by Mark Helprin
Entwining his hands, Mr Guthwin rested them on the edge of the desk and put his head down to them so that his nose sat on the saddle of his index fingers. He closed his eyes, breathed-in a deep breath, looked up, and said, “What can I do for you?”
“A standard transaction,” Freddy stated confidently. “Something quite ordinary.” He held up the banknotes. “What is your rate on sterling? I have ten thousand pounds and would like to buy dollars.”
“The Utz Bank doesn’t do foreign exchange,” Mr Guthwin said. “We’re not equipped for it. I’m sure that in Philadelphia you’ll have no trouble. Just across the river.” He pointed.
“Mr Guthwin, you don’t have to be equipped for this transaction,” Freddy lectured. “You need not be holding yen or roubles or kumquats. You have in inventory exactly what we need: U.S. dollars. Now, if we have to pay a premium because foreign exchange is not common in Cherry Hill, we will. That’s because we need a taxi, we need food,” his voice began to rise in passion, “we need shoes, we need clothes, we need to cut ourselves out of these suits, and we need a goddamned bloody dentist!”
Mr Guthwin looked at them. He looked at the trail of blood that marked where they had walked. He looked at Fredericka’s huge long nose that was like a horseradish but which in conjunction with her immense cheeks, high cheekbones, and broad aristocratic face had fired the imagination of the world. Now, however, it stood out in red and it was, without her masses of silver-blond hair to balance it, not quite of the world. Who were these people? Were they people? He didn’t know. They were very large, they were tremendous. And they seemed so angry and desperate. He didn’t want to say no. “We may be able to arrange it,” he told them. “I’ll have to call Mr Utz, our president, at the main office.”
“Don’t they do foreign exchange at the main office?” Freddy asked.
“No,” said Mr Guthwin, picking up the phone. As he dialled, Freddy and Fredericka felt hope return. “Mr Utz please. Serge Guthwin at branch seven.” He looked up and smiled, as if to say, Here comes Mr Utz, and all this will be taken care of.
“Mr Utz, this is Serge Guthwin. Fine, sir. Thank you. Yes, we have two foreign gentlemen here. . . .”
“Gentlemen?” Fredericka asked. “Gentlemen!” She ripped off her aviator’s cap and out fell masses of paralysingly beautiful tresses that spilled like a waterfall and shone in the light. “I’m a lady,” she said severely.
“I’m sorry,” Mr Guthwin said. “Excuse me. Mr Utz, a gentleman and a lady.” Her nose was now in context, and assumed the hypnotic anteater quality that some men found irresistible. “They would like to buy dollars with pounds sterling. Yes. Cash, one-hundred-pound notes. I have no idea, how can I tell?” He listened for a while, covered the mouthpiece of the telephone, and said, “Mr Utz says he’s sorry, but, because we don’t ordinarily deal with it, we have no way of knowing if the sterling is genuine.”
“Of course it’s genuine,” Freddy said. “There’s a picture of my mother on every note.”
“He says, Mr Utz, that it is genuine, and that there is a picture of his mother on each note.”
“And tell him,” Freddy said, pulling his ace, “that he’s a Fugger. Go ahead, tell him.”
“Mr Utz, he says to tell you that you’re a Fugger.”
They heard, from the phone, a tiny voice that said, “A what?”
“A Fugger.”
“Tell him,” Freddy said, “that all Utzs are Fuggers, and that I know this because I’m a historian.”
“He says, sir, that all Utzs are Fuggers, and that he knows this because he’s a historian.”
“And tell him that, although he may not have known it, I am certain of it, and that I will be happy to go into it in detail if he would like to come here to interview me.” Freddy removed his own leather cap, with some relief.
Mr Guthwin relayed this message to Mr Utz. As he was doing so, Fredericka said, “Freddy, with your cap off and in that white balloon dress, you look like a duck in drag.”
“Mr Utz says,” said Mr Guthwin, pressing the phone against the same place one presses the butt of a rifle, “ ‘Fuck you.’ ”
“No, no,” Freddy said, “with a G.” This was relayed.
“Mr Utz says, ‘Fuck you, with a G.’ ”
“Please,” Freddy asked, “let me speak to him.”
