The Peaceful Affair: Chapter 34
As soon as the commercial break began the camel ran to the toilets and quickly relived himself. His re-life over, the gentle-mammal returned to the living room, just as the proto-TV went back to broadcasting the game of towelball. And a good thing, too: the cheerleaders were on.
Clad in skimpy priesthood robes, the two-dimensional maidens waggled their pom-poms over their flat profiled heads, with their arms forming beautifully choreographed right angles. They were shouting three-dimensionally, creating an ocean of sound that enveloped the camel like a sarcophagus.
They’re not gnomes,
They’re not tomes,
They’re the Cairo Catacombs!
A flutter of pom-poms.
Ra, Ra, Ra, he’s quick on the draw,
Ra, Ra, Ra, he abides no law,
’Cause he’s the greatest flashback, Ma!
Another flutter of pom-poms.
He can jive, he can drive,
He can even take a dive —
The camel’s lips formed a silent “why”.
Because, oh dearest, dearest Clive,
His towel says nineteen twenty-five!
Clive shrugged his humps and went to relive himself again.
True to his word, Armageddon Baggins had toiled around the clock for the next three months, trying every conceivable route he could think of to get the Rose Eta stone translated. The translation software — apple of his eye — had turned out to be of absolutely no use after the initial success in decoding the first letter of each word in the tablet. His efforts had all come to naught.
One bright morning Sydlig Henrikson entered their hotel suite to find a bleary-eyed Baggins sitting in front of an intricate array of windowpanes, hacking frenziedly.
“Arma — ” began Henrikson gently.
Without averting his gaze from the windowpanes, Baggins interjected, “Sh, Syd, don’t break my concentration. This came in last night from the States. It’s some kind of new computer, which uses all these windows in parallel.”
Henrikson looked worriedly at his friend. “How many hours of sleep did you get this past week, Arma?”
“Sleep?” echoed Baggins, as if he’d just heard the word for the very first time in his life.
“Sleep,” confirmed Henrikson, and continued thesaurally, “shuteye, slumber, nap, snooze, doze, siesta, forty winks.”
“Oh, that,” said Baggins matter-of-factly. “As soon as I get this thing cracked. I promise.”
“You’ve been saying that for the past three months, Arma,” complained Henrikson. “I’m really worried about you.”
“Right, right,” replied Baggins remotely, all the while hacking furiously. Henrikson stepped over to the electrical socket and pulled the plug.
“Why did you do that?” shouted Baggins irately.
“Because you are now going to sleep, even if I have to strap you to the bed with dancing snakes!” replied Henrikson firmly.
At the mention of snakes — which Henrikson hated so — Baggins knew his friend was utterly serious this time; he disengaged from the windows. “We have to get this stone translated. We just have to, Syd,” he pleaded.
“We will, Arma. We will,” replied Henrikson, gently leading his friend to the bedroom. “I haven’t been idling about these past few months, you know. I’ve been doing my own research. You sleep now, and I’ll come back in the evening. We’re going out.” He helped his friend onto the bed.
“Where to, Arma?” asked Baggins sleepily.
“To the flea market,” whispered Henrikson, his reply landing on dormant ears. Baggins crashed asleep as soon as his head hit the pillow.
“Why the flea market?” asked Baggins that evening, feeling refreshed for the first time in three months.
“Fleas have an eye for detail,” answered Henrikson.
The two were standing at the entrance to the renowned market, with Cairo’s hustle and bustle hovering around them like angels on a pinhead. Henrikson led the way through a maze of small smelly alleys until they reached a decaying building that was the spitting image of all the other decaying buildings.
“This is our fleabag,” affirmed Henrikson decisively.
“Looks to me just like all the other fleabags we passed on the way,” said Baggins dubiously.
“Believe me — this is the place,” reaffirmed Henrikson.
Full of belief, the two stepped inside, climbed a flight of stairs, turned right, then left, then right again, up another flight of stairs, back down the same stairway, right, left, right, and down the first staircase.
“We’re right back where we started,” complained Baggins.
“Not quite,” sounded a loud bass voice. “You have executed the password moves to the letter. You may come inside.”
A trapdoor opened on the floor in front of them, revealing a stepwise stairway. They descended to find themselves in a small workshop cluttered with assorted tools, with a wooden workbench standing at its center. A large fire-engine-red cat was staring at them from atop the bench.
