienable look of respectability convinced us that our Nordic seeming chum who would give a passing impersonation of a anemic Viking, that he was not meant for any such fate or any such environment. And when I looked into his case I found that instinct had not been amiss. The unfortunate fellow had been ‘framed’ for a Jeep Wrangler-theft of which Knut was entirely innocent. The sap explained all this to us- circumstances, when I looked into them, bore out his statements. So I visited the Commissioner re the unfortunate dupe was passed on to the Probation Officers, from whom I caromed off to the Assistant District-Attorney, who in turn delegated me to another official, who was cynical enough to suggest that the prisoner might possibly be released if I was willing to go to the extent of bonding him. This I very promptly did, for I was now determined to see poor Lindholm once more a free man.”
