Then it began to escalate. And what did Daisy and Roy, who seemed to have lost control of the production they were supposed to be directing, have to say about this?
“You can do some things with electronics that you can't do without it,” they said.
The lighting! The colors! Into the art yellow, the rushlight yellow, there had crept the dull glow of mud violet from far down the spectrum. This empty color, this ghost color, is part of real art, we suppose. But it brings the sense and sight of shadows without substance.
The audience at the Rushlight was charmed, even as a bird is charmed by a snake. Most of its members took vicarious parts in the perversions, mental and physical, that were being played out on simultaneous levels.
The lines and voices of the actors had taken on a moment, a movement, a rhythm. They could not be reproduced; nor were they later remembered, except as vague impressions. It was of their essence that they be forgotten or buried or sublimated. Emotions twanged like the instruments of the string quartet back in the study.
“We will not serve the climax dish,” said a chef who watched for a moment. (The Rushlight was a late supper club as well as a theatre.) “There will be no appetite left in the people, no, not even for beans. It may be good drama, but I hate these plays that make the people lose their appetites.”
It had to end. The polyander had been shattered by the polyandry and the murders and deformities; it's high fellowship was tarred with a pitchy brush. The succubus had come apart, but each part was still murderous and shrill. There was satiety, there was revulsion. It was time for the third act, and for the tragicomedy itself, to end. But here, a climax dish would be served: Catherine O'Donovan would be served as a dish.
Catherine was crying out lines in high rhyme. She was standing on a little ledge or sideboard before saffron drapes. There was such a sideboard in the study; there was also one in the Rushlight. There were brass and copper bells in her voice when she rang out her rhyme lines.
“Broke you the fellowship, poisoned the well! Spirits, bleak spirits, go back to your hell!”
But the spirits—the Putty Dwarf and seven worse than himself—would not go back. The spirit had already gone out of those pseudo-spirits Loretta Sheen and Mary Mondo. The craft of Daisy Flavus and Roy Mega had left them; there were places where their electronics could not follow. The end of the show had been taken out of their hands; it would not be as they had devised it. It was all between the unholy spirits and the spirited Catherine now.
“Carrot top, carrot top, lose you the fray! You be the going one. We be the stay,” those spirits rhymed it, and they were coming at Catherine in her high place. They had her threateningly boxed in. Nevertheless she wouldn't go easily, though nobody could or would aid her. She rhymed her defiance.
“Murders of children and bongers of knell! Devils, down devils, go back to your hell!”
The Putty Dwarf had leaped onto the sideboard and pulled the velvet rope. The saffron drapes parted. Behind them was a high window, and behind that was a desolate landscape. The unclean spirits, moving murderously, rhymed a last rhyme: “Carrot top, Carrot top, scuttled by all! Sputter your temper! How far do you fall!”
Then the end was very quick. The Down Devils were onto Catherine there in the window. They flung Catherine O'Donovan (and it was with a great smashing of glass that they did it) through that high window to her death in the desolate landscape below.
She was dead, broken dead, redly dead with her carrot hair and her freckles. And after death is the grave; without obsequies, without coffin. She was dead in a dug grave, with the dirt scooped directly onto her, into her face, her eyes, her nose, her mouth and throat—dead, buried, and dishonored. Poor Catherine O'Donovan!
III
“We have learned to whittle the Eden Tree
To the shape of a surplice-peg.
We have learned to bottle our parents twain
In the yolk of an addled egg.
We know that the tail must wag the dog,
For the horse is drawn by the cart.
But the Devil whoops, as he whooped of old:
‘It's pretty, but is it Art?’ ”
—Rudyard Kipling
Austro had made cheese things and passed them around, but those in the study had lost their appetites. He ate them himself when no one else would eat. After all, he was innocent of any wrongdoing or wrong thinking. Why should he lose his appetite?
The rest were a little unnerved by the Rushlight drama that they had witnessed without going to the Rushlight. They knew that there was one more scene of the drama to be played, and that it would be played offstage.
