A curtain hanging over the door rippled and a young boy appeared. He must have been about the same age as Bart, but he was shorter, with very dark skin, black hair, and a round, slightly feminine face. He would have been handsome but for the fact that one of his eyes had a large sty, forcing it into a squint, and this made him look almost sinister.
“Good morning. You want buy?” His English was heavily accented and singsong. He had probably learned it parrot-fashion from his parents.
“We’re not here to buy, thank you very much,” Brenda said.
“We’re looking for the way out. The exit.” Brian jerked his thumb in the direction of the door. “Go to the hotel. Taxi!”
“We have fine jewelry,” the boy replied. “Nice necklace for lady. Or maybe you like carpet?”
“We don’t want jewelry or carpets,” Brian replied angrily. “We want to go home!”
“This is useless, Brian!” Brenda muttered.
“I sell you something very special!” The boy looked around him and his eyes settled on a wrinkled object lying on a shelf. It was brown and curved, half-wrapped in moldy tissue paper. “I sell you this!” He took it and placed it on the counter.
“We don’t want it,” Brian said.
“It’s revolting,” Brenda agreed.
“What is it?” Bart asked.
The boy leered. “It is my uncle’s,” he said. “The monkey’s ear. It is very old. Very powerful. Very secret.”
“What does it do?” Bart asked.
“Don’t encourage him, Bart,” his mother said.
But it was too late. The boy ignored her. “The monkey’s ear gives four wishes,” he said. He counted on his fingers as if checking his English. “One. Two. Three. Four. You say to the ear what you want and you get. Very rare! But also very cheap! I give you good price . . .”
“We don’t want it,” Brenda insisted.
Bart reached out and took it. The ear nestled in the palm of his hand. It seemed to be made of leather, but there were a few hairs on the back. The inside of the ear was black and felt like plastic. He rather hoped it was plastic. He didn’t particularly want to imagine that he was holding a real ear, severed from a real monkey.
“Four wishes,” the boy repeated. “One. Two. Three. Four.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Brenda said.
“No. I want it!” Bart looked up at his parents. “You said I could have something from the souk and I want this!”
“But why?” A trickle of sweat dripped off Brian’s chin and he wiped it with the cuff of his shirt. “What do you want it for?”
“I just want it. I think it’s cool . . .”
“Brian . . . ?” Brenda began, using her special tone of voice. She always used it when she was about to explode.
“How much do you want for it?” Brian asked.
“A thousand dirhem,” the boy replied.
“A thousand dirhem? That’s . . . That’s . . .” Brian tried to work it out.
“It’s too much,” Brenda cut in. “It’s more than fifty dollars.”
“Will you take five hundred dirhem?” Bart asked.
“Seven hundred,” the boy replied.
“Come on, Bart.” Brian grabbed hold of his son’s arm. “We didn’t come in to buy anything. We just wanted to find the way out!”
“Six hundred!” Bart insisted. He wasn’t quite sure why he wanted the monkey’s ear, but now that he had decided on it, he was determined to have his way.
“Yes. Is deal. Six hundred.” The boy rapidly folded the monkey’s ear in its dirty wrapping and held it out.
Brian grimaced, then counted out the notes. “That’s still twenty bucks,” he complained. “It seems a lot to pay for a bit of rubbish . . .”
“You promised,” Bart said. He’d actually worked out that the price was nearer thirty dollars, but thought it better not to say.
They left the shop and within minutes they had once again disappeared into the swirl of the souk. Back in the shop, the curtain had moved for a second time and an enormously fat man had come in, dressed in traditional white robes that reached down to his sandals. The man had popped out to buy some Turkish Delight and was licking the last traces from his fingers as he sat down behind the counter. He glanced at the boy, who was still counting the money. The man frowned and the two of them began to talk in their own language so that even if the Beckers had been there, they wouldn’t have understood a word that was said.
“Some tourists came in, Uncle. Stupid English tourists. They gave me six hundred dirhem!”
“What did you sell them?”
