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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “How is Prester John?” Barnaby Sheen asked in a strong low tone. “Oh, leave off the legends,” Harry O'Donovan sounded angrily. “If there ever was a Prester John he's been dead these thousand years.”

  “No. About eighteen months,” Penandrew said. “I found him alive. And now he is dead.”

  “You killed him,” Barnaby said simply.

  “How would I kill him?” Penandrew protested. “He died of old age and God knows that that is the truth. He crumbled to dust. Why should he not have died of old age? Do you know how long he had been around? He saw Rome fall. And Jerusalem.”

  “What did you take from him?” Barnaby Sheen asked.

  “I took the jealous thing, the only thing. And now I will not die in the natural course of things. He wanted me to take it. He had been trying to give it to someone for a long time.”

  “That is the truth?” Sheen asked.

  “That is the truth,” Penandrew said. And it was the truth, we all knew that, but it was a lopsided truth. Penandrew left us suddenly then.

  “May the sun come up on him crooked in the morning,” Harry O'Donovan said bitterly.

  But in the big house on Harrow Street, John and Zoe Penandrew lived it up to the haft. It was speed forever and lean heavy on the hooting horn. There was something a little disreputable about the couple now, if that word can be used of rich and positioned people. John grew older only in the old man of him. The boy in him was still the boy, the youth still the youth, the man still the man. He was living at least four lives at once, all at high speed and all forever. Zoe became more buxom and more classic, more brassy, more lively. If she aged at all she did it entrancingly and disgracefully, but not ungracefully. There was nobody like her. She was full and overflowing, always.

  All the fun that could be crammed into every day and night! Speed, and the dangerous teetering that goes with very high speed. They went on forever.

  Actually they went on for ten years. Then Zoe left him and he broke up.

  No. He broke up first and then she left him.

  “I lost it,” he said, “and I couldn't have. Nobody could ever have got it out of my grip.”

  III

  For his duration too there is a word—the word Aevum or Aeviternity, the duration of that in which its essence or substance knows no change: though by its accidents it can know change…

  Theology and Sanity—F. J. Sheed

  It was then that the doings in the house on Harrow Street took a peculiar turn. Things had been hectic when Zoe was there; they had been noisy and publicized. But, whatever Zoe was, she was always High Brass. She'd had class. Now the house and happenings degenerated.

  John Penandrew brought those three nephews of his into the big house to live with him. They were a crass bunch. There was something pretty low about them, and they brought John pretty low. A man should not be ashamed of his poor relations, of course: he should help them if they need help; and perhaps it was the essence of charity that John should take them into his own house. John had real charity in his heart; there is no taking that away from him. He also had baser things there and they began to pour out of it now. The three nephews were bums, and John Penandrew became a bum along with them. Rich bums are the worst kind.

  And there was no doubting the kinship. All three of the fellows had the family look strongly. They were loudmouths, as John had always been a little — but they were not smart and they were not smooth, as John could be when he wished. They all had what I can only call a facial deformity and they had it to a grotesque degree where John had it only to a minor extent. It was that lopsided look. It was that one eye bigger than the other. Coming out of that clan, John Penandrew came by his own slight deformity honestly.

  There were low-life doings at the big house on Harrow Street. The four Penandrew males each seemed to bring in seven cronies worse than himself. There were riotous doings there and the black maria was a frequent visitor to those doors. There was the aroma of stale evil in all this and John hadn't used to be a bad sort of man.

  John Penandrew talked rationally but sadly whenever we came across him.

  “I should never have taken the thing,” he said. “I knew before I finally seized it that it was wrong and unnatural. And, having taken it, I should have been willing to let it go easier when I found what a deformity it really was. ‘The corruption of the best is the worst—’ do you remember when we were taught that? This excellent gift was taken away from us long ago, and for a reason. I had it as a tainted and forbidden remnant, and I held onto it like a snake in the hand. But I will not easily give up any strong idea that I have held. I have an intransigent mind. Do you remember when we were taught to have that? I held it too tight, and it shattered me.”

