The Fantastical Adventures of Leutenlieb of the House of Munchausen

by Shlomo Kalo

  Things were becoming serious and the sacred madness of war was showing its symptoms on both the warring sides simultaneously, and the unfortunate prisoners, lashed together like sticks of dynamite before detonation, were made to stand as we have said at either end of the improvised bridge while their comrades-enemies trained weapons on their backs, or pressed the muzzles of rifles or pistols to their temples and threatened to pull the trigger.

  I tried to use my influence here and there, to encourage rational thought, to calm and to quieten – but without success. And when it finally became clear to me that there was nothing to be gained from persuasion, promises and threats and other accepted military ploys, and time was running out and the fate of the prisoners on both sides of the bridge was likely to be settled at any moment and not to anyone’s advantage – I went to one of the batteries under my command and with my own hands turned the barrel of the sophisticated gun, taking careful aim and checking meticulously, as has always been my wont, with supreme thoroughness, leaving nothing to chance.

  And to the great surprise of my soldiers and the stunned amazement of my officers – I fired a single shell which ripped apart the tense curtain of silence with a sharp whistle, hasty, open and proud. Consternation abounded. But the shock that came after it could not be described by any of the means put at the disposal of man since he was dubbed "the thinking animal", one capable of conceiving bold ideas and inventing ingenious stratagems to extricate himself from his superstitious beliefs.

  Before the astonished eyes of the onlookers, on both sides of the swollen river, enemies and friends alike, officers and men, horses, dogs, ravenous wolves and frightened mules, the following picture was revealed:

  The bridge had disappeared from view completely and the two groups of prisoners stood as if petrified on the two banks of the river, with one minor difference which not all the spectators grasped immediately, and it may be supposed that some of them have not grasped it to this very day – each of the groups stood on the opposite side, in the camp of its own army! A full exchange of prisoners had been accomplished in less time than it takes to blink.

  All of this was down to the mathematical precision with which I calculated the trajectory of my shot, a calculation which could be described as sheer genius, if I may say this without abandoning my humility, which has since then become the stuff of legend.

  With well-planned accuracy the shell landed on the one, the unique point of balance on the tree-trunk serving as a bridge, which caused the two sections to rise up simultaneously, and impelled by the same energy to catapult the two groups of trussed prisoners across the river in opposite directions, an operation carried out with such scientific expertise that having swapped places with their counterparts, all landed on their feet on the opposing banks.

  The shock was so profound that for a few moments even those with the sharpest eyesight failed to grasp the material change that had taken place before their eyes, and the moment it became clear to them, they burst into a spontaneous roar of applause, which shook heaven and earth and drastically distorted the course of the river, bending it into the route which it follows to this very day, although the change has never been recorded on maps, as it should have been.

  So the exchange of prisoners was effected, without generals and superfluous debate, without messengers, expectations and disappointments, without banquets and the consumption by high-ranking negotiators of superior foods and drinks fit for a king.

  The prisoners themselves, once released from their bonds, stood for half the day stunned and rooted to the spot, until it became necessary to offer them urgent medical treatment, but they refused to accept it and at once fell into one another’s arms, as if they had been resurrected and awakened to new life, with the coming of the age of deliverance.

  There was also a change in relations between the two "enemy" armies – suddenly they began exchanging cordial greetings and commending my courage and resourcefulness, not to mention – my genius. My name was on the lips of all, from the rawest of recruits to kings sitting in their sumptuous palaces in the heart of their ancient capitals, and compliments descended upon me like thick snow on the two poles of the globe, from friends and from enemies alike, to such an extent that fear took root in the hearts of all – lest some pedantic staff officer should misinterpret the case and see me, Heaven forbid, as a collaborator or worse.

  This, admittedly, did not happen, but the two generals, who as a point of honor had refused to come and negotiate over exchange of prisoners, were sorely offended, cut to the very quick of their souls, and a letter of apology on my part was not enough; there was also a distinguished delegation drawn from the two armies which made a pilgrimage to them, in the hope of appeasing them with pleas and entreaties and offers of precious booty, and by this means cooling their warlike spirits and preventing, in time, any precipitate action on their part, for which thousands of soldiers would pay with their lives.

  In the end – those eminent generals were placated, and each of them received a medal for strategic skills and for exemplary courage and valor, in addition to a letter of commendation signed by their respective kings, paying tribute to their loyalty and dedication and announcing their promotion to the rank of super-general, hastily invented specifically for them.

  And the whole story was forgotten, and the battles flared up again as before, with even greater intensity, and the guns thundered and the shells killed the living limbs of human beings and left behind them bereaved families and families of cripples. And rifles and machine-guns added their ferocious barking – and bayonets did the rest. And no attempt has ever been made to bring the murderers to justice, meaning the real murderers, those who sit in distant, centrally heated palaces, playing war-games with toys.

  THE WHISTLE

  Immediately after the exploit of the successful blowing up of the bridge, I was given a short period of leave and went home to rest for a while from the lunacy of war and the privations of life at the front.

