The Fantastical Adventures of Leutenlieb of the House of Munchausen

by Shlomo Kalo

  As soon as the whole collection had been concentrated on a dark patch at the base of the whale’s tongue, my friend gave the signal – and I very gently rubbed a tiny protuberance at the entry to the gullet which served my friend as a kind of gigantic colonnade in the Roman-Greek-Babylonian style – and the whale immediately spewed out the whole mishmash of carved wood, fabrics and lordly symbols.

  So we returned to the folds of the intestines which had not changed their designations as cabins, although more modest than before. And how great was our satisfaction when we heard, to our utter astonishment, our friend the whale singing a song of decidedly whalish timbre, a song in praise of joy and freedom: joy – in that his friends inside understood his mind and had acted in the interests of relieving his suffering, and freedom – in that he was released from the servitude imposed by the legs of tables and chairs, injuring his stomach day and night and disrupting his delicate digestive system, and enjoyed the liberation of the soft cushions which padded those long intestinal tracts and quickly led to the healing of their wounds.

  "You hear!" my friend the red prophet exclaimed with spontaneous enthusiasm – "This fish is singing!"

  "And you didn’t know that every fish sings?" I asked in all solemnity, a look of emphatic astonishment on my face.

  "No!" my friend declared in a particularly thick voice, sounding almost offended.

  "They sing and they’re not the only ones – everything, animal vegetable or mineral, has wonderful songs to sing…"

  "They are not to be heard!" the red prophet insisted. "Impure ears will never take in this delicate and enlightening music!"

  "And what kind of people have pure ears?" my friend demanded to know in a vehement tone, his broad, high and smooth forehead creasing into a thousand wrinkles, like a field recently ploughed by an industrious farmer.

  "Those who love them and seek their welfare, those who will always do everything to prevent harm to them, will not bind them, injure them in any way whatsoever – or, heaven forbid, slaughter them to fill the stomachs of man-eaters…"

  "Animal-eaters," my friend corrected me.

  "The one who eats animals eats mankind too!" I asserted – "And if you take my advice – one day you will have to release this marvelous creature from all yokes and restraints, disembark on dry land and settle there and set the whale free!"

  "I don’t reckon that I’ve laid any heavy burden on him in the past and I don’t intend to do so in the future!" my friend thundered and hastily added: "With his help the word of God will be spread and will reach the most remote corners of this world and will open the ears of those ignorant brethren of ours who live there… this is my duty and he too has a part in it and when the great day of judgment comes he will be generously rewarded!"

  "All the same," I persisted, "you have to stand up and calculate the future and when the appropriate time comes – liberate this wonderful beast and set him free!" He mumbled some other complaint under his thick and wavy moustache, red as fire, sat on one of the soft cushions, creased his forehead again, relaxed a little and suddenly threw into the void of the intestinal tract which since the heavy furniture was removed from it seemed to glow with a pure and limpid light:

  "And all the stories of your great-great-great grandfather – are fairy tales! There isn’t a drop of truth in them! Don’t try to convince me otherwise. You won’t succeed, and you too are an incomparable deviser of puzzles, going down to the bottom of a lake and coming out as dry as if you had never touched the water!"

  He tried the well-known military tactic, embodied in the familiar proverb: "The best form of defense is attack".

  I sat facing him, on a purple velvet cushion with gold trimmings, embroidered symbols and slogans which could no longer be deciphered, and declared resolutely:

  "Every word spoken by my great-great-great grandfather – was the absolute truth! Every one of his stories – is a solid exposition of incontrovertible facts!"

  He glanced at me with a look of astonishment in which the anger, artificially ignited, gave way to lively curiosity.

  "I remember three famous adventures of that schlemiel Hieronymus…"

  "He was no schlemiel!" I retorted brusquely.

  He smiled to himself, accepting my interjection and having no choice in the matter since that curiosity of his, dedicated to inquiring and finding out the truth, pressed him and went on pressing, and he knew it would not rest until it was completely satisfied. "Let’s say, that Hieronymus…" "The Baron!" I stressed.

