The Fantastical Adventures of Leutenlieb of the House of Munchausen

by Shlomo Kalo

  The inventor adopted the feckless expression of an innocent bystander and gained access to the factory specially constructed in Northern Carolina, a big and impressive factory for the assembly of that minuscule device, disguised as a "consortium for the manufacture of original oriental carpets, Magic Carpet Inc."

  He encountered no obstacles; on the contrary, people recognized him and expressed their admiration for his 1924 patents and his wealth. Until he reached the particular work-station, the sabotage of which would halt the production line and in fact paralyze the whole factory, preventing any further production of his lethal machine.

  The inventor approached one of the installations and tried to reach the secret operating-switch, but here for the first time he met opposition on the part of the technician responsible, who refused to let him touch any part of that installation. He argued with him, and tried using force, and then it became evident to him that the technician was in fact an undercover agent of the FBI. The latter didn’t hesitate, but drew a revolver and announced he was arresting him on charges of breaking a solemn undertaking, dereliction of duty, treason, deception and endangering the security of his homeland, and for good measure he denounced him as a "coward" and a "born criminal" and a "man devoid of conscience and human decency".

  So the choice was no longer in his hands. While continuing his lengthy homily, the one with the revolver was pushing him towards the exit door. The inventor took advantage of a momentary lapse of attention on the other’s part and with an agile movement dived into a dark and tortuous side-corridor, and from there into an even darker and more tortuous one. His pursuer was confused and didn’t dare shoot for fear of his bullet hitting an unintended target; instead he tried to seal the exits before it was too late, by activating the emergency alarms. But my friend succeeded in evading capture and reaching one of the smoke extractors which was not at that time in use, climbing through it not without some effort and getting clean away… and since then he had been a fugitive…

  Meanwhile, the device had been tested with considerable success. A number of the "enemies of the homeland" of the FBI agents had been "radiated" with the help of reliable henchmen, had contracted malignant diseases and departed this world, leaving behind them suffering, agonizing and a heavy weight on the conscience of the inventor.

  "Who are the ones who have already been targeted?" I asked the ragged man who in the course of his flight had reached this blessed island and found refuge here.

  And he answered me in a strangled voice:

  "The American, Senator Humphrey, Israel’s Golda Meir, the Shah of Persia, Major Saad Haddad from Lebanon and some others less well known… the Syrian ruler, Assad, survived the exposure to radiation and emerged unscathed… in that case it seems the hitman was incompetent in handling the apparatus…"

  He lifted a big pitcher of the superior coconut milk to his lips and took a deep gulp, in a clear attempt to hide the tears streaming down his face behind the rough-hewn coconut wood of the pitcher.

  We became friends. One of those wonderful evenings, which regularly visit the island of Coconut Delights, with a full moon resembling a Chinese gong from the Ching dynasty, some seven meters in diameter, and innumerable stars strewn across a pure sky – I asked him to describe in more detail how it would be possible to foil the manufacture of the instrument and abort this technology once and for all.

  He scanned me again with that confused-suspicious look of his, but in the end he relented and revealed to me that if a certain module, as small as the palm of a hand, were to be removed from a particular installation and replaced by another module, apparently similar in every way – the device would still be manufactured, but its murderous potential would no longer apply. I confided in him my sincere desire and firm determination to implement the plan which he, through a combination of unfavorable circumstances and bad luck, had failed to carry through. And when he had again inspected my features closely, and was satisfied that my words were sincere and I had no intention of retreating from my decision, he introduced me there and then into the greatest secret of all, the method of exchanging the modules, in all necessary and even unnecessary detail. In the course of his lecture the man was in turn subject to a strange frisson of repressed happiness, and tension, fear and a kind of anxious anticipation, concern over the forthcoming sequence of events, but finally a great flame of hope was ignited in him, showing its clear signs in his eyes which instead of glowing with a sickly luster were now filled with light. He handed me the substitute module, which the palm of a hand could easily cover, shook my hand firmly and wished me every success.

  One of the encouraging factors which helped considerably in the development of the plan which, needless to say, had to be stitched together there and then, within the space of a few seconds – was without any doubt the fact that the industrial complex had been sited in Northern Carolina, in the vicinity of the township of Julius Caesar, where the retired sheriff and local barbershop proprietor, editor of the "Washington Star", was one of my best and oldest friends, assuming of course that he hadn’t gone to his eternal rest in the meantime – likewise the famous and famously ancient ticket-clerk, the sharp-witted and highly percipient Diogenes.

  I made hurried preparations for the journey. And then, somehow, despite all the meticulous precautions I had taken, my friend the red-bearded prophet sensed that something in me was not as it had been the day before yesterday; he enquired and demanded and in some way quite unfathomable to me, deduced that I was intent on setting out on a journey beyond the bounds of the blessed island of Coconut Delights.

