East of Laughter

by R. A. Lafferty

  “I’d say, if a fellow was about the size of a baseball, he’d be perfect for the trip,” Charles Fort said. “And if he were somewhat the shape of a baseball too, why it would be perfection sphered for him. Say, I hadn’t noticed it before, but you’re about that size and shape.”

  “I sure am,” Solomon grinned his spherical grin. “I sure am.”

  “Charles, either in the context of the Special Fortean Universe, or in the larger General Universe, do you know what has gone wrong that the stars and moon and sun have all been dimming for several days, that all the vital functions of the world and the universe have slowed down or weakened?” Leo Parisi asked. “Do you know why there has been a clear decrease in gravity, and in the magnetic field of the world, and in the coriolis force of the world, and in the rate of influx of radio-carbon to the earth system, in the efflux of helium-4 into the atmosphere, in the bonding of the earth’s pelt, in the –”

  “Spare me the cataloging,” said Charles Fort. “For every item you name, I can name you ten. And the most serious of the changes, of course, is the Suffocating Nightmares that kill so many thousands of the people world-wide every night. I could put it down to the summer doldrums, and it is partly that. But the main answer is that the troubles are caused by the hundred-and-nine-year locusts. They call them that because they come every hundred-and-nine years. They’re invisible. And moreover they’re decapods and so are not true locusts at all. But they feed on the daily-life-elixir and diminish it so much that the world and its peoples suffer from the deprivation. That’s the Fortean answer.”

  “And what can the world and its peoples do about the fearful hundred-and-nine year locusts, Charles Fort?” Gorgonius Pantera asked.

  “The world and its peoples can give thanks that the hundred-and-nine year locusts come only once every hundred-and-nine years. But the locust plague and the other plagues are a mortal danger to the world only if they carry over into the second week, so it is written in the Book of Jasher. Thanks for calling me up, people, but I’ve been here almost twenty minutes by your time, and that’s more than a millionth of a second out of the time after I’m dead. Call me up again tomorrow if you wish, and I’ll come.”

  “We will likely be in a different place tomorrow,” Monika said.

  “That’s all right. I’m no respecter of places. If that girl-woman will evoke me with that same rime tomorrow, I’ll come wherever you are. Say, girl-woman, you don’t look like the type, but I have the feeling that you’ve become one of the new scribbling giants who write the world. Are you?”

  “Yes, I said I’d be one. And I think I’m becoming one of them, Charles,” Jane Chantal High-Queen said. “I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”

  ‘O Christ, the plough, O Christ, the laughter

  Of holy white birds flying after.’

  Masefield.

  But the greatest of Denis Lollardy’s forgeries, of course, was his Laughing Christ of Creopas or Creophylus.

  “The Christ, where do you have him on display, Denis?” Gorgonius asked. “He raises so many questions. Where do you have him?”

  “Nowhere. He’s temperamental. He won’t stay on display. He’s back in the hole where I buried him and later dug him up. But I can bring him up by a rope-pull, and he’s usually very pleasant after he’s up.”

  They went to a cut in the verdant hillside, just up the slope from the Irish Gardens. Denis Lollardy pulled the rope-pull, and the statue came up to the light of day standing on a pallet. And all eleven of them (including Denis who had carved the statue) drew their breaths in sharply at the sheer beauty and joy and friendliness of the masterwork.

  Well, this was the most pleasant piece of statuary that any of them had ever seen, slightly larger than life-sized, and wrapped in the colored cleanliness of its own laughter.

  The Laughing Christ! But who was he really?

  “No, he is not Christ. He is creature,” Laughter-Lynn said. “and he is alive. Oh, the wonderful eeriness!”

  “I think so,” Denis said in a sort of rapture. “Though I cut him out of pinkish marble, yet there is more than that to him now. More and less, for I’m often disappointed in him. He becomes more trivial than I made him, now and then. A sylvan spirit comes into the statue sometimes. I have seen him, but only when I’m half asleep.

  “Come out of the marble! Come out of it! I command you. We are the most excellent company in the world here. Come out and share your laughter with us!”

