Читать книгу Mr Humperdinck's Wonderful Whatsit (2017 ed) - Wynand Louw - Страница 5

Butterfly Magic

“Pete! PEE-YEET!”

Pete stopped on the pavement in front of Paradise Mansions.

“AHOY, PETE SMITH!”

Pete looked up. It was Mrs Burton, a beacon in her red jersey. She was leaning out of her third-floor window, waving a dishcloth to attract his attention. The sun was behind the gargoyle on the roof, transforming it into a menacing black shadow that seemed to descend from above on the old lady. The building looked even more ancient than it was: tired, as if it would keel over and die if it weren’t for the two modern skyscrapers supporting it on either side. Pete waved back at her.

“I need your help!” Mrs Burton shouted.

Pete waved again, and ran in at the front door of Paradise Mansions and up the stairs. The lift had been stuck on the third floor for as long as he could remember, and it served as an art studio for Nathaniel the Artist, who lived next door to Mrs Burton. (He was actually a handyman, since he had never sold a painting and he had to eat. But, as Mrs Burton observed, selling a painting didn’t make you an artist, and he had such a sensitive and artistic soul.)

“What’s wrong?” Pete asked as he entered her small flat and threw his schoolbag on the floor.

“The Bubonic Plague, that’s what’s wrong!” fumed Mrs Burton, wiping her hands on her apron. “The Black Death!”

“Rats,” said her son Spike from behind his coffee mug at the kitchen table. “She found some rat droppings in the bathroom this morning. You’d think they’d be decent enough to use the can.”

“It’s no joke, Spike. Aren’t you supposed to be on duty?” Mrs Burton tugged at the collar of his police uniform. “You’re all wrinkled. Don’t you have an iron?”

“This is my tea break,” said Spike. “We’re allowed fifteen minutes teatime in the afternoon.”

Mrs Burton smiled at Pete. “I’m so proud of him.” She took a pair of cups from the shelf and poured some tea.

“It must be a plague,” said Pete. “There was a rat in my schoolbag this morning.”

“Listen, I want you to ask old Humperdinck to set traps and catch these horrid things. He’s supposed to be the caretaker of this building. It’s time he starts doing his job!”

“Why don’t you tell him yourself?”

Spike sniggered. “They aren’t talking to each other.”

“Not talking to each other? He isn’t talking to me!”

“Broke my old lady’s heart, he has,” said Spike. It was an open secret that Mrs Burton was in love with Mr Humperdinck. “She ambushed him on the second landing this morning when he went up to his flat for tea. Lipstick, scent, feather boa and all. Didn’t even see her.”

“‘Idon’twanttobuyanythingthankyou,’ he said and slammed the door in my face. Bang! As if I were some salesperson or something.” Mrs Burton waved her teaspoon wildly and almost poked Pete in the eye. “I’m NEVER going to speak to him again!”

“Until next time,” said Spike. He winked at Pete. “I can’t see what she sees in him. But I guess he is handsome for a short, fat, bald …”

“Your fifteen minutes are up!” snapped Mrs Burton. “Get your big bottom out of my house, you lazy animal!” She grabbed the broom, shooed him out of the door, and closed it behind him.

Then she smiled. “Such a dear boy, but he drives me up the wall. If I didn’t give birth to him myself …”

“I’ll ask Mr Humperdinck about the traps, but I still think you should speak to him yourself,” said Pete.

And then he blurted out, “Mrs Burton, why is my dad always drunk?”

“Oh dear,” Mrs Burton said. She straightened her blue-grey hair and sat down at the table. “Do you know what happened to your father and mother?”

Pete scowled. “How would I? Dad never speaks to me. He’s been drunk for as long as I can remember.”

“Well, maybe you should ask him! I’m sure he’d tell you if you asked him.”

“Do you know what happened?”

“I only know what I read in the papers. I didn’t know your dad before you moved in here. He wasn’t always a drunk, you know. He was a famous lawyer. One of the best in town.”

