87. Buddha’s Hand

It was the witching hour and recently installed electricity shone in the tropical Isle of Bumps where Chef Santichu Semeurtzi was trying out his new kitchen and starting a new life. Salty Boogerbeard had hired him to be the cook of the huge hotel and casino he had installed in the island.

Santichu was a warm and very talkative person and when he had no one to chat with he was pleased to talk to himself.

“Creating new dishes is my thing, but designing sixty new dishes with unfamiliar ingredients in only three hours will be a record for me, magical as I am,” he was saying to himself while he wondered what to do with a fruit that was new to him. When green, the fruit called Buddha’s hand looked like a bunch of Italian peppers that had been born Siamese, but it was really a citrus fruit that tasted like lemon, which became more evident once it ripened and turned yellow. “I think it will go well with a pâté of golden egg layer goose, overworked to death by an exceedingly greedy owner.”

And then, something happened that made Santichu’s outer and inner eyes pop. The fruit he was studying came alive. Its fingers moved to form the gesture of teaching. And a voice that had to be Buddha’s was heard to say, “Be so kind as to give me back my hand. It was not made to be eaten with meat.”

                 

Now it happened that Santichu admired Buddha enormously. He was one of those Basques who believed his people had Tibetan roots. He began to speak with the Buddha.

“I have always created fully vegetarian meals for the fairy people,” he said. “But I have no choice but to work here now and the clients are all on the very dark side, despite the electricity there is now on this island. I’m here because I can’t make a living anywhere else. I am fleeing from a jinxy kid who has a sick obsession with me and chases me wherever I go and folds up my business. I pull something out of an oven and there he is, with his napkin round his neck and a knife and fork in his fists. But among the execrable people there are here, I might be safe. They’re bound to defend their dinners with knives and forks too.”

                           

At that moment, Salty Boogerbeard burst into the kitchen, demanding to know what was going on there.

Those that had known him some months back would never have recognized him. The fairyland plastic surgeons had turned him into one more young model, right out of a magazine page. He looked as if he was in his early twenties, his blue eyes were surrounded by long and thick lashes, his mouth was sexily swollen and sulky and his ears and nose were half the size they had been. Salty’s new hotel and casino were to be inagurated in twenty four hours and things were way behind schedule. When Salty saw the Buddha was visiting his kitchen, unlike Santichu, he was not at all impressed.

“Look here, Mrs. Grundy,” he said to the Buddha, “what is all this to you? Aren’t you the bloke who says everything is an illusion? Well, look another way and contemplate something you’d rather see.”

               

Buddha’s hand made the gesture of warding off evil.

“Where are the ashtrays?” hollered Salty, his mind already on something else. “Three thousand enormous rock crystal and silver ashtrays I procured for my casino at great trouble to myself and worse to others and I don’t see a single one anywhere. And I bought them heavy to deter souvenir lifters! To think I have to worry about these details when I own slaves paid for with a credit card!”

Salty had invited half of the Vicious Villains’ Society to the inaguration. He had not invited the other half so they would feel envious. That might not be good for his business but it made him happy. However, he knew very well that if everything was not in order when he opened, he would be the laughing stock of his peers.

“Has anyone remembered to invite the Hoovers?” he yelled.

One of the natives of Bumps’ Island was manager of the hotel. He was young and had just been trained to act as an executive. Tall and thin, he was dressed to play the part in a see through suit of the latest fashion and wore expensive dark glasses.His name was Tropez, but Salty called him Bumpety because he was a Bump, and as full of bruises as any other.

“The hoovers?” he asked. “Why, the vaccum cleaners are in the room where the maids keep the stuff they clean with. Haven’t they been used today? ”

“No, no!” shouted Boogerbeard. “The Hoovers are the psychic vampires. We have to invite a few so they will absorb part of the negative energy there will be here tomorrow. If they don’t, there will be no breathing in this place.”

