Mister B. Gone

picked up the knife the young man had dropped. I proffered it to him, handle first.

'Here,' I said. 'Take it. And if I should do or say anything that troubles you, slice off my tongue and prick out my eyes.'

The young man didn't move.

'Take the knife, Peter,' Gutenberg said. 'But you'll have no need of slicing or pricking.'

The young man took back his knife. 'I know how to use it,' he warned. 'I've killed men.'

'Peter!'

'I'm just telling him the truth, Johannes. You're the one who wanted this house made into a fortress.'

'Yes, that I did,' Guttenberg replied, almost guiltily. 'But I have much to protect.'

'I know,' Peter said. 'So why are you letting this, this creature in?'

'Don't be cruel, Peter.'

'Would killing him be cruel?'

'Not if I deserved it,' I interjected. 'If I meant harm to anyone or anything under this roof, then I would think you perfectly within your rights to cut me from groin to gullet.'

Young Peter looked at me with bewilderment, his mouth opening and closing as though some reply was imminent, though none was forthcoming.

Gutenberg had something to say, however. 'Let's not talk of death, not with so much we two have dreamt of finally in sight.' He smiled as he spoke, and I got a glimpse of the younger, happier man he had once been, before his invention and the demands of keeping it from being stolen or copied had made him into a man who slept too little and feared too much.

'Please, my friend,' I said as I approached, 'think of me as a traveler from that dream place where your vision first came.'

'You know of the vision that inspired my press?'

'Of course.' I was moving into swampy ground here, given that I didn't know whether Gutenberg had designed this 'press' of his for the squashing of lice or for taking creases from his trousers. But I wasn't in this house by accident, that much was certain. Gutenberg had dreamt me here. He had dreamt even the words he would say to me, and the words I would say in return.

'I would be very honored,' I said, 'if I might see the Secret of Fortress Gutenberg.' I spoke as I had heard high-brow people speak, with a certain detachment, as though nothing was really of any great significance to them.

'The honor would be mine, Mister Botch.'

'Just Mister B. is fine. And shall I call you Johannes, as we've already met?'

'Already met?' Gutenberg said, escorting me through the first room of his workshop. 'You mean, you dreamt of me, as I did of you?'

'Regrettably I seldom dream, Johannes,' I replied. 'My experience of the world and its cruelties and disappointments has erased my faith in such things. I am a soul who chooses to travel the world behind this burned face, simply to test the way Humankind approaches those who suffer.'

'Not well, you're going to say.'

'That would be an understatement.'

'Oh but, sir,' Gutenberg said, a sudden passion in his voice and manner, 'a new age is about to begin. One which will rid this world of cruelty you've seen by giving men a cure for their ignorance, which is where all cruelty begins.'

'That's quite a claim, Johannes.'

'But you know why I make it, don't you? You wouldn't be here if you didn't.'

'Everybody's here,' said a lushly over articulated voice belonging to an enormously obese man, an Archbishop to judge by the lavish cloth of which his vestments were made and the massive jewel-encrusted cross that hung about his neck, which was so fat it gathered in rolls, which were blotchy from an excess of wine. But his appetite for food and drink had not sated that other hunger, the one that had summoned him to serve Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Beneath heavy lids his eyes had a feverish glint about them. This was a man sick with power. His flesh was as white as bled meat, his face covered in a sheen of sweat that had seeped into, and darkened, the rim of his scarlet skullcap. In one hand, he held a staff in the form of a shepherd's crook, made only of gold and decorated with enough rubies and emeralds to buy ten thousand thousand sheep. In the other, held discreetly at his side, was a pork bone with a sizable portion of pig's rump still awaiting his assault.

'And so,' he went on, 'the question inevitably follows: Whose side are you on?'

I must surely have looked aghast, if only for the blink of an eye, before the answer came, delivered with the same unassailable authority that had carried all my remarks so far.

'Why yours, Excellency,' I said, my voice dripping with such an excess of devotion that I hoped the Archbishop would suspect I was mocking him. To drive the joke home, I dropped to my knees and reached for the hand that held the pork bone (which I gave him the impression I did not see, so overcome was I by the chance to prostrate myself before him), and, not knowing which of his many rings church protocol dictated I kiss, I kissed them all, the biggest of them twice. I then relinquished his hand so that it could return the pork meat to his mouth. Remaining on my knees before him, I lifted my ruined face and I said: 'I am happy to be of whatever service I may to your Excellency.'

'Well, for one, you don't need to stay down there, Mister Botch,' he said. 'Get up. You've made your allegiance clear. I have just one question.'

'It is?'

'Your disfigurement — '

'An accident, when I was a baby. Mother was bathing me on her knee when I was two weeks old. I was born on Christmas Eve, it was bitter cold, and she feared my getting a chill. So she built the fire in the hearth high, so I would stay warm as she washed me. But I became slippery as a fish once I was covered in soap, and I slipped out of her hands.'

'No!' said Johannes.

I had got to my feet by now and turned to him to say: 'It's true. I fell into the flames, and before my mother could pluck me out I was burned.'

'Entirely?' said the Archbishop.

'Entirely, my lord. There is no part of me which is not burned.'

'What a terrible thing!'

'It was too much for my mother. Even though I had survived the accident, she could not bear to look at me. And rather than do so she died. When I was eleven I left my father's house, because my brothers were so cruel to me, and went to find somebody in the world who would look past my wounds — which I know are abhorrent to many — and see my soul.'

'Such a story!' said another voice, this of a well-rounded woman who had come in behind me at some point in my exchange with Gutenberg. I turned and bowed to her.

'This is my wife, Hannah. Hannah this is Mister B.'

'The man you dreamt about,' Hannah replied.

'Down to the last…' he seemed lost for the appropriate word. 'Last…'

'Scar,' I prompted him, smiling the horror of my appearance away.

'He suffered greatly,' Gutenberg said to his wife. 'His story should be heard. Will you have Peter fetch wine?'

'Might I also respectfully request some bread?' I asked Gutenberg. 'I have not eaten since I woke from my dream of this house.'

'We can do better than bread,' Hannah replied. 'I will bring what's left of the pork.' Then she threw a less than loving glance at the Archbishop. 'And some cheese, with the bread and wine.'

'That is most generous,' I said. I wasn't faking my gratitude. I was both parched and fiercely hungry.

'I'll be back in a few minutes,' Hannah said, her discomfort at being in my presence all too plain. She departed hastily, muttering a prayer as she went.

'My wife is uneasy, I'm afraid,' Gutenberg said.

'Because of me?'

'Well… you're part of it, to be truthful. I described you to her when I woke from my dream, and now here you