“I wish they'd ring if there are any late visitors,” Barnaby said.
The chimes downstairs rang. “No, no, not me,” Mary Mondo cried. “I won't go down. It might be them.”
Nobody had to go down. The dread visitors burst the front door open and came up the stairs with a clatter. They burst the door of our room open and came in.
“All is lost,” the sawdusty Loretta Sheen moaned. “It's Paracelsus.”
“Destruction and damnation!” Mary Mondo howled. “It's Morgana.”
“Fate worse than death,” Austro cringed. “It's the Unnameable One.”
Well, the three visitors did look a little bit gaudy. One of them, the one Austro called the Unnameable, poured a bowl of clotted Kiboko blood over Austro's head. It was like pouring a bowl of death over him. And Austro fainted dead away, and fell over on the floor. He turned blue. He quivered a little bit, and then he stopped quivering. He stopped breathing too. Doctor George Drakos gave him a poke in the solar plexus and he started to breathe again. “Happy birthday, Austro!” the three fearsome visitors called. And Austro regained himself and sat up on the floor.
“I knew you all the time,” he said. “I wasn't fooled.” But he had been.
The magician with the white beard was Roy Mega. Yes, the white beard was real. He hadn't had it that morning but he had it now. What is the use of being a genius if you can't grow a beard to order?
Morgana, the evil consort of the magician, was Chiara Benedetti. And the Unnameable One was a wino who was a friend of Austro and all of us, Heavenly Days McGee. What he had poured over Austro's head was not clotted Kiboko blood at all. It was chili. It was Ike's Chili Parlour chili, the best kind. And Chiara had brought what she said was snail cake, with candles on it. So they had a party.
“How is this your birthday, Austro?” George Drakos asked. “And how old are you?”
“Carrock, I'm twelve years old,” Austro said. “It's my golden anniversary.” He was eating snail cake and opening presents and chiseling out next week's heroic episode of the Rocky McCrocky comic strip all at the same time.
“How did you calculate it?” Cris Benedetti said. “And twelve isn't the golden anniversary.”
“Twelve is the golden anniversary where I come from,” Austro said, “and it is also the year of my majority. I'm a man now. Oh, I calculated it from the helical rising of the Dog Star, and by the sothic period.”
“The sothic period still has twenty-eight years to go,” Cris Benedetti said.
“So? Then I subtracted twenty-eight years from it, and that made me twelve years old.”
Say, that was a happy time. That cake was good. Chiara had lied; it wasn't snail cake at all. And the future was rolling out like a sunshine carpet before Austro, the kid with the sunshine brains. The cloud was gone, but what had it been? “What is the fate worse than death?” George Drakos asked.
“Carrock, it missed me,” Austro said. “Let's not talk about it.”
“But what is it that you would be turned into when your monkey is wrenched sideways?” Harry O'Donovan wanted to know. “What is this sapi that you would be turned into?”
“Homo sapiens, that's what,” Austro said. “You get turned into one of them—fate worse than death.”
Hammer and chisel ringing out the great epic of Rocky McCrocky on the comic-strip stone blocks. Chili still on his head, and his mouth full of snail cake. Sunshine shining there at midnight, and the rock dust flying!
They weren't about to turn Austro into a sapiens.
The Skinny People Of Leptophlebo Street
—and turned into Leptophebo Street (it's always a scruffy sort of delight to come into it). It was a minor discovery and a sudden entrance, like going through a small and florid door into a whole new world, a world of only one street. The chattering of the monkeys was what struck him first, and then the chattering of the people in a kindred tone: and then the absolute cleanliness of the place, and the pleasant bouquets of selected and superior smells. Close on that was a whole dazzle of details that would take days to assimilate.
The poverty of the street struck him last of all, and then it seemed a more pleasant poverty with some other name. It was picked-clean poverty, as if every speck of dust had been hand-gathered from between the cobblestones as something as valuable as lepto pepper or gold.
Canute Freeboard, adventurous investor and freebooter-at-large, had come to Leptophlebo Street for what money could be found there; but the street seemed bare of value. He had come looking for a man named Hiram Poorlode. Canute needed money, and that was the year that money was very tight. There were those who said that money might be got in Leptophlebo Street, but they all laughed when they said it.
