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

by R. A. Lafferty

  “There is an aerodynamic requirement that every winged device or creature must also have a tail for balance. This requirement applies also to angels. An angel without a tail would have its splendid beauty grotesquely reduced. Someday some artist will have the courage to paint an angel with a tail, and he will startle the art world with the beautiful effect.”

  —Arpad Arutinov, The Back Door of History

  The images of persons, whether Doppelgänger or Angel or Fetch, are much more common than one would admit. The psychologist Jung implied that the Doppelgänger of a person is only one of the splinters from the Unconscious of the person, which splinter, sometimes the ego, sometimes the id, sometimes the shadow, is made audible and visible in moments of queer stress or confrontation. And mostly these Doppels are heard and seen only by their primary, though sometimes also by a person who is emotionally very close to the primary person. And in all this there is some doubt whether the appearances are entirely subjective or partly objective also. But in another place Jung implies (and almost writes it outright) that there might be a life-long association between a person and his Doppelgänger reflection. And it had been a life-long, though never very important, association between Melchisedech Duffey and his Doppel.

  The face that they shared, or had shared until Melchisedech's death and defacing, was a good one, a handsome face, a rather tall face on a rather broad body. One may see that face in Rubens' painting THE MEETING OF ABRAHAM AND MELCHISEDECH. One may perhaps see it better in the statue group on the porch of the northern Transept of Chartres Cathedral. Melchisedech is leftmost of the three carven figures, then we have Abraham and Moses.

  Oh, but those were representations of the Original Melchisedech, someone might say. And they were only artists' ideas of what the Holy and Puzzling person may have looked like.

  Get one thing clear! Melchisedech Duffey was the Original Melchisedech, the Thou-Art-Forever Melchisedech. And the anonymous sculptor of the Chartres figures as well as Rubens, did the figures from life (as it were) with splendid grace and insight and intuition.

  The more contemporary Melchisedech had modified the look of his face slightly by wearing a shorter and more squarish beard, but it was still a face that seen once would be remembered forever.

  “Who are you anyhow?” Melchisedech asked his Doppel one day soon after he was reactivated as masked and muffled Argo Master and Pilot.

  “There are some who would say that I am only an aspect of yourself,” the Double spoke in the rolling voice of Melchisedech himself, but not with quite such a vigorous roll.

  “But I do not say that and I do not believe that you say that,” Melchisedech argued. “All my life I have been seeing you a dozen times a day or more, and I have never given you much thought. What is your name?”

  “Sometimes I am called Pseudo-Zorokothora,” said the double.

  “But Zorokothora is only the mythic equivalent of myself, Melchisedech. The same legends are told of us both. But you cannot really be named Pseudo-Melchisedech. I'll not accept that.”

  “Sometimes I am said to be one of the Grigori or Watchers. Sometimes I am said to be a Zophiel which is a ‘God's spy’. We are close but impossible parallels, and yet we are almost universal. Everybody starts life with one of me, and there is usually a separation near the end of childhood. But you are a child forever, and you have me yet. You and all of your species are descendants of Noah and his race. I and all of my species are descendants of Nir, the brother of Noah, about whom you are not permitted to know very much. You look at me now as you seldom bothered to look at me before, because you have lost your face and you believe that you see it on me. But it is I who have lost my face. For I cannot see it anywhere now, not in you, not anywhere.”

  “You can see it in any mirror, dolt.”

  “No, I cannot. No mirror will reflect me. I do not exist as far as mirrors are concerned. Melchisedech, my task is always to warn you of things you do not want to notice. You are now in the latter part of your Seventh Voyage that is called the Voyage of the Lost Years. You have lived seven lively lives on such eerie voyages, and you have died seven deadly deaths. And in the case of three of those deaths you were judged and damned to hell. Does that not worry you?”

  “Yes, a little bit. But it seems that I'm ahead of the game. I was not judged and damned to hell in the case of four of my deaths. How much longer till the end of this Seventh Voyage of the Lost Years?”

  “There is One only who sets that time. He is not you and He is not I. What are you looking for? What are you trying to see?”

  “I'm trying to see whether you have a tail, Pseudo-Zorokothora.”

  “Oh, you have read the humorous history of Arpad Arutinov. Whether I have one or not, you will not be able to know.”

