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

by R. A. Lafferty

  The gallows always smells of rope,

  I don't know why it shouldn't.

  A gassing chamber smells of soap,

  Though I'd have bet it wouldn't.

  If time is pressing, take your love

  Out like a kite and fly it,

  For benison is from above,

  And fate is low. Defy it!

  FROM THE COMMENTARY OF ELENA O'HIGGINS

  “I disapproved very much of the advertisement that Casey once ran in the ‘Crock’: ‘Genuine consecrated hosts $1.00 each, sent postpaid by defrocked priest who still has the power of consecration. Use for fun or experiment, or for special rites. Prodigies sometimes occur during their use.’ A box number was given to send to. I do not know how much response there was to that ad, but it ran in at least three issues of the ‘Crock’…

  “Notice the musical score by Casey on the facing page. It is the only portion of the scoring for the organ that I was able to salvage before he destroyed a very great work. What looks like charring around the edges of the musical sheet is indeed that.”

  (For technical reasons, there is no musical score on the facing page, but the description of Elena O'Higgins will suffice.)

  “This is consecrated music that Casey has written here. Oh try it, play the fragment, and think what the whole might have been! But what he substituted for it after destroying it was supposed to be used for fun or for experiment or for special liturgy. ‘You can go to hell for such special liturgies, Casey,’ I told him. ‘That's the idea, Elena, that's the idea,’ he said.

  “The substitute piece is not scored for organ or any sacred instrument. It is now scored for the kazoo, for the peewee guitar, and for the musical saw, for God's sake! They use it at St. Cristina's Church where they're working hard to be the most trendy parish in Chicago.”

  FROM THE COMMENTARY OF TONY APOSTOLO

  “I have been a newspaper reporter and editor and feature-writer for enough years to have a matching story for everything. If an Angel out of Heaven should come down this evening bringing the text of the Fifth Gospel, I could take him to old files and show him that I had done the Angel-out-of-Heaven-with-the-Text-of-the-Fifth-Gospel story seven years ago. And if the living Hitler should walk through that door right now, I would be able to tell him ‘This is not so exclusive as you might think.’ I have the record here of seven different reporters to whom seven different Hitlers have made appearances. It isn't enough for a living Hitler merely to appear and tell his story. He has to be able to do something else if he's going to put together any sort of act at all. Can you sing? Can you do imitations? Can you play the mouth-organ?

  So the claims made by and for Casey Szymansky do not come to me as new claims. The idea of a man trading souls or trading places with the Devil to liberate him from damnation is a frequent psychological quirk or obsession. Casey is the fourth man I know who believes he has done it. And he is the fifth man I know who believes he is the Anti-Christ. And he is the sixth man I know who believes that he is the Scape Goat for all the sins of the world.”

  The Scapegoat takes the rocky road

  And never ever wins.

  He's goaded by a gimpy goad

  And laden with our sins.

  FROM THE COMMENTARY OF D'ALESANDRO

  “Casey walked into one of my post-graduate classes one afternoon when I was putting several series of trial balloon equations on the blackboard. Casey walked up and changed one value in the ninth equation. Several of my more brilliant students laughed, though I do not know why. One of them then reversed a vector value in my nineteenth equation. And Casey and the more brilliant students laughed still more loudly. I asked what it was.

  “ ‘You'll get it after a while,’ Casey said. ‘Some people just aren't as fast as others at things like this.’ (And I am one of the world's leading mathematicians.)

  “But I did not get it, not in a day or a week or a year. I asked my most brilliant student John Tweed (who had meanwhile become world-famous) about it. ‘It would spoil it to tell it,’ he said. ‘I don't believe there is any way it could be put verbally anyhow. It is just a couple of mathematical puns, oi, oi, in sort of dialect yet! Some people just don't get inter-discipline mathematical puns very well.’

  “I still don't get it.”

  The Devil knows the future only in fragments, but he knows the past completely, and he rides right up on the cutting edge to the present. That is where I want to ride. I want to know all the secrets of everybody in the world. I insist on it. And if I have to change into something else to know all the secrets then I will change into something else. I will change into the Casey Machine.

  BALLAD OF THE CASEY MACHINE

  “Oh friend, Oh my friend, Oh you mouth of a horse,

  Oh you the most peachy impeachable source,

  Oh tell me the things on the people so coarse,

  And who was defamed and defaulted and worse,

  Oh tell me what's par on the cheap-shotter course.

  Oh tell me perforce.”

  “These things, Oh my crumb, are a dollar a line,

  Or traded in moistness over strange wine.

  They're not for the peasants, they are not for thee.

  For God and the Devil and Casey they be,

  Or for fee.”

  “I look in the windows, I hark at the wall,

  I never will ever learn all of it all.

  I want to know what's with the wax in the ball,

  I want to know when it was last on the house,

  I want to know who is behung like a mouse,

  I want to know which has the heart of a louse,

  I want to find out who's been milking my cowse.

  Tell me, grouse.”

