It was a charming summer evening and the day’s blue sky, blue hills, forests and fields had transformed to a bar of gold, almost violent in intensity. The boat was quiet; its inhabitants on cushions on the roof swilling gin and staring dreamily at the sunset, preferring – philistines – each other’s company and to watch the carp dive and splash rather than read their books.
Halgrim the book guardian, being an Icelandic troll, naturally disliked summer. He found the whole affair sticky and disagreeable, not least perturbed by his voluminous and capricious mass of hair which, curling down his back to his knees and even onto his toes, naturally, was ill suited to the temperate season. A hat (the obligatory uniform of a book guardian) was inappropriate. He much preferred the quiet closing in of winter; the fire crackling and bathing the spines in a warm red glow, the book owners ensconced on chairs facing each other with books on their laps, the table and the shelves. Secured safely behind doors shutting out the wind; not flung wide at three entrance points and open every which way to any ill breeze or thief. It unnerved him. It frustrated him.
‘How can we PROTECT books if they leave the damn doors open Binky?’ he exploded irritably, mopping his forehead on the tail of his hat.
Binky was a rabbit, his war bunny and faithful defender of books. Being an animal, carefully evolved to endure outside weathers, he was generally unperturbed by the heat and retained his tranquil demeanour. He twitched his nose at Halgrim in indulgent sympathy.
Outside, the curlews began to cry. Halgrim stiffened.
‘What was that?’ he demanded. Binky’s twitch reassured him it was indeed but a curlew.
‘Binky, we don’t have curlews in Buckinghamshire!’
Alarm in the twitch of Binky’s nose.
‘Quick Binky!’ Halgrim shouted, ‘the doors! The hatch!’
Both troll and rabbit scrambled, grappling for handholds down the bookcase; across the brown plane of the floor, mountaineering up the ladder; fumbling with the catches – but it was too late. A black haired magician on a flying carpet flew in and landed on the book case.
Binky snarled and lunged, clearing the afore-scrambled space in one leap with Halgrim clinging to his ears.
‘Sir – I must insist you step away from those books!’ spluttered Halgrim when he regained his breath. Binky twitched his nose imperiously, kicking Halgrim with his back leg. ‘I am, I am,’ panted Halgrim. ‘Who are you? What are you doing here? What do you want with these books?’
The stranger’s green eyes twinkled. ‘My friends!’ he cried in a strangely accented voice, ‘do not fear! I am but a traveller –‘
‘From an antique land?’ interrupted Halgrim.
I don’t think it’s that book, Binky’s twitch indicated.
‘-Some have called me a magician. I come to show you my wares – to enlighten you to the mysteries of magic! Come, join me on my magic rug for refreshment.’ His green eyes and snake like curls were hypnotic. Binky bounded onto the rug with surprising enthusiasm, tipping the cautiously balanced Halgrim on before him.
The magician laid out two glasses and a bowl and poured out cool, dry, white wine from a stoppered bottle previously tucked in a mysterious fold of the carpet. The wine was cold and lovely and much refreshed the hot and bothered Halgrim. While he disliked heat, he disliked running about in it defending attacks even more.
‘Behold!’ spoke the magician. ‘the wonder of ice!’ He revealed glass like white blocks that had kept the wine cold. Binky’s eyes widened at the wonder. Halgrim looked unimpressed.
‘You know I…I’ve seen ice before. Not least because I’m Icelandic.’
‘Oh really?’ The magician was taken aback. ‘It’s a really big deal where I come from.’
‘Where do you come from?’ inquired Halgrim.
‘South America. Would you like to buy these tiny, hand crafted silver fishes?’
‘No thank you,’ Halgrim replied politely.
‘More wine then, for you and your friend?’ The magician leaned forward with the bottle and something of a leer in his voice.
‘I will, thank you – it’s very refreshing, although Binky isn’t much of a – ‘
Halgrim stopped in surprise. Binky had not only lapped his bowl clean but was now fast asleep sprawled out on the rug.
‘Oh my!’ exclaimed Halgrim. ‘Well it is very hot. It makes one feel very strange. And say such strange things. Bananas.’
‘Ah,’ said the magician, ‘let me tell you a story about a banana company and a revolution and a very singular Colonel…’
Oh dear Gods no! thought Halgrim desperately before sliding into a heady and strange sleep.