“The monkey’s ear.”
The man’s eyes widened. He stood up quickly and went over to the shelf. One look told him all he needed to know. “You sold them the monkey’s ear!” he exclaimed. “Where are they? Where did they go?” He grabbed hold of the boy and drew him closer. “Tell me!”
“They’ve left! I thought you’d be pleased, Uncle! You told me that the monkey’s ear was worthless. You said it was—”
“I said we couldn’t sell it! We mustn’t sell it! The monkey that the ear was taken from was sick. You have no idea of the danger! Quickly, you son of a goat! You must find the tourists. You must give them back their money. You must get it back . . .”
“But you said—”
“Find them! Go now! In the name of Allah, let’s pray it’s not too late!” The man pushed the boy out of the shop. “Search everywhere!”
The boy ran out into the souk. The man sank back into his seat, his head buried in his hands.
It was already too late. The Beckers had managed to find their way out and were by now in a taxi on the way back to their hotel. And two days later they left Marrakesh. The monkey’s ear went with them.
The Beckers lived in a modern bungalow in Stanmore, a sprawling suburb to the north of London. They had been home for a week when Brenda stumbled on the monkey’s ear. She was cleaning Bart’s bedroom. Brenda had a strange way of cleaning. Somehow it always involved searching every drawer and cupboard, reading Bart’s diary and letters, and generally poking around wherever she could. She was the sort of mother who always believed the worst of her child. She was sure he kept secrets from her. Perhaps he had started smoking. Or perhaps he was gay. Whatever he was hiding, she was determined to be the first to find out.
As usual, though, she had found nothing. She had come upon the monkey’s ear underneath a pile of Tintin comics and she carried it downstairs in order to prove a point.
Bart had just gotten home from school. Brian had also gotten back from work. He’d had a disappointing day. Although he’d been out in the street for nine hours, he’d issued only 307 parking tickets, far short of his record. He was sitting in the kitchen, still wearing his uniform and precious cap, eating a fish-sticks sandwich. Bart was also at the table, doing his homework.
“I see you’ve still got this filthy thing,” Brenda exclaimed.
“Mom . . .” Bart began. He knew his mother must have been looking through his room.
“We paid all that money for it and you’ve just shoved it in a drawer.” She sniffed indignantly. “It’s a complete waste. We should never have bought it.”
“It’s not true,” Bart protested. “I took it to school and showed everyone. They thought it was creepy.”
“Have you made any wishes?” Brian giggled. “You could wish yourself first in your class. It would make a pleasant change.”
“No.” Bart had almost forgotten what the boy with the sty had said, but the truth was that he would have been too embarrassed to make a wish using the monkey’s ear. It would be like saying he believed in fairies or Santa Claus. He had wanted the ear because it was strange and ugly. Not because he thought it could make him rich.
His father must have been reading his mind. “It’s all just rubbish,” he said. “A monkey’s ear that gives you wishes! That’s just a load of baloney!”
“That’s not true!” Bart couldn’t stop himself from arguing with his father. H
e did it all the time. “We had a story in school this week. It was exactly the same . . . except it wasn’t a monkey’s ear. It was a monkey’s paw. And it wasn’t as good as an ear because it only gave you three wishes, not four.”
“So what happened in the story?” Brian asked.
“We haven’t finished it yet.” This wasn’t actually true. Their English teacher had finished the story—which had been written by someone called W. W. Jacobs—but it had been a hot day and Bart had been daydreaming, so he hadn’t heard the end.
Brian took the ear from his wife and turned it over in his hand. He wrinkled his nose. The ear was soft and hairy and felt warm to the touch. “It would be bloody marvelous if it worked,” he said.
“What would you wish for, Dad?” Bart asked.
Brian held the ear up between his finger and thumb. He raised his other hand for silence. “I wish for a Rolls-Royce!” he exclaimed.
“What a lot of nonsense!” his wife muttered.
The doorbell rang.
Brian stared at Brenda. Brenda sniffed. “I’ll get it,” Bart said.