  After his very real death (all seven of his deaths had been very real) Melchisedech Duffey could still come and go in time and space, but he could go on with his activities only a very few years into the futures. And some of his incursions on the Argo were beyond those few years. As a stubbornly dead and resolutely bony man, he accomplished things that another man could hardly do. There was an ambivalence about him (he said that he had a tibia in each of the worlds), but there was an awkwardness and an unaccountability also. The future is wraithy in any case, and one may excuse a certain wraithiness there. But as to present time, however constrained that present scene might be, what was the case of Melchisedech in it? If an Argo adventure was more nearly in the present time, if it impinged less far into the future than did the Adventure of The Laughing Prince and the Seventh Death of Melchisedech, then Melchisedech became almost a normal man again, with flesh on his bones and a voice in his voice box. In that case he used the same bones he'd been using, and he used the same flesh that he used to use. But were not the ashes in the cigar canister that had once belonged to the King of Spain the residue of that same flesh? The ashes in the cigar canister did not disappear at those times, though they smoked uncommonly and seemed a bit more hot. This was the ‘Ambiguity of the Flesh’ that would be with him for many years, coming and going, all through his married life, all through the New Orleans days and nights, all through his less spectral adventures. But his flesh was no less valid for suffering this ‘ambiguity’.

  Prince Kasmir Gorshok (Casey of Chicago) left the Argo and returned to it very many times. He became quite irregular as an active Master of the Argo. “I have other Ships to sail that you wot not of,” he told them with an air of mystery.

  Henceforth (and preforth) Melchisedech had the feeling that the ‘Present Time’ was a sort of living in the past. Melchisedech had been quite a young boy-man when he first (and last, and always) set his person onto the circumstance named ‘The Sea of the Lost Years’, the Sea and the Years in which so many of the Argo adventures were enacted. And that sea could be left or reentered at any of its shores. “And I must remind you that you can leave the Argo at any of the shores, at the age twenty-four or at that of eighty-four,” X told Duffey. “And if you leave it at an early age, then you will always have your long life ahead of you yet.”

  “What are you saying, X?” Melchisedech asked him. “You do not understand the situation. I can leave it only once more, at the unraveling of this my seventh voyage on the ‘Sea of the Lost Years’. And then I will have not but reality ahead of me to cope with as well as I can.

  “Leave the Argo? Why should I want to leave the Argo?”

  Melchisedech Duffey, however, seemed (to himself and to those who knew him best) a not-quite-real person on his every return to ‘present places and times’.

  The Chicago years, from this unmoored viewpoint, would have a strong tone of déjà vécu. By that, Melchisedech seemed more to remember his wife than to live with her in any present time, much as he loved her. The New Orleans years were always a sort of living in the past also. There was nothing wrong with this. It gave depth to those times and experiences. But Melchisedech Duffey really was a bundle of anomalies in the decades when he ran the Walk-In A
rt Bijou in New Orleans, when he kept his own smoking and aromatic ashes in a cigar canister on a table there, when he paraded such incredible knowledge, and often such incredible ignorance and simplicity. The unreality of Duffey would be to everybody the most striking thing about him. It wasn't that he was destined to die in a fairly near future; everybody is so destined. It was that he had already died in the near future and had the ashes of his cremated flesh to prove it. And yet it seemed that he was a little bit ahead of everyone else. “For all the lives that he's lived, he hasn't died nearly enough deaths,” Absalom Stein said of him once. But there was never anybody who was such good company, never anybody that it was such a joy to be with as Melchisedech.

  But what role did Stein play in these anomalies, or Count Finnegan, or Teresa Stranahan? Probably hers was an animating role just as Melchisedech's was a creative role. They are not quite the same. What role did Biloxi Brannagan really play, or Henry Salvatore?

  Whenever the Argo came to a land to refit or to take on provisions or sea-stores, it came to one of the chancy places or times in a present day context. And some of the sea-stores and ship-stores that the Argo took on were, though absolutely necessary, intangible.

  It took on electric life from Teresa and Margaret Stone and from Henry. It took on sea-biscuit from Hans and Marie Schultz, and Jew-bread from Absalom Stein, and Purgatorial Loaf from Bascom Bagby.