“Could you tell me where I might find a man named Hiram Poorlode?” Canute asked a friendly-looking young fellow there.
“Kmee-fee-eee-eee-eee,” the young fellow said, and Canute saw that a mistake had been made. “I'm sorry,” he said. “I hadn't noticed that you were a monkey.”
The monkey nodded as if to say that it was quite all right, and he motioned for Canute to come along with him. They stopped in front of a man who was sitting cross-legged on the stones of the street. The man had a sign ‘Nuts, Wholesale and Retail’: he had a pandanus leaf in front of him and on the leaf there were seven filbert-nuts and two almonds. The monkey pointed the man out to Canute and Canute to the man and he said “Knee-fee-eee-eee-eee.” Then he skittered away.
“Yes, I am Hiram Poorlode,” the nut-man said. “Thank you, Hoxie.” He spoke the latter to the skittering monkey.
“Get your clothes rewoven, sir. Get your clothes rewoven,” a young boy chanted at Canute. “My father reweaves clothes free. Turn those baggy clothes into trim fit real fast.”
“My clothes aren't baggy,” Canute said.
“Boy, they sure will be baggy in a little while,” the boy said. “Better get it done now.”
“Get your teeth cleaned sir!” another young boy chanted at Canute. “My father cleans teeth excellent free.”
“Is he your son?” Canute asked the street-sitting nut-merchant Hiram Poorlode.
“Oh no. This one is Marquis Shortribs,” Hiram introduced. “His father is Royal Shortribs who is a tycoon in teeth. And I am Hiram Poorlode, nut-merchant, investor, moneylender. Sit down on the cobbles, sir, and talk to me. You are the only customer in my shop at the moment so I can give you my full time.”
“I am Canute Freeboard, a stranger in this country and in this town. I expressed strong interest in obtaining investment money. The man to whom I had introduction must have been a humorist and he played a lopsided joke on me. Ah, how is the nut business?”
“It hasn't been a bad morning,” Hiram said. “I received twelve filbert-nuts on consignment this morning and I have already sold five of them. With my mark-up, this gives me enough equity in filberts that I can eat one myself and still have enough cash on hand to cover those sold. This is known as eating free and it is the first rule of economic independence. As to the almond nuts, I own them outright. I started the day with five of them and I have sold three for cash. This is the best sales record that I can remember, up to this time of day, for almonds. I also own the pandanus leaf. That being so, I am almost insulated against misfortune. If I sell nothing for the rest of the day it will still not be a complete catastrophe.”
“Haircut, sir? Haircut, sir?” a small boy cried in set-chant. “My father does supreme haircutting and head-grooming free.”
“No, I don't believe so, boy,” Canute mumbled. “Is he your son, Mr. Poorlode?”
“Oh no. This is Crispin Halfgram the son of Claude Halfgram the biggest man in hair and fields in Leptophlebo Street. Some of the finest garments here are woven by his wife Rita from the hair that Claude collects in his studio. You are looking for investment money? I am the most promiscuous money-lender in Leptophlebo Street. How much do you need?”
Hiram Poorlode, as did all the skinny people of Leptophlebo Street, wore a very large, fl
at, wide-brimmed hat that was crawling all over with rambling greenery. Canute now saw that what Hiram really wore on top of his head was a growing vegetable and fruit and grain garden. And all those garden-hats were tilted to catch all the sun possible.
“I'm afraid that we're not thinking on the same scale,” Canute said dourly. “I need eighty-five thousand dollars for an opportune deal, such a deal as will come only once in my life. I need the sum at no more than seven percent interest and I need it today. Yes, my acquaintance in this city must be a humorist.”
“Here are the shoes back again, Mr. Poorlode,” a small boy said, and he set a good-looking pair of smooth shoes down beside Hiram. “He will not need them again for two hours, but he believed that Mr. Shortribs may want them before that.”