“Come in, come in,” invited the loud bass voice. “Don’t be shy.”
“Are you Mr. Big?” Henrikson asked the cat.
“The one and only,” replied the voice.
Baggins was at a loss as to the formalities of etiquette. “Do we shake paws or what?”
“Paws?” asked the voice in a puzzled tone, and burst into laughter a moment later. “You think I’m the cat. Jumping pyramids, that’s a good one.”
Annoyed, Henrikson said, “Stop playing cat and mouse. Where are you?”
“On the feline’s left ear. The cat’s just my ride,” explained Mr. Big. “How do you like the color? Cool, huh? Just had her repainted. Now, let’s see, Fritz — two magnifiers for the gentlemen, if you please.”
Languidly, the cat extended a paw to a corner of the workbench that boasted a metal container full of miscellaneous magnifying glasses; she selected two and handed them to the visitors.
“Miss Feeflea said you might be able to help us,” averred Henrikson, eyeing the loquacious flea through the magnifier.
“Ah, dear Bella,” sighed Mr. Big. “Tell me, how is she these days?”
“She seemed just fine to me,” replied Henrikson sincerely.
“Is she still on Even Keel?” asked Big.
“As I said,” replied Henrikson, “she seemed to be in sound condition.”
“No, no,” cried Big. “I meant, does she still ride that abominable poodle of hers, Even Keel?”
“She has a poodle,” confirmed Henrikson, “though we were never properly introduced; therefore, I cannot vouch for the pooch’s name.”
The flea sighed longingly. “Not introduced, huh? Ah, sweet, sweet Bella. Still has absolutely no manners.” He waxed silent, flea-ting thoughts about a flea-footed lady coursing through his mind. After a moment Mr. Big looked up and said, “So, what can I do for you gentlemen?”
“We heard you’re good at translating old tablets,” said Henrikson.
“Good? GOOD?” shouted the flea indignantly. “I’ll have you know I’m sensational!”
“Did I say ‘good’?” asked Henrikson innocently. “Forgive me for the typo. I meant ‘god’. You’re a god at translating tablets.”
Mr. Big smiled and admitted in a placated tone, “Now you’re cooking.”
Henrikson extracted the tablet from a satchel he’d been carrying, and asked, “Can you translate this? We found it three months ago under one of the dimaryps.”
“Ah, our famous inverted pyramids,” said Mr. Big.
“Yes,” confirmed Baggins, who had been silently regarding the looming flea through the magnifier. “We named the tablet the Rose Eta stone, after this girl I once dated.”
“You used to date Rose Eta?” cried the flea. “I’m impressed. That’s one classy dame.”
“Can you translate it?” asked Henrikson anxiously.
The flea took hold of the tablet and examined it carefully. “Let’s see now, there’s an inscription in Egyptian hieroglyphics with a translation in Swedish.”
“Ancient Swedish,” interjected Henrikson. “That’s why we couldn’t make any sense of it.”
“You’re Swedish? How interesting, I thought you were Swiss,” remarked the flea absentmindedly. After a moment he raised his head and said confidently, “Piece of cake. Come back in one hour and I’ll have the whole shebang translated.”
Baggins was slightly irritated. “One hour? ONE HOUR? I’ve been working for three months on this damn slab and you say one hour?”
Mr. Big eyed Baggins calmly, tapped his forehead with a flea’s idea of an index finger, and remarked, “It’s not about how big your brain is — it’s about time for you to leave. I think I must now send you away with a flea in your ear. Come back in one hour.”
Henrikson grabbed his friend and pulled him out of the fleabag, before Baggins had a chance to add injury to insult.
“What now?” asked Baggins outside. “It seems we’ve got an hour to kill.”
A little boy, who was sitting in the alley playing lawyer, sprang up in panic and shrieked, “Please don’t kill me! Please don’t kill me!” Out of a nearby door emerged a tall figure whose entire body was wrapped in white bandages, and commanded, “Anawur, you stop yelling like a pyramid right this instant!” At which the boy lowered his head meekly and mumbled, “Okay, Mummy.”
“An hour indeed,” agreed Henrikson and threw in a pastimely suggestion. “How about a game of hide-and-seek?”
Baggins shook his head. “No. You always cheat by peeking. How about we play hide-and-peek?”