Above, the book owners moved in the stifling heat, first like worms, then like rabbits.
* * * *
Hours later, in the sticky black night, Halgrim woke from strange dreams.
‘Ye gods!’ he exclaimed, ‘what dreams! Something about a shroud twenty years long, an old dying doctor everyone hated, seventeen different ways of eating aubergine, a ghost tied to a tree…it was like several things mixed into one!’
He looked over at Binky. Binky was combing and plaiting his ears. Halgrim lowered himself down the bookcase to check the books. The mysterious stranger and his carpet (and the sweet white wine) had vanished. With rising panic at this exposure, he counted.
‘BINKY!!!’ sobbed Halgrim, heaving himself up to the top shelf, ‘that bastard! That utter utter bastard!! He’s stolen FOUR!! He drugged us and stole four!!’
Binky twitched his nose. His rabbit face conveyed little emotion either way.
‘How can you just SIT there plaiting your ears at a time like this?!’ shrieked Halgrim, near hysterical. ‘You can’t even plait with only two bloody ears!!’
Binky twitched contemptuously and turned his back.
Halgrim’s eyes dewed. He fished in his pocked for a reviving nip of his Aquae Vite. He sighed a patient sigh.
‘No hard feelings old chap. I can see this has affected you badly and you won’t be much help. I shall recover these books – don’t fear.’
He stepped back and nearly fell off the edge.
‘Hello, what’s this?’
A scroll was rolled up on the shelf. Large. Coded. Old.
* * * *
Halgrim spent days trying to decode the scroll. He poured over it. He dribbled over it. He gushed over it so much that Binky had to hang it out the side hatch every morning in an attempt to dry it out. The heat waxed on, brutal, stifling and deadening; mirage like over the green water in the heat. Halgrim sweated over it while an old toothless man played accordion nearby with increasing fretful haste; maddening energy for the deadening hotness.
‘Ye gods damn it to hel – shut up!!’ Halgrim shrieked eventually. ‘Madre de Dios. It’s enough to drive a troll mad!’
The twitch of Binky enquired why Halgrim had suddenly come over all Spanish.
‘It’s the heat I say!’ continued the maddened, glistening troll, ‘sweat’s dripping in front of my eyes, Loki damn it, I can’t SEE! It’s all mixed up!’
Binky hopped up and peered over the side of the boat, faintly unconcerned. It would’ve been wrong to say he was unruffled. Because he had no feathers. He was unfluffed.
‘Look!!’ screamed the heat-struck Halgrim, ‘bananas!!’
And just like that, the world was changed. The boat was encharnted after all.
A whimpering Halgrim dragged himself and the scroll to the muddy water’s edge. Lizards rained from vines in the sky while agitated butterflies flung themselves at walls in suicide pacts. The bubbling of birds flitted lazily in the intense sun and a maddening hum and rustling from the arid bushes and chewed begonias thickened the heat. He stared out at the burningly bright landscape.
‘Well Binky,’ said Halgrim, straightening up determinedly to his full, yet diminutive height, ‘I hear the 12.15 train call. Let’s go into town and find some lunch and maybe some help translating this scroll.’ He made off down the street; Binky with plaited ears trailing after him.
Some time later they were sat at a table in a cool room with fourteen other people who had been on the train. The table, oak, beautiful and antique, was presided over by the Colonel.
‘So it was in the revolution you became – oh yes, I will have some more aubergine, thank you – a colonel then?’
‘Si,’ came the reply. He was a quiet man, not tall, but austere, somehow metallic as if even the most spirited among the diners couldn’t beat him in a fight despite their strength. He stroked his black, thin moustache and sighed at his hat beside him. ‘De fight against capitalism continues. Will your rabbit friend hab more creamed aubergine?’
Binky lowered his eyelashes modestly in acquiescence.
‘I must say,’ mused the colonel, taking out his pipe, ‘that is one damn fine looking rabbit.’
Binky was re-plaiting his ears, oblivious to the admiring looks the other diners were indeed giving him.
‘Indeed,’ continued the Colonel, stuffing his pipe with quite an aggressively rhythmic gesture, ‘you’ve dined at our table now, you are part of us. We will christen your rabbit Binky Buendios the Beautiful.’
