“Sure we do. We’d be bored to distraction if we didn’t. But I believe that circles are only a spin-off of small-minded concepts chained to small-number concepts. There were early perfections in number and ratio which have since been destroyed. We know that originally the circumference of a circle was exactly three times as long as the diameter of the circle. There were such conceptual perfections in all the ratios at the time when basic matter and space and time were made. This perfection of ratio and proportion was not marred or abandoned until the time of the fall of the angels and the subsequent fall of man. But it is marred now, and we are unable in our fallen state to reestablish the early perfection. Oh the questions, the questions that are appointed to us to consider!
“Are there only a few dozen categorical opposites to choose from, or are there billions of such pairs. High-low, hot-cold, in-out, live-dead, good-bad, yes-no, big-little, true-false, material-immaterial, mortal-immortal, oneness-division, repulsion-attraction, light-dark, dimension-micronity, love-hate, plus-minus, rich-poor, euphonic-cacophonic, how few of these pairs there are in the common conception of apes and bears and humans. If there are really billions of these opposites, and some of them billion-choice as well as two-choice, why do we come so hardly to them?”
“Have you any special thoughts about unborn spirits or wraiths that sometimes pass for living persons, sometimes pass for very many years as living persons, and then melt away like the dew?” Gorgonius asked.
“In most cases that is ourselves,” the Ifrit said, “for we are technically unborn and we are mistaken for cases of unborn humans. But there are real cases of yet-to-be-born humans getting a sort of pre-training. It used to be that nearly every large human family had one of these invisible children with whom they would become quite familiar and involved. Now that there are no longer any large human families, I don’t know how frequent the manifestations are. But when many human children and even adults seem to remember previous lives, they do indeed remember pre-birth episodes. Though invisible, they are not eyeless nor earless nor noiseless, and they are able to identify persons and places in amazing details. We can follow their processes pretty well.”
Then Gorgonius Pantera and Jane Chantal High-Queen both asked a question at exactly the same time.
“A recent article in a Swiss magazine says that nine of the twenty greatest fortunes in the world are controlled by unknown practioneers and prestidigitators. Somehow I feel that you know something about this? Do you?” Gorgonius asked.
“Some of the wishes that the Ifrits fulfill will require either a great back-up of magic or a great back-up of money, for they certainly smell expensive. Somehow I feel that you know something about this? Do you?” Jane Chantal High-Queen asked. And the last eleven words of the two of them were uttered in total concert.
“The two questions are really the same questions,” the Ifrit said. “Yes, some of the wishes that we fill for people are quite expensive. Humans, being half-way intelligent, only half-way believe in magic. We, being somewhat more than half-way intelligent, believe in magic somewhat more than humans do. But we use it only in conditions of absolute necessity, seldom in the little game of granting wishes. Yes, quite a number of the great fortunes of the world are in Ifrit rather than in human hands. When Drexler wrote: The absolute anonymity, irresponsibility, and ruthlessness of a near majority of the great fortunes is as shocking as anything that can be imagined, he wrote correctly from the human viewpoint. When Jimmy the Greek Tuttleburg wrote: Some of the very largest fortunes in the world have owners whom I can only describe as ‘Lords of Smoke’, he wrote of us.
“Monika, has my bide-a-while with you people been sufficient and satisfactory? In any case, it will not count as a wish against you. Some other day, but not today, rub the selfsame lamp again, and I will once more come to you to grant a wish. Maybe, by that time, you will have thought of something that you do need or wish. You are all such pleasant people that it almost seems as if you should all be Ifrits.”
And then the Ifrit disappeared back whence he had come.
“Well, was he or wasn’t he?” Solomon Izzersted demanded of all of them as he bounced up and down like a ball in his excitement. “He has a nimble mind, and he has certainly had at least a brushing acquaintance with deep thoughts.”
“Oh, he was real enough, for an Ifrit,” Monika said, “which is to say that he was a real Ifrit. The standards of reality are lower for Ifrits than for people.”
“Monika, Monika,” Denis chided her. “That was my forgery of the Aladdin’s Lamp that you rubbed. That was my forgery of an Ifrit who came on your cue. Oh yes, he had a nimble mind, my own. And certainly I do have at least a brushing acquaintance with deep thoughts.”