  "The Baron," he conceded –"told a story about clothes that were bitten by a mad dog and infected with rabies; about a horse that was supposedly cut in half and was drinking incessantly because the water kept on pouring out of the part that was missing, and about another horse that was suspended from the spire of the belfry of a Russian church…" He chuckled not without pleasure and suddenly snapped out the brief and crude comment: "Pure fiction, all of it!"

  Unimpressed by the provocative tone of his voice and the hurtful content of the remark, I began calmly explaining to my friend-host-savior, one to one, whatever required explanation and clarification:

  "As for the clothes," I smiled at him a mild and ingratiating smile – "any increase in the ownership of clothes necessarily leads to clothes-rabies. There was no need for any garment to be bitten by a mad dog…"

  "How can you prove that?" the red prophet protested, his eyes flashing again.

  "With the aid of the Scriptures," I answered him calmly, and since my answer caused him to retreat a little from the abrupt tone, soften it somewhat and listen attentively, I exploited this and added: "It is written – If someone asks you for your shirt, give him your overcoat too, because thus, and only thus, can you stop the rabies that comes with multiplicity of clothes, that spreads and infects the owner of many clothes, his relatives and friends, neighbors and compatriots, and becomes an unstoppable plague. And people who own many clothes walk in the streets in pain, torment and anger and instead of turning to one another with soft human speech and poetry, they bark at one another in the manner of aggressive animals and attack one another, and bite one another like mad dogs… and there is no recourse or remedy other than to uphold that sacred rule – someone asks you for your shirt, give him your overcoat too. In this way both you and he will have clothing in adequate measure, and the plague will be halted, and rabies will disappear from the face of the earth, and people will smile at one another once more in friendly fashion and converse calmly, in mild and poetic human language, and not bark at one another and bite one another!"

  My interlocutor hummed indistinctly and raised a hairy right eyebrow, immediately creasing the right side of his forehead:

  "And that bisected horse…" he fixed his eyes on me again, although not with the same insistent disdain, like someone who has just come across an incorrigible professional liar and has decided to lay him bare before the world.

  I could not help but smile again, that gentle smile, overflowing with warmth and friendship:

  "It’s a well-known fact," I began, "that unbridled thirst is a clear sign that the thirsty creature is no longer alive, divided and bisected and his torments will not ease as long as he goes on trying to quench his endless thirst… A rich man who never stops increasing his wealth, will end up leaving it all to others, in other words, he’s pouring it out from the other side, like that bisected horse, in other words – he thinks he’s alive but in fact he’s dead, cut in half and he will not recover, until he stops being a slave to insatiable thirst…"

  "What do the Scriptures say about this?" my friend interrupted in an imperious tone.

  "It is written," I said in reply to his demand – "let the dead bury their dead – and how will the dead bury their dead? This refers to those people who are dead while they are alive, in other words – they know no satisfaction or refreshment and they carry on drinking in the vain hope of attaining some kind of satisfaction. And they don’t realize that so long as they don’t control this thirs
t, which exhausts their strength and rules over them with cruelty and with anger, until they can no longer tell the difference between right and left – they will be bisected, like that horse, with water pouring in at one side and pouring out of the other, so that his thirst, instead of being quenched, goes on growing, without measure… until he overcomes it and they join up his missing part, like the missing part of that horse, and he stops searching for futile quenching of permanent thirst, and leaves the lost camp of those dead who bury their dead, meaning – those who will never know what life is…"

  "And the horse hanging over the mouth of an abyss?" – my host was not giving up, but he had changed the tone of his voice appreciably, and softened it beyond recognition.

  "Anyone who is imprisoned is hanging over the mouth of an abyss, and the one who should be held responsible for this is the dim-witted jailer. He it is who will be called to account when the time comes before the celestial tribunal, and he will be numbered on that day with the ‘goats’ standing to the left side of the Savior, and he will be ignominiously dismissed along with his cronies: I do not know you – they will be told – Begone from me you sinners!"