“He would like to speak to you, Mr Utz.” Mr Guthwin handed the phone to Freddy, whispering, “He’s mad as hell.”
“Mr Utz,” Freddy said in his most regal voice. “I’m so sorry, sir, that there appears to have been a misunderstanding. Who am I? Actually, I’m the Prince of Wales, and the princess and I will forever be in your debt if you will simply authorise Gershwin the Baby King to . . .”
“Freddy, he doesn’t know.”
“. . . complete this rather simple, hello? Hello? He’s rung off.”
“He’s like that,” Mr Guthwin said. “I’m afraid we just can’t help you.”
Freddy’s visage suddenly went dark. He gathered himself up in his chair, pointed his right index finger at Mr Guthwin like a gun, and said, “Look, we’ve been in your country for less than a day, and we’re starving, bloody, and cut. We’ve been attacked by Devils, chased by ambulances, stung by golden bugs, and insulted by Fuggers. I’m tired, angry, covered with muskrat shit, and all I’ve eaten in days has been the top of an iceberg, a pound of W&Ws, and fifteen packets of fake cream.” Freddy now hovered over Mr Guthwin, the blood vessels in his temples signalling real danger.
“This is good money!” he shouted. “My mother guarantees it. I’m even on it. See me in the background, near the gate, in the baby carriage? I demand that you accept this as legal tender and give us dollars. I insist.”
During this oration, Mr Guthwin had pressed the silent-alarm button on the undersurface of his desk. The police would be on their way, and now he had to delay. He was unaware that the woman with the butterfly glasses had previously pressed her own button, and that the police were already sealing off the perimeter.
“Let’s see,” he said. “I think it isn’t impossible to do such a thing. It shouldn’t be, should it?”
“Why not,” Freddy asked, falling back in his chair, “seeing that I myself am on each note?”
“We’ll need documentation. You have identification, of course, Social Security numbers?”
“Of course not,” Freddy said. “We’re aliens.”
The Cherry Hill Police burst through the front doors of the bank. It might have been in the commando style had not the door hit one in the face and knocked him down, and had not the lead man charged in so fast that he tripped and slid on his belly along the waxed marble floor for ten feet, his pistol clattering in front of him and out of reach. When they had righted themselves, they pointed their guns at everybody, as one of them, a greying walrus of a man in a suit, approached Freddy and Fredericka. “Are these the ones?” he asked.
Mr Guthwin nodded. The uniformed police approached and tried to frisk the Finneys but found it impossible to get through all the folds of parachute cloth. Royal personages are notoriously ticklish, and the frisking was the occasion for bursts of high-pitched laughter. Satisfied that if Freddy and Fredericka did in fact have weapons they would not be able to get to them, the police holstered their pistols, although two officers outfitted with backward SWAT caps and AR-15s, and seemingly no more than twelve years old, remained on guard.
The uniformed police called-in some codes and the walrus sat down on the edge of Mr Guthwin’s desk. “I’m Detective Mancuso of Cherry Hill PD. Who are you?”
“Serge Guthwin, president of this branch.”
Detective Mancuso turned to Freddy and Fredericka. “Who are you?”
Freddy and Fredericka were silent. Their eyes darted. They looked caught.
“Who are you?” Mancuso repeated.
“They said they’re aliens,” Guthwin told him.
“I didn’t ask you,” Mancuso said. Then he turned to Freddy and Fredericka and spoke t
o them in a cautious, patronising fashion, as if they were insane. “Are you aliens? Did you tell him that you’re aliens?”
A look of absolute dread crossed Freddy’s face, because he realised that before he answered any official questions he would have to open the capsule.
“Well?”
Freddy was silent.
“Do you know where you are?”
“Cherry Hill.”
“Good. Do you know who we are?”
“Pigs,” said Freddy.
In a somewhat less friendly tone, Mancuso asked, “What’s your name?”
Freddy almost answered but caught himself and was silent.
“Are you aliens?” Mancuso asked again.
“We don’t know yet, pigs,” Freddy said, thoughtfully. “May we use the WC?”
“What’s that?”
