The Best of R. A. Lafferty

by R. A. Lafferty

  “The things will be there if I put them there,” Icarus insisted.

  “And you cannot bring it closer since all distance is now infinite,” Karl maintained.

  “At least I can focus it better,” Icarus insisted, and he did. The world appeared quite near.

  “It remembers us like a puppy would,” Welkin said. “See, it jumps up at us.”

  “It’s more like a lion leaping for a treed hunter just out of reach,” Icarus grudged. “But we are not treed.”

  “It can’t ever reach us, and it wants to,” Welkin piqued. “Let’s reach down to it.”

  (“And they inclined the heavens and went down.”)

  * * *

  A most peculiar thing happened to Ronald Kolibri as he touched Earth. He seemed to have a seizure. He went slack-faced, almost horror-faced, and he would not answer the others.

  “What is it, Ronald?” Welkin begged in kindred anguish. “Oh, what is it? Somebody help him!”

  Then Ronald Kolibri did an even more peculiar thing. He began to fold up and break up from the bottom. Bones slowly splintered and pierced out of him and his entrails gushed out. He compressed. He shattered. He splashed. Can a man splash?

  The same sort of seizure overtook Karl Vlieger: the identical slack-face horror-face, the same folding up and breaking up from the bottom, the same hideous sequence.

  And Joseph Alzarsi went into the same sundering state, baffled and breaking up.

  “Icarus, what’s happened to them?” Welkin screamed. “What is the slow loud booming?”

  “They’re dead. How could that be?” Icarus puzzled trembling. “Death is in time, and we are not.”

  Icarus himself passed through time as he crashed earth, breaking up, spilling out more odiously than any of them.

  And Welkin touched earth, crashed, then what? She heard her own slow loud booming as she hit.

  (Another million years went by, or some weeks.)

  * * *

  A shaky old woman on crutches was going down the middle-of-the-night passages that are under the Rocks. She was too old a woman to be Welkin Alauda, but not too old for a Welkin who had lived millions of years outside of time.

  She had not died. She was lighter than the others, and besides she had done it twice before unscathed. But that was before she had known fear.

  Naturally they had told her that she would never walk again; and now most unnaturally she was walking with crutches. Drawn by the fungoid odor and the echoing dampness she went down in the total dark to where small things were growing with the wrong color white and were all of the wrong shape. She wanted one thing only, and she would die without it.

  “Sky for salving the broken Crone! Sky for the weal of my hollow bone!” she crackled in an old-woman voice. But it was only her own voice that echoed back to her.

  Should a Sky-Seller live forever?

  Cliffs That Laughed

  Introduction by Gregory Feeley

  “Cliffs That Laughed” appeared in the March 1969 issue of Magazine of Horror, surely one of Lafferty’s less likely markets (it was edited by Robert A. W. Lowndes, who had published some of Lafferty’s earliest stories and who doubtless knew enough to ask for more). It was reprinted in Lafferty’s second collection, 1972’s Strange Doings, but has scarcely been seen since. It certainly cannot be called a horror story, although what Freud called “the horror of incest” definitely plays a role. But what kind of story is it?

  It’s a tale told in a bar, at least in part—but interleaved with another tale, told decades earlier to the same narrator, by a Malay storyteller he met while stationed in Indonesia, who gained new inspiration when he gained access to American comic books. The storyteller’s tale, which begins with “flute notes ascending” and ends with “flute notes descending,” offers a pleasing sense of unity, but the other story, about three soldiers who disappeared on an Indonesian island in 1945, “keeps interposing itself” upon it. In the end, however, the two tales complete each other, forming a deeply bizarre saga that the narrator (his protestations notwithstanding) weaves into a third tale, the one we read.