  And in fact John Penandrew was a shattered man now—or a splattered one. The sap had been all drained out of him, as though the nephews were sapsuckers or bloodsuckers who preyed on him. He weathered badly. Now he looked older than he was and he no longer looked all ages at once. He aged monstrously—he leered and lolled. He seemed to be returning to most unaromatic dust.

  He had given up his chairmanships of the boards and his associations with the banks. It was their loss. He had always been very smart in matters of business and policy. He knew that that was finished with him now. He took his money and went home.

  And that home was a shipwreck. The middle nephew was as queer as a glass-egg goose. He had a stack of morals charges against him and John Penandrew had thousands of dollars of bond out on him. He was an almost personable fellow, but he was slanted — how he was slanted!

  The youngest nephew was no more than a boy — a cat-killing, window-breaking, arsonous vandal who led a wild pack and always left a trail right up to the Harrow Street house. What things he got away with because he was not yet adult! And him much more intricate than the adults who had to deal with him, and much more deadly! It is pretty certain that he killed larger and higher things than cats and broke more fragile things than windows.

  The oldest nephew, a twisted humorist, an almost good fellow, was the instigator of the endless series of sick parties held in the big house, the procurer of the dozen or so florid witches who always came with the dark. He was an experimenter in the vices, an innovator of reputation.

  John Penandrew had become an old and dirty caricature of himself. There was something artificial about him now, as though he were no more than a mask and effigy propped up on a display float at some garish carnival. The shape he was in, John Penandrew surely could not go on forever, and he didn't.

  “There has got to be an infusion of brains in the neighborhood and the militant world,” Barnaby Sheen said once when we were all together, except John Penandrew. “There is a stupidity on everything, and I cannot completely except even the present group. We need greater brains, wisdom, judgment, adequacy of the spirit and of spirit-handling.” “We need it, but where will you get it?” Harry O'Donovan asked.

  “Oh, from Aethiopia Cerebralis, I suppose. It's the only one of the Wells of Wisdom that I have the location of. I am thinking of the Guna Slopes whence the late monstrosity came. If a stolen secret of sick application comes from there, then we must bring counteracting wisdom from there also.”

  “Yes, there is an aura of braininess about that place,” George Drakos said, “but has its primary been discovered?”

  “Yes, of course. Discovered or guessed by myself at least. I will go there and get light for our darkness. Magi have come from those slopes before to grace the poorer parts of the world. I am going to recruit.”

  “Oh, but what if it turns out to be another stolen secret of sick application?” Cris Benedetti asked with apprehension.

  “I will be very careful about that,” Barnaby said. “I will not steal a star from those slopes. I will beg a young star to come.”

  After about three years of cohabitation with the nephews, John Penandrew died. That should have wrecked the legend that he would live forever. Maybe not though. Well, it really seemed that he did
not die in the natural course of things. There was something most unnatural about the course of his dying, as though he had turned to dust before he died; as though what died was not himself at all; as though the dying were an incident, almost an afterthought. He wasn't much more than fifty years old. He looked ninety. Zoe didn't come to the funeral.

  “He isn't in very good shape right now,” she said. “I'll wait a few months, and then go back to him when things are looking a little better with him.” She wasn't at all distraught; she was just not making sense. She left the country the night before the funeral.

  After the funeral mass, after the Zecharih Canticle when the body was taken out from the church, Barnaby Sheen whispered to the priest in the vestibule: “I don't believe you've got him all there.”

  “I don't believe so either,” the priest whispered back.

  Zoe inherited. The nephews? No, they didn't get anything.

  There was something a little bit loose about those nephews. They weren't—ah—seen again. No trace was found of them, either backward or forward. They simply hadn't been. In the legal and recorded sense, at least, John Penandrew hadn't had any nephews. He had had attributes, we suppose, but not nephews. Well, peace to the pieces of the poor rich man!