“Thank you, Piet,” Hiram said, and the boy skipped off. “That is Piet,” Hiram told Canute, “the son of Jan Thingruel who gathers more astatic grain out of cracks than does anyone else on the Street. We have but one pair of shoes here, and whatever person goes to make a prestigious visit will wear the shoes. They fit all persons in the street, since Claude Halfgram had the final joints of four of the toes removed last year. They are good shoes and we take excellent care of them. I am shoe custodian this week.” Hiram Poorlode lifted up one of the flagstones of the street and put the shoes down into a shoe-hole that was underneath it.
“I have the money by me now,” Hiram said then. “Nothing is easier than eighty-five thousand dollars in gold. And, with me, a man's face is his security. Give me half an hour to consider you for I am a cautious man. Spend the time pleasantly: visit and observe our rather odd Leptophlebo Street here. Enjoy yourself, sir, and be assured that your case is under active consideration. I can tell a lot about a man by watching how he reacts to Leptophlebo Street.”
“All right,” Canute said. “I'd given up hope of raising the money anyhow. Money is tight this season. Ah but it was a sweet, once-in-a-lifetime opportunity! Yes, it's an odd little street here. How much do you sell the filberts for?”
“Three for a mill. Oh, it's the standard coin to the Street. One tenth of a cent.”
One might as well enjoy the drollery. Really, Canute had never seen anything quite like Leptophlebo Street; never such skinny monkeys or such skinny people. The monkeys couldn't talk properly. There's an old saying that whenever monkeys do talk there's some monkey-business going on. Well, there was plenty of it going on here, but all that the monkeys could say was “Khlee-fee-eee-eee-eee.” The monkeys wrote notes on little pieces of paper and gave them to the merchants of the Street. They brought in fruit and they traded it or sold it. From the merchants they bought a few nuts that were out-of-season in the woods, bought them for clay coins or in trade for their in-season fruits or nuts. The people asked the monkeys about their families and about the situation in the woods, and the monkeys wrote the answers on little pieces of paper. “The monkeys are so smart,” Canute said, “that it seems as if they could talk. As long as you are doing business with them anyhow you could teach them speech.”
“People of the monkey caste are not allowed to talk,” Effie Poorlode said (she was the wife of Hiram the nut-merchant). “Everyone has his niche in the world, and the monkeys don't have talking niches. And it would be no profit to us to teach them speech. We have plenty of time to wait for them to write out their notes, and we do make a good profit on the paper that they write them on.”
The people of Leptophlebo Street were the skinniest folks that Canute had ever seen. How the ribs stood out on them! Two ribby young ladies were in a booth down the street.
“What? Do you sell the paper to the monkeys?” Canute asked Effie Poorlode.
“Get your teeth cleaned free, sir!” the boy Marquis Shortribs was soliciting a passer-by. “My father does excellent tooth-cleaning free.” But the passer-by continued on.
“If the tooth-cleaning is free, and if there are no customers anyhow, then where is the profit?” Canute asked.
“Oh, there will always be customers,” Effie told him. “Suppose that ten thousand persons go by and do not avail themselves on this service. But then the very next person might stop at the Shortribs' booth, and you can see how that would make all the waiting and solicitations worthwhile. As to your question, no, we don't sell the pieces of paper to the monkeys. The monkeys make the paper in the woods, and they make the ink too. They write their notes on the paper and they give them to us. You can see that the profit will be enormous. If we get only eight or ten of these little pieces of paper a day look how they will count up. We dissolve the ink of the paper, and when we have a thousand pounds of the ink we can sell it to ink-bottlers or pen-makers of the city.”
“How long will it take to accumulate a thousand pounds?” Canute asked.
“Oh, it would probably take us a thousand years, but what's time so long as we keep busy? And we find all sorts of uses for the little pieces of paper. I tell you that there is money in paper; there is money in everything.”
“How much money is there in everything, Mrs. Poorlode?” Canute questioned.
“Yesterday my husband and I cleared one cent and three mills from all our businesses,” Effie answered. “And we also achieved equities in three other mills. This is better than most of our days, but all our days are good. Oh the wealth does accumulate!”
