The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

“There is a fish eight feet long and eighty feet deep,” said Elias. “We should mark this spot and come back with a line.”

  “We wouldn't need to mark it,” said Stuff, and he was right. There is an old joke about marking the spot where a fish is, but the joke misses the point. Here the spot of the sea could be noted as definitely as a spot of the landscape. It was just where the water turned from blue to lilac, it was exactly at the bottom of the cup, it was in the middle of a floating meadow of coconut fronds and fibrous wood, it was where the water coiled over itself in minute arabesques.

  There is an old wood-cut picture that shows the sea like that, composed of stylized very small waves, each one curled over itself in three-quarters of a circle, and the rows of them as identical as figures on wall paper. One would have said that the man who drew that had never seen the sea. But he must have seen it, and right here.

  Behind them the configuration was different, ruffled like blue fur, and beyond that it was green sheen. Ahead it was purple. It was a very bright day. There were clouds, high castle-like white clouds, and a little green in them as though they reflected the islands, but none of the clouds came near the sun; they faded away to nothing as you watched them, but new ones were being born constantly, or they drifted in. The air had something of the smell of the hot sea itself, something of jumping young fish, something of the odor of an Italian grocery store, coming from the castellated islands.

  The birds came and sat down on the sea around them.

  “I'll tell you about this having the world by the tail,” said Stuff. “You don't get that way. You're born that way. You come out with it in your hand, and you never let go.”

  They had a store of brew in a five gallon g.i. water can. Stuff, who had made it, called it corn beer. Elias, the Syrian from Oklahoma, called it choc beer. Plunkett, who was an Australian, said that it was very like Townsville Treacle.

  “Very like, Stuff. That is a sort of family name we give it. We made a lot of it at home for selves and friends. And, modestly, I also have the world by the tail.”

  “Cobber, you don't know which end is the tail. And you don't have it; it has you. It's sunk its teeth in your nose and is hanging on like an eel. You no more have the world by the tail than anything.”

  They were going very fast, but it was hardly noted. The sea jarred once more, then again. Yet they scarcely seemed to move. You may or may not know how these things go, but they had drunk a lot of the beer and were relaxed and not caring greatly. They were still in the bottom of the cup and at the center of the world, but little Ita Pulau was now rushing to that center.

  “You had better hit that thing or we are out to sea and gone,” said Shoe-Horn.

  “How could I miss it? It's four hundred yards across, and we're right on it.”

  “Stuff, knowing you, you couldn't hit it with a rifle from here. I hope you can hit it with the boat.”

  They lofted in over the treacherous coral, and jumped clear to the mud of Ita Pulau. Stuff landed running with the near empty beer-water can. They had no other gear.

  Ahmad was there. He was the one who had invited them to Ita Pulau. He came forward as always with hand extended and said one word, his name, “Ahmad.”

  Shoe-Horn took his hand and said, as always, “Ah-not-mad.” Ahmad never understood this. He knew that it was a joke on his name, but he knew that it was a good-natured one, and he liked the boys.

  “Makan, minum, elok,” said Ahmad, ‘Eat, drink, and be merry’ — really eat, drink, and be beautiful, if you are a literalist, and God help you if you are.

  “For today we die,” said Shoe-Horn, and right there's where he broke the molasses pitcher, as Uncle Remus has it. Perhaps if he hadn't said that, they wouldn't have died that day at all. Shoe-Horn was always a jinx.

  And Ahmad was the perfect host. He had provided two large tin cans, a block of wood, and a stump for them, understanding the inability of white boys to sit on the ground with either ease or grace.

  They had what was probably fish, and what was probably taro. They knew enough to eat with their fingers, and they knew enough to take the food with the right hand only. They had what was probably coconut wine, real jungle juice, but it was disappointing, apparently non-alcoholic; and their corn beer was gone.

  “Where are the girls?” asked Shoe-Horn.

