East of Laughter

by R. A. Lafferty

  “It is just one hundred hours till the end of the week,” Mary Brandy said. “I don’t know how long it is till the end of the world. Let him hang there, let him hang – But we will have the priest and the mass for John Barkley Towntower immediately. In all ways he was a good man, and he was always patient with his affliction.”

  “And his affliction was always patient with him, in my own way, in my own way,” Solomon Izzersted said.

  The Shadow of Prince Leonardo the Great was there at the foot of the gallows, the female black panther. She was not gloating, she was grieving. Nobody has yet guessed the real role, or even the real species, of that other black panther.

  “Mary Brandy Manx, I wish you would found the Penny-Whistlers’ College,” the Political Opponent Gregory O’Growley suggested. “You are the only one here who is rich enough to found a Penny-Whistlers’ College. To avoid rivalry between the three towns, you could call it the Spanish Head College of Royal Penny-Whistlers.”

  “It’s my experience that if a boy learns one tune on the penny-whistle, then he is forever spoiled for all other tunes,” Mary Brandy said. “He will be able to play one tune well and others not at all.”

  “True, true,” agreed Gregory O’Growley, “and the one tune will be Friday at Port Saint Mary for Three Penny-Whistles.”

  “And you just happen to have three little nephews with you ready to play their three penny-whistles. And you just happen to have with you the Articles of Incorporation for the Spanish Head College of Royal Penny-Whistlers. Oh all right, I’ll sign it.”

  And Mary Brandy Manx was wise to sign the Articles of Incorporation. Friday at Port Saint Mary for Three Penny-Whistles was to become one of the great penny-whistle tunes of the world.

  Father Joseph Kirkpatrick (he came originally from the nearby Scottish Coast) drank brandy with Mary Brandy and the rest of them at dusk, after the burial of John Barkley Towntower.

  “These Apprehensions, which are sometimes known as the Nine Day Wonders, are frequent in history or at least in shadow-history,” he said. “Scarcely a century has been so poor that it has not had one or several of them. They are characterized by Pnigmophobia, both for the individual person and the world. I suppose that it’s really the contagion of a viral sickness. That being so, it will pass, and its dead will be buried, and the world will continue on its way. The fifth night of the sickness (that will be tonight, Friday night) is usually the worst, or that was the case in the epidemics of 1017, 1126, 1344, 1453, 1562, 1671, 1780, and 1889.”

  “What happened to 1235?” Jane Hunting-Horn Chantal Ardri asked.

  “The Thirteenth, the Holiest of Centuries, was spared the apprehensive sickness,” Father said. “But Friday night, the fifth night, is usually the worst for the victims. That is the night of the nightmares, of the deliriums, and of the deaths. The people have nightmares that they are choking to death, and so they do choke to death, a few millions of them, in their violent sleep. On the Friday night of the Strangle-Death of the year 1344, thirteen million died in Europe alone. The failure of worldwide input is only the failure of grace. But you people here, being intellectually active, do not sleep much at night anyhow. Oh, one or two or three of you may die tonight (after you make your midnight jump I believe), but the rest of you should survive with minimal impairment. Bonfires are good to keep off the nightmares. And yes, young girl, hunting-horns. I see that you have yours about your neck.”

  “Do you believe in giants?” Jane Hunting-Horn Chantal asked.

  “Of course I believe in giants. My own great-grandfather was a giant. And I myself am quite tall, six feet and five inches.”

  “I mean the Writing Giants who write the world?”

  “They would have no power if it were not given to them from above. Locally, in the Islands and the Scandinavias and all shores of the North Sea, a Friday Night feature of the disease is the Infestation of the Sussex Wraiths. It is said that they take their bat-flights from the ancient Evenrood Manor in England. But they are not world-wide, or perhaps they are known by other names in other parts of the world. Good night all. I must go to an early bed. I anticipate a number of funerals tomorrow. Oh, it will probably take the remaining four days of the week to bury all of those who die on this Night of the Strangulation. Be cheerful all, and walk in the Faith and the Light.”

