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

by R. A. Lafferty

  So this morning, Margaret Stone came in from her night in the Quarter wearing a gaudy button that read: “Royal Pop History. Are You Splendid Enough?” “Wherever did you get that, you splendid person, you?” Mary Virginia Schaeffer asked.

  “I made it,” Margaret said. “A man was wearing the big button part for his convention name-button. I took his name out and put the message in. A bunch called ‘The Society for Creative History’ or else ‘The Royal Pop Historians’ is going to hold a meeting in town. It starts today. They say their job is to get rid of a lot of unhistorical remnants in this town, just as they got rid of them in the rest of the world. I maybe better go to their thing. They may try to get rid of something I want to keep. I suspect they'll need me.”

  “I used to create quite a bit of history myself,” Mary Virginia bragged, “but I don't do nearly so much of it nowadays.”

  “I don't think that's quite what ‘The Society for Creative History’ means,” Margaret rattled on in her dubious voice, “but maybe it is. They have topics listed like ‘Get Rid of That Stuff,’ ‘History Made While You Wait,’ ‘It Doesn't Matter; They're Only Human,’ ‘Louts, Liars, and the Use of Historical Evidence,’ ‘The Holy Barnacle and the Pearl Beyond Price,’ ‘Waxwork History and the Ironic Flame,’ ‘The Evidential World,’ ‘Mountain Building for Fun and Profit,’ ‘History, Hypnotism, and Group Amnesia,’ ‘Whoever Were Those People Who Lived Next Door to You Yesterday?,’ ‘We Said to Get Rid of That Stuff!’ They're interesting topics. Oh, by the way, the Black Sea has disappeared, and millions of people are destroyed. It's all obliterated, and forever. The Royal Pop people say it puts an end to the old geography.”

  “How could a sea be obliterated?” Mary Virginia asked. “Where did you read the announcement of such an historical meeting, Margaret? They sound like things you made up.”

  “Read them? Whenever did I read anything? I'm not even sure I know how to read. I don't remember ever doing it. No, this is just something I know. Or it's something I heard.”

  “Please don't go through all the recital again, Margaret. Can't you just tell me in two words what you're talking about?” Mary Virginia requested. “Absalom says that everything in the world can be described in two words.”

  “I know his two words. But what I'm talking about is Pop History. Old kind of people don't understand it very well. The meeting starts today. I don't know where it is, but somebody said Duffey might know.”

  “I didn't know you were interested in history, Margaret. It sure was noisy in town last night. What was happening?”

  “Sure, I'm interested in history, Mary V. Papa used to have a book, History of Cook County in the Early Days. I'm from Chicago, you know.”

  “I know, Margaret. Did you read the book about the history of Cook County?”

  “No, I never read it, but we had it. Papa bought things like that because he was trying to get used to being an American. Anyhow, I'm real noetic, so I'll be a natural at history. What was so noisy last night was that funny wind blowing down the façades and breaking up the old people and the old animals. It left a lot of trash in the streets. Not only that, but there's so many parks and courtyards and places this morning that weren't there yesterday that it causes one to wonder. They sure are gracious places.”

  “What old people and old animals are you talking about, Margaret? What funny wind? What façades? How did they break up?”

  “Gee, Mary V., I think some of them were from old Mardi Gras floats, or they were planned for the new floats next season. They were breaking up everything that wasn't splendid enough. There's one dragon big enough to load three floats pretty heavy. It's still alive a little bit.”

  “Are you talking about live people and animals, Margaret? And what are these new parks and courtyards and places you're jabbering about?”

  “Oh, the people and animals are mostly papier-mâché or rubber or styrofoam or plastic; after they break up and die, that's what's left of them. But some of them were pretty lively before the end. There was one fire drake (or he was half man and half fire drake) that bit a lady on the leg and got blood all over the street. Some people took her to Dr. Doyle with it. ‘That's a terrible bite,’ he said. ‘I think it gave you infectious draconitis. You have to show me what bit you.’ He went out with the people to look at it. When he found out that it was just a fire drake made out of rubber, and that it was fabulous besides, he didn't know what to think. But a laboratory has checked what the lady has and it's infectious draconitis all right. They think she'll die.”

