In case you couldn’t tell, I had too much fun writing the Bicycling trilogy! This post first ran in 2015.
Last week’s post about memorable movie lines included one from the 1941 horror classic, The Wolf Man, specifically from the old gypsy woman named Maleva. The renowned Russian actress, Madame Maria Ouspenskaya, played the oft-imitated role with dead seriousness. It reminded me of an outrageous scene I’d written in the second book of my satirical sci-fi Bicycling trilogy, The Ultimate Bike Path, so I thought that I’d share it with you.
JACK WINDS UP IN WEIRD PLACES
Here’s the set-up: my protagonist, Jack Miller, rides around on a twenty-one-speed Nishiki mountain bike. An alien study group has implanted a twenty-second gear on the bike, which enables Jack to visit—well, just about anywhere imaginable. In this scenario he’s ridden into a world of old horror and sci-fi movies, where almost immediately his bike is stolen by a giant squid-thing. Before he has a chance to deal with the shock, Jack is confronted by a poodle-like animal, which bites him on the leg. He kicks the creature away, but it starts toward him again. Here is what follows:
That was when I noticed the gypsy woman fifteen yards away.
Yeah, an old gypsy woman, I swear. Smallish lady with a babushka and big dangly earrings and a serious expression. Behind her was a tired-looking old horse, and behind the horse an even tireder-looking old buggy with wobbly wheels.
The most noticeable thing was a gun the gypsy woman held. It was one of those old blunderbusses with a cavernous barrel. When she first raised it, I thought I was dead. My hand reached for the Bukko. But she twisted it around toward the poodle-thing, and with hardly any time to aim she pulled the trigger. The ensuing echoes of the explosion sounded like the last ten minutes of any Rambo movie. And you should have seen the projectile that came out of the gun! That’s right, you could see the “bullet,” which was about the size of a Scud missile. Hell of a thing to fire at that little animal. I figured it would be blown into nine thousand wooly pieces, but do you know what happened? This was weird. The poodle-thing absorbed the ball, and it began a sort of dance while changing from white to a glowing fluorescent pink. It turned three other colors, becoming brighter, until with a final yip yip nyaah it winked out of existence.
Maleva gives Larry Talbot (Lon Chaney, Jr.) the bad news: “You’re a verevolf.”
Sure, I was taken aback, but it didn’t seem to faze the old gypsy woman in the least; or her horse, for that matter. Laying the blunderbuss down on the buggy seat, she led the horse to where I stood. Her expression did not change.
“You are wery lucky, yunk man,” she said in a thick accent, each word drawn out and deliberate. “Had I not destroyt the padoodle, it vould have bitten you.”
“Yeah, thanks, I…the what?”
“Dot terrible creature, the padoodle. You know vot they say: ‘Whoever is bitten by a padoodle and lives, becomes a padoodle himself.’”
There was something familiar about this gypsy woman; there was something familiar about what she just said… Yeah, I got it! This was Maria Ouspenskaya, a great Russian actress who, near the end of her career, played this very role in the Wolfman movies of the forties. In the real world she’d been dead for decades, but the Ultimate Bike Path had a way of sending you to surprising places, didn’t it? Okay, I’ll go along.
“Don’t you mean, ‘whoever is bitten by a werewolf and lives, becomes a werewolf himself?’” I asked.
“A verevolf?” she said. “Vot’s a verevolf?”
“A verevolf…I mean, a werewolf is—whoa, Jee-zis, you gotta be kidding!”
“Vot’s the matter?”
“I was bitten by the…padoodle!” I showed her my ankle. “See? It’s only a little bite…”
She jumped back, startled, and made a sign that might have been a cross, except it had too many points. “Oy wey!” she cried. (Oy wey?)”You really vere bitten!”
“Yeah; uh, listen, Madame Ous—”
“Maleva is my name.”
Transformations are a bitch.
“Right, Maleva. Am I really in trouble here? I mean, was that little bugger rabid or something?”
She got even more solemn-looking, if that was possible, rolled back her eyes and recited from memory:
“Even a man who is pure in heart,
And says his prayers by night,
May become a padoodle when the padoodlebane blooms,
And the autumn half-moon is bright.”
The half-moon? “So I do have a problem. Can you help me?”
“I can’t, but I vill send you to somevun who can.”
“That vould…would be appreciated. I’ll go anywhere to save myself from being turned into a padoodle.” (Do you think I was buying any of this?) “But I have a more immediate problem here.”
“Vot’s dat?”
I told her about what happened to the Nishiki. She jumped back again and made that same weird sign. There were too many points for even a Star of David.
“So you see, I have to get it back,” I concluded.
“Oy wey, you are one cursed dude.” (I swear that’s what she said.)
“Right; uh, you can help me with this problem, can’t you?”
“You say it vas right over dere?”
“Yes, about fifty yards.”
“Your—vot did you call dat ting?”
“My bicycle.”
“Yes, your votever is no longer anywhere in the wicinity.”
Back on the tired old buggy…
No longer in the wicinity! Now I definitely didn’t like the sound of those words. “What is that supposed to mean?”
“Your…votever was taken by the muunastrebors,” she said (I think!). “Dey roam everyvere across the land. It vas only chance dat put them here. The muunastrebors always return to vhere they come from, which is around the Castle Frankenstein.”
The Castle Frankenstein, of course! “So that’s where I must go to find my bicycle?”
“Yes, and also to rid yourself of the padoodle’s curse.”
“Oh, right, forgot about that.”
“The good Dr. Frankenstein is the only vun who can do this,” she added.
“Great. How far is the castle?”
“About tventy kilometers.”
Hey, not bad, twelve miles or so. “How do I get there?”
“I am going in the opposite direction, or I vould take you dere myself. Follow this path, and vhen it ends at a vider road, turn left. It has many tvists and turns, but vill ewentually lead you to Castle Frankenstein. Just be varned, the vay is not always an easy vun.”
How come I knew that? “Yeah, well, thank you, Maleva.”
She shoved a trembling finger in my face. “Bevare, yunk man, bevare the half-moon.”
“Oh, for sure, I vill bevare,” I told her solemnly.
This seemed to satisfy Maleva. I helped her atop her tired old buggy, and she called a command to her tired old horse, which started off along the road. A minute later the gypsy woman had disappeared into the smog.