From The Collector of Tales
I made it the last few feet to the bar and to the creature that I took to be in authority. It is an simple observation that I was watched with hawk-like focus by this woman from the time that I opened the door to within a few feet of the bar. As soon as I actually got there, I appeared to have become a part of the scenery. I looked meaningfully in her direction but she had started swilling a tankard in some brownish liquid from a basin beneath the bar and appeared totally engrossed both in that task and an animated conversation taking place at the far side of the room. It was pretty obvious, with all the noise around, that she couldn't possibly hear it.
I tried coughing and clearing my throat but even I knew that was pointless in the din and besides it prompted a series of hackings and spitting from a couple of men at the bar that made me sound like a girl. I waved: not a thing. I called out moderately loudly but in that room it was lost. I decided again on the very obvious.
"Drahnk, ja'bas" I yelled at the top of my voice.
A ripple of silence spread out through the room from where I was standing, passed out through the walls and was gone. It had worked though, for Grendel's Mother stirred from her labours and looked over at me. Actually, it was more like she looked through me. It was quite discomfiting. Again there were those bovine eyes and again the vacant look and the red saliva and, even more disconcerting, again the thick black beard.
"D'ja wahnt?" she growled.
"D'ja goht?" I barked.
"Horshp's!" she hissed.
"Y'allavvit'en." I grunted.
So far so good, I thought.
Then it was that I made the mistake. All those fifty-two years of good upbringing could not be held back. Much as I had tried, I simply could not help it and out it came uninvited from my hapless mouth.
"Shakoff..." I whinnied.
It had not been said loudly. In fact I had almost swallowed the word as it came out and yet the silence in the room was immediate and utter. I could hear my heart thumping. God's ear, I could hear half a dozen hearts thumping. All eyes were on me. I could feel the hostility. Something quick was needed.
"Paw'sh akov peg ah' there to."I said as loud as I dared, pointing with apparent enthusiasm (I hoped) to the pig roasting, for want of a better word, in the smoke and warmth of the fire.
"Paw'sh akov peg! Y'ah!" I thumped my chest for emphasis with my clenched right hand. "J'ah hangregish!"
I scarcely dared to look around in the unnerving quiet that had enveloped the room so I kept my eyes on Grendel's Mother. Her mouth twisted slightly and worked its way into what I think was a grin. It could have been pity and again it could have been lust.Hopefully, I would never know.
"Y'ai sh'akov peg, lurv" she replied, softening ever so slightly.
I was relieved. It looked like I had pulled it off: one serious cultural faux pas into what was frankly an acceptably rude demand for food. I ignored the all too obvious comments of "fawk'in farners" and a range of other similar obscenities from the others in the room as the volume went back up to full.
It was with slightly detached interest that I watched as Grendel's Mother poured a rich, slightly greenish looking liquid from a large tin jug under the counter into the battered tankard that she had hitherto been immolating in the basin. The liquid had a thin, oily look about it as it was poured and small white things floated and bobbed about on the surface in the tankard once it was placed on the bar before her. She gave it a vigorous stir with a stick that seemed to be lying about for the purpose and then passed the tankard to me.
The detached interest gave way to mild concern as I watched the oily liquid whirl around in the tankard that was now in front of me. There were far too many bubbles forming on the surface to be accounted for by the mild agitation of the stick. Something was clearly living and breathing in it. I noticed also that the white things had ceased to bob about. In fact they seemed to have disappeared. Perhaps, to be accurate, I should have said that they dived beneath the oily surface.
"Horshp's!" she said.
There was neither pride nor threat in her voice. It was a take it or leave it kind of statement and from the look of the drink that was described, I was pretty sure now that I was going to leave it.
"Yu'l aff a tab or'll ya pay fer't nuw,"she continued and then witha pause and a hard glint in her eye added. "Fee trupps!"
To be honest, I had no idea what Horshp's was but I presumed that it was now before me in all its greenness, floating the slightly thin and oily froth on its surface that looked vaguely off white. However, fee trupps demanded a response. This was a land of hagglers and I was expected to do the business. As it was I couldn't tell from the dialect whether she had said fee (five) or thee (three) and I was not going to pay five for a drink I was basically afraid off.
"Fee trupps! " I stammered, "Nehg, nehg! Ye nehg a fawk'in farner heer."
That at least drew some interest from those nearby.
" Di trupps 'nd ne mur vor dis greyn pus"
"Ja'horsun farner ish'ta shahk!" she countered and followed it up with an emphatic hawk and spit, the like of which landed in all its redness at the base of the tankard just where it met the bar.
"For trupps ne holper 'an," she added in a slightly menacing tone.
Three and a half trupps was more than any reasonable man would pay but I threw down the coins in feigned disgust. At least that way I would keep all my remaining teeth, for now. I added, for realism, "Ja'bas!" which, it seemed she took almost as a compliment as she flashed me one of her twitching, grimacing smiles.
"Ja'll getcha sh' akov peg," she offered.
Oh crap, I thought. More haggling and we haven't even got down to the main issue. Somehow I had to get myself a room in this place to sleep tonight. Best to go for it now I resolved.
There is something that I find fundamentally embarrassing about asking for a room for the night. To start with, I never really know what to say. Usually I'll try something like, 'Have you got any vacancies?' or, 'Do you have any accommodation?' or perhaps, 'Have you got a room?' No matter which I use, however, there is always that suggestion of embarrassment and invariably I'll swallow the words or mumble so that I will not be heard properly no matter what language I am speaking. Then I'll have to go through it all again. I guess we all create our own versions of purgatory one way or another.
That was more of less what happened when I tried to get a room sorted here. The only difference was that once we had got down to the issue, we haggled over the price. Well, that and the fact that I claimed that I was the mother of a smoking dog. Don't ask me how. All I know is that I swallowed a couple of syllables in 'accommodation' and out it popped uninvited as it were. It kind of caught her unawares and I think threw her out of focus on the price. Anyway five trupps was, I thought, a bargain even though there was the obligatory non-refundable deposit (for fumigation) which the hairy witch told me was set at another five trupps in these parts.
This was on account of the 'calymeens' she had explained. She had disappeared behind the bar for a few seconds before emerging with a look of triumph and a rather unhappy and pale looking creature vaguely resembling a trilobite which she then crushed on the bar before me.
"Ye'cob calymeen. Hah!" she said with a grin.
Personally I think that she had kept that one there for the purpose. As the viscous juices of the hapless creature spread over sticky surface of the bar, I paid my ten trupps (and the shreeve tax - another trupp) and the key deposit (another two trupps but refundable if the key is presented before sunrise which in this part of the world was currently 06.00 , Eastern Seaboard Time. Then with my bag, a huge key and my plate of smoke roasted and slightly warm pork on a dirty birch bark platter, I made my way through the crowded room to the dark narrow opening with the words 'Slepisht' scrawled on the crumbling plaster above it. The tankard of Horshp's remained on the bar untouched.
The dead trilobite watched me through its lifeless calcite eyes.
The Collector of Tales is available in paper or Kindle format
No comments:
Post a Comment