  It's a moral paradigm, really, of a man who reached for too much and was shattered by it. It's a neat instance of final moral compensation and seemliness. Yes, except that it wasn't neat; that this wasn't the final part of it; and that the compensation was not particularly moral. It was not neat because there were pieces sticking out of it — a primordial brass horn that surely wasn't Gabriel's; and three, at least, noisy persons in the house on Harrow Street.

  It was stated that the nephews were not seen again — but they were heard. Oh how they were heard! They were the noisiest unbodied bodies that ever assaulted honest ears. They and their florid witches (unseen also) made the nights—well—interesting, for quite some months in that long block on Harrow Street.

  This was the first phase of the Haunted House on Harrow Street. It was featured in Sunday supplements everywhere, likely in your own town paper. It was included in books like Beyond the Strange. It became a classic instance.

  And that was only the first phase of the Haunted House episode. The next phase was not so loudly trumpeted (don't use that word in this case) to the world. There was a tendency to play it down. It was too hell-fire hot to handle.

  Zoe came back to town, bright and big and brassy as ever. A classic personage, Zoe. How the classic has been underestimated and misunderstood! But she came in almost silently, muted brass with only a hint of dazzle and blare.

  “I believe that things will be looking a little better with my husband John now,” she said. “He should be better composed by this time. I am his wife. I will just move in with him again and be the proper wife to him.”

  “Move in where?” Harry O'Donovan asked aghast. “Into the grave?”

  “Oh no, I'll move back into the house on Harrow Street and live there with my husband.”

  “Zoe, did you take the, well, thing from John?” Barnaby Sheen asked curiously.

  “Yes, I took it, Barney, but only for a short while. I'll give it back to him now. He may be able to cope with it this time. I don't need such things myself. This time I am certain that we will have a long and entertaining life together. All things coalesce for us now.”

  “Zoe, you're not making sense. John Penandrew is dead!” Cris Benedetti shouted.

  “Who isn't?” she asked simply. “I'll bet you though, Cris—” (raucous horn blowing in the distance) “that he's more alive than you are at this minute. Or you or you or you or you. If any of you were as alive as he is, I'd have you.”

  “You are out of your wits, Zoe,” George Drakos said and blinked. There was something the matter with Drakos' eyes, with all of our eyes. Somewhere was a brassy shimmer of the second brightest light that human eyes will ever see. The four men who knew everything did not know Zoe Archikos. Much less did I.

  Zoe moved back into the house on Harrow Street. And how was it with her there? Noisy, noisy. Some things at least coalesced for her or into her: among these, the florid witches who used to come with the dark. Their voices had been so jangling because they were broken voices, part voices. Now they were together in that dozen-toned instrument, the red-brass, the flesh-brass. They had never been anything other than wraiths of her. Now she was all one again. There was some evidence also (shouting, grisly evidence) that the aeons or nephews or attributes had all coalesced into John Penandrew again.

  Well, that is the sort of thing that a town must live with, or die with; but it will not live with it on a normal course.

  Listen! No, not with your ears! Listen with your crawling flesh! Did you yourself ever meet a man after you had seen him dead? It does give you a dread, does it not? There was no need of elaboration. John Penandrew was a humorist, but by that time he had become a little edgy of horror humor. There was none of that coming-through-the-walls business. He came in normally by the door and sat down. “Jesus Christ!” Barnaby Sheen moaned. “Are you a ghost, John?”

  “The very opposite,” Penandrew said softly. “In fact, I had to give up the ghost.” Penandrew was that kind of humorist, but even bad jokes are shocking from a man who's supposed to be dead.

  “It wasn't all of you in the coffin was it, John?” Barnaby asked in wonder.