Mrs. Poorlode was like the valiant woman in scripture as she stood proud and skinny, with her garden on top of her head and with her hands busy leaching nut-shells in a bowl.
“This processes the nut-shells for industrial use,” she said, “and we have the Nut-Shell Bitter Tea left over to drink. It makes the bones glossy. My husband gives a rebate to every purchaser of one of our nuts if he returns the shell after he has eaten the meat out of it. We are blessed to live on a street that has so many business opportunities.”
There was nothing very interesting about the gaunt ribcage of Effie Poorlode.
“Yes,” she said, reading the thoughts of Canute Freeboard, “the townsmen lust after our ribs and after our ossuary generally. There is nothing wrapped up about us. There are some persons in the town with so much flesh grown onto their bones that their fundamental persons and passions are buried away and their real impact is never felt. Luckily that is not so with the people of Leptophlebo Street.”
“How is the street kept so clean and swept?” Canute asked.
“Brooms with both astatic and static bristles are the secret,” Effie told him. “Organic dust clings to the static bristles, and the non-organic dust is swept clean into gathering vessels by the astatic bristles. Then we pass the brushes over degaussing jets that release the organic particles, and we make soup from them. And the non-organic dust is separated into flammable and inflammable piles.”
“They mean the same thing,” Canute said.
“Not on Leptophlebo Street they don't,” Effie insisted. “So we make briquettes to burn as fuel out of the one sort. And we make bricks and flagstones and face-stones for buildings out of the other sort. So we have our soup and our fuel and our bricks, and we keep the street clean all the time.”
A medium-sized bird, probably a grackle, came down onto the rim of the garden-containing hat that Effie carried balanced on her head. And the bird was stuck fast. Canute saw that the edge of the hat was bird-limed to catch anything that landed there.
“I will wait,” Effie said. “The pot wants a bird, but the pot must wait also. These grackle-birds attract one another for a while. This is not one of our own grackles that I know; it's one of the newly-arrived grackles from the countryside. They will not be wary of one bird stuck there, nor of two birds stuck. They will not be wary of less than three stuck birds. I will be patient and I will have three grackles for food and for by-products. Will you not stay with us this evening and have a look at our nightlife on Leptophlebo Street?”
“I don't know what I will do,” Canute said. “I haven't comprehended it all yet.”
“Lose weight free in seven minutes surgery, sir,” a small boy
chanted. “My father does good free work. He is one good loser.”
“No, not right now, boy,” Canute said.
“Have your appendix out, sir? Have your appendix out?” another small boy was putting the shill on. “My father performs faithful appendectomies free.”
“No, not right now,” Canute said.
“This boy is Pat Thingruel, the brother of Piet and the son of Jan Thingruel,” Effie told Canute. “The father is as stylish a free appendectomist as you will find anywhere.”
“I do not understand how all the people of Leptophlebo Street can work for free,” Canute said. “How do they profit by it?”
A second curious grackle-bird came down and got itself squawkishly stuck in the bird-lime of the edging of Effie's garden-hat.
“Oh, there's a lots of profit!” Effie exclaimed. “A vermiform appendix, especially when inflamed, is a veritable storehouse of richness. Master microchemists like ourselves can manufacture all sorts of useful things from such rich material. And the teeth that Royal Shortribs cleans, do you realize just how super-organic are the deposits taken from teeth? Do you know how many things can be woven and fabricated from the hair that Claude Halfgram cuts? Garments, rugs, tents, seines, modish gowns for the modish ladies in the town. Almost solid profit. And the head-grooming that he does, do you know that there are some very lively products to be had from that? Our greatest industry, though, is the night soil that we gather from the cooperative of people of the town. And I will tell you something else if you will promise not to tell the monkeys.”
“No, I won't breathe a word of your secret to the monkeys,” Canute promised.
“We pay the monkeys only half as much per equal weight for their night soil as we pay the people in the town. And the monkeys bring theirs to us; we don't have to go and get it. Ah, there is profit everywhere you look, in the stones, in the air, in the very rain. What a money-harvest we do have! Mills and mills and cents and cents, and at the end of a week we may even have another nickel for our hard work.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 210