  “These things, my companion, may none of us see,

  But God and the Devil and Casey, those three

  Who have it for free.”

  “Oh mother, my mother,” the little child said,

  “Oh tell me how rotten a life you have led,

  The people you ruined from alpha to zed,

  And addled poor father until he was dead.

  Oh tell me the fellows with-whomish to bed,

  On which the forbiddenish fruits you have fed.

  Tell me all.”

  “Oh child, Oh my child, this is rotten of you.

  The damage you'd do if you knew that you knew!

  These things, little pretzel are hidden from view,

  For God and the Devil and Casey, their due.

  Tootle-oo.”

  “There's a way, my companion, my bacon and bean,

  No matter at bottom it isn't too clean:

  'Tis easy to eye and to spy every scene.

  Go do like the case on the Casey Machine.

  He traded off something that never was keen,

  And now he knows everything lofty and mean.

  The Machine!”

  The Casey machine, for I will be a machine when I have made the swap, will know all about everyone. That is what I want to do. This will be all the satisfaction that the Casey Machine can ever count on, knowing it all.

  You have heard of persons saying they would give their souls to know a certain secret. I am giving my soul to know all the secrets.

  FROM THE COMMENTARY OF SILAS AND MAUD WHITERICE

  “A cheap and shoddily-done encyclopedia was published here in Chicago last year. The first volume of it (A-C) was given away widely in a grocery-store promotion. Subsequent volumes sold for a dollar each with twenty dollars worth of groceries. About one percent of the copies of Volume One of this encyclopedia have an entry that is not in the other copies of it:

  “ ‘ANTICHRIST: born in Chicago, U.S.A. on October 7, 1921, the son of Gabriel Szymansky a pawn broker and antique dealer and his wife Miriam Lessing. The child was Kasmir (Casey) W. Szymansky. His manifestation as the Antichrist was, was, was, organization formed in 1839 to work for the repeal of the English corn laws.’

  “The verbal confusion at the end of this short entry
is from running the defective ANTICHRIST entry into the following article which in most of the copies is headed ‘ANTI-CORN-LAW LEAGUE’. Could this be a hoax? Anything could be a hoax. The Encyclopedia was published in Chicago, and the elegant Casey often did printing for shoddy promoters. Did Casey himself insert the hoax? Or was it some of the droll kidders who worked for him at the old printery? A hoax it certainly was, but was its information accurate? Yes, the place and the date and the names are right. That is the where and the when and the from-whom of the birth of Casey Szymansky. And that is the where and the when and the from-whom of the birth of the Antichrist.”

  SONNET TO PAINED VICTORY

  From every pride beswollen-anima

  Come vilest beasts to take the dismal loads.

  Oh hear the scapegoat feet on rocky roads!

  Oh hark the high backed swine of Gadera!

  Pained victory, through fire, from death, some win,

  Or many lose whose hands will not let go.

  Oh what poor walking bones in mean escrow

  For expiating promontory sin!

  This is the desert traffic, hot with fear,

  And prodigies appeared in pungent flame,

  And texts on parched interiors of throats

  Announcing things for here and after-here,

  Or bales laid down of heavy greed and shame,

  And bloody spume of promontory goats.

  SONNET TO AN IRON SKY

  I will not mourn on Purgatory's hills

  If ever I will come to live so high.

  We'll paint our dome consensus-blue for sky,

  And sing our buried song of grindy mills.

  'Tis really to be washed with hopefulness

  And happiness in work begrimed and sore.

  It's true we'd be content with something more,

  Or less, or less, or less, or less, or less.

  We glimpse salvation as a distant light.

  Our crooked path will (such may we atone)

  (It seems an aeon) rise a foot more high,

  In hundred years punch three more holes in night,

  And find each day our ground is softer stone,

  And iron sun more bright in iron sky.

  I am an unsavory person, although I do affect a delightful exterior. It is we unsavory persons who anticipate everything. Were it not for us, nothing would ever begin, and nothing would ever change. Or else things would begin and change very much as they do now, and we would not be missed. I suspect that the latter is the true condition, but I will act on the supposition that the former is true.

  We do not really break any trails for people or things to follow, we know that. We do break trails, but they are all dead-end trails. And then other trails are laid out and they are used. Our own trails must sometimes resemble the latter trails in location and type; it would be strange if they did not. And our own short-lived trails will also differ entirely and fundamentally from the latter trails in most ways. Very well, we will emphasize the likenesses, and we will ignore the unlikenesses. And we will make our claims to primogeniture.

  There had to be a dozen false chaoses before a true chaos was ever effected. There had to be a dozen false cosmoses or ordered creations before a real creation succeeded. There had to be twenty false falls before the two valid falls (that of angels, and that of men) took place. Falls are tricky. It is hard to fall from grace with grace, or even with an acceptable degree of awkwardness. Before the true redemption there had to be a dozen false redemptions; and after the true, there had to be many more of the false, and they are still going on. Before the compensation and the ransom there had to be false compensations and ransoms.

