Beneath Unwashed Robes
Being a Prophet: Noel's autobio­graphical novel

 

Front cover

Prologue: Awakening
1: Discovery
2: Adolescence
3: Submergence
4: Preparation
5: Escalation
6: Recreation
7: Inflation
8: Prophetry
9: Preachery
10: Diary
11: Trial

Chapter 11: Trial

The next morning I prepared myself for the trial. I put on some clothes Smeagolurtz had brought me: jeans, a sweatshirt, and leather shoes. After decades in robes and sandals, or robe-like hospital garb, it felt very quaint. But I wanted the judge to know that I had matured beyond my prophet years. I combed my hair and beard and chased away all remaining squirrel squatters. And I cleaned the mirror onto which someone had written "Hey, Master! Long time no see! When can we re-start our crusade?" with toothpaste.

Smeagolurtz and Bqggz came to fetch me, and we jumped into the toilet to evade the protesters. After a short crawl through the pipes and a refreshing swim through the city sewers we climbed out of a water tap not far from the courtroom. "Well, then", said Smeagolurtz, brushed some used condoms from his elegant waterproof suitcase and re-lit his cigarette, which had gone out on the way.

We entered the courtroom to find that most of the protesters were already there. They were sitting on the spectator benches, and angry murmur arose when I walked through the door. But a row of policemen protected me, ready to quell any uproar that might arise.

I sat down at a small table in front of a huge desk. Behind this desk the judge towered over me and the rest of the room. He was a bulky man with a menacing face, and under his unmoving stare I shrunk approximately three inches. Something was odd about him, but I could not pinpoint it. "Present the evidence", the judge snarled, and thus the trial began.

***

The hearing of the witnesses lasted all day. One after the other, the protesters stepped forward and testified against me. There were some interesting stories among all that. One woman claimed I had climbed into her house through the chimney and danced naked in her living room, giving their children a traumatic fear of Santa Claus. Santa Claus accused me of impersonating him on several occasions. A giant hamster skeleton complained that I had stolen its skin. The Eddings fan with the ridiculous armour accused me of having stolen his flail, something that was definitely not true.

But the majority of testimonies consisted of the same things, repeated over and over and over. I had lured these people to my temple with false promises, brainwashed them, extracted all their money and left them in emotional turmoil once the cult was no more. I thought highly of Bqggz at this moment, because he stepped in and testified himself, trying to defend me. He claimed that I could not be held responsible for all my actions, since I evidently had been under the influence of a few malevolent persons myself - Udunvagor, the Old Pseudo and the rest of the bunch. However, the judge seemed unimpressed, and Smeagolurtz as my advocate became more and more nervous as he saw the whole thing slipping out of his hands. He started lighting new cigarettes while he was just halfway through the old ones, and he furiously attacked the witnesses, calling them liars and worse. But nothing helped.

Finally the last protester had spoken, and the judge indicated he was about to send me to prison, a gulag or an electric chair, or, possibly, to cut me into three parts first and then do all of that at once. Either way, he would not let me off the hook. The judge stared at me, and my eyes began to water, partly because I felt so utterly destroyed, and partly because I realized now what was odd about him. He had not blinked once since the trial begun. A trick judges learn to intimidate criminals, I guessed.

"Any final words?" asked the judge, and his little hammer hovered over the table, ready to deliver that bang that would seal my fate. I looked through the room in sheer panic, like a deer frantically searching an exit from the hunters' trap. Smeagolurtz smoked three cigarettes at once. Bqggz bit his lips nervously. I longed for a pipe of calming weed and wished Papa Tee was here to hand me one. Suddenly I had the feeling that something was wrong, very wrong. If only, I thought, I could reconstruct these last missing seconds of my memory, no more than a minute, which still eluded me-

-Fire. Pain. Chaos. Shots.

I clenched my fist. I was in two places at once. There I was in the courtroom, with the stone-faced judge, the two orcs - and there I was in the temple during the last moments of my empire. I held up my arms. "For Tolkien!" I thundered. A soldier with a dangerous-looking rifle jumped onto the pedestal where I was standing, and I blew him up with the machine gun. Or I tried, but had to discover that it was jammed. Strawberry, my favourite, but that did not help at all right now. I retreated from the pedestal.

