The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,27

theses.

Whether Ghoolion was lecturing him on the integrated geocentric model of the universe or the language of diamonds, Bookemisticotypographic hypnosis or the sensitivity of metals to pain, his words seemed to Echo like music that went in one ear and came out the other. He was happy just to listen to the Alchemaster’s melodious voice, which could always be relied on to banish his own dark thoughts, and he hadn’t the least idea how much he truly understood of what he heard and how much had lodged between his ears. Ghoolion knew that Echo’s mind possessed the unique ability to store all this knowledge without its becoming a burden to him - indeed, without his even realising that he had learnt something of importance. Only in a Crat’s brain could this serene symbiosis of ignorance and intelligence have prevailed.

But Ghoolion’s playful tuition in the fundamental principles of alchemy was practical as well as theoretical. He granted the little Crat unlimited access to the laboratory and allowed him to wind round his legs while he was performing his daily tasks. Echo observed every one of the Alchemaster’s techniques and series of experiments. He was permitted to read Ghoolion’s notes, even the entries in his journal. What he failed to realise, however, was that all these figures and formulae, chemical ingredients and focal lengths, logarithms and barometric data, fermentation times and melting points, et cetera, were etching themselves into his brain.

He was allowed to look through all Ghoolion’s magnifying glasses, microscopes and telescopes, watch the alchemical furnace being fired and even be present at every stage in the operation of the Ghoolionic Preserver. He also sniffed powders and solutions, secret tinctures and ointments, essences and acids, and made a mental note of their odours, names and composition. Hanging on the laboratory walls were big blackboards bearing alchemistic tables, symbols and chemical compounds, all of which he studied from top to bottom. He read passages from priceless old alchemistic works, which Ghoolion brought him from the library. And at night, after a long day’s work and a meal of many courses, the Alchemaster would read to him from the secret texts in which he had recorded the most daring of his experiments. Echo’s little head absorbed all this information until it became what may well have been Zamonia’s biggest hoard of alchemistic knowledge, but he bore it lightly.

He was sometimes awake at night because the food lay heavy on his stomach, so he liked to walk it off by roaming the old castle until he got tired. When he encountered Ghoolion, as he occasionally did, he dived behind some piece of furniture and surreptitiously watched the Alchemaster at his nightly activities. These, as he soon discovered, were thoroughly unmysterious and predictable. Ghoolion would either sit down on a window seat and survey the town through a telescope, or repair to the library, with its stupefying aroma of old books, and mutter to himself as he read. He often messed around in the laboratory as well, of course, and because he felt unobserved at night his manner was far more feverish and restless than during the day. He would fire up the alchemical furnace, check on the progress of current experiments, or tap on the jars containing Leyden Manikins. Then he would hurry over to the big blackboard, wipe off formulae with a sponge and replace them with others; take a step backwards; fly into a rage; bellow at the blackboard and hurl the chalk into the fire; promptly calm down and carry out some elaborate experiment with the utmost serenity and composure; pace to and fro, reeling off an endless succession of figures and formulae; make an entry in his journal; rinse out some test tubes and retorts; sew up a damaged taxidermal specimen; tan a hide; add a few brushstrokes to a painting; scrub the floor; sweep the chimney; and so on and so forth. The old man never paused to rest.

Echo was reminded of an occasion when he’d scaled the ivy-covered walls of Malaisea’s municipal lunatic asylum. The roof of that unloved institution had afforded him a view of the exercise yard. What he saw there was remarkable. The lunatics were all behaving like people engaged in activities of supreme importance. One had made a pile of leaves in the corner of the yard and was guarding it against potential thieves with a resolute air. Another was banging his head against a wall with clockwork regularity, counting as he did so.