by Rhys Hughes
“I bet he doesn’t realise what has happened!” Mummery exclaimed. “He merely climbed a tree to pick some apples and while he was doing so the tree uprooted itself and came here to tackle this mountain. It’s the same as a man who unwittingly carries a spider to the summit in his pocket. But this tree is making very rapid progress. The fellow with the basket is going to have a real shock when he descends and finds himself standing on top of the Eigerwand!”
A few months later, when his leg had perfectly healed, Mummery was invited to join an expedition by his colleague Whymper Bowman. The plan was to ascend a gigantic apple that had appeared overnight, falling out of a clear sky, perhaps from a distant star, onto the city of New York. It had impaled itself neatly on a number of skyscrapers and had become an accepted feature of the urban skyline. Engineers had even bored subway tunnels through it so that trains could rumble the pips.
But it had never been climbed. Mummery and Whymper boarded a steamer and crossed the Atlantic and when they entered the harbour and passed the Statue of Liberty they were overawed. “The Big Apple!” breathed Mummery, to which Whymper responded, “Yes, and over there is the big apple!” Truly it was enormous, a shiny red apple as crisp as autumn itself, noble and imposing but also homely; the pipedream of a demented orchard-keeper, turned into unabashed reality.
They disembarked and approached the base of the succulent mountain. On the northern side the skin was slightly more wrinkled and would favour toeholds and fingertip grips, so they attacked the ascent from that direction. The crampons that Whymper fitted to his boots were of a radical new design and Mummery questioned them. “Crampons? No, they are peelers. I intend to peel the apple as I go up it,” Whymper said, “in the name of science of course!”
Mummery wondered what the name of science was but he didn’t even hazard a guess at this juncture.
Finally attaining the summit of the monstrous fruit, they shook hands and frowned at the gathering clouds of an approaching storm. Were there apple trees somewhere up there? Anything was possible providing it wasn’t a self-contradiction, Mummery told himself.
On yet another continent, he found himself travelling in a train full of drunken people. Someone shouted that an impromptu cabaret had started in the buffet car and there was a stampede towards it. A hand gripped his shoulder and a voice asked, “Aren’t you coming?” Mummery blinked up at a familiar face. It was the fellow who had stood in the branches of the apple tree! “I know who you are. I know that you piggybacked your way to the apex of the Eiger,” he declared.
The man laughed and nodded. “My name is Wockycough Riptidy, but you may call me Mr Science.”
So that was the answer to the riddle…
Mummery said, “I prefer to remain here in my seat. I’m not a drunkard or a reveller. I like the peace and serenity of the remotest regions of the planet. That’s my kind of entertainment.”
Mr Science leaned forward and whispered, “Then we understand each other perfectly. That’s also how I feel. Let me make a confession.” He fumbled in his pocket and drew out a piece of paper that he folded many times and presented to his new friend. Mummery took it with a frown. It looked more like a unicorn than a confession to him. He popped it in his mouth.
“I arranged the cabaret in order to get the passengers crammed tightly into one small space,” continued Mr Science. “They are mostly influential young executives. I plan to embark on an expedition right here. It will involve some difficult social climbing. Do you want to join me? Social climbing is much more challenging than rock climbing.”
Mummery nodded without needing to hesitate, then he stood and accompanied Mr Science to the buffet car. It was crammed with sweating enthusiasts of the performance that was taking place at the far end, where an apple tree danced and shed its leaves one by one. “A striptrees!” shouted Mr Science and when Mummery called back, “Surely you mean striptease?” he was greeted by laughter. “Put these on,” said Mr Science, giving Mummery a pair of odd crampons.
“Juicers?” wondered Mummery as he held them up and examined them. But Mr Science was already strapping his own to his boots and setting off, climbing over the apple-cheeked youths with determination and confidence. So Mummery followed with a spider in his pocket.
The Taste of Turtle Tears
There are certain kinds of butterfly that live exclusively on the tears of other animals. Even butterflies that like to drink nectar will still often alight on the cheeks of a beast that has been weeping.
There is nothing illogical in this action really, for the butterflies crave salt, and tears are one of the richest sources of sodium. Butterflies that dwell near the sea don’t need to do this because the wind is already laden with salt and the wind sprinkles it over the flowers.
But butterflies that have their homes far inland will usually find that the salt the wind can carry has been shed long before it reaches them, so they will be desperately short of the vital mineral.
Deep in the Amazon rainforest, far from the ocean, there are flotillas of butterflies that have become specialised tear-drinkers. It may seem a gloomy feast for such a beautiful creature but what choice do they have? Without salt death is certain and a slow agonising death too.
So they find it essential that larger animals cry; and one way to ensure a regular supply of tears is to encourage these animals to shed them; and the best way of doing that it to make them feel sad.
How on earth do butterflies make other animals sad?
In one small region of that mighty jungle some butterflies have learned a few things that butterflies elsewhere have yet to learn. They know that the tears of the yellow-spotted river turtle are the saltiest and most nourishing of all, and they also know how to speak turtle language.