  "What then is to be done?" Hoarse and throaty sounds of genuine concern and repentance stole into my interlocutor’s voice.

  "Don’t imprison anything, man or beast! Tear down to the foundations those dreadful places of detention called prisons, which trample upon the honor of the enlightened name of humanity, created in God’s image. It is not for flesh and blood to judge flesh and blood!"

  He pondered this, humming softly to himself, but he was not yet ready to admit defeat, and after a long pause he exclaimed:

  "And what about the incident of the sounds which froze in the trumpet of the post-chaise, apparently on account of the intense cold prevailing out of doors, and when the trumpet was put beside a hot stove – it started playing sweetly, by itself?"

  "When a man goes out into the street with a melodious song in his heart, because this is the true nature of the heart of man – always singing, always enlightened – and he meets his neighbor whose face is frozen, who has never in his life smiled even to himself – the song freezes in his heart and his face withers… and a little later, when he meets his other neighbor who has a sincere smile spread over his playful, radiant face – the song that was frozen in his heart is melted, and it makes its voice heard, limpid and pleasant to the ear – by itself!"

  My host scanned me with a long look, and finally declared:

  "It’s a miracle that I’ve met you! God in his great mercy put you in my way – the last scion perhaps of that celebrated family which – so it seems – has lost none of its sap, and behind the laughter which it arouses, hides invigorating wisdom not inferior to the wisdom of King Solomon himself, and anyone endowed with such wisdom is truly blessed!" And he smiled at me a broad smile which was thoroughly friendly, pure and innocent, and in a resonant voice ringing like the bells of sheep that have just now gone out to pasture and are cavorting joyfully in every conceivable direction, and there is no stopping them, he added: "I’ll brew tea and we shall drink to the health of your great great great grandfather, who unlike you, so it seems, was a genius!"

  Naturally, this was an opinion which I did not share, but at that portentous moment I felt no urge to correct his fundamental mistake and make it clear to him once and for all, that among the Munchausens there had never been a single scion who was not a genius, a genius in every generation, outdoing the genius who preceded him, and so on – ad infinitum.

  Being in a good mood, my friend and host went ahead and told me some vivid, enjoyable and fascinating anecdotes about all kinds of remote islands tucked away in hidden corners of the world, which he visited courtesy of his remarkable craft. Thus for example he described to me, in strong colors and a succinct style which testified to a considerable literary talent, the exceptional situation of the inhabitants of the island of Bigdog, who once used to rear dogs as their sole source of nourishment. Herds of dogs were reared and nurtured, just as the sophisticated herdsmen in our parts rear sheep, cattle and pigs. And why did the inhabitants of Bigdog focus on herds of dogs alone? Because nothing grew on the rocky expanses of their island, smooth as glass, and dogs were useful since they could subsist on the fresh bodies of residents who had died of ripe old age, of disease, or as the result of some accident. According to the enlightened laws of the island these bodies were offered, following solemn funereal rites very similar to the obsequies with which we are familiar, to the herds of domesticated dogs. Furthermore, since it was impossible to dig into the iron-hard rock, for the purposes of burying anyone or anything – if they had not ended up in the stomachs of dogs, the corpses would have been burnt or thrown to the formidable sharks, two methods of disposal utterly devoid of dignity and offering no benefit to the permanently hungry Bigdogians, to say nothing of the absence of the respect due to the deceased and to his grieving family.