  On the evening packet-boat (it was late) there came a lady with golden skin and very black hair. She went out and stood under the gallows-gibbet where Prince Leonardo the Great hung, and Mary Brandy went out to talk to her. And Mary Brandy called somebody to have a chair brought for the lady.

  “I want his body,” the golden-dark lady said.

  “He must hang there till the end of the week,” Mary Brandy said.

  “I’ll wait. It’s less than a hundred hours.” The female black panther put its head in the lap of the golden-dark lady as soon as she was seated in the chair. “She is my sister,” the lady said. “We were born twins. We are of the changing cat-clan. Each of us was brided to him, I in the human and she in his cat form. But the Mystery of Evil was on him and we could do nothing. After this week is over we will claim his body and bury him here. No, we will not need anything. Neither of us will eat or drink till the week is finished. It’s less than a hundred hours.”

  Mary Brandy told the people to have bonfires burning all that night. “You don’t have to tell us that. This is Friday night,” said Mayor Haggerty of Port Erin. “Bonfires indeed,” agreed Mayor McEnglish of Castletown, “and hunting horns.”

  “Yes, and penny-whistles,” said Gregory O’Growley who was the political opposition in Port Saint Mary. “The new tune Friday at Port Saint Mary for Three Penny-Whistles will help keep the strangulation away.”

  “Oh well, the Night of the Strangle-Deaths might as well be a fun night,” Monika Pantera said. “How many hunting horns do you have in your house, Mary Brandy?”

  “Oh, five or six, surely. But several of them may be out of tune.”

  “I want one out of tune,” said Drusilla Evenrood. “I’ll show those Sussex Wraiths who are giving my Manor a bad name! I’ll split their ears!”

  “You’ll not be able to do that,” said Solomon Izzersted who had become a know-it-all since he was an unattached man. “They are bat-wings and they will have bat ears. When you hit the highest note that the hunting horn has, you’re just getting to the edge of their country. They are at home with the really high and ear-splitting frequencies. But they are no more than comic characters if you are able to take them as such, small pipe-smoking, squeaking bats, who claim that they are giants, such are the Sussex Wraiths, in legend at least.”

  There is not much difference between the tunes Friday at Port Saint Mary for Three Penny-Whistles and Friday at Port Saint Mary for Three Hundred Hunting-Horns. They enlivened the air, and the bonfires illuminated the night. Prince Leonardo the Great, hanging on his gibbet-gallows and turning slowly from one of his forms to the other, had three black crows perched on the gallows-arm to keep him company. Some of the people thought that they heard Prince Leonardo talking to the crows.

  “Oh, you know that is not true,” Mary Brandy told those people crossly. “All my life, those same three crows have roosted on that same gallows-arm every night. They don’t even know that it’s a gallows-arm. It is just something for them to roost on.”

  The Sussex Wraiths began to come. Bat-wings indeed! Many of them had the pipe-smoking faces of those neo-giants, the dead Roderick Outreach and the live Sandra Ott. “We are not wraiths, we are not bats,” the wraiths said. “We are angels or messengers sent out to effect the writs of the New Giants. We are the motivation of the world. We are the future of the world.”

  Nah, they lied. They were bats.

  Hunting-horn blowing takes a lot of breath, and some of the people, with the strangulation fear upon them, had to abandon it. And some of the people did begin to have the delirium-nightmares while still walking about. They passed into fevered sleep-walking. They had nightmares that
they were choking to death, and so they did choke to death in their violent walking sleep. But this did not happen to many of them, only thirteen in the whole three towns that whole night. It would have been much worse if they hadn’t had the bonfires and penny-whistles and hunting horns.

  But one of their group, Hieronymous Talking-Crow, did die. He died in a shouting and strangling nightmare. It would tear your heart out of your breast to see it! Mary Brandy gave his body to Mortimers’ Undertakers at Port Saint Mary with instructions to ship it back to the United States. Hieronymous had specified when he joined the group that he wanted his body shipped back. “I will not survive,” he had said. “I will be the scapegoat. That is my role.”

  The Group of Twelve had now lost to death at Port Saint Mary three persons, John Barkley Towntower, Prince Leonardo the Great, and Hieronymous Talking-Crow. And still there were twelve of them in the Group of Twelve.