  The tale’s elements will be familiar for Lafferty fans: a bloodthirsty but colorful pirate; a willful young woman intent on withholding sexual favors; a fell scheme foiled by a clever trick. Neither will these readers be surprised by the rather idealized portrait of pirates, nor with what Andrew Ferguson calls Lafferty’s “lurid depictions of death and dismemberment.” What does startle us is that the trick turns on the incest taboo, something Lafferty never otherwise wrote about. The brutal but poetic Willy Jones finally wins over Margaret, daughter of a man he murdered, and succeeds in consummating his love, but when he disregards her warning not to resume pirating, she exacts a grotesque vengeance upon his return to their sinister island, which forever frustrates his desire to “board” his wife lest he unwittingly commit the abomination of incest. Since her trick requires both Margaret and her nubile—indeed indistinguishable—daughter (born and bred during Willy’s twenty-year absence) to be at once dead and alive, the grotesque family romance seethes with the Freudian unheimlich or uncanny, and leads in time to father, mother, and daughter banding perversely together to attract other men to the island and then slaughter them as they “frolicked” with the two beautiful women.

  This tangle of rage and baffled lust—the impulse to incest deflected into murderous resolve—gets its sequel in the tale told in the bar, by an American soldier who alone escaped from Willy Jones Island in 1945 and now, after twenty years’ journeying home, wishes for nothing but to go back again. A Malay folk tale updated by Wonder Woman (complete with numerous elements common to incest myths, such as identical mother and daughter and a questing figure who was declared dead yet is still alive) turns into the evocation of a composite Belle Dame Sans Merci, who leaves the men she encounters wracked by sexual enthrallment and desolation. It is a strange short story even for Lafferty, and this is without mentioning the “golems” (who are clearly something else) or the uncanny intermediate condition that haunts the text, such as the “middle state” between life and death (which mother and daughter now inhabit) or the “middle land” that the soldier traverses beneath the earth.

  And what does the title signify? There are no cliffs in the story. The soldier now returning to his death remembers the two women as being “like volcanoes” and declares that “we climbed them like mountains. Man, the uplift on them! The shoulders were cliffs that laughed. The swaying—”

  It’s an odd image (it does not sound like shoulders that he is praising) and recalls a short story Lafferty published a year later, “The Cliff Climbers,” in which the eponymous cliff—which the narrator tells us at the outset is actually “a spire”—clearly (like the “up-thrust” or “rock chimney” in “Continued on Next Rock,” also published in 1970) stands as a synecdoche, too blatant for readers to overlook, for a centuries-long male desire, one that (as in “Continued on Next Rock”) proves destructive to both pursuer and pursued.

  Lafferty’s use of “cliff” as an image of displaced sexuality remains finally mysterious, as do his reasons for offering a different version of the three soldiers’ disappearance in his 1971 novel The Devil is Dead. “There is only one story in the world,” the storyteller reminds us, and the version proffered in “Cliffs That Laughed” gives us myth, humor, and virtuosity. For utter clarity, you need look to another writer.

  Cliffs That Laughed

  Between ten and ten-thirty of the morning of October 1, 1945, on an island that is sometimes called Pulau Petir and sometimes Willy Jones Island (neither of them its map name), three American soldiers disappeared and have not been seen since.

  “I’m going back there, I tell you! It was worth it. The limbs that laughed! Let them kill me! I’ll get there! Oh, here, here, I’ve got to get hold of myself.

  “The three soldiers were Sergeant Charles Santee of Orange, Texas; Corporal Robert Casper of Gobey, Tennessee; and PFC Timothy Lorrigan of Boston which is in one of the
eastern states. I was one of those three soldiers.

  “I’m going back there if it takes me another twenty years!”

  * * *

  No, no, no! That’s the wrong story. It happened on Willy Jones Island also, but it’s a different account entirely. That’s the one the fellow told me in a bar years later, just the other night, after the usual “Didn’t I used to know you in the Islands?”

  * * *

  “One often makes these little mistakes and false starts,” Galli said. “It is a trick that is used in the trade. One exasperates people and pretends to be embarrassed. And then one hooks them.”