“And my mom?”

“Oh, Jennie was a beauty, all right. A medical doctor. Your father must’ve loved her very much. But she became very ill at a time when he was busy with an important case. It was in the papers and on television nearly every day. She died in hospital while he was in court. I don’t think he ever forgave himself for not being there. He started drinking, and losing cases. One day in court he was so drunk that he could hardly stand on his feet. When the judge called him to order your dad cursed him. Never worked again after that.”

Mrs Burton got up and from the bottom of one of her kitchen drawers she took a wrinkled old newspaper clipping. “A few months ago I found this among some rubbish your dad had dumped in the hallway. It’s not the kind of thing he would’ve thrown away if he was in his right mind.”

Pete stared down at an old faded picture of two happy people: a proud young man in a tuxedo suit who vaguely resembled his father, and a radiant, beautiful bride at his side. Whiz kid lawyer marries his dream princess.

“This man is your real father, not the drunk who lives with you now. Remember that.”

Pete went to Mr Humperdinck’s bicycle shop on the ground floor. The doorbell played a slow, sombre tune as he opened the door. Pete had always wondered how an old-fashioned copper bell mounted on a spring screwed to the door could play a tune. Maybe it worked as some kind of switch, but no matter how hard he looked, he could never find any electrical connections. He thought he heard the doorbell sigh at the end.

As always, Mr Humperdinck ignored it.

“Hi there!”

The old gentleman’s brushy moustache trembled. “Hello.”

“You okay, Mr Hump?”

“I suppose so …”

Something was wrong. Way wrong. Mr Humperdinck was usually a friendly, talkative man. Pete didn’t want to bother him about Mrs Burton’s rats while he was in such a bad mood, so he busied himself with the chores that he usually did for the old man.

The shop was a place of marvels; apart from a few bicycles (that were seldom sold), it was filled with junk. Layers and layers of junk, on rows and rows of shelves, from top to bottom. There were Thingamabobs from the Far East, Gadgets from Egypt, Gizmos from the Amazon. In fact, you could ask Mr Humperdinck for absolutely anything. A truck for your skateboard, a toilet seat or a hard drive for your computer? He would find it. A fuel valve for a Concorde’s left jet engine, a submarine porthole or even a grand piano? He would disappear in the shadowy depths of his back room and produce a perfectly good second-hand product, covered with layers of dust.

But of all the wonders in the shop, Pete loved Squeak, the white mouse that lived in the wire cage next to the till, the best. Unlike usually, the little mouse seemed agitated, running back and forth in his cage and chewing on the bars. For a moment it seemed to signal to Pete to open the door. Pete dismissed the thought. Mice couldn’t signal! He filled its bowl with seed, and the water bottle with fresh water.

And then there was the big white cat that usually lay asleep on an old piece of canvas on a shelf. Most people in the building thought it belonged to Mr Humperdinck, who called it Snow White. This wasn’t a very good name, because it was a tomcat. But Mr Humperdinck didn’t seem to care. Maggie thought the cat belonged to her, because she fed it tuna once a day, and she called it Here-Kitty-Kitty.

Pete looked for it in all its favourite places, but the cat was gone.

“Have you seen Snow White, Mr Humperdinck?”

The old man banged something with a hammer. “He’s away on business.”

The doorbell rang and Maggie walked in. The bell played that same sombre tune again, even slower than before. This time, Pete was sure he heard a sigh.

Maggie owned AUNT ANNIE’S CONFECTIONERY next door. It would be a little rude to describe what she looked like, so let’s just say that she was her own best customer.

“Pete, I need you to do a few errands,” Maggie said. He was her delivery boy, and she paid him with a meal a day. He didn’t want money, since his father always took whatever he had earned to buy booze.

When Mr Humperdinck saw Maggie his face went red. He stomped off to his back room and slammed the door behind him.