  "I don’t demand of you," he began in a voice that still retained traces of the authoritative vehemence typical of his prophetic utterances – "I don’t demand of you," he repeated with added emphasis and looked me full in the face with a grim and inquisitive air – "that you reveal to me the precise purpose of your journey… My guess is that you have been notified of something resembling villainy or miscarriage of justice etc. etc. and you are setting forth, true to your nature and upholding your principles, to try to correct, insofar as God permits, whatever needs correcting… but without me… It isn’t going to work for you!" he cried in that vehement and inflammatory tone which resounds in the ears of those who hear it and leaves them without even a morsel of the will to resist: "Since," he went on to explain, "God will put His word in my mouth and it will be up to me to proclaim it in the right place, at the right time, in the right way and before the right audience. So – as you have just been informed and as you are informed again: without me it won’t work for you!" Flames of steadfast faith blazed in his piercing eyes, shooting arrows of fire in every direction.

  It was clear to me I had no way of resisting this look and this iron-clad willpower, not to mention the voice of God speaking from my friend’s hoarse throat. I submitted there and then, fully and unconditionally. I reached out and gladly shook his calloused hand. He was happy too and his prophetic features softened a little. And then he added in a voice more or less resembling the voice of a normal human being:

  "It’s always worth taking a prophet of wrath along for the ride. There’s no knowing how the media and hotel employees are going to relate to you!"

  "An utterly spurious observation," I responded, "my agreement has been given and it isn’t in my nature to hesitate, change my mind or reconsider a decision that has already been taken."

  Within twenty-four hours we were ready for the journey. We knew that our whale, once he had rested enough, would find us wherever we might be and we didn’t worry about him.

  We set out in one of the long pirogues, made from a single section of a coconut tree, which the local residents use extensively as a means of transport, for family outings on public holidays, and as an inexhaustible source of income: fishing and the distribution of delicacies.

  After a cruise lasting some six solid hours, we arrived at a neighboring island where we said goodbye to our two energetic oarsmen and boarded a barge, propelled by eight ex
perienced rowers and transporting seven goats, two milk-cows, five empty and polished boxes, about half a ton of honey in petrol cans, and a huge pile of loose coconuts. Despite the load, the enormous barge glided with surprising smoothness, since those rowing it knew how to exploit the hidden currents of the oceans, the height of waves and their breaking times, calculated with impressive mathematical precision, and of course, the movements of tides and ebbs.

  The voyage lasted some seven days, during which all those on board – eight oarsmen, my friend the prophet and I – enjoyed a daily ration of fresh milk, courtesy of the cows or the goats, according to preference, and a variety of dairy products which were equally fresh, since the crewmen were adept at churning butter from milk and producing delicious cheeses within minutes. They churned the butter with the use of two slings made from crocodile-skin, each with a capacity of about three liters. Filling the slings with milk and swinging them through the air – one or two circuits at head-level – was all that was needed to produce fresh butter of exquisite taste.

  We could not restrain our curiosity and we asked how this process worked; the explanation we received was scientifically sound and entirely satisfactory.

  "It’s a special property of crocodile hide," the butter-maker – or more accurately the butter-swinger – told us. "As is well known," he proceeded to explain, "the crocodile cannot endure fat, and its hide instantly repels it."

  And sure enough, as distinct from the procedures familiar in our countries – the butter in the crocodile-slings curdles in the center of the liquid as opposed to on the surface. And as for the cheeses, we enjoyed cheeses of varying strength, flavor and salt-content, which the crewmen produced by filling wooden vessels with milk and adding a few handfuls of brine. So we ate our fill and were grateful, happy in our lot and cheerful at heart, until the end of that agreeable week of cruising on the restless waters of the mighty ocean.

  The island where we made landfall had a substantial harbor where three paddle-steamers were anchored, the kind of craft used by Mark Twain for his forays along the Mississippi. We were assigned overnight sleeping accommodation on the lumpy deck of one of these ships, and our voyage to the mainland took three enjoyable and productive weeks – productive in an educational sense, with lessons in sail-seamanship. Because, immediately after emitting its traditional siren-call and puffing out a few smoke-rings in grey and black, the ship’s engine seized up, and working alongside the multi-racial and polyglot crew, we were required to rig up masts and hang sails on them.

  On reaching the mainland we boarded a Swedish steamer which did not carry reserve sails and masts and all that we had learned about wind-navigation on the previous ship was soon forgotten, erased by disuse as if it had never existed.

  We arrived in Bangkok and from there took an exhilarating flight over the ocean in a luxuriously appointed piston-propelled aircraft, a relic of the First World War. We landed in the West Indies, where a TWA Boeing 707 was waiting for us, to fly us directly to Northern Carolina. We stayed overnight in the crowded state capital, in a superior hotel which offered us a splendid view of the stars peering down at us through the fissures in the ancient roof. We rose early and took showers and I shaved as well, whereas my friend brushed and combed his voluminous red beard most assiduously until it regained its powerful prophetic luster. It was still early in the morning when we boarded the fast train which at twelve noon slowed and came to a complete standstill in a station bearing the resplendent sign: "Julius Caesar, County Seat".