  Galli was an hereditary storyteller of the Indies. “There is only one story in the world,” he said, “and it pulls two ways. There is the reason part that says, ‘Hell, it can’t be’ and there is the wonder part that says, ‘Hell, maybe it is.’” He was the storyteller, and he offered to teach me the art.

  For we ourselves had a hook into Galli. We had something he wanted.

  “We used the same stories for a thousand years,” he said. “Now, however, we have a new source, the American Comic Books. My grandfather began to use these in another place and time, and I use them now. I steal them from your orderly tents, and I have a box full of them. I have Space Comics and Commander Midnight; I have Galactic Gob and Mighty Mouse and the Green Hornet and the Masked Jetter. My grandfather also had copies of some of these, but drawn by older hands. But I do not have Wonder Woman, not a single copy. I would trade three-for-one for copies of her. I would pay a premium. I can link her in with an island legend to create a whole new cycle of stories, and I need new stuff all the time. Have you a Wonder Woman?”

  When Galli said this, I knew that I had him. I didn’t have a Wonder Woman, but I knew where I could steal one. I believe, though I am no longer sure, that it was Wonder Woman Meets the Space Magicians.

  I stole it for him. And in gratitude Galli not only taught me the storyteller’s art, but he also told me the following story:

  * * *

  “Imagine about flute notes ascending,” said Galli. “I haven’t my flute with me, but a story should begin so to set the mood. Imagine about ships coming out of the Arabian Ocean, and finally to Jilolo Island, and still more finally to the very island on which we now stand. Imagine about waves and trees that were the great-great-grandfathers of the waves and trees we now have.”

  It was about the year 1620, Galli is telling it, in the late afternoon of the high piracy. These Moluccas had already been the rich Spice Islands for three hundred years. Moreover, they were on the road of the Manila galleons coming from Mexico and the Isthmus. Arabian, Hindu, and Chinese piracy had decayed shamefully. The English were crude at the business. In trade the Dutch had become dominant in the Islands and the Portuguese had faded. There was no limit to the opportunities for a courageous and dedicated raider in the Indies.

  They came. And not the least of these new raiding men was Willy Jones.

  It was said that Willy Jones was a Welshman. You can believe it or not as you like. The same thing has been said about the Devil. Willy was twenty-five years old when he finally possessed his own ship with a mixed crew. The ship was built like a humpbacked bird, with a lateen sail and suddenly appearing rows of winglike oars. On its prow was a swooping bird that had been carved in Muskat. It was named the Flying Serpent, or the Feathered Snake, depending on what language you use.

  * * *

  “Pause a moment,” said Galli. “Set the mood. Imagine about dead men variously. We come to the bloody stuff at once.”

  * * *

  One early morning, the Feathered Snake overtook a tall Dutchman. The ships were grappled together, and the men from the Snake boarded the Dutch ship. The men on the Dutchman were armed, but they had never seen such suddenness and savagery as shown by the dark men from the Snake. There was slippery blood on the decks, and the croaking of men being killed. “I forgot to tell you that this was in the passage between the Molucca Sea and the Banda,” Galli said.

  The Snake took a rich small cargo from the Dutch ship, a few able-bodied Malay seamen, some gold specie, some papers of record, and a dark Dutch girl named Margaret. These latter things Willy Jones preempted for himself. Then the Snake devoured that tall Dutchman and left only a few of its burning bones floating in the ocean.

  “I forgot to tell you that the tall Dutch ship was named the Luchtkastell,” Galli said.

  Willy Jones watched the Luchtkastell disappearing under the water. He examined the papers of record, and the dark Dutch girl Margaret. He made a sudden decision: he would cash his winnings and lay up for a season.

  He had learned about an island in the papers of record. It was a rich island, belonging to the richest of the Dutch spice men who had gone to the bottom with the Luchtkastell. The fighting crew would help Willy Jones secure the island for himself; and in exchange, he would give them his ship and the whole raiding territory and the routes he had worked out.

