The Way of Muri (15 page)

Birds and fish had already homed in on the carcass and were dividing it up like experienced butchers. The terns got the tentacles. The sharks got everything else.

‘Wastrels!’ screeched one of the terns, with unbridled disdain.

Her scorn was directed at the happy-go-lucky pilot whales. Twitching in the air like a puppet on a string, the agitated bird watched as the pilot whales disappeared over the horizon.

‘Not a care in the world!’ she shrieked. The hard-working tern was genuinely outraged by the reckless roaming of these marine gypsies.

‘Why don’t they ever stop? All they do is roam about!’ squawked another tern, with one eye still on the squid.

The birds weren’t the last to partake of the meal that Dick had involuntarily provided for the local residents. Hungry guests continued to arrive at the site of the bloody battle. Sharks attacked the carcass greedily, ripping off huge chunks of flesh and simultaneously managing to hold back the smaller scavengers, which obediently retreated and waited for the bullies to make way. Unfortunately for them, however, the sharks’ appetites showed no sign of abating. Some of the more brazen individuals even followed the sperm whale for a while, but they gradually lost interest as the sea, attentive as a nurse, washed the
last traces of blood from his body. Annoyed by their own stupidity, one by one his persecutors returned to their cohorts.

‘Thanks for dinner, mate!’ called a marlin that had been hovering alongside Dick for a while. The twenty-foot swordfish had waited for the sharks to clear off before attempting to strike up a conversation. He was a genial, elderly male, and judging by the scars on his face he had lived a colourful life.

The sperm whale ignored him and kept moving. The terns, meanwhile, flew along behind Dick, hoping to be rewarded with another meal and continuing to revile the pilot whales and dolphins that they felt were loitering pointlessly about the Pacific Ocean.

‘Just ignore them!’ said the marlin, as the sperm whale released another jet of spray. ‘They don’t even know what they’re squawking on about. The impudent hussies!’ he continued indignantly. ‘You provided enough food to last them at least twenty-four hours, and still they complain. Typical small-minded small fry!’

Dick glided smoothly through the waves – a dreadnought equipped with massive flukes and jaws that were immune even to the attacks of killer whales (sharks were a minor irritation, barely warranting his attention). He had finally stopped bleeding and his entire head was encompassed in white stripes where the fat showed through his wounds, though these would soon heal over.

‘Those fools rush about between their nest and the sea,’ continued the swordfish, keeping pace with the sperm whale’s steady rhythm: a dive, a breach, a glimpse of his white back, a fountain, a slap of his tail, another dive. ‘Back and forth, back and forth! Terns flap about relentlessly, but at least they get the chance to rest. We never even slow down! Speed, speed, endless speed – that’s what makes fish and whales happy, isn’t it?’

The white-backed sperm whale continued to dive and surface. A rainbow hung in the spray above him.

‘I admire you, mate!’ cried the marlin, before he disappeared. ‘When I see travellers like you and those crazy pilot whales, it makes me want to push myself a little harder! We both know
there’s always more fuel to add to the fire… Farewell! Your journey will never end!’

With a flash of his sword, the marlin’s engine sprang into action. In a blaze of scales he was gone, leaving only stray silver bubbles in his wake. Without even knowing it this aquatic athlete had just sung a glorious hymn to Lin Peng.

Meanwhile Dick’s blowhole whistled rhythmically as he continued to dive and surface, releasing his spray and then diving again.

After making brief appearances in Friedrichshafen and Kempten, Muri passed  through Munich and began heading for Berlin.

The Bosnian cat met another kindred spirit on the way – a tiny spirit who had also been made homeless by fire when the oak tree he had been living in, near Ljubljana, had been struck by lightning. Instead of quietly bemoaning his fate and languishing on the roadside grass, the spirit had swiftly taken the decision to find a new home elsewhere. He couldn’t even contemplate his life without a dry and spacious hollow, without the bitter brandy smell of oak bark, without leaves playing in the sun and the wind, without being able to doze on a bed of moss. His mission was virtually impossible because oak trees, particularly those of a certain age, are usually inhabited. Nevertheless, the spirit was convinced that he would find an unoccupied tree somewhere between the Danube and the Siberian taiga. He spent quite a long time with the cat, flitting about either in front of him or behind, but this time Muri wasn’t at all irritated by his feverish twitching.

