The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,36
of relief, as if that said it all.
But Echo persisted. ‘Cratesses?’
‘Yes, female Crats.’
‘You mean there’s another kind of Crat?’
‘Oh yes, certainly. Quite another kind. Tell me, do you really have no idea how you came into the world?’
‘Yes, my mistress told me she found me in a clump of Cratmint.’
Theodore groaned. ‘Oh dear, oh dear …’
‘You mean she was lying to me?’
‘Yes. No. Yes! I mean, er … Look, I won’t go into all the giobolical details now, I’ll simply give you a very avebbriated account of them, cencontrating on the bare essentials. All right?’
‘All right.’ Echo pricked up his ears.
‘Well, it’s like this. There aren’t any Cratesses left here in Lamaisea, but there may still be a few over there beyond the hoziron, on the far side of the mountains. Where love is concerned, they’ll have all the answers to your questions.’
‘Then I’ll never get to hear them,’ Echo said sadly, looking up at the moon again. ‘Ghoolion will slit my throat first.’
The Tuwituwu, who had been finding their conversation more and more embarrassing, flapped his wings and rose into the air.
‘Nightfall!’ he cried. ‘Time to go hunting! As I already told you, I unfortunately have to ornagise my own meals.’
And he went into a nosedive.
Echo continued to sit on the roof for a long time. He surveyed the Blue Mountains on the horizon, whose peaks were being carved out of the darkness by the faint light of the moon. Did another kind of Crat really exist beyond them? One that could dispel the restlessness he always experienced when the moon was full? The old nightbird couldn’t have expressed himself less clearly if he’d tried. Echo was feeling even more puzzled than before.
He looked up at the moon again and, although it was still far from full, he had an almost irresistible urge to utter a loud, piercing miaow.
Ghoolion’s Torture Chamber
The feeling that overcame Echo whenever he watched Ghoolion cooking was a blend of amazement, fascination and disgust. Within his personal domain the Alchemaster was an omnipotent tyrant. Malaisea was his kingdom, the castle his stronghold, the laboratory his throne room - and the kitchen his torture chamber. The cleavers and boning knives, meat mallets, potato mashers and pans of boiling oil were his instruments of torture and execution, the foodstuffs his submissive slaves, who flung themselves into boiling water or on to a red-hot grill at his behest. Eggs waited humbly to be beheaded, poultry volunteered to be dismembered or spatchcocked, steaks to be beaten tender, lobsters to be boiled alive.
‘Beat me!’ cried the cream.
‘Reduce me!’ gasped the gravy.
‘Drown me in dressing!’ groaned the salad.
Ghoolion carved a joint or kneaded a lump of dough as if dissecting or throttling a living creature. Like an executioner, he hurried from one instrument of torture to another, from grill to chopping block, as if eager to scorch or scald or hack his victims to death. Tongues of fire licked greedily at his frying pans and ignited the hot oil. Yellow flames leapt high into the air, lighting up the Alchemaster in a dramatic fashion. Wind blew in through the open windows, plucking at the steam rising from his pots and pans and inflating his cloak. The old man’s performance at the stove would have made a good circus act.
‘Anyone who can’t stand the heat’, he called to Echo above the hiss of the flames, ‘has no business in the kitchen!’ He removed red-hot casseroles from the oven without gloves, dipped his fingers in boiling soup to taste it and scooped fried potatoes out of seething fat with his bare hands.
‘Of course I feel the pain,’ he said when he noticed Echo’s look of horror. ‘I don’t respect it, that’s all.’
When he hurried from one part of the kitchen to another - hurried, mark you, not dashed - his movements were economical and unerring. Nothing ever got burnt or boiled over. At the Restaurant Ghoolion, the Alchemaster was head chef, sauce chef, waiter, wine waiter and dishwasher all rolled up into one. No tasks were beneath his dignity. He performed them all with the same ceremonious care and attention. When he wielded a kitchen knife his fast-moving hands were a blur. One heard the machine-gun burst of the blade on the chopping board and there lay a heap of gossamer-thin onion rings, a mound of finely chopped chives or a consummate tuna tartare. He carved a joint of roast beef with the unruffled precision of a brain surgeon, so perfectly that no