  It was of such delightful anomalies that an early Master of the Argo, Saint Augustine of Africa, wrote “And these were the dishes wherein to me, hunger-starved for thee, they served the sun and moon.” Don't knock it who have never been served the Sun and the Moon in a dish. It isn't the great thing itself, but it's in the direction of it.

  And another early Argo Master wrote in Scripture “Oh my people, I will open your graves and have you rise from them, and I will bring you back to your land.”

  And as Margaret Stone said in that exciting present that she always carried with her, “I can procure it so that no one I have ever known will be lost. I have this as a promise, and I do not know of anyone else in the whole world who has received this same promise.”

  “Margaret, Margaret,” Melchisedech chided her when he heard her expound this. “You went to see and heckle the Devil himself when he once spoke in this city. And later you drank coffee with him and talked with him privately. Is he then covered by the promise which you received that no one you have ever known will be lost?”

  “He is covered by that promise and he will not be lost,” Margaret said. “Even now, he may have already broken with that thing. But he is a devil, not the Great Devil himself. Him I have not known.”

  “Yes, he is the Great Devil Himself, and he once spoke in this city and he once drank coffee and talked long with you. There are several of us who know the signs by which he may be recognized.”

  “Listen, you tattered Masters,” Margaret pealed. “How do you know that your salt hasn't lost its savor? How are you sure?”

  “You and yours make me sure,” Melchisedech told her. “If our salt has lost its savor, then we will get new salt from some of you here. See to the stowing of a few hundred weight of savory salt, favorite urchin. We sail again within the half-year, and we will fly a new pennant proclaiming ‘This Holy Ship is salted by Blessed Margaret Stone Herself’.”

  Margaret would always be “The fire which saith not ‘It is enough’.” The shape of the world would have been different, and more ungainly, without her.

  Melchisedech Duffey sometimes sailed a hundred different adventures on the Argo in the interval of no more than a single day that he would be absent from his Establishment in Chicago or his Walk-In Art Bijou in New Orleans.

  It was in the ‘Third Year of the Bells’ that Count Finnegan came on board the Argo with two companions, all of them in such sort of disguises as any sharp eyed mariner could see through. The point about these three men, Count Finnegan Himself, and Gilberto Levine-and-O'Brien, and Herman Hercules, was that they were acting as doubles or stalking horses for Three Princes of the Ecclesia (that central institution on earth than which none can be higher). Or else they were the Three Princes disguised as their own doubles. The assignment of Count Finnegan and his companions was to get themselves killed in place of the Three Princes. And they had failed in their assignment. The Three Princes had all been murdered, and these their three doubles still lived and traveled the lands and the seas.

  There was one musical sound noticed shortly after the three doubles came on board the Argo. It was produced by Coryphaeba-fish rising with their heads above the waves and blowing horns (shell horns, but they had bright brass stops and frets, really), blowing them loudly and clearly. This always happened whenever a present or future Pope was riding on the Argo. It had happened a dozen times in the Argo's history, and it was a fact beyond question that this music of such unusual origin served as a continuing salute to the Personage.

  One other person came on to the Argo at the same moment as came Finnegan and Gilberto and Herman Hercules. This other person did not come on to the Argo openly. He came over the poop, and he hid, except from Melchisedech. No one could hide from Melchisedech when he was in his state of fleshlessness. The person who was acting so peculiar (not so peculiar for him, though) was X.

  But was not X already on the Argo? No, he had left the Argo openly three ports back, for service of another sort, he had said, and now he returned secretly. Secretly, but bright for he was now in red robes and a red piped cape. And now he was Monsignor X.

  He brought a sly wrapped package with him. He always brought something such whenever he came. He showed it to Melchisedech in one of those unaccountable hours of the night. It was the oddly marked, flayed skin of Cardinal Artemis. “Yes, this is the holy flayed skin itself,” Monsignor X told Melchisedech, “the skin of the murdered Cardinal, and it is marked in a very peculiar manner. And so is the skin of one of the men who is now sleeping in a berth on the Argo here, one of the men who came on board with Count Finnegan. The Cardinal's flayed skin here, and the living skin of that sleeping man, have almost identical markings. This man on board now is supposed to be the double of the Cardinal, but how can we tell which is which for certain now?”