  “Margaret, what sort of convention was going on in town last night?”

  “Oh, just three or four very ordinary ones. No, this is straight dope, Mary V.: I wasn't cordial on the stuff last night. And the courtyards and parks and nooks aren't new except for not being there before. They're quite old and weathered, and they're full of almost the biggest trees in town. They're very bright. New things aren't usually that bright and pleasant. And the thing that chokes you is that nobody remembers what was in those places yesterday. ‘I live there,’ one man said—you know him, he's that Russian, Sarkis Popotov—‘and now there's a place next door to me named Artaguette Park. It looks unfamiliar to me, but some of these horsy tourists in town say that it'll look familiar by tomorrow. There's room for about three buildings to be there, where the park is this morning. I've lived there for forty years, and I know there were some kind of buildings next to me, but I sure can't remember what they were!’ That's what old Sarkis said. And there are other places like that. The town's full of them this morning.”

  “What were the people in the Quarter drinking last night, Margaret?”

  “Green Ladies, mostly,” Margaret Stone said. “You know, like peppermint schnapps except with absinthe instead of schnapps. That's what everyone has been drinking all week. Why don't you go with me to the Pop History meetings today, Mary Virginia?”

  Margaret was small and intense, with a large voice that was saved from stridency only by a certain music in it. She was Italian and Jewish, with possibly a little bit of the Greek and preadamite in her. She would have been beautiful in repose, but no one had ever seen her so. So, at least, an old describer has described her. But he didn't mention the terrible tragedy and passion that were sometimes in her face: It was because too few people listened to what her musical voice said. The passion and tragedy in her face had increased lately. So had a certain threat that refused to give its name.

  And Mary Virginia, her associate at the Pelican, had everything. Her kindness was extreme, but lately it had acquired a vacant quality, as though she could no longer remember just whom to be kind to. Her beauty alone would knock you off your stool forever. That had happened to a number of fellows. It wasn't true that her beauty had begun to fail in the last several decades. It had become deeper and fuller.

  “As you know, I seldom get out of this place, Margaret,” she said. “And the Pops don't sound as attractive as all that. There are very many things going on this week, if I should get out. Horny Henderson is on the trumpet at the Imperial John. They have a new singer at Red Neck's. Justin says that the Jazz Museum has so much new stuff over there that it'd take a week to see and hear it all. The Presentation at the Decatur Street Opera House this week will transcend everything. We have to go there tonight. There's a big bunch of new painters in the galleries and around Pirates Alley, and Duffey says that one of the new ones could almost be the ghost of Finnegan, the way he uses his oranges. There's a couple of Dominicans giving a mission at St. Katherine's; it's full of hellfire just like when we were kids. They say that our world will end right here this week. The Nostalgia Club should get hold of them. ‘As American as hellfire and apple pie,’ as Mencken used to write. You want me to go to a Pop History banger, and you don't even know where they're having it?”

  The scene changes to just around the corner, over on Bienville or Conti or whatever street it is that Duffey has his establishments on. Yes, there had been a new breeze blowing through the night. It
was blowing down the façades with a rattling and crashing. And what kind of impression is that to be received by a man who is still asleep? The scenery, the façades, the false fronts were toppling and breaking up in the streets outside; there was the sound of tearing canvas and scorching rubber and stuttering styrofoam. It wasn't a joke. It was all straight impression. There really was something noisy and airish going on outside in the streets. It was like a strong experience of anthropomorphic colts, a great clatter of them.

  “A Strong Experience of Anthropomorphic Colts!” Duffey howled, and he came out of that bed on his misshapen feet. “I've woke up with a mouth full of some pretty crocky phrases before, but these anthropomorphic colts outrace them all.”

