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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “Well, that's fate,” Snapjudge said after he had completed the call. “There's no arguing with fate. But you might as well sketch out my end for me. Just how will I end, Jonah?”

  “Wet,” said Jonah Hirnbrecher.

  2

  “It is he that saith not ‘Kismet’; it is he that knows not Fate; It is Richard, it is Raymond, it is Godfrey at the gate!”

  —Chesterton, Lepanto

  “I've observed too many persons on their death day for me to have any doubt in your case,” Jonah said. It was almost as if he had something to defend.

  “Oh, I haven't any doubt,” Snapjudge said humbly. “My fate is fixed as is all fate. But I wonder how it came upon me so suddenly.”

  “The indications of sudden disaster have always been there, I suppose,” Jonah said. “They're written plainly everywhere, on the backs of your hands, and in the wide swing of your eyes. They're in your shapeless gestures, particularly that emphasized tossing of your head. They're in the dilation of your nostrils. But you're a bit of a special person, an Analyst, a Prophet, almost an exception; so the signs and causes were scattered with you and at first they did not have to come together. They've done it though. There is now a correspondence and constellation of all your evil signs, and they cannot be reversed.”

  “Jonah, how do we really do it? Isn't there something more to it? I mean the sudden and true intuitions. Sometimes they seem to go beyond the evidence.”

  “Oh, the intuitions are merely the culmination of the evidence that we receive without consciously acknowledging it. This evidence burgeons, or it festers, in our unconscious. Then the intuitions explode out of that evidence that we had consciously overlooked. But the intuitions are valid and in the true line, Jim. Our prediction tactics cannot be in error. There is a mystique that requires their accuracy.”

  “I don't know, Jonah, I just don't know. There's been a feeling coming over me all afternoon that maybe, someday, somewhere, we should give someone the benefit of the doubt.”

  “The benefit of what doubt, Jim? We Prejudicial Analysts cannot have doubts. Were we not certain, we would be mighty shaky. If we did not stand on sacred privilege, we would be in danger of being ridiculous.”

  “It just seems to me, Jonah (and forgive me, for I'm a distraught man speaking on the last day of his life), that we may sometimes be too arrogant in some of this.”

  “Arrogance is a requirement for us, Jim. Let them know that there are still Prophets in Israel. We are the latter-day prophets, and as such we will always be in danger of being stoned by the people. And, walking always in this danger, it is automatic that we should be arrogant. We have to be right. There is an inerrancy about properly marshaled evidence, about assembled Folk Belief, about phrenological accumulation. What they indicate has to be. We grow out of the past, and the name of that past is Prejudgment or Prejudice. Today's one-inch twig growth at the top of the tree does not give the total profile or representation of that tree. Without rational prejudice, which is the solid sense of things past, we would be like foolish gooney birds waking up into a world with only a present dimension.”

  “Or little ducks each day,” said Jim Snapjudge. “But might we not sometimes suspend judgment?”

  “No, Jim. Suspended judgment is a little bit like suspended animation,” Jonah explained. “Somehow we might like it to be there as a workable alternative if things got too rough. But there's no proof at all that either will ever work. Better to forget about them.”

  “Does Fate have to be final?”

  “Certainly. It wouldn't be Fate if it weren't final.”

  “And yet there is the possibility that Agnes was partly right,” Snapjudge said dreamily. “The strongest case against Prejudicial Analysis isn't that it is unfair or hate-filled (why should such a calculating and impersonal thing as the Analysis bother to be unfair or hateful to fragments of its own data?) the case against it is that it is sometimes mistaken, though by its nature it can never admit that it is mistaken; and that it is always premature. It's as though we were telling a situation or a person ‘You can't get out of your cage. Don't try.’ And that situation or person should protest ‘I want to try anyhow. Isn't it allowed to try?’ and then we would exclude all chance with a final statement ‘No, it is not allowed to try.’ From one viewpoint, a case could be made that this is unfair. I don't know whether it would be a strong case or not. What are you doing to me, man?”

