The Nonexistent Knight Read Online Free Page A

too?”
    “He thinks the ducks are him. Gurduloo’s like that, a bit careless ...”
    “Where’s he gone to now, though?”
    The paladins neared the pond. There was no sign of Gurduloo. The ducks, having crossed the piece of water, now began waddling along the grass on their webbed feet. Around the pool, from among the reeds, rose a croak of frogs. Suddenly the man pulled his head out of the water as if he had, at that moment, remembered he had to breathe. He looked around in a daze, not understanding this fringe of reeds reflected in the water a few inches from his nose. On each reed leaf was sitting a small smooth green creature, looking at him and calling as loud as it could, “Gra! Gra! Gra!”
    “Gra! Gra! Gra!” Gurduloo replied, pleased; and at the sound of his voice frogs began to leap from every reed into the water, and from the water onto the bank. Gurduloo yelled, “Gra!” gave a leap out too and reached the bank, soaking wet, muddy from head to foot, crouching like a frog and yelling such a loud “Gra!” that with a crash of bamboo and reeds he fell back into the pond.
    “Won’t he drown?” the paladins asked a fisherman.
    “Oh, sometimes Omoboo forgets himself, loses himself ... No, not drown ... The trouble is he’s apt to end in our net with the fishes ... One day it came over him when he’d started fishing. He flung the nets in the water, saw a fish just about to enter, and got so much into the part of the fish that he plunged into the water, and then into the net himself. You know what Omoboo's like ...”
    “Omoboo? Isn’t his name Gurduloo?”
    “Omoboo, we call him.”
    “But that girl there ...”
    “She doesn’t come from our parts, maybe she calls him that.”
    “From what part is he?”
    “Oh, he goes around ...”
    The cavalcade was now skirting an orchard of pear trees. The fruit was ripe. The warriors pierced the pears with their lances, making them vanish into the beaks of their helmets, then spitting out the cores. And there in the middle of a pear tree who should they see but Gurduloo—Omoboo! He was sitting with raised arms twisted about like branches, and in his hands and mouth and on his head and in the rents of his clothes were pears.
    “Look, he’s being a pear!” chortled Charlemagne.
    “I’ll give him a shake!” said Roland, and swung him a hit.
    Gurduloo let all the pears fall down. They rolled down the slope, and on seeing them roll he could not prevent himself from rolling around and around, down the field like a pear. And so he vanished from sight.
    “Forgive him, Majesty!” said an old gardener. “Martinzoo sometimes doesn’t understand that his place is not amid trees or inanimate fruits, but among Your Majesty’s devoted subjects!”
    “What on earth got into this madman you call Martinzoo?” asked the emperor graciously. “He doesn’t seem to me to know what’s going through that pate of his.”
    “Who are we to understand, Majesty?” The old peasant was speaking with the modest wisdom of one who had seen a good deal of life. “Maybe mad’s not quite the right word for him. He’s just a person who exists and doesn’t realise he exists.”
    “That’s a good one! We have a subject who exists but doesn't realise he does and there’s my paladin who thinks he exists but actually doesn’t They’d make a great pair, let me tell you!”
    Charlemagne was tired now from the saddle. Leaning on his grooms, panting into his beard, puffing, “Poor France,” he dismounted. As soon as the emperor set foot to the ground, the whole army stopped and bivouacked. Cooking pots were put onto the fires.
    “Bring me that Gurgur ... What’s his name?” exclaimed the king.
    “It varies according to the place he’s in,” said the wise gardener, “and to the Christian or Infidel armies he attaches himself to. He’s Gurduroo or Gudi-Ussuf or Ben-Va-Ussuf or Ben-Stanbul or Pestanzoo or Bertinzoo or Martinbon or Omobon or Omobestia or even the Wild Man