  “Midnight has already struck at my home in Lecco,” the master forger Denis Lollardy said. “It is Saturday at Lecco so there are still four more days in this week. We are destined to make our rounds till the end of the week or the end of the world.”

  “Everybody stay very close together,” Jane Chantal Ardri said. “If we scatter, we will be picked off one by one and killed.”

  They stood very close together.

  They went to Lecco in Italy.

  CHAPTER NINE

  Saturday at Lecco

  ‘Whether toward the time of the Judgement the Sun and Moon will be darkened in very truth?’

  SECOND ARTICLE OF QUESTION 73 ON SUPPLEMENT TO THE SUMMA THEOLOGICA, Aquinas.

  Saint Thomas decides that toward the time of the Judgement the Sun and Moon will in truth be darkened. But when the Judgement Itself arrives, the light of the moon shall be as the light of the sun, and the light of the sun shall be sevenfold, as Isaiah says. But how long is that darkened interval toward the time of the Judgement? Is it a short day, a short year, a short century, a short millennium?

  “There is no doubt that the stars, the moon, the sun have been darkened by as much as twelve percent,” Gorgonius Pantera said, “and that is after applying every correction, coefficient, and adjustment. And the boys on Mont Blanc have just told me that this confirms their readings for this morning too.”

  Gorgonius had just spent five hours, before and after dawn, in the fascinating observatory of Denis Lollardy at Lecco.

  “That doesn’t seem like much, around twelve percent,” said Leo Parisi, “but it’s enough to extinguish life on Earth if continued as long as three years. Do the boys on Mont Blanc consider it a sport or a permanent thing?”

  “The stars, moon, and sun have been darkening for six nights and five days, but the rate of decrease of light declined slightly last night. The decrease might have crested, but that doesn’t guarantee that the trend will be reversed.”

  “How would you go about increasing the light of the stars and the moon and the sun?” Laughter-Lynn Casement asked.

  “Easy,” said Jane Chantal. “I’d get New Giants installed and get them to writing brighter stars and moon and sun.”

  “The New Giants in my Manor in Sussex give me no satisfaction at all this morning,” Drusilla said. “They tell me that they have rejected my nominal suzerainty. They say that they may write the stars out of existence completely in the interest of simplicity, and they may write out our present moon and write in seven smaller moons to be named for each of them. I don’t know who their seventh giant is now, since Roderick Outreach is dead. They say they will write in a thermostat for the sun so it will lighten or darken or heat or cool instantly as desired. And they are writing out the nine minute or so delay that has been elapsing while the heat and light comes from the sun.”

  “There will always be trouble when professionals are able to take over jobs like that,” Laughter-Lynn said.

  The Twelve were now reduced to Eleven indeed. After they arrived at Lecco, in the middle of the Strangulation Night, Hilary Ardri had died in a strangulation nightmare, and his death had shocked them all. What an odd man he was! The things that he could do with a computer, and he not even known as an expert in the field! Consider the thousands of tons of computerized fish that he was able to get out of ponds and streams and lakes and seas and oceans, when in fact those fish hadn’t been in those waters at all!

  An Arabian sort of man came up to Jane Chantal as she walked in her new sorrow in the French Garden of the wonderful estate of Denis Lollardy at Lecco.

  “The El-Khatar Giant, whom I serve, says that he is weary and wishes to die as Atrox has died, as the Hsiang Giant has died, and as the Illacrove Giant died during the night just past. Now the El-Khatar Giant wishes to die just as soon as he can get a replacement.”

  “Yes, all right, I will, I’ll be glad to be his replacement,” Jane Chantal said.

  “That wasn’t what you were expected to say,” the Arabian man puzzled. “It was expected that you would say ‘Oh, I don’t know anything about the gianting business, and I wouldn’t know how to replace a scribbling giant.’ That’s what you were expected to say.”

  “Why should I say such a silly thing as that? I know almost everything about the gianting business and I know exactly how to replace a scribbling giant. I’m born for the job. I’m a camel’s nose just like Atrox was. I like to slip under every tent flap and know all about everything.”

