Thelonious and the Dragon, part I

Thelonious A. Lamedvavnik had two professions: firstly, he was a chronicler of names, an onomastographer, as he liked to call it; secondly, he was a calameter, one who is hit by moving vehicles for the insurance money. He rarely spoke of the latter, though if the truth be told, it was obscenely lucrative. Being an onomastographer, on the other hand, never made Thelonious a hapenny. In Singapore, he would lecture sailors resting between shore leave appointments, on the periods in history in which oriental names were fashionable in the West. He would fail to mention the jin-rickshaw that had trampled him the day before that was going to fetch him a ticket home on a luxury ocean liner.

Thelonious had been hit by horse-drawn taxis, carriages, trolleys, trains, he had even fallen into the subway tube and been trampled by horses at the track. Thelonious was the first to be struck by the automobile. Any evidence of success in onomastics was actually paid for with calametry. Even his offices, Lamedvavnik Onomastics, had been paid for by an unlucky sleigh rider who had ridden down Thelonious one unfortunate Christmas Eve.

Conveyances were not the only things that hit Thelonious. Practically everything that was not stationary struck him. He was even once hit by stationery: a dear lady friend of Thelonious had received a letter from her fiancé confessing an indiscretion; she had crumpled the letter and thrown it in anger, striking poor Thelonious in the eye. Thelonious’ life was a never ending rain of rocks, chamber pots, soap, loose bricks, hot bowls of soup and so on. In the city, where such objects are often bandied about, Thelonious could even be struck by several things at once!

One particularly egregious incident occurred while Thelonious was strolling along the esplanade. He spied a bicyclist bearing down on him, and, fully aware of his personal disposition, stepped clear to the side – and into another bicyclist who knocked him into the first. At that very same moment, an empty bottle of ripple, cast off by a vagrant, smashed on Thelonious’ foot. As he grabbed at his pained foot a half-eaten mule from god knows where fell from the sky and obliterated the whole heap! After that, Thelonious decided that there was some sort of conspiracy, not against him, but against the art of onomastics. To make matters worse he was being stalked by his bitter rival, Guillaume de Gaulle!
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