They were waiting a little nervously for the first shoe to drop, waiting with anxiety (fear and trembling on the side) for the second shoe to follow it, and waiting with real trepidation for that third shoe to fall.
Roy Mega and Daisy Flavus came into the study, having hurried over from the Rushlight. But they weren't any of the shoes. They took Harry O'Donovan to task for what they believed was mistreatment.
“Mr. O'Donovan, you changed the script!” Daisy charged.
“No such thing,” Harry maintained. “I wrote one clear script and one only. You two changed it a little, but it changed itself back. My scripts will do that. You can get hurt changing them, you know.”
“But the Putty Dwarf and his gang weren't supposed to move or act,” Roy said. “They hadn't any speaking parts. They were just painted figures lurking in the woods, figures painted by Dr. Drakos here.”
“My paintings have a lot of life in them,” George Drakos said.
“And they did have speaking and acting parts,” Harry insisted. “They were on the last two pages, the pages you said you weren't going to use—and you didn't use them. They used you.”
“You used us too, O'Donovan,” Roy Mega charged.
“Certainly, certainly,” Harry said. “At first I was going to have a couple of psychic types in it and somehow do it mentally. Then I decided to write in an electronics nut and a featherheaded girl instead. You two came through a little sloppy, though, I should have done a little rewriting on you.”
“But we were real, real,” Daisy protested. “You talk as though you made us up.”
“I always use a basis that is real, real, Daisy. I'm a realistic playwright,” Harry said.
Helen Drakos came in. She was the first shoe, but thankfully she dropped almost noiselessly.
“I liked it,” she said. “The part I liked best was killing the kids for Moloch. George, why don't we have some kids of our own so we can kill them if they get out of line?”
“Whatever you say, Helen,” George agreed. “Where are Judy and Catherine?”
“Judy will be here in just a minute. Catherine is delayed. She's dead, so I don't know when we'll see her.”
Judy Benedetti came in. She was the second shoe. She dropped a little more noisily.
“Harry, don't you know anything at all about wines?” she demanded. “The wines that you wrote in for my wineshop were inferior, terrible. My customers wouldn't drink them. I had to drink them myself. Now I don't know whether I'm crocked or sick.”
“I'm sorry, Judy,” Harry said. “If the subject comes up again, I'll let you write the wine.”
“But I liked the slaughter of the children, Harry,” Judy said. “You could have done much more with it, though. What with us becoming civilized and all, we're in danger of forgetting how much fun it is to kill kids. Oh, it's always been mod and arty! Chiara wouldn't believe that I was really going to do it to her. ‘Mother, it's only a play,’ she hollered. ‘Mother, get that look out of your eyes!’ How she screamed when I really killed her though! I liked that—and the polyandry was fun. George was pretty good. So was Barnaby. So were you, Harry.”
“Where is Catherine?” Harry O'Donovan asked.
“Oh, she'll be a while yet. She's dead. I liked that scene, Harry. It was a great ending. I like her, but I've often wanted to throw her out a window or something.”
“Had to—dead, you know,” came the voice of Mary Mondo out of the air. “That's what the second Englishman said.”
“What did the first Englishman say?” Loretta Sheen croaked from her sawdusty sofa of pain.
“Ah, I hear you've buried your wife!!” Roy and Daisy shouted together, cutting Mary Mondo out. Those kids were serious about the theater business. They had gone to the trouble of learning all the old jokes.
Ghostly icy winds blew across the haunted moors! Frightened hounds bristled and bayed in the spooky night! There was a terrible stench of rot, death, and unhallowed ground. A dead person walking, stalking, with that stilt-like walk they have! Living death, walking death, was even now at the door! Like a soundless scream, the horror-faced, walking-dead Catherine O'Donovan burst into the room. She had grave stench about her; she had grave dirt on her, in her eyes, her mouth, and her carrot-colored hair. She held a burning swamp rush like a torch in her death's hand. She was the third shoe, and when the third shoe drops at night it sets the stoutest heart to fluttering. She dropped, fell, and lay upon the boards — disheveled, derelict, and dead. Austro grabbed the burning rush torch lest it kindle the room.