  Among the prisoners liberated by courtesy of that remarkable gunshot, which as far as I was concerned was nothing more than a technical diagram sketched on old wrapping paper, was a talented officer in the corps of engineers, an architect in civilian life, who had gained worldwide renown for his researches into the construction techniques of ancient Egypt, and who like me was granted a short period of home leave. The pretext for his furlough – the trauma that he had experienced as a prisoner of war, and the no less traumatic shock of his unconventional liberation, "liberation Leutenlieb-style" as they called it at the front. In the course of this time this phrase turned into a legitimate encyclopedia entry and there is no self-respecting encyclopedia which does not address the topic in appropriate depth, with the exception of the Britannica whose ballistics expert has been investigating the "exceptional Leutenlieb phenomenon" to this very day and finding it impossible to describe it in a manner acceptable to the readers of this august tome with their refined sensibilities.

  And as things worked out the two of us – the architect with the interest in ancient Egyptian buildings and yours truly – boarded the same train heading for the home front, where affluence continued undiminished. And then it became clear to me that this agreeable fellow was a close neighbor of mine, no more and no less, in the northern sector of my ancestral city, the fine city of Munchausenberg in other words, capital of the prosperous province of Munchausenland.

  From the very moment the fact of our blessed neighborliness became known to the two of us, he turned to me in a courteous style which testified to a superior education and urged me most persistently to honor him with a visit during the three days of our furlough, in the ancient villa which he inherited from his ancestors, who like my ancestors were people of noble breeding but had not become widely famous on account of the architectural profession, passing with them to father and son and so on; architecture is a quiet profession, not likely to make much impression on the pages of turbulent history, unlike the aristocratic craft in which the
Munchausen offspring were schooled, from the smallest to the greatest.

  I readily accepted the man’s generous invitation, and thanked him according to all the norms of courtly courtesy which were second nature to me; I was all the more keen to accept in that he seemed to me a man of refined taste, in all matters relating to food and the arrangement of flowers.

  And indeed, during my visit to him I discovered to my surprise that the walls of the ancient villa that he inherited from his ancestors in its entirety were covered with the master-works of renowned artists such as Zubaraban, Velasquez, Goya, Murillo, El Greco and others.

  "You’re an admirer of things Spanish?" I asked, looking at the "water-seller" of Velasquez, unable to move from it my gaze of genuine and profound admiration. Incidentally, about a dozen years later the man donated the picture to the "Prado" museum in Madrid. Anyone who feels in the mood and is an enthusiast for Spanish art in general and Velasquez in particular, now has the opportunity of traveling to Madrid and feasting his eyes on its classical beauty, over which the ravages of time have no dominion.

  "An avowed admirer!" – the talented, well-connected researcher answered me in his soft and pleasant voice and added: "Pure Spanish blood in not insignificant quantities flows in my veins!"

  "Indeed," I replied politely, "there is no true gentleman in Europe who does not have Spanish blood in one quantity or another flowing in his veins!" I lowered my open gaze with all due modesty, assuming that the famous story of my great-grandfather who married Princess Margot, one of the noble nieces of King Charles the Fifth, ruler of Spain and of all Europe, was well-known to him.

  From topic to topic, the conversation came round to the matter of the saving of his life, and the astonishing gunshot about which he expressed keen professional curiosity, wanting to know my ballistic calculations down to the smallest details.

  I acceded to his request and on superior notepaper, an ancient Dutch product, I sketched the parabola, and jotted down beside it a few simple and illuminating mathematical formulae.

  He understood at once, clapped his hands in spontaneous admiration and cried: "Genius!" He shook my hand warmly, and seeing the typical look of sincere indifference, sketched on my face which some consider handsome, manly and noble – invited me into his study.

  This was a spacious room, furnished in the finest baroque style, all padded, soft-seated and high-backed armchairs, speaking of diligence, intellect, precision and seriousness, typical of the pre-romantic seventeenth century, fertile with unfounded industrial dreams.

  To my pleasant surprise he set out before me detailed sketches of the world-famous Egyptian pyramids and various other ancient buildings in the Nile delta, as well as professionally proficient portraits of several expressionless sphinxes.

  "If we look carefully" – touching and not touching with his long finger, the finger of a born pianist – "at one of the walls of the pyramids, we cannot accept, from any viewpoint whatsoever, that these gigantic stones were quarried, worked on, transported and erected in the place they were erected – by men, with wagons and such primitive cranes as may have been available to them then…"

  "Meaning?" I asked curiously, since any true riddle always arouses my instinctive, ingenious and purely scientific pursuit of knowledge, arousal of an intensity which is not to be resisted.

  Pretending he had not heard me speak, and at the same time finding a line which could lead to a possibly satisfactory result, the architect went on to say, with dignity:

  "Even in our day, no one would dare even contemplate, still less take on himself such an impossible professional assignment…"

  "And they – how did they do it?" I collaborated with him, suppressing with an effort my lively curiosity regarding any phenomenon of pure science. Judging by the expression on the face of the celebrated researcher, judging by the smile which slightly enlarged the corners of his lips, it was obvious he knew the solution to the riddle, and this solution was not shrouded in mystery but based on solid science, and susceptible to decisive scientific proof, from all perspectives and in accordance with all requirements.