  But the spirit or creature that stepped out of the stone statue was not quite in the spirit of the statue. Its laughter was lesser and otherwise.

  “Oh, the stone pillar, I use it as sort of a change-station,” the emerging darker creature laughed. Well yes, he did look a little bit like the wonderful statue, in his pleasantness anyhow, but he was no more than half the size of it and hadn’t a quarter of its vitality.

  “I use it as Superman uses a telephone booth to change into his Superman costume,” the Sylvan Spirit said. “I used to duck into any hollow tree around here until Denis carved this wonderful statue. I have two states, and I love to change from one of them to the other.”

  “Just who are you?” Gorgonius asked. “What species, please?”

  “Oh, I don’t know. Memory is a tricky thing and so is classification. I remember being born of a she-goat and living as a faun for a thousand years. Well yes, I do remember it. If that is not exactly what I was, well I was something for that thousand years. I was overwhelmed with my love for the earth, and I still am. When all the other fauns aged and died and were not replaced, I still lived on, still lived on as little more than a boy. Gioioso Lecco, Merry Lecco, was the name given to this region then, and I was a part of the merriment. Well, there was never a happier earth spirit than I was.

  “Then I died. And the real fun began. I was canonized by the Church as Saint Faunus the patron of merriment, and I am still honored that way on the local calendar. In the Laughter of the Saints, before the Day Star, I begot thee is the beginning passage of the Introit of my mass of Saint Faunus.

  “Solomon Izzersted, beloved baseball of a man, you just blinked. Everybody blinks, but not everybody blinks that special thousandth-of-a-second blink. You went on a journey during that short interval. Yes, tell us about that journey, Solomon.”

  “Yes, it was like a carnival or circus, like twenty carnivals and circuses,” Solomon Izzersted said, seeming still to be in a sort of rapture, “and I have peculiar entree into the world of carnivals and circuses. When I had the ventriloquist act with John Barkley Towntower we traveled with lots of circuses. Some of the Impresarios and Mentalists and Side-Show Producers are amazing fellows. I sat up and talked all night with those fellows, for thirty-one nights, and I’ve got enough tall tales for a lifetime. And I can go back in there as often as I wish, into the interior of a different atom every time, and there are billions and billions of them waiting for me. And I will not have made the circuit of them all until my days will be manifest. And I’ll use less than a thousandth of a second on my life-clock every time I go.”

  “In your own way you will have the best of many worlds now,” the Sylvan Spirit said. “Smallest man in the world, you have become enlarged. But as to my own history: In my dying it was discovered that I was an immortal. But I still did not have to give back the thousand years. Fauns, as you may not know, live a thousand years in joy, and then they are finished. For they are mortal. But humans usually live less than a hundred years in very mixed joy-and-sorrow, and then they die. And after that, for better or worse, for much better or much worse, they live forever. But I could have it both ways. And in another way also I have it both ways.

  “I loved the earth so much that I was allowed to divide my time between the earth and the after-earth for my second thousand years. My second thousand years ran out several decades ago, but nobody said anything about it so I’ll not say anything either. I love the deep green joy of the earth! Of course I love the after-earth also, but I’m still a bit timorous about
that.

  “Oh certainly I know the Scribbling Giants, girl-woman Jane. And you ask me, Caesar Oceano, why don’t the scribbling giants leave this world alone? Why don’t they leave it just as it is?

  “The world is never just as it is,” Faunus declared. “The world lives its blessed life with the aid of the extraordinary effort of a small group of extraordinary people added to the ordinary effort of the ordinary people. Why should the extraordinary ones be excluded? The world would never make it without its extraordinary citizens. When the numbers of the Extraordinaries is diminished only by several of them, and only for several days, the difference is manifest.

  “The giants, like the fauns, live one thousand years, and they live much more in sorrow than in joy. The world has never understood the deep melancholy of the giants. Their melancholy makes them creative, in a rumpled way, but is it worth it to them? If they cry out at the idea of being extinguished at the end of one thousand years, they are given a second thousand years. But for their second thousand years, the balance is tilted still more to sorrow and less to joy, and their melancholy deepens. There is nothing like the black melancholy of giants in their second or even third millennium. And yet they work hard and try to write the world cheerfully. Perhaps somewhere, some day, they will have their compensation. But nobody would want to be a giant, from free choice.”

