If the report went on like this Nubar knew he was going to get upset, possibly even angry. A quick cable to the fruit juice stand in Jerusalem was needed.
FLASH FROM HERE. ARE YOU MAD? HALT ALL FUTURE REFERENCES TO ALBINO
MONKEYS. COLOR OF GENITALS UNIMPORTANT. I NEVER LIKED THE IDEA OF THAT
FREAKISH BEAST FROM THE JUNGLE. UP UNTIL THIS POINT YOU WERE DOING WELL
BUT NOW YOU'RE BEGINNING TO SLIP. GET BACK TO THE EPIC TALE AND NOT
ANOTHER WORD ABOUT THINGS THAT DON'T MATTER.
NUBAR
TOP BONGO.
No. Wrong. Was his mercury poisoning causing his brain to substitute words inadvertently? Or had that loathsome name jumped into the cable because it was echoing around his head?
Either way it was dangerous. He had to be careful. Using the wrong words could lead to confusion in the ranks, even chaos. His absolute authority might come into question. In his mind he crossed out the last line of the cable and wrote TOP LEADER instead.
But that seemed too brief. He pondered the problem for a moment and decided on a longer ending.
GET BACK TO THE EPIC TALE AND NOT ANOTHER WORD ABOUT THINGS THAT
DON'T MATTER.
NUBAR
THE TOP ALL RIGHT AND ALSO JUST PLAIN NUMBER ONE,
SO YOU BETTER GET USED TO THE IDEA FAST.
Nubar scratched himself and turned pages.
The man referred to as a long-term resident of Jerusalem, the witness to the events in the epic, was described by the baking priest in such a way that the informer knew it had to be his neighbor in the alley, Haj Harun. No one else in Jerusalem wore a faded yellow cloak and a rusty Crusader's helmet tied under the chin with two green ribbons.
Both of the unusual occurrences in the epic, sang the baking priest, seeing a genie in the last century and God in this one, took place while this long-term resident, an elderly item, was making his annual haj.
Here the informer interrupted his narrative to make a personal observation. There was no way of knowing, he wrote, whether Haj Harun went to Mecca every spring, as he claimed. He also disappeared at other times, saying he was off exploring imaginary caverns of the past beneath the Old City; something he claimed he had been doing for the last three thousand years. The informer then added a comment on that.
What is one to make of these extravagant claims that seem to pop up every time Haj Harun is mentioned? Can the old man be believed or is he suffering from terminal amnesia? Or perhaps from advanced dementia brought on by acute senility? If you want my opinion, it's the latter.
That's exactly what I think. This Haj Harun is definitely a strange one. And furthermore, I question the legality of anyone skulking around beneath Jerusalem for the last three thousand years. Isn't that against the law? Wouldn't it be a clear and present breach of some existing statute, perhaps the sanitation code, for example?
Nubar snorted furiously. They weren't going to get away with this. Immediately he made a mental note for another cable to Dead Sea Control.
ARE YOU MAD? WHY ARE YOU LETTING THIS INFORMER THINK? I WANT FACTS, NOT SPECULATIONS, AND I DON'T WANT TO HEAR ANYTHING MORE ABOUT
SANITATION CODES OR LEGALITY IN GENERAL, OR IDLE OPINIONS.
ABOUT WHAT'S LEGAL AND WHAT ISN'T, I AM THE SANITATION CODE AND
WHATEVER I DO IS LEGAL BY DEFINITION, REMEMBER THAT. ANYTHING SAID TO
THE CONTRARY IS A SUBVERSIVE CRIME THAT AIDS AND ABETS THE ENEMY, AND
THAT CRIME WILL BE DEALT WITH AS IT DESERVES TO BE, WITH UTTER
RUTHLESSNESS.
THAT IS TO SAY, WITH CRIPPLING FINES AND PURLOINED MAIL FOLLOWED BY
CONSTANT SURVEILLANCE, BY OFFICIAL VERBAL ABUSE AND BREAK-INS AND
SHOOT-OUTS AND OPPRESSIVE HARASSMENT BY ALL AGENCIES, BY PERJURY AND
BLACKMAIL AND INSINUATIONS OF SINISTER FORCES AT WORK, BY SECRET
PHYSICAL BEATINGS WHERE POSSIBLE AND UNRELIEVED THUGGERY ALL AROUND.