He went to the door and opened it. Of course there wasn’t going to be a Rolls-Royce there. He didn’t expect that for a minute. Even so, he was a little disappointed to discover that he was right, that the street was empty apart from a small Japanese man holding a brown paper bag.
“Yes?” Bart said.
“This is 15 Green Lane?”
“Yes.” That was their address.
The Japanese man held up the paper bag. “This is the takeout you ordered.”
“We didn’t order any takeout . . .”
Brenda had come into the hall behind Bart. “Who is it?” she asked.
“It’s someone saying we ordered takeout,” Bart told her.
Brenda glanced at the Japanese man with distaste. She didn’t like foreign food, and for that matter, she didn’t like foreigners either. “You’ve got the wrong house,” she said. “We don’t want any of that here.”
“Fifteen Green Lane,” the Japanese man insisted. “Sushi for three people.”
“Sushi?”
“It’s all paid for.” The man thrust the bag into Bart’s hand, and before anyone could say anything, he had turned and walked away.
Bart carried the bag into the kitchen. “What is it?” his father asked.
“It’s Japanese takeout,” Bart said. “He said it was sushi . . .”
Brian frowned. “There isn’t a Japanese takeout around here.”
“He said it was already paid for,” Brenda said.
“Well, we might as well have it, then.”
None of the Beckers had ever eaten sushi before. When they opened the bag they found a plastic box containing three sets of chopsticks and twelve neat rolls of rice stuffed with crabmeat and cucumber. Brian picked up one of the pieces with his fingers and ate it. “Disgusting!” he announced.
“I’ll give it to the cat,” Brenda said.
Brian sighed. “Just for a minute there, I thought that stupid monkey’s ear had actually worked,” he said. “I thought you’d open the door and find I’d won a brand-new Rolls-Royce in a competition or something. Wouldn’t that have been great!”
“A Rolls-Royce would be a stupid wish anyway,” Brenda said. “We could never afford to drive it. Just think of the insurance!”
“What would you wish for, Mom?” Bart asked.
“I don’t know . . .” Brenda thought for a minute. “I’d probably wish for a million dollars. I’d wish I could win the lottery.”
“All right, then!” Brian held up the monkey’s ear for a second time. “I wish for a ton of money!”
But nothing happened. The doorbell didn’t ring. Nor did the telephone. When the lottery was drawn later that evening (it was a Wednesday), Brian hadn’t even gotten one number right. He went to bed as poor and as frustrated as he had been when he woke up.
There was, however, one strange event the next day. Brian was out on his rounds and had just given a parking ticket to an old retiree and was on his way down to the station where he knew he would find at least a dozen illegally parked cars when he came upon a woman leaning under the hood of a small white van. Brian smiled to himself. The van had stopped on a yellow line. He reached for his ticket machine.
“You can’t park there!” he exclaimed in his usual way.
The woman straightened up and closed the hood. She was young and rather pretty—younger and pret tier, certainly, than Brenda. “I’m very sorry,” she said. “My van broke down. I’m just on my way to the market. But I’ve managed to fix it. You’re not going to give me a ticket, are you?”
“Well . . .” Brian pretended to think about it, but in fact he had no real reason to ticket her, not if she was about to move. “All right,” he said. “I’ll let you off this time.”
“You’re very kind.” The woman reached into the van and took a small tin off the front seat. The tin had a yellow-and-black label with the words ELM CROSS FARM printed on the front. “Let me give you this,” she said. “To thank you.”
“What is it?” Brian wasn’t supposed to accept gifts, but he was intrigued.
“It’s what I sell at the market,” the woman explained. “I have a small farm in Hertfordshire. I keep bees. And this is our best honey. It’s really delicious. I hope you enjoy it.”
“Well, I don’t know . . .” Brian began. But the woman had already gotten back into the van and a moment later she drove off.