  Duffey had been wakened by the strong breeziness that morning. He usually slept unencumbered, and there was never much of a chill at any season in that town. Most times, even in the early morning hours, it is hotter outside than inside, away from the radiating heat of the sidewalks and streets and people. And there is seldom much of a breeze in these narrow streets. It's even said that any breeze must go through them sideways. Well, this breeze was going through with a great bumping at every door and wall. Duffey knew without looking that his front door was standing open and that there was a new breeze blowing.

  Duffey never locked his doors, but sometimes (late at night) he did close them. He had inventories worth many thousands of dollars. These formed the heart of Melchisedech Duffey's Walk-in Art Bijou. And the bijou, the pawnshop, the various other enterprises, his living quarters, his very body were all members of this one establishment. He would not lock up any of them.

  Yes, the door was wide open. It opened inward, as did Duffey himself. And there was a notice nailed to it. It was on some sort of yellowed old poster cardboard, and it was nailed to the door with a long and ancient nail.

  Duffey read the notice or message. It was in the new style of writing, so it was a non-verbatim message. The words “Pop History” leaped at him. Then other and more fearsome words came and ate up those first words and established themselves with an easy arrogance. Slogans like “We Said To Get Rid Of That Stuff” and “It Doesn't Matter; They're Only Human” took their places on the scroll; and then other phrases came forward, and these withdrew to less emphatic levels. The whole thing was a proclamation, but a very tricky one.

  Then Duffey read what he could of it again, with disbelief and near alarm. There was a difficulty about the words (Duffey still had some trouble with the new style of writing, even though words were one of his trades), but there didn't seem to be much doubt about the first meaning. Duffey was sociable; he was hospitable; but the message mentioned numbers that were overwhelming. It stated that he was favored to lodge two hundred or more royal persons at his establishment. It stated that these were serious persons of a scientific sort, persons of blazing beauty and towering mentality and perfumed perversion and breath-catching art; all this in the intensity and scope of the thunder dimension. It stated that such splendid persons were used to the best in accommodations. And it implied that Duffey was selected (the verb isn't clear here; the verb is never clear in the new style of expression) for this honor because of his great age and erudition. And it gave the name of the convening society. But something was missing from the name and the message, something that can only be called verbatimness. There were very tricky things about the words of a message refusing to stand fast and be accounted for.

  This Duffey has been called “a patriarch without seed, a prophet without honor, and a high-sounding brawler.” He was a man of uncertain age (this fact about him had assumed importance lately); and he was a willful man who was held on peculiar checkrein—he did not know by whom. But he was a spacious man, and he could be forgiven many inconsistencies.

  Duffey rocked on his feet and lowered at the writing and thought about it while he woke up by degrees. It was a ritual sort of thing that was nailed to his door, and it deserved a ritual answer. Duffey got a pen and a bowl and wrote an answer in his hieratic hand at the bottom of the scroll. It was not old poster cardboard that the scroll was made out of; it was now seen to be old parchment. Duffey wrote:

  Royal Pop People, I am honored. And you are welcome. But my facilities are quite limited, as is my credit. I will be host to as many of you as I can. No man can do more. Somehow you will all be taken care of.

  —Melchisedech Duffey

  He paused for a while and stirred the ink in the bowl. Then he wrote a bit more:

  If this is a hoax, then it's a howling hoax.

  Out of affectation Duffey wrote all official things with this squid ink that he kept in a bowl. This is the finest ink ever. It will not coagulate. Write anything at all in squid ink. Then write something else beside it in ordinary ink. Come back in three thousand years and notice the difference. The one will remain true, the other will have paled. But squid ink had gone out of fashion. The prime message on the parchment, however, was also written in squid ink, and there weren't many people who used it these last few centuries.