  Jonah Hirnbrecher was doing something with his hands, on or behind the shoulders of Jim Snapjudge. He seemed to be unfastening an invisible something, probably a garment. Then he drew it off and folded it carefully with his ritual hands. The object was still invisible, and yet its shape, including the very fancy fringes of it, could be guessed from the movement of those Jonah hands.

  “I am removing your Prophet's Mantle, Snapjudge,” Jonah said then in a liturgical voice. “It is best removed some hours before the death, for the prophetic faculty is already lost when the doubting and questioning begin. When one dies and the Mantle has not been symbolically removed, then the trees in the sacred talking groves (there are still some in nearby Scioto County) will wail out ‘A Prophet is dead!’ And I hate to hear grown trees cry. Do you ever go down to Rhineland?”

  “Seldom. Sometimes I go down to check on my analyses of persons and their fates. I may go down this evening to check on two such fates.”

  “Yes. You will go down there this evening. That is where you will die.’

  “But what if I do not go down there this evening, Jonah? How will I die if I avoid the scene of my death? What could force me to go down to Rhineland this evening?”

  “Snapjudge, you have ceased to be a Prejudicial Analyst, you have ceased to be a Prophet. Otherwise you would not be able to ask such questions. The backs of your hands will force you to go down to Rhineland this evening, and that wide swing of your eyes will force you. Your broken-patterned gestures will force you — particularly that tossing of your head. The dilation of your nostrils will force you. The way you rock on your feet will force you, and the way you flex your knees. Your chewing of your lower lip will force you: that would do it by itself. You will go down there tonight and you will die there because you are named Jim Snapjudge, and that is the way that Jim Snapjudge will end.”

  “Yes, yes, I see that there's no way out. Ah, just what is it that we lose, Jonah, when we cease to be Prejudicial Analysts and Prophets in our last hours?”

  “Purity of concept is what is lost. That is the guard: and when that guard retires, then other things crowd in by the common gate. Among these things which that noisome complex called popular opinion has associated with Prejudice in times past, and that is still associated a little bit today. But it is only when Prejudice ceases to be true Prejudice, when the judgment in its prejudgment fails in soundness, that unfairness and hate and bias and prematurity can creep in. Now good afternoon to you, Snapjudge, and abide as well as you can in the concept of Prejudice as Work of Art.”

  “Aye, Prejudice as work of art — when it works,” Jim Snapjudge said, and the fallen prophet went out from that office and clinic.

  As evening had already come on, Jim Snapjudge went down to that shoddy waterfront district named Rhineland. He went to the Ruination Bar and Grill and Candy-House which is to be found where Elm Street ends on the River. And there was something gone wrong, or gone different, with the whole Rhineland district.

  It was, of course, still shoddy in every detail; but the whole thing didn't add up quite as shoddy as expected. It was bright, rather; it was almost gay; it had a sort of freshness, almost newness about it, and nothing new had come to Rhineland for decades.

  “What will you have, Mr. Snapjudge?” asked the proprietor of the Ruination. He was cashier and waiter and bartender and his name was George Rue-something. Jim Snapjudge had lost his prophetic facility and could no longer finish the name of the man. But should it now run in the other direction?

  “And how do you know my name?” Snapjudge as
ked the proprietor.

  “Why, don't you know that every bartender is a Prejudicial Analyst as well as a Prophet?” George R- asked. “Oh, by the way — this needn't be your last meal. That is just a sticky notion that you have. You can break it. You can fight it. Nobody has to die till he's ready.”

  “I'm ready,” Snapjudge said. “There's no going against fate.”

  “The common people go against it every day, Snapjudge. They fight it. They pull it off its high horse and roll it in the dust. It is only the fine people who are too easily intimidated by the old fraud. Ah well then, why don't you have a meal good enough for the last meal of the rankest murderer? The snap-turtle is good, the crawfish tails are good. We don't have shad roe today but we do have mud-cat roe. The calf brains aren't bad. The hotcakes and kidneys are really for the people who cross the river from Kentucky, but there's no law against anyone else wanting them. The sandbar onions are about what you'd expect from wild onions this late in the season. The coffee is good but strong. Don't try to dilute it with more water. It's the water that makes it so strong. And this isn't Kentucky Bourbon, whatever the bottle may say. This is Ohio Rye Whisky and I made it myself. It's good. We've got sour-milk bread and corn-cob bread. And crab-apple cobbler.”