The honey was delicious. Brian and Bart ate it for tea that evening, although Brenda, who was on a diet, refused. She was in a bad mood. The washing machine had broken that afternoon and the repairman had said it would cost ninety dollars to fix. “I don’t know where I’m going to find the cash,” she said. Her eye fell on the monkey’s ear that was still lying on the sideboard where they had left it the night before. “I notice we didn’t get a single penny from that stupid thing,” she said. “If only it did have the power to grant wishes. I’d have a new washing machine for a start. And a new house. And a new husband, too, for that matter . . .”
“What’s wrong with me?” Brian complained.
“Well, you haven’t got much of a job. You don’t earn enough. You pick your nose in bed. And I always think it’s a shame you lost your hair. You looked much more handsome when you were younger.”
It was a particularly nasty thing to say. Brenda knew that Brian was sensitive about his appearance, but whenever she was in a bad mood, she always took it out on him.
Brian scowled. He snatched up the monkey’s ear. “I wish I had my hair again,” he cried.
“You’re wasting your time,” Brenda muttered. “You’re bald now and you’ll be bald until you die. In fact, that ear ’s got more hair on it than you have!”
That night the weather changed. Although it had been a beautiful day, by the time the Beckers went to bed, the clouds had rolled in and the wind had risen and just before midnight there was a sudden, deafening rumble of thunder. Brenda was jerked out of her sleep. “What was that?” she whimpered.
There was a second boom of thunder. At the same time the clouds opened and a torrent of rain crashed down, rattling on the roof and driving into the windows with such force that the glass shivered in the frames. The wind became stronger. The trees along Green Lane bent and twisted, then jerked crazily as whole branches were torn off and thrown across the street. Lightning flickered in the air. Somewhere a burglar alarm went off. Dogs howled and barked. The wind screamed and the rain hammered into the house like machine-gun bullets.
“What’s going on?” Brenda cried.
Brian went over to the window in his pajamas, but he could hardly see anything. The rain was lashing at the glass, a solid curtain that seemed to enshroud the bungalow. “It’s gone crazy!” he exclaimed.
“But the weather forecast didn’t say anything about rain!”
“The weather forecast was wrong!” There was an explosion above Brian’s head and something red and solid hurtled
past, disintegrating on the front drive.
“What was that?”
“It’s the bloody chimney! The whole place is coming down!”
In fact, the bungalow stood up to the storm, but the following morning at breakfast, the Beckers realized that they were going to have to pay for more than a new washing machine. The storm had torn off the chimney and part of the roof. Brian’s car had been blown over onto its side. His rock garden was missing. All the fish had been sucked out of his fishpond and his garden fence was somewhere on the other side of London.
Curiously, theirs was the only house that seemed to have been damaged. It was as if the storm had descended on them and them alone.
“I just don’t understand it!” Brenda wailed. “What’s going on? Why us? What have we done to deserve this?”
“It was a blooming hurricane!” Brian said. “A hurricane! That’s what it was!”
Bart had been listening to his parents in silence, but Brian’s last words somehow reminded him of something. A hurricane? He thought back—to tea the day before, and breakfast before that. He looked at the monkey’s ear, lying on the sideboard. His father had made three wishes and nothing had happened.
Or had it?
“It worked!” he muttered. “The monkey’s ear . . .”
“What are you talking about?” his father demanded.
“It worked, Dad! At least, it worked—sort of. But . . .” It took Bart a few moments to collect his thoughts. But he knew he was right. He had to be.
“The monkey’s ear didn’t give us anything,” Brenda said.
“But it did, Mom.” Bart reached out and took it. “We made three wishes and we got three things—only they weren’t the right things. It’s as if it didn’t hear us properly. Maybe that’s why it was so cheap.”
“Twenty dollars isn’t cheap,” Brian sniffed.
“No, Dad. But if the monkey’s ear had been working properly, it would have been a bargain.”
“What are you going on about?”
Bart paused. “What was your first wish?” he asked.
“I wanted a ton of money.”
“No.” Bart shook his head. “Your first wish was a Rolls-Royce. And what happened? There was that funny Japanese man at the door and he gave you—”