  “Ah, flay the sleeping man, I suppose, X,” Melchisedech said, “and then run both of the skins through our computer. That should tell us which is the false skin and which the true, which is the double and which is the primary. But only Count Finnegan and the man Gilberto know of the marks, you say?”

  Duffey at first thought that a most peculiar fog was rising in the night. Then he saw that it was a special shimmering. That meant that the events happening now and henceforth, though of high probability, were not absolutely happening. That was really a sort of relief to Duffey.

  “But the flayed skin that I hold in my hands, to which man does it belong?” X asked. “The skin of the dead Cardinal Artemis was marked and mottled naturally. And the skin of Gilberto who would play his double was marked by Gilberto himself with a tattoo needle, and it had all the marks of the Cardinal's skin. But Gilberto put on certain of his own characteristic marks also, ‘So that I will know my own skin if I ever see it again,’ he said. But which skin is it now? Are there too many marks on it or too few? Of which man is this the skin? And which man is sleeping on this ship right now?”

  “I don't know, X,” said the bones-only Melchisedech Duffey.

  “I find it significant that you, Great Melchisedech, a certified sorcerer and magus, do not know such a simple thing,” Monsignor X said. “Let's find out.”

  They did find out. They found out what man was wearing what skin now, and what man had died in that skin. And they all seemed to be astonished by the finding. But it was Monsignor X, with a sudden resurgence of good sense, who suggested that this information must be classified. They all agreed to that. And classified it remains.

  Yes, it was possible that Casey Gorshok Szymansky, of the Zodiac and of Chicago, was somewhat chilly to Count Finnegan and his companions when th
ey came on to the Argo, during that ‘Third Year of the Bells’. But both Casey and Finnegan were Masters of the Argo, so a chilliness between them would not have been becoming. There had to be some explanation of the apparent frostiness of Casey to Finnegan and his companions, since it could not be real. Then there was an event of great importance in the history of art. Count Finnegan, in that short time he was on the Argo in this instance, painted thirteen really stunning pictures. This was the ‘Deaths of the Cardinals’ series. They are beyond all price. They are also almost beyond all access, for they are painted on the very bulkheads of the ‘Bread and Wine’ room of the Argo, and the Argo does not come to the call of random persons.

  The series shows the thirteen executions or murders of the thirteen very great men. All of them were wonderful in their power and majesty, but the ‘Hanging of Cardinal Gabrailovitch’, the ‘Beheading of Cardinal Ti’, the ‘Flaying of Cardinal Artemis’, and the ‘Impaling Upside-Down of Cardinal Hedayat’, ah, these were surpassing! For the record, the thirteen paintings represented the deaths of Cardinals Ti, Brokebolt, Merry de Val, Leviathan, Artemis, Lloyd-Spencer, Salvatore, Gregorio, Runosake, Doki, Gabrailovitch, Erculo, and Hedayat, all very great men, some of them saints. And one of them, Salvatore, was an Argo Master.

  “We are going to the ‘Belling Shoals’, to the ‘Ringing Rocks’, to the hewn cave in the heart of the ‘Mooring Stone’,” Count Finnegan said to them all. “Ours is a very short trip with you this time. And I may never again set foot on the Argo till I sail on her on the Four Waters of Paradise. We are going to the Haven in the Shoals because that is the last refuge on Earth for us. We are assembling there now, by various conveyance, thirteen shadow-men, thirteen doubles of dead princes, because we will play a trick on the Judas world by going there. Of the thirteen of us, one at least will not be a shadow man. One of us at least will not be the double of a dead holy man. One of us will be, pardon me, a dead holy man who is still alive. And by that we will effect it that the line is not broken. We will assure it that the world will not be lost before the last battle begins at least. You will know that we have not let the line be broken by the fact that on your very next adventure you will have the transporting of the Antichrist. Were we extinguished now, the Evil would already be done, and there would be no need for him to appear in person. But our line will still be unbroken when Armageddon Morning dawns red. One of us will be reigning when this very ship, the Holy Argo, carries the Antichrist to the Plains of Megiddo.” “The Antichrist will never travel on the Argo,” Biloxi Brannagan stated firmly.