  “I want to be a giant, whether from free choice or not,” Laughter-Lynn stated. “Drusilla and Mary Brandy and Jane Chantal have all been offered giants’ mantles, but only Jane Chantal High-Queen has picked hers up for certain yet. I’d surely pick mine up if it were offered to me. Maybe it will be offered to me tomorrow.”

  “No, Laughter-Lynn, there will be no laughter for you tonight and there will be no tomorrow for you tomorrow,” Saint Faunus said.

  “Oh, I’ll make a tomorrow for myself, no matter what happens to me tonight,” Laughter-Lynn smiled. “But how does one who is not born a giant obtain a giant rating?”

  “Sometimes by being untimely born. Jane Chantal was untimely born a second time by the Giant’s compassion, after she had been murdered. You were untimely born a second time, out of a giant goose egg, and probably you would be offered a giant’s commission tomorrow, except that you will die tonight. Solomon Izzersted was untimely born the second time, out of the belly-button of his brother, and nothing except his small size prevents him from becoming a giant.”

  “You are fortunate in all ways, Saint Faunus, and nothing untoward can happen to you now,” Gorgonius smiled.

  “Not quite. In one form I am safely dead and enjoying the beatific vision, but in my faun form I could be terminated and be no more, as is the usual fate of fauns. I have been told to be very careful while in my faun form, but if I were careful I would cease to be a faun. But it’s been fun entirely. Who wants to go with me up the mountain side to strike new springs of mountain water out of new-splitting rocks?”

  “Oh, I’ll go with you, Faunus,” Laughter-Lynn agreed.

  “And I,” said Leo Parisi the Wonder-Boy.

  “All three of you should be very careful about striking new springs of water on the mountainside,” Gorgonius Pantera warned them. “One of the results of the lack of earth-input, or of the depredations of the hundred-and-nine-year locusts (according to Charles Fort), is that the bonding of the earth pelt has been loosened.”

  “That is like telling fleas ‘You should be very careful when you ramble about in the pelt of that dog; an engineering report shows that several of the dog’s hairs are loose,’” Laughter-Lynn laughed. “We are agile fleas, and we will meet few catastrophes among the dog hairs.” And Laughter-Lynn and Leo Parisi started up the mountainside in the company of Saint Faunus the faun.

  “What do you make of Faunus, Gorgonius?” Caesar Oceano asked.

  “A little bit pompous. He needs a touch of sorrow and fear. He needs an oceanful of sorrow and fear. And it cannot happen to him. The worst thing that can happen to him is extinction, and he will still never have known a moment’s sorrow. He’s a character that stopped growing, ah, at least a thousand years ago.”

  But the wonderful statue, the Laughing Christ of Creophylus still remained a thing of overwhelming joy. Denis Lollardy let it down again by the pull-rope into its enchanted burial cave.

  Among the many fountains and sources and springs and wells in the Irish Gardens of the Lollardy Estate was one very small-throated fountain.

  “The name of that one is Foinse na n’Og,” Jane Chantal High-Queen said. Jane seemed to know very much about the Irish Gardens, and there was a suspicion that she had written additions to them that very day.

  “Foinse na n’Og is the Fountain of Youth,” Gorgonius Pantera said, “but for one to receive its gift one must be totally immersed in its full depths. But no person could possibly be immersed into the depths of that small-throated fountain, no person who was not as small as a – Oh, Oh –”

  “It will be tight, but I believe I can do it,” Solomon Izzersted said as he weighed the implications. Then he plunged into the fountain head-first. Well, any way he plunged into it would be very nearly head-first, since he was mostly head. He stayed in the depths of the fountain for quite a few minutes. “If it has gone wrong with him, there is no way to get him out,” Gorgonius said. “One could scarcely push a hand down into the narrow throat of the fountain. But he has been submerged too long a time.”

