The Alchemaster's Apprentice - By Walter Moers Page 0,40

liquid into one of seven cut-glass bowls standing on the table. Then he took a second bottle and poured some yellow liquid into another bowl.

Echo jumped up on the table and sniffed the liquid inquisitively. ‘I’ve never drunk any of this stuff before,’ he said. ‘I don’t even know if it’ll agree with me.’

‘Crats have two livers,’ said Ghoolion. ‘It’ll agree with you, never fear.’ He went on filling the bowls with liquid, some red, some yellow.

‘What kind of juice is this?’ Echo enquired. ‘My mistress never drank any. Why is some pale and some dark?’

‘This is wine,’ Ghoolion said solemnly. ‘Wine is drinkable sunlight. It’s the most glorious summer’s day imaginable, captured in a bottle. Wine can be a melody in a cut-glass goblet, but it can also be a cacophony in a dirty tumbler, or a rainy autumn night, or a funeral march that scorches your tongue.’

Wine could evidently be quite a lot of things, Echo reflected.

‘Wine’, said Ghoolion, ‘can provide you with the inspiration of a lifetime - or rob you of your wits completely. Where wine is concerned, there’s only one thing to be said about it with any certainty.’

‘Which is?’

‘The better the wine, the more it costs!’ Ghoolion guffawed at his own little joke. ‘Right, let’s get on with the tasting.’

Whatever this special kind of juice was, Ghoolion had certainly sampled some. Furthermore, it seemed to have wrought a change in him, whether for better or worse, Echo still couldn’t tell. There was something about the Alchemaster’s manner that was thoroughly out of keeping with his usual grim composure.

Ghoolion filled a glass with red wine and held it up to the light.

‘First,’ he cried, ‘use your eyes!’

He held the glass close to his face, shut his left eye and stared at it with his right.

‘You taste with your eyes as well as your palate,’ he said. ‘Is the wine red or white? The connoisseur can tell whether he’s dealing with a red wine or a white wine. As a general rule, if the wine is translucent and pale gold in colour, it may be a white wine, but if it’s red and inky and you can’t see through it, the chances are that it’s a red wine. If, on the other hand, it’s pink and translucent, it’s a rosé - the hermaphrodite among wines.’

At the moment, wine seemed to be having a favourable effect on the Alchemaster. For the first time ever, he didn’t appear to be taking what he was saying in Echo’s presence entirely seriously.

Echo sniffed the wine in the first little bowl. It was dark red and smelt intoxicating. He stuck his tongue in it, intending to lap up a mouthful, then recoiled indignantly.

‘Ugh!’ he said, pulling a face.

‘What’s the matter?’ Ghoolion asked.

‘It tastes funny. So sour.’

‘Sour be damned! You’ll soon get used to it. The first sip of wine never tastes nice. Perseverance, that’s the essential thing. Get it down you! Appetite comes with eating and it’s the same with drinking.’

Echo took a few reluctant sips. Sewer Dragon’s knilch had also tasted nasty at first, but then … He was growing warm, first in the tummy, then in the head. It was a nice feeling. Obediently, he lapped up the rest of the bowl.

‘Secondly the nose.’ Ghoolion stuck his long, pointed nose in the glass and sniffed with relish. ‘The wine is now being olfactorily analysed. Aaah! Mm! Does it smell of peach blossom wafted through an olive grove by the breeze in springtime? Of a freshly bisected grapefruit? Or of currant buns and vanilla cream, like this one? If your mistress never touched a drop of wine she was missing something, don’t you agree?’

‘Absolutely!’ said Echo, who was now on his second bowl. The wine had already ceased to taste sour. This one had a rather fruity quality, like the sweet acidity of a ripe raspberry. His ears were also getting warm now.

‘Well,’ asked Ghoolion, ‘does that taste better?’

‘It tashtsh lovely!’ Echo said. Tashtsh? Had he said ‘tashtsh’?

Ghoolion knocked back his wine and promptly poured himself another glass from a different bottle. He plunged his nose in it and inhaled, only to remove it quickly with a grimace of indignation.

‘Or does it smell like a worm-eaten carpenter’s bench? Like a dishcloth soaked in sour milk? Like the sock of a soldier suffering from athlete’s foot? Or, as this disastrous purchase does, like a dead lemming’s sweaty armpit? The secondary aromas have been completely destroyed - a sign of poor fermentation.