  Before the term of the times, there will have to be many false terms. Before the return of Christ, there must be a dozen returns of false Christs, and one of them will be larger and more conspicuous than the others. Before the end of the world, there must be very many false endings; and I suspect that some of them will be very well done and pretty convincing.

  I will take part in as many of the false preludes as I can. There might be a final upheaval by which the false will become true and the true will become false. Before final compensation, there must be a precursory false compensation to melt all heart-stones; and I have selected this as my special thing.

  Some of our early efforts were not too bad. We made goats before sheep and asses before horses and buffalo before cattle. Does God claim that he made the goats and the asses and the buffalo. No, no, he claims too much. We made them, we the unsavory people.

  FROM THE COMMENTARY OF HILARY HILTON

  Casey wanted me to kill him. He almost dragged me into it several times. But all of that was only a piece of something much smaller. Casey's flight from life and from reality is a shriveled sign of the times.

  Casey is an anti-hero, and he has all the kinky ideas that an anti-hero must have. But his main and overriding notion is only a bit of dismal show-boating. Just as all persons who claim they are reincarnated will make the pitch at being reincarnated from somebody high, Caesar, Napoleon, Cleopatra, the Queen of Sheba, Marie Antoinette, Joan of Arc, so all persons who claim to trade souls will have pretense of trading with notables of either light or darkness. Casey's pretense of trading souls with the Devil is this sort of fraud. If he does trade souls with somebody, he will probably trade with the sickest grub under the sickest log in the most extreme trash lot anywhere.

  One would almost gather that I didn't like Casey, and yet I do like him well enough. He is totally useless, of course, and he is a coward; but many of my friends are. I admire his intellect, and his quick and balanced understanding of the arts. His fooling around with my wife, trying to find an easier and less demanding death than suicide, is the only real obstacle between us.

  Sure, I pretty well know the scenario for Casey. There is always a tag on Casey that insures that he will be taken care of. Such tags are placed on a person by the One who has the right to place them, and they must be obeyed. It's a little like the Mark of Cain which says “You must not kill this man.” There is a mark on Casey that says “This man will always require easy sums of money. See to it that he has as much as he requires.” There is a mark on Casey that says “This man must not be unduly embarrassed or harassed. See to it that he is not.” There is a sign on him that says “This man has a peculiar need to feel important. See that he does feel so.” There is a symbol on him that says “This man has a love of farce, and a fear that his farces should fail. See to it that they do not fail.” But Casey's whole soul-trading gag is a dangerous farce. I'm to see that it does not fail? What side am I on anyhow?

  These signs are placed on Casey by God, and I'll not argue with God on such matters. I'll obey, though sometimes it gags me. There isn't more than one of us in ten thousand who sees such signs on persons (though other persons may see other signs to which we are blind). We are the only ones who would be able to do anything about such signs anyhow.

  There is another sign on Casey that says “This man has to be loved. Love him.” God over my head, I have other things to do! You don't really know Casey. This could get sticky. But the sign is still there. Oh all right, I'll love him. But I wouldn't do it if it weren't for the sign saying to.

  There is one other sign on Casey. Perhaps I am the only one who has read it. It says “This man is the Instrument for the Salvation and Damnation of Many.” So be it. Fortunately the sign did not say “See to it”. I wouldn't know how.

  Hell was once a pleasant, though isolated place. Some portions of it still are. They are places of natural happiness with only the happiness of the Beatific Vision absent. But most parts of Hell are horrible, of pain more manifold, of suffering more extreme than anything that can be imagined on Earth. The tradition of extreme torture was built up slowly in Hell. The persons in Hell drew themselves into groups. Even the most proud and solitary individuals, finally, after a few millennia, formed themselves into small, proud and solitary groups. It was a custom for persons there to ask for whatever
pleasures or preferences they wished, and these were given to them. Then it developed that a person could ask whatever he wished for the others of his group, if he also accepted it for himself. And these groups began to arrive at rougher and rougher consensus. People, out of perversity, voted slight displeasures for their fellows, even though they had to suffer these displeasures themselves. And it grew. From the mouse of malodorous small enjoyments was born the mountain of taking pleasure in the terrible tortures of others, even if it meant the same tortures for the self. It grew and grew, it even overflowed Hell and spilled some of its stuff on Earth.

  The imagination, over long stretches of timeless time, will devise tortures and pleasures in torture beyond credence. And the shriek is always “more, more, more!” There cannot be an ultimate in torture, since there is ever more extreme torture beyond.

  The persons can get out of it at any time, of course. One may always withdraw from a group, and join a pleasure minded group, or none at all. But the torture groups now outnumber the pleasure groups thousands to every one. Oh sure the shrieking, horrible pain and suffering and despondency, the unending agony of it all is beyond endurance. But to withdraw from it would be to lose the ultimate lust, the pleasure in the torture of one's fellows, the joyous gloating over the screaming, even when one must scream in blinding pain oneself.

  This is a little known, but true, explanation of one aspect of a well-known place.