  Duffey examined the parchment, and later he would examine it again and again. “We will come back to you, skin of a horny goat,” he said. “Oh, how we will come back to you!” He turned his attention then to the nail that held it. It was large, and it appeared very sharp. It was not, as Duffey had at first thought, either brass or bronze. It was a copper-iron nail, and it was of old Macedonian workmanship. Odd, but not very, for there were in that city many members of the Society of Creative Anachronisms, a social, historical and dramatic society. These people were all friends of Duffey, and Duffey suspected them of a hoax. They put great effort into some of their hoaxes.

  Duffey, a widow man of loose and informal establishment, now made himself ready for the day and its apparent adventure. He caught again the whiff of the new breeze blowing; and part of that whiff was made up of putridity, that emanation of changes a-working. He dressed, daubed whiting on his beard and hair (they had both been turning disquietingly black lately), and went out into the streets to find comradeship and adventure and breakfast. Yes, there was indeed a new breeze blowing. It wasn't a great air mover of a breeze, but it brought a rumbling freshness, a bracing and reminiscent aroma, a rakish sense of rot, and an altogether vivid accord with things as they were and as they were becoming.

  And it brought a sudden and happy discord with things as they had not been before. Certainly there had always been several buildings right next to Duffey's place, on the left when one comes out. And just as certainly, those structures of whatever kind were not standing there now. Just what was there now was a little harder to say. One couldn't get a clear view of the area, and one wouldn't have believed his eyes if he had been able to get a clearer view. The powers shouldn't spring these things on a man so early in the morning. Something was in the act of being born in that area. There were bales of greenery; there were bales of shadow. There were other bright things already there or arriving, but this pleasant confusion hadn't quite put itself together yet.

  The streets were trashy, although trash trucks were everywhere cleaning them up. Here and there, the sidewalks were slippery with blood, but it was blood of no great validity. There was a lot of synthetic fiber lying around, and very little of the authentic flesh.

  And there were a few newly homeless cur dogs and vacant oddity people and evil spirits skulking about the site. They had been dislocated from their places and from their forms. And their new and unpleasant confusion was another thing that hadn't been able to put itself together yet. “It's you who have destroyed my house and my body,” one of the uncreations hissed at Duffey. Duffey could not determine whether it was a cur dog or a snake or a spirit or a person. “It's you who have done it with that rectitude of yours.” Duffey did have his rectitude, but these uncreations did not seem to have much of anything.

  “I cannot in any way remember who lived next door to me here,” Duffey mumbled into his beard (not to the uncreations, but to himself), “or who it was who transacted business in this p
lace so near to my own. This is a puzzle. And yet I've lived and worked here for several decades, and various persons have lived here beside me. I now suspect that they were nothing people all the time and that they have descended to their perdition or oblivion.”

  Duffey walked a block and noticed a handful of other disappearances and changes, as well as several pleasant new arrivals. Some of the broken-up puppets or dummies in the streets reminded him of persons whom he had known. Some of them opened effigy mouths and croaked at him in voices he had known. The discarded little abominations were almost in bad taste.

  But not everything had changed. Duffey entered one of the old and gracious places that had remained (considerably enlarged, though, it seemed) and sat down with a happy sigh. And a friend was sitting with him instantly (it always happens in that place).

  “I hear that you are playing host to some sort of historical group, Duffey,” Absalom Stein was saying as they sat together and planned a breakfast in Girardeau's Irish Restaurant. Absalom was an Israelite in whom there was much guile, but he averaged out to a good man, and sometimes he wrote for the Investigator as well as the Bark.

  “How long is their convention going to last, Duffey?”

  “I don't know at all,” Duffey said. “All I remember are the words ‘Pop History.’ Then other words came out and gobbled them up and began to make demands for two hundred or more people. You seem to know something about it, so I suspect you're in on the hoax.”

  “No, I'm not, Duff, but I may get in on it. Why shouldn't I know about it? We have all become intuitive since we began to realize that we were the pleasant people. But there's a lot of loose stuff floating around town this morning, and I suspect that your Royal Pop History bunch may be a handle to take hold of it by. I'm afraid they're going to make us give up a lot of our old items as not being splendid enough to keep.”