‘My new home must be in a glade or on a hillock,’ declared the spirit, darting ahead and then fluttering back and waiting for his fellow traveller to catch up. ‘I’m not just going to settle for any old tree, you know! No, my oak has to meet certain criteria. Its roots must be moist, and its leaves mustn’t burn or wilt in the summer sun. Its heart must be healthy and resonant, and its bark must be dry even in autumn, without even the slightest
suggestion of damp… I will take up residence only on these conditions! Do you hear what I’m saying, my friend?’

Muri nodded. He had been trotting along the highway to Poznań for several days now, getting soaked by the autumn rain. The incessant flow of Polish and German cars droned past just a few feet away, almost knocking him down with their spray. He couldn’t use the road; he had to make his way along the roadside ditches, jumping over plastic canisters and other debris and carefully avoiding the lethal fragments of broken glass. This didn’t affect his pace, and he continued to devour mile after mile. His whiskers stood out proudly, and his eyes shone like emeralds.

It turned out that the Serb was right. There were hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of different creatures out on the road – running, striding, scurrying and crawling nearby. The commotion was particularly noticeable on the Polish motorways, but even the country roads, lanes and tracks were far from deserted. The low, rainy sky above the cat and the spirit constantly rustled with wings. Migratory birds were easily identifiable by their extreme rarity, whistling through the air as they hurried overhead, screeching and quacking.

Eventually the time came for the spirit to take his leave. ‘Farewell!’ he squeaked, turning east.

‘Goodbye!’ replied Muri, continuing his path northwards.

In a field near Warsaw he met a philosopher.

The dog’s name was Adolf, and he turned out to be quite an intellectual. The scruffy, shaggy dog demonstrated his Socratic good nature by not chasing the weakened Muri out of the rusty shelter where the hay was stored.

‘Imagine my situation, if you will,’ said Adolf, settling down and courteously shielding the shivering cat from the wind with his weather-beaten hide. ‘Over there, behind that little wood, is the village where I first came into this world! I’ve got a home and a caring family waiting for me there, including a little girl who
thinks the world of me. I know that they would gladly provide me with a warm kennel, plenty of food and everything else I could ever need. All I have to do is get up and walk across the field, through the wood and over two low fences… and my fate will be decided.’

‘So what’s the problem?’ asked Muri, who had calmed down and stopped arching his back. ‘What are you still doing here?’

‘I’m very clever, you know,’ continued the dog, as though he hadn’t heard the question. ‘It’s in my genes. My father’s a pedigree German shepherd. True, my mother’s blood is not particularly clean – she’s half collie, half mongrel – but she’s very clever and still working as a sheepdog, despite her age. It was only a matter of time before my talent was spotted by the professionals. A travelling circus stopped at a little town nearby, about three miles away. It doesn’t matter if you don’t know what a travelling circus is… The point is that yesterday I was apprehended by a stout old gentleman with an extremely serious look about him, who performs in the ring as both a magician and a clown. He called me to his caravan, looked at me for a long time and then invited me in. Naturally I declined, in spite of the tasty sausage he was offering, but I already knew that he was interested in me – I had run past their camp a couple of days previously, and the same gentleman had treated me to the leftovers of a very tasty goulash. Yesterday he said that he was in urgent need of a dog to perform in his show, one that was sharp and quick-witted – a mongrel would do perfectly! He inspected me all over, behind my ears, along my back… I even let him look at my teeth, but I wouldn’t jump into his caravan, which seemed to deeply disappoint him. He kept saying the same things over again – that I was exactly what he’d been looking for, that circus life would suit me down to the ground. If I go back there I know they’ll take me in straight away, and it’ll be great! Of course I’ll have to work like a dog, as it were, but I can tell he’s not a bad person. I’ll get to see the world and perform in the ring. I might even become
a celebrity! And I expect they’ll take care of me when I grow old…’

‘Well, what are you waiting for?’ said Muri.