Actually, this last part isn’t quite true. They don’t speak the language but write it instead, in mid air, with their fluttering bodies. The orange and yellow butterflies form words in the turtle tongue that tell extremely sad stories and the turtles read them and burst into racking sobs.
The butterflies don’t need to form individual letters to make the words of a sentence because the written language of these turtles isn’t alphabetical but pictographic. Each symbol stands for one word. This fortunately means it takes less butterflies to tell a turtle tale than it otherwise might. There is a limit to the number of butterflies that can drink the tears of a single turtle. Having said this, there have been occasions when more than one turtle arrived to experience the sad story that was being related for them.
One memorable afternoon the butterflies had an audience of no less than six turtles, but more than one is a rarity. The stories that make turtles cry aren’t especially sophisticated. Simple tragic narratives suffice. Accounts of brave but foolish turtles that ended up as meals for jaguars; doomed loved affairs; stories about ungrateful children being mean to their mother; bitter ironies about what happens to naive turtles in the big bad world.
When the turtles can bear no more, they begin to weep and then it’s time for the butterflies to land and take a drink. The turtle tears give the insects the salt they need and they taste great too. The only problem is that the sadness, or at least some of it, comes with the substance.
Yes, it’s true. A little of the morose feeling is transferred into every tear, so the butterflies generally feel rather sad themselves afterwards. For the turtle the weeping might be cathartic but not so for the butterflies. They just feel sad without any emotional cleansing of the soul.
One day it occurred to the butterflies that tears are not only produced by sadness. They wondered if they might switch to telling funny stories so that the turtles would cry with laughter. Worth a try!
A comedy that will appeal to a turtle is no more polished than a tragedy that will fill it with melancholy. Turtles like farces best, with lots of characters narrowly avoiding each other in complicated love triangles. The butterflies told these stories and the turtles wept with joy.
These tears tasted sweeter than the juice of s
adness.
But they were a little too sweet.
The butterflies enjoyed them nonetheless, but one morning, while sunning themselves on the river bank, among the flowers they held a discussion. Tragic tears were too bitter, comic tears too sweet. Might a way be found to combine and moderate the two flavours into something better? Was there such a thing as tragicomedy, a blend of both genres?
They weren’t sure but they decided to try anyway.
The next story they told was a masterpiece of plotting and it manipulated the emotions of the turtle who witnessed it in a way that previously would have seemed implausible, swooping from the black depths of despair to the dizzy heights of mirth and back again at a velocity that to a turtle must have seemed horrifying and exhilarating at the same time.
The subsequent tears of tragicomedy were rated very highly. Indeed the butterflies considered them utterly perfect.
They began to tour their performance across the entire region and back to the starting point. It might be supposed they could simply have moved to a new home closer to the sea, where salt would have been plentiful, but the home they already had was far from meddling humans and had its advantages. Why should they emigrate? They liked it here and now that they had the recipe for the best tears ever tasted, there was no more need to worry.
But giving the same performance day after day meant that they became a little complacent. They put less effort into forming the words correctly. If one of the butterflies was late to get into position the others would go ahead without him or her. Yes, their work became sloppy.
And one awful day the turtle that was the sole audience member started laughing in a different way from usual. The butterflies carried on and, when the turtle cried, they abandoned the story and took their drink. But the flavour was off this time, very peculiar, and mildly toxic.
It didn’t kill the butterflies but it made their souls sick for a few days and in that time they squabbled with each other or drooped their wings pathetically while resting on petals or muttered dark ideas about self destruction or found it impossible to go to sleep. They were depressed.
The problem is that the last performance had been a disaster. So casual had the butterflies become, so cavalier with their theatrical duties, that most of them hadn’t bothered to make neat symbols in the air. The pictographs were ragged and badly formed. As a consequence, the meaning of the words of the story had changed. It had become gibberish.
And yes, the turtle had laughed and wept, but not because of catharsis or amusement. No, he had guffawed and cried in derision, in contempt, his tears and laughter directed at the butterflies rather than with them. These tears were pure poison, not strong enough to kill the insects but certainly potent enough to make them feel very bad about themselves.
The solution was to forget about amateur dramatics.
And now the butterflies have a highly organised and superbly disciplined troupe of professional actors who give daily shows down by the river. They are even building a special venue there, an open air amphitheatre, though how they are doing this with their little thin legs is beyond my knowing; and the actors in this troupe are never sloppy or slapdash.
It remains to be seen if butterfly theatre ever catches on in that isolated part of the forest. I sincerely hope it does.
Their plan is to make everything as honest as possible, so the old idea of tricking the turtles into weeping is now considered a bit vulgar. A more ethical alternative has been proposed, that the price of admission for a show should be set at two tears, one from each eye, payable after the performance; and only if the show has the desired emotional impact.
The Musical Universe
“The idea of the oscillating universe has finally been discredited and I’m rather glad about that,” said Dr Wombat as he left the university building through the doors of an obscure rear exit.
Perry Crammer, his favourite research student, followed him with one of his affable shrugs, a shrug that wouldn’t have been seen by his myopic mentor, even if he had been facing the right way. “It was discredited years ago, really; but now we’re sure our cosmos is fated to keep on expanding and expanding.”