Halgrim chewed aubergine sceptically and decided to leave that comment.
‘Excuse me, but what’s that noise?’ he enquired.
‘The knocking?’ replied the Colonel blowing out smoke, ‘fear not. It’s a bag of bones somewhere around here that knocks – bones of an ancestor.’
‘Oh,’ said Halgrim.
The days wore on. In the hot nights, Halgrim noticed no one slept. The inhabitants of the town were also forever writing little notes to themselves and fixing them to things. Now apart from the scroll there was this mystery to solve. He questioned the local townspeople as they passed, pens forever ready.
‘The town is gripped by an insomnia plague. We have not slept for months. We write notes because insomnia makes you forget things.’
Halgrim regarded the woman carefully.
‘No it doesn’t.’
Halgrim huffed off, frustrated and consumed with doubt. Well what if it did? He’d never had insomnia for months. Troubling. As he continued up the town’s main drag between the dusty plane trees, he espied a girl sat on the earth on the other side of the fence. He legs were spread apart and she scooped at the mud between them and ate it.
Halgrim gipped and jogged on. He entered a cool courtyard with an explosion of roses in red and fuchsia and yellow against the wall. A small fountain attracted mosquitos and on the veranda sat beautiful women at their sewing. A brightly coloured bird sat in the courtyard’s central tree that had a rope tied around the trunk; seemingly suspended. An ancient woman was curled up on a camp bed in the shade. She winked at Halgrim knowingly. He approached softly on his soundless, hairy feet.
‘I wonder, Signora, if you could help me translate this scroll? Four of my books have been stolen and this left in its place. You see I…’ Halgrim became overwhelmed. The heat, the strangeness, Binky, the books, it was all too much and he wept like a child troll.
The old woman heaved herself up on her bed and brought Halgrim’s hairy head to her lap. She stroked it while his body trembled.
‘My child, tranquillo. The answers will become clear. Go down to the market place at the river’s edge. There is a man of letters there, perhaps he could help.’ She gave him a banana for luck and clear directions, which was more helpful, and Halgrim went off alone.
The mosquitoes were worse than ever by the river and the sharp mountains on the other side seemed to block the heat passing overhead and pour it all down in the valley. Among the insufficiently canopied stalls and sweating market goers, Halgrim found the man of letters. He was dressed head to foot in black, so much so that Halgrim went into a spasm of winces and pants to see a man so attired in such heat. He himself had undone the top part of his dungarees and stuffed his hat in his pocket. The man of letters, with feverish eyes and nervous long hands, took the scroll with interest.
‘Well…’ he mused, turning the scroll this way and that, bringing out various eye glasses and books. ‘Well this is in ancient language. I think I recognise this word here.’ He pointed and Halgrim peered closely. ‘It’s something agricultural. Fertilizer? Something like that. Of a …cow? No bull. Or horse? But it’s not a technical term I don’t think.’ He turned the scroll upside down. ‘Bullshit?’ he read. ‘Well. That may be all I can help you with. My speciality is poetic prose. Are you in love? I’m very good at love letters. I’m responsible for most of the marriages round here for the last three years!’ He sighed, a faraway look coming to his eyes. ‘Except my own dear unrequited. But I’m prepared to wait! Until we’re eighty if necessary! And I still have sex with everyone else.’
Halgrim scuffed his feet and cleared his throat. The man of letters came to, somewhat.
‘Your famous rabbit friend? I’ve already written him letters from twenty three separate admirers! Such a beautiful rabbit. We had a real beauty here some years ago who drove everyone mad. Eventually she ascended to heaven. Such beauty is not for this world. I expect Binky Buendios the Beautiful will do the same,’ he mused.
‘You WHAT now?’ spluttered Halgrim. An ice giant’s fist clutched his heart. ‘Good Odin protect him, I’ve got to get back to the Buendios house!’
Halgrim’s hairy feet were a blur as he ran. Above, a dry wind began to blow in layers of hot and cold air.
* * * *
Halgrim searched all over the house to no avail. He stopped, breathing hard, to think. Somewhere outside in the thick heat, a church bell rang four times.
‘Four o clock. Where would Binky be at four?’ Then Halgrim snapped his fingers and leapt up again. ‘The bathroom! He’ll be washing and plaiting his ears again!’