  "They knew something which to this very day – we do not know!" he declared and gave me a bright look of good-natured triumph.

  "What is it that they knew and that isn’t known to us to this very day?" I went on to press him.

  He declared at once: "How to neutralize the magnetic pull of the earth, how to cancel gravity!" – speaking in a rather tired voice, as if regretting having gone too far in revealing his closely guarded secret, and at the same time awaiting my judicious response which would make his disclosure of this secret pleasurable after all. And indeed, the response was not slow in coming:

  "It’s very easy," I commented sternly, "to throw out some such bombastic statement into the world, without any real evidence. Is there evidence?" I softened the tone of my voice a little and it seems I was not entirely successful controlling the muscles of my neck, tensing and drawing my head, with all its firmly etched facial lines, forward.

  With a slow look, showing deep appreciation of my undoubted intellectual acuity, he scanned me from top to toe and answered me calmly:

  "There is!"

  And saying this he drew from the tiny velvet pocket of his trousers, a pocket designed for a watch, a key made of solid gold, walked towards an Elizabethan bureau, burnished to a dull glow, carefully opened one of its glass doors, probed the left-hand panel until he found the keyhole he was looking for, inserted the minuscule key and pulled out a drawer the size of an embryo’s hand. From this tiny drawer he removed a kind of twisted tube resembling a whistle, with something engraved on it Hieroglyphics.

  "It says here," the architect pointed to the ancient inscription, "he who blows into me – could lift the world on his little finger."

  My astonishment was growing ever stronger, to say nothing of my scientific instinct, which may in this particular instance have been blended with curiosity that was less than sophisticated, but justified and reasonable from any point of view.

  "With the aid of this whistle – they had the power to cancel the gravitational power of the earth?" I asked at once.

  "Yes!" – my host’s eyes lit up with triumph. "Indeed," he added in that tone of deep appreciation bordering on admiration, "your powers of perception are truly remarkable! Acute and quick, almost superhuman!" And after a short pause he went on to explain in detail: "This whistle, as you called it and as indeed it is – emits sounds on a particular frequency, which the human ear cannot hear, a low frequency, the frequency of the earth, if it can be put like that… dogs, as opposed to people, can take in some of it… this frequency fits in beautifully with the frequency of the earth’s gravity, blends with it and takes its awesome power, takes it completely! And not only that," he continued with his detailed account, "it also distinguishes between what’s directly connected to the earth and what’s built on it."

  "You mean to say it can tell the difference between a building and its foundations?"

  "Precisely so!" my interlocutor enthused, witnessing additional conclusive proof of my wondrous powers of perception, which it never occurred to me to parade before him in any way, or take pride in. My response was entirely spontaneous.

  "And you have seen this whistle in action, in practice?" I demanded to know.

  Instead of answering my friendly neighbor led me to his luxuriant garden, a garden in the eastern style crammed with flowers of all colors, in all seasons of the year, and non-deciduous trees with golden leaves summer and winter, and the garden stretching from the ancient villa as far as the whitened bank of a broad river, descending to it by way of broad steps of manicured lawn. In the eastern corner of the garden stood a stone of considerable size, with some hieroglyphic script visible on it, which had not entirely resisted the ravages of time.

  In my estimation, and I’m not saying my estimation has ever been wrong, the stone weighed more than twenty whole tons.

  "A souvenir of my travels in Egypt!" – my fr
iend pointed to the stone, approached it, blew softly into the strange whistle, knelt down beside the stone, stretched out his manicured hand – and lifted it on his little finger!

  It was a crazy spectacle, like seeing a baby lift with his finger one of the snow-capped peaks of the Alps. Without saying a word, my friend signaled to me to approach him, and transferred the gigantic stone – weighing more than twenty whole tons – onto the little finger of my right hand!

  "The effect of one blow on the whistle lasts about four minutes," he told me, "or to be more precise – three minutes and thirty-three seconds… and then the gravitational forces of the earth once again take control of the object that’s been raised – a stone, a house, a mountain – and put it back on the ground. And if you want to keep holding it up for longer, you have to blow the whistle a second time…"

  And sure enough, after about four minutes it was impossible to do more than touch the gigantic stone on any of its sides, and categorically refuse to believe that without a powerful crane it could possibly be shifted from its place…

  We returned to the villa.

  "With the aid of that whistle you could make yourself a fortune!" I commented, still in the grip of wonderment.

  "I have enough and more," the architect-explorer sighed, casting his eyes over the high walls of his study, "and besides that," he added thoughtfully – "it could be dangerous to reveal the secret of the whistle!" He gave me a quizzical look and continued: "Wars could break out because of it, innocent people could be killed in their thousands, families destroyed… that’s why I’ve kept it a closely guarded secret, and you’re the first person who’s ever been shown it… and the last…"