AND LET ME MAKE ANOTHER THING PERFECTLY CLEAR. NO ONE IS GOING TO GET
AWAY WITH AIDING THE ENEMY. I REPEAT, WHAT I DO IS LEGAL AND IF ANYONE
ELSE DOES ANYTHING I DON'T LIKE, ESPECIALLY ANYTHING THAT IS IN THE LEAST
WAY THREATENING TO ME, I'LL GRONK THEM AND GRONK THEM GOOD. AND YOU
CAN BET YOUR SWEET ASS ON THAT YOU SHITHEAD ASSKISSING CUNTLICKING
ASSSUCKING CHICKENSHIT COCKSUCKING FUCKOFF ASSHOLES.
THAT'S RIGHT, YOU'RE IN TROUBLE NOW, BOY. AND IF I WERE YOU I'D STAND UP AT
ATTENTION AND START SHOUTING HAIL TO THE CHIEF AND I'D SHOUT IT AS LOUD
AS I COULD AND I'D KEEP ON SHOUTING IT UNTIL THE CHIEF TOLD ME OTHERWISE.
YEAH. YOU'RE NOT GOING TO HAVE ME TO KICK AROUND ANYMORE, YOU
BUNGHOLE COCKSUCKING ASSHOLES. BUT I MAY JUST DECIDE TO DO A LITTLE
ASSKICKING MYSELF AND HOW'D YOU LIKE THAT, YOU CHICKENSHIT SANITATION
FARTS?
YEAH, SO WATCH OUT, BOY. BIG NUMBER ONE MAY JUST TAKE OFF THE GLOVES
AND COME DOWN THERE AND GIVE YOU DEAD SEA SHITS THE KIND OF REAM YOU
DESERVE.
YEAH. ASSHOLES.
NUBAR
FUCK SUCK KILL.
ULTIMATE LEADER AND SUPREME
AUTHORITY AT THE
TOP OF THE HEAP AND ALONE
THERE FOR ALL TIME.
Nubar felt a little better after that, but it only showed you could never relax your authority. They were all ready to go over to the enemy if you showed the slightest weakness, the slightest deviation from absolute iron-fisted control.
He brushed away something that seemed to be nibbling at his ear, an imaginary bat perhaps, then returned to the report.
Now the narrative was back in the Franciscan bakery, the pilgrim sprawled naked on the floor with his head on fire, the baking priest dancing around through the fierce heat bearing fresh loaves of bread in all directions.
Off to Mecca he was all right, sang the baking priest, just as sure as the wind will blow he was going to reach his Mecca, this elderly article on his annual haj in the first half of the nineteenth century. Well he gets himself well down into the desert that spring, well down into Araby and away from the customary tracks as is his custom when on a haj, when what does he find going on down there all of a sudden in Araby? What, you say? He finds the sky turning strangely dark one morning, that's what, darkly strange I say. And all alarmed he is and why not, since he's in the middle of nowhere where no man should be, and what happens then but he stumbles across an apparition of a man who's all of seven and a half feet tall, and what's this striking figure doing but sighting through some complicated astronomical instruments, by way of measuring heavenly bodies. Like it so far?
Nubar groaned. He closed his eyes.
Seven and a half feet tall. Surely not Ahura Mazda again?
He took a long drink of mulberry raki, coughed weakly and read on.
Well, sang the baking priest, clapping his hands and slapping his sandals on the floor, well and then well.
It's not exactly what an honest traveler would expect to run into out there, and with this apparition looming up in front of him with heavenly instruments and the sky so dark and all, well your man is just suddenly very frightened.
Why, you say? Because he knows a thing or two about the world and one thing he knows for sure is that this has to be a genie he's dealing with. But luckily for him this genie is a good genie who takes pity on him and decides straightaway to make things better, not worse. So the genie tells him right off why it's dark out there. It's dark, says the genie, because a comet is passing overhead. But no one knows about the comet except him, the genie, because of course a genie can have his very own comet if he wants one, and it seems this genie did. And now this genie was out there in the desert plotting his comet's cycle of six hundred and sixteen years, taking roundabout measurements of this heavenly plaything of his, so to speak. All this the giant good genie quickly relates to your man the elderly item.