“Good show, Catherine,” said her husband Harry. “I wasn't sure that you could handle the role. Say, you have some pretty bad cuts where you went through the window! Fortunately they are only sympathetic electronic cuts. We may have allowed the electronic amplification to enhance the play a little too much. The mixed-media dosage can well be fatal.”
“The play is over, Mrs. O'Donovan,” Daisy said, “and you were wonderful.”
“Oh shut up!” Catherine burst out furiously, surging shakily up from the floor. “My flesh is rotted and there's grave dirt all over me.”
“It's only electronic flesh rot and electronic grave dirt, Mrs. O'Donovan,” Roy Mega tried to explain.
“Well, how do I get rid of it?” Catherine demanded.
“I don't know. I'll have to invent something,” Roy said weakly.
“I'll get even,” Catherine moaned. “Ah, to waken unblessed in the grave!”
“You woke up in the prop room, Mrs. O'Donovan,” Daisy said, “in an old prop grave that we used in ‘Queen of the Living Dead’.”
“I'll get even,” Catherine moaned again. She went over to where Austro and George Drakos had put their heads and gravers and colored pencils together.
“The next one I write, I'll put in a real psychic couple,” Harry said, “and they'll be able to create all sorts of effects. But I'll use Roy and Daisy too. There cannot be too many effectors when one jumps the media tracks for greater reality. Ah, what an artist I am!”
“You'd better keep the stage plays on the stage, Harry,” Barnaby Sheen warned.
“Oh, how I'll get even!” Catherine was crying, but there was a new liveliness about her now. George Drakos was drawing a death's head with his colored pencils. It was ghastly, horrifying in its death suffering. It was the tortured face of Harry O'Donovan.
“Will it work?” Catherine asked.
“Why not?” said George. “As an artist I can jump media as well as Harry can. And I also have my effectors.”
Austro was drawing Rocky McCrocky with a great splitting stone axe held high, and the axe was about to descend murderously.
“Will it work? Will it work, Austro?” Catherine asked. “Carrock, why not? It always has,” Austro said.
“Let me!” Catherine ordered. She took the two pictures in her angry hands. She superimposed one upon the other. The axe descended upon the head. Harry O'Donovan screamed.
“Oh, my head, my head!” Harry wailed.
“I don't think that things can be enhanced too much,” Daisy was saying, “just as I don't believe that music can be played too loud. We can't go restricting things just because a few people get blasted.”
“I don't believe that the media can be mixed too much,” Roy Mega was saying. “I don't believe that reality can be twisted too much, or that we can launch too many combinations. The more little explosions we are able to have, the closer we come to having the big explosion. That's what everybody wants, isn't it?”
Austro was rock graving other pictures with graver and hammer. They had something to do with Roy Mega and with Daisy Flavus. They were effector pictures. They would really blast! (No, no, Austro, don't do it! Sure they are brats, sure they are asking for it. But not that! No, Austro, don't do it! No, no!)
“I have a splitting headache literally,” Harry O'Donovan was moaning. “There's no pain like it this side of death.” Harry had gone ashen white in the face—with a garish overlay of studio yellow. He seemed to be suffering the tortures of the damned. He was the veritable original of the ghastly death's head drawing by George Drakos. He moaned. He was living-dying art.
And Austro was doing truly amazing things with hammer and graver on stone. Oh, the screaming to come was implicit in that picture, and Catherine O'Donovan looked at it with anticipation and pleasure.
“It's a little hard not to overdo it when you're getting even, Austro,” Catherine beamed through her rot and reek. “I think maybe it's more fun to get just a little bit more than even: now if you draw it here like this—let me have the hammer and graver a minute—like this! Then Daisy and Roy will feel what it's like to—”
“No, no, Catherine, don't do that! No, no!” Austro pleaded. “That's a little too much.” He took the graver and hammer back from her.
“Ah, what artists we all are!” Catherine gloated with ghoulish pleasure. Really, she wore her grave dirt (and stench and rot) rakishly. She was magnificent!
