The Third Bear (51 page)

Pirates simply made an adventure for us, this late in our lives. Nor did we mind the next day when two fellow travelers playing cards shot at one another before being subdued by members of the crew. Besides, Macha missed all of it, having overslept.

Shortly thereafter, however, the menu began to change and this is where I believe the nature of our complaint will become clear. It will also explain why we began to lose weight on this so-called "idyllic cruise downriver, ending at the site of ancient Smaragdine." Perhaps typing up a description from the menu will be enough to convince you of our claim:

Thrice-Shoved Frogs, Whole - Two whole emerald frogs, flayed alive and then lightly braised and macerated, after which the whole skin of one is pulled back over the other and vice versa. The frogs are then impaled, still fresh, on a two-headed skewer and cooked over an open flame. Both frogs are then put inside a hollowed-out river iguana, which is then stuffed into a large river fish and placed inside a box full of coals that is heated and tossed out behind the boat for further maceration. The resulting taste of the then-panfried Thrice-Shoved Frogs is indescribable.

For three days, your crew and the two women serving as cooks prepared a series of dishes that included macerating anything and everything, usually "shoving" or "stuffing" it inside of some other animal. I have never seen such senseless violence done to anything or anyone as to these creatures with their bulging eyes and gutted rears. When we complained, we were told by both women that we should be happy to receive such delicacies.

Many other strange things went on aboard that ship, sir or madam. Some of them I do not feel comfortable relating to you, even now, two months after our ordeal. The crew did not seem to sleep and once, when I peeked out from the door of our cabin after midnight, I saw two of them painted green from head to foot, stark naked, engaged in a dance involving scarab beetles. During the day, they would say odd things designed, I believe, to make us react in some specific way.

After a time, we did not know if perhaps the crew had gone mad or if they just practiced insolence as a cure for boredom.

When we arrived at our destination, the crew disappeared, leaving us there by the dock. We had to take a train back to our little apartment the very next day - a trip of some thirty hours, and very hard on my poor Macha.

We do not need or want apologies. We would like a refund of our money and vouchers for free meals from our favorite restaurant. It is only symbolic, of course, to have these vouchers separate from a general refund. But there is the principle involved, isn't there? We cannot get those "Thrice-Shoved Frogs" on The Light of the Moon out of our heads.

Thank you for your kind attention,

Saladin Davidos, Esq.

Pococurante

From the Book ofSmaragdine, 212th Edition:

A careless person has no cure, unlike a careless thought or animal. Calling a careless person a "pococurante" or other fancy name will not, by the precision of the term, suddenly make the careless careful. Once, a careless farmer living outside of Smaragdine lost his own name and had to take the name of his ox, Baff, much to the delight of the villagers (one of whom found the farmer's name and used it as his own). A woman once lost her vagina and by the time she found it she had twelve children. Losing one's shadow is perhaps the most common affliction of the careless, which explains why, on a hot afternoon day, you will find so many little dribbles of shadow in every lonesome crack and crevice. A lost shadow has no wish to be found, because, inevitably, it will just be lost again.

"But the truly careless - the person who has descended into a place that not many can understand - will lose much more than that. These truly cursed people can lose even a love so strong that it radiates like heat. The kind of love that creates laughter around even the simplest act. When enough love is lost to this kind of indifference or carelessness, wars begin - sometimes in lands far distant from the occurrence, but always these wars come home. Such effects are magnified depending on the status of the individual. Thus, when statesmen, when queens, when caliphs, become careless, they lose whole armies and people die on vast scales in foreign lands. The innocent taste sand in their mouths, not the green spring air of their native country. Their bones line the roads of places so far away and exotic that not even the wind through their skulls can say the names. A careless commoner often loses hate as well, even though such hate will replace itself indefinitely and the person therefore never realizes his own carelessness. But for this reason, many careful kings and queens find the hate of others and use it as if it were their own.

"Alas, a careless person has no cure, unlike a careless thought or animal. It is just the way of the world."

Psoriasis

Anyone who has seen Psoriasis' act for the Babilim Traveling Circus knows it is only matched by the equal and opposite reaction created by Eczema.

Myths about Psoriasis' act abound, but this is what eyewitnesses report: Psoriasis, so nicknamed by her late doctor father for the predominant condition of her formative years, dressed as a man with a fake moustache, in clothes similar to whatever the locals favor, sits in the stands with the audience while below Eczema enters the ring in her sultan disguise accompanied by helpers who carry several small boxes. Eczema begins her act, which consists of an insect re-creation of a mythical Smaragdine battle.