“The process is accelerating.”
“Quite right,” muttered Dr Wombat.
“But,” said Perry, moistening his lips with his precocious tongue. “I don’t understand why this fact should have any emotional impact on you at all. The scale of events is too grand in space and time to influence our little human lives. So why are you glad?”
Dr Wombat opened an iron gate in a wall and stepped through into the quiet ambience of a cobbled alleyway in the adjacent historic quarter of the town. This was where the tourists should have gone, but never did. It was kept a secret from them. Mainly students frequented the labyrinthine ways, the quaint cafés and secluded parks.
“A universe that expands to a certain size, and then contracts to a point, before blasting outwards again, and so on forever; reminds me too much of one of those damn musical instruments, the wheezy kind. What are the horrid objects called? Accordions, is it?”
“Or concertinas,” ventured Perry.
“Yes, yes! I hate the sound they make. I loathe the thought that maybe the universe sounds like one of them.”
“But this is all a bit fanciful,” chuckled Perry.
Dr Wombat said nothing in reply. He turned corners and passed under the awnings of shops, his face now in shadow, then in sunlight, so that he resembled an archaic thinking machine with flashing bulbs pushed to the limits of its ability. Then he boomed:
“I know a little place that’s perfect for lunch!”
And turning the next corner he stopped at a café and turned his head to beam at Perry; but even as a smile began to curl on his lips, a frown was furrowing his brow. On an elevated platform, next to the tables and chairs of the cute establishment, a band was playing music. Many musicians and many instruments and one of them was—
“An accordion! Blast it!” bellowed Dr Wombat.
“No, it’s a concertina,” said Perry.
“Let’s find somewhere else to eat. I can’t possibly munch a salad, and slurp a coffee, and ogle a waitress with that din rattling around in my ears. It sounds like an asthmatic donkey that has gone mad. I can’t understand why the management thought it made business sense to book them. Very few people like this kind of cacophony.”
“Well, to be perfectly candid, I enjoy the other instruments that are in the hands of the other musicians,” said Perry.
“I suppose they are agreeable but the accordion spoils everything. Do you understand now why I’m so emphatic that we don’t live in a universe that undergoes an eternal cycle of inflation and deflation? Honk, wheeze and drone! A nightmarish appetite suppressant! Come, I know plenty of other cafés, alternatives to this one. Hurry up!”
But Perry was still listening, tapping his foot to the tune.
Then he glanced at his mentor and saw the expression of disapproval etched there and sought to explain himself. “I’m filtering out the sound of the concertina with my mind. It’s the sound of the blampet that I love. I’ll come in a minute. I took blampet lessons.”
“I suppose the blampet is acceptable. I am willing to declare the flutes, trumpets, trombones, banjos, chimes and fiddles to also be inoffensive. It is simply the accordion that I can’t stand.”
“Concertina,” said Perry in a very quiet voice. “Listen!”
And he pointed at the blampet player.
The musician in question held a blampet at arm’s length. The string of the thing dangled down. Then he reached out with his free hand to tug the string and the blampet popped and let loose a sweet but powerful note. He was clearly a virtuoso because he delved into a bucket and procured yet another blampet without skipping a beat; and the tempo of this music was now very fast. Perry sighed with pleasure.
“It’s a superb instrument, one of my favourites. And you know what? I would say that it’s a very good model of our universe, the real cosmo
s we happen to live in. After all, that’s what the new results from our telescope prove, isn’t it? Our universe will expand and expand until, eventually, one day in the unimaginably remote future—”
Dr Wombat finished his sentence for him. “It pops.”
They waited for the musician to play another note on the blampet, but finally the concertina’s croaking proved too much for old Dr Wombat; he plucked Perry’s sleeve and dragged him along the alley and around new corners to a café that was silent and almost as quaint. They ordered salads and espresso and munched in satisfaction.
When the meal was done, Perry wiped his lips with a napkin and he became philosophical, as he always did with a full stomach. “Suppose we are living in just one universe out of many?”
“Ah, the multiverse conjecture. What of it?” Dr Wombat smiled as he slurped the dregs of his cup. He felt indulgent.
“Well, it could be that each universe resembles a different instrument, a different musical instrument I mean. We don’t exist in a universe that is like a concertina, true, but one that’s awfully similar to a blampet. What if other universes in some parallel spacetime act more like flutes, trumpets, trombones, banjos, chimes and fiddles?”
Dr Wombat folded his arms, sat back in his chair, laughed.
“I just hope the melody is synchronised.”
Perry also laughed. “But seriously, a universe that resembles a banjo. Imagine that! Would the laws of physics even be the same? Probably not! I enjoy all this wild speculation, you see.”
“Post-lunch prattlings. Harmless,” said Dr Wombat.
An odd light appeared in Perry’s eyes.
“In some of those other universes the musical instruments themselves might be different. I don’t know how workable that makes my analogy. I bet in some of those alternative realities they don’t have blampets or even know what they are. Can you credit that?”