“If this lamp that I rubbed is a forgery, I still have the other lamp of the pair,” Monika said, “and it will be the true Aladdin’s Lamp then. If this Ifrit that came on my cue is a forgery of yours, then a real Ifrit will come on my rubbing of the real lamp. And it may be that I’ll get a wish granted from each of them.”
“Do not try to call up the real Ifrit by rubbing the real lamp today, Monika,” Denis said. “This is Sunday the Christian Day of the Right Hand of God, but all Ifrits are Muslims of the Left Hand of God. No real Ifrit will come on Sunday. Try it tomorrow or the following day, if there is a following day. The eighth and the ninth days of the week are the best days for calling up Ifrits.”
The rather strange man named Otto who lived higher up on the mountain came to Gorgonius Pantera again.
“The Alpenriese, the Alpine Giant says that it takes twelve hours for a giant to die,” Otto said. “And he says that he is beginning to die now. He says that a Scribbling Giant dies best with an audience. He says that somebody will have to be digging the grave on the first terrace just below the mountain crest, and that the grave must be eighteen feet long, and quite wide and deep. He says that it will take quite a bit of dynamite because it is so rocky.”
“We will come at once, Otto,” Gorgonius Pantera said.
It was noon of June 21, Midsummer’s Eve, the last time that June 21 would fall on Sunday in that century. There was still snow on the mountain shoulder where the giant lived, for it was a high mountain. There had even been an inch of new snow that morning. The Midsummer Eve snow was proverbially the last snow of the season on that mountain.
“Ah, Gorgonius Pantera, you are small for a giant, even for one of these latterday giants,” the Alpine Giant said. “But you will yet grow. I have known you in all the three centuries that you have lived in. And there is your sixth (or possibly your seventh) wife Monika who has been up to see me before. And there is your sixth (or is she your seventh) daughter Perpetua. She climbed up here to see me one summer when she was yet a young girl. And your friends, I know some of them by their fame and repute. I have already begun my long process of dying, so I will ramble a little bit in my mind and my tongue. And yet I’ll pass on to you true kernels of wisdom.
“But what is that little antic Kricketball of a boy? Oh, it’s a bouncing comic Zappelphilipp, and Ewigerjude-Tand, a jumping toy to amuse the old giant in his dying hours. Thank you, Gorgonius. How is it wound up? Where is its wind-up key?”
“Before the morning stars sang together I was already wound up,” Solomon Izzersted croaked in a loud voice that had as much new frost on it as had the Midsummer Eve mountain top. “I am no bouncing toy! Know it, giant, I am a man, a man!”
“A stroke of genius to put such a rough, loud, man’s voice in the little bouncing toy,” the giant admired, and the twinkle in his eye was as big as a dinner plate. He saw that Solomon was indeed a living man, but he still had his giant’s dying humor. “Which one of you made it?” he asked. “You Gorgonius, great craftsman? You Denis Lollardy, master-craftsman and forger?”
“Yes, I made the little bugger,” Denis joshed. “Out of walnut wood I made him. And then he bit a piece out of the buzz saw when I was finishing him off. His bite is worse than his bark.”
“I will
go through the formula that should always be given to an incoming giant,” the Alpine Giant said. “When all else is told about the impetus and direction of the world, the world is still supported by a number of lonely, devoted, and austere persons, the Pillars of Wisdom. There is a numbers game concerning the count of the Pillars of Wisdom who support the world, but I know that our full complement is twenty-one Pillars, three sevens of them. One third of the Pillars of Wisdom are the Seven Scribbling Giants who literally write the on-going future and scenario of the world. When even one of the Pillars of Wisdom who support the world dies, the whole world staggers until that Pillar is replaced. When the number of the pillars is reduced by two or more, then there is catastrophe. Somewhere in Scripture such a time is described as when the heavens themselves were closed for three years and forty days. The present week may yet turn into such a time of disaster. I myself will be replaced by Gorgonius here, but who will replace Atrox Fabulinus the greatest of our seven? Oh, he was a dolt, he was intemperate, he was senile. But he was the oldest of us all. He was the Roman Connection, the last citizen of the Old Roman Empire still active in the world. I hate to see the Roman Connection broken. Where is there a giant big enough to fill the gap that the Great Atrox has left?”