“I wonder what’s eating him,” said Maggie. “He was even ruder to me yesterday.”

“What did he say?” Pete asked as they left the bicycle shop and entered the bakery.

She giggled, and bit a fingernail right off. “He shouted at me, like this, ‘Aaarrgh!’ and then he said, ‘GET OUT!’”

Pete knew it was difficult to provoke Mr Humperdinck. “Why? Did you do anything to upset him?”

“Nothing at all. I just came looking for you, but you weren’t back from school yet.” Perfect innocence, but Pete didn’t quite believe her.

Suddenly he saw something. “A butterfly! Look, there is a butterfly in the bakery!”

There were in fact quite a few flitting about – but Maggie ignored them. “There’s an order for twenty-two doughnuts from that guy at the bank. He tells me he’s on a doughnut diet and he’s already lost a lot of weight. I should try it myself.” Maggie giggled again.

Pete kept a straight face. She had been on a doughnut diet most of her life anyway.

“After that you have to deliver a party pack to that woman in the office on the tenth floor on the corner of Main and 22nd Street. And then three meat pies to Carlo’s restaurant across the road. I think he’s tired of his own food.”

Maggie took a box off the shelf to pack the twenty-two doughnuts, but when she touched the first one, it turned into a butterfly.

Poof!

Just like that.

Pete dismissed it as some trick the light was playing on him. The tone of Maggie’s giggle rose half an octave. She grabbed a second doughnut, which also turned into a butterfly. The same happened to the third, fourth and fifth doughnuts. She screamed, grabbed the whole tray of doughnuts and threw it against the wall. The tray clanged to the floor and a whole swarm of rainbow-coloured butterflies fluttered to the ceiling.

Maggie collapsed on the floor, her back against the wall and her thick legs spread out in front of her. Huge mascara-stained tears ran down her round cheeks and onto her apron.

“Did you see that?” she sobbed, rocking back and forth. “I’m going crazy, I’m seeing things. They’ll take me away and lock me up and I’ll lose everything I’ve worked for my whole life.”

Pete fetched her a paper towel from behind the counter. “You’re not going crazy. I can see them too.”

She blew her nose into the paper towel, and sobbed even louder.

“I can see the butterflies, Maggie!”

The sobs turned into wails of despair. “I’m jinxed, Pete! Cursed! I’ll die of hunger! Every time I try to eat something, it turns into an INSECT! I HAVEN’T EATEN ANYTHING TODAY!”

This time Pete found it difficult not to smile in spite of his bewilderment. A little bit of hunger could only do her good. In fact, a lot of hunger would be even better.

“Come on, everything will be fine. Get up and wash your face; you don’t want people to see you like this.” Pete helped her to her feet.

Just then the door opened and a customer walked in. Maggie grabbed the roll of paper towels and fled into the kitchen, so Pete stood behind the counter to serve him. The poor man’s head was hidden in a cloud of butterflies. He waved wildly, but to no avail.

“May I help you?” asked Pete.

“I thought this was a confection bakery. Since when has it changed into a butterfly farm? What’s going on here?”

The man looked very familiar. Perfectly combed dark hair, smart suit and matching tie, a toothpaste ad smile.

“Er … It was the neighbour,” Pete said. “An April fool’s prank.”

“What? It’s May already!”

“He’s a bit slow. May I help you?”

“Five doughnuts with caramel and nuts, please.”

Pete went into the kitchen to get a new tray of doughnuts. When he came back, he almost bumped into the customer’s face as he opened the door. The man was peeking through the keyhole.

“Sorry,” he mumbled, and returned to the other side of the counter.

After the man had left, Pete opened the front door and most of the butterflies flew out. He then went to see if Maggie was all right. She wasn’t too bad, but she wouldn’t be able to work. Anything edible she touched turned into butterflies. So Pete hung the CLOSED sign on the door and went out to do the deliveries.