Bumpety took his mobile phone from his coat pocket and asked Salty if the Hoovers could be located at the VVS clubhouse. The VVS is the Vicious Villains’ Society. These kind of people love to gang up.

“They’re in the little black book I gave you!” snapped Boogerbeard. “Read it! And read the guest list too, you useless Bump! Maybe you would see better if you took off those glasses. What have I blessed you with electric light for? You look like you are blind with those glasses on and you no longer are. Now you see! All thanks to me. They say I have never done a kind act. Well, I said let there be light and here it is! I’ve shown the light to a whole population that dwelt in darkness. Is it my fault if they don’t want to see ? A daily good deed at least I always do. Mostly unconsciously, but I do!”

Bumpety said he was there to give Salty the latest news, including extra-official rumors. This was something he did for his boss every day. He said this disaster had ocurred and so had that one and a dozen more. Everything was more expensive than it was the day before except  what there was too much of and part of that had been dumped into the ocean to keep prices high.

Salty said he didn’t care a fig about rising prices. What he didn’t want to pay for he took anyway.

“Your new nocturnal tourist complex here on Bumps’ Island is front page news in all the magic media except the Only Good News Channel.”

“The Only Good News Channel!” scoffed Salty. “**** them!”

 “And last but not least, there is an urban legend that a child has the power to topple the candid business of Christmas illusions.”

Salty stroked his smooth, beardless chin.

“The skinny, ravenous lad the Horsemen of the Apocalypse want to hire is ready to hit the polar enterprise?”

“No!” said Tropez. “It’s not the Unchagedling. It’s one of Titania’s younger kids. Unpromising in every way as he is, he is said to have wheedled a blank check out of the Three Wise Capos.”

“Now I call that imprudence!” exclaimed Salty. “Those old men must be doting. You know how hard it is to copy the writing of those three guys? What is not in Chinese is in Aramaic, or ancient Syriac, or Ethiopian or who knows what? Anything in three languages today only spat by energumens. Nobody has ever been able to falsify all three signatures at a time. Because I’m busy as a stinging bee right now and someone is bound to do it before I can, or you would see what a blow I would deal the free gift enterprise now that I know about that check!”

The pirate turned casino owner was getting red in his pretty new face, so hostile was he to the Magi. Salty was so worked up the squeaky clean hair on his head was rising and twirling and doing all sorts of horrible things and turning into what looked like horns.

“Why the hell should people who don’t know how to steal things get things free? They should at least make an effort to learn, like I did. You know how hard I’ve studied all this I have planned and brought to life here? And if there is something I hate it is people who lie to little kids. High time those foggies were stopped.”

                       

                       

Suddenly, Buddha’s hand made the gesture of fearlessness.

Santichu saw. And he pulled off his apron and threw it on the kitchen counter.

“I’m the one who has seen the light!” he cried. “Fairies don’t live by abused geese alone. There has to be something more important than junk food, inordinately expensive as it might be! And I’m going to look for it! I quit! I’m going to learn more about my Tibetan ancestors!”

Salty Boogerbeard was first aghast and then rabid.  

“But what is this whacko saying? Nobody knows where Basque fairies come from. They could have come from Mars, for all we know. What do you think you will find in Tibet? The same **** as here, only tackier! You mean to stand me up on the opening night of my casino because the Buddah appeared to you? Give one step towards that door and I’ll tear out your pineal gland and chomp it up like a roasted peanut!”

In case you don’t know what a pineal gland is, it is a pinecone like part of the brain that is considered to be the seat of the soul.

And the cleavers gleamed. But fortunately, no blood was shed into the pots of boiling soup. Why? Because Salty Boogerbeard had paid a fortune for his new face and did not want to have it broken.

“Alright,” he said, “you can go. But just you wait. You’ll be sorry about having called me swollen wasp lips. You’ll have to face my wrath as soon as I am less busy and my face is less expensive.”