“The water closet,” Freddy answered, as if talking to an idiot.
“What’s the water closet?”
“The toilette. I can’t tell you my name, and I can’t tell you if we’re aliens, until I use the toilette.”
“How ’bout you, ma’am?” the detective asked Fredericka. “Is that your position?”
“I haven’t the slightest idea who I am,” Fredericka said, “and neither does he. Since we fell to earth we haven’t had time to look.”
“You’re aliens, then?”
“We don’t know.”
“But if you go to the toilette, you will know? Is the toilette some sort of communicator?”
“Yes, Constable, in a way.”
“You’re not getting up out of that chair, alien shitbird, until you identify yourself.”
Fredericka shuddered in angry exasperation. “Unfortunately,” said Freddy, in a burst of heat and irritation directed, puzzlingly, not at Mancuso but elsewhere, “we ourselves will not know who we are until we read the information on tiny scrolls in capsules that we carry in our rectums.”
“Excuse me?” Mancuso asked.
“I don’t want to repeat that,” Freddy said.
“Are you drug mules?”
“We are not drug mules. We are not mules of any type.”
“What are you, then? What do you do?” Turning to Fredericka, he asked, “What does he do?”
“What do you mean, ‘What does he do?’ ” Fredericka asked contemptuously.
“I mean, ‘What does he do?’ ”
“He’s a prince,” said Fredericka.
“I didn’t ask you, Ms, what you think of him. I asked you what he does. How does he make a living?”
“I told you; he’s a prince.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I knew you wouldn’t,” Fredericka said, almost wickedly. “That’s why I was able to tell you.”
“Then why can’t you tell me your names?”
“As I have said,” Freddy told him, “we will, if we are given the opportunity.”
Mancuso turned to Guthwin. “Does the bathroom have a window?”
“Of course not, we’re a bank.”
“Were they in there at any time?”
“No.”
“Okay. Vogelman, check out the bathroom. And you,” he said to Freddy, “if somehow you come out of there with a gun, it’ll be the last thing you ever do.”
“You mean,” asked Freddy, “no more orphanage dedications, no more visits to labour training centres for hoodlums, no more accursed motorway spur openings?”
“You’re not suicidal, are you?”
“Hardly.”
“I want you to sing every second that you’re in there. You, too,” he said to Fredericka. “We don’t want any suicides.”
“Do you think,” Freddy asked as he rose, “that I’m going to kill myself because a bank in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, can’t change pounds sterling?”
“Sing,” Mancuso commanded.
Freddy had a magnificent singing voice. From someone so shy, it was totally unexpected, a masterful bass and baritone that could shake cathedrals. Had he not been born a prince he might have trained for the opera. The moment he closed the door to the loo, he began a startlingly powerful rendition of “Don Giovanni, a cenar teco m’invitasti.” It was, in its mass and gravity, absolutely chilling. Mancuso had assumed that Freddy would sing something like “Home on the Range,” or “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” but this, this glimpse into the darkest recesses of sorrow, delivered with the power of a ship’s whistle, paralysed everyone in the bank.
“Jesus,” Mancuso said, reverentially and in awe. Even Fredericka was amazed.
The water ran, and eventually Freddy came out, smiling a huge, gap-toothed smile, and holding a little red capsule as if it were the Holy Grail.
“Freddy,” Fredericka said. “I didn’t know you could do that.”
“It’s not so difficult, and you’ll feel a lot better when it’s out.”
“I mean the singing.”
“Oh. I sing when I’m on the way to Moocock, hunting UFOs, as I float above the rooftops alone.”
Satisfied with this answer, Fredericka left to retrieve her capsule. Her song was a lovely rendition, as if by an English choir girl, which once she had been, of “Up on the Roof.”
“You float above the rooftops,” Mancuso said to Freddy.
“At times.”
“When you’re hunting UFOs.”
“Yes,” Freddy answered, in a pleasant tone.
“Do you do that a lot?”
“Yes, Mummy invented the game.”
“The Mummy invented the game?”