When he had done all the deliveries, Pete decided that he had to see Freddy. His only transport was the old skateboard he had salvaged from a dustbin and repaired with a little help from Mr Humperdinck and a lot of ingenuity. Taming the skateboard had been even more difficult than repairing it. The darn thing kept throwing him off like a wild horse. But with time and practice, Pete had become its master.

The first stretch of road to Freddy’s was level: past the Italian hairdresser, LORENZO ALTINTOPI, BARBER of DISTINCTION, next to AUNT ANNIE’S and the 24-hour supermarket, then across the street at the traffic lights. Ollie onto the pavement. The next bit was very tricky since the pavement was always crowded with people. Pete kept his right foot on the elevated tail of the deck, so he could lift the front wheels and change direction in an instant. In this way, he made his way through the crowd with only the occasional small collision. At the main road intersection he cut through the corner door of the convenience store (the girl at the till always shouted at him, but of course she couldn’t catch him) and then it was downhill to the station.

It was on this downhill stretch that Pete had had one of his more serious spills. One weekend, a shop owner had erected a brand-new billboard, and Pete, not expecting it there on the Monday morning on his way to school, made a magnificent crash into it. If it were on television, they would have shown the action replay over and over again, backwards, from different angles, and in slow motion. Such was the beauty of this crash. And Pete had a wonderful cut on his forehead to show for it.

When he arrived at school, his face and shirt were covered in blood. Aunt Nellie, the school nurse , cleaned him up and tried to contact his father, who was (as expected) not available. So she had to take him to the day clinic herself. Not only did Pete legitimately miss a whole day of school, but he also had not three, not five, but EIGHT stitches! And afterwards Aunt Nellie took him for the biggest ice cream of his life.

The next day at school everybody envied him his eight stitches. The girls in the class wanted to know if it hurt, and of course he said that it didn’t. For the rest of the week everybody regarded him with the awe and adoration due to a veteran of the racetrack.

After ducking under the new billboard, Pete ollied over a fire hydrant, and then raced downhill to the corner where he had to tailslide and grab the traffic light with his right hand in order to stop. When the light turned green, he sped across the street to the station and ground the rail downstairs into the large main hall. This was a skateboarder’s dream. A marble floor as big as two football fields with staircases and ramps for wheelchairs! Pete carefully stuck to the places where he knew the crowds of commuters would be less thick, and here he practised his stunts at breakneck speed. A few ollies to warm up. Flip ollie. Frontside flip. Backside flip. Rail flip.

And the three-sixty grab: Ollie off a low staircase, get phat air, grab your deck with one hand, do a full 360-degree spin, and then land facing in your original direction.

Suicide.

Pete landed half on his belly, half on his right side, with his right arm and hand stretched out to break the fall, and after a four-metre skid on the marble, he came to a stop at the counter of the station coffee shop. The guy behind the counter (his name was Vusi) was used to this. The first few times Pete crashed into a table and chairs before reaching the counter, but Vusi moved them so that he would have an open landing strip.

“Ladies and gentlemen, another perfectly executed Belly Skid, performed for your entertainment by Pete Smith, the Awesome Stunt Skater!” Vusi announced and helped him to his feet. There was a small round of applause.

Pete blushed and disappeared around the corner. The rest of the way to Freddy’s flat was routine skating any rookie could do.

Freddy was one of five brothers, and they all lived on the eighth floor in a flat with two bedrooms. Pete found him reading a book, while the rest of the family watched a soap opera.

“We have to talk,” said Pete.

Freddy nodded. “Let’s go to my office.”

His “office” was behind the lifts in a shaft where all the building’s water and sewage pipes ran up and down. They entered the shaft by a little quarter-sized door behind the stairwell and climbed down an iron ladder until they came to a landing made of a steel mesh. Here Freddy switched on a light.

Pete never felt comfortable in Freddy’s “office”. When you looked at your feet on the steel mesh you could see a gaping black chasm that was at least seven stories deep. And there was always an updraft.