  The Bigdogians – the red-bearded one went on to tell me – were not favored by fortune and their supply of dogs soon ran out. This because the mortality rate among Bigdogians declined miraculously and there was nothing to feed the herds with. And the result of this was that the starving dogs began preying on one another, and within one night all that was left of a population which had once numbered hundreds of dogs, was one single animal, which had devoured all the other members of his species and grown overnight to the dimensions of a camel. It was no easy matter tackling such a beast. It was necessary to harness all the ingenuity with which the hapless Bigdogian race was endowed, their initiative and resourcefulness, for the purpose of designing a trap capable of catching the camel-dog. The Bigdogians suspended a one-day old baby on a rope hanging from the edge of the flat roof of the tallest cottage on the island, and someone up above held the rope and every time the camel-dog jumped up to snatch the wailing baby and eat it, he pulled on the rope dexterously and the dog missed its target, blazing anger and frustration mounting to the point where the animal was losing its wits. And so the process continued until the oversized beast became utterly exhausted, and collapsed under the tantalizing baby, to take a nap. And then the man holding the rope hitched it to a projection so that the baby, equally tired, was suspended at a safe height, climbed down furtively from the roof, constructed from the bones and sinews of dogs and people, approached the dozing dog and wrapped round its neck a noose made of flexible and strong dog-skin, attached to a gleaming brass chain. The hunter stepped a few paces back and gave the chain a sudden tug. The astonished camel-dog leapt in the air and was throttled there and then. The hungry natives took the fresh corpse, skinned it and cooked from its meat, offal and bones a nourishing soup that supplied the needs of the whole community, i.e. all the inhabitants of this unhappy island, numbering around a hundred men and women.

  Since the supply of dogs was exhausted the inhabitants of Bigdog had been trying to feed themselves with the flesh of birds of prey of the rarest species, which for their part tried to pick out their eyes and usually succeeded. And all this because of the unique topography of that island, a smooth plateau forming the peak of a great rocky outcrop springing up in the heart of the ocean.

  The inhabitants of the island were doomed – since even the hunting of birds was proving unsuccessful. Every time they managed to hit one of them with an arrow (they had bows and arrows made from the bones and sinews of people and animals) – the bird would carry on flying and finally fall into the sea, some distance from the shore. The natives had no boats which could be used for the retrieval of their prey, most of them couldn’t swim and those who could were afraid to go into the sea since the island was surrounded by a dense cordon of sharks and anything falling in was immediately swallowed. Even if there was a fall of rocky shale – it would not reach the water, swallowed in mid-air by the most agile or the hungriest of the sharks.

  "I tend," my friend added in concluding his sad story, "to visit them every year and bring them a few provisions that I pick up along th
e way. They are frugal, and a barrel of herrings will be enough to support the whole tribe for a month… and how distressing it is to see them in their irreversible decline!" My friend sighed and added: "Every time I visit them – their numbers are diminishing rather than increasing! It would be appropriate if someone from our homeland came and lived among them for a while to study their ways and record all the details as they should be recorded, and when they finally disappear from the rough face of this planet of ours, something will be left to remind other people of their existence!"

  I have to admit – the story aroused my curiosity. On the one hand – I was keen to see them with my own eyes, all those strange people on their island which, as mentioned before – was nothing other than the smooth summit of a rocky cliff and on the other – I had a strong desire to help them, to help them somehow, if only I could.

  I indicated to my friend that I was interested in visiting Bigdog, his enchanted island, and he weighed this up, wrinkled his high forehead, frowned, riffled through the new diary that he had swiped from a wrecked British ship and finally, he softened his expression, smiled and informed me solemnly that according to his schedule, he was due to land up in Bigdog in around two weeks time, and the barrel of herrings was ready in the hold of his ship, or rather – the broad belly of the whale.

  We did indeed visit the island, and what our eyes saw there and our ears heard went several stages beyond the chilling account given by my red-bearded friend.

  The terminally hungry residents had almost entirely lost their healthy logic and their normal capacity for calculation. Their eyes scanned the skies, and rather than looking for birds to shoot at – their priority was to spot them in time and flee to their huts built of canine and human bones, before the birds could swoop on them brazenly and peck out their eyes. More than half of them had already been blinded in this cruel manifestation of the competition between two species – human beings on the one hand and birds of prey on the other.