“I’ll find the man for that job, I’ll find a giant to take his place!” bouncing, baseball-sized Solomon Izzersted howled in his louder-than-usual and more-abrasive-than-usual voice. “The man for any job in the world can be found on the job markets of the world. One only needs to know where to look. I’ll find him!”
“I do not laugh at you now, Bouncer, I do not laugh at you,” the Alpine Giant said. “In one case a crane-bird led the searchers to the cave where the reluctant giant was hiding, afraid to become one of the pillars of the world. And yet he became one of the finest Scribbling Giants ever, and he served extraordinarily well for several centuries. And in another case a black dog came to a covenant of searchers. ‘There are seven boy giants who are brothers,’ the black dog said. ‘Follow me to their cave. I will bite each of them savagely in the leg. Six of them will say ‘It does not hurt at all’, but the seventh will scream in pain. Seize on that seventh one then and make him a Scribbling Giant, for he will be the honest one and his six brothers will be liars.’ And once a flight of bees discovered a new Pillar of Wisdom. They formed themselves in the air to spell out the words: HERE IS A PILLAR OF RIGHTEOUSNESS TO BE ONE OF THE SUSTAINERS OF THE WORLD. Little toy who is not a toy, do you have in mind somebody in particular who will be giant enough to replace the Giant Atrox?”
“I barely begin to have such a giant in mind,” Solomon said. “Perhaps he will be a Patagonian Giant.”
“Perhaps there are giants in Patagonia, Solomon, the Alpine Giant said. “Patagonia is the Land of Attending Marvels, as the whale Moby Dick has written: All the attending marvels of a thousand Patagonian sights and sounds helped to sway me to my wish. I like that passage.”
“But it was not the whale who wrote that, Alpine Giant,” Mary Brandy corrected. “It was the human author.”
“Advise me not so, woman, for you are mistaken,” the dying giant said. “I am a Scribbling Giant and I know something about the scribblers’ trade, of sources and of authorship, of true hands and of false. I say that it was the whale who wrote the book.”
Perpetua Parisi took a pack of cards out of her sweater pocket. “Now, Old Giant, we will play Alte Jungfer, Old Maid, as I played it with you when I was a little girl. I could beat you then and I can beat you now, but I’ll let you think you can beat me. When I was a little girl, my mother there, the lady with the purple eyes, wouldn’t let me go up to the top of the mountain while it was snowing. ‘But the giant will be lonesome if I don’t go up and play Old Maid with him,’ I’d say. ‘Not on snowy days he won’t be lonesome,’ my mother would tell me. ‘On snowy days the snow plays Old Maid with the Giant and keeps him from getting lonesome.’ ‘How in the world would the giant and the snow play Old Maid?’ I’d ask. ‘With snow cards,’ my mother said. Did you and the snow really play Old Maid with snow cards, Giant, and did it keep you from getting lonesome?”
“We did play with snow cards, yes. But that didn’t completely keep me from getting lonesome. Only you could do that,” the gracious Giant said. Denis Lollardy was seasoning clay to make a death mask for the Giant when the hour should come. “There is a museum which already has four such death masks,” Denis said, “and in a thousand years it may have a dozen or more of them.”
“And if the one you take of me doesn’t come out well, you can always forge one,” the Giant said. “I want to be buried with my great hunting horn in my mouth, and the end of it sticking out from the covering earth. If world-wide menaces approach, then I will blow it if I am able to do it. And if I’m not able to do it, then I won’t.”
“It’s sure to become a legend,” Mary Brandy said. “Like the old dead Emperor Barbarossa buried in a cavern sitting at a table with his red beard grown clear through that table. He also has a hunting-horn to blow, and sometimes people hear it, or believe that they do.”
“You call that a hunting-horn that old Barbarossa is sealed in with?” the Giant demanded. “It’s no such thing. It’s a French horn.”
“Is there any canonical height required for a giant?” Solomon asked.