“I’m on more familiar terms,” Freddy said condescendingly. “I just say ‘Mummy.’ ”
“I know,” said Mancuso. “When I talk to the Bride of Frankenstein, I just say ‘Bride.’ ”
“Do you?” asked Freddy, convinced that Mancuso was insane.
“You and she,” Mancuso said, meaning Fredericka, “hunt UFOs on the way to Moocock. That’s what you do.”
“That’s what we do, yes.”
“Not at Moocock.”
“Never.”
“Why not?”
“Because UFOs could never get to Moocock. Moocock is like a fortress.”
“What is Moocock?”
“It’s a secret.”
“Like your name?”
Fredericka came back from the WC, clutching her tiny red capsule.
“We can’t tell you about Moocock,” Freddy continued, “but now we can tell you our names.”
“Okay,” said Mancuso, “what are your names?”
Freddy and Fredericka both opened their capsules and took out tiny little scrolls that they unfurled to about ten inches in length. The print was so small that they had to hold it right next to their eyes, like jewellers. “My name . . .” said Freddy, reading. “Just a minute, I’ll find it. I’m surprised it’s not at the beginning. My name . . . is . . . Christ!”
“Your name is Christ?”
“No. My name is . . . Lachpoof Bachquaquinnik Dess Moofoomooach, which is my imperial and Druidic name . . . hold on a moment . . . but the name on my Louisiana driver’s license is . . . here it is . . . Desi Moffat. My name is Desi Moffat. That’s a strange name, but not bad, really. I can live with that.”
“Who’s she?” Mancuso asked, as if in a dream.
“She’s my wife.”
“What’s her name?”
“I don’t know. She hasn’t opened her capsule yet.”
“I have too, Freddy.”
“Oh, sorry,” said Freddy. “What’s your name, then?”
“My name,” she said, reading down the little scroll so near her eye, “is . . . just a moment . . . is . . . Mrs Lachpoof Bachquaquinnik Dess Moofoomooach, or,” she said, actually reading, “ ‘tell them Mrs Desi Moffat, which shall be the prince’s name. Your Christian name is Popeel.’ Popeel?” she asked. “That’s a name? What kind of a name is that?”
“Is that your name?” Mancuso asked.
“Yes.”
“Have you ever heard that name bef
ore?” he asked Freddy.
“No.”
“And neither have I,” volunteered Fredericka.
“And she’s your wife?” Mancuso continued.
“Yes.”
“You didn’t know her name until now, and I take it you didn’t know your own name until just now, is that correct?”
“Obviously,” Freddy said.
“How can you explain that?”
“I have no idea.”
“Desi?”
Freddy did not respond, but looked around as if Mancuso were speaking to someone else.
“Desi!” Mancuso shouted.
“Are you addressing me?”
“What do you do? I’ve got to know. I don’t know why I’ve got to know, but I do.”
“For a living?”
Mancuso nodded. Freddy held the scroll up to his eye again. “I’m a dentist, it appears, in Ahlahbahmah,” by which he meant Alabama.
“You . . . are a dentist?” Mr Guthwin asked, looking at Freddy’s teeth.
“Shut up,” Mancuso ordered. “If you’re a dentist in Ahlahbahmah, why do you say you have a Louisiana driver’s license?”
“Perhaps in Ahlahbahmah I live close to the frontier. How would I know?”
“What frontier?”
“The Louisiana frontier.”
“Between Louisiana and Ahlahbahmah, you will find Mississippi.”
“Surely I’m not expected to know things like that. Can you name the départements of France, or the provinces of Romania? Really, Constable, don’t be absurd.”
“But you’re from Ahlahbahmah.”
“Yes, but I didn’t go around tracing its borders. I was always more interested in history and aesthetics, and teeth, of course.”
“I think you people are insane,” Mancuso said.
“We’re perfectly sane,” Freddy declared, “and we are who we say we are. You may check in Ahlahbahmah, where an unimpeachable record has undoubtedly come into being. All we want to do is exchange some money.”
“What are you doing in New Jersey?”
They both referred to their scrolls. “Tourism,” they said simultaneously.
“Where’s your car?”
“Which one?”
“The one you came in.”
“We walked.”
“You walked from Alabama? You don’t have a car?”