  “With levity sauce, I suppose. Just fix me something good to eat and something strong to drink,” Jim Snapjudge said uncertainly. Always before he had known what to order in a place. A Prejudicial Analyst could divine the qualities of any food in the environs just as well as he could read the character and proclivities of any person around. But Snapjudge had lost his powers.

  “Gas lights here?” Snapjudge asked, though it was obvious that they did have gas lights. “It seems very bright in here for gas. Do they cost you much?”

  “Nothing,” George R- said. “I use river gas. I drove a couple one-inch pipes with sand points on them down a few feet here, and I have all the gas I want. And I washed the big mirror. That's what makes it seem so bright. It fools your fate too. Any change in a big mirror throws them into confusion.”

  “You'll not turn fate aside with humor,” Snapjudge said sourly.

  “I always have,” George R- said. “I've got almost everything fixed up now. All but the broken plank out front in the boardwalk that goes out over the water. I should fix that. Somebody will get a bad fall there. And the board is so noisy that it spooks people.”

  “The broken plank is noisy?”

  “Yes, noisy. It carries on all the time. Always mumbling and grumbling.”

  The dusky young lady who may have been Teresa Tuesdaychild came in and took a table. She was still dressed brightly, and her primary colors had taken on an exciting glitter under the gas lights. Jim Snapjudge had never been quite sure what her ruination would consist of. And now, having lost his power, he couldn't project beyond what he had known earlier in the day. He believed that her fate, her ruination, would be caused by a gun misfiring and exploding in her face. This would be the second shot from that gun. The first shot would have killed a man.

  “What is she anyhow, white on black or black on white?” Snapjudge asked George R- testily. He found Teresa very attractive, but he was somehow indignant against her.

  “She is hue upon color, tone upon timbre, shade upon sheen. She is a primary chromatic of high saturation and high brilliance. A jewel, I forget which kind: a flame garnet.”

  “I don't like her. I haven't any reason. Until this afternoon I did not like or dislike anything or anybody. And I always had a reason for my thoughts. She will come to her ruination in this place tonight.”

  “No, she will not. Young girls seeking ruination go to the rooming house next door. Not here.” George R- sat with Jim Snapjudge when he wasn't busy. Now he rose to wait on Teresa.

  She asked for the table to be set for three, and she seemed to order for three. Quickly there was the new a bright aroma of food that was better than snap-turtle or mud-cat roe or calf brains or sandbar onions. There was pungent and juicy rack of rash ribs somewhere, and hot riverboat rolls. There was an olfactory presence of noble coffee of which the water was not the strongest element. And there was the curling whiff of Ohio Rye Whisky. Pleasurable promises all. George R- came and sat with Jim Snapjudge again for a moment.

  “Why have you the dogs skulking around on the floor yet when you have brightened up everything else somehow?” Snapjudge asked.

  “There are no dogs here,” George R- assured. “I got rid of all of them two weeks since. Those are merely some of their shadows that are left over for a while. Yes, they skulk and lurk, but they are only shadows.”

  “Of coming events?”

  “No, I don't think so. But you can see anything you don't want to in those shadows. Mostly, I believe, you will see yourself.”

  There was urbane laughter, there was natural gentry laughter all about: and there was the sound of good music somewhere in another room. That's where even good music should always be, at some distance away, or in another room at the very least. And now Jim Snapjudge had been presented with his last meal, rash ribs that stood and reigned, hot rolls made with buttermilk and honey, pepper that—

  Godfrey Halskragen came into the Ruination Bar and Grill and Gandy-House. He joined Teresa Tuesdaychild at her table. Now the two fates were together, and they had only to wait for the assassin, probably the person of the big Buckaroo.

  “You will have at least one killing here tonight. I always watch to prevent trouble.”