It was Henrikson’s turn to shake his head. “It’s no fun, you never peek. How about hide-a-geek?”
Baggins grinned and nodded in agreement. “Okay. I’m counting. Till twenty.” He selected a right arm, covered his eyes with it, and rested his face against the wall of the nearest building. “One… Two… Three…”
Henrikson began running purposefully to and fro looking for just the right someone to hide.
Baggins was counting steadily on. “Seven… Eight… Nine…”
There! Henrikson spotted a scrawny four-eyed kid typing furiously on a slab of stone on which a keyboard had been drawn with white chalk.
“Twelve … Thirteen … Fourteen …”
He nabbed the kid, who immediately cried, “Just let me chalk ‘save’!” and spirited him off to a nearby ice-cream parlor called Titanic that served the frosty sugary substance in tall iceberg cones.
“Seventeen … Eighteen …”
Henrikson bought the kid a Geek Special — the establishment’s legendary scoop, with extra disk space — and bade him lick out of sight.
“Nineteen … Twenty!” finished Baggins and declared loudly, “Here I come wherever you are.” He ran about for nearly an hour, poking his head into sundry poky locations, now and again getting shouted at by an angry camel, “Can’t you see I’m watching the towelball game?” On one occasion he was even invited by a group of pharaohs to join their game of gin mummy — an invitation he kindly turned down. As the allotted hour was nearly up, Baggins stumbled into Titanic, there to find the licking geek. “Found you!” he shouted in delight, slapping the boy on the shoulder so hard, his glasses needed glasses of their own to see it coming.
Henrikson, who’d been sitting in a dark corner, came over and boxed the kid lightly on the back of his head. “I thought I’d told you to lick out of sight, kid.”
“Sorry,” apologized the youngster, “I thought you said you were sick of light.”
Henrikson waved his hands dismissively and said, “Come on, Arma. It’s time to return.”
Back in Mr. Big’s disorderly underground workshop, with a magnifying glass in hand, Henrikson asked eagerly, “Well, have you translated the tablet?”
On the bright-red cat, amidst a forest of fur, the flea was seated on a chaise longue, at his side a tall cocktail glass with a little paper umbrella jutting out; he was reading a cheap detective novel.
Mr. Big put the book down and said serenely, “I have.” The two men became highly agitated.
“Where’s the translation?” shouted Baggins.
“Out with it! Out with it!” added Henrikson animatedly.
Wordlessly, the flea handed them a small piece of paper, on which were scribbled four lines in neat longhand.
Henrikson began reading excitedly, “Man — ”
“No, no, no,” protested Mr. Big vociferously. “Don’t read it out loud. That’s for the detective; it’s his traditional role.” He waved the book he’d been reading. “You’ll murder the suspense.”
Not wishing to dice with death, the two men finished reading in silence. They raised their heads, revealing speechless eyes; both were well-nigh shaking all over.
“This is the most profound wisdom I’ve ever seen in my life,” said Henrikson quietly.
“Sublime,” whispered Baggins reverently. “Sublime.”
They paid the flea in fur, retook possession of the Rose Eta stone, and silently quit the disorderly workshop.
The two walked back to their hotel without uttering so much as a single syllable. Back in their suite, Baggins said softly, “Sublime,” as if that single word had extirpated all other words his brain had so laboriously accumulated over the years.
“This is … This is …” Henrikson attempted speech, a faraway look in his eyes.
“Sublime,” repeated Baggins. “Sublime.”
Henrikson ambled over to the window overlooking the noisy street. He stood there pensively for several minutes, at length remarking quietly, “Arma, the visit to our subterranean friend has changed my life. I found peace underground.”
Two days later Baggins burst into the suite, intruding upon a quietly brooding Henrikson.
“I had these made by a local artisan,” Baggins said breathlessly, showing his friend two shining medallions made of gold and silver. “Look how they can be fitted together,” he continued eagerly, and demonstrated how the two objects could be fitted together.
Henrikson examined the medallions for a long minute, and finally said determinedly, “Sublime, Arma. We shall cherish these objects like a long-lost cousin-in-law.”
“Agreed, Syd,” agreed Baggins.
“One for you and one for me,” Henrikson displayed his predilection for equitability. For a long while, both men stood musingly in silence, each holding his newly acquired possession.
It was such a touching moment, Baggins actually began fondling it.