  “One day a cuscus (the coconut possum) came to visit the turtle,” said Ahmad. “ ‘Where are your eggs?’ asked the cuscus. ‘I love to look at turtle eggs, so round and soft to the touch.’ ‘Up on the hill,’ said the turtle. But they were not up on the hill; the cuscus could not find them, and he came back. ‘Where are your eggs?’ he asked again. ‘I have an affection for them. I always did like children in whatever form.’ ‘Up in the top of the kapok tree,’ said the turtle, but the cuscus could not find them there. ‘Where are your eggs?’ he asked again. ‘They are so leathery and smooth that I like to pet them.’ ‘Perhaps their mother has taken them to the other side of the island on the rocks,’ said the turtle. The cuscus went to look, but he didn't find them there either. This was because the turtle had lied, and the eggs were buried in the sand all the time. He knew in what way the cuscus liked turtle eggs.”

  “Oh, I never heard that story before,” said Shoe-Horn. “But where are the girls?”

  Ahmad had a lean brown muscular face, and he smiled with it. But he didn't say where the girls were.

  “I will tell you what it is like to have the world by the tail, Ahmad,” said Stuff. “Others talk of reaching for a star, but I have hold of a cornet. You will hear of me someday, even here you will hear of me. I have the mark on me. And someday I will get the chance to make the deal. With some the thing they have isn't worth enough to be offered the deal. Why don't you put a little scorpion sting in the coconut wine, Ahmad?”

  “I have never heard of putting it in a drink. I wouldn't know how to go about getting it.”

  “I mean alcohol.”

  “That is already in.”

  “We all of us appear very ordinary men before we make the deal. One was a stone-mason, son of a blacksmith. One was a poster-painter, son of a customs official. One was a dilettante, son of a dilettante. One was an apostate seminarian, son of a shoemaker. And one is a twenty year-old army sergeant, son of a Ford-car dealer. All at the moment of the deal are apparent failures. But they accept the deal, giving away one thing, and they rise to the top of the world. The others did not realize both the strength and the weakness of their new status, but I will realize it.”

  “We also have that story,” said Ahmad, “and I know what it is you all trade. But is it worth it?”

  “And you must remember, Stuff,” said Elias, “that Faust was not saved in all versions of the story, only in that of the great mediocre, and one other. But actually he's in hell this afternoon, and it's too nice an afternoon to be there.”

  “He didn't know what he was doing,” said Stuff. “Ahmad, it does not have alcohol in it. You didn't understand what I meant. The others understood the weakness but not the strength of their new positions. They acted from panic, hating to be conspicuous failures. They didn't do what they had the opportunity to do in the years that they had. But give me twenty years of the power and I will make such connections in all three of the worlds that they can't put me in hell.”

  “You seem serious,” said Elias. “I always thought that was a joke of yours.”

  “I am serious. This is the one thing I'm serious about.”

  One thing about the coconut wine, it was good. It wasn't cold, or even cool. It hadn't a kick. It tasted astringent and green. But it was good. They drank a lot of it.

  “You should be careful,” said Ahmad. “It isn't what you think. It isn't that I'm stingy. It's easily made. But it will knock you on your cans. Is that the correct form of the phrase?”

  “That is the correct form, Ahmad, but it won't. It's good, but there's nothing to it.”

  And they drank a lot more of it.

  “I may also have the wo
rld by the tail,” said Elias, “but tentatively, contingently, and by a single hair, if I have it at all. I made a bet with myself, that I shouldn't have made, but there is a chance that I have won it. If so, then I will not worry about anything else. I am easily repelled, and I never liked things too sweet, and there was something in the war time sentiment that sickened me. It infected the churches which was to be expected, but it also infected the Church. Well, I'd been a rounder, particularly during the last year when I'd already been away from home. Then I came into the army. I had never been such a rounder that I didn't get right before it was dangerous, and sometimes I stayed right for quite a while. But there seemed to be a propaganda directed right at me (I thought) that I should get right because I was going to war, because I might be killed. ‘I'll gamble it,’ I said. ‘You've all made me mad now.’ I told God and all the rest of them that they had done wrong to try and panic me, and that I wouldn't go back to the sacraments till I was back from the war and away from those dangers. I wouldn't be driven to them by fear, and I stuck to that point. Whoever said there were no atheists in fox holes was a vicious liar. There are lots of them. And there are others who were atheists before and will be after, and who spend the interval as preachy cowards. Of them I didn't want any part. ‘But after this is over we will figure it out unemotionally,’ I said. ‘We will see.’