  “Yes. That last man who came in, that man who is sitting with the colorful girl named Teresa, he will be shot to death here tonight. I have seen this in a valid vision. His name is probably Godfrey. He will be shot by a jealous man whose jealousy is quite complex. I never believed in mixing the primary colors myself.”

  “You are not talking about primary colors at all, Snapjudge. You are talking about achromatic colors,” George R- said. “But you are mistaken. Somehow you have seen it wrong. Or else the vision itself has changed slightly, but to change the effect completely. The violence will not happen.”

  “A valid vision cannot be changed even slightly,” Snapjudge insisted. “A fate once set is absolutely certain.”

  “No, Snapjudge, no,” George R- contradicted. “Listen to me. In every town there is one small section where fate is not securely established; where things that are absolutely bound to happen will sometimes happen in a slightly different manner; where recompense is demanded and obtained for all unbalanced things. When towns were walled, these sections were always outside the walls. When pales were garrisoned, these sections were always beyond the pales. In Kronstadt, Ohio this unruly and slightly mystic section is named Rhineland.”

  “Look at the way those two talk,” Snapjudge was saying, and he was referring to Teresa and Godfrey. “He is trying to seduce her. And the assassin who will arrive soon believes that that man has already seduced her. Those two, soon three, I don't like.”

  Actually it was Teresa Tuesdaychild who was trying to seduce Godfrey Halskragen. And this is what she was saying, softly and intensely, in her highly chromatic voice: “What do you owe the P & G Rotary Valve Company, Godfrey? yes, they have paid you well, but you have given them the good value for what they have paid you. If you must move from Gallipolis to Kronstadt to move one step forward, why not move two steps? Change to Simpkins Great Solar Valve Company. It is more than a verbalism when we say ‘valves are Simpler with Simpkins’. You say that Irene is afraid that this would be a less friendly town? I'll phone her tonight if you wish. I'm sure I can convince her that people are friendly in Kronstadt. I know I can convince you that the Simpkins people are friendly. When Buck gets here he can show you some figures on your projected earnings. They will be substantially above anything that P & G could pay. I will be quite brazen about this. You have a real talent for valve sales, and we intend to recruit you.”

  “Teresa, I will simply have to think about it a little longer.”

  “Godfrey, that man over there, I don't like him at all.”
(She meant Jim Snapjudge.) “He eyeballed me this afternoon. I felt that he was trying to read me. I felt that he was reading me all wrong. That long nose of his and those bugged-out eyes, they're intolerable. He should do something about them.”

  “What could he do? Does not Scripture tell us that, by taking thoughts we cannot add one cubit to our stature?”

  “I'm not talking about adding a cubit to his stature. I'm talking about him shortening that damned nose and unbugging his eyes. Don't tell me that he can't do it! He can. He's running a chilly fever now and I hope he dies from it. But whatever kind of fever he runs, he's too cool to go in for hating. I'm not. I hate a guy who won't hate. I hate him. I think he's a Jew or an Armenian or a Limey or one of those.”

  “Lady, I hate him too,” said a man at the next table. “He looks right through you. He's got some kind of business where he gives ratings on people to companies that hire them. I bet he never gave a good rating in his life, think he comes from up in Middlesex County.”

  “I hate all those middle sex people,” said the lady with the man at the next table. “I don't care if they are consenting adults. How are you going to raise children properly when people like that are always moving in next door to you. I think that that man's one of them too. He sure looks like it.”

  A jolt, a momentous jolt! That was only someone coming through the front door? No, it wasn't only someone; it was a menace, an assassin, a personage, a key person in the drama. The very air was freighted with threat. “It's the killer, the corsair, the Buckaroo,” Jim Snapjudge breathed; and his hackles were rising. (Until this afternoon he had forgotten that he had hackles.) “This is Murder, this is Fate, this is my last Analysis vindicated. Here comes death and ruination.”

  “Oh, it's only Buck,” said George Ruination the proprietor. “He's a loud one, yes, and a comic. But there's no real harm in him at all.”