Being The Uplifting Tale of Alberecht Moonweevil

It had never been a large town, nor a prosperous one. The fields grudgingly yielded their corn to the syrupers. The sun parched the ground in summer and in winter the snow hid the earth. I was a boy then and my curiosity was boundless. It was there that I met the legend. He was already old and wrinkled. His fangs were stained by the marzipan gin he took every evening outside the Inn, and at that time he was reduced to living on the charity of his neighbours. We younger weevils would peer at him from our hiding place in the old barn, and whisper and giggle, as he smoked god knows what in his beat-up old pipe.

Alberecht, his name was. An old name in those parts. A name to live up to. A name to pass on. But this Alberecht had no young weevil to pass his name to. I overheard my mother say that he had been a handsome creature. Many a lady had slavered delicately in his presence and a few, maybe, had shared his digestive biscuits. But Alberecht had always moved on.

It was one of those golden Sunday mornings when he told me his plan. He, lounging in the square, presumably nursing a hangover, and I trying to avoid my mothers enthusiasm for bathing. “Boy” he called. “ Do you want to help me with something interesting?” He had, he said, been everywhere a weevil could go and done everything a weevil could do, except for one remaining adventure. He had never been to the moon. I could not resist pointing out, in my childish enthusiasm, that as far as we knew nobody had ever been to the moon. He looked at me with his bright multifaceted weevil eyes. “I have not spent my life doing as others have done” he said. He smiled. “Come with me boy, up to the high hill that looks over the ocean, and I will show you a thing.” I needed no further bidding, for the best I could otherwise expect on that Sunday was a family gathering and a multitude of wet slavering kisses from my many weevil aunts.

It seemed to me that we had walked forever. The sun was dipping below the horizon and the gulls circled dizzyingly overhead. “Look there boy” said Alberecht. He never used my name. Perhaps he did not know it. I looked over the ocean. The ocean in which the moon floated, a great pale island. “Come down to the beach with me” said Alberecht. I went. We edged carefully towards the surf, where stood a device not unlike the inverted roof of a weevil house. “What is it?” I hollered, above the roar of the breaking wavelets. “I made it” he said. “I call it a boat”. I asked what it was for. “I have studied the wind and the currents boy. If I ping into the boat and you give me a push, then I shall be carried to the moon.” “Then I will not be able to come with you?” I shouted. “That is so, boy, but you will be able to tell others of your adventure; and of mine.”

Alberecht pinged into the boat as it was gently lifted by the rising tide. I gave the back of the boat as great a heave as I was able and felt it slip forward into the deeper water. We weevils are not great swimmers so I danced hastily backwards. I watched, entranced, as the boat slid away. Alberecht did not look back. I could not see the moon from sea level, so I climbed back up the hill. When I reached the summit I turned and looked out over the ocean. The boat was a small speck now, and it seemed to me that it was getting closer to the moon. Lightning crackled in the sky. Fat drops of water began to fall. I wondered if Alberecht would die. In the rain.

It was many years later when I saw Alberecht again. I had thought of him often, so much so that when he lurched into the village I thought that I must be daydreaming. I caught the familiar reek of his pipe. I think that he did not recognise me for he passed me by and made straight for the Inn. Being now grown, I followed him. He took a resting place beside the bar. “Alberecht, by the gods!” said Old Ringwort, the Innkeeper. “Where have you been?” Alberecht smiled. “Is it worth a drop to know?”. “That boy, young Whistler there who brought back that ridiculous tale about you going to the moon in a boot, has been drinking on the strength of it for years. I suppose it’s worth another drop to find the truth of it.” Alberecht held his silence until he had sipped the marzipan gin.

“It took many days to get there” said he. “And many a time I thought the boat” – and on that word he lay great emphasis – “would overturn and I be drowned, but eventually I was washed up on a hot rocky shore. I was surprised for I had always thought the moon looked cold. Weak though I was, I followed a small creek upstream and was soon hailed in a tongue I could not understand. I was very disappointed, of course, to find weevils already on the moon. They were most hospitable and welcomed me into their community. After only a few weeks I could understand much of their language. They told me that there had always been weevils where they lived. When I told them that, whence I had come, their home seemed a distant planet, they were astonished. We discussed the matter and decided that my homeland must look the same from their side of the ocean, for sure enough one could look out over the ocean from the hills there and see a large body very similar to the moon.”

“Those weevils were very nearly as civilised as ourselves but there was one thing they lacked. Marzipan gin. Though I have drunk my share of it I do not know how it is made, so I could not bestow upon them its blessing. More pertinently, there was none for me. After many months I set out in my boat once again. Many things have befallen me in my travels but at last I have returned.”

Old Ringwort, who had stood rapt throughout the tale, was not one to miss a good thing. “Why don’t you stay a while?” he asked Alberecht. “Stay and tell your tale in my humble Inn.” Well, we weevils may not move very quickly, except when we ping, but the news of Alberecht’s return spread far and wide. Old Ringwort made a pretty penny as weevils came to hear the amazing stories of Alberecht. Before long people spoke of Alberecht the Moonweevil.

As with all things, Alberecht’s popularity diminished. The audiences grew smaller and Alberecht decided to move on. Before he left he asked me a favour. My father had been a famous distiller and I was pleased to give Alberecht the basic recipe for marzipan gin, though not the secret family recipe which I alone now know. “Which way do you go?” I asked him. “Why, back to the moon in my boat.” I was by now a less curious weevil and I thought that all the world inland might wish to hear of Alberecht Moonweevil, so I set off in the opposite direction – and here I am today telling you his tale. And now my throat is dry and my fangs no longer able to slaver, so perhaps, kind friends, you would be good enough to buy me another glass?