"Yohoho! Babylon! You will never win! Jah's the alpha, man, and the omega!" With a loud cry Papa Tlzotlicoatl stormed between me and the soldier. He was Rastafarian now and Aztec priest, a mighty warrior defending his friend. His dreadlocks whirled through the room and felled several attackers. A spear was in his hand, and reggae blared from his ghetto blaster. The foundations of my temple shook.

"Watch out!" I yelled in panic. Papa Tee turned his head towards me. It all seemed to happen in slow motion. The soldier, his ears already bleeding from the vicious reggae beats, raised his rifle in a last, desperate effort. A single shot fell.

Papa Tee opened his mouth. The spear dropped out of his hand and rolled from the pedestal. The music fell silent, and Papa Tee sank to his knees. A red stain appeared on his shirt and grew with a sickening speed.

I knelt down next to him. "No!" I whispered. "That cannot be!"

Papa Tee looked at me with his big, friendly, always slightly clouded eyes. "See you..." he murmured while something red trickled out of his mouth, "see you on the other side... Zion, I see Zion... Love and peace, man..." Then he said no more.

I knelt on the pedestal, dumbfounded, and held my dead friend in my arms. The soldier had collapsed as well, but I paid no attention. Around me the last line of my defense crumbled. A mighty explosion brought down one wall of the great hall, and big blocks of basalt and obsidian started to fall from the ceiling. And then Bqggz arrived, pushing aside my guards. He did not wear a mask anymore, and he was wielding a dangerous-looking waffle iron. Remnants of several well-toasted attackers hung from it. "Noeel!" he shouted. "Come! Get out of here, you idiot! Over here, if you want to survive!"

But just in this moment, a large wooden bar fell from the roof and smashed against my head.

***

The fires before my inner eye subsided. I sat in my chair in front of the judge, breathing heavily, clenching the armrests. Just one or two seconds had passed in real time. The judge's hammer fell, but I hardly noticed it as my brain began to work furiously.

Papa Tee was dead. I knew that. But Smeagolurtz had claimed that he was alive, that he had married Bombadillia, that they had founded a family. That was too much to be a simple misunderstanding. Smeagolurtz had lied to me. But why? Why should he?

I had asked him about Bombadillia. Smeagolurtz, unprepared for that question, had made up a story to keep me away from her. He had to keep me away from her, for some reason. He knew I had not remembered everything, not Papa Tee's death at least, or he wouldn't have claimed he was alive. How could he know what I remembered and what not? Bqggz, I thought. Bqggz had told him. My old friend or enemy Baggy had been pulling strings in the background. He had hired Smeagolurtz, after all.

There was, I concluded, something Bqggz did not want me to know. Something he had been hiding from me ever since I woke up. Something so big and obvious that a single meeting with Bombadillia would have utterly destroyed his little ruse.

I stood up. The judge, Bqggz and Smeagolurtz protested, but I did not listen. I walked up to the judge's table and looked behind it.

The judge had no lower half. Beneath the table there was an elaborate mechanism of pinwheels, spinning like the inside of a clockwork. Hinges and wires connected that mechanism to the upper half. The judge was artificial. A small slip of paper was taped to him, a note from 'Jack's Rent-A-Judge service". It was billing a certain Mr. Bagronk.

Very slowly I looked up, and my eyes met those of Bqggz. Smeagolurtz shrugged and rose from his chair. "Time to start packing", he said.

The protesters in the audience had fallen silent as well. Their leader, a fat guy with a "Noel ruined my life" shirt, turned towards Bqggz, who was now visibly sweating. "We'll still get paid, won't we?" he asked. Then he and his ruffians followed Smeagolurtz outside. I was alone with Bqggz.

"Smeagolurtz! You coward! Come back at once!" yelled Bqggz. "I know what-" What he knew I never learned, for in this moment I had somersaulted over my little table, landed in front of Bqggz and grabbed him by the collar. "What the hell is going on", I shouted into his smug little orc face. "You set this all up! The judge, the trial - everything!"

Bqggz gasped. "Noeel, please!" he squeaked. "You don't know what you're doing! You're still confused from the coma. They thought you were so dangerous that they wanted to rely on an artificial judge and-"

I hit him. Orc teeth flew through the room and got stuck in the spinning wheels, and with a tortured creaking they came to a halt. "Unspecified error", the judge thundered. "Please contact manufacturer. Press nose to reboot."

"The truth!" I demanded. "Now!" I lifted up my fist again.