“I doubt whether really small giants will ever become the fashion,” the Alpine Giant said. “Oh, seven or eight or nine feet tall should be enough when he’s first declared a giant. And most of them grow another foot or two after taking office.”
“But it isn’t a canonical requirement?” Solomon persisted.
“There is no canonical requirement, no, Solomon. Only that the people should gaze up at him in awe and say ‘Now there is a Giant.’”
Meanwhile the digging of the grave went well. Gorgonius and Denis and Caesar were all strong diggers. The grave eighteen feet long and nine feet wide went down and down. Only at the six foot depth and the nine foot depth did they have to blast through a stratum of hard rock.
Solomon Izzersted had borrowed from somebody a palm-of-the-hand voxo which was exactly as large as he was. He seemed to be transacting world-wide business with this.
“What are you doing, Solomon, and whom are you talking to?” Perpetua asked him. “Now that I no longer have my boy-man Leo to worry about, I may start worrying about baseball-sized-man you.”
“I’m talking to my New York Agent,” Solomon said. “Buy it, Charleroi, buy it!”
“Who is Charleroi, Solomon, and what are you having him buy? Why do you need a New York Agent? Are you going back to vaudeville, and how will you do both parts of the vaudeville act by yourself?”
“I am not going back into vaudeville, but I will use good old-fashioned vaudeville ballyhoo techniques in all my new businesses. And I will latch onto a giant I knew in vaudeville (I haven’t decided on which of three giants yet) to be the replacement of Atrox. Oh, do you people know that the Sustaining Pillars of the World have been working free all these centuries. This must stop. They should be billion-dollar-a-year persons out of common decency. I wonder how many of them I would be able to represent after I got well set up? But the Atrox replacement will be first. I will give him worldwide hype and hoke when I have chosen him. Oh, it’s a bankrupt New York publishing company that I’m having Charleroi buy right now. What bankrupted that New York publishing company was building too lavish a building for themselves, and furbishing much too lavish suites in it. But things can’t get too lavish for me! We will have the leading Giant of the world for our first client, and we’ll spread him all over the world.”
“Are all three of the giants above the non-canonical height for giants, Solomon?” Gorgonius asked him.
“One of them is. The second one can make it by stretching his neck. He is very good at that. He used to substitute for Ruben the Rubberneck in vaudeville whenever Ruben had too sore a neck to go on. He was better than Ruben at neck-stretching: he was better than most people at most things. And the thi
rd possible giant, he is such a tall personality that ordinary measurements can’t apply to him in any category.”
“Play fair, play fair, Solomon,” Caesar warned. “You must not use shoddy material in the Pillars that Sustain the World. None of them sounds like a sound Atrox substitute to me. Alpine Giant, did you know that when Solomon was in the stage act with John Barkley Towntower, he had a new account of his origin at every performance? He never repeated his patter. Tell the Alpine Giant a new account of your origin, Solomon.”
“Yes, Giant, I was born a twin, the furthest from an identical twin that it is possible to be. When I was born they believed that I was only a bump or growth on my twin brother’s navel, for I sure didn’t look human, and I still don’t. We were twins, apparently, of the same mother but of two different fathers. My twin John Barkley Towntower was baptized a Christian but I was not. They did not pour water on my head. They didn’t know that I had a head, or even an identity. Nevertheless, they did put salt and oil on my head, intending to put it on the body of my twin. I believe that I am a Jew born and bred and ingrained forever.”
“How do you arrive at that conclusion, Solomon?” asked the tired and dying, but amused, Alpine Giant.
“I believe that my father was Iofel, sometimes known as the Trickster Angel. He used to impregnate women of the goyim quite unknown to them, just for the laughs everybody would have when such women bore indubitably Jewish children. Iofel is the only angel known for certain to be Jewish. He is the most ethnic of the angels. You don’t like it, Alpine Giant?”
“I’m sorry, Solomon, but when you’ve been around as long as I have, you’ve heard them all,” the Giant smiled. “People, there is the rumor that several of your group besides Gorgonius have become Scribbling Giants. It is good to have a close-knit group like that. There is also the rumor that one of the women for sure, and probably two more, have become Scribbling Giants. The three of you are extraordinary.”
East of Laughter Page 19
