“I looked around: not a soul. I stepped out onto the hearth. I had landed, judging by the long shelves crowded with books and folders, in the palace library. I listened: through the wall I heard the scrape of chairs being drawn up, then silence marked off by only the tick-tock of a pendulum clock, then someone’s even, wall-muffled voice slapping over words like slippers over floorboards. Having just fallen from the clock hand onto the clockface, I of course did not know that this was a session of the Versailles Conference.* On the library table I found a card file, the latest editions of newspapers and folders full of official reports. These I set about reading, quickly apprising myself of the political moment. Suddenly I heard the scrape of chairs being pushed back, low voices, and someone’s footsteps approaching the library door. Now I. . . . No, I see I must again visit my old wardrobe.”

Ernst Unding, leaning far forward in anticipation of the story, watched with impatient eyes as the baron broke off, shuffled back to the pegs protruding from the depths of the wardrobe, and reached into the puckered pocket of his ancient waistcoat.

“Now then.” Munchausen turned around to his guest. In his outstretched hand there glowed the morocco of a small gilt-edged octavo with leather corner pieces. “Here is a thing with which I am rarely parted. Feast your eyes: first London edition, 1785.”

He opened the frail worn volume. Unding’s pupils pounced on the title page and skimmed down the letters: BARON MUNCHAUSEN’S NARRATIVE OF HIS MARVELLOUS TRAVELS AND CAMPAIGNS IN RUSSIA. The book clapped shut and slipped in beside the storyteller on the broad flat arm of his chair.

“Afraid lest I be taken for a spy in search of diplomatic secrets,” Munchausen continued, his soles resting once more on the fender, “I hastened to hide: opening my book—like this—I crouched down, knees touching my chin, head drawn into my shoulders, as compact as could be, and leapt into the pages, banging the book shut behind me, as you, say, might bang the door of a call box behind you. At that instant the footsteps strode into the library and approached the table on which, flattened between pages sixty-eight and sixty-nine, lay I.”

“I must interrupt you.” Unding started from his chair. “How could you have made yourself as small as that pocket book? That’s in the first place, and—”

“And in the second place,” the baron rapped the red morocco with the heel of his hand, “I will not be interrupted. . . . And in the third place, you are a bad poet, I swear by my pipe, if you do not know that books, if only they are books, may be commensurate with, but never proportionate to reality!”

“Very well,” muttered Unding.

And the story went on.

“As luck would have it, the man who nearly took me by surprise (by the way, he was one of the honor cards in a tattered diplomatic deck) caused us both a fresh surprise: The fingers of that diplomatic ace, hunting for some reference, sliding over books and bindings, happened to catch in the morocco door of my refuge, the pages flew apart, and I, somewhat abashed I will admit, now three- dimensionalizing myself, now flattening myself anew, did not know what to do. The ace let fall the cigar from his mouth and, throwing up his hands, collapsed into an armchair, round eyes riveted on me. I had no choice: I stepped out of my book and tucked it under my arm, like this. Then I drew up a chair and sat down opposite the diplomat, knees to knees. ‘Historians will claim’—I nodded encouragingly—‘that it was you who discovered me.’ When at last he found his tongue, he asked, ‘To whom have I the honor?’ I reached into my pocket and, without a word, offered him this.”

A square visiting card flickered before the eyes of Unding, now slumped back in his chair; the Gothic script on the heavy stock read:

Baron

HIERONYMUS VON MUNCHAUSEN

Supplier of Phantasms and Sensations

In and Out of This World

Since 1720

The five lines hung in the air, then flipped about in the baron’s long fingers and disappeared. The wall clock’s pendulum had not ticked ten times when the story resumed.

“During that pause, which lasted no longer than this one, I noticed that the diplomatic expression on the diplomat’s face was changing in my favor. While his mind moved from major to minor premise, I kindly supplied the conclusion: ‘A more necessary man than I, Baron von Munchausen, you shall never find. I give you my word of honor. As for the rest. . . .’ I opened my octavo, preparing to retire from this world to that, so to speak, but then the diplomat seized my elbow: ‘For goodness’ sake, I beg you.’ Well, having thought a moment, I determined to stay. My old abode—right here, between pages sixty-eight and sixty-nine, if you care to look—has been left empty: for a long time, I suspect, if not forever.”

Unding looked: on the bent-back page between parted paragraphs were the fine black rules of an oblong box: but inside the box was only the blank stare of white space—the illustration had disappeared.

“So there it is. My career, as I’m sure you know, began with a modest secretaryship in an embassy.* After that . . . but now the minute hand means to separate us. My dear Unding, I must go.”

The baron pressed a button. In the doorway darted a footman’s side-whiskers.

“Bring me my dress coat.”

The whiskers flashed out.