  “No. Only my older aspect went over the edge. I once thought that this would give me a foot in each world and I was curious about it. It didn't work that way. I have no consciousness of that aspect now; nor, I suppose, has he of me. I shuffled off the mortal coil there. I've won. That's something. Nobody else ever won at it—except those like Zoe who were already preternatural.”

  “You're a damned zombie, Penandrew!” Harry O'Donovan cried in shrill anger.

  “Can a zombie be damned?” Penandrew asked. “I don't know. Tell me, Cris. You were the theology student. For damnation is there not required a nature of a certain moment? But I'm of another moment now. Momentum, I am saying, which means a movement and a power and a weight; and ‘moment of time’ is only part of its meaning and only part of mine.”

  “Damn your Latin! You're a deformity,” O'Donovan cried.

  “Yes. I'm a deformed curve, the one that never closes on itself,” Penandrew said with his lopsided smile. “Barnaby Sheen's ‘In the Beginning’ bit left something out. There was what might have been a perfect sphere, yes. There was, possibly, an exterior speck for contrast. I say that there was something else, one curve that would not close when everything else closed into the rather neat package that called itself the Cosmos, the Beauty. There was one shape left over. I am part of that other shape. Try being a little lopsided sometimes, men. You live longer by it.”

  That was the last real talk that we ever had with John Penandrew. He never sought our company again and we sure never sought his.

  Nobody else lives in that long block on Harrow Street now, but the noises are overriding in that whole part of town. There is nothing the law can do. It is always that beautifully brassy woman there when they call and always with her artless answers: “It is only myself and my husband together here,” Zoe says, “and we taking our simple pleasures together. Is that so wrong?” Even coppers get that funny look in their eyes when they have been hexed by the pervading sound of the brass winds.

  Old men and young boys often gather near that house at night and howl like wolves from the glandular ghosts that the strange flesh calls up in them. But even the most aroused of them will not attempt the house or the doors.

  The Penandrews are a unique couple taking their pleasures together all at once forever, and so violently as to drive the whole town stone-deaf—like those old stone-deaf statues, their only real kindred. For these two will not die in any natural course of things, not with that big loud bright brassy horn blowing in a distance, and at absolutely close range, all at once, everywhere, unclosed, lopsided. It's the ending that hasn't any end. The Stone i
s found, and it's an older texture than the philosophers believed. The transmutation is accomplished—into brass. Classic and koine: this is the Zoe who dies hardly forever; this is the Penandrew, the man of the wrong shape.

  The four men who know everything understand it now.

  And I do not.

  Five little Wise Men, sitting on the floor.

  One lived forever, and then there were four.

  Dorg

  The Problem: Straited Ecology (not enough to eat).

  Projected Answer: Turnip and Tetrapod.

  Projected Method: Find them, find them.

  Methodologist: A Crash-Oriented Chief of Remedial Ecology.

  Spin-Offs: An Amalgamated Youth, a Trilobal Psychologist, a Mad Cartoonist.

  Recycled Method: “On your feet, Dordogne, do it one more time.”

  “It beats me how you will find the answer to world hunger in a mad cartoonist and a half-mad psychologist,” the pleasantly ponderous Annalouise Krug railed angrily. (Annalouise was a member of Amalgamated Youth.) “This is the sort of unimaginative drivel we have always had from the aged,” she ran on. (Whenever three or more persons were gathered together anywhere in the world to discuss actions, a member of Amalgamated Youth must be present; this was the law.) “What we need is fresh insights, youthful impetus: not the woeful stutterings of aged minds,” she stated. “You are the oldest person present, Annalouise,” Adrian Durchbruch the crash-oriented Chief of Remedial Ecology bounded back at her.

  “The oldest only in years, and then only if you unjuggle the record,” Annalouise maintained. “I have had my age officially set back eleven years. In Amalgamated Youth we have that privilege. Besides, you have no idea how difficult it is to recruit chronological youths into Amalgamated Youth. Further besides, Adrian, you are a crook-tailed boor to mention my age, considering all the years I have given to Youth.”