  “Your name is Jane Chantal Ardri, isn’t it?” the Arabian asked.

  “Well, it was. But now that my husband has died of the perishing strangulation, I think I’ll change my surname from Ardri to Ard-ban-rion. Get it? Ard-Ri meant High King, specifically the High King of Ireland in the old days. But I shall change my name to Ard-ban-rion or High Queen. I was born to be named ‘Queen’. Isn’t everything working out perfectly!”

  An unemployed musician of his acquaintance came up to Denis Lollardy as he walked in the English Gardens of his wonderful estate at Lecco.

  “Which instrument, Cipriano?” Denis asked. “And how many?”

  “Flutes,” said the man, “and seven of them. My surname, as you know, is Settiflauti or Seven Flutes.”

  “Gorgonius!” Denis called to the great composer who was walking in the Italian Gardens of the wonderful Lollardy Estate, “Gorgonius!” Denis called across that half mile interval in that soft but carrying voice that only the Italians around Lecco have, “how long would it take you to compose Saturday at Lecco For Seven Flutes?”

  “I have just composed it. How strange that you should ask!” Gorgonius answered in that solid carrying voice that only the Alpine Germans have, and he began to whistle the new tune in a powerful whistle.

  “Have you six other flutists for friends, six who are as unemployed as yourself, Cipriano? And do you suppose that we could strike a bargain?”

  “I have six such friends. I suppose such a bargain. Was there ever a day when things were so exactly right!”

  Lecco was a beautiful foot-of-the-mountain town in Lombardy where the river Adda flows out of Lake Como. The great trees and breath-taking boscage and grass were so deep a green that they looked blue. And the blue at Lecco was so deep a blue that it looked purple. The rising countryside was an explosion of ten thousand different blooms of orange, yellow, red, and super-red. Olives, grapes, dates, figs, and melons were all ripe at the same time. The limbs of the walnut trees touched the ground with their load of nuts; and the apple, cherry, and citrus trees were all in fruit. Shoulder-high clovers were grazed by cattle, sheep, goats, and deer. The woods were full of peafowl and gamecocks. There were a dozen kinds of brightly-feathered warblers giving a tonal background to the exquisite Saturday at Lecco for Seven Flutes. There were a hundred estates around Lecco, and the fairest of all of them was that of Denis Lollardy.

  “It’s most funny that I don’t remember it being quite so wonderful here,” this Denis said now, “and I’ve been gone for less than a week.”

  On the wonderful estate of Denis Lollardy was his French Garden, En
glish Garden, Italian Garden, Moravian Garden, Aragonese Garden, Armenian Garden, Persian Garden, Arabian Garden, and Japanese Garden all in high style.

  “It’s funny that I don’t remember some of them, and they are surely of memorable appearance,” Denis considered the matter. “In all my life I never saw such beauty of design. But I don’t remember the Moravian Garden at all. And the Armenian Garden! I wonder how one says de trop in Armenian?”

  So he went to seek the source of his new blessings, and he found Jane Chantal High-Queen painting and writing at a slab table that beggared description.

  “I have had a wonderful estate for a long time, Janie,” he said, “but it has not been this wonderful until just this morning. Have you a finger in this matter, dear? Is it, in fact, a form of your finger painting?”

  “Yes, I have ten fingers into it, Denis, clear up to my navel. I thought I would write you the most beautiful estate possible because you have such a beautiful personality. Well, not quite everything that I paint and write today takes flesh, but almost everything does. It’s easier at close range, of course. These twelve incredibly-colored birds here, for instance, six males and six females, were not at all difficult to write. I just wrote ‘Make them on the inside just like any other big tropical birds, but on the outside feather them as follows –’ And then I described the breath-taking plumage they should have. And there they are! Then I wrote that they should go out and populate Morotai, an Indonesian Island on the other side of the globe. But they fly off a little ways and then they come back. They don’t seem to have any idea how to get to Morotai Island. I’ll get them there yet though. I believe I’ll have to learn to phrase things a little bit better. I’ll have to learn to describe the flightways that the birds are supposed to have an instinct to follow. Do you have a geography book in your house, Denis?”