The Water-Method Man

Akthelt dropped on his knees before her, whimpering his apologies and begging forgiveness for the burden he had forced her to bear. 'I bear another burden,' Gunnel said coldly. 'Hrothrund's spawn is in my belly. You shall have to bear that for me too.'

By this time Akthelt was ready to accept almost anything from her, so he agreed abjectly.

'Now,' she said. 'Take your true wife home.'

Akthelt did so, and bore his burden well enough until the child of Hrothrund was born. But he could not fathom her affection for the child; to him, the spirit of the father-murderer, wife-raper lived within the babe, so he slew it and threw it to the wild boars in the moat. It would have been a girl.

'I could forgive you much,' Gunnel told him, 'but I will never forgive you this.'

'You'll learn to,' he said, but he wasn't so sure. He slept badly - and alone - while Gunnel roamed the castle every night like a streetwalker whose price was too high for any passer-by.

Then, one night, she came to his bed and made violent love to him, saying she at last felt reconciled to him. But in the morning, she asked the chamber girl for a bucket of fresh eels.

After that, the kingdom of Thak went the way of most kingdoms whose leadership is up for grabs. Gunnel was completely off her rocker, of course. She herself announced Akthelt's death at the morning session of the Council of Elders. She brought Akthelt's head, crammed with eels, to the meeting, placed it on a meat board and set it before the Elders, plunk in the middle of the great table. For years she had been in the habit of serving exotic dishes at these weekly meetings, so many of the Elders were caught off guard.

'Akthelt is dead,' she announced, putting the dish down.

One of the Elders was so old that his eyesight was gone. He groped his hand toward the head on the table, which was his customary manner of identifying Gunnel's exotic dishes. 'Live eel!' he exclaimed. The Elders were not sure what to do.

The obvious successor to the throne was young Axelrulf, Akthelt and Gunnel's only son, who was now in charge of the occupation of Flan. The Council of Elders sent a messenger to him, informing him of his father's murder at his mother's hand and pointing out that the kingdom of Thak was in danger of division without strong leadership. But Axelrulf was having an awfully good time among the Flans. They were a handsome, hedonistic and civilized people, the living was easy, and Axelrulf had never had political ambitions. At least, that was part of his reasoning. 'Tell Mother I'm very sorry,' he told the messenger.

In the meantime, some of the Elders were conspiring to appoint one of their own to the throne, and to murder Axelrulf should he come back to claim his birthright. That was the larger part of Axelrulf's reasoning for not being interested in the position. He was no fool!

What happened then was what always happens. When no strong leader emerged, the kingdom of Thak erupted in chaotic and ineffectual rebellion. At the castle, Gunnel became obsessed with a rash of lovers, and there were more buckets of fresh eels. Finally, of course, she took a lover who was not so spent and love-drugged as he looked, and he cut her head off. He didn't bother with the eels, though.

Finally, when the kingdom of Thak was hardly even a kingdom any more, but a disorganized land with hundreds of tiny, feuding fiefs, what happened then was what always happens too.

Young Axelrulf rode up from Flan. In fact, he liked the Flans so much that he brought an army of them into the kingdom of Thak and took over the whole mess very easily. He made peace in the kingdom by killing all the feuders who wanted war. So Thak became Flan, sort of, and Axelrulf married a nice Flan girl named Cronigen.

In the last stanza of Akthelt and Gunnel, the anonymous author implies that the story of Axelrulf and Gronigen is probably not much different from the story of Akthelt and Gunnel. So why stop it here?

Bogus Trumper was more than willing to agree. When he had finished all four hundred and twenty-one stanzas, it seemed a pretty empty accomplishment. In part this was because he had been so honest a translator that there was nothing of his own in the whole work. So he added something.

Remember the part where Gunnel cuts off Hrothrund's head? And then Akthelt's head? Well, Trumper added an implication that she cut off more than heads. It fitted, after all. It suited the story, it certainly suited Gunnel, and most of all, it suited Bogus. He really believed that Gunnel would have cut off more than their heads, but that for reasons of etiquette guiding the literature of the time, the author had been obliged to discreetly edit certain details. Anyway, it made Trumper feel better and gave him a small stake of his own in the translation.

Dr Holster was very pleased with Akthelt and Gunnel. 'Such a rich work!' he exclaimed. 'Such a basic pessimism!' The old man moved his arms like a symphony conductor. 'Such a crude story! Such a violent, barbaric people! Even sex is a blood sport!'

The notion was no surprise to Trumper. He was a little uneasy, however, that Holster had especially liked the implication he had added, and when the old man suggested a footnote to emphasize the boldness of such an act, Bogus declined by saying he didn't care to draw attention to it.

'And the part with the eels!' cried Holster. 'Think of it! She cut off their pricks! How perfect - but I just couldn't imagine it!'

'I could,' said Fred Bogus Trumper, BA, MA, PhD.

So finally he had finished something. He packed and reread his mail. With nothing to occupy him, he felt as if his pulse had slowed down, as if his blood was reptile-thick.

There hadn't been any more mail from Tulpen. His mother had written about his father's ulcer. Bogus felt a little guilty and tried to think of a gift. After some thought, he went to a fancy-food store and sent his father a prime boned Amish ham. Too late, he wondered if ham was good for an ulcer, and quickly sent a letter apologizing for the gift.

He heard again from Couth. Biggie had delivered an eight-pound baby girl, named Anna Bennett. Another Anna. Trying to imagine the baby, Trumper remembered that the ham he'd sent his father also weighed eight pounds. But he felt so happy for Couth and Biggie that he sent them a ham too.

And he heard from Ralph. Typically, a mysterious letter. It mentioned nothing about Trumper abandoning a film career or leaving Ralph Packer Films, Inc., in the lurch, but said simply that he thought Trumper should at least come see Tulpen. Surprisingly, Ralph spent most of the letter describing the girl he was living with now, someone called Matje, 'like the herring, you know?' The girl was 'not voluptuous, but a brimming person', and Ralph added that 'even Tulpen likes her'.

Trumper had no picture of what in hell was going on. He understood why Ralph had really written the letter, though; Ralph wanted Bogus's permission to release the film. Fucking Up was done, Trumper knew.

Bogus left the letter unanswered for a few weeks. Then one night after his thesis was finished and he was feeling especially aimless, he went to see a movie. It wa

s a film about a homosexual airline pilot who is afraid of rain. By some slip-up, he sleeps with a sympathetic stewardess, who cures him of both his nasty homosexuality and his fear of the weather. Evidently he was afraid of rain because he was a homosexual. It was a sloppy and offensive movie in every way, Trumper thought, and afterward he sent a telegram to Ralph. 'You have my permission,' the telegram said, and it was signed, 'Thump-Thump'.

Two days later Trumper said his goodbyes to Dr Holster. 'Gaf throgs!' Holster hailed him cheerfully. 'Gaf throgs!'