“The weirdest thing happened today!” Pete said when they were both seated on the cushions Freddy had put there.

“Weirder than the rat in your schoolbag?”

“Far weirder than that!”

Pete told his friend in detail what had happened that afternoon in Maggie’s shop. Freddy asked questions about the exact moment that the doughnuts changed into butterflies, about whether there was any sound associated with the changing process, and so on. When Pete had finished, he thought for a while.

“Cool. Well, either there’s a sound scientific explanation (which I can’t figure out) for this phenomenon, or there isn’t. If there isn’t, then it must either be psychokinesis or magic.”

“Psycho what?” As usual, Freddy had lost Pete along the way.

“Psychokinesis. Like that guy who bends the forks and spoons by just looking at them. A load of claptrap. Camera tricks.”

Pete couldn’t believe his ears. “So it must be magic, right?”

“Sure,” said Freddy. “Why not? Let me show you my latest project!”

Pete was a bit disappointed by Freddy’s apparent lack of interest in his story. Did he really believe in magic?

Freddy was always tinkering with some project. Most of them didn’t work, but every now and then he accomplished amazing things. Like the computer he built from a lot of old stuff the bank threw away. For a twelve-year-old it was a pretty neat thing to do, even if he were a genius. The home-made computer sat on a stand in a corner of the office. It looked like a chicken coop full of wires, with a big fan at the back to stop it from overheating. Freddy switched it on. The ancient screen flickered a few times and came to life. It cast a spooky glow on the two boys in the pipe shaft. But Pete still had other pressing matters to discuss.

“Schiz is going to tell the school board to expel me,” he said.

“Bummer,” said Freddy. “What’re you going to do?”

“Don’t know …”

“Why don’t you fire old Schiz? The best form of defence is to attack.”

“Are you crazy? I can’t fire him!”

“Why not? School’s a waste of time anyway.”

Freddy only went to school because everyone expected it of him. He read brainy books on physics and philosophy while he sat on the loo. He even wrote a letter to the New Scientist and it was published.

Pete shook his head.

“Look, you can go to any other public school,” said Freddy. “Just write him a letter and tell him that he’s fired. If you withdraw from his school, he can’t have you expelled.”

He started typing:

Dear Mr Schulz, As the result of recent reports of unprofessional behaviour by you and your staff, and since there have been numerous reports of emotional abuse of pupils in your care (“That should get him thinking,” said Freddy), I have decided to terminate my family’s association with your institution with immediate effect. I’m considering lodging a formal complaint with the Department of Education and will be speaking to other families (“That means me,” said Freddy) about this. If we find enough support, we will demand that you be removed from your post.

Kind regards.

“What’s your dad’s name?” he asked.

“Peter,” said Pete.

“Good, then we don’t have to lie. We’ll write the letter in your name and Schiz will assume it’s from your dad.”

On the bottom line he typed: Peter Smith.

Pete was impressed. “Wow, that’s so cool!”

“I’ll make sure that it’s delivered to him tomorrow – by registered mail,” said Freddy. “The midterm break starts on Monday anyway, so you have two full weeks to find a new school!”

When Pete came home, his father wasn’t there yet. The flat was dark and cold, and the big double bed in the corner was empty.

The remains of the morning’s breakfast were still on the table by the window.

It started to rain, and the gargoyle outside the window spewed a stream of water into the gutter under the roof.

Pete took the newspaper clipping Mrs Burton had given him and carefully placed it in his scrapbook, which he hid in a secret compartment in the bottom of his drawer.

Later, as he lay in his bed looking at the gargoyle outside, he thought about how unusual the day had been. He had actually had first-hand experience of real honest-to-goodness magic. (If Freddy said so, who was he to disagree?) And he was going to be the first kid in known history to fire his school.

Pete smiled, and he was sure the gargoyle smiled back at him.