27

A Peculiar Suitcase

A friend of mine, Herr Otto O. - infamous palindromist (in Germany), defender of animal rights (in any country) and traveller (to any country) - spent his holydays last month in Wales (Great Britain). He sent me a long letter to Germany containing information and descriptions regarding a certain suitcase he had stolen from a certain person in Wales. The letter was written in english, which appeared very strange to me, because his (and mine) native language is not english, but german. I did not translate any of his german expressions (e.g. blitzkrieg, eigenwert, kindergarten, rucksack, zahnarzt, zeitgeist) since they are not intended for the public. Here are some excerpts from his letter (Also, I skipped the sections describing the beauty of the country, the greeness of some hills and his remarkable comments on the native language and its relationship to mathematics):

26. July 1997

" ... after all that mess around in bulgary. First the people from the village in Dfwllyn (29 Kilometer southwest from [unleserlich] ) told me from the coal pit and from Mr. Pnddllwm, an very old shepherd and palindromist. I was supposed to meet him [there]. When I arrived (after crossing a flat river running northeast, close to a lake called "The-Our-Glass"), I saw a small, round, smoking face approaching from the black entrance of the pit. The face offered me a cigarette ("Omen Faustum"). But I refused and lit a cigar, a havanna cigar..."

" ... I recognized a leathered, slim suitcase with a red badge attached to it. The plain, simple letters on the badge were "Thomas Repuls". Der Mann told me, zhat the suitcase vas made from zhe skin of a blind sheep, vhich he had killed with his own hands! "It was a sheep from Wales and was killed by known person in Wales... well, when I was much younger", Pnddllwm said " and less fearful". "I was paid to do so by a countryman of yours. I don't know, if he was sent or forced or something else. The suitcase was sent back to me in the late sixties containing all that weird stuff." And at last: "The sheep has found its vindication. I don't mean to be manufactured to a suitcase, but to be killed by a welsh!"

" ... I called him a lufteinatmer and eckensteher and took zhe koffer in meinen possession, without mit der wimper zu zucken!...". "You can talk to me forward and backwards, but I will not hand you that case", P. replied.

(And so on. At this point, my friend gets a little confused and messy, but at the end he was successfull (for a while) and here are the contents as Otto described them in his letter):

1 A red phone book from a place in Wales (1967). 30 pages and a note on the frontispiz that "it would be 60 pages, if Mr. Pnddllwm would not have invented that fabulous system of information reduction."

2 A bird rib (seemingly a bird from the northern hemisphere) and some feathers.

3 The worlds first (literal) recursive novel "The Traveller and the Reader" by Ewon Gral. "Any iterative story can be translated to a recursive story (and vice versa)", with remarks by Ewon Gral, handwritten, blue ink.

4 A small piece of paper (like the paper from a chinese fortune cookie): "Llad dafad dall". Maybe a prophecy, certainly a palindrome.

5 A b-w photography of an (obviuous) red swan. (In the background you can discover a phone box and the Tower of London. The phone box is supposed to be a red one).

To make it short; The defender of animal rights Otto O. captured the suitcase by using elaborate arguments, his charming character and - of course - a less charming gun. I don't know where Otto is right now and what happended to the suitcase, but I will talk to him as soon as he will be back from Wales.

He concluded his letter by following mysterious words:

"But I will not panic in a pit, now! Won't I? He he he!" (The suitcase was "given" to him in that dark and deep coal pit).

My conclusions are:

I am sure, that this suitcase has to be one of the missing 92 suitcases. I don't know who T. Repuls is, but if you read that name backwards you have Sluper T. And if you reverse Tulse Luper you can get Slut Repulse.

Regards, George Dudas (Stuttgart).

P.S. This morning I received a second note from Otto. It was a postcard from the capital of bulgary, where he was led to (or shall I say distracted to) by a map, which he had found in a secret place of that particular suitcase. He lost the suitcase or it was stolen or it became something else, but he was not clear at that point. Also he lost all his money, notices, papers and not to forget: his gun. The suitcase and its contents are lost! Forever.

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Peter Greenaway

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