  Then Solomon Izzersted bounced out of the throat of the fountain again. He banged about in the water, and he came out of the Fountain of Youth onto solid land. “And now I really have eternal youth!” he announced. “Envy me, everybody, envy me!”

  “No, but we will rejoice with you, Solomon,” Mary Brandy said.

  “Among other things that have diminished in the world in this peculiar week of attrition, this week of the failure of extraordinary input, this week of the hundred-and-nine-year locusts, is mental balance,” Gorgonius Pantera was saying. “I notice it diminishing in myself and in you eight. And when mental balance is lost, everything is lost.”

  It was near dark where they sat in the big-treed Welsh Gardens of the Denis Lollardy estate, but the upper reaches of the little mountain opposite of them were still twilit. And from the middle heights of that little mountain, two silvery phenomena expressed themselves. One of them was the infectious laugh of Laughter-Lynn Casement. The other was the silvery flashes and gushes of new-born springs and fountains. The Intrepid Three, Laughter-Lynn Casement, Leo Parisi, and Saint Faunus the faun, were striking new springs of mountain water out of new-splitting rocks.

  “Oh, the rocks are squeaking and splitting more than they should,” Jane Chantal cried out, and she began to blow her hunting-horn. She blew Bloody Saturday Night over and above the evening sound level of Saturday at Lecco for Seven Flutes.

  “The world takes advantage of us when it realizes that our mental balance is diminished,” Gorgonius spoke with a touch of fear in his voice. “And there’s the fact that the bonding of the earth’s pelt has really weakened. Bloody Saturday Night indeed! And after it there will still be three days and nights left of this bloody week.”

  “It’s a rock-slide, it’s a rock-tumble!” Caesar Oceano cried out.

  The terrified scream of Saint Faunus the faun was heard on the little mountain. The scream was cut off sharply. Well, he’d had at least one brief moment of fear and sorrow before he was terminated. He was saved from living his lives in completely unmitigated joy.

  The infectious laughter of Laughter-Lynn Casement was heard. It would take more than a rock-slide, than a rock-tumble to kill all the laughter in her.

  “From laughter plowed into the earth

  “Will grow a thousand years of mirth,” Jane Chantal recited. “Oh Laughter-Lynn, we want you back, come back, come back!” But the openly infectious laughter of Laughter-Lynn was changed into deep-buried laughter, and then the sound of it was far-away and very deep.

  And the carrying voice of the boyish Leo Parisi was heard “Goodbye, Perpet
ua; every minute of it was fun.” Then the voice of the rock-tumble turned into thunder, and the Intrepid Three were buried.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Sunday at Klavierschloss

  ‘He who is throned in Heaven laughs’

  Psalms

  ‘Oh we buried Laughing Kelly in a box without a top.

  “You are dead now, man,” we told him, “and that laughing’s got to stop.”’

  Irish Song

  Was it possible that the Countess Maude Grogley was whistling that latter tune when she came to them where they had set up the torches and flood-lights at the clattering bottom edge of the rock tumble? Or more likely she was whistling From the Darkness into Glory. It is really the same tune.

  “How have you come from Gaire Castle so quickly, Countess Maude?” Gorgonius Pantera asked her.

  “It has not been quickly. It has been twenty minutes. My Modern World Terminal dates from the eighth century. And, while it is not instantaneous, neither is it obsolete. It gets me places. Ah, daughter of mine, that’s quite a rock-slide you’re buried under.”

  “Her worries are over with now, Countess Maude. She is with the Saints in Heaven now,” said Monika Pantera. (Did you know that Monika had purple eyes?)

  “That brat never had any worries, Monika, though it’s true that I’ve come onto her weeping unaccountably a few times. No, she is now with the deferred saints in the iron meadows of Purgatory. It will be good to have somebody with an infectious laugh like hers in that blessed-bleak place for a while. Maybe she’ll teach them to play Black Dog there. There’s a lot of fun to be had from that game. Of course it’s iron playing-cards that they use in Purgatory and they’re pretty hot. It doesn’t take very long to play a hand there. All the players like to get rid of their cards in a hurry.