  “It was a little of bravado, like daring the lightning when you are little. It wasn't that I'd ever really been on bad terms with God. It was just that I had to prove a point that whatever would hold me, it wouldn't be fear that held me.

  “Three times I thought that I'd been caught in my smart trick. Once I was alone, once with others, once with two of you. I could have died easier than not any of those times. But I didn't waver. Didn't waver? I wavered all over the place. But I didn't get in.

  “Now I'm through it and alive. Now I'll go back to the sacraments and save whatever I have worth saving by one horse tail hair. It's a slim hold I have on it, and I hope it doesn't break. I always will be a rounder, but I might still make it slimly.”

  They went to the little hill that is the center of Ita Pulau, which was also now the center of the known universe, the middle of that convex cup which is the world. And whatever it was (Ahmad said that it was the coconut wine) everything had now been brought into much sharper focus. It wasn't only the colours and the shapes, though these had never been so clear anywhere. It wasn't just the smells, though you could smell every bird and grub and lizard and sea-spider within a mile, it wasn't just the heat and the breeze, though now these were felt directly as never before. It was being awake, or alive, in a new way; as though, after in the morning waking from a dream, one had now waked a second time from a larger dream and seen that whole previous life had been a dream, and now for the first time was wakefulness.

  This feeling was new to the boys, but it may have been experienced by others. Ahmad said that it was common after drinking coconut wine. He said that it was the wine that did it, and that they were a little drunk. But the wine had no kick. It was just the startling fineness of the day that brought a new clarity all its own.

  “I probably have it luckier than any of you, now that it is near my time for going home,” said Phil Plunkett. “I don't know what it is I have done to deserve my luck, and I can only hope that it holds.”

  Plunkett was an Australian lance corporal. But Australian does not tell the story; he was also an Irishman. He had a face like a monkey's, and yet somehow a rather fine one. That is possible with Irish faces.

  “What is your luck, Phil?” asked Shoe-Horn.

  “Aileen. It seems unjust to the rest of the world that I, who am as common as cabbage, should be promised not only the kindest girl in the world, but also the smartest, the most humorous, and probably the prettiest.”

  “I wouldn't worry about the injustice to the world in gathering a little luck to myself,” said Stuff. “The world wouldn't worry about a little injustice befalling you.”

  “Oh, but it would. I've always felt the world cares very greatly what happens to me. No, I haven't honestly always felt that; but since I've known Aileen I've felt it.”

  “She is probably shacking up with some yank now,” said Shoe-Horn.

  “I don't believe it. She is virtue personified.”

  “I knew a girl who was virtue personified,” said Stuff. “I went to see her three times. Then it came to me, ‘Stuff, this isn't for you. It isn't enough, it just isn't enough.’ Virtue is a fine thing, but there has to be something else. I ran out of that house and left my hat there. I guess it's still there.”

  “With Aileen there is much else. Nobody, nobody would have picked me as the one lucky enough to have her.”

  “She is probably shacking,” said Shoe-Horn.

  “Oh shut up. She wouldn't shack, but she might be seriously taken with someone else. She is so kind she could never turn anyone clear off. I imagine that there are times when kindness puts something of a strain on virtue.”

  And they kept on drinking that nothing coconut wine.

  The effect was greatest on Shoe-Horn. Not that he was drunk. Since it had no kick to it, naturally you could not get drunk on it. But he was changed for the better as they all were, and he had a new sparkle to him.

  “I know it all now,” he said. “It has come to me all at once. You all thought me the dummy of the crowd, and now I know just about everything there is to know.”

  “It is the sign that you have had enough. A little more of it and you will know nothing,” said Ahmad.