‘There’s someone else, too – an old woman. She’s coming apart a bit at the seams, but she’s got at least another ten years in her,’ said Adolf thoughtfully. ‘I’ve lost count of the number of times she’s plied me with food and tried to persuade me to stay. She’s desperate for company. She’d even let me live in the house! I could lie by the fire for days, just scratching my sides…’

‘Seriously, what are you still doing here?’ asked the cat. ‘Do you actually have a brain?’

Adolf grinned, baring his canines, which dripped with inoffensive saliva.

‘Ah, now I understand!’ he exclaimed. ‘You’re one of those cats who set out on some kind of mission, and now you’re hurrying blindly towards your goal. You simply cannot conceive of an alternative and won’t let anything distract you. Most creatures are like you, always rushing about at breakneck speed, whereas I am at a permanent crossroads. I could join the circus – that’s one option. Or I could throw my lot in with the old woman, and then my fate would turn out completely differently! I’m paralysed by the possibility of choice, and that’s why I’m staying right here. You have only one wretched goal, but I have too many to count. It’s impossible for me to follow all these paths and choose a thousand different fates simultaneously without fragmenting into a million versions of myself. So that is why I have opted for complete inertia.’

‘You’re insane!’ exclaimed Muri, with conviction. ‘I don’t even want to try and understand you. I couldn’t care less about your infinite paths and choices! All I need is one house and one blanket.’

‘I don’t expect you to understand!’ retorted the dog. ‘You should consider yourself lucky it doesn’t concern you. Simultaneously seeing all paths, all possible fates, is not the privilege of vainglorious itinerants such as you, for whom the entire world is reduced to a single and invariably pointless quest!’

‘My journey is worth more than that!’ retorted the cat.

‘Is that so?’ answered the philosopher. ‘Just think about it… If you were in my place, would you take even one small step? Being the central point from which all paths lead, being master of your own destiny, being drunk on the possibility of choosing at any moment to take either one road or another… The only solution is to carry on lying here under this shelter, and that’s that.’

‘I would rather be doing something,’ answered Muri.

‘You don’t think I’m doing something by acknowledging all the possibilities that are open to me?’

‘Look!’ the cat interrupted the discussion. ‘As I understand it, your path begins and ends here. Not that there’s anything wrong with that! Everyone’s path is different, but it’s time for me to leave. The rain has stopped and I’ve been idle long enough, so farewell!’

Muri made it to Warsaw. At the same time, 200 miles from Mexico, under the constellations of the Tropic of Cancer, the sperm whale began his fiftieth journey around the world.

On his way north, the whale got lost in the greatest desert on Earth. A month later, not far from San Francisco, the crew and passengers of the liner
Australia
were treated to the incredible sight of Dick’s enormous body appearing out of the abundant foam, right alongside the ship. He was surrounded by smaller whales that had joined him along the way. Snorting and showing their tails, the group made some impressive waves off the port side of the
Australia
. To please his passengers, the captain gave the order to reduce their speed. The spectators stayed on deck until it was completely dark and the stewards began handing out the ship’s own brand of grog, known as ‘Fiery Jigger’. The speakers blared out a popular song from that year, which contained the following words:

Undeterred, Dick continued his semicentennial run.

As the sperm whale reached Queen Charlotte Sound, he ran into snowstorms that were heading south after decorating Alaska with the world’s most perfect whitewash. The porpoises had long since left for warmer waters. The Aleutian Islands loomed in the distance, melancholy in their extreme desolation. The fur seals were making their own journey along the coast together with their young. The little ones were testing their strength, venturing cautiously into open water, and they perished in their thousands. Their silvery carcasses, plastered with seaweed and sand, were relentlessly thrown ashore by the surf. But they were also following their calling! The experienced whale continued heading north, even though hordes of storm petrels were already leaving these barren regions. A trail of silt, raised from the depths, stretched behind the whale like a mantle. He was not in any particular hurry, although staying in the murky northern waters was not without danger – the first ice floes were already visible here and there.