Funnyfingers
“—and Pluto, Lord of Hell, wept when Orpheus played to him that lovely phrase from Gluck — but these were iron tears.”
—H. Belloc, On Tears of the Great
“Who am I?” Oread Funnyfingers asked her mother one day, “and, for that matter, what am I?”
“Why, you are our daughter,” the mother Frances Funnyfingers told her, “or have you been talking to someone?”
“Only to myself and to my uncles in the mountain.”
“Oh. Now first, dear, I want you to know that we love you very much. There was nothing casual about it. We chose you, and you are to us—”
“Oh, take it easy, mother. I know that I'm adopted. And I'm sure that you both love me very much; you tell me so often enough. But what am I really?”
“You are a little girl, Oread, a somewhat exasperating and precocious little girl.”
“But I don't feel precocious. I feel like a rock-head. How can I be a little bit like papa and not anything like anyone else at all? What was the connection between myself and papa?”
“There wasn't any at first, Oread, not like that. We were looking for a child since we could not have one of our own. I fell in love with you at first sight because you reminded me of Henry. And Henry fell in love with you at first sight because you reminded him of Henry. Henry was always the favorite person of both myself and Henry. That's a joke, dear. But not entirely; my husband is so delightfully boyish and self-centered. Now run out and play.”
“No, I think I'll run in and play.”
“Oh, but it's so dark and dirty and smoky in there.”
“And it's so light and unsmoky everywhere else, mama,” Oread said, and she ran inside the mountain to play.
Well, the house and the shop of Henry Funnyfingers backed onto the mountain. It was really only a low but steep foot-hill to the Osage Hills. This was on the northwest fringe of the city. The shop was the typewriter repair shop of Henry the father of Oread. You wouldn't know that from the sign out front, though. The sign said “Daktylographs Repaired Here, Henry Funnyfingers”.
The shop part of the building was half into and under the hill. Behind the shop was a dimly lit parts room that was entirely under the hill. And behind this were other parts rooms, one after the other, rock-walled and dark, rockier and darker as one went on, all deep under the hills. And these continued, on and on, as tunnel and cave
rn without apparent end.
In these places of total darkness, if only one knew where to reach in which pot, there was to be found every part for every sort of machine in the world; or so Henry Funnyfingers said.
Oread ran through room after room, through passage after passage in the blackness. She drew parts from the pots and the furnaces as she ran. She put the parts together, and it barked remindfully. “What have I forgotten?” Oread asked. “Ah, Rusty, I've given you only one ear. I'm sorry.” She took the other ear from the Other Ear Pot as she ran past, and she put it on him. Then she had an iron dog complete. It would run and play and bark after her in the tunnels under the mountain.
“Oh Kelmis, Of Acmon, Oh Damnae all three!
Come out of the mountain and play with me.”
Oread sang that. Sometimes the three Mountain Uncles were busy (they had to make numbers and letters and pieces for the whole world) and couldn't come to play. But almost always one of them came, and Kelmis came today. Kelmis was the smoky smelly one, but Oread didn't mind that. He was full of stories, he was full of fun, he was full of the hot darkness-fire from which anything can be made. It was great fun there through all the afternoon and evening, as they are called out in the light. But then Kelmis had to go back to work.
Oread and the iron dog Rusty ran back up the passages towards the house. She took the dog apart as they went back and put each piece into its proper pot. Last of all she put its bark in the bark pot, and she came up through the shop and into the inside of the house for supper.
“Oh, Oread, however do you get so smoky and smelly?” mother Frances Funnyfingers asked her. “Why don't you play out in the sunshine like other girls do? Why don't you play with other girls and boys?”
“I made an iron boy to play with once, mama,” Oread said. “You wouldn't believe how he carried on or the things he wanted to do. I had the devil's own time taking him apart again. That's the last boy I ever make, I tell you. They're tricky.”
The Man Who Talled Tales: Collected Short Stories of R.A. Lafferty Page 166