  “This?” asked Stuff. “Why, there's nothing to it. Still, I have to admit that I also know it all, and that's a little unusual. Not so much for me as for Shoe-Horn, however. He had so much farther to go. It is the drink?”

  “It is the drink,” said Ahmad. “When one has had exactly enough of it he knows all there is to know. I sit here sometimes, and I come to know all there is in the world. And the world becomes very small and I hold it in my two hands.”

  “I know what you mean,” said Plunkett. “Round like a ball and everything in it. I can almost do it myself.”

  “Round like a ball? Oh no, you're mistaken. The world is the shape of a plantain leaf when one really knows it. You haven't progressed far enough into this. But you have progressed too far for one day. Now you must drink no more; you must get on your bobble boat and row home, and if you row very hard you may yet make it.”

  “We could get there without any boat,” said Shoe-Horn. “I know the way to do it. We can make it come to us here. We are as close as our island is. It is just as close for it to come.”

  “Ahmad is right,” said George Elias. “There is a right time for everything. And this is the right time for us to go. It has turned into the most memorable day that I have ever seen, and I also feel that I know everything. But this I know with a different corner of my mind; I know that it is time to go.”

  Stuff agreed. He didn't want to, but there was also something stirring in one corner of his mind that told him to agree. And Plunkett, who had been toying with the idea that they might all row to Australia instead, now turned sadly to the unreasoning conclusion that it would be better for them to attempt the six miles than the two thousand miles.

  They almost had to use force on Shoe-Horn, but they got him down to the coast, and the four of them launched off in the rubber boat out over the rough coral.

  “But there has never been a day like this before, has there Ahmad?” called Stuff.

  “I am not sure. It may be that such a day comes to everyone, and that each of your ancestors has known one. Or it may be that this is the only day like it that has ever been. To me also it has been an especially vivid day.”

  They did not understand what he said, for he spoke in deep Malay, not the pidgeon that only strings a few of the words in. Yet they knew what he said well enough. They couldn't be sure either, not having enough experience in such; yet the truth was that there had never been such a day like that since the world was made
. Even in such simple things as colours and smells there had never been such an outstanding day. And it had not been a delusion that they had all shared a short time before; for a short moment there they all of them had really known everything.

  Now they were like giants. They used the oar and the other oar, and they stood out from the island powerfully and at a fast speed. Ahmad waved to them from the shore. He waved like a small boy. They had not understood before that it is a universal gesture.

  A tide is nothing, a current is a joke when you are near the end of the afternoon of the great day. It dragged at them but it could not hold them. Nothing could hold them now.

  Ahmad was still waving at them from the shore, but now there was great pain and worry on his face.

  It is like a plowman who sees that he is going to finish a field before dark, and with a little to spare. It is like a journey where you arrive far more timely than you had hoped, and in better shape. The yellow inflated rubber boat ate up the miles under the power of the oarsmen who grew taller by the minute, and they hadn't a mile to go. The shadow had begun to eat up the island behind them, and they knew that there it goes from daylight to dark without twilight, but they would make it easily, and the night promised to be even more glorious than the afternoon had become.

  “I will bottle the stuff,” said Stuff, “and then I'll really have the world by the tail. It doesn't make you drunk, it just hones you to a fine edge, and it brings all the rest of the world up to your high level. It is the greatest thing ever.”

  They weren't three hundred yards off their home shore and they were beating the dark there, when the sea gave a bump. There was also a sort of shimmer went through the four of them.

  And then they stood still though the oars almost bent with the power. They even went back a little, and it darkened quickly as though a hand went over the sky.

  Shoe-Horn, who had an oar, began to giggle. Then he threw that oar a great distance, and to sea. He grappled with Elias and took possession of the other oar, and threw it even farther. And they were running to open sea at a frightening rate as the dark grew darker. Shoe-Horn and Elias were engaged in a bloody drunken fistfight and both looked empty-eyed and stupid. Phil Plunkett lay flat in the bottom of the boat and sang a low incoherent song with the words all blurred together, and he slobbered as he sang.