  On alighting from the carriage and for a few moments thereafter, it seemed to me I was in a deep dream, or I had got my calculations wrong and come to a completely strange and unfamiliar place, and instinctively I turned round and ran after the receding train, in a desperate attempt to re-board it, together with my red-bearded friend who ran behind me asking no unnecessary questions. I even waved frantically to the driver as the locomotive picked up speed, but he paid no attention to my gesticulations and perhaps did not even see them. But then if he had seen them and was minded to respond to them – regulations would not allow him to apply his brakes until he was several kilometers clear of the station, and this would not have helped us much…

  And then I suddenly realized this was not a dream and I wasn’t mistaken, and the place where I alighted, or I should say – we alighted, my dear friend the red-bearded prophet and I, your obedient servant – was indeed our intended destination. And all of this was implanted all at once into my consciousness – courtesy of the elderly ticket-clerk who popped up in front of me, an acquaintance I recognized from long ago, none other than Diogenes, still at his post – his back bent as it had always been, silvery hair, dense and carefully combed, covering a head that was pointed like a rugby ball, and a mocking smile on thin lips that had turned so it seemed, during the long period of my absence from this place, somewhat sour.

  Old Diogenes approached me and greeted me with a stylish and polite inclination of the head as was his habit, and then having executed a ludicrous curtsey in the manner of a prima ballerina, he began by assuring me that he had most definitely recognized me the moment he set eyes on me:

  "Your Eminence, Baron Von Leutenlieb of the House of Munchausen!" he teased me in typical style and proceeded to clarify this: "My memory is not at all impaired and never will be impaired… on the contrary, it becomes more acute with the passage of time… since it has no choice in the matter, and this is forced upon it by the way events are unfolding… with a memory like this I could go back some years in time and change my face… but I have no desire for that! The status of the old is preferable and worth hanging on to with both hands! And why is this?" he addressed the question into the airy void and answered it calmly – "Because an old man is not pestered excessively – not by political factions, gangsters, sects, the media, managers, women, teachers, nightclubs, charitable campaigns, boxing associations… and that is what’s going on these days in Julius Caesar – ‘County Seat’ indeed! And that’s why I approached you – the astonishment shown in your face worried me… incidentally – you haven’t changed that much either!" he noted with modest satisfaction and declared: "A man who is assigned a mission and doesn’t shy away from it, but on the contrary, runs towards it – time has no hold over such a man!"

  "It’s a great pleasure meeting you again!" I answered him with my trademark smile, from ear to ear, shook his hand warmly and introduced my red-bearded friend.

  "What’s been happening round here?" I hastened to ask.

  "You can see with your own eyes," Diogenes sighed, "there has been a drastic change… some say in a positive direction, others say negative, and there are those who have no opinion and those who prefer not to express their opinion… all this began when that gigantic factory was set up here, for the manufacture of oriental carpets, ‘Magic Carpet Inc.’"

  On hearing this statement I felt suddenly tense and alert and not wanting to lose the thread of the story which was so important to me, I encouraged him to continue, making my genuine curiosity plain:

  "What kind of a factory is it?"

  But as it turned out there was no need to worry about losing the thread of the continuing story. Diogenes had plenty of baggage stowed away and he saw himself as entitled, obliged even, to unload it all, and this he proceeded to do. Standing before us slightly stooped on account of his prodigious age, paying no attention to the locomotives and carriages as they juddered to a halt and then moved on with rhythmic cacophony, he told us all he knew:

  "There are 1,500 workers in the factory, and they have 4,500 security personnel assigned to them, three to every worker, and attached to the security personnel there are two brigades of paratroopers and to service the paratroopers there are shops offering all kinds of provisions, clubs and gaming houses etc. and to these are attached two gangs of protection-racketeers, and responsible for them are two brand-new police stations, three fire-stations, two hospitals – for ailments of the body and ailments of the mind, two cemeteries and three cr
ematoria, three parks complete with rangers, attendants and vandals… and so on and so on… They also say that at least 200 FBI agents have been drafted in here, and twice as many spies from all nations are sniffing around that factory… Negroes came here to work in the new industries that were opening up and to sweep the streets, closely followed by the notorious Ku Klux Klan, which operates three private post offices, five telephone exchanges and two bars for whites only… Naturally all the government departments have sent representatives here – departments of domestic and foreign affairs, economics, culture, anti-discrimination, justice, war, and public parks… Today," Diogenes sighed again, "the town of Julius Caesar, ‘County Seat’ has a population of 245,000, a thousand times the population as it was a generation ago!"

  "And all this on account of that carpet factory?" my friend the prophet expressed his sincere amazement.

  "That and that alone!" the ticket-collector confirmed.

  "And what kinds of carpets are produced here, so important that every worker is guarded by three security men?" – I asked a pertinent question and my friend nodded his head in full agreement with me.

  The ticket-clerk put on his old, sardonic smile that I remembered from those far-off days when we worked together solving the crossword puzzles in the "Washington Post" and the "New York Times" and handing them over, once solved, to the grateful retired sheriff, proprietor of the Jose Mojica barbershop, the only such establishment in the Julius Caesar of former times – and said:

  "They take carpets in by a side-door and bring them out the following day by the main entrance – an idiotic attempt at illusion that wouldn’t deceive even a mad dog…"

  "And what has become of our friend from former days, the retired sheriff?" I tried to change the subject having got all the information I needed – "Is he still alive?"