"Okay!" gasped Bqggz. "Okay! Stop it. The truth." I let go of the collar, and Bqggz slid back into his chair, holding his cheek. "About six months after you fell into that coma, there was indeed public unrest against you. People protested below your window, just like these guys. A trial was scheduled, just like this one."

I waved my fist menacingly. Bqggz grinned and spat out a few more teeth. "It's true", he said. "But then something happened. A guy whose name I forgot, Hackson or Lackson or something, made a film version of Lord of the Rings. And a few more Harry Potter volumes came out. An avalanche of merchandise followed... and suddenly, the world was awash in bad fantasy. Fantasy inferior to Tolkien's vision, and nobody challenged it. People realized that your quest for purity had not been such a bad thing after all. A bit over the top perhaps, but necessary to keep the balance. Public opinion swung in your favour. The trial was cancelled, and you were officially rehabilitated."

"But..." I began, utterly confused. "What was your role? Why this ruse?"

"At that time, I had hit rock bottom", admitted Bqggz. "My communist party had split. Finances were a mess. We were, factually, broke. And there were you, seemingly forever unconscious, with billions and billions still safely stored on Swiss accounts. I ask you, Noeel: what would you have done?" I answered not, and Bqggz continued. "I funneled off money. A little at first, then more and more. My party prospered again. Dammit, Noeel, I saved your life in that temple! I deserved a little compensation. At least that was what I told myself to calm down my guilty conscience."

I started to understand. "And then I woke up", I said slowly.

Bqggz nodded. "Right. We had become completely dependant on these financial infusions, and I did not want you to discover what I had done. Which you would have, once you started rebuilding your empire. So I bought the hospital. I bought the doctor, the nurses, and a few unemployed guys as protesters. I never planned to harm you. My sole aim was to isolate you in that hospital, to keep you away from the real world, so that I could continue spending your money."

"What did you need that much money for?" I inquired. I knew how much I had scraped together, and even running a communist party from it would have hardly left a noticeable dent.

"Oh, it was not just the party", Bqggz admitted. "Then there was my research about parallel universes. Noeel, there are other worlds out there! According to my theory, there is at least one where the revolution has already been carried out by sentient handkerchiefs. I have to find that world, Noeel! And with just six more months of renting both CERN and the Hubble Telescope I would have found it!"

I shook my head. Obviously Bqggz had gone insane - sentient handkerchiefs, what nonsense! - but that was not my concern right now. "How long?", I asked. "How long would you have kept this up?"

"I don't know", wailed Bqggz. "I honestly don't know. It was no great masterplan. When I heard the news that you were waking up, I panicked. I made things up as I went along. Noeel, I'm sorry. I really am. I didn't want it to come this far."

"And Smeagolurtz? Who is he?" I asked. "What role did he play?"

"He's the financial organiser of the Bolshevork Party", Bqggz said. "He knew how dire our situation really was, so I let him in on my plan."

I sat down again, slowly digesting all those news. "So I'm not accused of anything", I said. "There is noone out there to get me. People actually do want me to continue my crusade."

"That's right", Bqggz said and wiped his mouth. He fetched a crumpled piece of paper out of his pockets. "This is a list of your possessions. There's still much left. I suppose you want it back."

I closed my eyes and took a deep breath. "Keep it", I said.

"Uh... what?" said Bqggz. He looked at me as if I had just grown a second head.

"Don't you remember what I said?" I asked, and a great peace overcame me. "I'm through with this prophet business, I don't want it anymore. I need a fresh start. Go look for your handkerchieves, if that makes you happy. There's just one thing you'll give me."

"Anything", said Bqggz weakly.

"Bombadillia's phone number", I said.

Bqggz ripped a little edge from the sheet and scribbled some numbers on it. I took it from his trembling fingers, then, following a sudden impulse, I patted my old friend's shoulder. "You better go and pay these ruffians now", I said. "They look like they can get quite nasty when they're denied what's theirs." Then I started walking towards the exit.

"Where are you going?" Bqggz asked.

I thought for a second. "I have a wedding proposal to make", I said. "Then, I don't know. Perhaps Jamaica. If you ever happen to get there, there's a place that has a good light show. Or so I've been told." I smiled. "At least it's going to get a good light show, once I take over again. You pay the beer."

And then I walked out of the door, and the sun was shining, and all birds praised Tolkien in the sky.

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