Halgrim burst into the bathroom at precisely the moment a rabbit admirer, attempting to watch him bathe, had leant too eagerly and too far forward and fell through the weak part of the roof, landing broken and screaming on the concrete floor in front of him. Binky peered dreamily over the edge of the bath, then hopped out over the body to Halgrim’s side, ringing out his ears.
‘I feel strongly we should leave, Binky,’ declared Halgrim. ‘Maybe if I take this scroll somewhere cool, I’ll be able to think better and decipher it.’
They walked together down the dark corridor, trying doors to find the way back to the courtyard. On opening one, they found a tall, beautiful woman of late thirties with her teenaged nephew. She was…bathing him. Well, she probably had been to start with. Troll and rabbit backed out of the bathroom, blushing furiously and arrived in the dining room where the rest of the family had assembled.
Halgrim pointed to the bathroom door down the hall. ‘Er…did you know about this?’ No one answered him. They looked mildly around. Somewhere outside, carried by the hot and cold wind from a different direction, came the sound of a church bell striking four. Halgrim blinked away his confusion and tried again.
‘Look, it’s not alright that she’s sleeping with her nephew, ok?’
An odd sensation submerged his hairy feet. Halgrim looked down and saw he was stood in a pool of blood that was trickling from the door several feet away. He followed it suspiciously.
He returned after a few minutes with a thunderous expression, having seen how the blood had trickled inexplicably round three separate corners, arrived under the middle of the front door and was coming, in a poker straight line, from up the street.
‘And look!!’ he stormed, ‘blood just doesn’t MOVE like that!! That’s enough of all this nonsense.’ His fury reached volcanic pitch. ‘What’s with the mud eating girl? And the insomnia. And the knocking bones? And how old even IS that woman? And if you founded a town because you were lost and it was too far to get back, how come a train makes it??’ Above, somewhere, the echo of a church bell rang four times like God running a finger around a wine glass.
‘And WHAT TIME IS IT?! Why has it rung four, three times?’
Halgrim was shaking with incandescent rage. The colonel shuffled forward rather sheepishly.
‘It’s the heat,’ he complained, ‘it slows time down. We cannot agree and so time stops. Meanwhile the heat’s madness takes over. Everything has stopped here since the banana company left.’
‘Well what are you DOING about it? Why do you sit here waiting? Suffocating and dying? You’ve got the railroad and the bananas. Export them yourself. And clean up some of the rubbish they left behind. Don’t just sit here for hundreds of years alone, waiting, nostalgically dreaming!’
The family shuffled about and exchanged glances and frowns. A man with long dark hair and green eyes, a familiar man, stepped forward smiling. Binky shook his plaited ears free and snarled a rabbit snarl.
‘I’ve been trying to tell them this for years.’ He opened his arms. ‘I even used that scroll to try and trick them into discovering it, I’ve been brewing a storm in the stratosphere to clear this whole damn mess away forever.’
The ancient and wizened woman hurriedly got up, cleared her throat and held herself proudly.
‘That won’t be necessary,’ she insisted in a firm, rich voice. ‘We’ll invest in some air-conditioning immediately.’
‘Gracias dulce madre de Dios,’ muttered the magician. ‘Halgrim and Binky; forgive me my theft, but you were my last hope. Here are your books and thank you for your help.
The people of the town built new restaurants and hotels and a good few swimming pools where families played and kept cool and sane in the hottest months. They cleared away the rubbish and cleared out the bordellos; expressed forthrightly and honestly their love for one another and in their air conditioned kitchens, they ate aubergines in moderation. A joyous Halgrim and restored Binky caught the 12.15 train home.
* * * *
It took nearly six months to get there because it’s a bally long way from central America to England, particularly when weighed down by four books twice your size and you are but a troll on a rabbit’s back. When they were north enough, an ecstatic Halgrim nicked a sleigh, and now in his element and glugging Acquae Vite, they made it home in less than a week.
Without their favourite books, the book owners had to start watching X-Files again from series one, so Binky and Halgrim snuck in easily behind them and replaced the books and took up position. The fire was on, the boat was warm, and they were cozy. A uniquely Northern Hemisphere sensation.