  Willy Jones captured the island and ruled it. From the ship he kept only the gold, the dark Dutch girl Margaret, and three golems which had once been ransom from a Jew in Oman.

  “I forgot to tell you that Margaret was the daughter of the Dutch spice man who had owned the island and the tall ship and who was killed by Willy,” Galli said, “and the island really belonged to Margaret now as the daughter of her father.”

  For one year Willy Jones ruled the small settlement, drove the three golems and the men who already lived there, had the spices gathered and baled and stored (they were worth their weight in silver), and built the Big House. And for one year he courted the dark Dutch girl Margaret, having been unable to board her as he had all other girls.

  She refused him because he had killed her father, because he had destroyed the Luchtkastell which was Family and Nation to her, and because he had stolen her island.

  This Margaret, though she was pretty and trim as a kuching, had during the affair of the Feathered Snake and the Luchtkastell twirled three seamen in the air like pinwheels at one time and thrown them all into the ocean. She had eyes that twinkled like the compounded eyes of the devil-fly; they could glint laughter and fury at the same time.

  * * *

  “Those girls were like volcanoes,” the man said. “Slim, strong mountains, and we climbed them like mountains. Man, the uplift on them! The shoulders were cliffs that laughed. The swaying—”

  * * *

  No, no! Belay that last paragraph! That’s from the ramble of the fellow in the bar, and it keeps intruding.

  * * *

  “I forgot to tell you that she reminds me of Wonder Woman,” Galli said.

  Willy Jones believed that Margaret was worth winning unbroken, as he was not at all sure that he could break her. He courted her as well as he could, and he used to advantage the background of the golden-green spicery on which they lived.

  “Imagine about the Permata bird that nests on the moon,” Galli said, “and which is the most passionate as well as the noblest-singing of the birds. Imagine about flute notes soaring.”

  Willy Jones made this tune to Margaret:

  The Nutmeg Moon is the third moon of the year.

  The Tides come in like loose Silk all its Nights.

  The Ground is animated by the bare Feet of Margaret

  Who is like the Pelepah of the Ko-eng Flower.

  Willy made this tune in the Malaya language in which all the words end in ang.

  “Imagine about water leaping down rocky hills,” Galli said. “Imagine about red birds romping in green groves.”

  Willy Jones made another tune to Margaret:

  A Woman with Shoulders so strong that a Man might ride upon them

  The while she is still the little Girl watching for the black Ship

  Of the Hero who is the same age as the Sky,

  But she does not realize that I am already here.

  Willy made this tune in the Dutch language in which all the words end in lijk.

  “Imagine about an
other flute joining the first one, and their notes scamper like birds,” Galli said.

  Willy Jones made a last tune to Margaret:

  Damnation! That is enough of Moonlight and Tomorrows!

  Now there are mats to plait, and kain to sew.

  Even the smallest crab knows to build herself a house in the sand.

  Margaret should be raking the oven coals and baking a roti.

  I wonder why she is so slow in seeing this.

  Willy made this tune in the Welsh language in which all the words end in gwbl.

  When the one year was finished, they were mated. There was still the chilliness there as though she would never forgive him for killing her father and stealing her island; but they began to be in accord.

  * * *

  “Here pause five minutes to indicate an idyllic interlude,” Galli said. “We sing the song Bagang Kali Berjumpa if you know the tune. We flute, if I have my flute.”

  The idyllic interlude passed.

  Then Willy’s old ship, the Feathered Snake, came back to the Island. She was in a pitiful state of misuse. She reeked of old and new blood, and there were none left on her but nine sick men. These nine men begged Willy Jones to become their captain again to set everything right.

  Willy washed the nine living skeletons and fed them up for three days. They were fat and able by then. And the three golems had refitted the ship.

  “All she needs is a strong hand at the helm again,” said Willy Jones. “I will sail her again for a week and a day. I will impress a new crew, and once more make her the terror of the Spice Islands. Then I will return to my island, knowing that I have done a good deed in restoring the Snake to the bloody work for which she was born.”