261. In the Land of Johnny Ben Balthazar
We set off for the land of Prester John, Johnny Ben Balthazar to my grandfather. We were Alpin, Bunglemore and Elucubrius, Uncle Richearth, my guest Don Alonso and AEternus’ cat Little Mauel, and I. Alpin was coming because he hoped for a spectacular dinner. I, because he wasn’t allowed to go without me. Bunglemore and Elucubrius came forced because they had been condemned to row in a galley and Uncle Richearth came because he meant to soften their sentence by buying a galley and making his friends work on it, for they would be safer there and more gently treated than in another. He did not dare defy AEternus entirely, but he wished to do whatever was possible for his once kidnappers. Don Alonso I had invited to come with us, for he had read everything that had ever been written about the priest-king, and could always be counted on for good advice, and Little Mauel…well, he was still cross with Grandpa and giving himself airs and asking to be begged to return home and not reproached with I-told-you-sos.
“Well, Mr. Quijano,” asked Uncle Richearth, “what can we expect?”
“I see,” said Uncle Richearth, and indeed we all did get to see. We sat in a circle round a bonfire we lit on a beach of Apple Island. We were burning ebony wood and myrrh and black lupin pulses, and drinking intense dark coffee. Grandpa had told me that these pulses came from the land of Prester John, and that if we burned them, they would want to take us home and everyone and everything around them would end up there. So when Uncle Rich said he saw, we all saw a pinetree-covered mound, like a head with two much shorter mounds on its side that seemed to be its shoulders. The head seemed to have only one eye, and this looked like it had been battered, for it was most irregular.
“Can that eye see?” asked Alpin. “The head might swallow us if the eye sights us.”
But the next thing we saw was that we were sitting, bonfire and all, in a pine tree wood. And before we could decide to get up and wonder about it, we were approached by a welcoming committee. A bit of a frightening one it was, for its members were a green bear, a sea blue lion and a red unicorn. And they did not look friendly, though they didn’t look hostile either.
“Belyarok, Belcyan and Beladom,” whispered Don Alonso. But it was Little Mauel who proved to be the bravest of us, for he leapt right up before them and hissed at their faces. I don’t know if he scared them away or they were satisfied with his impudent greeting, but they vanished just as they had appeared, and a huge red stone appeared before us, more a mountain than a rock.
“That stone is sard,” said Don Alonso, “and this means we can enter Prester John’s grand palace. But… before we pass, we must leave whatever is poisonous or harmful behind. This gate does not allow anything conflictive to cross it.”
“That means Alpin and Bunglemore and Elucubrius cannot pass?” I asked Don Alonso, quite worried.
“I don’t see an entrance anyway,” said Uncle Rich, and then, we all did. A diamond door.
And before Don Alonso could answer my question, the door slid open and a king appeared before us. It was obvious he was one, though at that moment he wore no crown. He was but dressed in a splendidly simple white robe, and wore only one ornament, a gold breastplate studded with gemstones tied on with blue silk ribbons. There was a carnelian, a crhysolite, an emerald, a turquoise, a sapphire, an amethyst, a jacinth, an agate, a crystal, a beryl, a lapislazuli and a jasper. They were set in the shape of a cross He gestured for us to step in, and we were all able to.
I identified myself and handed the king the letter. Every line he read, the priest-king smiled. More and more each time, until he ended up laughing.
“AEternus!” he said, shaking his head. “Always so droll!”
And then he invited us to dinner. I cannot tell what we ate for I was as if in a daze all the while, mostly because of the hypnotic music – flute and drum and something metallic, a sort of xylophone - that seemed to dance on the food. But a magnificent one the dinner was, and served on ivory dishes and gold bowls and the drink on rock crystal cups by pygmies in green velvet tunics with aromatic herbs in their hair. It satisfied even Alpin, and gave Uncle Richearth some ideas for his parties, or so he said, for after telling us this wasn’t manners and shouldn’t be done, he went off to consult the cooks and the sommeliers, which he could not resist doing. Speaking with Don Alonso, John said that he could have and enjoy treasures and at the same time not give any importance to material goods. That was why he was accompanied everywhere by two blue bowls, one full of gold and the other of ashes. It did not matter that he was immortal, he said. He still saw things that way. After dinner, he showed us some of his magic treasures, the most useful being a mirror that allowed him to control all his kingdom, for it reflected everything that was going on in it, and the friendliest prize being a phoenix that sang for us while it bathed in a perfumed fountain under a spicy tree. My grandfather AEternus has one too, so I had seen such a bird before. There may have been only one Phoenix to begin with, but today there is not only one in existence. However, no two are identical. John’s had emerald and rose feathers, and my grandfather’s looks and walks like a ruby peacock and rhapsodizes in Greek. Both are splendid in their own ways. John also took us across a field of poppies to a forest to see a silver rivulet of youth, that is, of water that once a few drops drank, kept one young forever. None of us needed that, but John invited us to fill some dark-blue crystal vials with it in case someday we came upon someone who might.
Before we left, there was the delicate subject of Elucubrius and Bunglemore’s fates. Shaking his head as if he thought it was not a good idea, John agreed to let Uncle Richearth do what he intended to, and sold my uncle a Tyrian galley, purple sail and all.
“I love that purple sail. Has the galley got lily-white beds too?” Uncle Rich asked John. “I want these two to sleep on such.”
“Lily-white hammocks,” nodded John, shaking his head even more after speaking.
“Do you know what to do with this?” Uncle Richearth asked his once kidnappers. “Or will you resell the ship to someone else?”
Bunglemore and Elucubrius admitted that was the only notion they had of what to do with a galley, though they did know about the sea because they had once owned the boat they had locked Uncle Rich up in.
Eventually, the galley ended up being rowed by a crew of automatons, and Bunglemore and Elucubrius were put under a spell so they could do nothing but sail in it forever, like the Flying Dutchman. Uncle Rich put an everlasting supply of food and drink on board and left them radios and TV sets and such so they wouldn’t be bored, justifying his generosity saying they had done the same for him. And since he is a pushover, he softened conditions allowing them to set foot on shore twice a year, preferably in June and December, for three days that ended up being a week each of these two months.
“I’m thinking your father isn’t going to like this,” said John to Uncle Rich.
“Ah, he doesn’t contradict me much,” answered my uncle. “I think he will only fuss if something goes wrong with this plan. Then he will say to me that he told me so. But meanwhile, this might work. And I promise to visit them now and then to see how they are doing. Well, if I remember to.”
And then it was time for us to leave, and we awoke as if from a dream round the dying embers of our bonfire at the Apple Island beach, with Little Mauel yawning on my lap.
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