At the same time, Psoriasis begins to complain about the act from the stands, in oddly modulated tones. The loudness and quality of this disturbance varies from city to city. Woven in with the complaints are phrases such as "The father of it is the sun," "The wind carried it in its belly," and "So the world was created," all delivered in a peculiar sing-song intonation. These phrases come from the fabled Emerald Tablet, attributed to the ancient alchemist Hermes Trismegistus.

After a time, the people listening to Psoriasis experience a heightened sense of happiness, followed by a profound drowsiness. One boy of thirteen recounts that "I know I must have fallen asleep, because my next memory is of feeling something smooth in my left hand and finding a strange green coin there."

That Psoriasis attempts to aid in the audience's enjoyment of her sister's insect battle seems apparent. Whether this is by simple hypnosis or some deeper technique is unknown. What, if anything, the audience does while under this possible hypnosis is also unknown. However, in the weeks and months after seeing the performance, many people report intense shifts of emotion, visions, and a desire for "all things that are green."

Psoriasis does not join Eczema until the end of the act. That Eczema and Psoriasis are Siamese twins only becomes evident when they stand together and bow, and the declivity between them - that outline, that echo - tells the story of another act altogether.

Semaphore

When Truewill Mashburn turned eighteen, he left the U.S. with forged documents and passed himself off as a thirty-something ESE teacher at a Costa Rican university. He'd always looked older than his age and at six-four with sandy-blond hair and a Viking's eyes and chin, people usually believed what he said. By the time he left Latin America at the age of twenty-two and headed for Europe, he'd hitchhiked through twelve countries, been a missionary, a doctor's aide, and a bank teller.

Now twenty-five, Mashburn found himself living in an abandoned semaphore tower on the banks of a Central Asian river that eventually wound its way down to the ruins of old Smaragdine and the tired modern city that surrounded it.

He'd read about the semaphore towers while hanging out in a Tashkent library. They'd once been vital in Smaragdine's epic battles against "the dreaded Turk." Now they were just free apartments ripe for the taking, in Mashburn's eyes.

Mashburn took the book - The Myth of the Green Tablet - and headed south. By the time he found the towers, he was ready to settle down awhile anyway, having been hassled at half a dozen borders. He could fish in the river, exchange some of his limited cash for food in the nearby village, read the book he'd stolen, or just hang out with the locals smoking dope. A few times a week, the village women walked past, giggling and talking about him. He couldn't understand them, but he knew what they were saying.

It should have been perfect, but an odd sense of responsibility began to grow inside him with each day he lived there. He felt it in his chest every time he walked up the three stories of crumbling stone steps to stare at the tower a half mile downriver that doubled his own.

The book was to blame, even though the author seemed contemptuous of the subject. On some level, the more Mashburn read about the fascinating history of Smaragdine, the more he couldn't help but feel an obligation to continue its ancient fight against the Turks. It didn't make sense, and yet it did.

Mashburn decided to become the true keeper of the tower. He removed the weeds inside and along the circular fringe. He did his best with his limited knowledge of drywall to repair the worst areas. He began to wear his tattered army-surplus jacket all the time. He bought a pair of old binoculars from a villager. He even assigned himself guard duty, more often at dusk than during the day.

At night, the tower looked less ruined and it was easier to imagine he was back in Time and that he might need to use the tower's windmill-like semaphore spokes to warn of some danger.

Then, too, Mashburn saw many strange things the longer he stood watch at night. Fish that bellowed at him from the water. Debris and bodies from some battle that had taken place many countries upriver. A man in a motorboat who looked vaguely American in a leather jacket and dark shades, a gun holster on his exposed ankle. Something was happening, Mashburn was certain. He just didn't know what.

One moonlit night just before dawn, he saw the most curious thing of all: a river cruise ship with several smaller boats pursuing it. When they caught up, what looked like a band of circus performers jumped on board: a couple of women dressed like caliphs, a snake charmer, a mime, and a fire-eater, among others. The battle raged as Mashburn looked on with mouth open.

By the time the conflict had subsided, far to the south of his position, he couldn't tell who had won, only that the boats remained empty and most of the river cruise crew were walking around on deck again.

Sometimes Mashburn felt prematurely old from all of his travels, but in that moment, he felt both dumbfounded and oddly blessed.

By mid-morning, he had the semaphore spokes turning for the first time in two centuries and he was sending his message out across the water. He didn't care if the next station was manned or not. That wasn't the point.